On 17–18 November 2011, a conference was held at Uppsala University in Sweden on fascism in northern, east-central and south-eastern Europe, with the title ‘Fascisms on the Periphery’. The purpose was to encourage a comparative look at historical interwar and wartime expressions of fascism outside the ‘fascist core’ countries of Italy and Germany. Instead of using the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler as the benchmarks for comparison, presenters were encouraged to shed light on the local roots of fascistic politics in their respective societies, as well as giving evidence of mutual contacts, inspiration, and collaboration between movements that did not necessarily go via Rome or Berlin. Instead of teleologically analysing these movements as primarily collaborators with Axis occupation regimes during the Second World War, each movement’s ideology and political agenda is examined in its own right and national context, which in some cases offers significant new interpretations as to the hows and whys of wartime collaboration in, for example, the Holocaust. By doing so, we propose shifting these ‘peripheral’ fascisms from the margins of comparative fascist studies more towards the core of scholarly inquiry. By looking away from fascism in power (as in Italy in Germany) to fascism in opposition and anticipation, we can learn more about the nature of fascism and its apparently persistent appeal.
This second volume has the title ‘Fascism on the European Periphery: Ideas and Values’ and represents a partial shift in focus towards ideology and memory culture. Goran Miljan, who recently completed a PhD project at the Central European University in Budapest, focuses his analysis on the role of highly ideologized ‘moral upbringing’ as it was envisaged and implemented in the ‘Ustaša Youth’ during the 1940s. Mikael Nilsson then draws our attention to the issue of how the admittedly small Catholic Church in Sweden viewed communism, fascism and Nazism as it was expressed in its journal Credo. Per Anders Rudling is another Swedish scholar, who in his insightful contribution provides a fascinating account of the inter-relationship between state and nation building in Ukraine and the problems facing a society with a dark historical past that is often exploited for political purposes. Rudling’s article points to a problem that has become all but too evident in recent years; the process of gradual rehabilitation of fascists and extreme nationalists that is taking place in many countries of east-central and southeastern Europe. It seems this aspect of fascism is an underexplored topic that is in dire need of renewed scholarly interest.
Funding from the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) was instrumental for the 2011 conference and resulting publications, of which this special issue is the second.
