Minorities from East-Central Europe in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective
Minorities from East-Central Europe in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective

Summary/Abstract: Before the twentieth century, the existence of countless ethnic minorities was nothing new to East-Central Europe. The German Empire, Austro-Hungary, the Tsarist Empire and the Ottoman Empire controlled this part of Europe, even though Romania, Montenegro and Serbia had received international recognition as independent states since 1878, Bulgaria had declared its full sovereignty from the Ottoman Empire in 1908 and Albania had gotten independence just before the outbreak of the First World War. During the first half of the twentieth century there were countless minorities in East-Central Europe, but in the late twentieth century, the states of East-Central Europe looked entirely different in terms of ethnicity compared to the picture from before the Second World War. The disappearance of Jews and Germans, the exchanges of populations which took place at the end of the Second World War, and the volunteer and forced emigrations all played their part.

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