1 Benedict Anderson, “Staging Anti-modernism in the Age of High Capitalist Nationalism,” in Linda Jessup, ed., Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2001), p. 98.

2 For some of the most paradigmatic approaches see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995); Emilio Gentile, The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003); David D. Roberts, The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics (New York: Routledge, 2005); Antoine Compagnon, Les Antimodernes: de Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes (Paris: Gallimard, 2005).

3 Compagnon, Les Antimodernes, pp. 22–28.

4 Compagnon, Les Antimodernes, p. 8.

5 On p. 9 of his book, Compagnon has aptly noted that, before post-modernism, “la tentation antimoderne oscillait […] déjà entre le prémodernisme et l’ultramodernisme […]”; this observation applies to France, but could be used transnationally. Cf. Habermas’view of post-modernity as a particularly sophisticated form of anti-modernity, and more recently Hayden White’s assessment of American postmodernism.

6 See in this context Shane Weller, Modernism and Nihilism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

7 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 54–55, with comments extending to p. 58.

8 Roger Griffin, “Tunnel Visions and Mysterious Trees: Modernist Projects of National and Racial Regeneration, 1880–1939,” in Marius Turda and Paul Weindling, eds., Blood and Homeland (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007), pp. 417–456; and Griffin, Modernism and Fascism.

9 Commentators who deplore Cioran’s characterization of the Hungarians or of the Roma do not seem to have read his treatment of the Romanians. Cioran’s apophatic nationalism is too sophisticated to be examined here; in any case, he has produced the most virulent form of Romanian self-hate, a unique chapter in the transnational history of ethnic stigma. See Sorin Antohi, “Cioran şi stigmatul românesc. Mecanisme identitare şi definiţii radicale ale etnicităţii,” in Civitas imaginalis. Istorie şi utopie în cultura română (Bucharest: Litera, 1994, pp. 208–285; second, revised edition, Iaşi: Polirom, 1999, pp. 235–324; French version by Claude Karnoouh and Mona Antohi, Imaginaire culturel et realite politique dans la Roumanie moderne. Le stigmate et l’utopie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999, pp. 177–265).

10 Quoted by Renzo De Felice, Autobiografia del fascismo. Antologia di testi fascisti 1919–1945 (Turin: Einaudi, 2004), p. 15.

11 See Henri Lefebvre, Introduction à la modernité (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1962; translated into English by John Moore as Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes, September 1959–May 1961, London and New York: Verso, 1995); note the terminological inversion, by which “modernism” becomes what is usually understood as “modernity.”

12 See Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987).

13 Maria Todorova, “Modernism,” in Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945: Texts and Commentaries, vol. III/1, Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States, ed. by Ahmet Ersoy, Maciej Górny, and Vangelis Kechriotis (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), pp. 4–22.

14 Todorova, “Modernism,” p. 6.

15 Virgil Nemoianu, A Theory of the Secondary: Literature, Progress, and Reaction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

16 For a synthesis of the Spanish case, see Santos Juliá, Historias de las dos Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004), and Javier Fernández Sebástian, “Debating the Concept of Modernity in Twentieth-Century Spain,” unpublished paper based on the author’s work in Spanish, including his entry on “Modernidad,” in Javier Fernández Sebastián and Juan Francisco Fuentes, eds., Diccionario político y social del siglo XX español (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008), pp. 775–791. See also the entry on “Regeneración,” by Rafael Núñez Florencio, ibid., p. 1041.

17 See Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism. The Case of Poland (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); and Poland Between East and West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1994).

18 Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999); Świat zwyrodniały. Lęki i wyroki krytyków nowoczesności (Warsaw: Sic!, 2000).

19 Robert B. Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1994).

20 Miloš Havelka, Dějiny a smysl. Obsahy, akcenty a posuny “české otázky” 1895–1989 (Prague: Lidové noviny, 2001).

21 Miklós Lackó, Válságok—választások (Budapest: Gondolat, 1975); Korszellem és tudomány, 1910–1945 (Budapest: Gondolat, 1988); and Sziget és külvilág (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1996).

22 Ivan Elenkov, Родно и дясно. Принос към историята на несбъднатия десен проект в България от времето между двете световни войни (Sofia: Лик, 1998).

23 Roumen Daskalov, Между изтока и запада. Български културни дилеми (Sofia: Лик, 1998); and “Populists and Westerners in Bulgarian History and Present,” in Central European History Department Yearbook (Budapest: CEU, 2002), pp. 113–142.

24 For the Romanian contribution, both theoretical and analytical, see Adrian Marino, especially Modern, modernism, modernitate (Bucharest: Editura pentru Literatură, 1969); Sorin Alexandrescu, especially Paradoxul român (Bucharest: Univers, 1998), Privind înapoi, modernitatea (Bucharest: Univers, 1999) and, most recently and closer to Comagnon’s, Griffin’s, and our approach, “Interwar Romanian Pluralism: How Could We Approach It?,” Images, Imagini, images. Journal of Visual and Cultural Studies, 2011. Besides other books and articles, Matei Călinescu has offered a synthesis from a perspective that comes close to our approach in his essay “Reacţii culturale împotriva modernităţii şi modernizării în România, 1900–1940,” serialized by the Cluj-Napoca-based journal Apostrof in 2004. Of Virgil Nemoianu’s many relevant books, see Imperfection and Defeat: The Role of Aesthetic Imagination in Human Society (Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2006), and Postmodernism & Cultural Identities: Conflict and Coexistence, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Of Zigu Ornea’s many works, see Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea (Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1980); and Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească (Bucharest: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, 1995; translated by E.M. Popescu as The Romanian Extreme Right: The 1930s, Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1999).

25 Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds., National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995).

26 On the ideological framework of Serbian radicalism see Alex N. Dragnich, “Populism in Serbia,” in Joseph Held, ed., Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, 1996), pp. 219–244.

27 Carl Schorske, “Politics in a new key,” in Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 116–180.

28 On the transformation of nationalism in Western European contexts see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, c1961); Michel Winock, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and Fascism in France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change After Bismarck (Ann Arbor, 1980); Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890-1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

29 See Roger Griffin, “The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of Totalitarian Regimes in Inter-War Europe,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3, 3 (2002), 24–43.

30 See Geoffrey G. Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (New York, 1981).

31 See Michael Sutton, Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics, 1890–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 46–76.

32 On Iorga's political thought see William O. Oldson, The Historical and Nationalistic Thought of Nicolae Iorga (Boulder [Colo.]: East European Quarterly, 1973).

33 On the interplay of Catholicism and Nationalism in the Polish context see Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

34 On the intellectual context of Popovici see Marius Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880–1918 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), pp. 37–66.

35 On the Slovak nationalist movement in the interwar period see James R. Felak, “At the Price of the Republic”: Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929–1938 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

36 On Eliade’s political and philosophical ideas before 1945 see MacLinscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade: The Romanian roots, 1907–1945 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988); Florin Ţurcanu, Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire (Paris: La Découverte, 2003).

37 For an overview of discourses on national character in the regions see Banac and Verdery, National Character. For a comparison of Romanian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian national characterologies in the interwar period, see Balázs Trencsényi, The Politics of National Character (London: Routledge, 2011). For the concept of ethnic ontology and its application to Romania, see Sorin Antohi, “Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism to Ethnic Ontology,” Tr@nsit online, 21, 2002.

38 On the broader context of Czech political Catholicism see Miloš Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People's Party, 1918–1939 (New York: Social Science Monographs, 1995).

39 On the Yugoslavist national discourse see Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 67–127.

40 See especially Louis Dupeux, ed., La révolution conservatrice allemande sous la République du Weimar (Paris: Kimé, 1992); Stefan Breuer, Anatomie der konservativen Revolution (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche. Buchgesellschaft, 1993); Rolf Peter Sieferle, Die konservative Revolution: fünf biographische Skizzen (Paul Lensch, Werner Sombart, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Hans Freyer) (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1995); Roger Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (London: Macmillan, 1996); Martin Travers, Critics of Modernity: The Literature of the Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1890–1933 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

41 A general introduction to the period is Ivan T. Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). For an overview of the breakthrough of authoritarianism in Southeast Europe see John R. Lampe “Illiberal directions,” in Balkans into Southeastern Europe (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 105–140.

42 On the ideological profile of Cioran in the 1930s, sympathizing both with Hitlerism and Stalinism, see Marta Petreu, An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).

43 On the Metaxas regime see Jon V. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: The Metaxas Regime (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1983).

44 To facilitate this, in addition to the usual “files” with biographies, contextualizations and excerpts, we have also included at the end of this volume a glossary of key terms occurring in all volumes of the series, as well as a selected bibliography of fundamental studies pertaining to various aspects of identity discourses in East Central and Southeast Europe.