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Reviews of Books
MARIA M. KovAcs. Liberal Professions and Illiberal
Politics: Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust.
New York: Oxford University Press or Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, D.C. 1994. Pp. xxii, 169.
$35.00.
Michael Polanyi often recalled with gratitude the
liberal, pre-World War I Hungary of his youth. Like
many other assimilated Jews, he and his brother Karl
entered the free professions: free not only from guild
regulations but from most forms of religious and racial
discrimination as well. That freedom, coupled with the
Magyar gentry's preference for bureaucratic careers,
had made Jewish preserves of the medical, legal, and
engineering professions; by 1910, Jews accounted for
nearly half of Hungary's doctors and lawyers and
almost 40 percent of its engineers. To Austrian antiSemites the Hungarian capital might be "Judapest,"
but to Hungarians of Jewish origin the city was a haven
of opportunity.
To be sure, as Maria M. Kovacs's exemplary study
points out, all was not well. The Jews' very prominence
in the professions aroused opposition to philo-Semitism as well as to the civil liberties and developing
capitalism that gave it effect. New, illiberal ideologies
such as socialism and racial nationalism called the
liberal order into question and appealed, among others, to those professionals who viewed overcrowding
and Jewish competition as personal threats. Still, the
latter found few outlets for their discontents prior to
1914.
The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 and
the formation of a short-lived Soviet Republic in 1919
convinced some radicalized doctors and engineers that
the liberal order had been permanently replaced by
one more scientific and planned, one in which they
would constitute the ruling class. Ironically most of
them, like Bela Kun and the majority of the soviet
leaders, were of Jewish origin. This circumstance,
added to the flood of refugee professionals from the
territories lost at Trianon, prompted new calls for
restricted access to professional schools. In response
the counterrevolutionary government headed by Regent Miklos Horthy passed a numerus clausus law
(1920) that established a quota for "races and nationalities" (that is, for Jews). Moreover, the medical and
engineering fraternities organized anti-Semitic associations; so, ultimately, did the steadfastly liberal legal
profession.
Yet, as Kovacs observes, Prime Minister Istvan
Bethlen, a liberal of the old school, saw to it that the
law was loosely enforced and, in 1928, rescinded. Only
when the Depression catapulted Gyula Gombos to
power did anti-Semitism receive a new lease on life in
the professions as well as in the country generally. Like
most historians, Kovacs identifies Gombos with the
"radical Right," although Gombos proclaimed himself
to be a national socialist and an admirer of Benito
Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist who despised the
old order. No one disputes the fact, however, that
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Gombos rejected Bethlen's conservative liberalism and
emboldened the anti-Semites. Yet in the end he, too,
met a culturally ingrained resistance, and at his death
in 1936 the Jews were not significantly worse off.
With Adolf Hitler in power in Germany, and Hungary aligned ever more closely with the revisionist
Reich, the government of Bela Imredy placed new and
more oppressive restrictions on the Jews. This satisfied
many doctors and engineers but not most lawyers,
some of whom formed a Christian association that
sought to undermine the discriminatory legislation. In
1942 these lawyers welcomed the new government of
Miklos Kallay because it shared their subversive intent.
Thus, it was only in 1944, after the Germans occupied
Hungary, that the way was cleared for the destruction
of the Hungarian Jews, many professionals included.
Kovacs recounts this tragic story of liberal devolution honestly and professionally. Thus, although she
has much to say about those Hungarians who embraced ideologies of resentment and hate, she does not
forget those who refused to compromise with evil and
who remained committed to "the survival of intelligent
norms of personal conduct inherited from a once
liberal and tolerant tradition" (p. 132).
LEE CONGDON
James Madison University
RICHARD S. WORTMAN. Scenarios of Power: Myth and
Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Volume 1, From Peter
the Great to the Death of Nicholas I. (Studies of the
Harriman Institute.) Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 1995. Pp. xiii, 469. $49.50.
Richard S. Wortman has given us an important and
beautiful book. He writes elegantly, argues his theses
with conviction and energy, and supports his ideas with
a dazzling scholarly apparatus. The volume also excels
at three kinds of historical approaches. The sixty-seven
illustrations show remarkable control of the arts and
are placed where discussed in the text, thus providing
evidence, not merely decoration. The discussion of the
participation of women in monarchical myth and ceremony is integrated into the central flow of the
narrative and not, as so often happens, appended as a
side issue. The comparative method successfully incorporates Russian developments into general European
monarchical theory, an approach fortified by the happy
use of the term "Russian monarchy" rather than
"autocracy," with its overtone of oriental despotism.
This book is also a pioneering work. It grapples with
a most important and complex, but quite neglected,
problem in imperial Russian history, namely the reasons for the unusual persistence of absolute monarchy
into the twentieth century. The application of semiotic
theory to this issue places Wortman in the vanguard of
Russian historians.
Wortman argues that the crafted splendor in the
presentation and celebration of the Russian monarchy
from the seventeenth century until 1917 was intended
to impress public opinion, domestic as well as foreign,
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Modern Europe
and "indicate[s] that Russian rulers and their advisers
considered the symbolic sphere of ceremonies and
imagery intrinsic to their exercise of power" (p. 3).
Such theatricalization resulted in the "elevation," to
use Wortman's apt term, of the sovereigns into a
sphere superior to their subjects, and because the
court nobility participated in this display, they, too,
partook of the sacralization and idealization of power
through reflected glory.
The correlative thesis contends that "by displaying
themselves as foreigners, or like foreigners, Russian
monarchs and their servitors affirmed the permanence
and inevitability of their separation from the population they ruled," and this served as "the animating
myth" justifying their control and privilege (p. 5).
Intrinsic to the myth of foreignness were the imperial
ambitions that claimed both Byzantine and Roman
origins. The script for the multifaceted presentation
and celebration of power, or scenario, changed with
each ruler in accordance with the needs and cultural
context of the times.
The book is divided into four chronological parts.
The first section, "Borrowed Signs," surveys European
monarchical symbols and ceremonies in use during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as Russian
imagery from the Kievan era until Peter the Great's
bold adoption of Western forms. The second part,
"Olympian Scenarios," covers the eighteenth-century
monarchs who adapted Peter's presentation of the
emperor as hero, god, and benefactor in conformance
with baroque and Enlightenment cultural currents.
"Mortal Sovereigns" describes the decision of Paul I
and Alexander I to present their primary image as
military leader and thus maintain their majesty in a
revolutionary era dominated by notions of popular
sovereignty. The last, richest, and most convincing
section covers the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. "The Dynastic Scenario" analyzes Nicholas I's
quest to refashion the mythical and elevated image of
the monarch in order to meet the challenges of
liberalism and nationalism. Wortman promises a second volume to cover the period from 1855 to 1917.
Wortman convincingly demonstrates that ideas and
myths inform practice and policy. Naturally, the theses
become overstated and overburdened when the effort
is made to fit every monarch and every reign neatly
into a coherent theory and separate scenario. Although the evidence is clear in the case of Nicholas
I-and all the monarchs were surely concerned about
their images-it is difficult to believe that they and
their retainers had such thoroughly conceived and
theory-driven notions of the type of sovereignty they
wanted to convey, or that they did so relentlessly
throughout their reigns in conscious alliance with the
historical forces of their eras. Wortman invests the
reign of Empress Elizabeth, for example, with a "scenario of rejoicing" and interprets the constant court
entertainments as "a protracted, unmistakable affirmation of the principle of happiness," while her wardrobe of 15,000 dresses is seen as "behavior prescribed
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877
by a scenario of demonstrative abandon from the
constraints of necessity" (pp. 107-08). A less semiotic
and simpler explanation, however, deserves attention:
the young princess, like her mother, had always loved
finery, and her quest for diversion was a factor in her
not agreeing to accept the burden and inconvenience
of rule until 1741; on becoming empress, she indulged
herself. Similarly, Paul's preference for a paradeground style is interpreted as reacting to the events of
the French Revolution, whereas his love for the military had been in evidence since his youth and had been
a proclivity of his father thirty years earlier. On
another level, the fact that there was a preponderance
of female monarchs throughout the eighteenth century
after the death of Peter the Great in 1725 is considered
evidence that "only they could claim to defend Peter's
heritage without threatening a return of his punitive
fury" (p. 85). First, this rationale seems patently ex
post facto; second, except for the choice of Catherine
I, each time a male member of the dynasty was
available, he was chosen, and even Catherine II gave
the impression she was ascending the throne as regent
for her son. In all these cases, Wortman's strong and
interesting interpretation is weakened by stretching it
beyond its limits.
The myth of foreignness ("Royalty is the foreigner"
[po 22]) may also be overdrawn, although it is of course
true to a certain extent. In fact, the primary Russian
myth was that the original dynasty, the Riurikid, was
Viking in origin; but, while this was accepted in the
nineteenth century, eighteenth-century figures heatedly repudiated the myth and made bizarre attempts to
invent native relatives for the founding father. Although Russian rulers were drawn to Byzantine and
Western "borrowed signs," the imitation of the most
modern models of monarchy emerges more as an
aspect of rattrapage than a conscious attempt to be
foreign. In addition, the foreignness of rule often
alienated Russians; during the epochs of perceived
"German tyranny"-the reign of Anna Ioannovna, the
regency of Ivan VI, and the six-month rule of Peter
III-the monarchs were vilified or overthrown. Catherine II, Peter's German-born wife, however, won popularity by russifying herself.
These reservations should not detract from the
overall argument, which is sound and original. Indeed,
Wortman's book has transformed the intellectual landscape for studying imperial Russian history and will
surely become a classic.
CYNTHIA HYLA WHITTAKER
Baruch College
Graduate School and University Center,
City University of New York
THEOPHILUS C. PROUSIS. Russian Society and the Greek
Revolution. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University
Press. 1994. Pp. xi, 259. $30.00.
This is a detailed and thorough monograph on Russian
philhellenism. Theophilus C. Prousis focuses on the
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