In this volume Ivan Berend looks closely at the fateful decades preceding World War II and at 12 countries whose absence from the roster of major players was enough in itself, he says, to precipitate much of the turmoil. As waves of modernization swept over Europe, the less developed countries on the periphery tried with little or no success to imitate Western capitalism and liberalism. Instead they remained, as Berend shows, rural, agrarian societies notable for the tenacious survival of feudal and aristocratic institutions. In that context of frustration and disappointment, rebellion was inevitable. Berend leads the reader through the maze of social, cultural, economic and political changes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the Soviet Union, showing how every path ended in dictatorship and despotism by the start of World War II. The volume seeks to shed light on the war, ethnic cleansing, poverty, and economic chaos that continue to plague Central and Eastern Europe.