Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi,

„Kommen die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa?“

History is an essential discipline in an analysis of the European Union enlargement process. On the one hand, the relations between states as well as current interests in the process of enlargement are often defined in the longue duree. On the other hand, representations of the past (as “national histories” or “regional histories”) serve as ideological basis for “incorporation” or “exclusion” of different states or cultures from the “European project” (Le Goff, 2000). The importance of the latter can be identified through the synecdoche by which “Europe” came to mean the EU as opposed to the geographic concept. We can also note that all histories in the text are represented in the following way:

The text of the historical account, that begins spatially by locating the country and historically sometimes in 5^th or 6^th century, thus somehow putting the history of the country within the context of an essential and ontological relationship with the European Union (which might be seen as a telos of every history in these representations)

History and representations of the past also serve to support the colonizing or orientalizing perspective of “the West” on “the East”. Focusing on traditionalism, stagnation, backwardness or “authenticity” of “Eastern cultures”, representations of the East European past constitute “Eastern Europe” as a mirror for the “Western” historical experience of dynamism and advancement (Wolf). One of the methodological premises of this report (as well as of the discussion it covers) is that such representations are the most general framework for analyzing the applicants’ histories.

However, there is hardly one ideology that underlines representations of the applicant countries’ past by the European Union. Rather, these representations open up a field of competition between different historical narratives.

Among them, national historiographies play an important part and serve to establish the subject of the applicant. For instance, in many of these histories current names of the countries are projected into the past thus eternalizing the national identity of the country (which might have experienced the “national awakening” only in the 19^th or even the 20^th century). Consider, for example, the following:

“…In 1201, German Teutonic Knights conquered Latvia…”

“…From the early 13^th century, Estonia experienced seven centuries of foreign rule”

In another instance of ideological work, the histories attempt to present an account of the past that eliminates certain historical experiences. As Salvatore Engel-DiMauro suggested, the absence of references to the Nazi dictatorship and control of Central and Eastern Europe has much to do with an attempt to appease certain EU states, Germany in particular. This specific reference to German interests in and visions of Central and Eastern Europe brings to the attention of researchers persistence and modifications of the concept of Mitteleuropa, developed at the beginning of the 20^th century by Central Powers, Germany in particular (Naumann, 1916).

Given a specific task of the histories (acquainting the Western public with the uknown domain), the representation of the past is not entirely negative. In several instances, the reports mention post-World War II industrialization of the applicant countries or, even, the presence of significant industrial base inherited from other periods. Thus, Czech Republic is reported to have inherited from 60 to 70 % of the industries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This consideration of what is available in the applicant countries resembles inventarization of property for future management and might have been included for the purposes of convincing the Western public in feasibility of the applicants’ functioning within the EU as well as presenting them as a lucrative investment market for the EU capital.

As was suggested during the discussion (Salvatore Engel-DiMauro), a multilevel consideration of historical events inspired the authors and compilers of these histories. Only certain events enter the published brief accounts, while others are excluded. We can single out several important topics that have entered all accounts:

- Domination by other powers

• The emergence of an independent state
• The communist past and the collapse of communism

Yet, despite these commonalities a degree of diversity in accounts and interpretation exist. A working hypothesis can be chosen that the accounts serve to establish a view of the countries that would

1. demonstrate these countries affiliation (and difference from) “Western” Europe;
2. demonstrate, in several instances, the countries’ difference from Russia/USSR and attempts to liberate themselves from the latter (in case of Slovenia, for example, the role of Russia/USSR is played by Yugoslavia/Serbia);
3. remove emphasis from certain historical experiences (German occupation/Nazi dominance, losses in the World War II); consider the mention of the Munich deal that effectively surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler and Britain’s and France’s role in it – the history of Czeckoslovakia mentions the deal but does not mention the Western powers involved in it. Moreover, the text presents it in such a way as if it was only the Sudeten Germans’ demands that secured the deal).
4. De-problematize historical experiences of a number of countries and thus ease the worries of the European Union that it would import border conflicts in the process of the Enlargement: the history of Hungary mentions the loss of territory by the country in the aftermath of the World War I but fails to acknowledge that this event constituted a major trauma in national experience.

What follows is an attempt of constructing visual representations of the contents of the texts and interpretations of these representations:

Table 1. The time spans of historical narratives by paragraph.

Table 2. The total length (in words) of the histories*

* This table was provided by Jozsef Borocz

Table 3. Descriptions of geopolitical location

* No names of border countries are given.

The opening paragraph is aimed at describing the geopolitical context of each applicant country. A territory is identified in terms of its geographical particularities, size, borders, and size of the population. Whereas it is a standard for an encyclopedic article, however small, to include the name of a capital city in the geopolitical description of a nation, in the opinions it is omitted from all texts. Table 3 presents the ways in which the countries' geopolitical location is described. It shows that listing of bordering countries follows a specific sequential logic: in most cases they are described in a clockwise direction. It is interesting to note that the borders of landlocked countries such as Hungary and Slovakia are described in the opposite directions and in a correct sequence with one notable exception: Ukraine should have been listed second to the last. The border of Poland is described in an unusual way: it begins with Slovakia, then skips the Czech Republic and Germany to continue listing Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine (all in a correct, clockwise sequence). The description ends with the Czech Republic and finally Germany. It is unusual given that in most cases the description starts at the west, and in this case, it would be Germany that has a relatively extensive border with Poland. Nevertheless, it is listed last.

In the case of Bulgaria and Romania, the listing is either incomplete or no names of bordering countries are given at all. The description of Bulgarian geopolitical location begins by pointing out that it is "bounded by the Black Sea to the East." What Western reader needs to know is that Bulgaria has an attractive, cheap resort area. It is conveniently left out, however, that it shares a seaborder with a number of countries such as Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and, of course, Turkey. Moreover, despite its land border with Bulgaria, Turkey is not mentioned at all. Bulgaria, according to this report, has only two neighboring countries worth mentioning, Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The northern border of Bulgaria goes along the Danube, the report says, a river apparently with only one bank. That Romania is located on the other bank of Danube is a fact of hardly any significance according to this description.

What is the reason behind the following geopolitical description of Romania: "Romania is situated between the Black Sea and Danube delta to the south-east and is crossed by the Carpathian Mountains to the north-west"? Having been described in this way, it is presented as if it has no political borders at all. Or the correct answer might be that it has no political borders with any of the current member-states of the EU. The three Baltic republics of the former Soviet Union also have no land borders with the EU but the fact that they are adjacent to Russia is well known and thus cannot be omitted. Yet, their somewhat inconvenient proximity to Russia is compensated by emphasizing "historically close links to Finland and Sweden" in the case of Estonia. Latvia, on the other hand, has one of the most detailed lists of its sea neighbors. Yet, Poland, which has just as many, has none mentioned.

And finally, one more interesting observation about how the three Baltic Republics are represented. Lithuania with its population of 3.7 million and area of 65,200 sq. km is the largest of all three. At the same time, it is the only applicant country described as "a small nation on the Baltic Sea" and explicitly compared as such to a member of the EU, Ireland.

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At this point, we shall try to analyze each particular history in order to single out the omitted or misinterpreted elements/facts and locate them in the context of presentations. Of course, such an analysis can not be absolutely exhaustive but can present an overall picture of histories.

Bulgaria: The history of Bulgaria only cursorily mentions the modern period of its history. The emergence of the modern Bulgarian state in 1877-1878 as a result of a Russ0-Turkish War immediately presented a crisis: fearful of the possible affiliation between Bulgaria and Russia (these fears proved to be groundless), Britain insisted on the limitations of the extense of Bulgarian territory. As a result of the Berlin Congress, the so called “Eastern Rumelia” was returned to the Ottoman Empire. This important element of Bulgarian history is omitted, although the First and the Second Balkan Wars, which resulted in Bulgarian loss of territory, are present in the account. Also, the account does not mention the German dynasty that ruled Bulgaria until World War I. In a trope of inventarization mentioned above the report notes the increase of Bulgarian industry during the communist period.

Czech Republic: The account of Czech history strikes by any reference to the most known pages of Czech history (known to the Western public). For example, the role of Czech lands in religious wars and reformation is such a page. The fact that Kings of Bohemia were often elected Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire would be another instance known to any Western student who had taken the elementary course of history. The representation of the Munich deal has already been discussed above and suggests an attempt to remove references to an unpleasant experience with some of the EU member states. The comforting (for the EU public) fact of the industrial capacities of the Czech lands has also been discussed above. As Anna Sher suggested, the information on the emergence of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 does not mention the fact that it was a democratic state, based on the rule of law and representative government.

The account of Estonian history is a good example of modern national identity projection into the past as well as a tool to signify difference and affinity. The account mentions Estonia’s “close historical ties to Finland and Sweden across the Baltic sea”. Yet, the same account mentions German Knights, Denmark, Poland and Russia as powers that possessed over the territory that was to become Estonia in 1918. We can think of one explanation as to why exactly Finland and Sweden are chosen to become “historically linked” to Estonia and this explanation should take into account the EU system of patronages when one EU member state supports a particular EU country. In case of Estonia, Finland (that shares with Estonia not only a geographic and linguistic proximity but also experiences of being part of the Swedish Kingdom and, from 1809 to 1917, part of the Russian Empire. Both Finland and Estonia within the Russian Empire were dominated by local elites of origins different from local population: Swedish nobility in Finnish case and Baltic German barons in case of Estonia. In both cases, national movements appeared in the course of the 19^th century and were initially directed exactly against these elites). Yet, Estonia is “historically linked” to Russia at least as much as it is to Sweden or Finland.

Hungary: Hungarian history is begun with an assertion that Hungary, prior to partial Turkish occupation of 1526, developed economic and cultural links to “Western Europe”. The account obviously misses the fact that “during the centuries prior to 1526”, the notion of “Western Europe” was meaningless. Hungary developed close ties with many important centers of culture in Europe, including the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine empire during its zenith.

The report on the Trianon treaty and the post World War I development fails to recognize the importance of this fact for Hungarian national history. It also stands in a striking conflict with the representation of the Romanian history (see below). The report also suggests some information on the economic policies of the communist regime, thus presenting Hungary as more than just a stagnated communist economy.

Latvia: As in the case with Estonia, the account of Latvian history imposes the modern name of the country upon the Duchy of Courland (emerged out of the Livonian order) that was incorporated subsequently into Poland, Sweden and Russia. The reports also insistently mention that Western states did not recognize the incorporation of Latvia (as well as Estonia and Lithuania) into the Soviet Union after the World War II. This statements raises certain doubts as all major states signed peace treaties with the USSR as well as the funding declaration of the OSCE that recognized the established post War borders in Europe. A striking specificity of the account that mentions a Russian radar (in Scrunda) reveals some specific points of interest for the EU authors.

Lithuania: The history of Lithuania is an example of selective material presentation. First, the account mentions the establishment of a Kingdom of Lithuania (in reality, Lithuania was a Grand Duchy). Secondly, the account stresses Lithuania’s strong connections with Northern Europe but fails to mention that, for instance, the written language and language of administration in the Duchy prior to the dynastic Union with Poland was Slavonic (Old Russian). The account fails to report on Lithuanian troubled history in the interwar period and its conflict with Poland about the city of Vilnius (Vilna), modern capital of Lithuania. It also fails to report on the fact that Lithuania incorporated in the USSR was rewarded by Stalin through the allocation of Vilnius to Lithuania. Finally, the account fails to report on the history of Jews in the country, whose population decreased from a significant to negligible minority in the course of the 20^th century.

Poland: The history of Poland focuses mainly on the victimized perspective of Polish history. The report fails to account for the emergence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16^th and early 17^th century as the most powerful state in the region. Also, the report omits any reference to the Polish Jewish minority (probably, the largest Jewish minority in Europe prior to the Nazi occupation of the country). In general, the report gives a strange feeling of the largest applicant state being presented in such a faceless manner.

Romania: The history of Romania, strikingly, fails to report on the Ottoman dominance of Romania prior to the emergence of an independent Romanian state in 1859. Its history also stands in conflict with the presented history of Hungary as, for example, it mentions post World War I “recovery” of Transylvania by Romania. The report mentions some distance from Moscow maintained by the Ceausescu regime but does not report on the nationalist underpinnings of this distance.

Slovakia: Slovak history presented in the accounts reflects the problem of representing a history of the countries whose statehood emerged only recently and had no antecedents in the past. Anna Sher presented a detailed comparison between Czech and Slovak national history accounts by EU:

A sentence-by-sentence comparizon of the narratives on the Czech and Slovak histories revealed that a method of "cutting and pasting" has been used in their construction. It was suggested by the participants of the discussion that the historical narrative of the Czech Republic might have served as a template for the description of Slovak history.

A quote from Slovak historical narrative: "From the 10th to 20th centuries, the Slovak lands were part of the Hungarian and Austro-Hungarian empire, apart from a period of partial Turkish occupation after 1526." Two comments need to be made. The author of this text evidently wanted to emphasize the ten century long imperial domination. However, there is a hidden ambiguity in this passage. Lacking an accurately specified year of the collapse of the empire (1918), it can be read that the empire lasted throughout the 20th century. The second part of this passage also lacks clarity. The fact of partial Turkish occupation after 1526 is true for the Austrian-Hungarian empire; however, the territory populated by Slovaks did not fall under the Turkish rule. (Sergei, this is based on the encyclopedic entry which reads: "While much of Hungary fell under Ottoman domination, Slovakia and the remaining parts of Hungary came under the control of the Habsburg dynasty.")

The next sentence indicates that Slovak national identity emerged only in the 19th century, which is relatively late compared to other European nations. The process of Slovak national identity formation can be traced to a Slovak national movement that emerged in the 18th century, as well as to the codification of a Slovak literary language by Anton Bernolák in the 1700s, and the reform of this language by L’udovít Štúr the following century. Furthermore, it seems that there is no accident in that the Czechoslovak Republic founded in 1918 is described in terms of its population. The authors omitted the fact it was founded as a democratic republic, with a parliamentary form of government, universal suffrage, and guarantees for human rights. The list of minorities is also incomplete: it does not include the Ruthenes (Ukrainians) that comprised 6 percent of the population. Moreover, it is quite obvious that the Czechoslovak Republic came to "inherit 60-70 percent of the industrial base of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" for it included its former territories. The irony, however, lies in the fact that the Slovaks territories were significantly less industrialized than that of the contemporary Czech Republic.

As was pointed out above, Germany of the 1930s is never identified with the Nazi regime. Given that, it becomes impossible to explain that, for example, the demands of Sudeten Germans were officially backed up by Hitler, and that Britain and France, anxious to avoid war, leaned heavily on Czechoslovakia to be conciliatory. And again, the only impact that the WWII had on Slovak people is described in terms of a nominal declaration of independence, then restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic, loss of Ruthenia to the SU, and expulsion of "virtually all" Sudeten Germans and confiscation of their property. The author of this narrative to be of any importance views neither human loss, nor the Slovak National Uprising of August 1944.

Slovenia: The account of Slovenian history represents the already mentioned example of today’s national identity projected back into the past. Obviously, what came to be part of the Habsburg empire in the 13^th century was by no means “Slovenia”. The narrative of an essential national identity being suppressed first by Habsburgs and then by Yugoslavia might serve as an ideological tool to present th dissolution of Yugoslavia as inevitable.

The EU reports on the applicant countries’ national histories reveal different ideological constructs and their competition. National historiographies compete with notions of “belonginess to Europe” or with specific visions of particular EU member states. At the same time, the colonizing and orientalizing framework of the EU visions of the applicants’ past is accompanied by some interest in inventarization of available resources, such as industries, in the applicant countries.

Applicants’ histories also serve the purpose of calming the Western opinion, presenting the applicants eithers as faceless victims (Poland), non-problematic areas in terms of national conflicts (Hungary), essentially different from Russia and close to better known Finland or Sweden (Estonia). The presentation of histories selectively appropriates the events from national histories in order to appease some EU member states (Germany and the absence of reference to Nazism). Remarkable absence of the history of Jews in many countries may have been to that same end as well. There is probably more of the inconsistency, frustration and problems that these reports reveal than of a pre-designed ideology of Europeanism that conquers victoriously Eastern Europe.

References:

“Die Grenzen von Europa”, Interview with Jacques Le Goff, Die Zeit, December 7, 2000

Fridrich Naumann, Central Europe, 1916, London.

Larry Wollf, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford, 1990.