Abstract:
Central and Eastern Europe is a specific historical region which
experienced the domination of the conservative dynasties such as the
Romanovs (the Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp’s branch), the Hohenzollerns,
the House of Habsburg (Habsburg-Lorraine) and the conservative systems of
international relations, for instance, the Holy Alliance (Heilige Allianz), the
League of the Three Emperors (Drei-Kaiser-Abkommen), etc. Starting with the
Congress of Vienna until the outbreak of the First World War, the monarchical
conservatism of the Russian and the Austrian Empires had resisted
irredentism of the neighbouring nations and nationalism inside the empires.
The old regime was able to retain itself due to the solidarity of the dynasties.
However, the imperial rivalries in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, accompanied by the irredentism of the divided nations
(sometimes even stimulated by the rivals) had eroded the solidarity of the
monarchies. Before World War I, the balance of power in the region had been
precarious in which Austria-Hungary played a certain role of a sui generis
bulwark against Russian expansion into the Balkans. Thus, the clash of Russian
(Pan-Slavism) and German (Mitteleuropa) geopolitical conceptions in Central
Europe amid the violation of the principle of the Vienna system caused the
First World War.
