Title: Bizánctól Bizáncig
Description: A book on Russian, Soviet and Central-European History
Summary of Géza Gecse’s book: From Byzantium to Byzantium. The Russian Imperial Thought

The last time that it was possible to publish a historical work dealing with pan-Slavism, the first serious Russian foreign political doctrine about the reorganisation of Europe in accordance with Slav ideas, in Hungary was in 1941. From 1945 onwards it was not in any way advisable to concern oneself with the history of what was called “reactionary pan-Slavism”. The theoretecian of Communist cultural politics, József Révai, called it the sin of “invoking the reactionary spirit” if anyone employed this concept in connection with the Soviet Union. We should not be surprised, therefore, that in the last sixty years no new work on pan-Slavism, nor Russian foreign political thought has appeared in Hungary, although for almost ten years after 1941 this 19th century great-power doctrine was clearly manifested in the foreign policy of the Soviet state.
Two Hungarian writers living in exile, Viktor Padányi and Sándor Kostya, did write a book each about pan-Slavism, but since they relied mainly on Hungarian sources, there is little to be learned from them about the various versions of pan-Slavism.
After World War II it was chiefly in the English-speaking countries that research into the history of this doctrine was pursued.
The author has drawn mainly on these and Russian sources in researching the history of Russian foreign political thought, that had the strongest impact on the history of Central Europe. According to his analysis, Russia in the 1860s and 1870s saw the development of basically three versions of this intellectual trend proclaiming the expansion of the Russians in Europe. One of these was the ethnocentric, the state-centred, and the third was ideological. From the works of Ivan Aksakov, Mikhail Katkov, Aleksandr Stronin, Vladimir Lamanskii, Nikolai Danilevskii, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Rostislav Fadeev and Kostantin Leontiev the author quotes the parts where these writers refer to Central Europe, thus making available to the reader sources unknown to public opinion in this country for the last century and a half.
Géza Gecse describes how, against a background of ideological pan-Slavism, Eurasian imperialism developed in the 1890s, favouring the expansion of the Russians in Asia and diverging from the Europe–centredness of classical pan-Slavism.
In succeeding chapters of his book, relying chiefly on Anglo-Saxon, Soviet and Russian works, he demonstrates in essay form how after the 1905 revolution pan-Slavism managed to revive with the help of Russian liberals, how it suffered a temporary defeat at the end of World War I, and reawakened with renewed vigour after 1941, when the Soviet élite first exploited pan-Slavism as an official doctrine.
He shows that the settlement carried out after World War II was in accordance with classical, ethnocentric Russian pan-Slav ideas, and Moscow broke with these only when it became clear that Yugoslavia would not be willing to dance to the Russians’ tune.
The author has also undertaken to illustrate the latest phase of Russian foreign political thought leaving open the question of what role pan-Slavism, Eurasian imperialism and Soviet communism may play in the life of the Russian state, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Subjects: History, Panslavism, Foreign relations, Philosophy
Places: Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Habsburg Monarchy, East and Central Europe, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia
People: Katkov, Danilevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), Nicholas I Emperor of Russia (1796-1855), Alexander II, Benes, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1894-1971), Leonid Ilʹich Brezhnev (1906-1982), Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev (1931-), Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1931-2007), Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (1952-)
Time periods: 19th century, 20th century