Abstract
Epochal events inevitably produce, alongside the expected elation, a certain ambivalence. The last partition of a vast multinational empire, that of Habsburg Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War, was also greeted with mixed sentiments. The collapse liberated some of the same peoples whose fate was touched by Gorbachev’s revolution. Even in the midst of the post-war elation, with the demise not only of the Habsburg Empire, but the Hohenzollern, the Ottoman, and the Romanov as well, many thoughtful people living in the victor countries could see a tragic potential in the ‘Balkanizing of Central Europe’. In fact fewer new states emerged then than in the events of 1989–91. The economist John Maynard Keynes lamented the demise of a functioning economic unit, a ‘free trade zone’ ruled from Vienna and Budapest. Winston Churchill later called the breakup of the Habsburg state ‘a cardinal tragedy’, and even a necessary cause of the Second World War.
Keywords
Foreign Policy East Central Free Trade Zone Soviet Bloc Collective SecurityPreview
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Notes
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