In 1897, a large wave of demonstrations and riots swept across Habsburg Austria, as people took to the streets in more than a hundred cities. Bohemia stood in the epicenter of the so-called Badeni riots, with the most severe cases occurring in Prague, where hundreds of houses of German-speaking and Jewish inhabitants were vandalized. After 1897, violent protests repeatedly reemerged until the outbreak of the “Great War.” In 1934, nearly forty years after the Badeni riots, violence erupted in Bohemia once again. Similar to 1897, a political conflict between Czech and German nationalists triggered riots in Prague that targeted the property of German-speaking and Jewish inhabitants. Although the Habsburg state no longer existed, Czechoslovakia seemed to face challenges reminiscent of those of the “Old Empire.” In both of the cases, the violence was a symptom of a particularly turbulent era. When discussing the conditions that lead to or shape a demonstration or riot, protest researchers (such as Charles Tilly or Sydney Tarrow) often refer to opportunity structures. Some opportunities are momentary, arising when the actions of one actor trigger reactions from another. Other opportunities are more structural and enduring, shaping the types of actions that are possible by encouraging some while discouraging or even preventing others. Protesters act in ways influenced by the external opportunities available to them, creating an arena for conflict and possibilities for mobilization. In the proposed paper, I will examine the opportunity structures at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and in the 1930s, seeking to answer why protests during these periods so often escalated into seemingly senseless and banal violence against “ordinary” people and their property. By comparing the protests of 1897 and 1934, I will reflect on how political, economic, and social conditions contributed to rising violence. Both eras were marked by significant uncertainty. In the first case, the political landscape of the state was undergoing rapid democratization, which coincided with the radicalization of mass political parties. In the second case, radicalization was driven by tense economic and international conditions. Many causes, however, were more complex. The heightened sensitivity of both Habsburg and Czechoslovak state institutions in this period often escalated protests. The civil society actors, emboldened by the weakness of the state actors, on the other hand, further mobilized outbreaks of violence on the streets. Applying conceptual tools from protest studies to the first half of the 20th century, this paper will analyze how periods of uncertainty often resulted in increased violence during protests. At the same time, it will show how the state, politicians, and civil society actors – consciously or unconsciously – created opportunities that enabled this escalation.

The Czechs and Finns were among the 'small nations' of Central and Eastern Europe that developed their national identities during the 'long 19th century'. This process, based mainly on vernacular languages, folk culture, and historical tradition, underwent several changes during this period. It began with a small group of language and culture enthusiasts and culminated in a mass movement with fully formed political programmes. Throughout this process, both nations tended to reach out to other national movements in analogous situations facing similar problems. The Czechs and Finns soon realised that they were in a very similar situation. Both countries were part of great multinational empires — the Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while Finland was part of the Russian Empire — and had to contend with politically, economically and culturally superior minorities within their borders (the Germans in the Czech lands and the Swedes in Finland), all the while attempting to establish their own national identities. During the second half of the 19th century, the leaders of the Czech (Palacký, Reiger, Náprstek, Herben and Masaryk) and Finnish (Snellman, Ahlqvist, Yrjö-Koskinen, Almberg of Mikkola) national movements had several contacts. This helped them realise that their counterparts were facing many of the same obstacles and problems when it came to constructing their national identity and promoting their national programmes. By observing the other small nation, they were able to learn about the strategies it employed and adapt them to their own national movement. Through analysing correspondence between Czechs and Finns, as well as books, newspapers and journal articles published about the other nation, I will demonstrate how Czechs and Finns reflected on each other and sought inspiration from the experiences of others. Despite their geographical distance and historical and political differences, the Czechs and Finns realised that they could learn from each other and improve their own position by adapting the experiences of their counterparts.

This paper examines how schooling functioned as a strategic instrument in the struggle over territory, identity, and national allegiance in interwar Czechoslovakia. Drawing on Habsburg and borderland studies, it argues that the use of school policy in the Bohemian Lands for nationalist purposes followed patterns institutionalized under the late Habsburg Monarchy. The Czechoslovak Republic inherited not only its ethnolinguistic complexity but also an institutional logic, notably the use of schools as tools of nation-building and symbols of sovereignty. After 1918, Czech nationalist associations, now supported by state power, worked to promote a Czechoslovak identity in linguistically mixed regions. The 1919 Minority Schools Act enabled Czech-language school expansion in predominantly German-speaking areas, reduced municipal autonomy, and led to closures of German schools. Severed from Vienna, German minority organizations increasingly turned to Berlin. Their efforts – litigation, petitions, covert funding, and international lobbying – met resistance from Czech strategies to assert control over education and space, now institutionalized by the state. This paper focuses on civil society’s role, analyzing national school associations – especially the Ústřední matice školská and Deutscher Kulturverband – as the largest in the First Republic. Based on archival research in Vienna, Berlin, Prague, and Czech regional archives, including state reports, association records, parliamentary debates, and consular correspondence, the paper explores schools as instruments of national presence and sources of political tension. It examines how both Czech and German actors constructed schooling as a contested field of political sovereignty through propaganda, services, and symbolic spatial claims. Special attention is given to strategies used to establish or maintain schools and influence enrollment. The paper argues that the school conflict was not merely cultural but a prolonged confrontation over territorial legitimacy. By tracing German associations’ cross-border connections with Berlin and Vienna and their direct interactions with Prague ministries, the study reveals how school activism operated across multiple levels of power and diplomacy, and how Czechoslovak and Sudeten German nationalism mutually shaped each other. Ultimately, the school conflict is situated within the broader fragility of interwar Czechoslovak democracy and the emerging logic of militant democracy, in which state defense was increasingly pursued through legal centralization, administrative pressure, and restriction of minority autonomy.

Cecylia Niewiadomska (1855–1925) was a teacher, author of popular textbooks, and educational activist associated with the Polish radical nationalist movement. She was also the older sister of Eligiusz Niewiadomski—a fanatical nationalist and murderer of Poland's first president, Gabriel Narutowicz—whom she raised after their mother's death. The textbooks she wrote, used in schools even after World War II, can serve as an example of nationalist historical politics, focused on celebrating the unity of the nation understood in ethnic terms and defining itself in relation to its eternal enemies, primarily the Germans. Their message, shaped during the partition period and already anachronistic, contributed to the disintegration of the multiethnic state and to the escalation of ethnic conflicts after Poland regained independence, leading to nationalist violence, especially against Jews. Yet even today, right-wing circles continue to promote this form of historical politics and education as a response to the uncertainty and disharmony of the modern world. In my presentation, I would like to describe this model of historical communication and – using Cecylia Niewiadomska as an example – consider the participation of women in the radical nationalist movement, which, although it may seem marginal, significantly contributed to the current hegemonic position of nationalist ideology in Polish public life.