Balázs Trencsényi
Biographic Data
| ID | 501731 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Balázs Trencsényi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Balázs |
| FAMILY NAME | Trencsényi |
| SIGNATURE | TRENCSÉNYI B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Central European University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0014-5704 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 8 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century: A Never-Ending Story
Revisionisms revised. Does the radical right appropriate or disrupt historical narratives through revisionism? 1
The Historical Construction of National Consciousness: Selected Writings
A long essay entitled 'Three Historical Regions of Europe', appearing first in a samizdat volume in Budapest in 1980, instantly put its author into the forefront of the transnational debate on Central Europe, alongside such intellectual luminaries as Milan Kundera and Czesław Miłosz. The present volume offers English-language readers a rich selection of the depth and breadth of the legacy of Jenő Szűcs (1928–1988). \n \nThe selection documents Sz…
A New State for “New Men”
Growing disappointment with party politics in the 1920s gave rise to discourses extolling the state as the principal actor of societal change. A common denominator of the various versions of etatism and technocratism in the region was a strong “anti-political” ideological reflex. In the 1930s, this was coupled with a discourse of a preventive strike, defending dictatorial policies as measures to hinder radical left- and right-wing movements from …
Velvet Revolutions and the Thorny Paths of Transition
The “velvet” and not so “velvet” revolutions of 1989 triggered fervent discussions on the nature of the postcommunist political system. The paradigm of transitology provided the dominant framework for these debates, while civil society remained a key concept, even though it became increasingly contested by the neoliberals and neoconservatives, as well as by the “new left.” The seemingly dominant, although never uncontested, “liberal consensus” of…
The Postwar “Transition Years”
Debates on the postwar “transition” are symbolically linked to the year 1945, but in many cases they had already started in 1943–4 and lasted until 1948. A general feeling of rupture with the past dominated throughout East Central Europe. Symbolic geographical references underwent important change, stressing some sort of synthesis between East and West. The experience of the Holocaust resulted in reflections on the responsibility of the region’s …
Stalinism and De-Stalinization
By 1948, a full-fledged Stalinist dictatorship was introduced all over the region. Socialist realism became an official aesthetic ideology; in historiography, in most cases it was the national Romantic vision that was extolled as “progressive,” but there were also attempts to claim the progressive character of a strong central state power. Independent reflection on Stalinism was only possible either in exile or in the private sphere. After Stalin…
Political Thought in Exile
The post-1945 exile from East Central Europe was characterized by extreme ideological pluralism and political fragmentation, ranging from post-fascist to radical leftist streams. Given this initial diversity and the permanent reconfiguration due to the arrival of new waves, it remained an extremely variegated phenomenon with limited ideological coherence. However the specific exile experience produced a certain type of political thought offering …
Dissidents and Opposition Movements
The evolution of dissident political thought had markedly different dynamics in different countries. In the satellites the dissidents represented a key component of the emerging “democratic opposition” focusing on human rights. The discourse of human rights gave to the henceforth fractured opposition groups a unifying language to voice their criticism, yet it did not erase the deep fissures among them. The contradiction between the doctrine of hu…
“Rebuilding the Boat in the Open Sea”
The reconfiguration of the state system and the dissolution of federations after 1989 prompted debates on the aims of state building and the nature of constitutionalism. The difference in the dynamics of these debates points to the radical divergence of experiences across the region from the peaceful “divorce” of Czechoslovakia to the much more violent reconfiguration of the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav spaces. In this context one of the key top…
Toward Socialism with a Human Face?
Marxist revisionism, providing a powerful political language of intra-systemic opposition, was characterized by an effort to restore the relative autonomy of the personality in the face of both society and history, to provide new ethics, a new way of life, and envision “socialism with a human face.” The 1960s witnessed an unprecedented boom of Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual and cultural production, ranging from the rediscovery of the inconv…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century' and Beyond
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History
European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History
Academic Freedom in Danger. Fact Files on the 'CEU Affair
In the beginning of April this year, the Hungarian Parliament passed two amendments to the existing educational law, which in their particular formulation targeted specifically the renowned Central European University in Budapest and sought to undermine the legal basis of its existence in Hungary. In four contributions leading academics and a PhD student of the History Department of the Central European University place the latest events in conte…
The Interplay of National and Imperial Principles of Organization
The post-1848 period saw a proliferation of theories regarding the reorganization of empires, including the establishment of constitutional freedoms and political representation for all national groups. They sought theoretical justification for dividing central (imperial) and local (national, provincial) levels of governmental competence, to find a middle way between imperial sovereignty and the logic of nation-statehood. The Eastern Question ori…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century'
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entangleme…
Beyond Liminality? The Kulturkampf of the Early 2000s in East Central Europe
The essay gives an overview of the rise of radical neoconservative discourses in East Central Europe in the wake of the seemingly successful completion of the transition agenda, culminating in NATO and EU accession. It describes the main directions of criticism aiming at the “liberal consensus,” held to be dominating the ideological frameworks of these countries in the 1990s. Offering the metaphor of Kulturkampf as a heuristic model to interpret …
Regimes of Historicity' in Southeastern and Northern Europe, 1890-1945
The volume undertakes a comparative analysis of the various discursive traditions dealing with the connection between modernity and historicity in Southeastern and Northern Europe, reconstructing the
"Regimes of historicity" in southeastern and northern Europe, 1890-1945: Discourses of identity and temporality
Introduction PART I: HISTORICAL CULTURES AND CONCEPTS OF TIME 1. Regimes of 'Balkan Historicity': The Critical Turn and Regional Time in Studies of the Balkans Before the First World War Diana Mishkova 2. Latecomers and Forerunners: Temporality, Historicity, and Modernity in Early 20th Century Finnish Historiography Marja Jalava 3. Temporality and Identity in Danish Historical Discourse, 1900-1945: Danish Historians Writing Modernity Claus Moller…
Mapping the Merry Ghetto: Musical Countercultures in East Central Europe, 1960–1989
Writing the nation and reframing early modern intellectual history in Hungary
Introduction Reframing the European Pasts: National Discourses and Regional Comparisons
In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990-2000
This article offers an overview of the scholarly debates on Romanian nation building and national ideology during the first post-communist decade. It argues that the globalization of history writing and the increasing access of local intellectual discourses to the international “market of ideas” had a powerful impact on both Eastern European history writing and on the Western scholarly literature dealing with the region. In regard to Romanian his…
Beyond Liminality? The Kulturkampf of the Early 2000s in East Central Europe
The essay gives an overview of the rise of radical neoconservative discourses in East Central Europe in the wake of the seemingly successful completion of the transition agenda, culminating in NATO and EU accession. It describes the main directions of criticism aiming at the “liberal consensus,” held to be dominating the ideological frameworks of these countries in the 1990s. Offering the metaphor of Kulturkampf as a heuristic model to interpret …
Regimes of Historicity' in Southeastern and Northern Europe, 1890-1945
The volume undertakes a comparative analysis of the various discursive traditions dealing with the connection between modernity and historicity in Southeastern and Northern Europe, reconstructing the
Why Bother About Historical Regions: Debates Over Central Europe in Hungary, Poland and Romania
The article analyzes the ways in which the concept of Central Europe and related regional classifications were instrumentalized in historical research in Hungary, Poland and Romania. While Hungarian and Polish historians employed the discourse of Central Europe as a central means to contextualize and often relativize established national historical narratives, their geographical frameworks of comparison were nevertheless fairly divergent. the Hun…
Revisionisms revised. Does the radical right appropriate or disrupt historical narratives through revisionism? 1
Conceptualizing Statehood and Nationhood
In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990-2000
This article offers an overview of the scholarly debates on Romanian nation building and national ideology during the first post-communist decade. It argues that the globalization of history writing and the increasing access of local intellectual discourses to the international “market of ideas” had a powerful impact on both Eastern European history writing and on the Western scholarly literature dealing with the region. In regard to Romanian his…
Why Bother About Historical Regions: Debates Over Central Europe in Hungary, Poland and Romania
The article analyzes the ways in which the concept of Central Europe and related regional classifications were instrumentalized in historical research in Hungary, Poland and Romania. While Hungarian and Polish historians employed the discourse of Central Europe as a central means to contextualize and often relativize established national historical narratives, their geographical frameworks of comparison were nevertheless fairly divergent, the Hun…
Why Bother About Historical Regions: Debates Over Central Europe in Hungary, Poland and Romania
The article analyzes the ways in which the concept of Central Europe and related regional classifications were instrumentalized in historical research in Hungary, Poland and Romania. While Hungarian and Polish historians employed the discourse of Central Europe as a central means to contextualize and often relativize established national historical narratives, their geographical frameworks of comparison were nevertheless fairly divergent. the Hun…
Late Enlightenment: Emergence of the Modern 'National Idea'
This volume represents the first in a four-volume series, a daring project by CEU Press which presents the most important texts that triggered and shaped the processes of nation-building in the many countries of Central and Southeast Europe. The series brings together scholars from Austria, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, the Republic of Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovak…
National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements
67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and the national movements in the cultural space ranging from Poland to the Ottoman Empire. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective work was born.The end of the 18th century and first decades of the 19th were in many respects a watershed period in Eu…
Narratives Unbound: Historical studies in post-communist Eastern Europe
The first work that covers the post-Communist development of historical studies in six Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. A uniquely critical and qualitative analysis from a comparative and critical perspective, written by scholars from the region itself. Focusing on the first post-Communist decade, 1989–1999, the book offers a longer-term perspective that includes the immediate 'prehisto…
National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements
Presents and illustrates the formation of national movements in Central and Southeast Europe. The 67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and national identity. The end of the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt…
Introduction Reframing the European Pasts: National Discourses and Regional Comparisons
Writing the nation and reframing early modern intellectual history in Hungary
Mapping the Merry Ghetto: Musical Countercultures in East Central Europe, 1960–1989
Beyond Liminality? The Kulturkampf of the Early 2000s in East Central Europe
The essay gives an overview of the rise of radical neoconservative discourses in East Central Europe in the wake of the seemingly successful completion of the transition agenda, culminating in NATO and EU accession. It describes the main directions of criticism aiming at the “liberal consensus,” held to be dominating the ideological frameworks of these countries in the 1990s. Offering the metaphor of Kulturkampf as a heuristic model to interpret …
Regimes of Historicity' in Southeastern and Northern Europe, 1890-1945
The volume undertakes a comparative analysis of the various discursive traditions dealing with the connection between modernity and historicity in Southeastern and Northern Europe, reconstructing the
"Regimes of historicity" in southeastern and northern Europe, 1890-1945: Discourses of identity and temporality
Introduction PART I: HISTORICAL CULTURES AND CONCEPTS OF TIME 1. Regimes of 'Balkan Historicity': The Critical Turn and Regional Time in Studies of the Balkans Before the First World War Diana Mishkova 2. Latecomers and Forerunners: Temporality, Historicity, and Modernity in Early 20th Century Finnish Historiography Marja Jalava 3. Temporality and Identity in Danish Historical Discourse, 1900-1945: Danish Historians Writing Modernity Claus Moller…
The Interplay of National and Imperial Principles of Organization
The post-1848 period saw a proliferation of theories regarding the reorganization of empires, including the establishment of constitutional freedoms and political representation for all national groups. They sought theoretical justification for dividing central (imperial) and local (national, provincial) levels of governmental competence, to find a middle way between imperial sovereignty and the logic of nation-statehood. The Eastern Question ori…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century'
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entangleme…
European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History
European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History
Academic Freedom in Danger. Fact Files on the 'CEU Affair
In the beginning of April this year, the Hungarian Parliament passed two amendments to the existing educational law, which in their particular formulation targeted specifically the renowned Central European University in Budapest and sought to undermine the legal basis of its existence in Hungary. In four contributions leading academics and a PhD student of the History Department of the Central European University place the latest events in conte…
A New State for “New Men”
Growing disappointment with party politics in the 1920s gave rise to discourses extolling the state as the principal actor of societal change. A common denominator of the various versions of etatism and technocratism in the region was a strong “anti-political” ideological reflex. In the 1930s, this was coupled with a discourse of a preventive strike, defending dictatorial policies as measures to hinder radical left- and right-wing movements from …
Velvet Revolutions and the Thorny Paths of Transition
The “velvet” and not so “velvet” revolutions of 1989 triggered fervent discussions on the nature of the postcommunist political system. The paradigm of transitology provided the dominant framework for these debates, while civil society remained a key concept, even though it became increasingly contested by the neoliberals and neoconservatives, as well as by the “new left.” The seemingly dominant, although never uncontested, “liberal consensus” of…
The Postwar “Transition Years”
Debates on the postwar “transition” are symbolically linked to the year 1945, but in many cases they had already started in 1943–4 and lasted until 1948. A general feeling of rupture with the past dominated throughout East Central Europe. Symbolic geographical references underwent important change, stressing some sort of synthesis between East and West. The experience of the Holocaust resulted in reflections on the responsibility of the region’s …
Stalinism and De-Stalinization
By 1948, a full-fledged Stalinist dictatorship was introduced all over the region. Socialist realism became an official aesthetic ideology; in historiography, in most cases it was the national Romantic vision that was extolled as “progressive,” but there were also attempts to claim the progressive character of a strong central state power. Independent reflection on Stalinism was only possible either in exile or in the private sphere. After Stalin…
Political Thought in Exile
The post-1945 exile from East Central Europe was characterized by extreme ideological pluralism and political fragmentation, ranging from post-fascist to radical leftist streams. Given this initial diversity and the permanent reconfiguration due to the arrival of new waves, it remained an extremely variegated phenomenon with limited ideological coherence. However the specific exile experience produced a certain type of political thought offering …
Dissidents and Opposition Movements
The evolution of dissident political thought had markedly different dynamics in different countries. In the satellites the dissidents represented a key component of the emerging “democratic opposition” focusing on human rights. The discourse of human rights gave to the henceforth fractured opposition groups a unifying language to voice their criticism, yet it did not erase the deep fissures among them. The contradiction between the doctrine of hu…
Political science (26 works) · History (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Politics (19 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (17 works) · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics (12 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Democracy (9 works)