Here are this week's questions. You are expected to bring to section rough written answers to the first two questions. They will not be corrected, but are meant to serve as a basis for discussion.

1. Bring to section (i.e. write down) a short identification of the following political figures: Dmowski, Masaryk, Pilsudski, Hlinka, Horthy, Bethlen, Gombos (with umlauts!), Kun. Extra credit: Count Karolyi, Konrad Henlein, Include nationality, political orientation and major actions.

2.What makes it difficult to arrange the above politicians alone according along the axis Left-Right? Come up with other axes that might help us differentiate between them. (Hint: what common assumptions are currently shared by the mainstream right and left in this country or in Europe that cannot be assumed for Eastern European political parties in the inter-war period?) Arrange the above politicians on these axes.

3. Why did the "rightist" Gombos (with umlauts!) chase the King of Hungary out of the country? (p. 90) What does this suggest about the relationship between the old and the new right?

4. Explain the significance of Pilsudski's statement that the sejm was "a sterile, jabbering thing that engendered such boredom as made the very flies die of sheer disgust" (p. 48). Why did the left tolerate and many minorities support his overthrow of parliament in May 1926 and the following sanacja of the political system (Think of the Jewish publican Piniowsky's attitude towards the emperor in Roth's the Bust of the Emperor)?

5. What explains the strong vote for the Pilsudski's government party following the 1930 suppression of the sejm? What comparisons might be made to the success of the Nazis in the March 1933 elections?

6. Why do you think so many paramilitary organizations formed in this period? What does this tell us about the functioning of the democratic systems? Examples: Orange Guard (Bulg.), Hlinka guard, Ustase, Arrow Cross, Hilter's SA and the German socialist Reichsbanner and communist Rotfrontkaempfer.

7. What was the nature of the relationship between Czech and Slovak nationalists in 1918-1920? 1930-38?

8. How does Crampton describe the changes from 1918 to 1938 in the relationship between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech-dominated government? What accounts for the rise of Konrad Henlein and his Sudetendeutschpartei?

9. What role did the Russian Bolsheviks play directly or indirectly in the history of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states?

10. Which of the Central European countries might have been considered democracies in 1935?