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What in particular have "collapsed" for the average citizen of Austria-Hungary? The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods. No one was striped

What in particular have "collapsed" for the average citizen of Austria-Hungary? The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods. No one was striped of their property en masse, there wasn't a widespread uprooting of economic ties. It wasn't nearly as bad as in Germany, let alone Russia of the same period. Only thing that collapsed was the ruling class, with the abolition of monarchy, expulsion of royal family, and abolition of aristocratic privileges and titles (that wasn't even mandated by the victorious powers, just people had enough of it, because it was clear that monarchy's uppitiness and disconnect from reality started WWI it had no chance of winning, for no visible gain). Sure there were ugly events with the red riots of Bela Kun, and white terror mostly aimed against Jews, to counter it, in Hungary, but that did not impact an average citizen, it was a political terror relatively normal for the era (not much different from KKK actions in the U.S. at same time).

sbierwagen 3y ago
>The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Austria
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> that did not impact an average citizen There has never been a revolution in which elites were removed where the average person didn’t suffer horribly. That transformation necessitates value destruction. That destruction must be allocated away from the new elites, which by definition places the burden on the average.
- izacus 3y ago
  I'd love you provide some evidence that it actually happened for Austria Hungary. Coming from a successor states that's not what our history says, so I'd love to hear your better sources.
  - barrenko 3y ago
    What does your history say?
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Onr cannot seperate the fall of Austria-Hungary from WW1. And in the end, the whole of Eastern Europe was in a civil war that ended not so long before WW2, and involved things like the Holodomor. So yes, the average people suffered a lot from Austria-Hubgary's collapse.
- barrenko 3y ago
  This + the sheer # of people that died in the two WW.
clarionbell 3y ago
Economy practically fell apart. Before you could move goods from Prague to Ljubljana without encountering a hitch. Now you had three separate borders in your way. This led to decline in virtually every sector, as things previously available on internal market suddenly became exports. Currency was the next catastrophe. Before 1918 you could buy bread with the same kroner in Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow. Now you had to handle multiple currency swaps. Finally, war erupted almost immediately between successor states. Poland against Czechoslovakia, Council Republics in Slovakia and Hungry, Poland against Ukraine ... And to top the list you had domestic repressions, like in Czechoslovakia against Germans. So yes, it was a crisis. After crisis, after crisis. The only reason we in central Europe don't see this era as one of horror is because things got even worse afterwards. General economic collapse by end of 1920s and well into early 1930s, followed by WWII, genocides, communist takeover etc. Well, there is one other reason. Nation states were seen as "progressive" and "modern" for most of the 20th century. The propaganda is kind of pervasive. Just some of the wars I mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Czechoslovak_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Czechoslovak_Wa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_and_interventions_in_Hungary_(1918%E2%80%931920) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_and_interventions_...
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  > Before 1918 you could buy bread with the same kroner in Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow. Now you had to handle multiple currency swaps. That must have been pretty tough on people who lived their lives constantly travelling between Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow but I suspect most people weren't like that.
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    [dead]
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Well, prior to the 20th century, in most of the world one wouldn't have needed currency changers or border checks. Passports were uncommon and most currencies were in gold or silver coinage of standardized weights. As the tensions around the world grew, passports and enforced borders became more common in the run up to WWI.
082349872349872 3y ago
cf Zweig, The World of Yesterday (1942)
empath-nirvana 3y ago
After the collapse of the empire, austria and the rest of it was conquered by either Nazi Germany or the USSR or both and most of it was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain for the next half century+.
saithound 3y ago
> The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods You.re very wrong about this. Austria had a massive economic crisis. Hungary had 98% inflation per month for.over a year (their second worst ever recorded, but surpassed big time by the one recorded after WW2, which ended with all the Hungarian currency in circulation being worth less than 0.01¢), massive uprooting and a refugee crisis, communist revolutions in Hungary and Slovakia, wars between the successor states (including between Czechoslovakia and Soviet Hungary, then Romania and Soviet Hungary, events which you ridiculously imply didn't impact the average citizen, or were in any way comparable to what was happening in the US at the time), not to mention millions of people ending up living under the jurisdiction of countries they previously fought against. Things didn't go back to any sort of normal until 1922 in any of the successor states. The situation was very much comparable to (and in most aspects worse than) early Weimar Germany. It's also not true that aristocratic privileges were abolished everywhere: the Habsburgergesetz abolished them in Austria in 1919, but Czechoslovakia and Hungary retained them until 1947 (even the Soviet republic didn't formally abolish them, although there were no noblemen stupid enough to try and use them in that brief period). All that said, I do agree with you on one thing: interwar nostalgia for the Empire was pretty much limited to a small Vienna elite (a fact that the article elegantly forgets to mention). Even the populations of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were overwhelmingly against its restoration, and against the return of the Habsburg monarchs, when the opportunity presented itself. My own Hungarian grandparents got stuck in Yugoslavia, pretty much an enemy nation, so they didn't have a choice in the matter. I also don't know what they thought about it at the time, but it's telling that 50 years later they had nothing good to say, no fond memories to mention about A-H at all.
inglor_cz 3y ago
Excuse me, but your history textbooks are farcically wrong. Or possibly your imagination is. The economy of A-H collapsed so thoroughly that there were famines and bread riots. Too many men and horses were sacrificed in war and the relatively backward agriculture could not be sustained by the women, kids and the elderly who were left. Hunger was one of the immediate reasons for the collapse - it was impossible to prevent the soldiers on the frontlines from knowing that their loved ones back home were starving, and by October 1918, mutinies and mass desertions were widespread. The countries that emerged from the collapse were often hostile to one another, which not only led to border skirmishes, but to introduction of wanton tariffs and regulations that broke precisely the economic ties that you mentioned. For example, the textile industry in German-speaking Bohemian borderlands (Sudeten) used to export its products into a 55-million common market freely. Suddenly, this market shrank to 14 million (Czechoslovak population after 1918), some 30 per cent of its former size, as countries like Hungary, Poland and Romania introduced protectionist measures. The resulting unhappiness of suddenly-much-poorer Sudeten Germans was later expertly exploited by Adolf Hitler. Also, in many places, there was hyperinflation that wiped out life savings of the middle class, contributing to growth of political extremism.

sbierwagen 3y ago

>The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Austria

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> that did not impact an average citizen There has never been a revolution in which elites were removed where the average person didn’t suffer horribly. That transformation necessitates value destruction. That destruction must be allocated away from the new elites, which by definition places the burden on the average.

izacus 3y ago
I'd love you provide some evidence that it actually happened for Austria Hungary. Coming from a successor states that's not what our history says, so I'd love to hear your better sources.
- barrenko 3y ago
  What does your history say?
- hef19898 3y ago
  Onr cannot seperate the fall of Austria-Hungary from WW1. And in the end, the whole of Eastern Europe was in a civil war that ended not so long before WW2, and involved things like the Holodomor. So yes, the average people suffered a lot from Austria-Hubgary's collapse.
barrenko 3y ago
This + the sheer # of people that died in the two WW.

clarionbell 3y ago

Economy practically fell apart. Before you could move goods from Prague to Ljubljana without encountering a hitch. Now you had three separate borders in your way. This led to decline in virtually every sector, as things previously available on internal market suddenly became exports. Currency was the next catastrophe. Before 1918 you could buy bread with the same kroner in Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow. Now you had to handle multiple currency swaps. Finally, war erupted almost immediately between successor states. Poland against Czechoslovakia, Council Republics in Slovakia and Hungry, Poland against Ukraine ... And to top the list you had domestic repressions, like in Czechoslovakia against Germans. So yes, it was a crisis. After crisis, after crisis. The only reason we in central Europe don't see this era as one of horror is because things got even worse afterwards. General economic collapse by end of 1920s and well into early 1930s, followed by WWII, genocides, communist takeover etc. Well, there is one other reason. Nation states were seen as "progressive" and "modern" for most of the 20th century. The propaganda is kind of pervasive. Just some of the wars I mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Czechoslovak_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Czechoslovak_Wa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_and_interventions_in_Hungary_(1918%E2%80%931920) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_and_interventions_...

Joker_vD 3y ago
> Before 1918 you could buy bread with the same kroner in Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow. Now you had to handle multiple currency swaps. That must have been pretty tough on people who lived their lives constantly travelling between Vienna, Brno, Budapest and Krakow but I suspect most people weren't like that.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
BirAdam 3y ago
Well, prior to the 20th century, in most of the world one wouldn't have needed currency changers or border checks. Passports were uncommon and most currencies were in gold or silver coinage of standardized weights. As the tensions around the world grew, passports and enforced borders became more common in the run up to WWI.

082349872349872 3y ago

cf Zweig, The World of Yesterday (1942)

empath-nirvana 3y ago

After the collapse of the empire, austria and the rest of it was conquered by either Nazi Germany or the USSR or both and most of it was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain for the next half century+.

saithound 3y ago

> The economy certainly did not, nor did people's livelihoods You.re very wrong about this. Austria had a massive economic crisis. Hungary had 98% inflation per month for.over a year (their second worst ever recorded, but surpassed big time by the one recorded after WW2, which ended with all the Hungarian currency in circulation being worth less than 0.01¢), massive uprooting and a refugee crisis, communist revolutions in Hungary and Slovakia, wars between the successor states (including between Czechoslovakia and Soviet Hungary, then Romania and Soviet Hungary, events which you ridiculously imply didn't impact the average citizen, or were in any way comparable to what was happening in the US at the time), not to mention millions of people ending up living under the jurisdiction of countries they previously fought against. Things didn't go back to any sort of normal until 1922 in any of the successor states. The situation was very much comparable to (and in most aspects worse than) early Weimar Germany. It's also not true that aristocratic privileges were abolished everywhere: the Habsburgergesetz abolished them in Austria in 1919, but Czechoslovakia and Hungary retained them until 1947 (even the Soviet republic didn't formally abolish them, although there were no noblemen stupid enough to try and use them in that brief period). All that said, I do agree with you on one thing: interwar nostalgia for the Empire was pretty much limited to a small Vienna elite (a fact that the article elegantly forgets to mention). Even the populations of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were overwhelmingly against its restoration, and against the return of the Habsburg monarchs, when the opportunity presented itself. My own Hungarian grandparents got stuck in Yugoslavia, pretty much an enemy nation, so they didn't have a choice in the matter. I also don't know what they thought about it at the time, but it's telling that 50 years later they had nothing good to say, no fond memories to mention about A-H at all.

inglor_cz 3y ago

Excuse me, but your history textbooks are farcically wrong. Or possibly your imagination is. The economy of A-H collapsed so thoroughly that there were famines and bread riots. Too many men and horses were sacrificed in war and the relatively backward agriculture could not be sustained by the women, kids and the elderly who were left. Hunger was one of the immediate reasons for the collapse - it was impossible to prevent the soldiers on the frontlines from knowing that their loved ones back home were starving, and by October 1918, mutinies and mass desertions were widespread. The countries that emerged from the collapse were often hostile to one another, which not only led to border skirmishes, but to introduction of wanton tariffs and regulations that broke precisely the economic ties that you mentioned. For example, the textile industry in German-speaking Bohemian borderlands (Sudeten) used to export its products into a 55-million common market freely. Suddenly, this market shrank to 14 million (Czechoslovak population after 1918), some 30 per cent of its former size, as countries like Hungary, Poland and Romania introduced protectionist measures. The resulting unhappiness of suddenly-much-poorer Sudeten Germans was later expertly exploited by Adolf Hitler. Also, in many places, there was hyperinflation that wiped out life savings of the middle class, contributing to growth of political extremism.