von Bismarck's anti-Catholic crusade known as the Kulturkampf (1872-1878), which drove the Religious Order of the Holy Ghost out of Germany, and brought them to a hill in the middle of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where in 1878 they founded an institution of higher learning, known today as Duquesne University. One of the primary functions of the Conference on Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe was to bring to light the state of new research on the various episodes of ethnic cleansing in modern Europe. In doing this, the organizers and contributors hoped to explore the historical and legal aspects of ethnic cleansing and to look comparatively at the experiences of populations expelled and the process of ethnic cleansing itself. Many commonalities emerged in the process of putting the conference together, and from these we developed a number of themes which seemed to be uppermost in the minds of those participating. We stated these before the conference as follows: 1. Definition. What is ethnic cleansing? Should all cases of population transfer be conceptualized as the same phenomenon? Has "ethnic cleansing" been diluted in terms of meaning? Should we adopt another terminology in dealing with the varieties of forced transfers of populations? 2. Origins. Ethnic cleansing has existed in some form from antiquity, but it has never been practiced with more variety or intensity than in the twentieth century. Where do we look for the origins and roots of this outburst? Nationalism? State building? Popular movements? Economic conditions? 3. Consequences. Clearly, many twentieth-century politi– cal leaders have opted to engage in forced population transfers and related behaviors. Misery to those trans– ferred has been one result, and that should not in any way be minimized. We should also ask, however: "What have been the long-term results?" 4. Processes. Looking at many cases of ethnic cleansing, how do the processes, carried out over the century and in many different regions, compare? Can we see a con– tinuity? Or do the cases of ethnic cleansing tend to exhibit highly specific, or particular, characteristics centered around local conditions and history? Yet in a sense, our conference was an attempt to assess a particular historiography—the analysis of ethnic cleansing—at a relatively We tried to define our topic in such a way as to make it clear that the Holocaust would be a crucial and constant background consideration. early stage of development, while the scholarship on the Holocaust is not only enormously larger, but also more mature in a historiographical sense.12 As one can see in the following book, many conference participants drew on the historiography of the Holocaust for both analytical and comparative purposes, even as they focused on historical episodes that have been studied much less. Indeed, some of the episodes addressed in the following articles are hardly known at all in the English-speaking world, except among small groups of descendants of the "cleansed" people and a few scholars. Although the contributors to this book therefore approach some of these cases for almost the first time in a scholarly way, we should make it clear that the long list of topics is in no way meant to be absolutely comprehensive. Numerous cases of ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe are not represented here. Their absence, it must be said, is not due to any desire of the organizers of the conference and the editors of the book to exclude or suppress one case or another of the abhorrent practice of ethnic cleansing. Our treatment is limited in this sense by the practical reason that we were restricted to those scholars who
answered the various calls for papers in the usual scholarly sources.
In the end, participants included individuals from seven countries in two continents. Most were
historians, but many were political scientists, literary scholars, sociologists, and legal scholars. Presenters
ranged from those still engaged in graduate study to scholars who have published many books in the field of
European history, law, and politics. Among the presenters were four survivors of ethnic cleansing whom we
asked to write explicitly about their own experiences.
The articles investigate dozens of cases of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. A number of
contributors deal with ethnic cleansing in the period of World War I, in particular those episodes arising from
the clash between Greece and Turkey at the end of the war. The period of World War II gave full play to the
deadly policies of Stalinist Russia in the East and Hitler's Third Reich, as well as many cases which clearly
spun off of these policies of ferocious ethnic cleansing. Hence, contributors deal with ethnic cleansing of
Poles by Ukrainians, Romanians by Russians, Germans by Titoist Yugoslavia, and others.
The vast case of the ethnic cleansing of Germans, the "Expulsion," forms an important part of the book.
Fifteen contributors deal with the expulsions of Germans from East Central Europe from one standpoint or
another. This extensive share seems in no way out of place, since the expulsion of sixteen million ethnic
Germans from half a dozen European countries, at a loss of over two million lives, constitutes an episode
which surely merits attention but which has been neglected by all but a handful of historians.13 The
contemporaneous ethnic cleansing of Hungarian populations, mentioned above, will be a familiar topic to
even fewer readers.
In dealing with the history of post-Cold War ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, contributors pay much
attention to processes and patterns, but they also do much to explore concepts and definitions. Multiple
approaches to the complexities of the Balkans and the violence which has marked the dissolution of
Yugoslavia prove most useful in conceptualizing as well as recounting ethnic cleansing in the region that
seems to have named it.
The studies of ethnic cleansing which follow represent an earnest attempt to make sense of a terrible aspect
of the twentieth century, a century whose reputation for barbarity, when viewed in total, goes beyond even
the pessimistic vision of Ortega y Gasset. Recording the erosion of indvidual autonomy and dignity, the
frequent lapse of the rule of law, and the blatant disregard of the ideals of justice long considered to be at the
heart of the European tradition does not tell the whole story. That story must also include the rise of a new
set of barbarous practices and behaviors that ignored the pleas of individuals for a homeland, rejected the
rights of individuals to their own property and the fruits of their labor, and in many cases denied the right of
the targeted peoples to live.