‘The Liminality of Failing Democracy: East Central Europe during the Interwar Slump’ is a research project funded by the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung for a duration of three years (2021 – 2024). The project team investigates how the crises of the interwar period, culminating in the Great Depression, transformed societies and states across East Central Europe.
East Central Europe saw the emergence of a series of democratically constituted new states as a result of the collapse of Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian imperial rule at the end of the First World War. The majority of these states – Poland, Yugoslavia, the Baltic States and Romania – shifted to authoritarian rule from the mid-1920s and in the 1930s.
The project challenges the narrative that democratic failure and the rise of authoritarian leaders in interwar East Central Europe resulted from a lack of experience in political participation. Rather, it argues that authoritarianism was enabled during specific critical moments which endowed it with significant domestic and international support. Economic crises resulted in ‘liminal moments’, which transformed shared expectations towards the agency of states.
Among the outcomes of this project will be an edited volume on East Central Europe during the Great Depression and a series of scholarly articles. We will use this blog to keep you updated on the research as it progresses, on preliminary findings, on broader scholarly developments and on events linked to the project. You can also visit our project website to find out more about the research team and the specific questions that guide our research.
Anca Mandru, Jasmin Nithammer & Klaus Richter