Europeanization in the 'Other' Europe

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Europeanization in the 'other' Europe: writing the nation into 'Europe'education in Slovakia and EstoniaDeborah L. Michaels a; E. Doyle Stevick ba University of Michigan, School of Education, Ann Arbor, USA b University of South Carolina,Columbia, SC, USA

To cite this Article Michaels, Deborah L. and Stevick, E. Doyle'Europeanization in the 'other' Europe: writing the nationinto 'Europe' education in Slovakia and Estonia', Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41: 2, 225 245To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00220270802515919URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220270802515919

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J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2009, VOL. 41, NO. 2, 225245

Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 00220272 print/ISSN 13665839 online 2009 Taylor & Francis http://www.informaworld.com

DOI: 10.1080/00220270802515919

Europeanization in the other Europe: writing the nation into Europe education in Slovakia and Estonia

DEBORAH L. MICHAELS and E. DOYLE STEVICK

Taylor and FrancisTCUS_A_351759.sgm10.1080/00220270802515919Journal of Curriculum Studies0022-0272 (print)/1366-5839 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis0000000002008E. [email protected] How is the tension between renewed nationalist and European narratives of belongingbeing unfolded in the curricula, discourse, and practice of civic education in Slovakia andEstonia. As two post-socialist territories that were reborn as independent nation-states inthe 1990s, Slovakia and Estonia were confronted with pressure to Europeanize. Europe-anization is intended to challenge doctrines of ethno-cultural citizenship, and is expectedto play a significant role within civic education. One might expect nationalists in thesecontexts to reject Europeanization and those with a more tolerant or cosmopolitan bent toembrace it. These different case studies show, however, that educators, curriculum devel-opers, and textbook authors at the national level do not simply dismiss conceptions ofEurope. Rather, two trends emerge: First, Europe is redefined geographically, allowingEstonia and Slovakia to assert that they are inherently European (as the borderland andthe centre, respectively). Second, the meaning of Europe is contested through counter-narratives about what constitutes Europeanness, and the concept of Europe is sometimesappropriated not to advance civic citizenship, but rather for exclusionary and nationalistends.

Keywords: citizenship education; civics; democracy; Estonia; Europeanization;nationalism; Slovakia

Introduction

The Iron Curtain that divided Europe during the Cold War effectivelyisolated the eastern half of the continent from initiatives to integrate Europein closer economic, cultural, and political relations. When the Iron Curtainopened in 1989 with the demise of state socialism, the stage was set for post-socialist states to re-join Europe. However, even as the vision of Europeanunity extended eastward, disunity in the form of rising ethnic nationalismscharacterized many post-socialist states. In the early 1990s civil war

Deborah L. Michaels is a PhD candidate in foundations of education at the University ofMichigan, School of Education, Rm 4114, 610 E. University Ave, Ann Arbor, 48109-1259,USA; e-mail: [email protected]. Her dissertation is an historical study that investigates,through textbook analysis, consistency and change in national identity and civic educationfrom the end of the Habsburg Empire until 2005 in what is today Slovakia. She is a Fulbrightand Spencer Fellow and served in Budapest in 2006 as a US Department of State expert onRomani [Gypsy] education issues in Central Europe.

E. Doyle Stevick is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policies at theUniversity of South Carolina, and Director of the Office of International and ComparativeEducation at the University of South Carolina, 318 Wardlaw, University of South Carolina,Columbia, SC 29208, USA; e-mail: [email protected]. He edited, with B.A.U. Levinson,Reimagining Civic Education: How Diverse Societies Form Democratic Citizens (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). He and Deborah Michaels are preparing a volume on HolocaustEducation across Central and Eastern Europe.

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226 D. L. MICHAELS AND E. D. STEVICK

devastated and divided Yugoslavia; Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania brokeaway from the Soviet Union; and Czechoslovakia split peacefully into twoautonomous states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This unravelling ofthe geopolitical map of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) stood as a starkcontradiction to goals of European unity, peace, and co-operation.

From the civic-democratic perspective of the European Union (EU)and Council of Europe (CoE), the ethnic national sentiments expressed inpost-socialist Europe were not European. Although the cultural bonds of apan-European identity remained contentious (Hansen 1998), the politicalidentity of the continent was clearly to be democratic, as the EuropeanCouncil confirmed in its 1993 meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. Toinduct post-socialist countries into the prescribed democratic, value system,the CoE and the EU sponsored a multitude of civic education projects.1 Byemphasizing minority rights and tolerance, these initiatives aimed toassuage divisive nationalist tendencies in CEE and thereby return theregion to Europe. By the late-1990s, European civic education had becomea fundamental vehicle for making Europeansdefined in democratic civictermsout of post-socialist citizens (Cahalen 1996, Winn and Harris2003).

Simultaneous with the proliferation of European democratic civiceducation projects in CEE, many post-socialist states were dusting offnational narratives of exclusive ethnic and cultural belonging, which social-ist regimes had often repressed. The tensions between renewed exclusivenationalist and inclusive democratic European approaches to civic educa-tion unfolded in a context of geopolitical relations, with each side having itspoints of leverage and weakness. On the one hand, as noted in the Introduc-tion to this issue of JCS, European institutions have limited influence overstate education (Ppin 2007). On the other hand, the incentives of fundingand potential EU membership provided European proposals with substan-tial clout (Kideckel 1996). In this paper, we explore how Slovakia andEstonia have managed these competing initiatives to, on the one hand,Europeanize in democratic terms and, on the other hand, nationalize inethno-cultural terms their civic education curricula after the fall of statesocialism. These cases offer a compelling comparison because both Estoniaand Slovakia were reborn as sovereign nation-states, freed from Russianand Czech domination, respectively, in the 1990s. In this rebirth,nationaland often nationalistnarratives emerged in their state school-ing. However, in this same period both countries courted EU membershipand were admitted to the EU in the May 2004 wave of expansion. Hence,these two states faced similar challenges in defining their national identitiesafter socialism while seeking European economic and political alliances.How this tension has thus far played out in their civic education curricula isthe focus of this paper.

Our analysis begins with considerations regarding different aspects ofEuropeanness and the pervasive dichotomy of East versus West inEurope. We maintain that a socio-historical perspective on how beingEuropean has been defined in the past is critical to understanding post-socialist responses to the call to Europeanize civic education curriculatoday. Our research findings demonstrate how processes and narratives

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intended to Europeanize national civic education are often appropriated atthe state level in ways than sustain rather than undermine ethno-culturalexclusion and serve to legitimate the nation-state.

Ethno-cultural and civic distinctions in European and national belonging

Although the concepts of alterity and civilizational otherness are perhapsmost associated with post-colonial studies, European powers have for centu-ries propagated notions of essential difference, not just between themselvesand their colonies, but along the EastWest axis of Europe itself (Wolff1994; Borneman and Fowler 1997, Todorova 1997). This socio-historicalcontext informs how countries east of todays European coreas Franceand Germany are frequently dubbedinterpret the call to Europeanizetheir civic education curricula, and which strategies they employ to translatetheir national histories and narratives into evidence of their Europeanness.We summarize here key aspects of this EastWest binary in Europe tocontextualize discourses we identified in our data.

That Western Europe has historically imagined itself against an EasternEuropean Other does not deny that significant differences have existedbetween these regions. Rather, the point is that these differences were gener-alized to the extent of becoming a dominant paradigm of contrast that over-shadowed similarities and unduly shaped how the West conceived andinteracted with the East (Stoler 1995). In Inventing Eastern Europe, Wolff(1994) illustrates meticulously how Western Europe defined itself in theEnlightenment against an Easternoften referred to as OrientalOtherwithin Europe. This Other Europe was characterized as inferior, evensavage and primitive by virtue of its lack of industrialization, the rule ofabsolute monarchies, its strange languages, and the presence of backwardCatholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It was viewed as periph-eral to European civilization, which, by contrast, was depicted as industrial,modern, Protestant, and cultured. In this conceptualization, EasternEurope was a shifting borderland that served as an ethno-cultural bulwarkagainst the Other Others of the Mongols and the Ottomans, but which wasnonetheless suspect of cultural and ethnic infiltration from the outside.

Building on the work of Said (1978), Kideckel (1996: 30) relates theEastWest binary to the post-socialist context in Europe. He distinguishesbetween an Orientalism that judges the other as essentially different andbeyond assimilation, and one that devalues others not because they aretotally different, but rather because they have fallen into difference overtime. It is this latter sense that Kideckel applies to Eastern Europe, becauseWestern Europe holds out the possibility of redemption for the fallenthrough capitalism, democracy, civil society, privatization, and the like(p. 30). We are concerned here with the democratic aspect of this modelof Europe as it relates to EU and CoE civic education initiatives in post-socialist Europe.

By exposing the history of power relations implicit in the term Europe,we probe the question: By what image of Europe should we evaluate

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progress in Europeanizing national civic education? Given that compet-ing notions of identity are likely to exist alongside dominant narratives(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, Hollinger 1995, Stoler 1995, Tilly 1995),we explore how the small nation-states of Slovakia and Estonia deployethno-cultural concepts of Europeanness to enhance and legitimize theirnational ethnically exclusive agendas, and, in turn, how they re-write andcensure their national histories to fit the democratic model of Europe.2

Nationalisms and Europeanisms: transposing nationalism types to the supra-national

Civic education has historically been the realm of the state for producingcitizens and nationals (Gellner 1983, Green 1997, Hobsbawm 1992, Miller1995). We suggest that understanding the categories of nation that civiceducation has tended to promote in the past can illuminate how Europe asa supra-nation is similarly narrated in classrooms and curricula today. Whilethe work on nationalism theory is too voluminous to discuss in detail here,we describe two categories of nationethno-cultural and civicthat arefrequently used to describe and differentiate how national communitiesare imagined.3 We later employ these categories to clarify parallels andtensions between national and European narratives of membership andidentity in post-socialist civic education.

The ethno-cultural nation anchors national belonging in particularisticethnic and cultural attributes that are depicted as objective and organicrather than socially constructed. Ethnic criteria of national membershipmake claims to tribal origin-myths, bloodlines, ties to the land, and a primor-dial rationale that legitimates the sovereignty of the nation today because ithas existed since time immemorial. Cultural attributes such as language,religion, and folk customs supplement biological evidence of kinship and aredeployed to circumscribe who does and does not belong to the nationalfamily (Haas 1964, Hobsbawm 1992).

In contrast, the source of social cohesion in a civic nation is not inheritedtraits or behaviours, but a common core of political values that ideally tran-scend religious, linguistic, and ethnic divisions (Meinecke 1962). Ignatieff(1995: 249) defines the civic nation as composed of all thoseregardless ofrace, colour, [religious] creed, gender, language, or ethnicitywhosubscribe to the nations political creed. This type of nation envisions apeople united by political values powerful enough to override historicalchauvinisms, such as those propagated by ethno-cultural narratives.

These two categories of the civic and ethno-cultural nation are ideal types:they can be compartmentalized for theoretical purposes, but in practice coex-ist and are never purely realized in any given national context. Even thoughthe prevalent discourse in European institutions describes an inclusive,democratic civic supra-nation, ethno-cultural terms for European belongingare evident in evocations of a common Christian heritage in debates abouthow far Europe extends geographically, and in ethnic references to theTurkish or Asian Others that exclude them from the reaches of Europe(Todorova 1997, Hansen 1998). In other words, nationalization and

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Europeanization of civic education can be complementary in at least twoways: each communitythe national (Estonia/Slovakia) and supranational(Europe)can be defined as similarly ethno-cultural, with parallels in theirperceived religious, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural heritage; or they can beconceived as civic communities, holding in common democratic principlesand forms of governance. An awareness of these potential points of harmonybetween the European and national civic narratives renders more apparentthe ways in which civic educators and policy makers at the national level cancreatively connect the European narrative and the national so that one doesnot preclude or illegitimate the other.

Cases and methods

Post-socialist states provide unique insights into the challenges of European-ization. First, the legacy of 40 years of totalitarian rule shapes how democraticcivic narratives are interpreted and accepted in CEE countries. Second, thefall of socialism led to the re-emergence of nation-states that in the early-20th

century had been absorbed into larger politiesfor example, the SovietUnion, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Ethno-cultural nationalism in the1990s served as both a motivation and justification for Estonian and Slovaksecession. This context of heightened nationalism could reasonably beexpected to undermine the influence of Europeanization programmes andthe reception of European conceptions of identity and citizenship. Finally,the history of an EastWest binary that we have described suggests thatcontemporary narratives of European inclusion may have a differentresonance in Eastern than in Western Europe, and therefore provide anillustrative counterpoint to Western European cases.

In addition to the experience of post-socialism, Slovakia and Estoniahave other parallel historical attributes that make a comparison of these twocountries of particular interest. Both nations share a history of dominationby larger ethnic groups. The territory of present-day Slovakia fell underHungarian rule during the Habsburg Empire and the Hungarian assimila-tionist policies known as Magyarization in the 19th century (Johnson 1985,Leff 1988). During the First Czechoslovak Republic (19181938) and laterin the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (19481989), the larger Czechpopulation tended to dominate state politics and subsume Slovak concerns.Similarly, Estonians were subjected to Russification policies in the 19th

century and again under Soviet domination (Raun 1991: 5759, 182).Relations between Estonians and ethnic Russians in Estonia and betweenSlovaks and ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia today provide important tests ofdemocratization.

Another parallel between these cases is that Estonia and Slovakia bothhad brief periods of being independent states before the socialist eraEstonia from 19181939 and Slovakia between 19391945whichconcretized their self-conceptions as distinct nations. During World War II,the Jewish populations in these countries were decimated, due in part to thecomplicity of their nationals with the Nazis; teaching the Holocaust inschools remains a major challenge in this post-socialist era in which national

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pride and heightened awareness of democracys call for minority rightssimultaneously tug at the shirt tails of civic education agendas. Both Slovakiaand Estonia experienced state socialism for over 40 years, then re-emergedas sovereign nation-states post-socialism: in 1990 Estonia declared itsindependence from the Soviet Union and in 1993 Czechoslovakia split intoSlovakia and the Czech Republic. Additionally, both Slovakia and Estoniabecame EU members in May 2004, and therefore experienced pressuresto Europeanize their civic education curricula over a comparable timeperiod.

Our data sources vary by country case. The data for Slovakia are drawnfrom civic education textbooks for primary and secondary students andteachers guides published between 19902005 and approved by the SlovakMinistry of Education.4 While the data on Slovakia reflect an outcome ofnegotiations over curricular content, the data on Estonia focus more oncurricular processes, taken from classroom observations and interviewsconducted between 20012004 with Estonian teachers and policy-makers.We first analysed the country-level data separatelyMichaels for Slovakiaand Stevick for Estoniaand then compared our findings on Europeaniza-tion across our two cases.

Despite differences in data sources, several fascinating civic educationtrends emerged in both cases. First, civic educators define Europe ingeographic terms that allow Estonia and Slovakia to assert that they are inher-ently European (as the borderland frontier and the centre, respectively).Second, the concept of Europe is sometimes injected with ethno-culturalmeaning not to advance civic democratic citizenship, but rather for exclu-sionary and nationalist ends. Third, national history is edited to minimize orerase undemocratic events from the national path, which renders an imageof the nation as unerringly adherent to the civic democratic principles ofEurope. Next we present evidence of these trends from our case studies.

Slovakia: on the democratic path and at the heart of Europe

Democratic belonging beyond and below Europe

Slovak textbooks link Europe to democratic processes and promotion, butdo not see it as the only source of democratization. European citizenshipmust also compete for attention with other international organizations, USgovernment and non-governmental agencies, and national institutions. Inthis way, even though one of the key goals of European integration is toprotect and promote democracy, democratic narratives in civic educationare not always an indication of Europeanization, but of democratization atvarious levels of governance and identityboth broader and narrower thanEurope. Post-socialist Slovak textbooks present at least four types ofcommunities in which a civic democratic belonging is relevant: the global/universal, the international, the European, and the national.

At the secondary school level, Slovak civic education textbooks dedi-cate significant space to explaining democratic principles with no specific

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reference to a delimited community. Instead, in these sections, democraticideals are depicted as universals constituting a global democratic identity.Lists of democratic freedoms and responsibilities, descriptions of whatconstitutes a civil society or democratic culture, and explanations ofconcepts such as majority rule and minority rights are common across textsin the upper grade levels (Krskov and Krtka 1998: 2021, 1617). Onetextbook (Bart and Drag[ncaron] 1993: 123) defines equality as equal treat-ment regardless of race, skin colour, sex, language, religion, political, orother beliefs, national or social origin, gender, property, or other position.However, the text fails to situate the ideal of equality within specific casesor contexts.

Debating the concept of equality or inequality as it pertains to issues oflocal and national import would ground the abstract concept of equality inreal-life applications. Nationally relevant examples include proposed affir-mative action policies for Slovak Roma (often referred to as Gypsies),state-sponsored minority-language schools for Hungarians in Slovakia, andthe treatment of Jews by Slovak ethnic nationals before and during theHolocaust. Not only are prompts for such discussions uncommon in thetextbooks, Michaels also found in classroom observations that teachersrarely facilitated conversations that related democratic principles to conten-tious issues in a national or international context. Teachers and studentswere more concerned with memorizing textbook definitions and lists relatedto democratic principles because these items were likely to appear on thestate graduation [maturita] exams (Bart and Drag[ncaron] 1993).

The majority of civic education textbooks in Slovakia look not only toEurope, but also to the US and UN as sources of democratic inspiration.Textbooks for the last years of primary school and early secondary schoolglorify the American Revolution as a turning point in democratic history. Inthe 1990s faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and AbrahamLincoln replaced earlier images of socialist heroes such as Marx and Lenin(Jaksicsov 1995: 23, Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997: 19, Vavrov 1997: 211). Onewidely distributed textbook (Krskov and Krtka 1998: 15) declares that theUS is the origin for todays [democratic] constitutions. The UN appearsfrequently as a democratic protagonist in the international community.Summaries and annotated versions of the UN Charter and The UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights are common beginning in the later half ofelementary school. Similarly, the Vienna Declaration, signed in 1993 at theUN convention, is often cited in the textbooks as an illustration of the inter-national communitys commitment to democratic human rights and therights of minorities ([Ccaron] apov and Sta[scaron] enkov 1998: 110113, Krskov andKrtka 1995: 88, Markov and Sattiov 2002).

In addition to presenting democratic ideology as a universal value systemand democratic history as an international movement, the Slovak civiceducation curriculum does draw specific connections between Europeaninstitutions and democratic civic identity. In one Slovak textbook under thesection human and civil rights, the authors (Bart and Drag[ncaron] 1993: 122)remark that [t]he Council of Europe was founded November 4, 1950 tosecure the protection of democratic and human rights in Europe. Text-books and civic education exams expect students to learn the general roles

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of European institutions, which are depicted as fully democratic, and toknow a general sketch of European integration history, including the namesand dates of major treaties such as Maastricht.

However, European governance and civic history are usually presentedas dry, disconnected lists of facts, figures, names, and acronyms, with littleor no context or narrative, while the national civic narratives often evokeemotion and engage the reader in a specific historical context that sets ascene for the narrative. A textbook written by a respected Slovak historian(Liptk 1990: 45) describes the reaction of Czechs and Slovaks after theSoviet pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968:

Hopelessness befell people. But they understood that real changes were notpossible so long as a dictatorship existed in the Soviet Union and Europecontinued to be divided. An open fight with the dictatorship was impossible. Thequestion of human rights became an important aspect in the race for democracy.(emphasis in the original)

In this excerpt, human rights and the race for democracy are situated in thenational context of the Prague Springa dramatic period of liberalization insocialist Czechoslovak history that ended when Soviet-led tanks crushed themovement. The people are implicitly Czechs and Slovaks, who want demo-cratic change. The dictatorship is equated with the Soviet Union and, inthis way, the text seems to deny any Czech or Slovak hand in the undemocraticsocialist regime that existed prior to or after the Prague Spring.

Stated in another way, Slovak national history in these textbooks is anarrative of democratic struggle. One textbook declares that:

The issue of human rights has been a part of Slovak and Czech history sincethe 1848 revolution; although often masked by other titles and the revolutionis generally understood only as part of the fight for national independence.(Krskov and Krtka 1995: 88)

Here the period of the Czech and Slovak National Awakening is depicted inthe broader context of a human rights movement, not simply as a nationalmovement.5 This image can be read as a self-defence for Slovak politicalculture in the mid-1990s, which Western Europe and the US often charac-terized as nationalist and a threat to European democratic integration.Instead of portraying ethnic nationalism as a necessary threat to democracy,the textbook excerpt represents ethnic nationalism as potentially an expres-sion of democratic ideals.

The ways in which textbook authors infuse national history with demo-cratic belonging are further illustrated in narratives about the Hussites andthe Charter of 77, which are taught largely in the secondary grades. Almosta century before Martin Luther, Jan Hus (who was a Catholic priest bornnear Prague) encouraged major reforms in the Church, such as the use ofvernacular languages instead of Latin during mass, an end to indulgences,and the right of believers to receive both forms of communion (i.e. bread andwine). Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 for his teachings, but his follow-ers continued to instigate liturgical changes after his death. During theCounter-Reformation, many Hussites fled to Slovakia, where religiousoppression was generally less severe at the time than in the Czech lands(Johnson 1985).

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Although the Hussite movements are achronistic with Enlightenmentdevelopments in democratic philosophy, textbook authors call attention toa democratic spirit in the former. As Vavrov one textbook (1997: 216)puts it: The democratic demand for free religious expression, which theHussite revolutionary movement and later the Reformation movementrealized, had far-reaching consequences. This excerpt opposes the notionthat democratic developments originated in Western Europe, which wasan idea central to the EastWest binary discussed earlier. It emphasizesthat the Hussite movement was a call for a democratic valuereligiousfreedomand predated the Lutheran Reformation. A 20th-century eventregularly evoked in secondary-school textbooks in a similar vein is theCharter of 77. This document, signed by Czech and Slovak dissidents in1977, called on the Czechoslovak socialist government to uphold the basichuman rights which it agreed to protect in the Czechoslovak constitutionand in international pacts it had signed, including the 1975 HelsinkiAccords (Liptk 1990: 46).

Evident in these texts is the portrayal of state socialism as an aberrationin the natural democratic trajectory of Czech-Slovak history. One textbook(Krskov and Krtka 1995: 21) reads: Although 40 years of socialist devel-opment signified a sharp interruption in [Slovak legal cultures] original pathof development, we are returning to our civilizational origin. The referenceto a civilizational origin calls to mind the premises behind the EastWestbinary, which defines Western European civilization as essentially demo-cratic against Eastern Europe as an uncivilized Other. Slovakia is placedfirmly within the confines of democratic civilization, associated with theWest. To further underline this point, the authors highlight another demo-cratic step in Czech-Slovak history: how the Czechoslovak government after1989 ratified the Bill of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms [Listinazkladn[yacute] ch prv a slobd] and note that this document was later adopted aspart of the Slovak constitution. Similarly, another textbook author (Liptk1990), after describing the Velvet Revolution of 1989, ends a section of histext with the following sentence: Czech-Slovakia after 42 years once againstepped out onto the path of democracy (p. 49; emphasis in the original). In thisimage, the period of socialism is dismissed as nothing more than a deviationfrom the democratic road that Czechoslovakia had started down in the inter-war era (19181938). The history of the fascist government that founded thefirst Slovak state during World War II is in this statement erased from thepath of the nation.

With few exceptions, Slovak civic education textbooks record positiveexamples of democratic events and periods in Slovak history and largely failto acknowledge profoundly undemocratic ones.6 The deportation of Jews andRoma to death camps from Slovakia during the Holocaust, the expulsion ofethnic Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovak territory after the secondWorld War, and current issues regarding the disproportionately poor Romaminority, especially in Eastern Slovakia, are a few examples of the gaping holesin a national civics history painted to appear unquestionably democratic.

In sum, in Slovak textbooks after 1989, the civic democratic narrativepervades notions of membership at multiple levels of governancethat is,the national, European, international, and even global. The ubiquity of the

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civic democratic narrative, which the texts describe as inherent to a broadspectrum of communities, dilutes its power to serve as a foundation ofEuropean identity and cohesion. The practice in Slovak civic education text-books of inscribing the democratic narrative into Slovakias national historyserves as both a means of bringing Europe closer to Slovakia by relatingdemocratic ideals to a familiar, national context, and, conversely, a way tomove Slovakia closer to Europe by illustrating that Slovakia indeed is a partof the Western civilizational ideal of Europe.

Slovakia as the ethno-cultural core of Europe

While narratives of democratic belonging dominate notions of European-ization put forth by the CoE and EU, Slovak textbooks also assign, often ina subtle fashion, ethnic and cultural attributes to European membership.These European characteristics echo in several ways the ethno-culturalconception of the Slovak nation by evoking Christian religious heritage,geographical belonging, and claims to a common high culture. Theseparallel narratives of Slovak and European membership implicate Slovakiaas the core of the continent, embodying the essential (and essentialist)elements of the whole.

References to Slovakia as the geographic centre of Europe illustrate aninterpretation of European identity with primordial undertones. In a civiceducation textbook for 6th-graders, a map of the European peninsula, north-ern Africa, and Asia Minor is shaded grey except for a white area, which isSlovakia and which appears in the centre of the image (Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997:58). The authors then assert: As you see, Slovakia lies in the very heart ofEurope. This formulation of geographic spacein both how the map isframed and the matter-of-fact voice of the written textleaves no room forany conclusion other than agreement that indeed Slovakia is not only inEurope, it is at its heart, a word which has similar connotations in Slovakas in English of being vital and central to the whole. A 1994 textbook citesan accomplished Slovak who wrote in 1918 that Bratislava was the secondcity of the Hungarian Empire and the most central town in all of centralEurope (Jaksicsov 1994: 77). The dual iteration in this quote of Slovakiasgeographic location in the centre of the centre indicates a desire on the partof the Slovak state for students to learn Slovakias spatial placeand implic-itly its cultural placeat the heart of Europe.

The fundamental belonging of Slovaks in Europe is further emphasizedin exclusive ethnic and religious terms in civic education material. A civiceducation textbook quotes, without discussion or analysis, an 1822 speechof the Slovak poet and political writer Jn Kollr: among all of the contem-porary nations in Europe, the Slav, or Slavic [nation], is the largest and mostwidespread (Jaksicsov 1994: 5657). This citation reminds ethnic Slovaksthat, although they alone are small in number, they can count themselvesamong a larger ethnic population in Europe. Because the speaker is Kollrwho figures highly in Slovak national historythe claim has added authorityfor the Slovak audience. The non-Slavic minorities of Slovakia, such asHungarians and Roma, are not only omitted from the Slovak national

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narrative, their presence in Europe as a whole is implicitly minimized incomparison with the numerous Slavs.

Linguistic minorities in Slovakia are further silenced in narratives thatglorify the Slovak language and its literature, but fail to acknowledge, forexample, the many Hungarian-speaking writers who were born or resided onwhat is today Slovak territory. One textbook (Jaksicsov 1994: 50) prophe-sizes that:

The learned world will see that the Slovak language and the literature writtenin it (and that is to say both spiritual as well as secular books) can always bewith great praise compared to the other famous European languages and theirpowers of expression.

Despite its laudation for Slovak language and literature, the tone of thisexcerpt is one of wrongful under-appreciation: the learned world willbutdoes not yetsee the value of Slovak literature. The thrust of the excerpt isthat Slovak language and literature nonetheless belong in the pantheon ofgreat European literary traditions. Linguistic membership is a commonfeature of ethno-cultural conceptions of the nation; here, however, thatmeasure is extended to the supranational level as a measure of Europeanbelonging.

Christianity also serves as an exclusive marker of the ethno-culturalSlovak nation and then, by elision, of Europe. A 6th-grade textbookremarks: In our country we traditionally celebrate Christian holidays(Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997: 21). The we signifies here those who are in ourcountry and yet these residents are religiously defined solely as Christians.The large Jewish communities that lived for centuries in Slovakia before theHolocaustas well as the few thousand who remainare disregarded, forexample. Assertions of the centrality of Christianity to the Slovak nation arecommon in civic education textbooks. The state symbol is a double cross,which one textbook explains: probably developed during the Byzantineempire. The missionaries Cyril and Methodius brought it to Great Moraviain the 9th century (Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997: 59). This excerpt asserts the bondbetween Slovakia and Christianity, but it also serves to write Slovakia intothe history of Europe: the fame of these fraternal missionaries, knownbeyond their religious calling for developing an alphabet that is the prede-cessor to Cyrillic, is associated in this text with Great Moravia, which, asSlovak civic textbooks repeatedly observe, centred on the territory of todaysSlovakia. Like Slovakia, Europe is also described as a Christian culture:The birth of Europe reaches back to the era of the Roman Empire, the riseof Christianity (Bockov et al. 2004: 335). In this account, Europe has itsprimordial origins in Christianity. Europe here is no longer simply ageographical entity created with the shifting continental plates; it is a civili-zational body that does not simply begin but is born.

Similarly, the civic education textbooks are replete with claims regardingthe cultural contributions of Slovaks to Europe. Exemplifying this pattern isa textbook with a section titled Notable Compatriots (Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997:62). Eight men are named in this section (no women), including Jozef KarolHell (17131789) for creating the prototype of contemporary oil pumps,and Jn Bah l who, according to the text, constructed the first basic

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helicopter (Ku[ccaron] rek et al. 1997: 6263). As if to counter the EastWesthistorical binary that associates the Enlightenment only with the western halfof Europe, a textbook describes a man whom it calls The Slovak Socratesunder the heading, The Age of Enlightenment. Adam Franti[scaron] ek Kollr(17181783) was a lawyer and historian, and the textbook claims that: Forhis wisdom and broad knowledge they named him after the famous Greekphilosopher Slovak Socrates (Jaksicsov 1995: 20). While such amagnanimous comparison is likely to bemuse non-Slovaks (and probablymany Slovaks as well), it illustrates how Slovak textbook narratives substan-tiate Slovakias place in a culturally defined Europe.

To summarize, Slovak textbooks employ multiple definitions ofEurope to effectively write Slovaks ethno-cultural conception of itself intoa narrative of Europe and, conversely, to apply selectively the democraticcivic narrative that dominates European institutional discourses on unifica-tion to Slovak history. Largely ignoring the tensions between exclusivenarratives of ethno-cultural membership with democratic principles ofpluralism and tolerance, the Slovak Ministry of Education and its textbookauthors in these ways subtly reconcilerather than eliminateSlovakethno-cultural nationalism with calls to Europeanize their civic educationcurriculum. As we describe in the subsequent section, aspects of these trendsare mirrored in the Estonian case.

Estonia: the border of Europe

What it means to be European is contested, not just between the EU andEstonia, but within Estonia itself. Estonia has, and has had, a strong nation-alist movement, and there is significant public sentiment for nationalistpositions among the ethnic Estonian citizens of the country. According to arecent study, 53% of ethnic Estonians were classified as tolerant, while 47%were classified as exclusionary (Pettai 2002, Poleschuk 2005 : 74). Theexclusionary group breaks down to 28% who are less tolerant and 19% whoare considered to be radical nationalists. It is perhaps unsurprising, then,that a significant rift exists between the countrys most prominent civiceducators in their support for traditional ethnic nationalism and civic nation-alism. For these two groups, being European has very different meanings.The more cosmopolitan group associates European values with civic nation-alism and the sentiment that people should be identified as citizens first, notby their ethnicity. Nationalists, on the other hand, generally believe thatRussiaand hence Russiansinterrupted Estonias natural trajectory as aEuropean state, often seeing ethnic Russians who are residents and evencitizens as a threat to Estonia, which was and (they believe) should again bea nation-state.

These differences emerge from Estonias history in the 20th century andparticularly the countrys fraught relationship with Russia and Russians(Raun 1991: 5759, 182). A common Estonian sentiment holds that, Forus, the Second World War ended when the Russian troops finally left in1994 (Classroom observation, October 2003). Under the Soviets, Estoniansendured deportations, a massive influx of Russophone minorities, and strong

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Russification. Across the Baltic states, these pressures are widely regarded asthe Soviet genocide. Estonian independence is thus inextricably linked toconflict with Russians and with strong Russian opposition (Stevick 2007:231). It is easy to understand why, when Estonia regained its independence,Estonian nationalists regarded much of the remaining Russian population asan enemy within.

During Estonias preparations to qualify for membership in NATO andthe EU, foreign pressure was applied to issues involving the Holocaust andthe Russian minority. The Holocaust and the presence of a substantialminority community evoked the deeply held and widely disparate meaningsthat the events of the Second World War had for the ethnic Estonian andethnic Russian communities. EU sentiment generally held the Nazis to bethe greatest evil of human history, a position that many in Central andEastern Europe were unwilling to concede after their experience underSoviet hegemony. Consequently, there was substantial resistance to foreignnarratives and influence on the ground level, even while actors at the policylevel paid lip service to foreign priorities and engaged in superficial compli-ance in order to keep their bids for NATO and the EU alive (Stevick 2007).Unsurprisingly in retrospect, it was difficult to discern any direct influencefrom the foreign pressure at the classroom level. How, then, can the lack ofreceptiveness to foreign influence and pressure be understood?

Institutional aspects of Europe in Estonia

Materials produced or supported by the EU about European institutionswere abundant in classrooms across Estonia, as well as other materialssupported by US funds, but they were seldom used. A middle-school teacherwho was particularly engaged in professional development activities onceshowed Stevick the piles of materials and books that had been provided toher over the years: it was nearly half a metre high (Field notes, September2003). She noted that she had 1 hour a week to teach civics: she couldscarcely get through what was in the official curriculum. The additionalmaterials could be nothing more than supplementary in an already crammedcurriculum. Europe experienced much the same fate. Although able toaccumulate a mass of EU-themed or sponsored materials, only oncebetween 20012004 did Stevick see them in use in a civics classroom. Strik-ingly, one of the publications Stevick found was a Euroskeptics pamphlet,which featured on the cover Manneken Pis, Brussels famous urinating boy,and the stream of water was replaced by the stars of the EU flag (Field notes,February 2003).

There was little room in the packed curriculum for the add-on of theEuropean dimensions of citizenship. The new wave of middle-school text-books that began to appear in 2003 had short sections tacked on at the veryend to address European questions. Textbooks for the 12th class, whenstudents study civics for 2 hours per week, engaged a bit more deeply. Still,engagement was limited. One teacher at an elite senior high school rolled ina VCR to show an EU-sponsored video about the official institutions ofEurope (Fieldnotes, March 2003); it was one of only two times over four

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school years that Stevick witnessed a teacher employ multimedia of somekind, and the only event that included substantive review of EU institutions.

Generally, discussion of European institutions did little to inspire inter-est in the students. The exception to the trend occurred when Estonia waspreparing to vote on the referendum about EU membership in 2003. Euro-skepticism was significant in Estonia at this time, and the nationalist-ledgovernment even contributed money to Euroskeptics to lessen the imbal-ance created by the EUs huge investment in the campaign. In the ruralcounty that ended up being least favourably inclined (among predominantlyethnic Estonian counties), the middle-school teacher emphasized her posi-tion in class, unusual in a context where teacher neutrality is the rule. Aftershe encouraged students to voice their positions, she stated that, I stronglysupport Estonias entry into the European Union, but of course, you mustmake up your own minds. The students largely disagreed, prompting her tonote that They are mirrors of their families (Fieldnotes, September 2003).More typical, though, was the 12th-class session in which the teacherinvoked the issue and held a vote immediately to gauge student support andopposition. By the time the votes were tallied, most students were activelyengaged in social discussions, texting on their cell phones, or reading a carmagazine. No substantive discussion emerged, even though this group,generally aged 1819, were eligible to vote on the issue.

European identity in Estonia

The presentation of institutional arrangements is a relatively dry affair.Historical narratives and the questions of belonging, who is permitted to bea citizen, and the like, are much more hotly contested between the Euro-pean Union and national leaders. Europe has a parallel position in twomiddle-school textbooks produced by different publishers, one written by acosmopolitan or civic nationalist author, the other by a political leader asso-ciated with the nationalist party. The similar structure is not a product ofsentiment, but of the national curriculum, which holds the force of law inEstonia and is adopted by the national parliament. The disagreements thatlead to the relatively marginal position for Europe in the curriculum arerooted in the divisions among the countrys civic education leaders, and inthe discourse about civic education within the country. These divisionsmirror those discussed earlier in the population at large. The differencebetween these groupsand their attitudes towards Europeconstitute acultural division so profound that one needs to understand a bevy of inter-related dynamics concerning history, culture, and language to make senseof them.

In this particular case, Estonias Soviet legacy comes into play, with itsunique ethnic schism, in which the former privileged group (the Russo-phones) is now a largely disenfranchised minority. Estonians feel theirhistory is not known by foreigners, their language not spoken, the sufferingnot recognized. Several interconnected sentiments were routinely expressedin discussions with Estonians and Estonian educators specifically: resent-ment at foreign interference, fear of Russia and its martial rhetoric, and

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frustration with the Russian-speaking minorities who have been here for 50years and still not learned Estonian. Estonians, well experienced insuppressing their personal views while continuing to follow the behaviourthey wished (to the point of schizophrenia, in the words of one civicsresearcher (personal interview, November 2003)), developed what was iden-tified in other Central and East European contexts as the ritual of listeningto foreigners (Wedel 2001: 3). Western European and US partners could beused instrumentally, as a means to a domestic end, and so could the rhetoricof Europeanness.

Among civic educators in Estonia, there is a division between civicnationalists and ethnic nationalists. One might expect that the ethnic/civicnationalist split would mirror the European/nationalist split. In practice, it isquite different. Both groups use Europeanness, as an externally legitimizeddiscourse, to advocate for their own ends. In the words of one Estonian criticof the nationalist camp who advocates for civic nationalism:

[Too many] do not have European attitudes, they have patriotic attitudes.They are still speaking about Estonians and non-Estonians; they dont see andrecord citizens as citizens. This patriotic focus is still very strong [even in civiceducation circles. One in particular] was a favourite of nationalist parties in thebeginning of 1990s, an historian, and history and national symbols are veryimportant for [such people.] For example, this person started a big discussionof isamaa [fatherland] for students, but didnt raise the issue of what doesdemocratic citizenship mean. I think it shows what is important. So althoughthis person may teach to the Russian teachers, maybe unconsciously it is abouttwo sides, two different groups in society. This is something that is very hardto break in our civic tradition, where civic education is based on an Estoniannational state. (Interview, July 2003)

In this rendering, European attitudes include civic nationalism as a corevalue, where citizenship is not dependent on ethnic membership.

European valueswhich means predominantly Western Europeanvaluesmight also exclude militarism. Support for military service as a keycomponent of citizenship is a central division between much of CEE andWestern Europe. Although not emphasized in much scholarship, anEstonian civic education researcher noted that:

It was also very interesting that teachers attitudes towards the characteristicsof good citizens wasfrom all former socialist countriesmilitary service is avery, very important characteristic of good citizenclose to 90% and more,but in Western countries [much less.] This is quite useful information and inEstonia we have done very little to disseminate this information. (PersonalInterview, November 2003)

Not only has this trait not been widely discussed, the conflict over therole of the military and military service is not broadly known. One civiceducation specialist recounted this experience:

I was asked to comment on [a Ministry of Defence] textbook and I was verycritical, because from my point of view, it was old-fashioned The mainfeeling was that it is impossible to live in peace, there will be war, and wemust be ready to go to war I said it is not democratic and it doesnt haveany relation to civic education I am saying that patriotism and military

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education dont have anything in common with citizenship education, andmany disagree with me, they see military service and patriotism as a part ofcitizenship education, so these discussions dont turn out very well. (PersonalInterview, July 2003)

This account of the conflict hints at the direct role that government insti-tutions (in this case, the Ministry of Defence) can play in censoring schoolmaterials. A textbook author recounted that:

The Ministry of Defence is very intensively, powerfully intervening in civiceducation. For example, it was the Ministry of Defence that demanded thatmilitary defence and military issues are put into the national curriculum incivic education, and when we tried to resist and say that this is not appropri-ate, [it was made clear that] in this case the curriculum would not be passedby the parliament. Now it is in, and if you write textbooks, you must writeabout military issues, because otherwise, the commission says, well, yourmanuscript doesnt fit to the national curriculum. It was the case with my lasttextbook at the very last stage before publishing I heard that the Ministry ofDefence called the publishing house and asked to see the manuscript, andOK, they agreed, saw the manuscript, made the changes they wanted.(Personal Interview, July 2003)

Ethnic nationalism and educational discourse in Estonia

The themes and trends discussed thus farfear of Russia, resentment offoreign interference, ethnic and civic nationalism, militarism, etc.comeinto focus in an illustrative passage composed for the mainstream educa-tional trade magazine of Estonia, Haridus. In it, a leading civic educator,Valdmaa (2002: 23), elaborated on the situation of the Russian minority inEstonia. The extensive passage, which is worth quoting in detail, is strikingfor its martial rhetoric:

One objective of Estonia is to be a nation-state, and this is legislated in the1992 Constitution. If we say it is this way, it also has to be this way, and weneed to do something in this direction. If we cant be this, the situation isschizophrenic.

Mental illness is evoked to describe the current situation of multiculturalEstonia. Rather than propose, say, that Estonia alter its constitution to takeinto account its large minority population, Estonia is instead likened to anextreme illness that requires action. The passage continues by evoking theidea of the border, and arguing that Estonia in its current state could notachieve its goal of being a nation-state, Estonia is a multicultural society.Multiculturalism is known to be, to some degree, the opposite of the nation-state (p. 23). The author continues to suggest that Estonians do not acceptthe Russians:

[I]f you ask if Estonia is also the fatherland to the second- or third-generationRussians who are living here, the Estonian teachers of Ida-Virumaa [a predom-inantly ethnic Russian region] will not agree. They do not want to recognizethat Estonia is a fatherland for Russian residents or for other non-Estonians.(pp. 2324)

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No proposal is made about how Estonians minds might be changed.Instead, the discussion immediately shifts to the concept of the border, andan implicit explanation for Estonians reluctance to accept their largestminority. He turns the discussion to Narva, the capital of Ida-Virumaacounty, which sits on a river of the same name that separates Estonia fromRussia; two giant fortresses face each other across the river:

Narvas mediaeval coat-of-arms featured on its corners cannonballs, whichsymbolize the citys historical connection to wars. On the coat-of-arms is thecurved Turkish-Tartar saber and the straight Western European sword. Thissays that Estonia is located on the border land, Estonia is a boundary-line.

The choice of symbolsall related to warframes the nature of the contactbetween the two cultures and an historical context of unremitting conflict:

Estonia is undoubtedly one meeting-place of cultures. This is visible mainly onthe Narva river, if one compares the Hermann and Novgorod fortresses. Theproblem is that the border of cultures no longer runs along the Narva River,but rather within Estonian society itself. (Valdmaa 2002: 24)

The attention to the fortresses and to the symbols on the flag evokesdifference and conflict between the two sides. One side is Western andEuropean. The other is further orientalized by reference to the (Muslim)Turks and Tartars. With this contextualization of Estonia as a meetingplace, it is clear that those meetings are inherently conflicting. By mixing theconcept of a meeting-point with the idea of the border, the passage rejectsthe idea of an integrated or mixed population: separation is inescapable. Theborder between cultures is no longer identical to the border between hostilecountries, he notes, and that is the problem.

Implicit in this passage is the idea that Estonians are Europeans, andhave been so historically. Estonia has manned the border against the non-Europeans for centuries. These kinds of historical narratives, put forwardin the professional discourse around civic education, are effectivelycounter-narratives to the EU versions of history and to the notion thatEstonia has to be Europeanized. The Russians cannot be made into accept-able Estonians, even after two or three generations, and hence cannot beEuropeans. Pressure to better integrate them, in this narrative, is contraryto being European.

In this way, a European identity is not incompatible with nationalism,but is appropriated by Estonians as a way to emphasize the distinctionsbetween themselves and their largest minority. This practice is well illus-trated, for example, by an event that occurred during the first day of the 12th

year students civic education class in a rural corner of Estonia, a shortdistance from the Russian border. The students were ethnic Estonians andEstonian was the language of instruction, yet when students were providedwith a textbooks list of the seven civilizations of the world, starting withWestern civilization and including Islamic, Confucian, and Orthodox, astudent responded to the last label with, Oh. Like us. Identity, history,culture, and minority rights were available topics for a rich discussion.However, the teachers response was emphatic and immediate: No! We arepart of Western civilization. This town was founded by the Russian empressCatherine the Great. The Orthodox Church established in her honour was

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visible from the schools windows. The teacher continued, implicitlyacknowledging these facts in this way: We have traces of Orthodox culturehere. Just as the boundary that had trapped Estonia inside the Soviet Unionhad recently disappeared, so too the border between civilizations could shiftto the east or west; yet, the tidy boundaries of the categories separating usand them, Orthodox and West, Russian and Estonian, remained inviolate.Europe was not a concept that pushed them towards accepting their Russo-phone minority on equal terms. Rather, it served as a rhetorical vehicle foremphasizing how the minority did not belong in Europe, or in Estonia.

Conclusions

These case studies clearly refute the supposition that ethno-cultural nation-alism and trans-national concepts of being European are inherently contra-dictory. Rather, the Western European model of being Europeana modelactively promoted within civic education circlesis resisted not for beingEuropean, but for its definition of what it means to be European. It is note-worthy that both Slovakia and Estonia deploy geography to insist on theirnatural place in Europe: Slovakia as the centre or heart; Estonia as theborder. While Slovakia and Estonia use different strategies for assertingtheir Europeanness, both insist that their natural political trajectory wasinterrupted with state socialism and that they are finally rejoining thecontinent to which they rightly belong after the interference of their ownOriental other, the Communists/Russians. Although confronted with thecarrot and stick of EU membership, Slovakia and Estonia have managed,through their citizenship education processes, to assert their own meaningsfor Europe, a counter-narrative of belonging that redefines the binary ofEast and West within the continent.

We have aimed to demonstrate that central to the dynamics of competi-tion and compromise between European and Slovak or Estonian nationalagendas in civic education is the definition of what it means to be Euro-pean. The perceived need to Europeanize the post-socialist countriesimplies that these countries are not already European. The intention of theEU and CoE might be to Europeanize in the sense of promoting a demo-cratic, civic wea goal to which many post-socialist European publics andpoliticians also aspire. Yet as this analysis describes, democratic narratives incivic education extend beyond the broadest conceptions of Europe. Theyinclude global/universal, international, and national narratives of democraticbelonging and thus do not foster a uniquely European sense of citizenship oridentity.

Constructing Europe as a particularistic ethno-cultural entity, insteadof as an inclusive democratic one, creates an opening to use the rhetoric ofEurope as a means to legitimize, rather than undermine, exclusive narra-tives of national membership. Civic education discourses in Slovakia andEstonia often do not fit into definitive camps of pro-Europe versus anti-Europe nationalist perspectives. Rather, we have illustrated how educatorsand textbook authors in Slovakia and Estonia reconcile European andnational conceptions of civic identity by making Europe and the state

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mutually constitutive: European democratic principles legitimize the state,and the states ethno-cultural heritage comes to represent a microcosm ofwhat is ethno-culturally European. Specifically, state civic educators andtextbook authors foreground the democratic traditions of their states,thereby writing themselves into the democratic narrative of Europe, andsimultaneously re-conceptualize Europe as an ethno-cultural entity thatthe exclusive nation-state embodies.

We suggest that analyses of Europeanization that only consider ethno-cultural narratives at the nationalbut not supranationallevel and thatfocus solely on civic democratic narratives at the supranational levellargelyignoring national claims to democratic belongingmiss salient points ofintersection between European and national identities as they play out incivic education. Because of Central and Eastern Europes historical image asthe Other Europe as well as its renewed nationalisms, study of the regiondecentres Western assumptions regarding processes of supranational Euro-pean citizenship and offers important insights into the identity politics ofnational civic education.

Notes

1. For an overview of the Council of Europes activities in democratic civic education seethe Introduction to this issue (Keating et al. 2009).

2. Slovakia and Estonia are not unusual in this regard. Renan, in his renowned 1882Sorbonne lecture What is a nation? (see Renan 1990), noted the tendency of nations tore-write history to serve their own ends. Similarly, Loewen (1994) evidences the manip-ulation of historical narratives in US textbooks.

3. We are drawing here on Andersons (1991) now famous characterization of the nation asan imagined community.

4. Excerpts from Slovak textbooks were originally in Slovak and translated by Michaels intoEnglish.

5. This democratic interpretation of the 1848 nationalist revolutions in the HabsburgEmpire has credence in the sense that the German-speaking population was dispropor-tionately represented in the Viennese parliament to the disadvantage of the empiresmany minorities (Johnson 1985, Leff 1988). However, recent scholarship has empha-sized the democratic successes and relatively high degree of tolerance that existed in theAustrian half of the multiethnic Habsburg Empire (Brubaker 1996, King 2005).

6. A notable exception to this trend is the textbook by Kus[yacute] and Stredlov (2003).

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Europeanization in the 'Other' Europe

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