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Rampart Nations

Rampart Nations

Liliya Berezhnaya | Heidi Hein-Kircher

(2019)

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Abstract

The “bulwark” or antemurale myth—whereby a region is imagined as a defensive barrier against a dangerous Other—has been a persistent strand in the development of Eastern European nationalisms. While historical studies of the topic have typically focused on clashes and overlaps between sociocultural and religious formations, Rampart Nations delves deeper to uncover the mutual transfers and multi-sided national and interconfessional conflicts that helped to spread bulwark myths through Europe’s eastern periphery over several centuries. Ranging from art history to theology to political science, this volume offers new ways of understanding the political, social, and religious forces that continue to shape identity in Eastern Europe.


Heidi Hein-Kircher earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In 2018, she earned her habilitation degree at Philipps University in Marburg. She is currently on the research staff at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, Germany. She is also the Head of Department at the Institute’s Academic Forum.


“The contributions in this volume are immensely valuable and include some of the most innovative and best-argued texts I have read in the field.” • Piotr H. Kosicki, University of Maryland

Rampart Nations is a worthy compilation that will interest historians and other scholars. It contains solid scholarship on a subject that deserves attention, adding to our knowledge and understanding of European history and how current society has evolved.• Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, University of Waterloo


Liliya Berezhnaya is an Assistant Professor at University of Münster’s “Religion and Politics” Cluster of Excellence in Germany. Her publications include Iconic Turns: Nation and Religion in Eastern European Cinema since 1989 (2013), co-edited with Christian Schmitt, and The World to Come: Ukrainian Images of the Last Judgment (2015), co-authored with John-Paul Himka.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Rampart Nations iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Transliteration and Toponyms x
Part I — Background 1
Introduction — Constructing a Rampart Nation: Conceptual Framework 3
Chapter 1 — The Origins of Antemurale Christianitis Myths: Remarks on the Promotion of a Political Concept 31
Part II — (De-)Sacralizing and Nationalizing Borderlands 59
Chapter 2 — Not a Bulwark, but a Part of the Larger Catholic Community: The Romanian Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania (1700–1850) 61
Chapter 3 — Securitizing the Polish Bulwark: The Mission of Lviv in Polish Travel Guides during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 81
Chapter 4 — Ghetto as an “Inner Antemurale”? Debates on Exclusion, Integration, and Identity in Galicia in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 103
Chapter 5 — Holy Ground and a Bulwark against “the Other”: The (Re)Construction of an Orthodox Crimea in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire 125
Chapter 6 — Bastions of Faith in the Oceans of Ambiguities: Monasteries in the East European Borderlands (Late Nineteenth–Beginning of the Twentieth Century) 146
Chapter 7 — “The Turkish Wall”: Turkey as an Anti-Communist and Anti-Russian Bulwark in the Twentieth Century 186
Part III — Promoting Antemurale Discourses 205
Chapter 8 — Why Didn’t the Antemurale Historical Mythology Develop in Early Nineteenth-Century Ukraine? 207
Chapter 9 — Translating the Border(s) in a Multlingual and Multiethnic Society: Antemurale Myths in Polish and Ukrainian Schoolbooks of the Habsburg Monarchy 241
Chapter 10 — Mediating the Antemurale Myth in East Central Europe: Religion and Politics in Modern Geographers’ Entangled Lives and Maps 262
Chapter 11 — Bulwarks of Anti-Bolshevism: Russophobic Polemic of the Christian Right in Poland and Hungary in the Interwar Years and Their Roots in the Nineteenth Century 293
Chapter 12 — Defenders of the Russian Land: Viktor Vasnetsov’s Warriors and Russia’s Bulwark Myth 319
Part IV — Reflections on the Bulwark Myths Today 345
Chapter 13 — Antemurale Thinking as Historical Myth and Ethnic Boundary Mechanism 347
Chapter 14 — Concluding Thoughts on Central and Eastern European Bulwark Rhetoric in the Twenty-First Century 374
Index 396