Eastern or Central Europe? [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 253-269]

254
ENDRE BOJTAR
use an expression of Istvan Bibo3 -is negligible. Thus we are discussing
the historical grasping of the quality of life. The great difficulty of this
is evident since, in order to achieve the most encompassing results, we
must utilize not merely the traditional sources of the recording of history,
but also indirect documents-for example, works of art. Yet the rules of
their interpretation are rather undefined.
The process-which in 1948 was called by Bibo4 a dead-end street,
its result a distorted Hungarian structure; and these two qualifications
can be safely extended to the whole of the area-begins at the end of the
18th century with the unfolding of capitalism that should have established
bourgeois society. In a spiritual sense, the point of departure is the Enlightenment, the essential content of which is the development of the
modem personality, free of Middle-Ages feudal limitations. The main
component of our history is, however, the birth of the modem bourgeois
nation (it is not by accident that, history everywhere, with the exception
of Russia, speaks of national rebirth). The conditions, the confused period
of extension of the development and evolution of these three factors-personality, society, nation-resulted in the picture that presents itself today.
1
Let us begin with the last, the most important one: the nation. Whichever definition we choose to consider-the legal-political concept of the
French Encyclopedists, tied to the chief institution: the State; or its successor, the German concept contained in the works of Herder, Schelling,
the Schlegel brothers, and mainly in the works of Fichte, according to
which the nation is a more ancestral association than are political configurations, and in contrast to these, national quality is determined by factors
such as language, soil, environment, and climate-in Eastern Europe nation
was in no respect identical with society: at times the nation and certain
social groups were not coterminous.
It is just at this time that the balance of power between the nations
of the region undergoes a change: after the third partition of Poland in
1795, the state with the largest inhabited area in 18th century Europe
(actually the Polish-Lithuanian common state), the Russian Empire gradually becomes the leading power in the region-supported in part by the
ideal of 'Slavic community. In vain does the Habsburg Monarchy try to
compete, or the Turkish Empire, barely able to hang on to her positions
in Southern Europe. I am referring to but one of the many causes, to one
that is not usually mentioned with sufficient emphasis. This cause is the
demographic revolution. It is of great general significance that the population of Europe increased by 200 million during the 19th century, which
is more than the total increase during the previous thousand years. The