The Great War, better known as World War I, was one of the most complex and dramatic events in the history of humanity. It radically changed the world’s viewpoint on history, politics, society, and life itself. There was no area of individual and social life that remained unaffected by the consequences of that devastating world conflict. Eventually, research on World War I became an ever-open field of challenging academic discussion for scholars in numerous fields, such as history, political science, international relations, social studies, and comparative literature.The Regional Institute for the History of the Resistance and for the Contemporary Era in Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy, dedicated to historical investigation of the Great War, published a special edition of its journal QUALESTORIA in June 2020. This edition, edited by Alberto Basciani, comprises an introduction by the editor and a section called Studi e ricerche (Studies and Research) with five scholarly articles, three of which are written in Italian and the other two in English.This edition reexamines the Great War historically, underlining its fundamental role in contemporary European history and, more particularly, in the fate and history of the Eastern Adriatic countries. Southeastern European countries such as Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece faced critical developments in terms of governmental, state-building, territorial, ethnic, national, economic, and social statuses. The war exposed the fragile economies, the insufficiently developed armies, and the weak institutions of these countries. In the aftermath of World War I, the East Adriatic countries—both the winners and the losers—were left with the major task of fundamentally modernizing their societies in multiple aspects, and the fulfillment or failure to fulfill this task defined much of their contemporary histories.The articles included in this issue of Qualestoria focus extensively on the various political, economic, and social reforms that these countries had to undergo in order to achieve the much-needed modernization of their economies, state structures, and societies as a whole. As maintained by the editor, A. Basciani, in his introduction, the authors of the articles included in this issue use primary sources that are little known to the academic audience in Italy and aim to enlighten some little-explored aspects of the postwar period in several southeastern European countries.The first article of this volume is written by Giulia Albanese of the University of Padua, and it explores the complex concept of the brutalization of politics, not only addressing it as a historiographic category, but also examining its utility for understanding the postwar period. Albanese’s article provides important insight into the relation between the brutalization of politics, the extreme right wing in politics, and the implications of this brutalization in relation to the origins of fascism. It points to the need for additional analysis of the consequences of the Great War and how it wreaked havoc on European society as a whole. Albanese also provides a significant description of the role of the brutalization of politics after 1989, when the communist regimes in southeastern Europe collapsed. She suggests that such insights could be a good starting point for further analysis of some important political phenomena of the twentieth century, such as fascism, communism, and revolutionary politics, while present-day Europe faces hypernational tendencies, and it is no longer possible to think of democracy in the same terms as in the 1900s.The second article is written by Stefano Petrungaro and deals with the kingdom of Yugoslavia, underlining its significant internal conflicts, especially between the Croats and the Serbs, as well as the various ethnic and territorial conflicts with most of its neighbor countries. Petrungaro examines the postwar period in Yugoslavia, focusing on the social tensions and the measures taken to deal with delicate and marginalized components of the society, such as the prostitutes and the beggars, relating them to the marks that the war left on the Yugoslav society as a whole. Such approach has had limited application up to now; therefore, it represents a particularly interesting contribution to the issue. The author maintains that the purpose of the article is to put to the test the most recent historiographical thesis about “phantom-borders” and postimperial legacies, as well as a methodological premise—that is, the extent to which the traditional approach based on the national conflicts and minorities in Yugoslavia is indeed useful and appropriate for shedding more light on the postwar social transition of the country. He maintains that the interbellum period in Yugoslavia should not be limited to the framing of the postimperial legacies and the establishment of communism, as it is far more dynamic. These two components are seen as insufficient for a convincing and well-balanced historical approach, and the author highlights that the phenomena addressed in his article are of a European and transnational nature. He also points to the fact that many of the events that took place in Yugoslavia during World War II and after 1945 were actually shaped in the interbellum period.The following article in the volume, by Stefano Santoro of the University of Trieste, deals with the territorial changes in the Romanian Kingdom and, more specifically, with the much-discussed issues of Transylvania and Bessarabia. The inclusion of these important territories in the Romanian Kingdom, with their great variety and significance in terms of religion, culture, national minorities, and other elements, while it greatly increased the size of the kingdom, also reflects the centralizing tendency of the ruling class in Romanian politics of that time. Internal conflicts took place between the old kingdom and the new provinces, as full integration was not achieved, and the author maintains that this is seen in the inability of the state to harmonize the Romanians and the ethnic minorities, as well as life in the cities and the countryside. This failure led to the collapse of the democratic and parliamentary system in Romania.The next article in the issue, written by Danial Cain of the Institute of South East European Studies in Bucharest, addresses Bulgaria, the country in the Balkans that seems to have lost the most after World War I, as none of the Bulgarian intentions, such as the reestablishment of the medieval kingdom and the fulfillment of their nationalist dream, took place. Cain focuses on the battle at Dobro Pole, where the Entente defeated the Bulgarian troops, an event that greatly damaged the national feeling and the goals of Bulgarian politics. After this dramatic defeat, Bulgaria became the first of the Central Powers to exit the Great War, and the terms of the peace agreement after World War I signed in Paris in 1919 were mortifying for this country. As a consequence of the territorial losses and the considerable economic damage inflicted, not to mention the moral catastrophe, which led to general trauma for the entire society, Bulgaria had to deal with a very complex political situation in the interwar period.The article that concludes this issue of Qualestoria is written by the scholar Fabio Bego, and focuses on the political situation in Albania in the aftermath of the Great War. Despite being declared independent in 1912, Albania faced significant difficulties in exercising state power and functioning as a sovereign state. This resulted in continuous and significant threats from its neighboring countries, especially Italy and Yugoslavia, aiming at the annexation of Albanian territory. While analyzing the relation between state-building and violence, Bego maintains that violence influenced Albanians’ relation toward the national identity and the nation’s state-building purposes. The coercive means used by Albanians in the face of the political goals of Italy and Yugoslavia, which threatened the integrity of the Albanian territories, had their own consequences, both positive and negative. On the one hand, they consolidated national solidarity among Albanians and helped to legitimize their long-standing claims for self-determination, but on the other hand, they had destructive ethical and political implications, as they were purposely used by both internal and external parties to delegitimize Albanians’ very claims for self-determination. Eventually, this contributed to the creation of a very difficult situation for the Albanian state.All of the papers included in this issue of Qualestoria provide significant insight into the aftermath of the Great War in the East Adriatic countries and offer new and important historiographic perspectives that will greatly improve our understanding of the postwar period, especially in the Balkans. Such perspectives should help to shed light on wider aspects of the history of contemporary Europe.

Abstract This study aims to investigate how the cult of St. Olaf, the most famous Nordic saint, was instrumentalized after the Great Schism. We can observe a theological tendency of the papacy to centralize and standardize the Latin rite in Scandinavia by eliminating all Orthodox influences within the Scandinavian churches. This measure would ensure the Catholicization of the cult of St. Olaf by passing over in silence any Eastern ecclesiastical connection. In what follows, we will see that as St. Olaf was increasingly assimilated by the Latin church, the Byzantines in Constantinople reduced his spiritual power within the imperial political ideology.

Sabrina P. Ramet, in her preface to this invaluable, multiauthored volume, poses the question, “[W]hy present yet another book about interwar East Central Europe,” when “there have been at least five books published that deal with the politics of this region during the years 1918–1939/1941” since 1945? Her answer is persuasive. Notwithstanding the fact that the volume that has been considered “standard” [Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (University of Washington, 1974)] appeared 46 years ago, and that the most recent of what may be considered the competing studies [Ivan Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (University of California, 1998)] was published two decades ago, the subject is timely. She points out that there is a striking similarity between the problems and challenges that East Central Europe confronted in the interwar period and those facing Europe today. Among them are the erosion of democratic accountability, the growing presence of extreme right ideologies, and the failure to ensure respect for ethnic and religious minorities. We may also add that it is equally important to remind ourselves that as a consequence of the collapse of the Paris Settlement of 1919, Europe tore itself apart in World War II, and thus forced two non-European powers to decide its fate.The challenges faced by the successor states to the Settlement, as well as the manner in which they addressed them, provide the focus of the volume. The countries covered, and the respective authors in this volume, are the Polish Second Republic (M. Biskupski)), Czechoslovakia (Sabrina Ramet and Carol Skalnic Leff), Hungary (Béla Bodó), Romania (Roland Clark), Bulgaria (Christian Promitzer), Yugoslavia (Stipica Grgic), and Albania (Bernd J. Fischer). These case studies are complemented by an analysis of “The Peasantries and Peasant Parties of Interwar East Central Europe” (Robert Bideleux). A perceptive analytical afterword by Stefano Bianchini caps off this rewarding study.The main themes addressed give the book its unity. They are the collapse of parliamentary systems, right radicalism, the economics of peasant agriculture, the impact of the Great Depression on a transitional economy, the failure to respect the minority treaties of the League of Nations that were designed to protect ethnic groups, the nature of the political class, anti-Semitism, the quest to defend the territorial integrity of the new or enlarged states of 1919–1920 in the face of revisionist claims by Nazi Germany and Hungary, and the threat posed by a Bolshevik Russia to a number of the nation-states. Consideration of these issues leads the reader to assess the relative significance of internal structural state weaknesses and pressure from external forces, which, taken together, created problems of harmonization and consolidation that leaders in several of the countries covered had little time or inclination to address. This stimulating study demonstrates that the failure to solve them blighted progress toward modernization and the exercise of genuine democratic rule in the period covered.

Abstract Since the end of the Yugoslav wars of the nineties, Serbia seems to have fallen out of the spotlight in scholarly research. Attempting to counter this, in this article, we tackle the media suppression by the 1998-99 Ministry of Information led by Aleksandar Vučić, nowadays serving as Serbia's President. Repositioning the spotlight from Slobodan Milošević to Aleksandar Vučić, we confront the numerous attempts of media suppression and censorship in the late nineties.

Abstract During the Soviet and post-Soviet period, countries of Central and Eastern Europe experienced difficult social transformation processes. At the same time, these states remained marginal in European integration projects. In this context, the European integration vision of Pope John Paul II became relevant. He emphasized the important role of Central and Eastern part of Europe, its identity, spiritual and cultural heritage in the context of the European unity concepts. St. Cyril and Methodius became the special symbols and the personification of identity of Central and Eastern Europe in Pope's vision. On the basis of analysis of researches, works and speeches the connection between the figures of St. Cyril and Methodius and the European vision of John Paul II is analysed. Particular attention is paid to his interpretation of actuality of St. Cyril and Methodius heritage for modern Europe in three important aspects: European integration, ecumenism, spiritual and cultural European identity.

Abstract As a note, the following paper tries only to signal possible etymological connections for Romanian raţă - Albanian rosë, as inspired by an article of Joshua T. Katz.

Abstract In this paper, I examine the twelfth century Byzantine satire Timarion. I seek to analyse the background of the work, through a focus on the plot and characters, the classical sources that influenced the Byzantine author and the issues of date and authorship which should be seen in relation to the targets of his attack. While there is no certainty about the identity of the author, the Timarion was written, probably, by a learned author who had knowledge of classical authors and medical theories of his era. This is obvious in the way he embodies these traditions in his satire. Similarly to satires of the classical period, the Timarion's attack is directed at several directions.