In the former districts of Eupen and Malmedy, present-day East-Belgians, in particular academic and socio-political elites, draw their collective identity, amongst others, from the historical injustices inflicted upon them ever since the adoption of the Treaty of Versailles. The transfer of sovereignty from Germany to Belgium was then the subject of a popular consultation organised by the transitional Belgian authorities in those territories. Favouring national over popular sovereignty, those authorities de facto undermined the freedom of choice and imposed their annexation to Belgium which the League of Nations, despite criticisms, consecutively endorsed. Much has been said about this petite farce belge yet not from a legal point of view. Thus, this article sheds a different light on the historical accounts of those events which are instrumentalised to construct the contemporary collective identity of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.

European countries have been important supporters of Ukraine since the 2022 invasion by Russia. Responding to the invasion, however, was not the only challenge facing these countries in 2022. A tough domestic economic situation caused by high inflation and skyrocketing energy prices gave rise to public resentment accusing governments of favoring Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees over their own citizens. Yet, communicating governments’ policies on Ukraine efficiently and having the public on board matters because lack of public support may endanger the countries’ ability to help Ukraine in the war. Given the importance of political communication, we use the case of Czechia to explore the role of empathy in political communication between Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. We build on existing studies which suggest that empathy in communication has the potential to decrease polarization of public opinion and that candidates using empathetic communication are viewed more positively. First, in a rhetorical analysis, we demonstrate that empathy with citizens’ concerns is not a part of the government’s defense of its refugee policy. Then, in an original survey experiment, we show that contrary to expectations, expressing empathy with citizens’ concerns does not significantly increase public support for help to refugees.

This article examines the discursive contestation of Alash movement narratives in post-1991 Kazakhstan by studying overlapping and diverse official and non-official narratives. By surveying textual content and conducting interviews with those who carry these narratives, including textbook authors, the article reveals that while both official and unofficial narratives converge on the subject of statehood for the Alash movement, the non-official narratives and textbook authors use its legacy to express dissatisfaction with post-1991 developments in Kazakhstan. This study sheds light on the differing perspectives and debates surrounding the Alash movement’s legacy in shaping post–1991 Kazakhstani society and politics.

This article demonstrates how Crimean Tatars use memories of past displacements in their narratives of contemporary emigration and coping strategies in occupied Crimea. First, I present the significance of the first annexation of Crimea in 1783 by the Russian Empire and the 1944 deportation in the collective memory of Crimean Tatars. Second, I discuss the main motives for the displacement of internally displaced persons of Crimean Tatar origin in 2014 based on interviews conducted in L’viv. Drawing from interviews and focus groups that were conducted in Crimea between 2017 and 2019, I describe the influence of the memory of forced displacements on contemporary discourse and how it has evolved since Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine. Finally, I focus on how Crimean Solidarity activists employ memories of the first annexation and deportation to legitimize their resistance against Russia’s repressive policy in occupied Crimea. I argue that the 2014 annexation of Crimea was a retraumatizing event for many Crimean Tatars and that it has become an integral part of the grand narrative of their forced displacement from the late eighteenth century to the present.

Drawing from the experiences of thirty-two refugee women who fled with their children from Ukraine to two German cities, Berlin and Frankfurt Oder, this article explores how being a refugee and a mother affects the anchoring, along with the un-anchoring and embedding of Ukrainian refugees in their new environment. It illustrates that solidarity practices and (inter)actions play a crucial role in mobility considerations, as the interlocutors engaging in solidarity work find meaning in building lives in their new environment. The identities of the interlocutors as refugees and mothers play an important role in shaping the solidarity they articulate as they work to support others in a similar situation in cultivating agency, which, at the same time, gives the interlocutors comfort in their own struggles. This article also makes a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on transnational family ties through the case of Ukrainian refugee women in Germany, who often have family members remaining in/returning to Ukraine. The interlocutors positioning as mothers and refugees means that they engage in negotiating mobility considerations with these positions in hindsight — providing new avenues of enquiry into the agency of refugee-mothers, reflecting on life aspirations, and considering their specific positionalities and forced migration context.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, Austrian schools effectively developed a robust system of civic education that attempted to cultivate the patriotism of all students, regardless of their nationality. While the ultimate goal of Habsburg civic education was loyalty to the imperial state, officials realized that this loyalty would not be able to supplant regional or national identities. Instead, officials designed a curriculum that would enhance these other identities hoping they would contribute to imperial patriotism. Students learned they shared their home with different national groups and that they belonged to a larger family of nations. While this concept was earnestly supported by the school curriculum, the way in which this material was taught may have impacted its effectiveness. For example, when discussing national groups, educators often drew from prevailing ethnographic theories that relied on stereotypical assessments. Moreover, compromises made in the early 20th century complicated these efforts. As nationalists gained increased control over school administration, the emphasis on shared local identity weakened. These factors did not necessarily alter Austrian civic education, but they do point to the ways in which it would have needed to adapt to the Monarchy’s changing political circumstances.

This article analyzes Vladimir Putin’s 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as an example of political rhetoric invoking the language/dialect dichotomy. Curiously, Putin argued both that Ukrainian is a “dialect” of a greater Russian language and that Ukrainian is a distinct “language” different from Russian. As a form of political rhetoric, the language/dialect dichotomy draws its power from normative isomorphism, the idea that languages, nations, and states ought to coincide. According to the logic of normative isomorphism, claiming that Russian and Ukrainian are separate “languages” gives the Russian Federation a claim to annex the Russian-speaking south-east of Ukraine, while claiming that Ukrainian is a “dialect” of Russian would justify the Russian Federation’s annexation of Ukraine in its entirety. By endorsing both positions, Putin’s speech provided pre-emptively justifications for different policies, giving him room to maneuver. All that said, neither the language/dialect dichotomy nor normative isomorphism offers a solid basis for political legitimacy.

This article examines the unexpected revival of Rodina (Motherland), a nationalist party that had been suppressed in 2006 for its embrace of “orangist,” anti-Putin politics. Five years later, Rodina was relaunched in response to the crisis of the Medvedev–Putin “tandemocracy.” This article shows that Rodina played a central role in the Kremlin’s “managed nationalism,” which sought to direct the energies of Russian nationalists into loyalist channels. In particular, it illuminates three ways that Rodina facilitated collaboration between nationalists and the regime. First, it helped to integrate nationalists into the All-Russia Popular Front, the umbrella structure that was created as a vehicle for Putin’s return to the presidency. Second, it served as a counterrevolutionary force by drawing nationalists from the “white ribbon” protest movement into two Kremlin-supported initiatives: the “conservative turn” and a media campaign against non-Slavic immigration. And third, it acted as a proxy for the Russian state during the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in southeast Ukraine, recruiting nationalists to serve as separatists and cultivating the support of European radical nationalists. In these three ways, Rodina contributed both to Russia’s autocratization and to the growing influence of nationalist ideas in public discourse.

Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan) and their ruling parties have altered over time, there are quite a few similarities between their models of nation-building, more than is commonly acknowledged. The guofu (father) of the modern Chinese state, Sun Yat-sen, one of the few political leaders who is still honored on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, claimed all the peoples and territories of the former Qing empire comprised a single national community, the so-called Zhonghua minzu. Yet a Han super-majority has long sat at the center of this national imaginary. In this article, we ask what has happened to Sun’s imagined community across the last century, and how it has evolved in the two competing Chinese states the PRC and the ROC. We seek to demonstrate the enduring challenge of Han-centrism for multiethnic nation-building in both countries, while illustrating how shifts in domestic and international politics are altering this national imaginary and the place of ethnocultural diversity within it.

In the Spanish region of Galicia, immediately north of Portugal, the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) has achieved unprecedented electoral success, emerging as a prominent nationalist force within the Spanish political landscape. This study analyzes the discursive and performative repertoires employed by Galician nationalism and explores how the prevalent dual national identity in the region shapes these strategies. Reversing Brubaker’s theoretical framework and using framing and visual analysis, we compare the BNG’s strategies during two different institutional settings: its time in government (2005–2009) and its role leading the opposition (2020–2023). The findings reveal the failure of Galician nationalism to nationalize identity when in power, as policies aimed at promoting Galician identity generated a backlash and, ultimately, produced frame dealignment between the nationalists and the Galician people. The new BNG presents a social project based on the defense of Galician interests and the moderation of the nationalist discourse. It successfully accomplishes frame alignment by adapting to the non-conflictive, dual national identity shared by most Galicians while proposing an inclusive political style.

The aim of the article is to analyse, in a diachronic perspective, the street names in today’s Berlin whose bases are geographical names referring to places in contemporary Poland. The analysis reveals a purposeful city-text that supports the nation-building narrative: either by mapping the state’s actual geography at the moment of the name’s bestowal, or by including the territories claimed (literally or metaphorically), beyond the current borders at the time of the naming. However, the degree to which these street names and the intention behind them are decipherable today remains questionable. Once meaningful for their original creators, today they are partly or completely semantically oblique to the general public, as evidenced by their contemporary reception.

In this article, we analyze the influence of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union on Ukrainian art-historical writing. As we shall reveal, the mechanisms of knowledge production created during that period continued to operate after the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991. The limitations that were imposed on the art-historical community, which can be regarded as colonial, shaped the crucial narratives (of the “triune nation”) and dictated the thematic scope of Ukrainian scholarship. The new notion of “mysteztvoznavstvo,” introduced in 1937 instead of the previously established Theory and History of Art, eventually led to a profound rift between Soviet Russian and Ukrainian scholarship and the Western world more generally. “Mysteztvoznavstvo” was supposed to be an umbrella term for art history, theory, and art criticism but ended up doing a disservice to each domain. Art theory in Ukraine was virtually nonexistent, whereas art history was mixed with art criticism, resulting in writing that did not meet widely accepted academic standards. This led to the isolation of Ukrainian scholars, who were confined to the Russian-speaking community and had very limited access to foreign scholarship. We also analyze the decolonization processes in the history of Ukrainian art prompted by the invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine after 2013, such as The Revolution of Dignity and “decommunization.” We argue that horizontal art history and decolonial approaches cannot adequately be applied if colonial tools are still used by the discipline. Epistemic decolonization can only be achieved after challenging the standards of “mysteztvoznavstvo” and, thus, by dividing art studies into three separate domains: art history, art theory, and art criticism, as each discipline has its own goals and methods.

Research on the nexus between education and nationalism in the Habsburg Empire has often focused on the role that language may have played in top-down nationalization processes and the popular dissemination of national thought. According to contemporary nationalist logic, undergoing education in a certain language of instruction also entailed the internalization of nationalist values inherent to its corresponding nationalist movement. The present article argues that the Habsburg educational experience was much more contingent, and draws attention to the diversity of pedagogical approaches towards nationalism and nationality that could be encountered in Austrian schools during the last five decades of Habsburg rule. By using examples from German- and Slovene-language textbooks, it shows that sociopolitical, temporal, as well as institutional factors played an important role in determining the practical values and attitudes towards the nationalism that students encountered during their school years. With systematic empirical studies remaining rare, further research will be necessary to gain a fuller insight into the complexities of the Habsburg education system and its potential effects on popular collective identity formation.

Why did Vladimir Putin order the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite numerous warnings from Western countries about the consequences of such an action? This article argues that misperceptions about having the upper hand vis-à-vis Western countries, formed and proliferated among the Russian leadership, emboldened the Kremlin to launch the military invasion of Ukraine, assuming that the West would stand down in the face of the attack. Based on a detailed analysis of Russian elites’ discourse through the theoretical lens of interdependence studies, this study demonstrates that Putin miscalculated Western resolve largely because of two key misperceptions. First, Putin’s elites were convinced that the West was asymmetrically dependent on Russia, viewing it as a strategic resource that would tie the hands of Western and EU countries, eventually making them accept the outcome of the war. Second, the Kremlin believed that Ukraine occupied a secondary role in Western interests that would further limit the West’s involvement in the conflict, as it would not risk exposing its dependence on Moscow for the sake of an issue that, in the Kremlin’s eyes, was marginal to European and American security.

This article analyzes the key factors behind the securitization of Ukraine’s small ethnic Hungarian minority in recent years and how they affect local interethnic as well as interstate relations. It draws on elite interviews conducted in the Ukrainian-Hungarian borderland, and other sources including speech acts. Four underlying factors were identified. The first two are Hungary’s kin-state aid and dual citizenship law, which have empowered Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarians, with the community appearing larger and potentially more threatening in the eyes of the majority population than its mere size justifies. The other two factors are Ukraine’s language policy and Transcarpathia’s future being subject of conspiracy theories in light of Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, which have negatively affected interethnic ties, although somewhat less in the borderland than between Hungary and Ukraine at large. In Transcarpathia, our different informants had diverging perceptions of who is stirring tensions but agreed that actors from outside their region were to blame. Overall, what has emerged is a clash of Hungary’s kin-state politics and Ukraine’s nation-state-building efforts. The article ends with more general implications for kin- and host-state relations in times of conflict.

The 2022 war in Ukraine has produced the biggest virtual humor archive in the history of wars. We argue that Ukrainian war humor is a form of civic activism in the name of Ukraine’s sovereignty. This civic activism is defined by resistance, solidarity, vigilance, and dedication to victory. The war humor circulates locally as well as on a global stage. It expresses the government’s positions and the people’s voices and empowers those affected by this war. Ukrainian war humor documents experiences of war realities; provides moral commentaries and emotional and aesthetic interpretations; and articulates visions for the future of Ukraine as a sovereign European state.

The past decade has seen mass emigration of Hungarians from Serbia to the kin-state and Western European countries. This has resulted in new ways of understanding what it means to belong to the community, both empirically and in terms of theorizing it, and both for those in Serbia and those abroad. This article claims that there are virtual platforms where members of this ethnic community (re)create their identities, and that this happens through relating to certain common themes. For this reason, I analyze the common themes of two humorous Facebook pages – namely, rurality, food, language use, ethnic others, and crossing borders – popular among Vojvodina Hungarians. The article argues that these elements of identity connect members of the community who live in Vojvodina and those who have emigrated to the kin-state or diaspora. Therefore, in order to unpack the complex dynamics of identification of a national minority community with high diasporic tendencies, an approach that connects the above topics to the concepts of community, nostalgia, home, minority, and borders, and in more general terms the lens of national minority and diaspora studies is needed.

This article examines Putin’s expectations prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and seeks to answer the following question: Why did Russia invade Ukraine regardless of the West’s threats of severe economic penalties raising the cost of an attack? I argue that the confidence in Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, despite his awareness that the stakes could go well beyond the borders of Ukraine and increase the cost of war for the Kremlin, was based on Putin’s calculations that the West would be reluctant to change or substantially displace established rich-get-richer economic structures and would not apply high costs on the Kremlin for military aggression against Ukraine in case of a successful blitzkrieg campaign. By utilizing an extended deterrence game analysis, the article demonstrates how Russia, Ukraine, and the West interacted in decision-making, taking into account the reactions and choices of the other players, and adds to the current body of knowledge by introducing an expanded approach to deterrence strategy based on economic interdependence and the scale of the anticipated conflict.