Potential Research Topics (Honors, Masters, Phd, Cotutelle)
Potential Research Topics (Honors, Masters, PhD, cotutelle)
(prospective [co-]supervisor: Tomasz Kamusella)
Advice: Let us not be afraid of languages. The world is a highly multilingual place, with books and periodicals published regularly in over 800 languages and Wikipedias available in about 300 languages. It is the very reality of globalization. There is no time or chance to master for reading purposes more than 10-20 languages. Life is too short. But Google Translate offers translation services for 103 languages now (2017) and counting. Copy-paste any text you want to consult in one of these languages and voilà, you can read it without even knowing the target language. For better or worse, as a rule of thumb, the best quality of translation is available between English and the other languages. And when a given text is scanned, text recognition software comes in handy to convert such a text into a form that would be downloadable in Google Translate.
NB: About a third of the topics can be researched on the basis of English-language materials; look for the word ‘None’ in the Requirements line.
Interwar Tannu-Tuva
Research question: Did the Soviet Union allow the formal independence of Tannu-Tuva in order to show the Soviet public that the promised export of revolution might (temporarily) fail in Europe but was a success in Asia?
Background: Tannu-Tuva evolved from the de facto autonomous region of China, namely, Tannu Uriankhai. In 1914 Russia made it into its protectorate, known in Russian as Uriankhanskii krai. The Tuvan People’s Republic (as Tannu-Tuva was officially known) was independent between 1922 and 1944. In the terms of area Tannu-Tuva was bigger than today’s Greece and only a bit smaller than present-day Belarus. Nowadays it is an autonomous Republic of Tuva in Russia, with a population roughly equal to that of Malta.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Russian is essential; while an ability to read in Chinese and a Turkic language would help.
NB: Not a single scholarly monograph has been published yet in any language on interwar independent Tannu-Tuva.
The Yugoslav Nation After Yugoslavia
Research question: Does a Yugoslav national identity survive after the breakup of Yugoslavia because of the emergence of the wartime Yugoslav diaspora and the rise of the vibrant Yugoslav (Serbo-Croatian) section on the web?
Background: In the 1980s 1.3 million citizens of Yugoslavia saw themselves as ‘ethnic Yugoslavs,’ or members of the Yugoslav nation who speak the ‘Yugoslav’ (Serbo-Croatian) language. 0.3 million more saw themselves ‘simply’ as citizens of Yugoslavia with no nationality; Yugoslav citizenship was enough for them. Nowadays around 1 million people living in North America, western Europe and in post-Yugoslav countries declare themselves to be Yugoslavs and their language as Serbo-Croatian (Yugoslav). The Serbo-Croatian (Yugoslav) Wikipedia is the largest among all the post-Yugoslav Wikipedias, though officially the Serbo-Croatian language does not exist.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Serbo-Croatian.
NB: Not a single scholarly monograph has been published yet in any language on the Yugoslavs after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
The Porajmos (Roma/Gypsy Holocaust)
Research question: Is the Porajmos so utterly forgotten (unlike the Holocaust) in historiography and by public opinion, because the Roma did not gain their own nation-state after World War II (unlike the Jews who created Israel)?
Background: During World War II the German (‘Nazi’) government,in line with the policy of ‘racial purity,’ decided to exterminate all Roma (alongside all Jews) in Germany and German-occupied Europe. Around half a million Roma were killed. The story remains practically unknown and seriously under-researched.
Requirements: Knowing English is sufficient, but it would be advisable to have an ability to read in German and other European languages. Last but not least, a knowledge of Romani (Roma language), though not essential, would allow for oral field research among Roma and Romani-speakingcommunities themselves.
NB: No full-fledge scholarly monographs have been published yet on this question in any language. Only one small monograph on the Porajmos was published in English and an extensive one in Polish (though mostly focused on the issue of remembrance).
Austrian or German?
Research question: Why are the post-Austro-Hungarian German-speaking minorities known as ‘Germans’ not ‘Austrians’?
Background: In Austria-Hungary German-speakers tended to identify themselves as ‘Austrians.’ The Allies created Austria after 1918 and recreated it after World War II. German-speaking inhabitants of today’s Austria see themselves as the Austrians, members of the Austrian nation. However, in the neighboring states and regions (of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia or Slovenia), the post-Austro-Hungarian Germnophone minorities as officially known as ‘German,’ not ‘Austrian.’ Why?
Requirements: A reading knowledge of German.
The Holocaust: Germans Killing Germans?
Research question (and background): According to the type of ethnolinguistic nationalism prevalent in central Europe, speakers of a language are defined as a nation. During World War II Germany exterminated Yiddish-speaking (Ashkenazim) Jews. Yiddish means ‘Jewish German.’ Most Ashkenazim were bilingual in German. Most Germans (Austrians, Luxembourgers, Germanophone Swiss) speak their local Germanic dialect at home and standard (‘High’) German in official situations. From this perspective Yiddish was just such a dialect of German, and in the view of central Europe’s nationalism Ashkenazim should have been treated as fellow Germans. Was the Holocaust, in light of ethnolinguistic nationalism, completely incongruous, basically Germans killing other Germans over religion, the genocide spuriously justified by ‘scientific racism’?
Requirements: A reading knowledge of German; and at best a reading knowledge of Yiddish.
The Holocaust: The End of German as a Global Language
Research question: Did the Holocaust end the rise of German as a global language?
Background): Until World War II German had been the language in which the biggest number of scholarly works were published. German was the global lingua franca of scholarship (like English today), and the language of commerce and everyday communication from eastern France to the Volga region in the midst of the Soviet Union, and from Scandinavia in the north to the Balkans and Turkey in the south. Ashkenazim Jews, as much as German minorities (strewn across central and eastern Europe) were responsible for this phenomenon. During World War II Germany exterminated Yiddish-speaking (Ashkenazim) Jews. Yiddish means ‘Jewish German.’ Most Ashkenazim were bilingual in German. Most Germans (Austrians, Luxembourgers, Germanophone Swiss) spoke their local Germanic dialect at home and standard (‘High’) German in official situations. From this perspective Yiddish was just such a dialect of German, and in the view of central Europe’s nationalism Ashkenazim should have been treated as fellow Germans. The Holocaust, alongside wartime and postwar expulsions of ethnic Germans from central and eastern Europe ended the career of German as a global language in Eurasia.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of German; and at best a reading knowledge of Yiddish.
Nationalism and the Forgotten Interwar Languages of Czechoslovak, Samnorsk, and Serbocroatoslovenian
Research question: Was the central European type of nationalism the cause of the failure of the proposed languages of Czechoslovak, Samnorsk, and Serbocroatoslovenian and their subsequent erasure from social memory and the respective national master narratives?
Background: In central Europe ethnolinguistic nationalism is the basic ideology of statehood creation, legitimization and maintenance. The nation is defined as all the speakers of a language who should be housed in their own nation-state. In breach of this norm interwar Czechoslovakia, Norway and Yugoslavia had two or more de facto or official national languages. In order to scale this ideological problem, in Norway an attempt was made at melding the two national languages into one, while in Yugoslavia the three national languages were gathered under the roof of a constitutional (nominal) language consisting of two (three) actual variants (standards). In Czechoslovakia both models were tried. Interestingly, though Samnorsk failed, today’s Norwegian is a nominal (pluricentric) languages consisting of two actual standards of equal status.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Norwegian (that is very close to English), Czech, Slovak (very close to Czech) and Serbo-Croatian.
Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, 1918-1946
Research question: (A) Did the Allies press this region into Czechoslovakia’s lap so that Ruthenia would not be seized by Bolshevik Russia? (B) Did Czechoslovakia give the region up to the Soviet Union, because Prague never wanted it in the first place?
Background: Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary. In 1919 the Allies decided to pass it to Czechoslovakia. Ruthenia’s population was composed from the plurality of Slavophone Rusyns (Ruthenians) professing Greek Catholicism, though some adopted Orthodoxy and wanted their region to become part of Russia. They write their Rusyn language in Cyrillic. Although it became (almost) official in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, in reality, Prague imposed in a quick succession Czechoslovak (Czech), Russian and Ukrainian as an official language in Ruthenia. After one day long independence, Hungary seized Ruthenia in 1939, renaming it Carpathia and its language as Hungaro-Carpathian. In 1944 the Red Army overran the region, and in 1946 Ruthenia was formally attached to Soviet Ukraine, and renamed Transcarpathia. Ukrainian and Russian became official languages there, as elsewhere in Ukraine.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Czech (Slovak), and ideally some reading knowledge of Rusyn (Ukrainian).
The 1960s Ethnic Cleansing of the Mazurs
Research question: Was the Mazurs’ religion (Lutheranism) the main cause of their expulsion from communist Poland?
Background: The Mazurs were a Slavophone ethnic group professing Lutheranism. They lived in Germany’s southern East Prussia, informally known as Mazuria. After 1945 Poland received this region. Germans were expelled, while the Mazurs were retained as Autochthons (‘heritage and potential Poles’), due to their Slavophone character. Their Mazurian language was redefined as a dialect of Polish. However, in reality the Mazurs were treated as ‘crypto-Germans,’ especially due to their religion, because after World War II Poland became almost homogenously Catholic.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of German and Polish.
The Postwar Yiddishland in Communist Poland’s Lower Silesia, 1946-1968
Research question: (A) Did the Holocaust completely wipe out Yiddish-speaking communities? (B) Or was it national communism’s anti-Semitism that liquidated resurrected Yiddishophone communities of Holocaust survivors?
Background: After the Holocaust Jewish survivors suffered numerous pogroms and rampant anti-Semitic violence in postwar Poland, all their property already repossessed among ethnically Polish neighbors. The only solution was to recreate their communities in the former German lands (emptied of Germans expelled west of the Oder-Neisse line) that the Allies passed to Poland at Potsdam. Jews rebuilt their Yiddish-speaking communities in lower Silesia, in the spirit of communist internationalism and Polish patriotism. But the Polish ethnic nationalism, resurgent since 1956, did not accept any other language but Polish and any other religion but Catholicism as the badges of the ‘true Pole.’
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Polish and Yiddish (very close to German).
The 1952-1993Protracted Ethnic Cleansing of Silesians
Research question: Was the Silesians’ bilingualism(biculturalism) and their own language of Silesian the main causes of their expulsion from communist Poland?
Background: The Silesians were a bilingual Slavophone (Silesian-speaking)and German-speaking ethnic group professing Catholicism. They lived in Germany’s second largest industrial basin in Upper Silesia. Poland received this region in a piecemeal fashion after both world wars. After 1945 Germans were expelled, while the Silesians were retained as Autochthons (‘heritage and potential Poles’), due to their Slavophone character. Their Silesian language was redefined as a dialect of Polish. However, in reality the Silesians were treated as ‘crypto-Germans,’ especially due to their bilingualism and the fact that they had relatives in West Germany. The Polish authorities rapidly changing policies of repression and accommodation toward the Silesians intermittently sent waves of expellees and refugees to (West) Germany. Between 1952 and 1993 around 1 million Silesians were expelled or felt compelled to leave.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of German and Polish.
NB: Our University Library has an extensive book collection on modern Upper Silesia.
Helsinki and Crimea
Research Question: Did the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 end the Postwar (Helsinki) Political Order in Europe?
Background: The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 constituted the foundation of the reconciliation between the West and the Soviet bloc, resulting in the period of détente. The Soviet 1979 intervention in Afghanistan ended détente but not the Helsinki principles, and neither did the fall of communism or the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a blatant breach of these principles.
Requirements: English is sufficient, though a knowledge of Ukrainian and Russian would be helpful.
The Interwar Soviet Union: Communism in One Country
Research question: The widespread, though wrong, belief repeated in a multitude of monographs and textbooks is that the Soviet Union was the sole communist state during the interwar period. Was this belief caused by Moscow’s propaganda slogan of ‘building communism in one country’?
Background: Between 1919 and 1921 Bolshevik Russia attempted to spread (‘export’) communist revolution westward to central and western Europe; without any success. However, such ideological export worked much better in Asia, where the SU helped establishing communist regimes in interwar Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva. Thus, in the interwar period there were three communist states. But ideologically, this Asian success was in an unseemly conflict with Marxism-Leninism, which claimed that communism revolution would, at first, erupt and flourish in the most industrialized part of the world, namely, western Europe.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Russian, a reading knowledge of German would be helpful.
The Cambodian Genocide
Research question: Was this extermination a genocide in light of the 1948 genocide Convention?
Background: The Genocide Convention defines genocide as an act of mass killing with ‘an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’ Between 1975 and 1979 the communist government killed a quarter (c. 2 million) of Cambodia’s population. Those targeted were seen as political and ideological opponents, but from the ethnic and religious vantage were the same as the genocidaires. So it was a genocide of a political or social group. Such groups, on the Soviet Union’s insistence, were excluded from the definition of genocide as adopted in the Genocide Convention.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of French, a reading knowledge of Khmer would be of help.
Communist Bulgaria’s Turks and Soviet Azerbaijan
Research question: Was the recreation of the Turkish minority education system in postwar Bulgaria, on the insistence of the Soviet Union, a ‘punishment’ for the fact that Sofia was an ally of Germany during World War II?
Background: The Turkish minority education system was recreated in postwar Bulgaria in 1946 and functioned through 1968. By that time Bulgaria had become the most trusted member of the Soviet bloc and even applied for membership in the Soviet Union. So in 1968/70 the Turkish minority education system was liquidated. This system was created with the help of Azeri specialists, because the Azeri (Azerbaijani) language, apart from some small differences, is very similar to Turkish.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Bulgarian and Russian, a reading knowledge of Turkish/Azeri would be of help.
A Genocide in Chechnya?
Research question: Did the killing of 50,000 to 200,000 Chechen civilians by Russian troops during the two Russo-Chechen amount to a genocide?
Background: Upon the declaration of the independence of Chechnya, Russia waged two wars (1996-1996, 1999-2001) against this country, complete with a repressive system of concentration (‘filtering’) camps and revenge attacks on civilian population. This happened at the height of the US ‘war on terror,’ in which Russia was an ally. Hence, Washington chose not to take note of what the Kremlin described as an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ in Chechnya.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Russian, a reading knowledge of Arabic and Chechen would be of help.
Italian Color Television: Yugoslavia and Monaco
Research question: Did Italian-speaking color entertainment TV stations from Yugoslavia and Monaco cause the emergence of color entertainment television in Italy in 1977?
Background: Yugoslavia’s Italian-language color TV Capodistria began broadcasting in 1971. Monaco’s Télé Monte-Carlo was the first private TV station in Europe. It broadcast in Monégasque (close to Italian) and French, and switched to color in 1973. Both TV stations are located on the very border with Italy and many Italian viewers tuned in for color entertainment television, at that time not available in Italy itself.
Requirements: A reading knowledge of Italian, a reading knowledge of Serbo-Croatian and French would be of help.
The Troubles or an Ethnic Civil War?
Research question: Did London insist on using the euphemistic designation ‘The Troubles’ for the civil war in Northern Ireland because during the Cold war it was ideologically unacceptable to admit that an ethnically driven civil war was possible in a ‘developed democracy’ like Britain?
Background: During the two decades of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968-1998), 3,500 people died, which fulfills any definition of a low-intensity war, thought along the ethnic lines of language and a memory of religion, employed as a badge of nationality (that is, the fact of belonging to this or that nation). But London and Dublin conceded it was ‘just the Troubles,’ and that this conflict was of a sectarian (religious) character, despite the fact that the majority of combatants rarely attended the mass. A similar conflict in Bosnia (1992-1995), where a memory of religion was employed to the same effect is referred to as an ethnic (civil) war. But scholars are reluctant to make this comparison, prevented by the British normative belief that ethnic conflicts and civil wars are an impossibility in a ‘genuine democracy.’