From: pgiltner@epas.utoronto.ca (Philip W. Giltner Jr.)
Subject: Re: I didn't know...
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 02:23:27 GMT

In article <9208102207.AA24129@epas.utoronto.ca> kruchio@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA (Agnes Kruchio) writes:
>>
>> In article <9208080126.AA21094@epas.utoronto.ca> kruchio@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA
>> (Agnes Kruchio) writes:
>> [ A LOT of stuff cut out]
>> >>
>> >>  Respectfully, H.K.
>> >>
>> >
>> >I agree that basic facts should be kept straight. Therefore, if Henry
>> >would check, he would see the "Bela Kun's Republic" was 1919-1920
>> >and that Kun was long gone from the scene by the time WW2 rolled
>> >around. As for his trying to make all of Slovakia part
>> >of Hungary, that is news to me and I think would be to many
>> >historians. I will check, however, and get back to you if I discover
>> >otherwise. It certainly would not have been post-WW2, though...Just
>> >part of the many "myths", I suppose....
>>
>> Rather than a myth, I suspect a mistake; everyone (at least on _this_
>> list) knows Kun was long gone by the 30's. What I think he means was
>> the Horthy regime, which was under pressure from the radical right for
>> most ot the decade to overcome the 'infamy' of Trianon....[...]
>
>This sounds very much like the line propagated by the Communists
>post-WWII, the master creators and propagators of myths of all sorts. I
>would like to ask the writer of this post if he could allow himself to '
>think through it all without ideological biases and without the
>prism of old myths. He might then see that a whole lot less head-
>and heartache, not to mention bloodshed, would have occurred
>in Europe had the 1919-20 Paris peace treaties not been as
>punitive as they in fact turned out to be. To blame opposition
>to them on the extreme right - or extreme left as the previous post
>implied - simply ignores the issue of a peace treaty that was
>momentarily convenient to the western powers and to *some* of the local
>peoples at the time, but which created new injustices and simply set
>the stage for future wars and invasions. (The work of such "right
>wing" thinker as John Maynard Keynes was just one of a whole school
>linking the origins of WWII to the harshness of the punitive treaties.)
>We now see some of the Paris peace treaties' other legacies  - the
>results of its profound lack of historical wisdom, never mind justice
>for this or that country - in the explosions in (x)Yugo, and now in
>the forces and events surrounding the possible imminent dissolution of
>Czechoslovakia. I hope and pray that we don't see any more. Propagating
>old myths, though, is really not productive.
>
>AK


1) I botched the thing abt the Horthy/Kun mix-up. Sorry abt that. Just
shooting off before I saw the follow-ups that H. Kucera posted.

2) I'm not at all certain what the next bit is about. However, just
for the record, I'd like to note that there's a long list of
historians who see the Paris Peace treaty as not harsh at all. Let's
pretend I didn't say that.

Beyond this, I really cannot understand what the rest is abt. All
treaties contain injustices. That's why they come AFTER wars; no one
would agree to such injustices beforehand.

Best wishes to all
Philip
pgiltner@epasu.utoronto.ca
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