The Commonwealth of Three Nations: history and myth

 

Lecturers:        Ph.D. Adam Świątek (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Docent Oleksii Vinnychenko, C.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

The course ‘The Commonwealth of Three Nations: history and myth’ will help students gain a coherent knowledge and profound understanding of society in old Polish-Lithuanian state. By following up the dynamics of particular notes of this embodiment as the Commonwealth of Three Nations in post-Partitions discourse, and highlighting the specific role of consecutive generations in mediating individual and collective historical memories, the course will also illustrate the instrumental role of mythical narratives in the time of strenuous political transition.

 

 

The Habsburg Monarchy as Central Europe’s history and nostalgia

 

Lecturers:        Ph.D. Bálint Varga (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)

Prof Mykhailo Kril, D.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

The multinational Habsburg monarchy has never lost its fascination since its fall in 1918. But for those interested in the history of modern Central Europe its attraction lies in more than the dramatic fortunes of dynasts. This course seeks to answer the question what are the most important elements in the maintenance of a multinational polity. Is it the role of rational values of common citizenship and tolerance, such as the Habsburg Josephinist tradition championed? Or emotive factors like dynastic loyalty and commonalities of culture and habit? The course also shows that nostalgia for the Habsburgs as the question not of reconstructing, but of constructing the past is firmly built in the discourse of Central European identity as one of its most important pillars, and displays striking similarities in all V4 countries.

 

 

The Shaping of Modern Central Europe:

Habsburg modernization and Slavonic politics

 

Lecturers:        Prof Łukasz Tomasz Sroka, Dr hab. (Pedagogical University in Krakow, Poland)

Ph.D. Marek Přihoda (Charles University, Czech Republic)

Docent Mar’yan Mudryy, C.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

This course traces how the changes in the wider World transformed economic, social, cultural and political realities in Central Europe during the second half of the 19th – early of the 20th century. Major themes include urbanization and changes in lifestyle, embourgeoisement and proletarianisation; social emancipation and the making of new elites; mass education and the growth of communications; the transition from absolutism to constitutionalism, and from religious prescription to competing secular and clerical norms. While the course deals with social and economic questions, it looks at social issues in terms of national cooperation and conflict. Unavoidably, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks and Ukrainians are more fully treated than the other peoples of the region though an attempt has been made to keep them in view as much as possible. In political sphere, Russia-oriented politics of a large part of Slavonic elites are studied along with their loyalty to respective metropoles, Austria and Hungary.

 

 

Living conditions, Violence and Population Changes in Modern Central Europe

 

Lecturers:        Prof Stepan Kacharaba, Dr.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

Ph.D. Radek Lipovski (University of Ostrava, Czech Republic)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

Within the broad framework of the interrelationships of society, technology and state politics a lot of themes dealing with social conditions and size of the population in Central Europe is pursued from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. They are: agrarian revolution and industrialization as serving to remedy scarcities which had themselves arisen through increase in human demand; changes in structure of the population, birthrates and dead rates, restrictions on births as well as internal and external migration in the industrial Austrian Silesia and agrarian Galicia by way of illustration; losses of population by the two World Wars and post-war shifting of state borders, the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet Holodomor, forced deportations of people as a common practice of Communist regimes in East-Central Europe.

 

 

Central Europe in the international relations of European states, 1918 till now

 

Lecturers:        Prof Jan Jacek Bruski, D.Hab. (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Docent Ph.D. L’ubica Harbul’ová, C.Sc (University of Prešov, Slovakia)

Docent Roman Syrota, C.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

The course considers questions vital to international relations in the 20th c. such as the making of Central Europe after 1918 and its place in the Versailles system of international relations, relations between Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland and their attitudes to the German and Soviet attempts to penetrate into the region, the Polish Eastern politics of ‘Prometheism’. The course also considers the politics of London and Paris through the period of the Appeasement. It highlights the role of Central Europe in international relations from the Munich to the establishing of Soviet dominance in the region. Among the issues addressed will be also the fall of Communist regimes and its effect on genuine integration processes in Central Europe, the making of the V4 in the first place, and Europe as a whole.

 

 

Coming to terms with the recent past:

national memory and the post-Communist transition in Central-Eastern Europe

 

Lecturers:        Ph.D. Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek (National Science Centre, Poland)

Docent Tamara Poleshchuk, C.Sc. (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)

Ph.D. Barbara Bank (Committee of National Remembrance, Hungary)

Ph.D. Miroslav Michela (Charles University, Czech Republic)

 

ECTS credits: 4

Assessment: exam

 

This course traces how much political changes and needs influenced collective memory in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe and vice versa. The course concentrates on remembrance and archival documents, historical politics and public history, including Institutes/Committees of National Remembrance and media, traumas and traumatic events in Central-European countries’ past and symbolization of communist trauma. The course proves that the only way of coping with such traumas is to accept that there is a conflict between different memories of the past. Additionally, the course will address the question whether attempts to communicate a complete and trustworthy image of the recent Ukrainian past are ‘sufficient’ to the country’s democratization and integration efforts.