In nineteenth-century Russia, the Caucasus was a large region composed of various territories and ethnic and religious groups. This region included Circassia, Mingrelia, Georgia, a part of Armenia, the ancient Media, Daghestan and the territories of Suanctians, Ossetians, Abkhazians, Karakalpaks and other mountaineer nations. During the nineteenth century, Persia, Russia and the Ottoman Empire wanted to establish their influence and power on the Caucasus. Due to this conflict, these powers, especially Russia with Persia and Russia with the Ottoman Empire, fought with each other.

A few years ago, the New York Times featured an article on the ancient city of Antioch and its modern-day inhabitants. Having lost its ancient grandeur a long time ago, Antioch (Antakya) is described as today a place that “even most Turks consider … [to be] remote and undistinguished.” The article features interviews with two members of the same family: the 110-year-old Ali Baklaci and his 20-year-old grandson Hasan Negruz. An old-timer who lived through the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, subsequent French mandate and eventual incorporation into Turkey in 1939, Ali Baklaci is unequivocal regarding his identity. In a matter-of-fact manner, he declares, “We cannot forget our origins. We are Arab people.” The grandson, Hasan Negruz, however, has a different view. While Negruz is “one of many local youths who have taken advantage of Syria's offer of free education,” the article informs us, “the experience did not turn him into a pan-Arabist.” Instead, Negruz formulates his identity in a way that is remarkably different from his grandfather's: “I am an Arab who is also a citizen of Turkey, and that's fine. I like being Turkish because this country is more modern than the Arab countries.”

Intra-state regional differences are a central topic in the study of European and Eurasian politics. In Ukraine, regional differences have proven to be powerful predictors of mass attitudes and political behavior. But what does the “regional factor” in Ukrainian politics represent? Is it simply the result of compositional effects, or are the regional differences more than just a sum of other demographic factors correlated with geographic divisions? When analyzing regional divisions as an explanatory variable, what are the implications of employing different regional frameworks? In this article, we demonstrate how geographic divisions in the country hold up even when others factors—such as ethnicity and language use—are controlled for. As part of this inquiry, we compare the results of three competing regional frameworks for Ukraine: one with two regions, one with four regions and one with eight regions. While the eight-region framework is uncommon in studies of Ukraine, the decision to examine eight regions is supported by historical, economic and demographic arguments, as well as by the results of the statistical analyses presented in this article. Scholars who have focused on fewer regions in Ukraine may have underestimated the effects of regional differences and missed interesting stories about intra-state variation in Ukrainian attitudes and voting behavior. The results of this study carry important implications not only for the study of Ukraine but also for those interested in intra-state regional divisions across Europe and Eurasia.

Freedom from the Soviet empire created an opportunity for elites of each former Soviet Socialist Republic to “nationalize” their newly independent state. Most observers of contemporary Kazakh politics would agree that Kazakhstan has taken advantage of this historic opportunity, and can thus be classified as a nationalizing state. For Rogers Brubaker, a nationalizing state is perceived by its elites as a nation-state of and for a particular nation, but simultaneously as an “incomplete” or “unrealized” nation-state. To resolve this problem of incompleteness and to counteract perceived discrimination, Brubaker argues, “nationalizing elites urge and undertake action to promote the language, culture, demographic preponderance, economic flourishing, or political hegemony of the core ethnocultural nation.” While the foundation of any Soviet successor state's nationalization program is a cluster of implemented formal policies that privilege the titular nation, these policies are often reinforced by informal practices, primarily discriminatory personnel practices, with the same function. Much has been written about Kazakhstan's nationalization strategy, and not surprisingly scholars rely on what they know about formal policies and informal practices to characterize that strategy. Little has been written, however, about the “Pugachev Rebellion” in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, and nothing has been written about the relationship between the official Kazakh reaction to what I call the “Pugachev incident,” and Kazakhstan's nationalization strategy in general. This article sorts out confusing events surrounding the Pugachev incident, and offers an interpretation of the official Kazakh reaction, which is best understood when situated in the broader context of Kazakh nationalization, to the incident.

The Eurasianist ideology is coming back on the Russian political and intellectual scene but also among the Turkic and Muslim elites in the Russian Federation and in Kazakhstan. The political, economic, social and identity difficulties of the transition invite Russians and other post-Soviet citizens to think about their relations with Europe and about the relevance of taking the West as a model. In this context of destabilization, Eurasianism proposes a geopolitical solution for the post-Soviet space. It presupposes the existence of a third continent between East and West, called “Eurasia,” and supports the idea of an organic unity of cultures born in this zone of symbiosis between Russian, Turkic, Muslim and even Chinese worlds. Neo-Eurasianism is the main ideology born among the different Russian conservative movements in the 1990s. Its theories are very little known, but the idea of an entity called Eurasia, regrouping the center of the old continent in which Russia would be “at home,” is more and more rife. It attracted many intellectuals and politicians in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Eurasianism was a way to explain the “disaster.”

The 15 October 2003 presidential election went down in the history of Azerbaijan as a turning point for three reasons. First, it provided a legitimacy for the transfer of power from ailing President Heydar Aliev to his son Ilham. Second, it demonstrated the unwillingness of the so-called “international community” to risk jeopardizing geostrategic and economic interests by unequivocally condemning blatant falsification of the ballot. And, third, by failing to condemn falsification of the ballot, the international community has signaled to other entrenched Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders that they have little to lose by following the Azeri example. However, the developments one month later in Georgia evidently worried them that the popular protests that forced President Shevardnadze from power could have adverse repercussions for incumbent leaders across the region.

The Russian conquest of Siberia was not only a remarkable event in world history like the conquest of the New World by the Western European nations, but also a decisive step in Russia's empire-building. Through territorial enlargement the empire became multiethnic. This process resembled the expansion of the white settlers in North America. Like North America, Siberia represented an “open frontier.” Harsh nature and the encounter between the white settlers and the “savages” formed the identity of the frontier. From the perspective of modern cultural anthropology the frontier also shaped reflections on the self and the other. There existed, however, a decisive difference to the American frontier: Siberia became a meeting ground for Russian and Asian cultures. Whereas the American frontier—except in the encounter with Mexico—remained isolated, Russians early came in contact with Asian nations. From the early emergence of a modern state in Russia during the era of Enlightenment, Russia came into manifold contacts with “civilized” Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) and with “uncivilized” Asians, i.e. the tribes of Siberia. At the junction between Europe and Asia, Russia as a Eurasian empire was the sole country in Europe which was so near to Asia. It was therefore logical that Russia felt a kind of mission toward Asia and required the role of a mediator between Europe and Asia.

The consensus among specialists on the politics of socialist Yugoslavia and supporters of Slobodan Milošević is that he rose personally as the leader due to a broad appeal of his political programme. According to one version of the political programme thesis, Milošević overwhelmed his initially more powerful opponents in the leadership of Serbia in 1987 by obtaining majority support in higher ranks of the party for his nationalist programme, namely the reduction of autonomy of Kosovo. The other version of the thesis says that he extended nationalist appeals to the population at large and established control over party and state organs in the largest republic of federal Yugoslavia largely by bringing pressure from society on the political elite. In any case, Milošević emerged from the leadership struggle as a very powerful leader and was thus able to purge his rivals from the regional leadership and embark upon the implementation of a nationalist programme. The supporters of Milošević have largely agreed with the specialists. Borisav Jović, his right-hand man, claimed, “the removal of bureaucratic leadership of Serbia, which had subserviently accepted the division of Serbia in three parts,” to be one of their main achievements.

It is well known that the idea and practice of cross-border cooperation have been developed in postwar Europe with the intention of overcoming the economic and social isolation of border regions and reconciling the hostilities between former enemies. But as a precondition for this process the new map of European borders had to be perceived as “final” and “just,” and as such it was legitimized on international and national levels. Moreover, it was the universal acceptance of the principle of the invariability of borders which made it possible for national governments to grant border regions more freedom in their contacts with the neighbours. The same applies in principle to the former socialist countries, where cross-border cooperation is supposed to help overcome the post-Cold-War division of Europe.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars developed an interest in Central Asia unmatched since the days of the “Great Game.” Scholarship initially focused on contemporary issues rather than historical analyses, since Central Asia was composed of obscure, newly independent, and strategically important states. With the opening of archives in the 1990s, however, historians began to pursue research on the identity and ideology of modern Central Asia, the legacy of the Soviet Union and Muslim modernism, and the challenges to nationalism and Islam. Drawing from postcolonial studies, these works have filled important voids and expanded our ability to analyze the multitude of factors that function in the conceptualization of the nation and the adoption of national ideas by the Central Asians themselves.