“Nation and Order!”, Central Europe and the Balkans between the World Wars

 This new common work by the co-authors of the popular regional study Austria-Hungary: The Fate of an Empire tells the story of the interwar history of Central and Southeast Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, covering the period from 1914 to the end of the 1940s. Known as the interbellum period, it is no coincidence that this era is called the golden age of European dictatorships, whose emergence is linked to the collapse of traditional monarchical systems, the arrival of the masses in politics, and the crisis of immature democracies that arose after the end of the First World War, none of which lasted longer than two decades. A dozen states located in the geopolitical corridor between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Stalin's USSR were bound by a common fate. Attempts of democratic development had come to an end by the late 1930s, the authoritarian regimes in power found themselves drawn into a new world war. The book explores the contradictory social processes of that period, the classification and characteristics of the political systems of a number of countries, identification of the patterns and distinctive features of the crisis development.

Yaroslav Shimov, Andrey Shary. “Nation and Order!”, Central Europe and the Balkans between the World Wars. — Chișinău: The Historical Expertise, 2025.