Between war and revolution: The transnational context of the collective biography of Eastern Europe's “lost generation”

Abstract

The study attempts to outline the perspectives of creating a collective biography of the Eastern European “lost generation”. Based on the historical material of the events of 1914–1923, it aims at identifying some typological features in the biographies of its representatives that would help explain the existence (or absence) of a collective identity. The main attention is paid to the collective experience of the war by a group of young people of predominantly Jewish origin who came from the middle and upper social strata of the Hungarian part of the Habsburg empire. It analyzes their transnational experience during the war and captivity as a part of their secondary socialization and how it determined their reintegration. For many of them this process had started already in Soviet Russia when they joined the Red Army or remained in the country after Civil War. Their resocialization in the post-war period was marked by the experience of return, when they had to choose a country of residence and the associated problems of adaptation and communication (language, culture, traditions) as well as profession in new post-war conditions.