Habersack, Sabine - Puşcaş, Vasile - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Democraţia in Europa centrală şi de Sud-Est - Aspiraţie şi realitate (Secolele XIX-XX) (Satu Mare, 2001)
Stepan Vidnyansky: Central-Eastern Europe int he Period Between Two World Wars: Between Democracy and Dictatorship
Stepan Vidnyansky countries of Central-Eastern Europe in that time. But the internal problems of building the countries complicated this development. But the biggest tragedy was that countries found themselves in that time between two totalitarian regimes which pretended on the world leadership - communist USSR and fascist Germany. The First World war, its consequences gave birth, first in the history of mankind, to totalitarian dictatorships in Europe - holding the chronology: in soviet Russia, horthyst’s Hungary, in Italy, and in Germany soon. All these countries were joined by dissatisfaction by Versailles System and they were the real menace for young countries of Central-Eastern Europe, which were created, as the result of this System. After creation of new independent states in the Central European region, a global problem occurred to them - what the character of governmental power would be. In Yugoslavia and Romania reactional power solved out this question by military methods. In Bulgaria monarchical government stayed to. Other situation was in Poland and Czechoslovakia, where the top positions were ocupated by leaders of emmigrational groups of the national liberation movement and it was established republican power. But in these countries political sistems established and developed according to the national traditions, social and political activity of some classes and strata with their abilities to political influence. In the result of this political system of Czechoslovakia, that was established as bourgeois-democratical. It continued to develope in this way even after deviation in right in the second part of 20th, when after multiparty system was established consolidating center in the form of “Grada” group. And the first president CSR, T.G. Masarik, was national authority. In Poland the deviation in right was held too, after 1926, but it was jerkier, inside of authoritarian regime. But U. Pilsudsky, in contrast to Masarik didn’t become a non-party arbitrator, which join everybody. As for Hungary and Austria, their independence - in borders determinated by winners, they also couldn’t face the results of national liberation movement in Central Europe. The crown of St. Stephan, as a result of political evolution of Hungary, from the year 40 of XIX century have lost appeal for non-hungarian peoples and they refused from different contacts with it in autumn 1918. Project of “Eastern Switzerland” of liberal Hungarian political figure O. Jaszi appeared too late, and the author was a marginal political figure and nobody in Hungary accepted his plan . And in 1920-1921 years in country became firmly established authoritarian nationalistic regime of admiral M. Horthy. Austria accepted its independence as political reality of Versailles System, the value of which at that time Austrian Germans (as they called themself) didn’t understand. 146
