East European History Quiz

[Apollo]

"2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s.
2. This country's majority ethnic group is derived from the ancient Illyrians, and has a population that's 70% Moslem and 30% Christian. "

Illyrians? Well then Albania.

"4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.
4. This was Kant's native country, and of course he spoke his native language here... "

Well I thought Kant was German, but Eastern Europe, how about Slovakia?

"12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.
12. One of the two ethnic groups in this country are "Kurs", sometimes spelled in English "Cours". The medieval state-let of Livonia is here. "

Latvia

"15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.
15. Lotsa mountains in this country. Also takes you about an hour to hitch-hike across (I can tell you from personal experience)."

Laibach=Ljubjana? Slovenia

""16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression. "

Yugoslavia

1/2 point here. I'm thinking of a more specific current country.

16. This country spent most of its pre-20th century history (though not all....) as an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Hungary, with its own diet, ruler "Ban"), etc."

Croatia (but could it really be called a separate country in 1970? )

"19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.
19. One word: Oil."

Oil means Romania.

 

[Vrylakas]

Apollo wrote:

"2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s.
2. This country's majority ethnic group is derived from the ancient Illyrians, and has a population that's 70% Moslem and 30% Christian. "

Illyrians? Well then Albania.

Yes! The communist butcher Enver Hoxha had the first modern roads built in Albania - a great step forward, if he didn't have to kill so many people in the process.

"4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.
4. This was Kant's native country, and of course he spoke his native language here... "

Well I thought Kant was German, but Eastern Europe, how about Slovakia?

Don't let modern prejudices get in your way. You're half right... (Hint: Kant was indeed not Slovak...)

"12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.
12. One of the two ethnic groups in this country are "Kurs", sometimes spelled in English "Cours". The medieval state-let of Livonia is here. "

Latvia

Yes!

"15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.
15. Lotsa mountains in this country. Also takes you about an hour to hitch-hike across (I can tell you from personal experience)."

Laibach=Ljubjana? Slovenia

Yes! Beautiful city too.

""16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression. "

Yugoslavia

1/2 point here. I'm thinking of a more specific current country.

16. This country spent most of its pre-20th century history (though not all....) as an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Hungary, with its own diet, ruler "Ban"), etc."

Croatia (but could it really be called a separate country in 1970? )

Yes! It wasn't a separate country in the 70s, but certainly would become one, fulfilling the nationalists' dreams....

"19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.
19. One word: Oil."

Oil means Romania

Yes! Romanian is somewhat Slavified (the words for "Yes" and "No" are "Da" and "Nu") but it is clearly a Latin-originated language, related to Spanish, French and Portuguese. To me Romanian sounds like someone speaking Italian with a Slavic accent. Like many languages in the Orthodox Balkans, it was written in Cyrillic (inspired by the old Church Slavonic, not modern Slavic languages) but Romanian nationalists in the 19th century switched to the Latin alphabet and tried to purge out the Slavic words. Example: "Revolutia populara a invins! Acum e nevoie de ratiune, calm si vigilenta in apararea libertati si valorilor nationale!" ("The popular revolution has triumphed! Now we need reason, calm and vigilence in defending national freedom and values!") You can guess where I got this from...

Great job Apollo!

Folks, we have only have one last question to wrap up - #4, and Apollo is so close....

 

[Julien]

Here are the one I know. I added a few comments to some of the answer when I thought the question wasn't posed well or just a few comments of mine.

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.

There isn't any that has half the population of Eastern Europe. Poland is the only country nearing the 40 millions. But the other account as follow : Romania (22millions), Czech Rep(10m), Hungary (10m), Serbia/Montenegro (10m), Bulgaria (8m), Slovakia (5,5m), Croatia (4m), Albania (3,5m), Slovenia (2m), Macedonia (2m) = about 77millions inhabitants. That's not quite half ! Even without ex-Yougoslavia.

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.

Greece.

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

Russia (but it's not its capital of course). Immanuel Kant lived in Koenigsberg, then Germany, but what is now Kaliningrad (Russia).

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)

Austro-hungarian empire. Kafka ?

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

Montenegro, but the name is not Italian, it's a derivation from Latin. The Italian would be Monte Nero. Spanish is allright, but it doesn't come from there.

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

Estonia. The language is related to Suomi and Magyar (as well as Turkish, Mongol and even a little bit Korean, which form the Ural-Altaic language group), which are not Indo-European languages. But Estonia is one of the 3 Baltic States with Latvia and Lithuania.

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

Bosnia-Herzegovina ? Yougoslavia ? When was this country created ?

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

Central Europe as well, uhh ? Switzerland !

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

Romanian (the answer is in the name : Roma - nian)

 

[Sodak]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
4. This was Kant's native country, and of course he spoke his native language here...

Prussia?

 

[Vrylakas]

Sodak wrote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Vrylakas
4. This was Kant's native country, and of course he spoke his native language here...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Prussia?

That's a wrap folks. Good job Sodak! Apollo came so close, but he couldn't quite get the modern definition of Germany as a Western country out of his mind. Prussia was right smack in the middle of Eastern Europe, and its social development mirrored the societies around it; the Prussian Junkers were organized very similarly to the old Polish Szlachta (though the Junkers weren't nearly as powerful), and it would be a hard-pressed ethnographer in 1900 who could tell the difference between a Lithuanian peasant household and a Prussian. Brandenburg was a vibrant, teeming and dynamic "Land" that became the core nucleus of the uniting Germany, but Prussia was a feudal backwater with a mass of peasantry only recently released from serfdom and a still-entrenched aristocracy. Bismarck is said to have complained once in the 1880s about independent Polish schools in the Prussian parts of occupied Poland being of better quality than the local Prussian schools.

In my question I said that Prussia gets a bad rap, and that's true - wasn't it Metternicht who once said "Most countries have an army, but Prussia is an army that has a country." The Prussians were really a mix of feudal elitism and European militarism - but European militarism, one that Prussia borrowed mostly from Napoleonic France. The Prussian Junkers of 1914-1918 were eager to defeat the Russian "steamroller" and its insolent friend, France, but the rise of German nationalism throughout the war was as much a threat to the Junkers as it was to Germany's neighbors and they resisted. They tried to hijack the Weimar Republic but found themselves outwitted by an Austrian corporal and his band of wackos, and they found themselves dragged into yet another war. There is ample evidence of their ineffectual but determined resistance to the war from Day 1, and indeed it was largely the Junkers who organized the attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944. Prussia's death in 1946-47 was not deserved, and I say this as a descendent of a family that suffered much because of the war Germany wrought.

Prussia played an important role in Eastern Europe and participated not as a Western outsider but as an eastern insider, indistinguishable from her neighbors socially and politically. She had her years of glory but also knew defeat and occupation. Like all of Eastern Europe but especially the Baltic states, her port cities were cosmopolitan centers with very mixed populations who fed and in some ways controlled the most powerful medieval European trade routes. Modern Polish and German nationalists argue whether Danzig/Gdansk was more Polish or German - it was both and more - but they are mis-understanding the point that Danzig/Gdansk was always a very international port dependent on Polish grain, Bohemian timber, Lithuanian amber and Ruthenian salted pork, no matter who ruled it.

Good job again Sodak!

 

[Vrylakas]

Julien wrote:

Re: East European History Quiz
Here are the one I know. I added a few comments to some of the answer when I thought the question wasn't posed well or just a few comments of mine.

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.

There isn't any that has half the population of Eastern Europe. Poland is the only country nearing the 40 millions. But the other account as follow : Romania (22millions), Czech Rep(10m), Hungary (10m), Serbia/Montenegro (10m), Bulgaria (8m), Slovakia (5,5m), Croatia (4m), Albania (3,5m), Slovenia (2m), Macedonia (2m) = about 77millions inhabitants. That's not quite half ! Even without ex-Yougoslavia.

Yes! You're right that I intended Poland. I'm sitting here stunned because the stat I quote above is something I'd heard from several professors in university without ever critically challenging it. The population numbers are even more diverse than those you mention above. I was fully aware of the general populations, but it never occurred to me to really add numbers up - laziness I guess. The true stat comes out at Poland having about one-third of the region's population; still formidible but not quite as dramatic. Thanks for the catch on that one Julien! I also could swear I've read this somewhere, but it doesn't really make sense.

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.

Greece.

Yes!

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

Russia (but it's not its capital of course). Immanuel Kant lived in Koenigsberg, then Germany, but what is now Kaliningrad (Russia).

Half point on this one; I didn't say the country still existed. Kant's hometown, Koenigsberg, was the Prussian capital (never the German). Kant would probably be horrified to see Kaliningrad today....

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)

Austro-hungarian empire. Kafka ?

Yes on both accounts!

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

Montenegro, but the name is not Italian, it's a derivation from Latin. The Italian would be Monte Nero. Spanish is allright, but it doesn't come from there.

Yes, the answer is Montenegro. I'd always been told however it was from Italian, though I don't speak any Italian. I'm curious why a Slavic state would inherit a Latin name; the locality? I have several sources on medieval Balkan history, and none mention any variation of a "Black Mountain" before modern times. The earliest Serb kingdoms in the area were called Zeta and Duklja (from the 11th century, after a dynasty) up until the final fall to the Turks in 1496. The Dalmatian coast was very much a part of the Roman sphere (Spalatto, etc.) so it is certainly feasible but this same coast also has a long association with the Italians through Venice - which is why I believed the Italian story. Perhaps the name is from a medieval bastardized variant of Italian? In all my sources, the name "Montenegro" just shows up to denote the Dalmatian Serbian tribal lands in the 19th century, revolting against the Ottomans in 1876 and being granted independence at Berlin in 1878.

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

Estonia. The language is related to Suomi and Magyar (as well as Turkish, Mongol and even a little bit Korean, which form the Ural-Altaic language group), which are not Indo-European languages. But Estonia is one of the 3 Baltic States with Latvia and Lithuania.

Yes! Exactly.

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

Bosnia-Herzegovina ? Yougoslavia ? When was this country created ?

Geographically close to your first answer, a part once of your second. When did it become independent? That's a tricky question, because its diplomatic recognition dragged out for nearly a decade. It declared its independence in 1992, but its southern neighbor objected for nationalistic reasons so for some time it was euphemistically refered to in international circles as "FYROM". Got it now?

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

Central Europe as well, uhh ? Switzerland!

D'oh! The problem here is a definition of "Central Europe". I know that some consider Switzerland and even parts of France to be in Central Europe, but the definition I'm used to dealing with puts the western boundary of Central Europe at Austria. My apologies; should have explained better. Switzerland was indeed a democracy, but what state east of Austria remained a fully-functional democracy in the 1930s?

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

Romanian (the answer is in the name : Roma - nian)

I am amazed no one else got this one (until I gave the "oil" hint later). I thought the "Roman" name would tip everybody off. Most of the surrounding peoples throughout medieval and early modern history refered to the Romanians as "Ulahy" or "Vlachy", Slavic-derived names that eventually meant all Latins. (Modern Poles still call Italy "Wlochy", from this old Slavic term.) The name of the Romanian region Wallachia comes from this name, and indeed a minority of Latin language-speaking people exist still in northwestern Greece who call themselves "Vlachs", so the "Romanian" name is relatively new. 19th century Romanian nationalists wanted to emphasize their "Roman-ness", so they became Romanians. Good job on this one Julien!

 

[Vrylakas]

*Sniff*

OK, so interest dropped off a bit here... I'll try to kick up some dust with hints for the remaining questions:

3b. Jan Masaryk, the non-communist prime minister of 1945-48 Czechoslovakia, had some visitors just before his "walk"...

8. János Kádár and 1956 - or after 1956.

11. It's connected to the Polish word waluta, which has the about the same meani9ng throughout Central and Eastern Europe (valuta).

12. They didn't work very well for Ceaucescu in December 1989.

13. How do you think Ceaucescu paid for that massive palace in Bucharest?

14. Don't pay attention to the dates themselves; it's the concept.

16. This communist country was the "Puritan" of all the communist countries, and even broke relations with the Soviet Union itself in 1961 because of the post-Stalinist reforms, briefly allying itself with Mao's China before breaking with them too.

17. Man did the readership drop off...

18. This country had openly defied and condemned Soviet political intervention in Eastern Europe (the Brezhnev Doctrine), and even booted Soviet "advisors" out of the country. Some in the West thought this country was going to leave the Warsaw Pact and saw the leader as a liberal reformer - but he remained ultimately loyal to Moscow and turned out to be one of the most notorious of dictators in modern Europe.

20. Toughee. It started in about as unusual a way as you could imagine, if you understand that Hungarians and Romanians do not get along at all.

21. Another toughee, but important. Vague hint: Verdun, Omaha Beach, the Somme, Malmedy, Arlington.

That help any?

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Somehow, the hints don't relate to the questions ....

E.g. I thought I answered for 21 as Hungary but yet you still give a hint about some battlefields and military burial fields.

I think maybe you shld just give us the answers. Probably, too hard the remaining, if any.

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

19. Cryllic aphabet with Romance language (derived from latin, related to franch & Itlalian) is obviously Romanian, the current major language most like ancient latin.

 

[Nahuixtelotzin]

I don't get your hints. Are you sure you're commenting your own questions?
Anyway, here are my answers to some yet unanswered questions:


8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.

Dutchy Moldova? Or does your hint want to lead me to Walachia?

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.

Slovaquia

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

Macedonia?


14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

Turkey?

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.

Czechoslovaquia?

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

Bosnia

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

Czechoslovaquia

 

[Vrylakas]

This is bizarre.... I don't know why this posted here. I intended my hints for the "Cold War in Eastern Europe" Quiz that has been lingering recently, and I know I had that one open when I wrote these hints this morning because I constantly refered down to my original post to get the question #s (without opening a separate window)....Strange....

I'll repost this to the proper quiz. Very odd. We had already wrapped up this quiz.

Nahuixtelotzin:

Regardless, you got all your answers right except # 16. That was Croatia. ("Matica Hrvatska" = "Motherland Croatia".)

 

[Nahuixtelotzin]

I could have guessed #16 if I had taken myself the time to READ the name

 

[basher]

Some I know, the rest I have to guess.

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.
- This has to be Poland, since it's the only possible one.

2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s
- This could be Belorussia OR Albania.

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.
- Bulgaria.

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.
- Prussia.

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)
- Austria-Hungary.

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.
- Finland!

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)
- Montenegro.

8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.
- Moldova.

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.
- Estonia.

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.
- Poland? But They couldn't protect their Jewish citizens well. They were simultaneously in war with the Germans and Soviets though. It could be Finland too, but that wasn't SIMULTANEOUSLY. The Russians requested Finland to drive the Germans out of Lapland which resulted in a war that is called the "Lapland war" in Finland.

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.
- Slovakia? Hmm.

12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.
- I really don't know. Could be my home country once again. Or Latvia or Lithuania, or...

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)
- Serbia.

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.
- Turkey? It wasn't Sweden or Switzerland, so it must be Turkey.

15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.
- Lithuania?

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.
- Croatia.

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...
- Russia?

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.
- Finland, once again?

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.
- Rumanian.

20. This country was, along with Czechoslovakia, one of the earliest victims of Nazi Germany when Hitler demanded the port of Klaipeda.
- Lithuania.

21. Facing the inevitable Soviet invasion in 1944, this country successfully secretly smuggled its 1000-year old crown jewels out of the country to the American forces then in western Austria, and its national treasuries resided at Fort Knox in the U.S. until a thaw in relations prompted U.S. President Jimmy Carter to give them back in 1978.
- Hungary.

 

[basher]

I know this subject doesn't exactly belong here but since you mentioned Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian I thought some misunderstandings should be corrected.

This text was taken from http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fufaq.html

- - -
Are the Finno-Ugrian languages related to other language families? What about Finnish and Turkish?
Most Finno-Ugrists would answer: we don't know, at least nothing has been proved yet. Some linguists have proposed a relationship between the Finno-Ugrian and Indo-European language families, but it seems more probable that the Indo-Europeans are simply our old neighbours: the FU languages have some really ancient IE loanwords.

Some other hypotheses have also been proposed (Uralo-Altaic, Uralo-Dravidian, Finno-Basque, Hungaro-Sumerian etc. etc.); as a rule, these are either based on antiquated ideas or created by (lay) people with no expertise on one (or both) of the language groups in question. The Ural-Altaic hypothesis still survives in some parts of the world as a common belief that "Finnish and Turkish are related". However, as pointed out earlier, the structural similarities between Finnish (or other Finno-Ugrian languages) and Turkish (or other Turkic or "Altaic" languages) are of a typological character: these languages belong to the same type. The basic vocabulary in these languages is quite different and does not allow for the reconstruction of a common proto-language. Besides, the existence of the "Altaic" language family (Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, perhaps also Korean) is also doubted by many scholars.

(Although not genetically related, Turkish does have some connections with the Finno-Ugrian languages. Some FU languages spoken in Central Russia and Western Siberia have been influenced by the neighbouring Turkic languages, and Hungarian has many layers of loanwords adopted from different Turkic-speaking tribes.)
- - -

Another link here (you can ask me for more)

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish-intro.html

 

[Jimcat]

I like to consider myself a bit of an Eastern European history buff, so I'll take a crack at this. I promise not to look at any of the previous answers. (-:

1. Poland
2. Albania
3. Greece
4. Serbia?
5. Austria-Hungary. Bonus: Franz Kafka. And don't forget Jaroslav Hasek's satire on its military.
6. No idea
7. Montenegro
8. Moldova
9. Estonia (closer to the Finns than the Slavs)
10. Hungary
11. Slovakia
12. No idea
13. Macedonia
14. Bulgaria?
15. Slovenia
16. Croatia?
17. Czech Republic
18. Czechoslovakia
19. Romania
20. Latvia
21. Bulgaria?

Hm, two Bulgarias. One of 'em must be wrong. Some of the others are wild guesses.

 

[Paiktis22]

Originally posted by Vrylakas


Yes! The population exchanges with Bulgaria and Turkey - made under military duress - uprooted Greeks from regions they'd inhabited for millennia, and radicalized Greece for the 20th century. I think they are still among the most nationalistic of the Balkan states. (I'm gonna get flamed for that one...)

Hmmmm

"13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)"

Macedonia.

Yes! Nobody recognized the Macedonian nationality in 1913; the Bulgarians and Serbs both claimed the Macedonian Slavs were a part of their ethnic group. The Greeks just wanted more real estate.

And also the protection of a quite significant Greek population that lived in Macedonia. The main fight was for Thessaloniki in Greek Macedonia which always was considered as the «capital» of the Balkans. IIRC nearly 50% of the population in Southern Macedonia was Greek. The fighters were called «Makedonomahoi» meaning «Macedonian Fighters». Some, very few, still live! But are very, very old. 90+ years old and they still parade the streets in national holidays. A sight to see. All their medals, marching proud despite their age. Very touching. (I bet someone is going to sound the nationalistic bell now )

In today's Balkans Thessaloniki is again living up to its name as it constitutes again the capital of most financial exchanges between Balkan states. It has a significant role as a strategic financial center. It is the second largest Greek city.

The language of the Slavs of FYR Macedonia is a bulgarian dialect.
But what tends to put Serbia but mostly Bulgaria and Greece somewhat on guard is the VRMO (spelling?) which is the nationalistic party that rules the Slavic Macedonia and wants more territory. (Greek and Bulgarian). The Albanians also want more territory (FYR macedonian and a bit of Greek too).

IMO the Balkans just need more money, less poverty, a de-radicalization of ethnic minorites as well as a concrete respect for said minorities. Just like Greece is doing. (sorry for being nationalistic ) and like Bulgaria is doing too I might add considering the 1 million muslims of turkish origin that inhabit its southern parts without any noticable problems.

 

[Vrylakas]

Whoa! So this one is still alive!

Basher wrote:

Some I know, the rest I have to guess.

Life is like that.

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.

- This has to be Poland, since it's the only possible one.

Yes - although as someone pointed out, this isn't strictly true. Poland does have the largest population in Eastern Europe outside of the former Soviet Union.

2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s

- This could be Belorussia OR Albania.

Albania - yes!

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.

- Bulgaria.

No. Although Bulgaria did also get caught up in some of that madness, though not nearly on the same scale. Greece was the right answer.

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

- Prussia.

Yes! I couldn't believe that this one stumped so many people.

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)

- Austria-Hungary.

Yes! Know the writer?

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

- Finland!

What? Are you out of your mind? "Hyvaa hymentaa"? Sorry Basher, but Finnish is not the correct answer for this one. Please don't be offended but I laughed for at least 10 minutes straight when I saw this one. In my university years in Hungary we had to study some Finno-Ugric linguistics, and it amazed even Hungarians.

Serbia has the most phonetic language in Europe; every sound has one letter, and each letter can only represent one sound.

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

- Montenegro.

Yes!

8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.

- Moldova.

Yes!

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

- Estonia.

Yes! You would of course know this one...

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

- Poland? But They couldn't protect their Jewish citizens well. They were simultaneously in war with the Germans and Soviets though.

No. Poland was indeed at war with both the Soviet Union and Germany simultaneously, but never with the Allies.

It could be Finland too, but that wasn't SIMULTANEOUSLY. The Russians requested Finland to drive the Germans out of Lapland which resulted in a war that is called the "Lapland war" in Finland.

No again. It was Bulgaria.

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.

- Slovakia? Hmm.

Yes!

12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.

- I really don't know. Could be my home country once again. Or Latvia or Lithuania, or...

You got it - Latvia.

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

- Serbia.

No - close though. Macedonia.

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

- Turkey? It wasn't Sweden or Switzerland, so it must be Turkey.

Yes! Turkey declared war in late April. Although there actually was a small chorus of opportunists, including Lebanon and I believe Argentina.

15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.

- Lithuania?

No. Laibach = modern Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.

- Croatia.

Yes!

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

- Russia?

No. Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

- Finland, once again?

No. I must confess that Finland doesn't enter into my mind as an East European country, though Helsinki is a couple hundred kilometers northeast of Warsaw. Aside from the civil war period after independence, you would be right hat Finland was indeed a democracy. However, I was thinking here of Czechoslovakia, a country that was a democracy from its conception in 1918 until its violent death in 1938-39 (then briefly again from 1945-48).

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

- Rumanian.

Yes! I thought the name "Romanian" would be a give-away, but only one other person got this one.

20. This country was, along with Czechoslovakia, one of the earliest victims of Nazi Germany when Hitler demanded the port of Klaipeda.

- Lithuania.

Yes!

21. Facing the inevitable Soviet invasion in 1944, this country successfully secretly smuggled its 1000-year old crown jewels out of the country to the American forces then in western Austria, and its national treasuries resided at Fort Knox in the U.S. until a thaw in relations prompted U.S. President Jimmy Carter to give them back in 1978.

- Hungary.

Yes!

Basher - you got more right in a single run than anyone else who's tried, I think - good shot!

 

[Vrylakas]

Basher wrote again: About the relatives of the Finnish language
I know this subject doesn't exactly belong here but since you mentioned Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian I thought some misunderstandings should be corrected.

This text was taken from http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fufaq.html

- - -
Are the Finno-Ugrian languages related to other language families? What about Finnish and Turkish?
Most Finno-Ugrists would answer: we don't know, at least nothing has been proved yet. Some linguists have proposed a relationship between the Finno-Ugrian and Indo-European language families, but it seems more probable that the Indo-Europeans are simply our old neighbours: the FU languages have some really ancient IE loanwords.

Some other hypotheses have also been proposed (Uralo-Altaic, Uralo-Dravidian, Finno-Basque, Hungaro-Sumerian etc. etc.); as a rule, these are either based on antiquated ideas or created by (lay) people with no expertise on one (or both) of the language groups in question. The Ural-Altaic hypothesis still survives in some parts of the world as a common belief that "Finnish and Turkish are related". However, as pointed out earlier, the structural similarities between Finnish (or other Finno-Ugrian languages) and Turkish (or other Turkic or "Altaic" languages) are of a typological character: these languages belong to the same type. The basic vocabulary in these languages is quite different and does not allow for the reconstruction of a common proto-language. Besides, the existence of the "Altaic" language family (Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, perhaps also Korean) is also doubted by many scholars.

(Although not genetically related, Turkish does have some connections with the Finno-Ugrian languages. Some FU languages spoken in Central Russia and Western Siberia have been influenced by the neighbouring Turkic languages, and Hungarian has many layers of loanwords adopted from different Turkic-speaking tribes.)
- - -

Another link here (you can ask me for more)

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish-intro.html

The Turkish debate lasted longer for Hungarians because of a large amount of lexical similarities with modern Turkish, but this was also due to the Hungarians having spent some centuries among the Turkic peoples (Khazars, Bulgars, "Onogur", etc.) in southern Russia. It still isn't completely dead; I saw a paper when I was last there claiming that the decision to link Hungarian to the Finno-Ugric languages (as opposed to the Ural-Altaic and hence Turkish) was a political one, attempting to distance Communist Hungary from NATO Turkey and towards neutral Finland and all those Soviet minority peoples. (Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, given the massive body of linguistic evidence...) There still is some controversy about the possible relationships between the Finno-Ugric and Ural-Altaic languages, but the grammatical similarities (like the lack of genderization, etc.) are too much to ignore. Yes, you're right about the Hungarians studying vociferously any and all of the Finno-Ugric languages (Ob-Ugrian, Ostyak, Vogul, etc.). In my office I have a poster of the famous 14th century chronicle of the "Hunor and Magyar" brothers that established the myth of the common Hungarian and Hunnic ancestors...

There's been some re-thinking on the Indo-European languages, wondering (after Colin Renfrew's work) whether the Indo-European languages aren't really a patchwork of local languages mingling through lingua-francas that came to be widely accepted through intense contact. Will we ever know?

Great input Basher! Are you making a career in linguistics/philology or is this just a hobby? Ertesz magyarul?

 

[Vrylakas]

JimCat wrote:

I like to consider myself a bit of an Eastern European history buff, so I'll take a crack at this. I promise not to look at any of the previous answers. (-:

Great! Why are you into Eastern Europe? You live in NJ, no? (I saw somewhere else you're refering to that ugly Columbus statue in Newark... I know it all too well...)

1. Poland

Yes!

2. Albania

Yes!

3. Greece

Yes!

4. Serbia?

No.

5. Austria-Hungary. Bonus: Franz Kafka. And don't forget Jaroslav Hasek's satire on its military.

Yes! Excellent bonus point too - plus double extra for mentioning "Good Soldier Svejk"!

6. No idea

7. Montenegro

Yes!

8. Moldova

Yes!

9. Estonia (closer to the Finns than the Slavs)

Yes! Not that there's anything wrong with being close to Slavs....

10. Hungary

No. Hungary remained true to the end with Germany; the answer was Bulgaria.

11. Slovakia

Yes!

12. No idea

13. Macedonia

Yes!

14. Bulgaria?

No. Turkey.

15. Slovenia

Yes!

16. Croatia?

Yes!

17. Czech Republic

No.

18. Czechoslovakia

Yes!

19. Romania

Yes!

20. Latvia

No. Lithuania. (Klaipeda = Memel.)

21. Bulgaria?

No, Hungary.

Hm, two Bulgarias. One of 'em must be wrong. Some of the others are wild guesses.

You did great though JimCat! Good shot!

 

[basher]

Hyvää huomenta!

Thanks for the right answers. I had no idea I scored so high! Well, I've always liked history. Linguistics are (this far) just a hobby of mine, but they sure are interesting... Unfortunately I don't speak Hungarian - you asked if I speak Hungarian, didn't you?