Acta Poloniae Historica

"The linguistic diversity of Europe (to stay within the limits of our continent) makes it culturally rich; yet, how hard-to-attain this cultural wealth sometimes is! This becomes particularly relevant when it comes to a content that is complicated and related to things of personal importance to people. And such is the case with problems of collective identity – particularly, national questions – that have been arousing strong emotion from time immemorial, attracting interest of numerous researchers in several last decades. While these problems cannot possibly be completely helped, they can be alleviated. Entering into international – that is, English-language – scientific circulation at least a selection (even if just samples) of original reference texts, not quite accessible due to the language barrier (among other factors), is one possible method. A task of this sort was undertaken a dozen years ago by a multinational team of young researchers who enjoyed institutional support from the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Central European University of Budapest, Hungary. Their publications describe the shaping of collective identities under imperial and post-imperial conditions – ‘collective’ actually meaning, in this particular case, ‘national’. The nationalist narratives whereby nation is a ‘natural’ and ‘perennial’ entity, are deeply rooted in the central-eastern part of our continent. The authors endeavour to demonstrate the ways along which such discourses and complexes of ideas or concepts developed."
Reviewed book: 
Editor: 
Diana Mishkova
Marius Turda
Balázs Trencsényi
ISBN: 
978-963-7326-62-2
cloth
$111.00 / €95.00 / £90.00