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Cabet, Étienne (1788–1856), French pioneer of UTOPIAN SOCIALISM and founder of the so-called Icarian movement. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1831. His attacks on the government led to a conviction for treason and he fled to England where he came under the influence of Robert Owen. Cabet sought to apply Christian principles to the problems of nineteenth-century industrial society. His Voyage en Icarie (published as a novel, 1840) described a utopian city where all social classes lived in harmony, underpinned by a system of universal education, adult suffrage, and primitive COMMUNISM. In 1848 he crossed the Atlantic and, together with a group of followers, founded a number of Icarian communities in Texas and Iowa. (See also SOCIALISM)

caciquismo Term derived from cacique (a word of Caribbean origin, meaning “chief”), used in SPAIN to denote the way in which notables manipulated local and national elections during the Restoration period (1874–1923), though such practices had first taken root even earlier. The caciques were typically men of economic and administrative influence, who often owned large estates and effectively instructed their tenants and employees how to vote. Critics of caciquismo, notably Joaquín Costa, believed that such clientism was preventing Spain from becoming a properly functioning liberal democracy. Although attempts were made in the 1900s to eradicate “boss rule,” this form of electoral corruption remained widespread under ALFONSO XIII.

Caetano, Marcello (1906–80), Prime Minister of PORTUGAL (1968–74). As a lawyer loyal to SALAZAR, he assisted in drafting the semi-fascist (see FASCISM) constitution associated with the ESTADO NOVO. He was subsequently minister for colonies (1944–7), and deputy premier in the mid-1950s. After a period heading Lisbon University, he returned to political prominence in 1968 as Salazar's successor. While conceding some measure of economic liberalization, Caetano proved unyielding in his political authoritarianism and in his determination to defy the currents of DECOLONIZATION eroding European imperial power. The human and material cost of Portugal's continuing colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea brought strains that eventually triggered a successful military coup against him.

Cagoulards Extreme right-wing terrorist organization (see TERRORISM), created in 1936 as a response to the electoral victory of the POPULAR FRONT within the French THIRD REPUBLIC. Technically known as the Organisation Secrète d'Action Révolutionnaire Nationale, the movement took its name from the hoods (cagoules) which activists wore at meetings allegedly to avoid recognition. Original members were disgruntled militants from the ACTION FRANÇAISE. Generally middle-class and decorated veterans of World War I, they were headed by Eugène Deloncle, a former naval officer. Ideologically, little held them together beyond their hostility to COMMUNISM. Deloncle later boasted 40,000 supporters but the true number was probably closer to 2,000. They were, however, extensively armed, and received funding from big business, which enabled them to carry out a series of murders and bombings. In November 1937 the Cagoule mobilized its forces in Paris, possibly in an attempt to launch a coup. This led to its dissolution and the arrest of its leaders. The police discovered links with senior army officers, notably Loustanau-Lacau, who headed another secretive body, the Corvignolles, which monitored left-wing subversion in the army. The fact that Loustanau-Lacau had served on PÉTAIN'S general staff led to speculation about a high-level conspiracy against the Republic. In truth, no such plot existed. However, the existence of the Cagoule did show that some of the French elite had lost faith in parliamentary democracy.

Campo Formio, Treaty of Agreement made in October 1797 between France and Austria during the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS, at the conclusion of the first Italian campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte (see NAPOLEON I). This consolidated French military gains. Austria was given Venice, Dalmatia, and Istria (thus strengthening its territorial position in north-eastern Italy) as well as the archbishopric of Salzburg. Conversely, the HABSBURG EMPIRE recognized French possession of the former AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS and the left bank of the Rhine. A congress was to meet at Rastatt to agree compensation to the German princes. Additionally, Austria approved the creation of two French satellite republics, the Ligurian (centered on Genoa) and the Cisalpine (comprising Milan, Lombardy, Modena, and Romagna). The REALPOLITIK underlying the settlement signified the end of the Revolution's willingness to allow the “liberated” peoples of Europe to determine their own fate.

Canning, George (1770–1827), British Foreign Secretary (1807–9, 1822–7) and Prime Minister (April–August 1827). Witty and intelligent, but also arrogant and acerbic, Canning entered the Commons in 1793 and served under Pitt the Younger in a variety of offices. He then followed his patron into political exile in 1801, after George III had blocked Catholic emancipation (see CATHOLICISM). He returned to office as foreign secretary in 1807, pursuing a bold and energetic policy against NAPOLEON I, but resigned after the notorious duel with CASTLEREAGH in 1809. Jealousy of the latter kept him out of office for almost a decade. He was on the point of sailing to India in 1822 as governor-general when Castlereagh's suicide led to his recall to the Foreign Office. While regarding the CONGRESS SYSTEM as involving an excessively intrusive engagement with Europe, Canning was particularly instrumental in gaining Russia's recognition of Greek autonomy (see GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE). He also pursued policies aimed at furthering British economic and strategic interests overseas, notably in Latin America. On Liverpool's resignation in 1827 he was asked to form a government. His appointment split the Tory party, with WELLINGTON, Peel, and a substantial number of others refusing to serve because of his support for Catholic emancipation. He therefore turned to the Whigs for support, while keeping the divisive issue of parliamentary reform, which he opposed, off the agenda. He died unexpectedly after only 119 days in office.

Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio (1828–97), Prime Minister of SPAIN (1875–81, 1884–5, 1890–2, 1895–7). As a conservative, he was largely responsible for the introduction of the so-called “Restoration system” as a means of preventing revolutionary upheavals and military coups. This involved the alternation in power of the two major parties – the Conservatives and Liberals – who had accepted the reestablishment of monarchy in 1875. The system – known also as the turno pacífico – led to stability, but was based on extensive corruption. Cánovas was assassinated by an anarchist.

capital cities In the late eighteenth century the capitals of the major powers were London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, and Constantinople. Of these only the first has subsequently enjoyed an entirely continuous history as a principal seat of government. Though Berlin graduated in 1871 from serving as capital of Prussia to becoming that of the new GERMAN EMPIRE as well, it suffered diminished status following the end of WORLD WAR II. From 1945 to 1949 it was essentially the base for rule by the Allied Control Commission, before operating during the rest of the COLD WAR as capital only for an eastern area of German territory, while its western counterpart was governed from the small Rhineland town of Bonn (see GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC; FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY). It was not until 1999 that Berlin officially resumed the full national functions that Bonn had taken over in the immediate aftermath of the GERMAN REUNIFICATION of 1990. Germany's earlier period of European dominance under Nazi leadership had also led to the temporary demotion of Vienna and Paris. The former, having already ceased to be an imperial capital, was not even a national one during the 1938–45 period of Austro-German ANSCHLUSS; as for Paris, between 1940 and 1944 such nominal autonomy as France preserved was centered not there but on VICHY. In Russia, St Petersburg had become the capital in 1713. It kept this status until 1918, albeit under the label of Petrograd from 1914 onward. By the time that the new Soviet regime had further renamed the city Leningrad in 1924 the governmental center had shifted to Moscow, which then retained its position even after the fall of communism (and the reversion of its rival to the St Petersburg label) in 1991. Change of name was similarly relevant to the Turkish case, where the term Istanbul became officially preferred to the alternative usage of Constantinople during the early 1920s, even while the seat of government was in any case relocating to Ankara in Anatolia (1923). As for smaller capitals, their quantity was significantly increased by the 1919 PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT, and again amid the aftermath of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91. Finally, the particular cases of Rome and Brussels deserve mentionThe first capitals of the new Kingdom of Italy were Turin (from 1861) and Florence (from 1865). Rome did not assume this role until 1871, and even then a small part of the city continued to provide a base for the temporal power of the Vatican as well (see also MICRO-STATES[5]). Regarding Brussels, the formal primacy which it has held within independent Belgium since 1830 has been in some senses eclipsed over recent decades by the city's further emergence as the principal bureaucratic base of the European Union (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION). For this international body it now fulfills many functions akin to those of a more conventional state-capital, though without any formal recognition as such. (See also PLACE NAMES)

capitalism A system based on market competition, under which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are controlled by private owners for profit. This mode of economic and social organization has been generally predominant in modern Europe, and provides the basis upon which most of continental and British INDUSTRIALIZATION has been achieved since the late eighteenth century. However, the system was very directly challenged by the ideology of COMMUNISM, and by the consequent attempt made during much of the twentieth century to practise radically anti-capitalist principles in the SOVIET UNION and (after 1945) elsewhere in eastern Europe too. Less extreme brands of SOCIALISM, on the other hand, have often accepted the necessity of compromise with a capitalist system that has demonstrated considerable resilience.

Max Weber's influential proposition that Western capitalism, in its modern form, drew much of its inspiration from PROTESTANTISM (and most notably from the Calvinist ethic that prioritized reinvestment not conspicuous consumption) serves as one reminder that the pursuit of private profit was firmly established as a central component of European economic growth even before the later eighteenth century. That was, however, the epoch at which Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) provided the most significant theoretical articulation of claims concerning the fundamental material and moral compatibility between such pursuit and the greater public good. Within this system, an enterprise generally receives its initial capital either from a very small number of owners or from a wider body of shareholders. These employ a quite separate workforce, members of which, even when they happen to prosper, hold no proprietary claim. The profitability of a firm then becomes essentially definable as the amount of income from the sale of goods or services that still remains with the providers of capital after they have made due deductions for wages and other costs. As Weber emphasized, the extent of their willingness to reinvest such profits with a view to further enlarging this or other enterprises goes on to become a crucial measure of capitalism's capacity for accumulative self-sustaining dynamism. In contrast, communist critiques concentrated on the exploitative and alienating characteristics of such a system, whether as operated inside Europe or as a force driving domination overseas (see IMPERIALISM). Opponents such as MARX, ENGELS, and LENIN depicted capitalism as marking an epoch of bourgeois ascendancy, which served to stimulate CLASS struggle and heightened proletarian counter-consciousness. On this view, the capitalist hegemony represented a merely transient phase in the overall historical process – one due to be inevitably succeeded by a communal utopia that would escape the corruptive habits of profit-seeking and private ownership.

The ideal model championed by capitalists themselves originally envisaged all relevant transactions being conducted in an open market that would reflect the LAISSEZ-FAIRE principles of free trade and would be supported by the prevalence of broadly liberal political institutions (see LIBERALISM). However, in practice, the modern European experience of capitalism came increasingly to feature certain elements of “mixed” or “planned” economy and of WELFARISM – all of these based on varying degrees of intervention, and even ownership, by the state. Rapid acceleration in globalization from the later twentieth century onward had nonetheless served to reduce the scale of control that could be exercised by individual governments (European or otherwise) over those capitalistic enterprises that had managed to develop into huge transnational concerns. Often possessing a core-base in the USA or in Asia, such mega-corporations commanded resources that, by the early twenty-first century, tended to rival or exceed those available to the less developed states of Europe or indeed of any other continent. Similar problems of control sprang from the growth of reckless speculation in the international BANKING and associated financial markets. These follies were starkly revealed through the major global recession that they triggered in the autumn of 2008.

Caporetto, Battle of Major defeat for ITALY in WORLD WAR I. Its forces fought 11 gruelling engagements along the line of the Isonzo between 1915 and 1917, with scarcely any territorial gain. On October 24, 1917 Austro-Hungarian troops, supported by six German divisions, moved against their exhausted and poorly-positioned enemy. After an artillery and gas attack, they broke through and advanced some seventy miles to the river Piave before being halted by lack of supplies, communication difficulties, and hastily-deployed British and French intervention. By early November the Italians had lost some 700,000 men, of whom at least 40,000 were killed or injured, 300,000 were prisoners, and 350,000 were deserters. The defeat led to the replacement of the prime minister, Boselli, by the energetic ORLANDO, who embarked upon a major reform of the Italian war effort. In the early 1920s MUSSOLINI'S militaristic propaganda would exploit the need to erase “the stain of Caporetto.”

Caprivi, Leo Graf von (1831–99), Chancellor ofthe GERMAN EMPIRE (1890–4). Of Italian origins, Caprivi was a professional soldier who achieved high rank in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. Administratively talented, he served as chief of the Imperial Admiralty (1883–8) and was Kaiser WILLIAM II'S choice to follow BISMARCK in 1890 as Reich chancellor and prime minister of Prussia. His appointment marked a shift from the previous regime. Domestically he strove to appease the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY, while abroad he sought reconciliation with the British. He achieved an agreement over relative spheres of influence in Africa, yet also extended Germany's colonial ambitions and obtained the so-called “Caprivi strip” which linked German South West Africa with the Zambesi. In 1892 he resigned as prime minister, and two years later stood down as chancellor following bitter power struggles. Caprivi always labored under the shadow of his illustrious predecessor, and has been described as the “caretaker of imperial Germany” before William II embarked on a policy of WELTPOLITIK.

Carbonari This name (Italian for “charcoal-burners”) was assumed by a number of secret political societies that existed chiefly in Italy and France during the early nineteenth century. Inspired by the ideals of 1789, they drew support from all ranks of society, but most notably from soldiers. The Carbonari first emerged around 1808 in Naples, where they opposed occupation by the French forces under MURAT (see also NAPOLEONIC WARS). Organized in the manner of FREEMASONRY, they borrowed from the vocabulary and practices of charcoal-burners to devise their own elaborate internal codes of conduct. Nationalist, anticlerical, and liberal in outlook, they favored representative government, yet beyond that their ideas were vague. They were, however, prepared to use force to achieve their ends and partook in the 1820–1 revolutions in Spain, Naples, and Piedmont. Repeatedly banned by the Austrians and the papacy, they lost support to MAZZINI'S Young Italy movement. However, the Carbonari did spread to France where they campaigned for a constitutional monarch and participated in the revolution of 1830 (see JULY MONARCHY; REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2).

Carlism A traditionalist movement that originated in 1830, when Ferdinand VII of SPAIN abolished Salic Law and named his only child Isabella as heir. Her succession in 1833 (initially under a regency) outraged supporters of his more conservative brother Don Carlos. The resulting Carlism drew strongly on anti-revolutionary and especially Catholic ecclesiastical support, opposing what then developed as the more liberal “Alfonsine” branch of the BOURBON DYNASTY and embracing the slogan “God, country, community, and king.” There ensued a series of Carlist Wars (1833–40, 1847–9, and 1872–6). Though Isabella was declared deposed in 1868 and Spain briefly became a republic in 1873–4, it was her son who, as ALFONSO XII, then retrieved the throne. National humiliation and colonial losses due to the Spanish–American War of 1898 eventually reinvigorated the Carlist dissidents. Under the SECOND REPUBLIC and during the SPANISH CIVIL WAR OF 1936–9 they supported FRANCO'S Nationalists, and helped to consolidate his subsequent authoritarian regime. However, this did not prevent him from preparing a royal restoration that, after his own death in 1975, favored JUAN CARLOS I, grandson of ALFONSO XIII, rather than the Carlist claimant.

Carlsbad Decrees Restrictive legislation passed in 1819 by representatives of Austria and the other major German states at a conference held at Carlsbad in Bohemia, and subsequently adopted by the assembly of the GERMAN CONFEDERATION. The edicts were organized by METTERNICH in the wake of the murder of the reactionary writer, August von Kotzebue, by a student. They were aimed at preventing liberal agitation through the introduction of press censorship and greater state control of the universities. Through the Decrees, a government inspector was appointed to each university, teachers guilty of “propagating harmful doctrines” were removed, and student associations were dissolved. The legislation remained in force until 1848 (see also REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9).

Carnot, Lazare Nicolas Marguerite (1753–1832), French revolutionary, and military organizer. The son of a lawyer, Carnot trained at the Mézières military engineering academy and held the rank of captain at the outbreak of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Elected to the Legislative Assembly, he became prominent as a member of the COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY with special responsibility for military affairs in 1793–4. He organized the levée en masse (mass conscription) and the amalgame (union of old royal and new revolutionary regiments), and was seen as the architect of the Republic's military successes. This saved him when the JACOBINS were purged after the downfall of ROBESPIERRE in 1794. He subsequently held high office under the DIRECTORY, but by then his political sympathies had begun to change. He fled after the coup of Fructidor (1797) which purged the government of conservative and royalist sympathizers, and returned briefly to serve Bonaparte (soon to be NAPOLEON I) as war minister in 1800–1. Carnot was recalled in 1814, and during the final phase of Napoleonic rule he skilfully organized the defense of Antwerp. He was exiled by LOUIS XVIII for having voted to execute LOUIS XVI, and died at Magdeburg. (See also FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS; NAPOLEONIC WARS; WARFARE)

Carol II (1893–1953), King of ROMANIA (1930–40). Because of his rakish lifestyle, he seemed unlikely to inherit the throne. During World War I he deserted to abscond with a lover whom he married in secret, causing a scandal. Divorced in 1921, he remarried, only to elope to Paris with yet another woman. In 1925 he was forced to renounce succession to the kingship in favor of his son, Michael, who came to the throne two years later. In 1930 Carol returned from exile, supplanted the regency council governing in Michael's name, and appointed himself king. Although in some respects he appeared the best man to end political infighting and alleviate the effects of the GREAT DEPRESSION[2], his political incompetence did little to rejuvenate parliamentary democracy and instead helped the rise of the fascist IRON GUARD. A violent power struggle ensued, which forced Carol to institute a royal dictatorship in 1938. By then, he was being drawn into a vexed relationship with HITLER'S Germany, on which Romania depended for economic aid and security against the Soviet Union. This failed to preserve his country's territorial integrity. In June 1940, the Germans pressured Carol into yielding Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to STALIN, as previously plotted through the NAZI–SOVIET PACT. Further land was sacrificed to Hungary and Bulgaria. Overall, a third of Romania was lost, together with three million ethnic Romanians. Hugely unpopular, Carol abdicated in September 1940 in favor of Michael, though real power lay with ANTONESCU, the prime minister who ruled as a dictator. Carol spent the rest of his life as an exiled playboy, first in South America and then in Portugal.

Cartel des Gauches Name given to the 1924–6 center-left coalition (cartel) that won the 1924 parliamentary elections of the French THIRD REPUBLIC, ousting the right-wing BLOC NATIONAL, which seemed incapable of improving postwar economic conditions. Though the left showed unity in the run-up to the polls, the Socialists were unwilling to accept seats in a Radical-led cabinet, lest this laid them open to accusations of taking part in “bourgeois” politics. In this situation, the new government led by HERRIOT struggled to find its way, achieving little in the domestic domain, other than threatening to extend anticlerical legislation (see ANTICLERICALISM) to the newly recovered provinces of ALSACE-LORRAINE. Greater success was enjoyed in foreign affairs where the Cartel arranged the end of the RUHR OCCUPATION and then negotiated the LOCARNO TREATIES. At home, however, the coalition appeared incapable of addressing the stability of the franc. In 1926 Herriot relinquished the premiership to POINCARÉ who subsequently restored public confidence in the running of the economy. The experience of the Cartel bitterly divided the left, which lost the 1928 elections. It would require the threat of FASCISM, both within and beyond France, to prompt the rallying that produced the relative success of the POPULAR FRONT in 1936.

Casablanca Conference Meeting between President Roosevelt and CHURCHILL held in French Morocco January 14–24, 1943. Attended also by US and British senior commanders, the conference addressed issues of grand strategy at a crucial stage in WORLD WAR II. This Allied consultation proceeded without direct participation from the Soviet leader, Stalin, whose preoccupation with finishing the Battle of STALINGRAD prompted him to remain in Moscow. The main immediate outcomes from Casablanca were a public declaration of insistence on unconditional surrender from the AXIS powers, an improved coordination of plans for liberating Italy, and a decision to mount combined bomber operations from British bases. The conference, taking place on territory controlled by the FREE FRENCH, also sought to forge greater unity between DE GAULLE (who sulked over the Anglo-American failure to consult him about the venue, but who did at least now get his first direct access to a distrustful Roosevelt) and such rivals as General Giraud who nonetheless shared the aim of overthrowing the VICHY REGIME.

Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount (1769–1822), British statesman and Foreign Secretary. Born in Dublin, Castlereagh was elected to the Irish House of Commons in 1790 and the Westminster parliament in 1794. Like his political opponent, CANNING, he abandoned his connection with the Whigs in response to the violence of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 and became a supporter of Pitt the Younger. As Secretary for IRELAND he handled the rebellion of 1798 and secured the passage of the Act of Union through the Irish parliament in 1800. Like Pitt and Canning, he resigned in 1801 over George III's refusal to countenance Catholic emancipation (see CATHOLICISM), but returned to office as secretary of state for war in 1802. He proved a vigorous and capable minister, but Canning's criticisms led the pair to fight a duel in 1809 which relegated them both to the back benches. Castlereagh's greatest achievements came as foreign secretary (1812–22), a post he occupied alongside that of Leader of the House. He successfully held together the coalition which defeated NAPOLEON I (see also Treaties of CHAUMONT), and at the VIENNA CONGRESS was a key architect of the CONGRESS SYSTEM designed to maintain peace in Europe. However, unlike METTERNICH and other participants in the project of QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE, he was against military intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states for the purpose of suppressing LIBERALISM and NATIONALISM. Nor would he have any truck with the HOLY ALLIANCE promoted by Tsar ALEXANDER I. As Leader of the House, Castlereagh had some responsibility for British domestic policy and had to justify repressive legislation at a time of social unrest. Criticism over this, together with overwork and disillusionment at the functioning of the Congress System, led to a nervous breakdown, and in 1822 he committed suicide by cutting his throat.

Catalonia Region of north-eastern SPAIN. Its strong tradition of SEPARATISM (see also BASQUES; GALICIA[2]) has been much reinforced by the preservation of Catalan as a distinctive language combining elements of Provençal with Castilian Spanish. During the nineteenth century Catalonia witnessed a literary and cultural Renaixença (“Renaissance”) closely associated with ROMANTICISM and LIBERALISM, while the decades around 1900 saw its intellectuals and artists making a notable contribution to a wider European MODERNISM. By the turn of the century the region was also notable as a focal point of INDUSTRIALIZATION and of political radicalism. In 1932, under the new SECOND REPUBLIC, it succeeded in winning a modest measure of formal autonomy from Madrid. When the SPANISH CIVIL WAR broke out four years later, most of its inhabitants supported the Republican cause, and sustained the struggle against the Nationalists until early in 1939. Thereafter the victorious FRANCO dictatorship endeavoured to erode Catalan identity, and particularly to weaken usage of the regional language. However, following the restoration of democracy in Spain, Catalonia achieved statutory endorsement as an “Autonomous Community” in 1979. The arrangements included recognition of Catalan as its official language, alongside Spanish, and the revised provisions of 2006 further enlarged the autonomy of this relatively prosperous region now containing a population of more than seven million. By then Barcelona, its chief city, had won an international reputation as a major cultural and touristic center rivalling Madrid.

Catherine II (1729–96), Tsarina of RUSSIA (1762–96), also known as “the Great.” Born Sophia Augusta Fredericka, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine emerged from her modest German origins when she was chosen by the Empress Elizabeth as bride for her nephew, Peter, the heir presumptive to Russia. Catherine moved there in 1744 and was married the following year. She successfully integrated herself into elite Russian society by adopting ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY and altering her original name to the russified Catherine. She initially attempted to please her new husband, who succeeded to the throne as Peter III in January 1762, but he rejected her and also alienated powerful groups in society with his eccentric behavior and admiration of all things Prussian. When Peter spoke of setting Catherine aside in favor of his mistress, she orchestrated a coup the following June with the assistance of her lover, Grigori Orlov, personally leading troops against her husband, who was forced to abdicate. She probably connived at his murder to protect her new position. Catherine's accession marked the beginning of a fresh period of Russian territorial expansion, which had faltered with the death of Peter I (the Great) in 1725. By placing another former lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski, on the Polish throne in 1764 she established Russian domination over that territory. She subsequently orchestrated the three partitions of POLAND, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, from which Russia was the major beneficiary. The second of these led to the acquisition of Polish UKRAINE and its 3 million inhabitants, while the third wiped Poland entirely from the political map. Catherine similarly aimed to carve up the European territories of Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE). Although this was not achieved, RUSSO-TURKISH WARS eventuated in the acquisition of extensive gains in the BALKANS, the Crimea, and beyond. Domestically, Catherine's reign witnessed substantial reforms, especially in the early years. Central and provincial administration was reorganized; in 1786 a new system of elementary EDUCATION was introduced; ecclesiastical property was confiscated and many monasteries dissolved; and in 1785 the nobility received rights similar to those pertaining in western Europe, part of a more general policy of “Westernization.” Catherine herself professed to be inspired by the ideals of the ENLIGHTENMENT. She claimed to have “ransacked” Montesquieu for the benefit of her empire; she told Voltaire that her motto was “Utility”; and she entertained Diderot and purchased his library. Yet it is doubtful if her attachment to the Enlightenment was more than superficial, for she undertook no reforms which might have threatened her autocracy. Thus the serfs (see SERFDOM) were placed yet more firmly under the control of their lords lest emancipation threaten the nobility's support for the regime; opponents were imprisoned or exiled; the abolition of torture was continually postponed; and the many uprisings which brought together disaffected Cossacks, serfs, and religious dissidents were brutally suppressed. Like her nineteenth-century successors, Catherine was chiefly interested in improving the efficiency of her autocratic regime, not in diminishing her authority by liberalizing it.

Catholicism This term, derived from Greek katholikos (“universal”), is most regularly used to denote a distinctive “Roman” branch of Christianity that professes allegiance to traditions of teaching and practice enshrined in a papal authority unbroken since the epoch of St Peter. Worldwide, the Roman Catholic Church now claims more than 1 billion adherents, accounting for around half of all Christians; within Europe, it forms the largest Christian denomination, covering in excess of 250 million members (nominal or otherwise) and some 30 percent of overall population. A further 15 million Catholic believers belong to the Eastern Rite churches, sometimes referred to as Uniates, who remain in communion with Rome while retaining their own practices, language, and distinct canon law. Unlike members of the Roman clergy, Uniate priests may be married – a situation confirmed in the common law code accepted by their churches in 1991.

The outlines of the religious map of Catholic Europe have stayed remarkably constant over the last two centuries. Along the southern littoral, Portugal, Spain, and Italy persist as bastions for Catholicism; while Poland and Lithuania in the east, together with Ireland in the west, are also still relatively strong in piety. Belgium retains a significant level of commitment, and so too do some regions of southern Germany, with Bavaria as the most notable case. Catholic loyalties prevail also in Austria, and in certain other areas of former Habsburg rule such as Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia. By contrast, varieties of PROTESTANTISM retain the greater appeal in Scandinavia, northern Germany, parts of Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, while ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY has remained the principal form of Christianity in most of eastern and southeastern Europe. The broadly stable patterns of religious allegiance as between countries have been generally reflected inside states as well. Thus in the French case Brittany and Normandy continue, even today, to show a relatively high degree of Catholic commitment just as they did in the late eighteenth century, whereas the Paris basin and the Massif Central have remained regions of relative DECHRISTIANIZATION[1] such as they were even before 1789. Yet if the outline map of Catholic conformity has stayed remarkably constant, the actual levels of religious observance have everywhere fallen. This is a general trend that has been far from unique to Catholicism – and one that only Islam (see MUSLIMS) and some evangelical Christian sects appear to have bucked. In the course of modern European history, the pattern of such decline has been neither linear nor geographically uniform. But, broadly speaking, it was men who were the more prone to fall away in the nineteenth century and women through much of the twentieth, with even graver loss of support among both genders then developing over the last fifty years or so. The causes are complex: traditional explanations center upon the processes of SECULARIZATION and INDUSTRIALIZATION, though cultural changes have probably been of most significance since 1945.

As well as losing adherents, the Catholic Church has also seen its political power leaching away. By the close of the eighteenth century, the decline of Catholic Spain had already presaged a longer-term shift, which was then hastened by European conflict during the period 1792–1815 (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS; NAPOLEONIC WARS). Protestant Britain and Orthodox Russia were the key beneficiaries of the peace agreed at the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15. Although Catholic Austria played a key role, hindsight allows us to see how far this settlement also served to lay the basis for the further rise of Protestant Prussia. Moreover, as the nineteenth century developed, France (formerly the “eldest daughter of the Church”) could no longer be guaranteed to espouse Catholic political causes – a shift illustrated by the foreign policy of NAPOLEON III, even before the ANTICLERICALISM of the THIRD REPUBLIC made the rift deeper still. Catholic influence was further reduced as the balance of international power became recalibrated from time to time. For example, the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT of 1919 confirmed the great-power status of the USA and Japan, as well as Britain and France. In the aftermath of WORLD WAR II the Soviet Union then came to rival the USA as a superpower, thus dominating most of central and eastern Europe in the name of atheistic COMMUNISM. The collapse of that ideology, amid the EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 in which Polish Catholic resistance played a particularly vital role, was hailed by Pope JOHN PAUL II as “providential,” but it did not signal any full recovery of ecclesiastical influence over the secular world at large.

In Catholic, as in Protestant, countries the modern period of European development has witnessed profound changes of relationship between church and state. Until the late eighteenth century a closely symbiotic linkage prevailed. Governments generally favored a single religion, protected its exclusivity and doctrine, and privileged the civil rights of its professed adherents; conversely, whichever church was dominant then preached due submission to the temporal authority. In Catholic Europe such arrangements encouraged extensive ecclesiastical commitment to EDUCATION and other welfare activities, and even governments that were inclined towards clipping the wings of the clergy seldom questioned church dogma. The FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, and the campaign for DECHRISTIANIZATION[2] in particular, attacked such a relationship. The revolutionaries attempted to eradicate Catholicism and to substitute the deist Cult of the Supreme Being. It was left to NAPOLEON I to pick up the pieces by means of the CONCORDAT of 1801 which effectively turned the Church into a department of state. Though the Church had to swallow hard over such developments, it came to regard concordats as the best means of preserving its own status in national and international contexts alike. Agreements of this sort offered some legal safeguards, and implicitly acknowledged a papal power to delegate authority over finance and ecclesiastical appointments. However, fears about loss of ecclesiastical autonomy appeared all the more justified in the light of the situation produced by ITALIAN UNIFICATION and GERMAN UNIFICATION (see also KULTURKAMPF), and indeed of the condition of republican France from the 1870s onward and even, for a time, that of Spain and Portugal as well. Here were governments bent on creating a sense of national belonging, on achieving some measure of social harmony amongst their diverse populations, and on creating an educated and productive workforce that could also bear arms. From the time of BISMARCK onward, states were also tending to take greater responsibility for their citizens through the development of a WELFARISM that further eroded the Church's social role. In its approach to science (see POSITIVISM) as well as politics, the nineteenth-century church had already become widely perceived as an obstacle to “progress” even before PIUS IX issued his reactionary Syllabus of Errors in 1864. Amid these tensions, Catholicism was especially distrusted for its so-called ultramontanism – the allegedly anti-patriotic tendency to appeal “beyond the mountains” not to national but to papal authority. Assertion of the latter had been most clearly crystallized in the decree of infallibility issued by the First VATICAN COUNCIL. This was proclaimed in 1870 even as the new Kingdom of Italy was about to strip the Pope of most of his remaining sovereign territory, leaving him to become a self-styled “prisoner” within the Vatican City (see MICRO-STATES[5]).

The pontificate of LEO XIII (1878–1903), which included the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, offered some limited concessions to secular modernity. However, his immediate successors proved reluctant to relinquish a more familiar conservative authoritarianism. Against that background, and with the Church's fears further sharpened after 1917 by the triumph of the BOLSHEVIKS in Russia, we can better comprehend the allure of right-wing dictatorships for many Catholics in the first half of the twentieth century. The broadly pro-clerical and traditionalist regimes that emerged during the fascist era (see FASCISM) – for instance, in Italy, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the VICHY REGIME in France – often claimed to be restoring moral certainties and to be promising a favored position for the Church. Though a number of concordats duly followed, these church–state agreements proved to be very unequal. The policy was especially ruinous in Germany where the 1933 concordat helped to legitimize NAZISM and emasculated Catholic resistance to the HITLER regime both before 1939 and during the wartime papacy of PIUS XII. Elsewhere (though this was imperfectly comprehended at the time) the Church was better placed in those surviving liberal democracies where it functioned as part of a pluralistic society. These included certain predominantly non-Catholic countries (such as Britain) where the penal legislation dating from the Reformation had been largely removed during the nineteenth century, for instance through the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829) which granted full political and civil rights. In the aftermath of World War II a new era in church–state relations evolved. Across much of central and eastern Europe, Catholicism had to survive four decades of persecution conducted on a scale not seen since the French Revolution. Meanwhile, in the West, such bruising experience of COLD WAR confrontation prompted the Church into some greater support for moderately progressive secular values, as embodied most notably in movements of so-called CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. Here, states that were now confident of holding the upper hand proved readier than before to opt for a neutral stance and an acceptance of religious pluralism; and anticlerical spats became rarer, even though issues such as gay rights, divorce, and abortion remained topics of contention.

It is misleading to write the history of Catholicism solely as one of political and intellectual reaction in the face of progress. To be sure, the church hierarchy tended to side with MONARCHISM and even Fascism as supposed constraints upon social disruption, while also proving generally hostile to the emergence of religious MODERNISM in the late nineteenth century. But priests and laity have embraced a wider range of values. For example, the liberal Catholicism developed by LAMMENAIS, Lacordaire, and Montalembert in the earlier nineteenth century exerted a long-lived influence in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. As well as urging the need for the Church to be free of involvement with the state, they encouraged the development of distinctly Catholic social policies to deal with issues of poverty and labor relations. Partly due to this, a Catholic Action movement emerged with particular clarity in the twentieth century, bringing larger numbers of the laity into the Church's work. Moreover, the Vatican has taken the initiative on a number of occasions: for instance, through the major encyclicals of Leo XIII and PIUS XI on social issues, and the publication of Divino afflante Spiritu in 1943 as Pius XII's contribution towards revitalizing Catholic approaches to Biblical scholarship. However, no pope has had a greater influence on modern Catholicism than JOHN XXIII who was responsible for convening the Second Vatican Council of 1962–3. This marked a new spirit of openness, and inaugurated changes in ecclesiastical liturgy and governance as well as fresh approaches to social reform and ecumenism. In politics, as noted already, the pontificate of JOHN PAUL II (1978–2005) was particularly important in helping to inspire the movements that produced at the end of the 1980s the downfall of Soviet communist hegemony over central and eastern Europe. In theological matters, however, the Vatican has generally shown since the later 1960s a greater cautiousness, seeking to reaffirm Catholicism's traditional teachings even while facing continuing revisionist pressures especially on clerical celibacy, artificial contraception, and other issues pertaining to the practices of SEXUALITY. Here, by 2010, the pontificate of Benedict XVI was becoming mired amid increasingly widespread allegations about priestly paedophilia, and indeed about longstanding concealments thereof on the part of European (and other) bishops.

As Christianity entered its third millennium, perhaps the most fundamental of the issues facing this “universal” church stemmed precisely from “globalization.” Over the previous 200 years or so the demographics of Catholicism had changed dramatically. Due in part to the missionary zeal that had once accompanied centuries of colonial IMPERIALISM, what had previously appeared as a predominantly European faith was now much more notably the preserve of others in continents beyond. Though as yet the governing form of the Catholic Church was still “Roman,” the substance of its future development seemed bound to lie increasingly in non-European hands.

Cattaneo, Carlo (1801–69), Italian political economist. His extensive writings, usually in his journals the Annali universali di statistica and Il Politecnico, provided a moderate, gradualist critique of post-Napoleonic restoration Italy. His talents led to his recognition and employment by the British government on agrarian problems in India and Ireland. Besides his scholarship, he is principally remembered for his part in the early stages of the Milanese uprising of 1848 (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9). After its failure he went into exile, only returning to Milan and reestablishing Il Politecnico once the FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR of 1859 had freed his native Lombardy from rule by the HABSBURG EMPIRE. However, as a federalist (see FEDERALISM[1]) rather than a nationalist, he remained deeply critical of Piedmontese expansionism and of the new Italian state ruled by the Savoy dynasty. (See also ITALIAN UNIFICATION; RISORGIMENTO)

Caudillo Spanish term meaning “leader.” Having been originally applied to nineteenth-century South American revolutionaries using a populist and charismatic appeal to promote reforms, it is now associated particularly with FRANCO who in 1936 declared himself “Caudillo of Spain, by the grace of God.” In this way, he nurtured a cult of hero-worship similar to that fostered in Italy by MUSSOLINI (as“Duce”) and in Germany by HITLER (as “Führer”).

Cavaignac, General Louis-Eugène (1802–57), French Minister of War. He became known to some as the “butcher of June,” due to his role in the JUNE DAYS of 1848 (see also REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9). After serving with distinction in Algeria, Cavaignac was elected to the National Assembly and made minister of war in the provisional government of the SECOND REPUBLIC. When the workers of Paris rebelled in June 1848 he used a mixture of regular troops with elements from the NATIONAL GUARD and the Mobile Guard to crush the uprising. He subsequently became “head of the executive power” of the republic, but, although he maintained law and order, a series of maladroit fiscal and social policies eroded his administration's popularity. He then ran for the presidency of the republic in December 1848, coming a poor second to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (see NAPOLEON III). He was briefly arrested and exiled to Picardy during the latter's coup in December 1851. A staunch republican, albeit a conservative one, he continued thereafter to oppose Louis Napoleon.

Cavour, Camillo (1810–61), Piedmontese statesman, pivotal in ITALIAN UNIFICATION and the RISORGIMENTO. His background made him an improbable national hero, since his father had served the Napoleonic occupation of northern Italy and his mother hailed from Geneva. Cavour spoke better French than he did Italian, and felt more comfortable in London or Paris than Turin. Trained as an engineer in the army of PIEDMONT- SARDINIA, he resigned his military post in order to travel widely in Europe – especially to Britain and France, which he viewed as beacons of progress. His early views on Italian NATIONALISM were vague, though he certainly regarded the republicanism of MAZZINI as unworkable and professed loyalties towards the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont. In June 1848 he was elected as a conservative to the parliament at Turin, where he supported CHARLES ALBERT'S unsuccessful attempts to expel the Austrians from Lombardy (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9; CUSTOZZA; NOVARA). Thereafter Cavour served as minister of trade and agriculture and then of finance. In these roles, he lowered tariffs, negotiated international trade agreements, and promoted railway-building so as to boost commerce and attract tourists from “the fogs” of northern Europe. In 1853 he became prime minister and, to the disgust of VICTOR EMMANUEL II with whom he enjoyed a fractious personal relationship, established an important parliamentary power base on the center-left. It was the king, rather than his premier, who subsequently involved Piedmont in the CRIMEAN WAR in the hope of recovering standing lost in 1848–9. However, though there were no immediate gains, Cavour soon contributed his own skilful exploitation of the goodwill which this move had encouraged on the part of NAPOLEON III.

The issue of Italian unification was now under increasingly urgent discussion, within the National Society (a small but influential group whose members now generally accepted the key role of the Piedmontese monarchy) as well as by Mazzinian nationalists. Cavour himself retained doubts about union with what he viewed as the uncivilized south (see MEZZOGIORNO), and favored instead an enlarged northern state strongly centralized under Piedmontese control. He also believed that international diplomacy was essential and, following the ORSINI PLOT, began negotiations with the French emperor. These resulted in the PLOMBIÈRES AGREEMENT of July 1858, a cynical piece of REALPOLITIK in which Cavour betrayed his limited nationalist credentials by agreeing to cede Nice and Savoy. The ensuing FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR of 1859 did not go to plan, as Napoleon proved an unreliable ally and the VILLAFRANCA TREATY yielded to Piedmont only Lombardy, not Venetia. Though Cavour promptly resigned, he then returned to office in January 1860 and oversaw plebiscites in central Italy which massively endorsed annexation to Piedmont. At that stage Nice and Savoy were handed to the French, helping to provoke GARIBALDI'S invasion of Sicily in May. Though Cavour had not dared to obstruct this venture, he neither strongly expected nor unambiguously encouraged the success that it rapidly registered. He was now forced to throw caution to the wind, moving Piedmontese forces southward so as to stymie Garibaldi's progress towards Rome, which lay under French protection and whose capture might imperil everything so far gained (see also PAPAL STATES). Cavour thus recovered the initiative, ensuring Piedmontese dominance over the new kingdom of Italy proclaimed in March 1861. As first prime minister of this creation, which despite the lack of Venetia and the PAPAL STATES was still much larger and less manageable than he had envisaged, Cavour recognized many of the problems ahead. His sudden death in June 1861, probably induced by nervous strain, meant that they were left largely for others to confront.

Ceauşescu, Nikolae (1918–89), First Secretary of the Communist Party of ROMANIA (1965–89), and State President (1974–89). Having advanced under the patronage of GHEORGHIU-DEJ, he became the latter's deputy in 1957 and then succeeded him as party leader in 1965. Throughout the BREZHNEV era, Ceauşescu continued his former chief's policy of stressing Romania's sovereign independence from the SOVIET UNION. Though he never attempted to secede from the WARSAW PACT or COMECON, his nationalistic distancing from the Kremlin won him much sympathy in the West (and even an honorary knighthood from the UK). Domestically, however, he was using his Securitate police to develop state terror (see TERRORISM), coupled with a cult of personality and private luxury. Policies of enforced population growth (e.g. a ban on contraception) and of rapid INDUSTRIALIZATION did little to benefit general living standards. Instead, the products of any economic improvement went largely to line the pockets of the leader, his formidable wife Elena, and their main party associates. In the later 1980s GORBACHEV'S reformist appeals to the Eastern bloc met only with contempt from Ceauşescu, who failed to anticipate the popular rising and military revolt that led to his swift overthrow and summary execution amidst the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91.

Center Party (Germany) (see ZENTRUM)

Central Powers Term denoting the military alliance, initially comprising the GERMAN EMPIRE and the HABSBURG EMPIRE, which confronted the Allies in WORLD WAR I. Geographically located in central Europe, Germany and Austria-Hungary were linked through the DUAL ALLIANCE of 1879 and the TRIPLE ALLIANCE of 1882. The latter pact also included Italy, which nonetheless remained neutral in 1914 and then entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915. The Central Powers were joined in late October 1914 by Turkey, and by Bulgaria a year later. They could also lay claim to the sympathies of those nationalities keen to slough off Russian rule, notably Finns, Ukranians, and Lithuanians. In late 1918, the decisions of Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary to sue for armistice, left the German regime with little choice but to do the same.

Champ de Mars massacre The killing by the NATIONAL GUARD in 1791 of around fifty unarmed demonstrators (though some authorities put the number as high as 200) during the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Following the unsuccessful attempt of LOUIS XVI to flee France in June 1791, calls for his removal multiplied, even though conservative opinion within the National Assembly rallied to his defense and he was reinstated as monarch. On July 17, some six thousand people flocked to the Champ de Mars, a large field on the outskirts of Paris, to sign a petition drafted by the radical CORDELIERS CLUB which declared the Assembly's actions contrary to the popular will. A confrontation between the demonstrators and the National Guard was provoked when two men, who had hidden under the table on which the petition was placed in order to get a view of the ladies' ankles, were discovered and summarily hanged. In response, the Guard, led by LAFAYETTE and the mayor of Paris, Bailly, marched to disperse the crowd. Displaying the red flag, which indicated the imposition of martial law, the Guard nevertheless opened fire without warning. The massacre marked a further breach in the relations between the popular movement and the Revolution's middle-class leadership.

Charles I of Austria (see under HABSBURG EMPIRE)

Charles X (1757–1836), King of France (1824–30) and Count of Artois. A younger brother of LOUIS XVI, Charles was amongst the first members of the royal family to flee after the outbreak of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, and then remained in exile promoting the counter-revolution. He became king following the death of his older brother, LOUIS XVIII. It was said that he had forgotten little and learned nothing from the revolution, and he appeared bent upon restoring as much of the old regime as possible. Nobles were given compensation – the milliard – for lands lost, and this was funded by a reduction in the interest rate offered to government bond-holders. Public, and particularly bourgeois, opinion was further affronted by curbs on press freedom and by measures designed to increase clerical influence, including a sacrilege law which made burglary of ecclesiastical premises a capital offence. However, even the ostentatiously pious Charles did not dare to restore to the church the lands that had been confiscated during the revolution. In 1829 he chose a cabinet of ULTRAS headed by the reactionary POLIGNAC. When the ministry was defeated in elections the following year, Charles responded by dissolving the Chamber and ordering a new poll. He also introduced censorship and dramatically reduced the size of the electorate. These measures, which were certainly illegal under the constitutional charter of 1814, went too far. Although Charles tried to back down, his actions precipitated a bloodless coup and he was obliged to abdicate on August 2, 1830 (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2). Though he hoped that the dynasty would continue in the person of his grandson, he was succeeded by the Orleanist, Louis Philippe. (See also JULY MONARCHY; LEGITIMISM; ORLEANISM)

Charles Albert (1798–1849), King of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA (1831–49). Chiefly known as a modernizer, he had in 1821 briefly served as regent to his cousin, CHARLES FELIX. Though swiftly banished for the concessions that he had offered to advocates of change, Charles Albert then succeeded to the throne in his own right ten years later. His reign began with moderate policies of financial, administrative, and military reform. During the 1840s, however, he also became increasingly responsive to more radical ideas of LIBERALISM and NATIONALISM. Early in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 he granted a constitution – which was one of the few political reforms to survive those upheavals and indicated Piedmont-Sardinia as the most likely state to promote some measure of ITALIAN UNIFICATION. Though Charles Albert's intentions remain obscure, it looks as if he was chiefly interested in acquiring Lombardy, and he supported the Milanese revolt in March 1848. His army was quickly defeated by the Austrians at CUSTOZZA (July 24) and shortly afterwards he signed an armistice. Criticized by radicals at home and by the Milanese, he renewed the fight in March 1849 only to be beaten again, at NOVARA. He abdicated in favor of his son VICTOR EMMANUEL II and went into exile in Portugal where he died shortly afterwards.

Charles Felix (1765–1831), Duke of Savoy and King of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA (1821–31). He came to the throne following the abdication of his brother, Victor Emmanuel I, who faced an uprising from revolutionaries demanding constitutional reform. While waiting for the arrival of Charles Felix from Modena, his cousin, CHARLES ALBERT, was appointed regent. The latter mollified the rebels by granting a liberal constitution. However, this was swiftly annulled by Charles Felix, who exiled the regent and suppressed the uprising with Austrian assistance (see NOVARA, BATTLES OF). Though married in 1807, Charles Felix had no children, and on his death the throne passed to Charles Albert.

Chateaubriand, François René, Vicomte de (1768–1848), French author and politician. He was the youngest son of a noble family from St Malo, who upon entering the army had already begun to show signs of the melancholy which would infuse his later writings. Chateaubriand left for America in 1791 as the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 became increasingly radical, and briefly returned to France before joining the emigrés in England. Here he reportedly found a new religious fervor. On receiving news of the deaths of his sister and mother he recorded that “I wept and I believed.” His Génie du christianisme, first published together with his tale René in 1802, idealized the emotional insights to be gained from a mystical religiosity and opposed the cold rationalism of the ENLIGHTENMENT and the supporters of 1789. The huge success of Génie, which caught the mood of ROMANTICISM then current, led NAPOLEON I, anxious at that time for better relations with the PAPACY, to make him ambassador to Rome. However, Chateaubriand became disenchanted with imperial rule, and wholeheartedly supported the accession of LOUIS XVIII. Made ambassador to London in 1822 and foreign minister in 1823, he orchestrated French intervention in Spain to restore full royal powers to its Bourbon ruler, Ferdinand VII. Even so, he was now disappointed by the failure of Louis to restore the mystical ideals of medieval kingship, and when he was sacked the following year he moved into opposition. His final decades were mainly spent writing his powerful Mémoires d'outre-tombe, a large posthumously-published autobiography with leanings towards a work of fiction.

Chaumont, Treaties of Series of agreements concluded on March 9, 1814, towards the end of the NAPOLEONIC WARS. The Allies thereby committed themselves not to conclude any separate peace with the French emperor, and to maintain their coalition for a further twenty years. The treaties were largely the work of CASTLEREAGH, who feared that the alliance, reflecting potentially divergent interests, might readily dissolve in the face of NAPOLEON I'S military victories. The signatories agreed to maintain an army of 600,000 men in “rigorous pursuit of a war to end the miseries of Europe.” Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and the Prince of Orange were also invited to accept the Chaumont accords, which then provided the basis for the final peace agreement made at the VIENNA CONGRESS.

Chechnya Region of southern RUSSIA lying on the European side of the Caucasus mountain range. The Chechens (currently estimated at 1.2 million in number, and predominantly of MUSLIM faith) have long resisted RUSSIFICATION. From the late 1930s the area formed, jointly with Ingushetia, an autonomous republic of the SOVIET UNION. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Chechnya unilaterally declared its independence and prepared for guerrilla resistance to Moscow's hostile response. There followed the First and Second Chechen Wars (1994–6, 1999–2000), in which both sides were guilty of significant atrocities. Though the earlier of these conflicts ended inconclusively, the later one enabled Russia to assert a firmer measure of direct control over most of the region. Chechen rebels have continued, however, to use TERRORISM in their continuing attempts at promoting independent statehood.

Cheka Russian acronym for the “Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.” This body formed the first version of the secret police that remained central to the operation of the new BOLSHEVIK regime that ensued from the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917. Originally established to protect the Bolsheviks' party headquarters in Petrograd, the Cheka was given extended authority in December 1917. The organization was empowered to “terminate” anyone it considered an opponent of the Revolution, and by 1919 it had a presence within each of the SOVIETS. Vastly expanding its activities, the Cheka opened people's mail, performed counter-espionage both at home and abroad, and spied on day-to-day activities. Under the initial control of Felix Dzierzynski, a devoted Polish follower of LENIN, it was at the forefront of the so-called Red Terror (see TERRORISM) which gathered pace after the assassination attempt against the latter made by Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary, on August 30, 1918. The Cheka was also prominent in prosecuting the Bolsheviks' many enemies during the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, by which time it employed 200,000 officials and was regularly engaged in widespread torture and murder. In February 1922 the Cheka was transformed into the United State Political Administration (OGPU) which was overseen by the NKVD. During the history of the SOVIET UNION the secret police, which played a particularly vital part in the GREAT PURGES, underwent several other name changes, eventually becoming the KGB (Committee for State Security) in 1954.

Chemin des Dames (see under NIVELLE)

Chernenko, Konstantin (1911–85), General Secretary of the Communist Party of the SOVIET UNION and President (1984–5). His career prospered through his position as protégé of BREZHNEV, with whom he had first worked for the party in the region of MOLDOVA. He entered the POLITBURO in 1978, but in 1982 found himself blocked as immediate successor to his patron. Only when ANDROPOV died two years later did Chernenko become general secretary. He was now supported by a NOMENKLATURA generally anxious to obstruct the rising influence of the reformist GORBACHEV. The latter did not have long to wait, however, as the new Soviet leader was already chronically ill. Chernenko's death in office, early in 1985, marked not only the definitive passing of the Brezhnev era but also what turned out to be the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union itself.

Chernobyl disaster Nuclear explosion that occurred in the UKRAINE, near Kiev, on April 26, 1986, causing 31 immediate deaths. The resulting fire at the Chernobyl power-station continued for weeks. Although the particular reactor at fault was eventually buried under concrete, other parts of the complex were allowed to continue operating until 2000. At the outset of the crisis the SOVIET UNION endeavored to conceal the nature and scale of the disaster. Such conduct reflected the regime's customary cult of secrecy as well as its longstanding negligence concerning environmental issues (see ENVIRONMENTALISM). However, as radioactive dust spread – towards not only Byelorussia (see BELARUS) but also Romania, Poland, Finland, and Scandinavia – the international pressure for greater candor became irresistible. Some 135,000 inhabitants of the area within a 20-mile radius of Chernobyl were then evacuated. It is estimated that, in addition to the widespread pollution of livestock and arable land, more than half a million people in and far beyond the Ukraine suffered some measure of contamination. This nuclear meltdown highlighted the globalized threats to health associated with the harnessing of atomic power, even for peaceful purposes.

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai (1828–89), Russian political thinker and novelist. He was a proponent of SOCIALISM, and more specifically of POPULISM. Son of a priest, he was educated at the University of St Petersburg and became a teacher, while also beginning a journalistic career which he pursued on the radical journal Contemporary. His outspoken views, advocating reform of RURAL SOCIETY and the abolition of SERFDOM, earned the displeasure of the authorities who arrested him in 1862. While in prison, he composed his most famous work, What is to be done? (1863). This novel, charting the life of a committed revolutionary, exercised a great influence on Russian intellectuals and dissidents, most notably LENIN who later wrote a work of the same name. Exiled to Siberia (1864–83), Chernyshevsky continued to write extensively, advocating the overthrow of the tsarist regime and its replacement by a socialist utopia based on the peasant commune (see also UTOPIAN SOCIALISM).

Chetniks Guerrilla forces promoting NATIONALISM in SERBIA. The term (deriving from Serbo-Croat četa, meaning “troop”) was first used to describe the armed bands fighting during the final decades of Ottoman dominance over the BALKANS, especially in the Serb-inhabited regions of Macedonia. It also extended to the Serbian resistance against Germany during WORLD WAR I. Such a Chetnik movement re-emerged in WORLD WAR II, after HITLER'S invasion of YUGOSLAVIA in 1941. Led by Colonel Draza Mihailović, the so-called Yugoslav Home Army was formed from soldiers who had retreated into the countryside and now remained loyal to the royalist government-in-exile based in London. After an initial phase of cooperation with TITO, these Chetniks increasingly devoted their energies towards undermining his communist partisans, now seen as dangerous rivals for future control of a liberated Yugoslavia. In their campaign to reassert Serb dominance over the region, Mihailović's forces also attacked the Croat Ustaše (see PAVELIĆ) as well as MUSLIM communities in BOSNIA. By early 1944 the British government had switched its support from Mihailović to Tito. After the latter's victory Yugoslavia's new communist regime completed the rout of the Chetniks. In 1946 Tito secured Mihailović's prosecution and execution, on charges relating to collaboration with the AXIS and to other war crimes. However, the term Chetnik reappeared in the early 1990s, when, as much of Yugoslavia dissolved through civil war, it denoted especially those Serbs who were fighting unsuccessfully against the formation of an independent CROATIA.

Chirac, Jacques (1932–), President of France (1995–2007), and Prime Minister (1974–6, 1986–8). Born in Paris to middle-class parents, Chirac received a bourgeois education, and served in the army and civil service before entering politics in 1967 as a Gaullist (see DE GAULLE) junior minister under POMPIDOU. He then held a series of portfolios, before supporting GISCARD D'ESTAING in the 1974 elections. Chirac was rewarded with the premiership, but in 1976 he resigned – the first prime minister of the FIFTH REPUBLIC to do so of his own volition, though it is likely he would have been pushed by Giscard, who recognized a presidential rival. To prepare for the Elysée, Chirac relaunched the Gaullist party as the Rassemblement pour la République, and in 1977 became the first elected mayor of Paris. In 1981 he failed to oust Giscard as the right's principal presidential challenger to MITTERRAND. However, following left-wing losses in the 1986 general elections, the latter had to appoint him as premier. This was the regime's first experience of cohabitation between a president from one party and a prime minister from another. Chirac was outmanoeuvred by Mitterrand, who was re-elected in 1988 and removed him from the premiership. Even so, Chirac retained a vital political base through the mayoralty of Paris. He eventually achieved presidential office in 1995. Never an ideologue, he promoted his own brand of inclusive Gaullism but, in 1997, took the unprecedented step of dissolving parliament, hoping to outfox his opponents. To his astonishment, the left won the polls, producing another period of cohabitation in which the socialist Lionel Jospin occupied the premiership. With little choice but to concentrate on foreign affairs, Chirac promoted EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. Yet this splintered the right, demoting Gaullism to one amongst the many strands of French CONSERVATISM and giving encouragement to the extremist LE PEN who surprisingly beat Jospin in the first round of the 2002 presidential ballot, leading to fears about the overall health of French democracy. Chirac easily saw off his far-right opponent in the final polls, and his newly retitled Gaullists, the Union pour la Majorité Presidentielle, triumphed in the ensuing general election. Chirac's second presidency was not, however, easy. While his defiance of Anglo-American intervention in Iraq (2003) won considerable admiration, domestically his government's austerity measures proved unpopular, and he personally had to refute corruption allegations dating back to 1970. This was the context within which the Constitutional Council ruled that sitting presidents could be tried only for treason. Early in 2007, when conservative loyalties were increasingly becoming focused on SARKOZY, Chirac announced that he would not seek election for a third presidential term, and in autumn 2009 embezzlement charges were formally laid against him.

Chouans Counter-revolutionary insurgents in the northwest of France, active during the period of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 and of NAPOLEON I. The name is said to derive from the call of the screech owl, which was used by the rebels as a rallying cry. Historians tend to distinguish between the insurgents involved in the VENDÉE REVOLT and those supporting Chouan risings elsewhere, though in practice the two tended to fuse. The Chouans, who were mainly peasants, certainly fought in defense of CATHOLICISM and fatherland. But chouannerie also reflected a wider discontent with the revolution's failure to satisfy demands for land reform or to alleviate rural poverty, and with its heavier burdens of government. The insurgency was sparked by the imposition of conscription in 1793. Peasants resented efforts to make them fight in defense of a revolution which had given them nothing. The ruthless use of the army by Napoleon brought chouannerie under control but did not eradicate the problem, and the insurgency flared up again in 1815 in response to the emperor's attempts to levy men for what turned out to be his final battles (see also HUNDRED DAYS).

Christian Democracy A form of political CATHOLICISM that emerged strongly in much of western Europe after World War II. Drawing inspiration from the earlier modernizing efforts of Pope LEO XIII (e.g. in Rerum Novarum, 1891), it combined vigorous opposition to COMMUNISM with a willingness to reduce the inequities associated with unfettered CAPITALISM. Thus Christian Democracy accepted some enlargement of state authority so as to implement appropriate measures of secular WELFARISM, and attempted to regenerate the kind of centrism or moderate CONSERVATISM that had so severely waned amid the growing political extremism of the 1920s and 1930. Appealing to a core constituency of middle-class voters, Christian Democrats sometimes formed single-party administrations, yet also promoted their objectives through coalition. Although often driven to collaborate with socialist moderates, they themselves maintained a general preference for the less governmentally constrained economics of “the social market.” Operating along such lines, Christian Democracy played a prominent role in the post-1945 development of Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands – and not least in entrenching representative government within the new Federal Republic of Germany. The transnational spirit of the movement also strongly influenced the early progress of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. Particularly notable among the pioneering exemplars of Christian Democratic principles were Konrad ADENAUER, Alcide DE GASPERI, and Robert SCHUMAN.

Churchill, Winston (1874–1965), British Prime Minister (1940–5, 1951–5). During his early career Churchill combined army service with war journalism, in India, the Sudan, and South Africa. He entered parliament in 1900, and eventually registered more than sixty years of almost continuous membership. He sat as a Conservative during the periods 1900–4 and 1924–64, and as a Liberal from 1904 to 1922. Churchill's first cabinet posts were at the Board of Trade (1908–10), the Home Office (1910–11), and the Admiralty (1911–15). He resigned from the last of these early in WORLD WAR I, over the failure in the DARDANELLES of the GALLIPOLI campaign that he had so strongly championed. His career in government soon resumed, however, with appointments as minister of munitions (1917–8), secretary of state for air and war (1919–21), and colonial secretary (1921–2). After losing his seat, he returned to parliament in 1924, and served for the Conservatives as chancellor of the exchequer until 1929. The fall of Stanley Baldwin's second administration marked the beginning of Churchill's “wilderness years.” He became marginalized within his party, being increasingly treated as a maverick because of his opposition first to India's progress towards self-government and then to policies of APPEASEMENT. Not until 1939, when HITLER violated the MUNICH AGREEMENT, did Churchill have a chance of dissipating the sense of failure pervading his recent career. “Winston is back” was (according to legend, at any rate) the naval signal that marked his return to the Admiralty upon the outbreak of WORLD WAR II. Even though he was partly responsible for the failure of the Norwegian campaign that ended Neville Chamberlain's premiership in May 1940, it was Churchill himself, rather than the temporizing Lord Halifax, who now took over as head of government.

At that crucial juncture – and through the following months that witnessed the DUNKIRK EVACUATION and the air assault on southern England (see BATTLE OF BRITAIN,) – it was a matter of far more than merely national significance that the UK's leadership had passed to a statesman who not only resisted pressures for a compromise peace but also possessed the ability to strengthen a spirit of defiance amongst the wider public. Alone except for the support of the Dominions, Churchill's compatriots were inspired by him to persist in fighting NAZISM. Thus he bought the time that proved necessary before the eventual emergence of the SOVIET UNION and the USA as allies in the same cause. Though he tended to meddle excessively with military strategies, the prime minister proved to be a formidable wartime leader. However, as the conferences of the “Big Three” proceeded from TEHRAN to YALTA and POTSDAM, it also became evident that Churchill could not prevent the Russians and Americans from becoming the paramount shapers of postwar European and global development. Indeed, even while the last of these conferences was in progress during July 1945, he and the Conservatives found themselves rejected by a British electorate that preferred to entrust Labour with the priority objective of achieving domestic reconstruction.

Out of power, Churchill began compiling, with much expert assistance, his bestseller entitled The Second World War (6 vols, 1948–54). Central to his Nobel Literature Prize of 1953, this work was probably the most seductively tendentious of the many writings produced by this historically-absorbed descendant of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. He deployed similar rhetorical talent to lament the loss of Indian empire and (most famously, through his “iron curtain” speech of March 1946) to blame STALIN for making Europeans the victims of a new COLD WAR. He also spoke eloquently of the need to create a “United States of Europe,” and was President-of-Honor for the 1948 CONGRESS OF EUROPE. However, neither while in opposition nor after his return as prime minister in 1951, did he do anything much towards encouraging direct British involvement in the particular kind of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION that was beginning to be pursued by such enthusiasts as SCHUMAN, ADENAUER, and DE GASPERI (see also BRITAIN AND EUROPE). According to the Churchillian worldview, the UK's standing depended far more upon cultivating the remaining imperial loyalties and the “special relationship” with the USA.

The ailing premier of the early 1950s was barely more than a shadow of the dynamic, if also impetuous, leader who had taken the helm ten years or so before. However, even the weaknesses of that later administration could not significantly detract from his preceding wartime achievement. Circumstances offer few individuals the opportunity to change the future course of European affairs quite so decisively as Churchill did back in the summer of 1940. In choosing then to exercise his authority with such courage, he had ensured that, for himself and for the peoples of Britain and its empire, this would indeed be remembered as “their finest hour.”

Ciano, Galeazzo (1903–44), Foreign Minister of ITALY (1936–43). His posthumously-published diaries provide candid insight into the regime of MUSSOLINI, whose daughter he married in 1930. Often known thereafter simply as il genero (the son-in-law), Count Ciano had inherited a taste for the good life from his father, an admiral and early supporter of FASCISM. Having trained as a reporter and then served briefly as a diplomat in Shanghai, Ciano returned home to oversee propaganda, before flying bombers in the ITALO- ETHIOPIAN WAR. As foreign minister from 1936, he helped to involve Italy in supporting FRANCO in the SPANISH CIVIL WAR, and organized the murder of Mussolini's opponents abroad. Though he was a prime mover in the Rome–Berlin AXIS, his diaries indicate an increasing distrust of HITLER'S Germany. In the course of WORLD WAR II, he came to favor peace with the Allies. Accordingly, he was sidelined in 1943, being appointed ambassador to the Vatican. In July 1943 Ciano, along with a majority on the Fascist Grand Council, voted for the removal of Mussolini. Characteristically, Hitler blamed Ciano personally for the fall of the Duce and had him arrested. Handed over to the Italian fascists in northern Italy, he was executed by firing squad on January 11, 1944. In the meantime, his wife had fled to Switzerland, taking her husband's diaries with her.

Cisleithania Name applied to the area of the HABSBURG EMPIRE remaining under direct Austrian administration after the AUSGLEICH of 1867. Incorporating the Latin prefix cis- (“this side of”), it reflected the fact that much of this territory ended at what was, from Vienna's perspective, the nearer bank of the Leitha – a Danubian tributary forming part of the internal border with a now semi-autonomous HUNGARY. This second element in the “dual monarchy,” covering the Magyar-dominated areas that stretched beyond the river, received the complementary designation of Transleithania.

Civil Constitution of the Clergy Legislation concerning restructuring of the Catholic Church, passed July 12, 1790, by the CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY soon after the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. The church was one of the institutions of the ANCIEN REGIME deemed by the revolutionaries to be most in need of reform. The nature of the change was shaped by the ending of the tithe in August 1789 and by the nationalization of church properties in the following November. Henceforth, the church would be deprived of any independent revenues, and be funded by the state. Accordingly, the revolutionaries wished to create a leaner and more cost-effective organization than had hitherto existed. An Ecclesiastical Committee was established to produce proposals. When a first, moderate, draft was blocked by the two bishops on the Committee, the increasingly frustrated Assembly packed the body with more radical deputies in February 1790, with the result that the final draft went much further than originally anticipated. The law passed in July abolished all ecclesiastical offices except those involving the cure of souls, dramatically reduced the number of bishops from 136 to 83 (one per département), and rationalized parish boundaries. Most controversially, it extended to the church the principle of popular sovereignty, which underpinned the revolutionaries' claim to authority. The clergy would now be subject to election by the same colleges of laymen – including non-Catholics – as held the right to vote for deputies and other government officials. The church temporized over accepting the Civil Constitution, hoping for a lead from Pope Pius VI who was implacably opposed to the legislation but hesitated to make a public pronouncement. Frustrated by the delay, which was holding up the sale of church lands, and believing that most clerics would in any case accept the new order, the Assembly finally decided to force the issue. Thus in November 1790 it decreed that all ecclesiastics must swear an oath accepting the Civil Constitution or lose their positions. All but seven of the Ancien Regime bishops rejected the oath; and overall (albeit with enormous regional variations) only a slender majority of the other clergy took it and became members of the new Constitutional church. Pius VI condemned the legislation in the encyclical Charitas in April 1791. The divisions resulting from the Civil Constitution, and the associated oath, were profound. Two separate churches had been created in France, and defense of CATHOLICISM now became associated with counter-revolution.

class The historian of modern Europe most regularly encounters or uses this concept as a means of positioning people within a hierarchy chiefly according to their perceived economic position, though sometimes with reference to other markers of social status as well. At the end of the ANCIEN REGIME, commentators discussing the structure of society still made reference to its medieval division into three principal functional groupings: those who prayed (the first estate or clergy), those who fought (the second estate or ARISTOCRACY), and those who worked (the third estate). Although privilege pervaded old-regime society, the first two orders enjoyed substantially more of it than the third, with the most significant manifestation being tax exemptions whose precise extent varied across Europe. While observers had long acknowledged differences of prestige and rank both between and within the various orders, by the late eighteenth century it had become clear that this tripartite structuring no longer accorded with the more complex social and economic realities which had now developed. Even if nobles continued largely to monopolize officerships and senior commands in the military, most of them no longer pursued the profession of arms that formed the supposed basis for their privileges. Similarly, lumping together all those who worked simply into a single category was to ignore obvious diversities. RURAL SOCIETY, for example, was becoming increasingly varied, encompassing as it did landless day-laborers as well as smallholders, tenant farmers, and prosperous landowners. The expansion of trade and commerce and – to a much lesser extent as yet – the commencement of INDUSTRIALIZATION had encouraged the emergence of social groupings whose prosperity depended on liquid wealth from non-agricultural sources. Additionally, a whole sub-grouping of lawyers and administrators had emerged to join the office-holders and men of property who together comprised what the French labeled the bourgeoisie – those non-nobles distinguished by the fact that they did not work with their hands and that they generally resided within towns (the original sense of the term “bourgeois”). By the late eighteenth century, wealth was increasingly important as the determinant of social status: many members of the bourgeoisie had lifestyles no different from those of the aristocracy, while the most prosperous commoners could acquire noble status through intermarriage or the purchase of ennobling office. In this sense, as ENLIGHTENMENT writers such as Adam Smith acknowledged, old-regime society was becoming based on classes rather than estates, even before the latter were swept away by the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 and in particular the AUGUST DECREES which abolished “distinctions of orders” and their associated privileges.

After 1789, social commentators tended to use the language of class rather than of estates or orders, even though the vocabulary was often deployed quite loosely. The term aristocracy continued to describe those at the top of society. Distinguished by the possession of personal hereditary titles, they were also defined by their wealth, generally based on landownership but also encompassing other forms of financial and economic endeavor. Many nobles in eastern Europe continued to exercise authority through the system of SERFDOM. Next in the hierarchy came the bourgeoisie (for which “middle class” is in English only an approximate, if virtually unavoidable, equivalent), whose wealthiest members were more than a match for the aristocracy. This class, which was both more numerous and more developed in western Europe than east of the Elbe, maintained an outlook generally characterized by attachment to LIBERALISM and LAISSEZ-FAIRE economic policies. While also containing self-made businessmen and industrialists, the majority of this grouping comprised landed and property-owning elements, together with “professionals” such as doctors, lawyers, and bureaucrats. Frequently, contemporaries added the prefix “upper” or “lower” to the term middle class in a search for greater precision, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century as the numbers encompassed by the second of these categories grew alongside the expansion of clerical and other office jobs. The well-to-do referred to those beneath them in the social hierarchy as the WORKING CLASS, broadly defined by manual labor. While this labelling clearly had a relevance to rural society, it became most sharply developed in the context of growing URBANIZATION and of the increased numbers of town-dwelling poor. However, such a designation not only failed to distinguish adequately between different kinds of workers – ARTISANS, journeymen, factory-based wage laborers, those engaged with industrial processes in their own homes, the skilled and the non-skilled – but also carried moral overtones concerning crime, godlessness, the erosion of family values, and other evils commonly associated with the new industrial society. EDUCATION, which some observers believed might break down class barriers, often served to reinforce them in the nineteenth century. Secondary schooling not only remained the preserve of the better-off but also became an essential foundation for the various qualifications required for entry into and advancement within the professions.

The French Revolution had politicized notions of class and also of class conflict, beginning with the Abbé SIEYÈS' famous pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” of January 1789. The aristocracy became the enemy of “the people” as did the bourgeoisie for a brief period at the height of the TERROR, though arguably the middle class was overall the chief economic and political beneficiary of the revolution and the subsequent regime of NAPOLEON I. During the nineteenth century all the major ideological movements – including CONSERVATISM, LIBERALISM, and SOCIALISM, each of which regularly used “1789” as a point of negative or positive reference – deployed the language of class within their polemic. Here the most influential analysts were MARX and ENGELS, whose best-known work was published early in 1848 as The Manifesto of the Communist Party (see also COMMUNISM). This made the bold claim that class struggle had constituted hitherto the central determinant of all social development. On the eve of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 the authors were contending – somewhat prematurely, as things turned out – that, in a Europe dominated by CAPITALISM, the hegemony of aristocracy had already waned to the point where such struggle had at last become simplified into a potentially final conflict between the bourgeoisie and the working-class proletariat. The former was defined as comprising “modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor”; and the latter as consisting of “modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor in order to live.” Marx and Engels went on to predict the imminence of violent revolutionary action, and the victory of an industrial proletariat that would inaugurate a final era of emancipation “from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles.”

A major weakness of this analysis was its reliance on monocausal explanation. Thus it underrated the extent to which other forms of group loyalty and conflict – for example, those springing from religious considerations, or, perhaps most importantly of all under modern conditions, from nationalistic ones (see NATIONALISM) – were capable of competing with the class-centered variety. However, Marx and Engels were not the only radical thinkers to regard a revolutionary and violent conflict between the exploitative and the exploited classes as inevitable. In championing ANARCHISM, BAKUNIN argued that a workers' utopia would emerge only when the anger of the urban poor and the landless peasantry was harnessed to that of the urban workers. PROUDHON, on the other hand, urged the working class to desist from political action lest they fall into the trap of cooperating with, and thus reinforcing, the existing system. However, the mainly middle-class proponents of “progressive” ideologies often found it hard to convert members of the working class, whose sensibilities were riven by divides between male and female operatives (see GENDER), between the skilled “labor aristocracy” and the unskilled toilers, and between the artisan and the factory employee. All of this hampered the emergence of a unified class consciousness. However, the authorities' heavy-handed repression of the 1848 uprisings did help to inculcate some sense of class solidarity, and from the mid-nineteenth century onward a labor movement began to develop in a number of countries. This became characterized by the establishment of mutual-aid cooperatives and TRADE UNIONISM, and eventuated, for example, in the First INTERNATIONAL (1864) and in the PARIS COMMUNE (1871). Yet despite this rising consciousness and the growing gap between rich and poor in the second half of the century, class warfare did not result. This was partly because governments acted to reduce social tensions by extending the (male) franchise, legalizing trade unions, restricting working hours, and extending elementary education. Sickness and pension schemes also began to be established through both public and private initiative (see also WELFARISM). Moreover, IMPERIALISM as well as nationalism was by now attracting the interest of the working class and strengthening a sense of patriotic self-identification capable of overriding class divisions. Socialists, trade unionists, and the Second International were certainly unable to dissuade working-class men from enlisting at the start of WORLD WAR I.

That major conflagration had important repercussions for class structures in both western and eastern Europe. The old aristocratic ruling elite was decimated by the war and never recovered whatever had survived of its ascendancy down to 1914. In many European countries the war had sharpened class animosities, increasing the tensions between organized and non-unionized labor, between bosses and employees, and between skilled and non-skilled workers. Members of the middle class in particular saw their position threatened by an apparent decline in deference from the “lower orders”; they resented the proportionately larger demographic losses they had suffered; and they believed they had paid for the war through higher rates of taxation. After 1918 they were unwilling to fund the social reforms demanded by the workers and there was a postwar middle-class reaction typified by the formation of organizations such as the Middle Class Union in Britain and the People's Party (DVP) led by STRESEMANN in Germany. More crucial still was the rise of FASCISM and NAZISM, partly in response to the BOLSHEVIK threat from the east that had been heightened by the war's precipitation of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917. Once in power, LENIN had to face the challenge of adapting the Marxist historical model to the barely-anticipated reality of a communism which had registered its first major triumph within a society that still remained predominantly peasant-based. What soon became the SOVIET UNION was theoretically classless, but in practice large differentials in terms of income and access to power remained as between those at the top of the party hierarchy and the rest (see also NOMENKLATURA). Peasants who had welcomed the dissolution of the great estates soon found themselves even more deeply disempowered by the state-run agrarian COLLECTIVIZATION pursued by STALIN from the late 1920s onward, and particularly by a “class-against-class” policy that targeted the so-called KULAKS. This sort of problem continued, moreover, even when the SOVIET UNION greatly expanded its sphere of effective control over much of poorly-industrialized eastern and central Europe during the later 1940s.

Viewed over the longer run, however, the twentieth century witnessed an erosion of traditional class boundaries. The second of the GREAT DEPRESSIONS, in its negative impact on the middle as well as the working classes, prompted some measure of levelling. Furthermore, particularly over the years since 1945, Europe's industrial economy in its classic nineteenth-century sense (associated with such “heavy” activities as coalmining, iron and steel production, and shipbuilding) has fallen into steep decline, even if the full onset of the trend was delayed in the Eastern bloc whose state-controlled firms staggered on for longer. This transformation has also entailed an erosion of the traditional working class. Employment gains have come instead through so-called “white collar” work linked, for instance, to governmental administration, welfare agencies, and a whole burgeoning “service” sector. Even before the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, the countries of the Eastern bloc were not immune to this shift, as witnessed by the growth of their state bureaucracies. In recent decades the MIGRATION into western Europe of overseas laborers – especially from Africa and from the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia – has further undercut many customary work-patterns based on class. Through most of the period since 1900 there has also been a general narrowing of income differentials, partly due to government policy (particularly notable in eastern Europe during the decades of Soviet hegemony) and partly as a result of inflation which at times has operated with unprecedented severity. One result of the squeeze on middle-class incomes has been the virtual disappearance of domestic servants. The increasing availability of labor-saving devices has further encouraged bourgeois families to tackle their own housework. Since the mid-twentieth century women – not least, middle-class wives – have entered the labor market in unprecedented numbers, reversing the traditional scenario in which they were encouraged to remain at home. In western Europe, and increasingly eastwards too, previous luxuries such as motor vehicles and foreign tourism have ceased to be exclusive to the middle or upper classes. Broadened availability of education has also improved social mobility and offered access to well-paid jobs in an increasingly meritocratic culture. As society has become more open, fragmented, and diverse, class distinctions have not disappeared. However, amid rapidly changing circumstances, analysts have struggled to redefine them with any secure precision. The rough picture that has most commonly emerged features an upper class comprising landowners, the entrepreneurial rich, and the jet-set wealthy; the middle classes (rather than class) comprising professionals, managers, white-collar workers, and the petit bourgeoisie; and the working classes (again in the plural), encompassing skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled manual workers. In the last decade of the twentieth century some sociologists claimed to have detected the emergence of a so-called “new underclass,” characterized by its dependence on state benefits, its aversion to work, and its criminal tendencies and promiscuity: a labelling that triggered from others the riposte that it merely resurrected nineteenth-century stereotypes of the “undeserving poor.” In sum, though social stratification may have become less pronounced over the last 200 years, class remains for contemporary Europeans a significant source of identity alongside other variables including ethnicity, age, and gender. It also persists as an indispensable item within the vocabulary of historians, even while no longer possessing the depth of explanatory authority once commonly supposed.

Clausewitz, Karl Philip Gottlieb von (1780–1831), military theoretician and general. Born in western Pomerania, he entered the Prussian army in 1792. Clausewitz was an active participant in the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS and the NAPOLEONIC WARS, which would inform his thinking. After the disastrous JENA-AUERSTÄDT campaign of 1806, he was instrumental, along with SCHARNHORST and GNEISENAU, in devising and implementing the reforms which rebuilt the Prussian army. Disgusted by the Franco-Prussian treaty which preceded the campaign of 1812, he transferred into the Russian forces. However, he regained his Prussian commission in time to serve at WATERLOO. He was subsequently appointed superintendent of the Allgemeine Kriegsschule (War College) at Berlin. During his career Clausewitz wrote several academic studies of WARFARE, but his most famous work on that topic (Vom Kriege) was unfinished at the time of his death from cholera, and was published posthumously by his wife in 1832. Said to be one of the most widely cited and least read books of all time, the work has nevertheless come rightfully to enjoy a totemic status because of the breadth, depth, and timelessness of its insights. Although it contained some advice on tactics and strategy for contemporary practitioners of warfare in the nineteenth century, its true value lay in the enduring nature of propositions such as the following: that war is a continuation of politics and there can therefore never be a purely military solution to military problems; that war is dominated by chance and chaos; that the simplest action, in war, proves difficult; and that attacks progressively lose impetus until the point where defense becomes strong enough to resist them. Vom Kriege thus proffers a uniquely structured and insightful way to think about warfare, and as such has enjoyed an unparalleled reputation.

Clemenceau, Georges (1841–1929), Prime Minister of France (1906–9, 1917–20). He is best known for his leadership during WORLD WAR I and for his uncompromising stance against Germany at the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT. Though born in the Catholic Vendée, Clemenceau came from a family notable for its republican sympathies and ANTICLERICALISM. Like his father, he trained as a doctor, but relinquished medicine for politics and travel. An opponent of NAPOLEON III, he spent much of the 1860s in the USA where he married an American, and imbibed further republican ideas. He returned to France in 1869, and a year later became mayor of Montmartre, where he remained throughout the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. During the PARIS COMMUNE, he mediated between the capital and the government of THIERS at Versailles, though the Communards doubted his loyalties. In July 1871 he was returned to parliament as a radical deputy and, over the next two decades, established a reputation as a fearsome left-wing critic of governments, on several occasions helping to bring down cabinets. He was a particular opponent of France's colonial policy, believing that the nation's destiny lay in a war of revenge against Germany to recover the lost provinces of ALSACE-LORRAINE. Having been implicated in the Panama Canal scandal (see LESSEPS), by receiving funds to fight his campaign against General BOULANGER, he lost his parliamentary seat and devoted more time to journalism, establishing the newspaper L'Aurore. This was the journal that published Zola's famous article “J'accuse,” which exposed the miscarriage of justice in the DREYFUS AFFAIR. In 1902 Clemenceau returned to parliament as senator for the Var and supported the tough anticlerical measures which led to the separation of church and state in 1905 (see also CATHOLICISM). During his first premiership he did not hesitate to involve soldiers in strike-breaking, despite his left-wing leanings. He had a frosty relationship with JAURÈS and the newly united socialist party. Tremendously patriotic and personally courageous, he was an early critic of the way in which France was fighting World War I. In November 1917 he returned as prime minister and, through sheer force of personality, established enormous control over parliament and the conduct of the war. Unafraid of the generals, he was especially dismissive of the cautious tactics favored by PÉTAIN, and supported instead the offensive strategy of FOCH. In 1919 Clemenceau, nicknamed “the Tiger,” held out for a tough peace settlement against Germany: territorial dismemberment and hefty REPARATIONS. It was later argued that the failure to impose such a peace contributed to World War II. In 1920, now celebrated as “le père, la victoire,” he was thought of as a candidate for the presidency, yet he had no wish to campaign for an office he called “as superfluous as the prostate gland,” and chose retirement from public life. His career had largely coincided with the life of the THIRD REPUBLIC. Committed to the ideals of 1789, he was always willing to challenge the enemies of the Republic (MACMAHON, Boulanger, the monarchists, the anti-Dreyfusards, the vacillations of his own compatriots, and the external threat of Germany). Thus he did much to secure the place of republicanism in the mainstream of French politics.

Code Civil Corpus of French laws governing the person and property, initially published in 1804 and known after 1807 as the Code Napoléon. The FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 had laid the groundwork for legal reform by sweeping away the more than 400 law codes in force under the ANCIEN REGIME. Yet it had made little progress towards the goal, enunciated by the CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY in December 1791, of providing France with a single unified system. As with so many aspects of government, NAPOLEON I took over and brought to fruition what the Revolution had started, appointing a commission of four to complete the task, and personally supervising much of the final work. As a result, the Code bore a Napoleonic imprint. It tended to be conservative, a trait best exemplified by its sanctification of property and the treatment it afforded to women (see GENDER), who were subject to the authority of the male head of the household. The Code, or some version of it, was imposed or adopted by most of the territories that came under sustained Napoleonic domination, and in this way proved immensely influential outside the borders of France. The Code Civil was succeeded by the Code of Civil Procedure (1806), the Commercial Code (1807), the Criminal Code (1808), and the Penal Code (1810). A Rural Code was drafted but never implemented.

Code Napoléon (see CODE CIVIL)

Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea (1899–1938), nationalist agitator and leader of the IRON GUARD. Too young to fight for his native ROMANIA in World War I, he nonetheless received a military upbringing and developed a respect for the values of discipline and order. Such an outlook was accompanied by dislike of the modern world, violent ANTISEMITISM, and hatred of COMMUNISM as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy. He moved into far-right politics, helping to break up the Iasa strikes of 1919–20 and mobilizing assaults on Jewish students. In 1923 he assisted in the foundation of the National Christian Defense League (LANC) which was appalled by the new constitution that granted equal rights to Jews. Gravitating to TERRORISM, Codreanu involved himself in a plot to kill the prime minister, and in 1924 murdered the police prefect Constantin Manciu, but on neither occasion was he successfully prosecuted. In 1927 he established the Legion of the Archangel Michael, having undergone a vision of the Saint during one of his many stays in prison. Modeled on FASCISM, this movement enjoyed considerable popularity thanks to the onset of the GREAT DEPRESSION[2] and the failings of parliamentary democracy under King CAROL II. In 1930 the Legion acquired a youth wing, the Iron Guard, by which name Codreanu's movement became popularly known. Borrowing heavily from MUSSOLINI'S blackshirts, it continued a policy of murder and intimidation. The banning of the Guard in 1933 did not prevent its assassination of the liberal prime minister Ion Duca. Codreanu went into hiding, but his movement continued to thrive. In 1938, exasperated by a wider lawlessness, Carol II inaugurated a personal dictatorship. Codreanu was arrested and summarily killed, yet the Iron Guard soon succeeded in reconstituting itself.

Cold War A condition of hostility between states that falls short of all-out military conflict. The term is most commonly used to designate the Russian–American “superpower” confrontation of the post-1945 period, which lasted until the fall of the BERLIN WALL in 1989 and the formal dissolution of the SOVIET UNION two years later. The origins of the Cold War have been hotly debated. In the West, orthodox history put the responsibility on an aggressive USSR, eager to dominate eastern Europe in defense of its security interests and to advance the cause of world COMMUNISM against the hegemony of CAPITALISM; conversely, the American response as expressed in the TRUMAN DOCTRINE was viewed as one of containment. However, revisionist scholars have insisted that the USA, keen to maintain its premier position in international affairs and holding a monopoly of atomic weaponry until 1949, must shoulder its share of the blame. They have also challenged the assumption that the hostility dated no further back than the end of WORLD WAR II. Some have attributed its emergence to the delay of the Western allies in opening a second front against the AXIS powers; or to the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917 which created two antagonistic ideological camps; or even to nineteenth-century trade rivalry between America and Russia. World War II had certainly masked longstanding distrust between the liberal democracies and Soviet TOTALITARIANISM and this reemerged starkly in the bipolar postwar world. There has been less disagreement about the various manifestations of the Cold War: in economic competition, in an arms race, in “culture wars” where both sides flaunted the merits of their respective politico-economic systems, and in proxy conflicts fought in the developing world.

Two contrasting models for economic, social, and political development emerged in Europe after 1945, each broadly matching the sphere of military predominance associated with one of the superpowers. This division into East and West was reflected in CHURCHILL'S declaration of March 1946 at Fulton, Missouri, that an “Iron Curtain” had fallen across Europe. The MARSHALL PLAN, introduced by the USA in 1947 in a bid to secure the West for democracy, helped to promote the material wellbeing that underpinned many other social and political postwar developments. It was designed to strengthen free-market economies and pluralistic politics, and it helped a new generation of politicians to promote policies based on collaboration, open frontiers, and long-term investment. The new regimes in eastern Europe, most of which joined the Moscow-dominated economic alliance known as COMECON, followed STALIN'S model of change. Much agricultural land was subject to COLLECTIVIZATION, while industry was placed under state control. Central planning institutions fixed prices, wages, and output targets. The managed economy offered some welcome benefits: subsidized health care, housing, and education, and guaranteed employment. Moreover, as in the West, the immediate postwar period witnessed dramatic economic growth which translated into higher living standards for most people. However, by the mid-1950s strains in the economies of the Soviet bloc were becoming apparent. These derived partly from an ideological insistence upon collectivization and the primary output of heavy industries, but also from the high levels of defense spending. The search for military – and especially nuclear – equivalence with the USA was understandable, but it distorted investment and research choices. Housing, transport, and COMMUNICATIONS suffered in particular, and the effects upon ordinary people were apparent in the soulless apartment blocks, the shortage and shoddy quality of consumer goods, the crumbling infrastructure, and the decay of the environment.

Worsening economic conditions led to popular unrest that was sometimes linked to wider demands for greater national autonomy and political participation. Yet the maintenance of uniformity across the Eastern bloc was crucial to the Soviet Union's security and influence, and it acted swiftly and ruthlessly to eradicate diversity, most notably suppressing the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956 and the PRAGUE SPRING of 1968. The Cold War provided the justification for the extension of mechanisms of repression that included secret police, censorship, restrictions on independent organizations, restraints on movement, and the direct use of military force. It did not give rise to comparable police states in western Europe and the USA, although it drove the growth of the secret services, and in the American case was the backdrop to Senator McCarthy's fanatical anticommunist campaigning.

Because the Cold War was partly fought over “rival ways of life,” it was waged through rhetoric and symbols as both sides sought to manage public opinion, expectations, and morale. The communist takeover of China in 1949, followed swiftly by the Korean War of the early 1950s, led the West to step up the use of propaganda, especially radio broadcasts. In eastern Europe the totalitarian regimes were able to make an even more concerted attempt at ideological mobilization through the state-controlled newspapers, TV and radio, posters in the workplace, public architecture, and the educational system. Additionally, both sides drafted in artists, writers, and intellectuals to give legitimacy to their respective systems. In 1949 Stalin launched the Movement for Peace. Designed to stress Western bellicosity and the peaceful intentions of the Eastern bloc, it sponsored communist intellectuals and artists to propagandize on behalf of the Soviet Union. In the West the Congress for Cultural Freedom was founded in 1950 to offer an intellectual counter- blast. Additionally, “America houses” were established across much of non-communist Europe. These contained libraries of selected books and hosted guest lectures. Soviet efforts to portray American culture as crass and banal undoubtedly enjoyed some success, especially in France and Italy whose populations needed US help but feared “Cola-colonization.” On the other hand, American music and films were generally popular in the West, where, if the erosion of the communist vote through the 1950s and 1960s is any guide, there was only one clear victor in the culture wars.

The two main protagonists in the Cold War never came directly to blows, though they were close to it during the 1948–9 BERLIN BLOCKADE and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Prompted by the former and by the detonation of a Soviet nuclear device, NATO was created in 1949. The admission of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY to it in 1955 spurred the counter-formation of the Soviet-dominated WARSAW PACT. The confrontation of these two military alliances produced a stand-off, centered on mutual nuclear deterrence, which maintained the peace in Europe. However, in the developing world the two superpowers tested each other's military and ideological commitment in a series of proxy conflicts. The best known of these were the Korean, Indo-Chinese, and Arab–Israeli wars. But Africa was also drawn into the rhetoric and divisions of the Cold War, especially after the SUEZ CRISIS. Moreover, despite the USA's wish to exclude such struggles from its own backyard, superpower antagonisms spilled over into Latin America. Thus Washington intervened either covertly or openly in Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Bolivia; and it supported coups against Marxist governments in Guatemala and Chile. Inherent in many of the proxy conflicts was a struggle for self-determination and DECOLONIZATION, but grafted on to them were the ideological tensions which lay at the heart of the Cold War.

The economic and political strains in both the Western and Eastern blocs intensified in the 1970s. Both superpowers were now anxious to restrict the costly nuclear arms race of the preceding decade. The Soviet Union was acutely aware of discontent in the satellite states, especially Poland, and had no desire to repeat the military intervention of the Prague Spring. The West was suffering from inflation caused by the 1973 OIL CRISIS, and by the Vietnam War which had additionally illustrated that military confrontation was not necessarily the best way to deal with communism. All this encouraged a process of DÉTENTE. In May 1972 Richard Nixon travelled to Moscow, the first visit to the Soviet Union by a US president, where he signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) restricting the number and variety of missiles. Other summit meetings followed. In July 1975 at the HELSINSKI CONFERENCE the two sides, along with Canada and most European states, signed the accords whereby the Soviet Union pledged to enhance human rights while the Western powers agreed to recognize Europe's post-1945 frontiers. Détente was welcomed by FRG leader Willy BRANDT who, even while hoping for national reunification, tended to believe that the geopolitical division of Germany and the border with Poland were likely to remain permanent. However, détente merely slowed down the arms race, which revived in the late 1970s following the ill-fated Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the clampdown in Poland. The MX missile system, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), together with official and clandestine aid to Afghanistan and Central America, caused an unprecedented hike in US peacetime defense spending, putting strains on the economy. However, the difficulties for the Eastern bloc were far more severe, particularly as around 30–40 percent of the Soviet Union's resources were devoted to the military budget. Faced with deep-seated economic problems of its own, the regime was increasingly reluctant to take the pressure off its satellite territories by providing subsidized energy or by offering a market for their shoddy goods. Moreover, the flow of Western credit that had financed economic growth started to dry up as a result of the oil shock and in the face of an increasing likelihood that Eastern governments would default on their loans. Popular discontent deepened accordingly. Dissident movements had already begun to articulate a new view of civil society in which the individual would be able to live outside the structures and patterns associated with the communist authorities. In Poland, for instance, it led to the establishment of local trade unions and factory councils, a rejuvenation of political CATHOLICISM, and pressure for genuine workplace rights (see SOLIDARITY; WAŁĘSA). Throughout the Eastern bloc, the emergence of new civil organizations was often linked to a rediscovery of national and ethnic culture and identity, typically associated with the concept of central Europe. Having assumed the Soviet leadership in 1985, Mikhail GORBACHEV recognized the long-term unsustainability of the economic, military, and political situation. Accordingly, he aimed to revive détente with the West and (altogether less successfully) to restructure communism from within. His policies eventuated in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 which brought about the collapse of the communist system and the effective end of the Cold War. (See also Maps 11 and 12)

collaboration Term often encountered by historians as meaning working with the enemy in wartime, frequently in a treacherous way. In all conflicts, there is necessarily a measure of cooperation between occupier and occupied, yet the term “collaboration” is most frequently associated with WORLD WAR II. This is because of the totality of the hostilities and the scale of hegemony which NAZISM enjoyed over continental Europe, though it should not be forgotten that the SOVIET UNION also encouraged collaboration wherever it conquered between 1939 and 1945.

Different versions of the phenomenon existed, the most obvious being “state collaboration.” All countries overrun by the forces of HITLER and STALIN had to evolve some relationship with their new rulers, though the nature of governance was generally dictated solely by the occupier. In the BALTIC STATES of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1939–40, Stalin facilitated puppet regimes comprising local communists. In Hitler's case the factor of RACISM added further complexity to the more conventional military and economic considerations. Those territories making up the Greater Germany – Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen and Malmédy, parts of Poland, and the Sudetenland – were fully integrated into the Reich. Here, much of the population already saw itself as German and willingly collaborated with the Nazis, though this was not true of Poles and Lorrainers, nor indeed JEWS. Relative freedoms were permitted to the governments of Holland, Denmark, and Norway, in the hope they would recognize their Aryan destiny, yet even these relatively compliant regimes became less cooperative as the Nazis increasingly interfered in their affairs, plundering their economies and manpower. Some areas, such as Belgium and northern France, were from the very start placed under tight military supervision, and expected to follow orders. In the BALKANS, it sufficed to establish puppet regimes. In what remained of Poland, surviving as the so-called GENERAL GOUVERNEMENT, collaboration was barely forthcoming, though a small minority of Poles were dragooned to work in CONCENTRATION CAMPS and some even volunteered for the Einsatzgruppen (special task forces of the security police). Collaboration was much more evident in the Ukraine where the population was keen to slough off Soviet rule, little knowing the even greater barbarities that awaited them.

All these governments and peoples were compelled to reach an accommodation with Germany. Some were keener than others, for instance the French VICHY REGIME, which was unusual in the amount of autonomy it enjoyed. Yet Hitler had no intention of conceding anything that might threaten his military position. This hard-headedness also affected his relations with allied states such as Hungary and fascist Italy, which increasingly came under German influence. At all times, Hitler wanted acquiescent leaders, such as Admiral HORTHY DE NAGYBÁNYA in Hungary, Marshal ANTONESCU in Romania, and Marshal PÉTAIN in France.

Alongside state collaboration, there existed an ideological “collaborationism” among those who sympathized with the NEW ORDER. Such collaborationists were a heterogeneous group – journalists, opportunists, black-market racketeers, and so on – who often sprang from the fascist parties (see FASCISM) of the 1930s, for instance QUISLING'S National Union Party in Norway. As earlier, they never enjoyed very much popularity. This was because, in most people's minds, they were too closely associated with the Nazis and the material deprivations of the war. They also failed to put up a united front. Their ideological divisions were mercilessly exploited by the Nazis who, again, had no intention of sacrificing real power lest the collaborators should become the focus for RESISTANCE movements. Perhaps only in Croatia, where PAVELIĆ'S Ustaše ran its own terror-state (see also TERRORISM), did collaborationists have a free hand. Ultimately the only real contribution Hitler welcomed from these ideological collaborators was their ability to recruit volunteers for the Eastern Front.

Other forms of collaboration also existed, notably in the economic sphere. Industrialists in western Europe, in particular, had to decide how far to go in assisting the occupier. Some (for instance Michelin, Wendel, Pechiney) were reluctant players; others, most obviously Renault, were far more enthusiastic. At another level, the black market too involved collaboration, if only because it was encouraged and exploited by the Nazis. There was also administrative collaboration, as civil servants, at all levels, found themselves working alongside new masters. Initially bureaucrats maintained that they were simply doing their job, as in peacetime, though this position became hard to justify whenever they were drawn into the so-called FINAL SOLUTION. In 1945 such officials typically protested that they had been following orders, but always in ignorance of the fate awaiting Jews and other deportees. Awful choices were also forced on Jewish elders who sometimes felt obliged to make compromises in order to sustain a measure of welfare provision in the ghettos. Other debates have focused on those women who had liaisons with the occupier – known in France as collaboration horizontale, “sleeping with the enemy,” a phenomenon highlighted there by the humiliations publicly inflicted on suspects at the Liberation.

In truth, all the peoples of occupied Europe were involved to some degree in collaboration, even if only of a passive kind. It was impossible to ignore the occupier's presence in the street or the cafés, or on public transport. Equally inescapable were the circumstances of occupation, such as a black market that was sometimes the key to survival. Even members of Resistance movements had to collaborate in order to maintain their cover. The resulting complexities of moral judgment created difficulties for postwar governments bent on doing justice. In France, for example, cultural collaborators were more likely to face the firing squad than those industrialists whose contribution to the Nazis had been much greater. Across Europe at large the ambiguity of much wartime behavior meant that memories of occupation would be all the more painful, and in many countries they have been collectively buried or otherwise conveniently remolded.

collectivization This was introduced in 1928, alongside the first FIVE-YEAR PLAN, as part of the drive to modernize the SOVIET UNION. During the 1920s, STALIN was increasingly concerned that the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY was not only failing to provide the food required for massive INDUSTRIALIZATION but also creating a new middle class in the shape of the KULAKS. His answer was to force the peasants into collective farms (see KOLKHOZ), under threat of death or deportation to the GULAG camps. Collectivization was pushed through with such enthusiasm that in 1930 Stalin temporarily halted the process, as the USSR had become “dizzy with success.” However, by the eve of WORLD WAR II nine-tenths of Soviet agriculture was collectivized. The experiment was a dreadful mistake. Though a small amount of private enterprise was permitted within the scheme, peasants were apathetic and had no real incentives to produce more, while the most prosperous group among them, the kulaks, were barred from the collective farms. Food production was always below the level required, and in the 1960s the Soviet Union began importing grain from the USA. It has been calculated that, on the collapse of COMMUNISM in 1990, 33 percent of agricultural produce emanated from private enterprises which owned approximately 5 percent of agricultural land.

colonialism (see under IMPERIALISM; DECOLONIZATION)

Comecon Western acronym for the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance formed by STALIN in January 1949. Within the COLD WAR context this trading bloc constituted his Soviet response to the challenge presented by the US-sponsored MARSHALL PLAN. Initial participants were the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Albania entered later in 1949 (but was expelled in 1961), and the German Democratic Republic participated from 1950. The formerly excluded Yugoslavia became an associate in 1965. Membership was also extended to Mongolia (1962), Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Comecon proclaimed itself as operating on the basis of exchange between the primary goods and energy resources sent from the Soviet Union and the finished materials prepared elsewhere in the bloc. In practice, the Council seemed to operate largely to the advantage of the Soviet economy, and there was constant tension between the Kremlin's desire to dictate trading strategy throughout eastern Europe and the resistance of the “satellites” to such centralizing aspirations. Mutual recognition between Comecon and the much more dynamic European Community (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION) did not occur until 1988, in the reformist era of GORBACHEV. However, Stalin's creation failed to survive the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91. In 1990 GERMAN REUNIFICATION caused the eastern provinces previously forming the GDR now to fall directly into the ambit of the EC, and by June 1991 Comecon at large had collapsed.

Cominform (see under THE INTERNATIONAL)

Comintern (see under THE INTERNATIONAL)

Committee of Public Safety English name for the Comité de Salut Public, the body which was central to the direction of THE TERROR that emerged amid the development of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. In January 1793 the CONVENTION had created a Committee of General Defense to coordinate the French war effort (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS), which up to this point had met with a series of reverses, and that led to the creation in April 1793 of the more specialized Committee of Public Safety. Initially comprising nine members who were renewed monthly – though this number was expanded to twelve in June and renewal became a formality – the Committee sat in secret, overseeing internal and external security issues and reporting to the Convention. From the summer, the Committee came increasingly to be dominated by the personality of ROBESPIERRE, who acted as its apologist. It now took on a wider portfolio, supervising all organs of government including its rival, the Committee of General Security, as well as generals and the representatives on mission, though finance always lay outside its remit. Following the fall of Robespierre in July 1794 (THERMIDOR year II in the nomenclature of the revolutionary calendar), the personnel of the Committee was altered and it lost its primacy in government, disappearing altogether under the DIRECTORY.

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Central to the history of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, this scheme became operative in 1962. It was foreshadowed by the 1957 ROME TREATIES, and reflected particularly a deal to ensure that the new common market should benefit not only German manufacturers but also French farmers. The CAP developed common prices for most agricultural products, together with a unified system of subsidies and import levies. By the 1980s, however, greater efficiency and technical progress in farming were generating large quantities of over-subsidized exports as well as unsalable surpluses, largely funded by general taxpayers to the advantage of an ever smaller number of rural producers. Fraud too had become rife. With the CAP consuming nearly half the European Union budget at the beginning of the new century, there was increasing pressure for structural reform. In 2003 the member states agreed on a transfer of subsidy (phased through to 2012) that would move towards rewarding land stewardship rather than specific crop production. The further decision to hold overall CAP expenditure level in real terms meant a potentially tougher regime for EU farmers, particularly since their number rose as a result of the membership enlargements of 2004 and 2007. (See also RURAL SOCIETY)

Common Market (see under EUROPEAN INTEGRATION)

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) The loose confederation (see FEDERALISM[1]) created by most of the constituent elements of the former SOVIET UNION when the latter was finally dissolved in December 1991. The newly sovereign countries most prominent in the formation of this CIS were Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Conversely the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania refused to participate. Georgia joined in 1993, but, after the brief South Ossetian conflict with Russian forces in 2008, gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the CIS with effect from 2009. The organization's principal spheres of coordinating activity have related to trade, finance, security, and prevention of cross-border crime.

communications A leading feature of modern European, indeed global, development has been a series of fundamental changes not only in the means of transportation available for people and goods but also in the ways through which information is disseminated. This dual revolution in communications has impacted, for example, on the scale and pace of social interactions, the conduct of economic and commercial affairs, the flows of MIGRATION, the nature of political organization and governmental control, and the handling of WARFARE, as well as transforming everyday attitudes towards constraints of space and time.

At the start of the modern period land transport was still largely reliant on the use of horses or other animal power, while most movement along the major rivers and particularly at sea continued to depend on wind and sail. Between the 1770s and the 1830s Britain's pioneering contribution to INDUSTRIALIZATION was assisted by enlargement of a canal system that eventually provided, most densely across England, a network of inland waterways for easier carriage of heavy loads. However, this kind of development –– reflected to some degree in northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands – was soon overshadowed in significance by the spread of railways. In the first years of the nineteenth century these emerged most typically within the limited context of horse- or steam-powered haulage over short distances between pithead and canal. But, within a decade of the 40-km (25-mile) Stockton and Darlington Railway opening in 1825 in Britain as a facility for passengers as well as goods, more rapid steam locomotion – effectively shrinking distance and soon requiring tighter standardization of time-measurement too – was already the object of an expansionist “mania” that quickly spread to continental Europe and indeed beyond. By 1850, for example, the length of track had already reached around 5,000 km (3,125 m) in France, and 8,000 km (5,000 m) in the German states (excluding Austria). Moreover, during the next fifty years, while each of these figures was increasing by a factor of six or seven, the lines in the Russian Empire mushroomed from virtually nothing into a network of more than 50,000 km (31,250 m), which by 1913 included the completed Trans-Siberian Railway as well. Such enlargements were central to an age of “coal and iron,” since a rail system not simply transported but also consumed huge quantities of these and other resources. Its infrastructure also demanded heavy commitment of fixed capital. In some cases, for example those of Belgium and Prussia, this came mainly from state rather than private sources; and in certain instances, such as the Russian one, much of the funding stemmed from foreign not domestic investment (see also BANKING).

Steam power also became dominant on the shipping scene. From the 1820s to 1860s it become quite common in river traffic and on short-haul sea routes, but its full maritime potential could not be exploited until the 1870s when engines became more efficient in using their heavy and bulky fuel. By the 1880s a majority of merchant vessels possessed steam, and by 1914 sail had been almost entirely superseded. Thus the greater speed and reliability of a new generation of coal-fired and metal-hulled steamships facilitated the final and most dynamic stage in the overseas expansion of European hegemony (see IMPERIALISM), as well as the transatlantic carriage of bulk cargoes from both North and South America. The completion of distant canalization projects via Suez (1869) and Panama (1914) was also highly relevant to Europe's own maritime history, while within the continent itself Germany's construction of the Kiel Canal (opened in 1895 and enlarged by 1914) between the Baltic and North Seas had even more strategic than commercial significance.

Around the turn of the century two other sources of power for transport were rapidly emerging. The first was electricity as applied to traction. This proved particularly important within the context of increasingly sprawling cities (see URBANIZATION), where mass transit from the growing “suburbs” to the center needed to be cheaply and efficiently provided. One response was the widespread introduction of electric trams. Another solution was to use this kind of power for partly subterranean railway systems: the London Underground, which originated in 1863, introduced its first electrical trains in 1890, and others followed on the new continental “metros” opened in cities such as Budapest (1896), Paris (1900), and Berlin (1902). The second new source of propulsion was the petrol-driven internal combustion engine (particularly as developed in Germany by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz) which, from the 1890s onward, began to supplant horse-drawn traffic by powering cars for the few and mechanized omnibuses for the many. This was, however, also the epoch in which a far simpler mode of popular travel benefited from improvements of design and manufacture that at last made the bicycle a relatively affordable means of personally-owned transportation in town and country alike.

The advances of the twentieth century generally followed these same broad lines. Even the new phenomenon of powered aviation (e.g. the Wright brothers' pioneering flight of 1903, or Louis Blériot's cross-Channel venture of 1909) was dependent on the petrol engine. While the airship (as launched by Count von Zeppelin in 1900) had a badly checkered career, the airplane soared to success. It had already shown something of its military potential by the end of WORLD WAR I, and thereafter it also developed as an increasingly accessible means of transport for both business and leisure passengers. The process of compressing most of Europe within a maximum flight-time of three or four hours was assisted by the widespread adoption of jet engines during the second half of the century. Nonetheless, still higher expectations about sustained progress towards providing passengers with regular supersonic travel were shaken by the negative cost-benefit outcomes from the Anglo-French venture of the Concorde fleet, which came into service in 1976 but was left grounded in 2003. One related feature of the most recent decades has been criticism of the environmental damage (see ENVIRONMENTALISM) regularly caused even by the routine subsonic forms of domestic, trans-European, and inter-continental aviation. In contrast, there has been rising support for extensive programs of “high-speed” rail tracking, aimed at rejuvenating Europe's long-distance train network through further improvements to the electrical technology that had long overtaken steam locomotion. Two recent engineering feats involving international connection – the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, and the Öresund Bridge-Tunnel from Denmark to Sweden (opened in 1994 and 2000 respectively) – incorporated, in different ways, such a rail element. Survival of the train seemed all the more imperative precisely because the popularity, convenience, and affordability of car ownership, plus the growth of motorized freight traffic, were tending to outstrip efforts towards averting extensive road congestion. Thus even the new multi-lane arterial motorways of Europe – dwarfing the pioneering “autobahn” constructions of the Nazi regime – now appeared all too often choked by the sheer abundance of their clientele.

The related issue of communications with reference to the transmission of information has also been revolutionized over the last 200 years or so. Apart from such limited exceptions as maritime flagging or the system of semaphore towers erected across France in the 1790s, such relay was still conducted in the early nineteenth century principally through the physical dissemination of NEWSPAPERS and other forms of messaging. The arrival of the railway clearly enhanced the pace at which material could be distributed. So too did the improved organization first of nationwide postal systems and then of cross-border mail arrangements, as formalized at Berne in 1874 through the General (soon “Universal”) Postal Union. However, by then, a non-physical form of much faster transmission had also been developed. Telegraphy on land via electric wiring began to be introduced from the USA to Europe during the 1830s and 1840s, before being extended through the kind of submarine cabling first laid between England and France in 1850 and across the Atlantic in 1858. Further advance was registered when the use of electric waves to reproduce speech led to the first telephones in the course of the 1870s; by 1900 these were operating across increasingly long distances and within systems over which European governments had generally assumed at least partial control.

Thereafter, some of the key characteristics of MASS SOCIETY as it developed in twentieth-century Europe were profoundly influenced by further innovations in the media of communication. Even as newspapers expanded their circulation and thus developed as part of the fabric of European popular culture, they had to compete in influence not only with the cinema but also – inside homes themselves – with radio broadcasting from the 1920s and 1930s onward and with the spread of television a generation or so later. Such was the potential influence of all these mass media that twentieth-century authoritarian regimes, whether right-wing or left-wing in orientation, felt the need to control them tightly as essential channels for official propaganda (see also TOTALITARIANISM). During the 1990s and beyond, the example of BERLUSCONI in Italy also indicated how dominance of a corporate “media empire” might itself be translated into populist political power. By the turn of the millennium a microelectronic revolution too was well under way, as transmission waves were bounced from geostationary satellites and as computer-based access to emailing and the internet took the speed and scope of communication to unprecedented levels. This was perhaps the most striking feature of an era of rapidly advancing “globalization” – one in which the European experience of novel modes of information transfer was becoming barely distinguishable from that encountered in every other part of the developed world.

communism A system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community, and where members contribute and receive according to their particular abilities and needs. The main theorists of this radical version of SOCIALISM were MARX, ENGELS, and LENIN, and the principal European example of an attempt to give it practical effect was the BOLSHEVIK regime, established amid the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917 and continued via the SOVIET UNION.

At earlier epochs such communal idealism was variously expressed in forms exemplified by the political thought of Plato, the aspirations of “primitive” Christianity and its monastic sequels, the writings of Thomas More, and the movement of the Levellers. Around the start of the modern period, within the context of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, it was again evident in the “Conspiracy of Equals” planned by BABEUF. Thereafter it pervaded the UTOPIAN SOCIALISM advocated in the early nineteenth century by FOURIER and CABET. By the 1840s the term “communism” itself was coming into use in France and Britain. On the eve of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 Marx and Engels, prompted by the so-called Communist League, published the short work that served thereafter to define the most distinctive characteristics of the creed. Here, in the Communist Manifesto, they gave a fundamentally materialistic twist to HEGEL'S view of historical progress as the resolution of successive conflicts between contending forces. They argued that a “scientific” (as distinct from merely “utopian”) socialism must be based on recognition of CLASS struggle as the fundamental determinant of all history. This meant that, with the feudal dominance of landed ARISTOCRACY now largely overthrown, the next revolutionary battle would involve engagement of the WORKING CLASS against the new hegemony of bourgeois CAPITALISM. Even as Marx and Engels acknowledged the extraordinary productive achievements of that economic system, they also insisted that it had been creating its own grave-diggers, principally in the form of an enlarged urban proletariat suffering from the dehumanizing and “alienating” conditions of INDUSTRIALIZATION (see also URBANIZATION) and from their treatment as mere wage-slaves. The approaching destruction of capitalism would produce a classless and non-conflictual society, where the state too would “wither away” after losing its role as principal agent for the dominance of one class over another.

Though the Manifesto talked already in terms of a distinctive “party,” it was only much later that communism acquired a substantial organizational base of its own. Meanwhile, it developed simply as one of the strands within the complex and highly disputatious movement of later-nineteenth-century European socialism. In 1867 Marx consolidated his position as the leading communist theorist by publishing the first volume of Capital, and later (in 1885 and 1894) two further installments appeared posthumously after editing by Engels. Back in 1864, these partners had also helped to create the First INTERNATIONAL, but its attempt at fostering solidarity collapsed in 1876 due largely to personal rivalries between Marx and BAKUNIN (see also ANARCHISM). Its successor, established in 1889, was also weakened by divisions, particularly between orthodox Marxists who continued to favor revolutionary methods and rivals such as BERNSTEIN whose “revisionism” advocated more gradualist and less violent procedures. By the turn of the century, the disputes of the left were becoming particularly acute in Russia, even though this was a country whose economic backwardness had not originally encouraged Marx and Engels to see it as a leading candidate for early revolution. However, in their preface to the first Russian edition of the Manifesto (1882), they had briefly hinted that, by virtue of the survival of certain forms of primitive communal organization such as the MIR, some different model of revolutionary acceleration might yet be available to anti-tsarist activists. This was certainly the hope encouraged by LENIN, whose work of 1902 entitled What is to be done? made the case for a professionalized revolutionary cadre capable of swiftly exploiting the Russian situation. After the Social Democratic Labor Party split the following year into the rival factions henceforth known as Bolsheviks and MENSHEVIKS, it was the former grouping which, under his leadership, became the focal point for the development of the Marxist–Leninist version of communism so important to twentieth-century European history.

Having proved unable to profit immediately from the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905, the Bolsheviks fared better in exploiting the opportunities offered to them by the tsarist regime's mishandling of WORLD WAR I. Following the abdication of NICHOLAS II in March 1917, they controlled the Petrograd SOVIET that increasingly provided an alternative source of authority to the more moderate republican Provisional Government. Though in July Lenin's initial attempt at a coup failed, in early November he led a decisive Bolshevik takeover and by January 1918 had established a monopoly of power. This was the point at which communism lost its innocence, as it ceased to be a radical critique of existing social and political structures everywhere and assumed a more demanding responsibility for implementing something allegedly better, both within Russia and (as far as possible) beyond. To this end, the Bolsheviks negotiated an early exit from the world war. They also rebranded themselves as the Communist Party, while creating a new Third International (or Comintern) to coordinate the formation of parallel groupings abroad. Over the next two or three years a schism between the communists and other kinds of socialist parties was institutionalized across eastern and western Europe alike. However, as the failure of the SPARTACIST RISING in Germany and the collapse of Béla KUN'S regime in Hungary served to suggest during 1919, the exportation of Bolshevik revolution was no easy matter. In its isolation, and faced by the perils of the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, Soviet communism became quickly associated with the personal dictatorship of Lenin and, as a continuation of his pre-war emphasis on organizational elitism, with the imposition of state-party control barely disguised by talk of “democratic centralism.” This was the mode in which the regime embarked upon a task of which the theoretical status was disputable – that of using political power to transform Russia's supposedly substructural economic conditions. Even the much-vaunted federal constitution of the Soviet Union (introduced in late 1922) could not obscure the realities of dictatorial centralization. Under these circumstances it was already far from safe to criticize the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP) openly for its compromise with profit motivation and its implicit recognition that transition to communism was far from imminent.

From the mid-1920s the Soviet regime, now led even more dictatorially by STALIN, prioritized the consolidation of “socialism in one country” rather than the “permanent revolution” championed by TROTSKY. The latter contended that a country as backward as theirs could not establish, while isolated within a global capitalist system, a truly communist order. In essence, without proletarian revolution in at least some economically more advanced societies, the Russian effort would be doomed either to self-betraying stagnation or to direct defeat from abroad. For his opposition, Trotsky was deported in 1929 and assassinated in 1940. As for Stalin, at the end of the 1920s he was using his unrivalled authority to replace the NEP with the first of his FIVE-YEAR PLANS. This involved centralized state-direction of industry as well as disastrous experiments with agricultural COLLECTIVIZATION. In so far as the vast disruptions and sufferings could not be entirely concealed by state propaganda, they were justified to the Communist Party at home and to a large range of “fellow-travelling” sympathizers abroad as the necessary price for revolutionary survival. Freedom of expression and conscience suffered too, as the Stalinist version of communism became during the 1930s something just as notable for its TOTALITARIANISM – a feature further underlined by the GREAT PURGES and the growth of the GULAG that characterized much of the rest of the decade. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the most creative revisions of the Marxist tradition had been occurring elsewhere, as with the case of GRAMSCI. Yet the fact that this founder of the Italian party was held in one of MUSSOLINI'S jails from 1926 until his death in 1937 exemplifies the many difficulties which communism was encountering even beyond Russia, especially when threatened by the rise of FASCISM and NAZISM. If the Kremlin's resort to cooperation with socialists via various POPULAR FRONTS was merely belated, its signature of the NAZI-SOVIET PACT of August 1939 involved a far deeper intellectual as well as political betrayal of the European left.

Yet as WORLD WAR II proceeded, and particularly after Germany's invasion of the USSR in 1941, communists made a major contribution to anti-fascist RESISTANCE in many countries. Moreover, when the conflict ended, the RED ARMY was occupying much of central and eastern Europe. Thus by the later 1940s Stalin had been able to export Kremlin control on a scale that had proved impossible thirty years earlier. Although the communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Albania (as well as the newly-triumphant Maoist one in China) followed independent paths, Marxism as interpreted by Moscow was now the governing force across one half of COLD WAR Europe. Stalin and his successors also sought obedience from Communist parties in the West, where the French and Italian movements were the most active, but with diminishing compliance (see also EUROCOMMUNISM). Despite the “destalinization” that occurred under KHRUSHCHEV, repression of the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956 – and, later, of the 1968 PRAGUE SPRING too –– did nothing to enhance the allure of communism in the Soviet style. More broadly still, through the years of drift under BREZHNEV and along the road to the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 throughout Moscow's “satellite” system, it became increasingly plain that the Kremlin model remained not simply dismissive of individual freedom and pluralistic DEMOCRACY but even incapable of matching the economic dynamism and material wellbeing still generally sustained in the West. So it was not within capitalist Europe, but eastwards beyond a dissolving Iron Curtain, that the most remarkable (and largely peaceful) revolutions of the late twentieth century would occur. The most significant one came eventually in the USSR itself. After seventy years of Soviet rule, not even the undoubtedly courageous attempts of GORBACHEV to reconcile glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – could restore faith in the regime's ability to effect transition towards the (perhaps, after all, utopian) condition of social harmony envisioned by Marx. Thereafter, in the European sphere, the principal divide lay between those who argued that communism had been tried but found severely wanting and those who still sought to console themselves with the belief that it had never been properly implemented at all.

Compromise of 1867 (see AUSGLEICH)

Comte, Auguste (see under POSITIVISM).

concentration camps In their original form, these were centers for the internment of civilians who might be supportive of enemy forces. As such, they were used by the Spanish army following the Cuban rebellion of 1895 and by the British in the Boer War of 1899–1902. The term eventually became more generally applied to sites where political dissidents could be imprisoned for punishment by “corrective labor” and torture, or indeed by death from summary execution or other mistreatment. Establishments of that kind were first instituted by the BOLSHEVIKS during the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, before being massively multiplied across the GULAG system of the SOVIET UNION. It was, however, HITLER who made most use of the specific label “concentration camp” (Konzentrationslager, or KZ), which he borrowed deliberately from the British in order to score a propagandist point. The development of these centers within Germany rapidly followed NAZISM'S accession to power in 1933. Hitler's located the first camps in such places as Dachau near Munich and Sachsenhausen close to Berlin, thus registering a very visible warning, especially to left-wing activists, about the price to be paid for opposing him. During the first six years of his regime more than 200,000 Germans were imprisoned (though not always permanently) for political offences. By the later 1930s the internments were extending to those whom the regime deemed dangerous for reasons of alleged racial inferiority (e.g. Jews and gypsies), religious orientation (e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses), or deviant “antisocial” behavior (e.g. homosexuals). This KZ system also spread geographically, in tandem with the enlargement of German-controlled territory both prior to WORLD WAR II and even more markedly during the course of the conflict itself (when the Reich's Romanian and Hungarian allies also created similar camps). Thus Hitler's range of victims soon expanded to include non-German Jews, as well as other foreigners suspected of promoting RESISTANCE in regions under Nazi occupation.

By 1941–2 “non-Aryan” inmates were being rounded up ever more indiscriminately as Hitler's huge KZ network (involving some twenty main camps with hundreds of satellite establishments) became the basis for supplying compulsory mass labor in support of the war effort, and sometimes for providing involuntary victims of medical experimentation as well. This was also the stage at which, following the launching of Operation BARBAROSSA against the USSR, the Nazis further enlarged the KZ system not only to turn many Russian prisoners of war into slave laborers but also to implement the most radicalized version of the regime's ANTISEMITISM. The latter was embodied in the scheme of genocidal extermination that had been entrusted to HIMMLER'S SCHUTZSTAFFEL (SS) by the time of the WANNSEE CONFERENCE, with a view to achieving the so-called FINAL SOLUTION. In an effort to maintain secrecy, the camps now being built precisely for such exterminatory purposes were sited outside Germany, on Polish soil. The locations included Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka – together with Auschwitz (known to Poles as Oświeçim), which subsequently became regarded as the supreme symbol of concentration-camp terror (see also TERRORISM). There, within a wider complex of forced-labor units already in operation, the Birkenau death-camp (“Auschwitz II”) provided the base for fatal gassings that by January 1945, on this one site alone, had accounted for around 1.2 to 1.5 million victims (at least two-thirds of them being Jews). During the final months of the war, the distinctions between the official mass-murder camps and the rest of the KZ network were increasingly blurred, as forced marches of inmates away from the lines of Allied advance became combined with disease and malnutrition in a way that increased the death-toll still further. A substantial majority of the 6 million murders that resulted from the attempted “final solution” occurred directly within the major extermination centers. It is estimated that by 1945 at least 1.6 million other victims had suffered imprisonment elsewhere within the camp system, and that perhaps no more than a third of these had survived.

concordat Derived from Latin concordare (“to be of one mind”), this term is most regularly used to denote diplomatic agreements made from time to time between the papacy and secular powers. Such concordats have typically addressed problems of church–state relations, whether in countries where CATHOLICISM still retained a cultural ascendancy or in others where its relative weakness made guarantees of religious toleration seem altogether more imperative. Particularly under circumstances of increasing SECULARIZATION, the rivalries at issue have pertained to competing influence over such matters as government appointments, EDUCATION, welfare (see WELFARISM), property, legislation concerning marriage and other family affairs, and boundaries of jurisdiction between ecclesiastical and state courts. The most important example of an early-nineteenth-century concordat was that which Cardinal CONSALVI, acting on behalf of PIUS VII, negotiated with Napoleon Bonaparte (see NAPOLEON I) in 1801. This involved Rome in conceding the irreversibility of many of the changes ensuing from the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, including the abolition of tithes and the extensive sales of ecclesiastical property. However, it also recognized Catholicism as “the religion of the majority of Frenchmen,” and over the longer run enabled the church to regain some of its control over such matters as schooling and poor relief. In broad terms, the 1801 agreement survived as the basis for relations between France's ecclesiastical and secular authorities until abrogated by the latter in 1906. During the nineteenth century the papacy negotiated a considerable number of further concordats (e.g. with Bavaria in 1817, Prussia in 1821, Austria in 1855, and Portugal in 1886) aimed at protecting the interests of Catholicism across many parts of Europe. In the twentieth century the two most notable instances of such diplomacy occurred under PIUS XI, and entailed reaching some measure of accommodation with the anti- communist regimes led by MUSSOLINI and HITLER. Through the LATERAN TREATIES of 1929 the first of these dictators guaranteed the sovereignty of the Vatican City (see MICRO-STATES[5]) as well as educational and other privileges for the church, and thus resolved the deadlock that had existed since 1870 when the recently-formed Kingdom of Italy had virtually annihilated the remaining temporal power of the papacy (see also ITALIAN UNIFICATION; PAPAL STATES). An agreement with the Nazi regime followed in July 1933. Negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli (the future PIUS XII), it involved the church in yielding much of its moral authority so as to secure some degree of institutional and pastoral survival and in effectively sacrificing the survival of the ZENTRUM as a party-political focal point for German Catholics opposed to Hitler. Pius XI's more clearly anti-Nazi encyclical of 1937, Mit brennender Sorge, was tantamount to a belated recognition that the 1933 concordat had proved a far better bargain for Berlin than for the Holy See.

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement, founded in 1910 at Barcelona. It was designed to rival the Unión General de Trabajadores which had close links with the Spanish Socialist Party, though relations improved in 1917 when both trade union movements collaborated in a general strike. Bringing together the disparate strands of Spanish ANARCHISM, the CNT was distinctive from other unions in welcoming untrained workers and peasants and in being highly decentralized. With some 700,000 members, it joined the anarchist International Working Men's Organization in 1922, only to be banned a year later when Miguel PRIMO DE RIVERA came to power. Forced underground, militant elements founded the Federación Anarquista Ibérica in 1927. Though repression continued under the SECOND REPUBLIC (1931–6), the CNT was eventually legalized by the POPULAR FRONT. The organization continued to have qualms about participating in bourgeois government, but sided with the Republicans upon the outbreak of the SPANISH CIVIL WAR. Its cabinet representatives were soon marginalized by communist and other left-wing groupings, who combined to crush the CNT's Barcelona rising of 1937. Two years later the victorious Nationalists banned the Confederation, though some elements continued to operate in secret. After the restoration of democracy in 1975, a much weakened CNT was divided about how to respond to the new circumstances and played only a minor role in labor politics. (See also TRADE UNIONISM; SOCIALISM; SYNDICALISM)

confederalism (see under FEDERALISM[1])

Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) French trade union organization, founded in 1895 out of the existing Fédération Nationale des Syndicats. As in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, the CGT never managed to unite all the disparate strands of working-class organizations under one wing, and has been constantly dogged by ideological divisions and factionalism. Until WORLD WAR I, the CGT was dominated by advocates of revolutionary SYNDICALISM who rejected parliamentary democracy in favor of strike action. The movement thus retained a distance from the Socialist Party of JAURÈS. Though the CGT rallied to the war effort, in 1917 it was excited by events in Russia and the prospect of revolution in France. Following the split in the Socialist Party in 1920 and the creation of a Communist one (see COMMUNISM), a year later radicals in the CGT broke away to found the far-left Confédération Française du Travail Unitaire (CFTU). This new venture also had to compete with the Christian trade union movement, the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), established in 1919, which eventually underwent schism in 1964 when a majority created the non-confessional Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). At the time of the POPULAR FRONT in 1936, the CGTU and CGT reunited, but the NAZI–SOVIET PACT of 1939 led to bitter infighting and the expulsion of the communists, while the arrival of the VICHY REGIME entailed the suppression of trade unionism altogether. CGT members were prominent in the RESISTANCE and the organization reemerged in 1945 under communist control, something confirmed in 1947; a year later, non-communist trade unionists rallied in the Force Ouvrière (FO). The CGT's close association with the Communist Party brought mixed fortunes. At the time of the 1968 demonstrations, it seemed far removed from the concerns of the workers whose interests were better expressed by the CFDT and FO. Ever since, it has undergone a decline in membership, yet this is true of all French trade unions, among the weakest in Europe, and the CGT remains a relatively influential force among older industries.

Confederation of the Rhine English term for the Rheinbund, the grouping of states from southern and central Germany created by NAPOLEON I in July 1806 following his victory over the Russians and Austrians at AUSTERLITZ in the preceding December. The Confederation initially comprised allied or satellite territories of France, including at its core Baden, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt. It was subsequently expanded to include other states, notably Saxony (December 1806) and Westphalia (November 1807). The rulers of the confederated states largely arranged their government and administration on the French model. The terms of the Confederation committed all members to fight as one, and accordingly the German territories provided substantial levies of men and material in the ongoing NAPOLEONIC WARS. The emperor's failed Russian campaign (see MOSCOW, RETREAT FROM) and his defeat at the battle of LEIPZIG (1813) led to the defection of the member states. At the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 a new GERMAN CONFEDERATION was formed.

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (see HELSINKI CONFERENCE)

Congress of Europe Meeting of some 800 politicians, lawyers, economists, and other experts from many parts of Europe that was held at The Hague in May 1948. Organized by the International Committee of the Movements for European Unity, it was deliberately designated as a “congress” to echo the VIENNA CONGRESS peacemaking of 1814–15. CHURCHILL served as its President-of-Honor. Despite the insubstantiality of his own rhetoric about the need to create a “United Europe,” this all-party gathering heightened public consciousness about the campaign for EUROPEAN INTEGRATION and helped to inspire the formation both of the European Movement in October 1948 and of the COUNCIL OF EUROPE in May 1949.

Congress System A scheme of regular diplomatic meetings between the major powers, aimed at “maintaining the peace of Europe,” which emerged during the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15. It was then formalized in November 1815 through the QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE of Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain. After Vienna four further gatherings reflected this “system,” whose most influential advocate was the Austrian METTERNICH –– a champion of CONSERVATISM dedicated to combating the twinned evils of NATIONALISM and LIBERALISM. The Congress that began at Aix-la-Chapelle in September 1818 agreed to an enlargement of membership so as to include “restoration” France, which was now also freed of any further Allied occupation or indemnity requirements. The TROPPAU CONGRESS then met in October 1820 to discuss a response to revolutionary stirrings, especially in Spain and Italy. While Austria, Russia, and Prussia advocated a sweeping right to intervention, the British, who had only sent an observer to the meeting, opposed any such generalized license to interfere in the affairs of other states. These strains were still evident when, early in 1821, the powers reconvened at Laibach. Here Metternich secured authorization for the suppression of revolt in Piedmont and Naples, but nothing similar was agreed in respect of Iberian disorder. The fourth meeting, at Verona in October 1822, focused not only on events in Spain but also on the beginnings of what developed into the GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE from Turkey. Regarding the latter problem, the British fended off the threat of imminent Russian intervention by agreeing to press the Ottoman Sultan for better treatment of his Christian subjects. However, on the Spanish situation, CANNING (who had now replaced the less liberal CASTLEREAGH as foreign secretary) took an even more adamant stance, insisting that WELLINGTON, as his representative at Verona, should try to block all moves towards interference. When a French army did enter Spain in 1823, Britain condemned the move. As the Congress System and much of the post-Napoleonic alliance framework effectively collapsed, Canning famously observed, “Things are getting back to a wholesome state – every nation for itself and God for us all.” No further gathering under a “congressional” label occurred until that of Paris in 1856: this dealt with the aftermath of the CRIMEAN WAR, but within a very different diplomatic context from the one relating to the “system” that had ended in 1822–3.

Consalvi, Ercole (1757–1824), Italian cardinal and diplomat who succeeded in restoring papal influence at the end of the NAPOLEONIC WARS. Born into the aristocracy, Consalvi trained for the priesthood and studied law. In 1783 he entered the service of Pius VI, and held a series of prominent offices within the Curia. When France invaded the PAPAL STATES in 1798, he was imprisoned and deported to Sicily. He managed, however, to oversee the conclave entrusted with electing a new pontiff in 1800. PIUS VII then appointed him cardinal and secretary of state, and in 1801 sent him to negotiate the CONCORDAT with Napoleon Bonaparte (see NAPOLEON I). Never trusting Consalvi, the latter secured his resignation as the pope's first minister in 1806. Three years later the cardinal was forced into exile following his refusal to attend Napoleon's second wedding. At the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 Consalvi ably deflected Austrian designs on central Italy and convinced the great powers to resurrect the Papal States, though he was forced to relinquish the Avignon enclave. Given the poor health of Pius VII, Consalvi was now effectively in charge of the papal territories, where he promoted moderate reforms until ousted by conservatives on the election of Leo XII in 1823.

conservatism A disposition towards preserving established institutions, values, and traditions on the grounds of their likely superiority to any alternatives that might be newly devised and imposed in the name of “progress.” There has been much debate, not least among conservatives themselves, as to how far this attitude amounts to a systematic sociopolitical doctrine or “ideology.” However, greater consensus has developed about conservatism's persistent support for well-tested sources of temporal or spiritual authority, the preservation of CLASS hierarchy and due social deference, the centrality of the family, and the right to private property, as well as for the strict maintenance of law and order in protection of these and similar principles. Thus it has been regularly associated, for example, with MONARCHISM, ARISTOCRACY, and traditional military values, as well as with CATHOLICISM; and, in the context of RURAL SOCIETY, the natural conservatism of major landowners has frequently extended also to a peasantry suspicious of such modernizing forces as URBANIZATION and INDUSTRIALIZATION.

The radicalism of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 made it more imperative than before to formulate explicit defense of conservative attitudes. Whereas their soundness might have been taken largely for granted under the ANCIEN REGIME, such consensus no longer prevailed once the plea for Liberty to be yoked to Equality and Fraternity had been heeded. The most notable early response to the challenge came from Edmund Burke. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) has remained one of the most influential and subtle articulations of conservatism, particularly by virtue of its insistence on gradual transformation compatible with the grain of history and its converse warnings against the uncritical pursuit of utopian abstractions divorced from the cumulative wisdom of tradition. Such was broadly the spirit in which conservatives such as METTERNICH battled with LIBERALISM from the early nineteenth century onward, and in which their successors also had to confront SOCIALISM and COMMUNISM as these increasingly populist phenomena accompanied the political emergence of the WORKING CLASS.

In certain instances the reactionary stance (sometimes fortified by those aspects of ROMANTICISM that concentrated mainly on nostalgia for the past) was so rigid as to seem tantamount to blocking virtually any change at all. This was the case with those who after 1815 dominated the restored BOURBON regime in France (particularly under CHARLES X), or with tsarist rule in Russia during the reign of NICHOLAS I from 1825 to 1855. However, in general, the resilience of conservatism was better sustained through more flexible responses, which proved capable of limiting or rechanneling those political and socioeconomic forces of transformation within MASS SOCIETY that could not be totally resisted. In the words that the twentieth-century novelist Lampedusa would famously attribute to one of his Sicilian nobles amid the Italian upheavals of the 1860s, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This was the approach adopted by Metternich, for example, when at the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 he advocated only selective restoration of dispossessed rulers. Later, after the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, BISMARCK would pursue his own variant of conservative flexibility, as he harnessed the disruptive power of NATIONALISM to purposes associated with maintaining the authority of the Prussian military class and of his fellow-JUNKERS in particular. Furthermore, as leading statesman of the new GERMAN EMPIRE, he would go on to develop in the 1880s a pioneering model of paternalistic state-led WELFARISM which was intended precisely to undermine the appeal of any socialist alternative.

A particularly striking manifestation of conservatism in the early twentieth century was the clerico-royalist movement ACTION FRANÇAISE, inspired by MAURRAS. The mystical nationalism that it promoted also featured in the broadly fascist political style which, during the period between the two world wars, developed so widely across Europe. Insofar as Italian FASCISM and German NAZISM were reactions against the threat from Bolshevism (see BOLSHEVIKS) as unleashed by the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, they undoubtedly presented some conservative aspects. Yet those movements were still more deeply marked by efforts to achieve a radical and incessant mobilization of the masses, in a context where means and ends alike soon had little connection with the historic currents of European conservatism. The links with the mainstream were arguably stronger, however, in the case of other right-wing regimes or organizations from the 1930s and 1940s (for example, those led by SALAZAR in Portugal, by FRANCO in Spain, and eventually by PÉTAIN in France) that borrowed certain fascist trappings while generally pursuing more traditional forms of authoritarianism.

After 1945, in eastern Europe some aspects of conservatism were evident in the agrarian parties that briefly attempted to assert themselves before the Soviet Union imposed its communist “satellite” system across the region. Under freer conditions in the West, however, the conservative tradition survived through further adaptation. It became increasingly identified with right-centrist positions, and was often barely distinguishable from a moderate liberalism that stressed the rights of the individual, the merits of free markets, and the need to remain wary about enlargement of governmental power. Even so, while shifting towards the “middle ground,” conservatives also tended to accommodate themselves to the general consensus supporting some measure of interventionism, particularly with regard to state involvement in welfare provision. Over the decades since World War II, such modernized conservatism has been principally apparent in the broad movement of CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY, which, especially in Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany, remained as the focal point of electoral competition with the left. Christian Democrats were also initially influential in postwar France, but there, from the late 1950s onward, conservative politics developed an even more distinctively Gaullist tone (see DE GAULLE).

Though many European political groupings have promoted conservatism over the last two centuries or so, few of them have explicitly reflected this commitment in their choice of titles. The most notable of these exceptions relates to Britain, where during the 1830s the Tories first began to identify themselves as the Conservative Party. Since then, this has constantly been one of the main contenders for governing authority, chiefly competing first against the Liberal Party and later against Labour. During recent decades, the tensions within the British movement (especially as exemplified in the contrasting leaderships of HEATH and THATCHER over the period 1965–90) have been most apparent in ongoing dispute about the merits of a unifying “one-nation” approach to social policy and about the extent to which EUROPEAN INTEGRATION might threaten the UK's national sovereignty in the form hitherto hallowed by an insistently patriotic conservative tradition.

Constantinople agreements Also known as the Straits agreements, these were a set of secret undertakings signed on March 18, 1915, between the TRIPLE ENTENTE powers of Britain, France, and Russia which looked ahead to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) at the end of WORLD WAR I. Britain and France agreed that Russia would receive the DARDANELLES, part of the BOSPHORUS, and its long-sought prize of Constantinople (Istanbul), though the city would remain a free port. In return, Russia would endorse the territorial ambitions of its allies “in the near east and elsewhere.” A year later the SYKES– PICOT AGREEMENTS resulted in further plans for the apportionment of Turkish territory. In the event, the Constantinople agreements were never fulfilled, partially because of the failure of the Dardanelles campaign; nor did they achieve their broader aim of preventing Russia from concluding a separate peace. Much to Britain's embarrassment, LENIN reneged on all tsarist pledges and made public what had been agreed, thus increasing ATATÜRK'S determination to defy the Allies and claim Istanbul for the new Turkish republic.

Constituent Assembly Title adopted by the ESTATES GENERAL in July 1789 to indicate the deputies' determination to give France a new constitution. The period of the Constituent (July 1789–September 1791)was the most productive of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. The Assembly swept away the institutions of the ANCIEN REGIME and introduced radical reforms to the religious, administrative, legal, financial, and economic structures of France, many of which changes proved to be sensible and enduring. The work of the Constituent often revealed the influence of the ENLIGHTENMENT. Fundamental to its reforms was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (see RIGHTS OF MAN), decreed in August 1789, which laid down the principles on which the new constitution would be based. LOUIS XVI, unwilling to accept any loss of sovereignty, reluctantly agreed to the new constitution in September 1791, at which point the Constituent was dissolved. It was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly. (See also CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY)

constitutionalism (see under LIBERALISM)

Consulate The form of government (lasting from 1799 to 1804) established in France after the coup of BRUMAIRE. A new constitution, largely drafted by SIEYÈS, one the conspirators of Brumaire, provided for three consuls, of whom Napoleon Bonaparte (see NAPOLEON I), as First Consul, was the most influential. He appointed the officers of state and controlled the more important of the two elected bodies, the senate, which had the authority to issue decrees. Napoleon used his influence to initiate a series of domestic reforms, to restore order and security as well as to end – albeit temporarily – the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS begun in 1792. He used these successes to consolidate his position. In 1802 a plebiscite confirmed him as Consul for Life by an overwhelming majority. The Consulate endured until 1804, when Napoleon used a conspiracy against him to argue that France needed the security of the hereditary principle. The senate declared him emperor in May, a title confirmed in a subsequent plebiscite. (See also FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789)

Continental System French initiative (1806– 1813) taken during the NAPOLEONIC WARS, designed to supplant Britain's economic hegemony and force her into negotiations. The Berlin Decrees (1806) forbade France or its satellite territories to buy British goods or goods carried in British ships, while the Milan Decrees (1807) made neutral shipping calling at British ports a lawful prize. Preferential tariffs were introduced to favor French manufactures against those of continental rivals. Russia and Prussia were obliged to join the system under the TILSIT TREATIES in 1807. Overall, the Continental System developed by NAPOLEON I must be judged a failure. It was ill-conceived and riddled with exemptions. Economically, its effects were patchy: some areas of the French economy boomed, but the ports were hard hit, while the British economy weathered the storm. More importantly, in 1807 Napoleon invaded Portugal to enforce the blockade more effectively, which led to the debilitating French involvement in the Iberian PENINSULAR WAR. Subsequently, Russia's withdrawal from the System led the Emperor to undertake in 1812 the disastrous invasion of Russia (see MOSCOW, RETREAT FROM).

Convention Successor (1792–5) to the Legislative Assembly and the third of the elected bodies which governed following the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. For most of its existence, the Convention sat in the old riding hall of the Tuileries palace. Its first act, voted on September 21, 1792, was to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic. It then tried LOUIS XVI, who was executed in January 1793. On February 1, the Assembly declared war on Britain and Holland – France was already at war with Austria and Prussia – and extended this to include Spain in March 1793 (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS). Faced with external enemies, internal counter-revolution (especially the VENDÉE REVOLT), and with the threat from the “federalists” (see FEDERALISM[2]), the Convention responded by putting into place the mechanisms of THE TERROR. The workings of the Convention were initially hampered by the existence of two rival factions: the GIRONDINS who numbered around 200 supporters with a hard core of 35–60; and the Montagnards, so-called because they sat on the upper tier of benches, who numbered around 135 deputies. The majority of uncommitted deputies were referred to as the Plain or, more dismissively, the Swamp. The Girondins initially dominated the Assembly, but opened themselves to charges of MONARCHISM by urging that the king's fate be decided by a nationwide vote (interpreted as a delaying tactic), and by their attacks on the people of Paris and on working-class heroes such as MARAT and DANTON. After a popular demonstration on May 31–June 2, 1793, 29 Girondin deputies were arrested and thereafter the Montagnards established an effective dictatorship which was not ended until the fall of ROBESPIERRE in THERMIDOR (July 1794). After finally agreeing the form of a new constitution, the Convention sat for the last time on October 26, 1795, and was succeeded by the DIRECTORY.

Copenhagen, Battles of Engagements fought in 1801 and 1807 by the British fleet against Denmark during the NAPOLEONIC WARS. In 1800, Tsar PAUL I of Russia revived the League of Armed NEUTRALITY, a coalition of Baltic states first established in 1780, to prevent Britain from interfering with neutral shipping. Britain responded by targeting Denmark, the nearest and most vulnerable member of the League, and sent a force to attack her fleet at Copenhagen. The engagement was long and hard fought. At the height of the action, NELSON famously refused an order from the fleet commander, Sir Hyde Parker, to withdraw, putting his telescope to his blind eye and observing, “I really do not see the signal.” After all but three of the Danish ships were put out of action a ceasefire was agreed. The League was effectively ended. In 1807 British fears for the security of the Baltic were again aroused. Russia and France signed the first of the TILSIT TREATIES, and there were rumors that Denmark and Sweden would be coerced into the alliance which would give NAPOLEON I control of their fleets. A British force was again sent against Denmark. It bombarded Copenhagen and captured the Danish fleet of 15 ships of the line and 15 frigates. On both occasions, neutrality had been violated without even a declaration of war. This aroused concern not only in Europe but among some sections of British opinion too.

Cordeliers Club One of the most significant political clubs among the many that flourished following the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Founded in 1790 and meeting four times per week, the full name of the club was the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (see also RIGHTS OF MAN), but it took its abbreviated title from the old Cordeliers monastery in which it initially met. Because the monthly subscription was low, the club had a large working-class membership (including women), although its leadership was drawn from the middle class and included DANTON and Desmoulins as well as popular heroes such as MARAT. Its broad membership and radical policies differentiated the Cordeliers from the bigger JACOBIN Club. The Cordeliers took the lead in campaigning against the king after LOUIS XVI'S flight to VARENNES in 1791, which led to the CHAMP DE MARS MASSACRE. The club's influence waned after 1792, and following the arrest and execution of Hébert in March 1794 it was closed.

Corfu incident A confrontation in 1923 between ITALY and GREECE which gave an early indication of the aggressive nature of MUSSOLINI'S foreign policy. In the aftermath of WORLD WAR I, an international commission was charged with determining the boundaries between Greece and ALBANIA. Four Italian soldiers, including General Tellini, were involved in this task but, on August 27, 1923, they were ambushed and killed by unknown assailants on the Greek side of the border. Exploiting this episode to the full, Mussolini demanded the capture and execution of the attackers, plus hefty reparations. On August 29, after Greece failed to respond, Italy bombarded and occupied the strategically important island of Corfu, provoking international condemnation. The LEAGUE OF NATIONS referred the problem to its Conference of Ambassadors, entrusted with resolving issues arising out of the 1919 peace treaties. In the event, Greece was required to pay “compensation.” Following pressure from Britain and France, Mussolini's forces vacated Corfu on September 27, 1923.

corporate state System of government that claims to achieve due political representation through substantial reference to economic and other functional interest groups rather than simply to more conventional structures based on localities and direct individual suffrage. During the papacy of LEO XIII (1878–1903) the corporatist ideal was revived as a leading feature of social CATHOLICISM. Around the same time but from a different direction, it was further promoted by the rise of TRADE UNIONISM. In the 1920s and 1930s, and especially as the GREAT DEPRESSION[2] took its hold on Europe, corporatism continued to appeal to many of those who sought a “third way” between the extremes of COMMUNISM and of unfettered CAPITALISM. It was most clearly favored within the context of Italian FASCISM. Under the Rocco Law of 1926 MUSSOLINI'S regime banned strikes and lockouts, and organized different branches of industry into “syndicates” that included representatives from both workers and bosses. The state arbitrated in any major disputes, though it was generally perceived that corporatism was mainly a front for the interests of big business. Other right-wing authoritarian states – notably SALAZAR'S Portugal, FRANCO'S Spain, and PÉTAIN'S France – also experimented with corporatism, yet once again it was little more than an attempt to break the power of labor. Though tainted by its fascist associations, types of neo-corporatism have been practiced since 1945 in a number of countries, including Austria, and recently post-communist Russia.

Council of Europe An intergovernmental consultative organization formed in May 1949 with headquarters at Strasbourg. Inspired by the CONGRESS OF EUROPE, it had as its founding members the five BRUSSELS TREATY signatories, together with Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Norway, and Sweden. The Council was charged with promoting democracy and justice, and with protecting Europe's “common heritage.” Its organs included a committee of ministers and a consultative (later parliamentary) assembly, though without any binding executive or legislative authority. From the late-1950s onward the increasingly important EUROPEAN COURT[2] of Human Rights also developed under its auspices. Within the wider context of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, the Council remained formally separate from the institutions (and arguably the supranational ambitions) of the European Community or Union. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there were nearly fifty members, including Russia and most of the other states in post-communist eastern Europe.

Craxi, Bettino (1934–2000), Prime Minister of Italy(1983–7). Son of a Sicilian lawyer, he was brought up in Milan and dropped out of school to pursue a career in politics, joining the Socialist Party at the age of 18. Elected to parliament in 1968, he became president of the Socialists eight years later and, despite his earlier left-wing leanings, quickly purged the party of its Marxist past and distanced himself from the Communists. In 1983 Craxi became Italy's first Socialist premier. His tenure was marked by his willingness to stand up to the trade unions. He also resisted US pressures, refusing to hand over the Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas to the Americans, though he did permit the stationing of NATO nuclear missiles in Sicily. In 1984 he renegotiated the LATERAN TREATIES: although CATHOLICISM was still acknowledged as being “part of the historic inheritance of the Italian people,” it was no longer recognized as the state religion. Craxi was a consummate wheeler and dealer amid the confusions of Italian politics. In 1992 it was alleged that he had accepted several bribes, as had many other politicians of all parties. He was sentenced to a lengthy jail term. In 1994 he escaped justice by fleeing to Tunisia, where he eventually died in exile. The political fall-out of the corruption scandal helped precipitate the dissolution of the 100-year-old Italian Socialist Party.

Crimean War Conflict (1853–6) between Russia on the one hand and France, Britain, and (latterly) Piedmont on the other, labeled by A. J. P. Taylor as the “most unnecessary of wars.” It began with a Franco-Russian squabble over guardianship of the Holy Places in the decaying Ottoman Empire (see TURKEY AND EUROPE). This led Russia to occupy the provinces of MOLDAVIA and Wallachia, and the Ottoman regime to respond by declaring war in October 1853. But the causes went wider. The REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 had weakened Austria and Prussia, upsetting the balance of power in central Europe established at the VIENNA CONGRESS and encouraging Russia to pursue an expansionist policy southwards and westwards. This was anathema to Britain which feared a tsarist seizure of Constantinople and the BOSPHORUS that would threaten its Mediterranean interests. NAPOLEON III was similarly opposed to Russian expansion, and keen to reassert French authority. Accordingly, France and Britain sent warships into the Black Sea in January 1854 and declared war in March. This led to a hasty Russian withdrawal from the DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES. There the matter might have ended, but France and Britain were intent upon a prestige victory that would deter future Russian aggression. Thus they landed troops in the Crimea with the aim of capturing Sevastopol, the principal base for the Black Sea fleet. Despite costly victories at Alma, Balaclava (scene of the notorious charge of the Light Brigade) and Inkerman, the year-long allied siege of Sevastopol succeeded only in September 1855. British naval operations in the Baltic and the threat of Austrian intervention finally persuaded Russia to join the Congress of Paris. By the resulting Paris Treaty of March 1856 the Black Sea was declared neutral (though Russia subsequently used French defeat in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR to repudiate this agreement); the Straits Convention of 1841 was reaffirmed (see STRAITS QUESTION); the Danube was declared an open waterway; and Russia lost southern Bessarabia (see MOLDAVIA; MOLDOVA; ROMANIA) to the Ottomans. The conflict, which had claimed almost 700,000 lives, proved in some respects to be a watershed. In the context of WARFARE, the use of the telegraph (see also COMMUNICATIONS) had allowed governments to intervene in military operations from a distance and permitted the rapid reporting of events in the newspapers; steamships had made a decisive appearance in navies; and British logistical and medical inadequacies intensified ongoing efforts at military reform (see NIGHTINGALE). On the political front, Romania obtained international backing for its autonomous status within the sphere of Ottoman sovereignty, while Piedmont's involvement enhanced her standing in the cause of ITALIAN UNIFICATION. Above all, Russia's administrative and economic backwardness had been brutally exposed, and, although this produced reforms under ALEXANDER II, tsarist expansionism into Europe was rebuffed for a generation.

Crispi, Francesco (1819–1901), Prime Minister of Italy (1887–91, 1893–6), and RISORGIMENTO hero. Born in Sicily into a family of Albanian descent, he studied law before pursuing the politics of NATIONALISM. During the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 he was active in the unsuccessful revolt against Ferdinand II, after which he fled to PIEDMONT-SARDINIA and continued conspiring in the cause of ITALIAN UNIFICATION. He was expelled in 1853, whereupon he led a peripatetic existence moving from Malta to France before joining up with MAZZINI in London. In 1860 he accompanied GARIBALDI in the invasion of Sicily and then Naples (see TWO SICILIES). A year later, Crispi entered the parliament of the new Kingdom of Italy as a left-wing deputy. Shortly afterwards he abandoned republicanism for MONARCHISM, believing that VICTOR EMMANUEL II had the best chance of consolidating a unity which was still fragile. However, Crispi's arrogant and temperamental manner meant that he won few friends among royalists. In 1876 he was elected president of the Chamber, and in 1877 served as interior minister under Agostino Depretis before resigning when confronted by unproven accusations about bigamy. Crispi returned fully to frontline politics in 1887, as the first southerner to become prime minister. He also took the foreign affairs and interior portfolios, arousing anxieties about dictatorial ambitions. He certainly admired BISMARCK, and possessed authoritarian leanings which became increasingly pronounced during his later years and which have prompted some historians to see him as a forerunner of MUSSOLINI. During his first premiership, he initiated a remarkable package of progressive social, legal, and administrative reforms. In his foreign policy he was determined that the new Italy should be counted among the great powers, and thus he maintained the TRIPLE ALLIANCE, even though this meant alienating France. An economic crisis forced his resignation in 1891, but two years later he resumed the premiership with a view to curbing socialist disturbances in Sicily. He not only did that with particular brutality, but in 1894 also proceeded to curtail the electoral franchise of “liberal Italy” and to marginalize parliament. Foreign affairs remained his chief concern, and he was unshaken in the belief that the nation desperately needed overseas success. Thus, having already reorganized Italy's Red Sea possessions into the colony of Eritrea in 1889, he embarked in 1896 on the foolhardy Ethiopian adventure that resulted in defeat at Adowa. Crispi subsequently suffered parliamentary censure and was forced into retirement.

Crna Gora (see MONTENEGRO)

Croatia A constituent republic of the former Yugoslav federation (see YUGOSLAVIA) that achieved recognition of its own independent statehood early in 1992. Containing a predominantly Slav (and mainly Catholic) population of some 4.6 million, it covers territory in the western BALKANS running westwards from the Hungarian border and then southwards along an extensive but increasingly narrow stretch of the Adriatic coast. After a short period of medieval independence, the various parts of Croatia fell at different times under the rule of the Hungarian crown, the Venetian Republic, Ottoman Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE), and the HABSBURG EMPIRE. From 1809 to 1813 the Croats were governed as part of NAPOLEON I'S Illyrian province. Thereafter the region returned to Habsburg control. The rising force of Croatian NATIONALISM soon manifested itself in the ILLYRIAN MOVEMENT. A bid for greater autonomy led by JELAČIĆ amidst the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 proved abortive, and particularly after the Austro-Hungarian AUSGLEICH of 1867 the Croats became increasingly resentful about efforts to subject them to Magyarization. Upon the collapse of Habsburg rule at the end of WORLD WAR I, they once more declared themselves independent. However, in 1921 they were absorbed alongside their Serb and Slovene neighbors into what soon became known as Yugoslavia. When this was invaded by the AXIS powers in 1941, the fascist Ustaše of PAVELIĆ again proclaimed separate Croatian statehood, though the reality amounted only to a puppet-regime. In 1945 Croatia was brought back into a reconstituted Yugoslavia, led until 1980 by TITO. Though he himself was part-Croat, his centralizing communist (see COMMUNISM) government in Belgrade yielded little to the pleas for greater cultural autonomy coming from Zagreb. These were most strongly voiced during the “Croatian Spring” which lasted from 1967 until its suppression in 1972. When the Yugoslav federation eventually dissolved towards the end of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, a further bid for independence was launched under TUDJMAN. Despite the hostility of SERBIA in particular, the new state of Croatia survived the ensuing civil war across former Yugoslavia and became a party to the concluding DAYTON AGREEMENT. Following the death in 1999 of the increasingly autocratic Tudjman (whose own ultra-nationalist agenda clearly threatened the Serb and Bosnian minorities), Croatia began to move towards a more democratic style of politics. In parallel, its economic recovery from the devastation that the warfare of the early 1990s had inflicted (e.g. on industrial resources and on foreign earnings from tourism) proved to be increasingly dependent on a closer involvement with the broader processes of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. Croatia joined NATO in 2009, and by that time was also officially recognized as a candidate for potential entry into the European Union.

Croix de Feu A right-wing veterans' organization, founded in 1927 by Maurice d'Hartoy, which became the largest of the French paramilitary leagues of the 1930s. This transformation was effected by Colonel François de La Rocque, a nationalist army officer with an eye for organization. The Croix de Feu was particularly prominent in the riots of February 6, 1934 (see STAVISKY AFFAIR), but historians disagree as to whether it was truly a manifestation of FASCISM. However, its message and support, some 300,000 strong in 1935, were enough to frighten the left, and in 1936 the POPULAR FRONT outlawed the leagues, forcing the Croix de Feu to turn itself into a political grouping, the Parti Social Français (PSF). Had not the 1940 elections been postponed because of WORLD WAR II, it is likely that La Rocque's organization would have won several seats. As it was, the PSF became a staunch supporter of Marshal PÉTAIN and campaigned for the National Revolution of the VICHY REGIME. La Rocque himself was disquieted by the German presence and eventually engaged in several RESISTANCE activities, for which he was captured by the GESTAPO. He was subsequently rearrested in 1945 by the French authorities of the post-Vichy era, but died before his resistance record was fully acknowledged.

Crystal night (see KRISTALLNACHT)

Curzon line This frontier, separating POLAND from the territory claimed by the new Bolshevik regime in Russia (see BOLSHEVIKS), was first suggested by the Allied Supreme Council in December 1919. The idea soon became associated with the name of Lord Curzon, the British foreign secretary, who in 1920 revived it as a means of brokering an armistice in the RUSSO-POLISH WAR. The line itself roughly corresponded to that used in the Third Partition of Poland (1795), and ran from Grodno to the Carpathians. It was never acceptable to the Poles. In the Treaty of Riga (1921), ending their conflict with the Soviet regime, they affronted Moscow by managing to secure a border well to the east of what had been earlier proposed. Later, however, the NAZI–SOVIET PACT of 1939 largely adopted the Curzon line as the boundary between the imminent Russian and German occupations of Polish territory. During WORLD WAR II, STALIN continued to promote the Curzon solution in his negotiations over the future shape of eastern Europe. It was broadly accepted at the YALTA CONFERENCE, much to the dismay of the Poles, and the border was duly confirmed in a treaty of August 16, 1945. Poland was partly compensated by the gains of former German territory that were involved in the creation of its new western frontier, running along the ODER-NEISSE LINE.

Custozza, Battles of Austrian victories (July 24–25, 1848, and June 24, 1866) over Italian forces during the struggles for ITALIAN UNIFICATION. Following the popular insurrections of 1848 (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9) aimed at liberating Milan and Venice from the HABSBURG EMPIRE, CHARLES ALBERT of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA was persuaded to lead an army of Sardinian regulars and Italian volunteers against the forces commanded by the 82-year-old RADETZKY, who had been obliged to retreat to the Mincio. Although Charles Albert's troops were superior in numbers, the king proved a mediocre general. The still energetic Radetzky took advantage of his opponents' dispersed positions to defeat them comprehensively in detail. The Austrians recovered Lombardy, and a further victory at NOVARA in March 1849 ended the First Italian War of Independence. In 1866 numerically inferior Austrian forces, commanded by the Archduke Albert, were similarly victorious at Custozza against the army of VICTOR EMMANUEL II of Piedmont. Once again, poor Italian leadership and inspired Austrian tactics proved decisive. On this occasion, however, Prussian victory in the wider conflict (see AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR) led to Austria losing Venetia to Victor Emmanuel.

Cuza, Alexandru (1820–73), Prince of ROMANIA (1862–6). In 1859 this liberal nationalist was elected by the separate assemblies of MOLDAVIA and Wallachia to be the ruler of these two DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES. Cuza then continued to exploit the support of NAPOLEON III so as to overcome Austrian and Turkish opposition to a fuller integration between the territories than one based simply on a form of personal union under him. Though the whole area in question would remain under nominal Ottoman suzerainty until 1878, he achieved its effective unification and independence (as Romania) in 1862. Cuza was forced to abdicate four years later in favor of a foreign prince drawn from the house of Hohenzollern– Sigmaringen, and spent the rest of his life exiled in Germany.

Cyprus Island in the eastern Mediterranean, whose current population of more than 900,000 is four-fifths Greek and one-fifth Turkish in origin. Previously part of the Ottoman Empire (see TURKEY AND EUROPE), Cyprus became a British protectorate in 1878. It provided the UK with an important strategic base, and was formally annexed upon the outbreak of World War I. Following World War II the longstanding tensions between the two rival Cypriot communities became increasingly violent, particularly due to the terrorist activities of the EOKA movement which favored union (see ENOSIS) with GREECE. The UK's compromise solution of 1959–60, which made Cyprus an independent republic (albeit with some ongoing provision for British air-bases), continued to be challenged both by those who wanted a full takeover from Athens and by those who favored one from Ankara. By 1964 relations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots had deteriorated to the point where the UNITED NATIONS agreed to make its first European deployment of peacekeeping forces. Ten years later the administration of Archbishop MAKARIOS III, the founding president, was interrupted by the ill-organized bid for enosis launched from Athens under the regime of the so-called GREEK COLONELS. The principal result was Turkey's military occupation of northern Cyprus. Though Makarios soon resumed his presidency and retained office until his death in 1977, the island stayed divided. A “blue line” of UN peacekeepers henceforth separated the predominantly Greek region forming the official republic to the south from the occupied territory that Ankara proclaimed as the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus and later (from 1983) as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Neither of these two labels served to win any international recognition for this creation, covering about a third of the island and containing around a quarter of its population. By the turn of the century the need to break the continuing deadlock was assuming greater urgency because of wider opportunities in the general area of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. A plan from the UN for a two-state federation (see FEDERALISM[1]) with an alternating presidency went to referendum in 2004. Although accepted by the Turkish community, the proposal could not be implemented because of its rejection by the Greek one. When in that same year the rest of Cyprus entered the European Union, the north therefore remained excluded. This unresolved dispute about the relationship between ethnicity and statehood on the island seemed likely to continue as one of the chief complications affecting negotiations about some future admission for mainland Turkey too.

Czartoryski Leading aristocratic family in POLAND-Lithuania. It came to prominence especially in the later eighteenth century when Princes Michael and Augustus wielded political power throughout most of the Commonwealth, and secured the election of their nephew, Stanislaus Poniatowski, to the throne in 1764. The family was also at the forefront of cultural life, with Princess Sophia playing a major role in introducing ENLIGHTENMENT ideas into the country. It suffered during the three partitions of Poland, and its estate at Puławy was lost to the Russians in 1794–5. Paradoxically, Prince Adam Jerzy (1770–1861), who was taken to Russia as a hostage, became friends with Tsar ALEXANDER I and served as Russian deputy foreign minister (1803–6). He became a reluctant conspirator in the revolt against Russian rule in 1830–1 (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2), and served as president of the five-man executive which ran the provisional government. With the failure of the revolt he was forced into exile in Paris. He remained influential in the maintenance of Polish national and cultural identity, using his diplomatic and aristocratic contacts to work tirelessly for an independent Poland, though his enduring belief in the benefits of aristocratic rule gradually alienated him from younger and more radical émigrés.

Czech Republic One of the two SUCCESSION STATES (the other being SLOVAKIA) inaugurated on January 1, 1993 following the peaceful dissolution of CZECHOSLOVAKIA. This new creation (with a population of some ten million) covered Bohemia and Moravia, regions of largely homogeneous Czech ethnicity. Its founding head of state was HAVEL, who as president of Czechoslovakia had previously attempted to avert the “velvet divorce” that had eventually come about largely in response to the demands of Slovak NATIONALISM. During the rest of the 1990s the Czech Republic, boosted by substantial foreign investment, pursued policies of rapid Westernization in economic and security matters. In 2004 it became, like Slovakia, a member both of the European Union (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION) and of NATO.

Czechoslovakia The first phase of this state's existence spanned the years from 1919 to 1939, and the second ran from 1945 to the end of 1992. Until the defeat of the HABSBURG EMPIRE in WORLD WAR I the Czechs and Slovaks had long been among the Slavic peoples kept under Austrian imperial rule. In the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, PALÁCKY'S movement for greater Czech autonomy and for Slav equality with the emperor's Germanic subjects made Prague one of the major centers of dissidence (see also NATIONALISM; PAN-SLAVISM). On the collapse of Habsburg authority in October 1918 a Slovak National Council voted to support the creation of a potentially thorny union with the economically more advanced Czechs. At the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT of 1919 this policy was endorsed by the victor powers who hoped that such a combination would render the new Czechoslovakian republic less vulnerable to any resurgence of expansionist ambitions in Berlin. They further aimed to strengthen its strategic geography and industrial potential by permitting it to incorporate another part of the former Habsburg territories, the SUDETENLAND. This area's German-speaking population of some 3 millions henceforth formed a western extension to the overall territory, which was otherwise mainly inhabited by some 7 million Czechs and 2 million Slovaks, together with smaller numbers of Hungarians and Ruthenes.

Despite the difficulties arising especially from its multi-national composition, Czechoslovakia as led by Tomáš MASARYK and BENEŠ made more progress during the 1920s and early 1930s than any other post-Habsburg SUCCESSION STATE towards consolidating democratic parliamentary practices and social welfare provision. This made its eventual betrayal, by the APPEASEMENT policies of the British and French governments that had once so firmly backed the launching of the Czechoslovak union, all the more tragic. After the ANSCHLUSS of March 1938 with Austria, HITLER identified Czechoslovakia as his next target. He fomented a Sudeten crisis, which in September (via the MUNICH AGREEMENT) the British and French premiers resolved only by capitulating to the German leader's demand that Czechoslovakia be forced to transfer that region to him while also ceding other disputed holdings to Hungary and Poland. What now became known as the Second Republic survived just for six further months, until the completion of the Czechoslovak state's dismemberment in March 1939. That was the point at which Hitler, exploiting (but also accentuating) the growing tensions between Slovaks and Czechs, ordered his forces to march on Prague under the pretext of saving each of these groups from the other. Once in occupation, he directly annexed Czech-inhabited BOHEMIA and Moravia in the form of a “protectorate,” while also putting Tiso at the head of a puppet-regime in charge of a nominally sovereign SLOVAKIA. During WORLD WAR II the Czech RESISTANCE proved particularly vigorous in challenging Nazi dominance, and achieved most notably the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (see also LIDICE MASSACRE). Though Czechoslovakia did not return to the map until Nazi Germany was defeated, it remained represented meanwhile by a wartime government-in-exile at London headed by Beneš.

The re-establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1945 meant the launching of a Third Republic, which now had to exist in a sphere where STALIN'S influence was rapidly growing amidst the tensions of an incipient COLD WAR. The country received back most of the territory possessed up to 1938, including the Sudetenland where the Allies permitted the forcible expulsion of the Germanic population and its replacement by an inflow of Czechs (see ETHNIC CLEANSING; MIGRATION). In the initial coalition government between Communist (see COMMUNISM) and non-Communist supporters Beneš was restored to the office of president and Jan Masaryk (son of Tomáš) held the foreign affairs portfolio. Early in 1948, however, the former was ousted by a Communist coup and the latter was found dead in circumstances that suggested murder by the secret police. A new “People's Democracy” was inaugurated, and dominated for the Communists by GOTTWALD until 1953 and then by NOVOTNY until 1968. Both proved to be faithful servants of whatever party line was being peddled out of Moscow from time to time, and Czechoslovakia duly became a founder member of COMECON in 1949 and of the WARSAW PACT in 1955. The kind of resentments against the hegemony of the SOVIET UNION that surfaced during 1956 in Poland and, even more dramatically, in the HUNGARIAN RISING were far more effectively contained by Novotny's authoritarian regime. Not until 1968 did he find himself supplanted, as DUBČEK'S liberalizing and de-Sovietized version of reformist communism briefly gained the upper hand in the so-called PRAGUE SPRING. After this was crushed by the Warsaw Pact's multilateral military invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Kremlin engineered the accession of a new hardline leader in the form of HUSÁK. Though he refrained from reversing Dubček's federalization (see FEDERALISM[1]) of the Czechoslovak state into two socialist republics, Husák was otherwise stubbornly persistent in promoting old-style communist orthodoxies. Growing opposition eventually became evident in the activism of the Charter 77 movement, which stigmatized the regime's betrayal of pledges on human rights that had been made at the 1975 HELSINKI CONFERENCE.

After 1985, however, Husák's intransigence set him at odds not only with such domestic dissidents but also with the reformist program now being advocated from Moscow itself by GORBACHEV. In December 1989, as part of the wider European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, Husák resigned and was soon replaced by HAVEL, the distinguished anticommunist playwright and champion of Charter 77. The triumph of Czechoslovakia's non-violent “velvet revolution” was symbolized by Dubček's return to preside over the first democratic parliament of the post-communist era. Yet Havel's program of liberalization proved unable to contain the increasing Slovak demands for dissolution of the federal linkage. After democratic endorsement of what would now become a “velvet divorce,” the two separate succession states of the CZECH REPUBLIC and of Slovakia were peacefully inaugurated on January 1, 1993.