In the wake of the First World War and Russian Revolutions, Central Europeans in 1919 faced a world of possibilities, threats, and extreme contrasts. Dramatic events since the end of the world war seemed poised to transform the world, but the form of that transformation was unclear and violently contested in the streets and societies of Munich and Budapest in 1919. The political perceptions of contemporaries, framed by gender stereotypes and antisemitism, reveal the sense of living history, of 'fighting the world revolution', which was shared by residents of the two cities. In 1919, both revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries were focused on shaping the emerging new order according to their own worldview. In Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919 (Cambridge UP, 2021), Eliza Ablovatski helps answer the question of why so many Germans and Hungarians chose to use their new political power for violence and repression.
Eliza Ablovatski is Associate Professor of History at Kenyon College (Ohio), where she has just completed her term as chair of the History department.
Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
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