Ethnic conflict is not—because there are no ethnic groups in conflict. This is the main conclusion of a comparison of so-called “ethnic conflicts” in the Balkans and in colonial India. A comparison of Muslim nation building in these two regions provides several valuable insights that go far beyond the specific cases. Thus far, there have been many hints in the literature on similarities between Bosnia and Pakistan or the Balkans and the Indian subcontinent as a whole. But there have been no systematic comparisons, though many parallels emerge when we look more closely.

In “Our Guests and Ourselves,” an article written in 1924 for the Prague daily newspaper Lidové noviny, Czech playwright and novelist Karel clarified for his readers the failings in Czech habits of sociability, and the unfortunate consequences of those habits for the new Czechoslovak nation. Each nationality in Prague, and each political grouping within the nationalities, tended to socialize in different clubs and cafes. The Czechs preferred to socialize only with each other, complained , and foreigners visiting Prague tended to socialize with Germans. When Czechs set themselves the task of entertaining visiting foreigners, they did so in a manner overly officious and overtly “national”: that is, Czechs dragged foreigners around from function to banquet, forcing them to listen endlessly to official pronouncements of the glories of the long-overlooked Czech nation. As yet, wrote, Prague lacked a single genuinely neutral club or grouping open to all, and comfortable for all, particularly foreigners, whom the Czechs needed badly to impress. In contrast, told his readers, he himself had just visited the kind of club the Czechs should create: the “Penklub”, in London. In the International Pen Club's London chapter, writers of different nationalities were able to enjoy one another's company, and perhaps develop a greater understanding for other countries' perspectives. The club's existence demonstrated that even England, one of the historical great powers of Europe, put great weight on creating international ties. reminded his readers that “we here have more, and more urgent, reasons for needing such [clubs].” Those “more urgent” reasons for changing Czech habits were first and foremost political reasons, in an age when sociability was politicized—and, as 's comments make clear, nationalized.

Both Yugoslav wars and Yugoslav basketball were conspicuous in Western media in the 1990s. While CNN transmitted scenes of horror from battlefields of Bosnia and Kosovo, several dozen professional athletes of Yugoslav background could be seen in action on U. S. sport channels. Yugoslavs, by far the most numerous among foreign players in the strongest basketball league in the world—the American professional basketball league (NBA)—sparked the audience's curiosity about their background and the peculiar Yugoslav style of basketball. The literature concerning the Yugoslav crisis and Balkan wars noted sporadic outbursts of ethnic hatred in sport arenas, but did not provide any detailed information on the otherwise important role of sport in Yugoslav history and society. Not even highly competent volumes such as Beyond Yugoslavia, which highlighted the country's culture, arts, religion, economy, and military, paid attention to what Yugoslavs called “the most important secondary issue in the world”—sport. Yet sport reveals not merely the pastimes of the Yugoslav peoples, but also the varieties of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia, including probably the most neglected of all local nationalisms: the official communist-era patriotic ideology of interethnic “brotherhood and unity.” The goal of this article is to highlight this type of nationalism manifested via state-directed sport using as a case study the most successful basketball program outside the United States.

During the first years of the Bulgarian transition to democracy, all indicators seemed to point towards an impending explosion of interethnic hatred. Located at the crossroads of Islam and Christianity, this predominantly Orthodox country harbors a 13.1% strong Muslim minority, which was subjected to forcible assimilation under communist rule. The assimilation policy reached a climax in 1984–1985, when around 800,000 Bulgarian Turks were forced to renounce their Turkish-Arabic names in favor of Slavic patronyms within the framework of the so-called “Revival Process,” a campaign that aimed at precipitating the unification of the Bulgarian nation. Far from achieving the intended result, the authorities' move not only fostered a reassertion of distinct ethnic and religious identification among the Turks, but also succeeded in durably upsetting intercommunitarian relationships. Significantly, the Communist Party's announcement on 29 December 1989 that it would restore Muslim rights met with sharp resistance in mixed areas, where large-scale Bulgarian protests rapidly gathered momentum. Against this background, in 1990–1991, few analysts would have predicted that Bulgaria could avoid religious conflict, especially as the country was faced with growing regional instability and a belated shift to a market economy—two conditions often said to be conducive to the exacerbation of ethnic tensions.

As Ukraine approaches its tenth year of independence, it seems an appropriate moment to ask what type of nation it has become. The process by which Ukrainians determine the boundaries and characteristics of their national identity is dynamic, and has been the source of debate at many levels of Ukrainian society. The education system can illustrate several aspects of this process of identity formation: what the dominant elite choose to teach to the next generation about nation and citizenship, whether that material is accepted or transformed in its presentation to pupils, and to what extent the pupils internalize what they have been taught. This article begins to analyze the historical narrative and underlying values that together help to define a collective understanding of “nation” through a discussion of the education system in Ukraine. In particular, it focuses on the textbook used for the introductory Ukrainian history course as an example of the values and narrative fostered by the Ministry of Education. Although the analysis focuses on a single textbook, the article also attempts to place the arguments in a broader perspective by paying attention to the context within which the textbook curriculum is created and implemented and by discussing several factors that may affect its presentation to and reception by pupils.