The last volume of the Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945 series presents 46 texts under the heading of "antimodernism". In a dynamic relationship with modernism, from the 1880s to the 1940s, and especially during the interwar period, the antimodernist political discourse in the region offered complex ideological constructions of national identification.
These texts rejected the linear vision of progress and instead offered alternative models of temporality, such as the cyclical one as well as various narratives of decline. This shift was closely connected to the rejection of liberal democratic institutionalism, and the preference for organicist models of social existence, emphasizing the role of the elites (and charismatic leaders) shaping the whole body politic. Along these lines, antimodernist authors also formulated alternative visions of symbolic geography: rejecting the symbolic hierarchies that focused on the normativity of Western European models, they stressed the cultural and political autarchy of their own national community, which in some cases was also coupled with the reevaluation of the Orient. At the same time, this antimodernist turn should not be confused with rightwing radicalism—in fact, the dialogue with the modernist tradition was often very subtle and the anthology also contains texts which offered a criticism of 'modern' totalitarianism in an antimodernist key.
Introduction
Balázs Trencsényi and Sorin Antohi: Approaching Anti-Modernism
Chapter I. Integral Nationalism
Nikola Pašic: The Agreement of Serbs and Croats
Georg Schönerer: The Pan-Germans’ program for the future
Roman Dmowski: Thoughts of a modern Pole
Nicolae Iorga: On national culture
Aurel C. Popovici: At the crossroads of two worlds
Vladimir Cerina: In the city of cynics
Babanzâde Ahmed Naim: The question of nationalism in Islam
Jozef Tiso: The ideology of the Slovak People’s Party
Dezso Szabó: Tomorrow’s nationalism
Chapter II. The Crisis of the European Conscience
Karl Kraus: The last days of mankind
Mircea Eliade: Spiritual itinerary
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar: On East and West
Leopold Andrian: Austria through the prism of the Idea
Mihály Babits: Mass and nation
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz: Unkempt souls
Ivan Hadzhiyski: An optimistic theory of our people
Chapter III. In Search of a National Ontology
Ion Dragoumis: Hellenic civilization
Jaroslav Durych: The mission of the Czech state
France Veber: The ideal foundations of Slavic agrarianism
Anton Wildgans: Speech about Austria
Lucian Blaga: The Mioritic space
Vladimir Dvornikovic: Epic man
Nikolaj Velimirovic: Serbian nation as a servant of God
Nayden Sheytanov: The Bulgarian worldview
László Németh: In the minority
Chapter IV. Conservative Redefinitions of Tradition and Modernity
Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Writing as the spiritual space of the Nation
Gyula Szekfu: Three generations
Heinrich von Srbik: Austria in the Holy Roman Empire and in the German Confederation
Živojin Peric: Religion in the Serbian Civil Code
Milan Šufflay: The depths of national consciousness
Karel Kramár: In defense of Slavic politics
Petar Mutafchiev: Towards a philosophy of the Bulgarian history
Nichifor Crainic: The meaning of tradition
Ömer Lütfi Barkan: The legal status of the peasant class in the Ottoman Empire
Ladislav Hanus: Slovak statehood
Manifesto of the Slovenian National Defense Corps
Chapter V. The Anti-Modernist Revolution
Ideological declaration of the Camp of Great Poland
Janko Janev: The spirit of the nation
Hüseyin Nihal Atsiz: Turkish unity
Ioannis Metaxas: Speech on the occasion of the inauguration of public works
Emil Cioran: The transfiguration of Romania
Lazër Radi: Fascism and the Albanian Spirit
Štefan Polakovic: Slovak National Socialism
Emanuel Vajtauer: Czech myth
Svetislav Stefanovic: The building of New Serbia as a peasant state
Edvard Kocbek: Comradeship
Basic secondary literature on identity discourses in Central and Southeast Europe
Glossary