In Uzbekistan, the 1990s brought significant and sometimes drastic change in employment and income security and in earning opportunities. In focus groups conducted in 1996 and 1997 with citizens of Uzbekistan from various ethnicities, regions and social classes, it was within the context of discussion of work and income that the idea of “transition” came through most clearly: life was once normal, and will be normal again sometime, but meanwhile nothing is certain. In these focus groups there was a pervasive sense that “the transition” is an aberration; this was expressed most succinctly in criticisms of those women who transgressed gender norms in order to earn an income in the “shuttle” trade.

Official government educational pronouncements and policy in the Kyrgyz Republic have called for wider access and participation in higher education as an essential part of the general strategy to build democracy and a market economy. The number of higher education institutions (vuzy) has increased from approximately 10 at the end of the Soviet period to 50 institutions, with over 200,000 students now in attendance. Various international statistical sources show that higher education enrollments peaked above 70% of secondary school graduates in the early 1990s. For the past decade, these figures are lower yet still substantial. UNDP reports between 53% and 63%, while the World Bank and UNESCO report between 41% and 45%. In any of these calculations, however, higher education enrollments in Kyrgyzstan have at least trebled since independence, which is even more remarkable considering that the Kyrgyz system of higher education has become almost entirely paid for by students and parents rather than by the national government.

This article traces the reinterpretation of the Revolution(s) of 1917 in the official historical narrative of post-Soviet Russia. Its construction is an essentially political process, as its discursive hegemony depends on how it fits into the symbolic landscape created by various social actors. The task of reinterpretation of the revolution is complicated by its centrality for two conflicting patterns of memory politics – the critical “working through” the memory of a traumatic and criminal past, and consolidation of the nation/nation-building. There are different coalitions of mnemonic actors behind each of these patterns. The author reveals different strategies of dealing with dilemmas involved in employing these patterns in the 1990s and the 2000s, and argues that until now the Russian imcumbent elites have not succeeded in reframing the Russian Revolution as a great, though tragic, episode of the national past. In the context of the centenary commemorated in 2017, the incumbent elite seem to have come back to the idea of “reconciliation and accord” that was coined by Boris Yeltsin's team in the mid-1990s. However, its integration into the apologetic narrative of “the 1000-year Russian state” totally changes its meaning, as it rejects “working through” the traumatic past.

The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina instituted ethnic quotas between Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats: the three “constituent peoples.” This institutionalization of ethnicity, criticized by some contemporary authors, is often seen as a creation of the peace agreement. Interestingly, several scholars deem such proportional representation a legacy from socialist times. But the existing literature lacks a historical perspective on the question of ethnic quotas. In addressing this issue, this paper reminds one of the existence of ethnic quotas, called the “national key,” during socialist times. A deeper analysis of the “national key” in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of the ethnic quotas in the last two decades shows, interestingly, more differences than continuity. The article concludes that few similarities and more differences can be observed between the two periods, especially regarding the legal aspects of the “national key,” in ideological justification and in the conceptions based on parity or proportional representation.

The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has been the most stable actor in the Romanian party system over the past two decades. However, in this article, we argue that beyond this apparent stability, the linkages between RMDSZ and its voters have undergone a gradual, yet significant shift. The ethnic block voting of Transylvanian Hungarians was closely connected to the concept of a self-standing and parallel “Minority Society,” and to the practices of institution building that the minority elites engaged in in the early 1990s. However, since its first participation in the Romanian government in 1996, RMDSZ has gradually departed from this strategy, a phenomenon that was also closely connected to a process of elite change within the organization. The present RMDSZ leadership puts less and less emphasis on policy programs that could reinforce the institutional system of the minority; consequently, it is unable (and unwilling) to organizationally integrate the community activists of the minority society who previously had played a key role in the process of (electoral) mobilization. At the rhetorical level, RMDSZ did not abandon the goal of building a parallel Hungarian minority society, but in its linkages to the Hungarian electorate, clientelistic exchanges have become predominant.

A frequent assertion about the recent events and pervasive mood in Belarus—the apparent efforts to reunite with Russia, the virtual denial of a Belarusian identity by a Russophone president, official nostalgia for the time of the former Soviet Union— is that national consciousness is somehow retarded or delayed, and national development is lagging considerably behind that of its neighboring states, Lithuania and Ukraine. This article seeks to address the question of national self-awareness in Belarus from three angles: those of demography, culture, and language. Was development of the republic in the Soviet period different from that of the other republics, and is that development responsible for what has been described as the “national nihilism” of today? Is that mood likely to change with a new generation of Belarusians? How far is President Alyaksander Lukashenka, the first president of Belarus, who was elected in July 1994, responsible for the present situation and how far is he a symptom of the notable lack of self-assertion of Belarusians?

Ukraine's independence signaled the end of the post-war Russification of the school system and the beginning of a large scale Ukrainization of the educational sector. From the 1990–1991 school year to the 1997–1998 school year, the national authorities raised the proportion of Ukrainian-instructed school children from 47.9% to 62.8% nationwide. As the language of instruction in Ukraine's schools almost exclusively is either Ukrainian or Russian, the relative percentage of Russian-instructed school children, conversely, declined from 51.4% to 36.4% during the same period. Ukraine is not the only Soviet successor state that has promoted the language of the titular nationality in the sphere of education at the expense of Russian. In Kazakhstan, for example, the proportion of pupils receiving their education in Kazakh grew from 32.4% in 1990–1991 to 40.1% in 1993–1994, and the percentage of Russian-instructed children, accordingly, fell from 65.0% to 57.2%. In Moldova, the number of pupils studying exclusively in Moldovan increased from 424,000 to 447,000 between 1989–1990 and 1992–1993, while the number of pupils studying exclusively in Russian dropped from 290,000 to 262,000.

Abkhazia during the Stalin era was at the same time a subtropical haven where the great leader and his lieutenants built grand dachas and took extended holidays away from Moscow, and also a key piece in the continuing chess match of Soviet politics. This paper will examine how and why this small, sunny autonomous republic on the Black Sea, and the political networks that developed there, played a prominent role in the politics of the south Caucasus region and in Soviet politics as a whole during the Stalin period.

Nationalism has long been understood to be a deeply gendered phenomenon. This article provides an overview of some of the key concepts and literature in the study of gender and nationalism, including women; gender; the nation and the intersection of sexuality, race, and migration; and gender within nationalist imaginations. It offers some future research agendas that might be pursued in work on gender and nationalism—namely the gendered dimensions of populism or “new” nationalism.

Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which were then articulated by some nationalistic political elites.

This paper discusses the way in which a post-conflict European Union (EU) member immediately after accession both shapes and adapts to EU memory politics as a part of its Europeanization process. I will analyze how the country responds to the top-down pressures of Europeanization in the domestic politics of memory by making proactive attempts at exporting its own politics of memory (discourses, policies, and practices) to the EU level. Drawing evidence from Croatian EU accession, I will consider how Croatian members of the European Parliament “upload” domestic memory politics to the EU level, particularly to the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of elite interviews, discourses, parliamentary duties, agenda-setting, and decision-making of Croatian MEPs from 2013 to 2016, I argue that the parliament serves both as a locus for confirmation of European identity through promotion of countries’ EU memory credentials and as a new forum for affirmation of national identity. The preservation of the “Homeland War” narrative (1991–1995) and of the “sacredness” of Vukovar as a European lieu de mémoire clearly influences the decision-making of Croatian MEPs, motivating inter-group support for policy building and remembrance practices that bridge domestic political differences.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines nation as “a distinct race or people, characterized by common descent, language or history, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory.” Nationalism in turn may be defined as a sense of identity as a people, and the efforts resulting to foster this and to obtain recognition as a distinct population, bound by common historical, cultural, linguistic, political, religious or other ties in the eyes of the larger society.

While in the broadest sense the term “nation” may apply to a non-politically autonomous ethnic group consisting of only a few hundred individuals (cf. the West African or Native American use of the word as an equivalent to “tribe”), it is most often used synonymously with the notion of an actual country, the existence of an independent geographical homeland being an integral part of its interpretation. However, as the dictionary definition indicates, this is usually, and therefore by implication not invariably, a defining criterion. There have been nations of people lacking a homeland (or a homeland allowing them access or control) throughout history. The pre-1948 Jewish population, for example, or the Palestinians in the present day. Bloody wars have been fought because of the existence of nations of people lacking their own autonomous territory.

It is into this latter category that the Romani nation fits and, though the efforts to secure a geographical homeland were central to the nationalist movement, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, the price paid for not having one has been heavy.

The disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) resulted in demographic shifts and drew new boundaries in a once borderless region. The South Caucasus, an area that has been characterized by its linguistic diversity witnessed one of the most destructive interethnic wars in the former USSR. Fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, it resulted in the removal of the Azerbaijani population. Two decades later the political status of the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic remains unresolved, but apparently a new linguistic self-identity of the population takes shape. While possibilities for extensive sociolinguistic research are limited, linguistic landscape research provides insights into patterns of individual and public language use. This paper analyzes the linguistic landscapes of Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, and establishes functional domains of the languages visible. Furthermore, it traces remnants of an Azerbaijani linguistic landscape in abandoned settlements and documents patterns of language use in rural parts of the territory. The demographic situation suggests a majority of Armenians, yet the results point toward a bilingual situation with Russian as a language of wider communication. On the other hand, the study shows the link between the removal of Azerbaijani from the public sphere and the eradication of Azerbaijani culture.

This article is based on the preliminary results of a project on “Islam, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Post-Soviet Tatarstan and Dagestan,” which began in March 1997 and ended in September 1999. These two out of Russia's 21 autonomous republics were chosen for comparative research because, although they are both Muslim, there are obvious geographical, ethnic, cultural, and political differences between them. Each republic also represents a distinctive model of the evolution of Muslim society and its relations with Russian culture in general and with the Russian political center in particular.

This paper examines the 15-point agreement on normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Two mainstream discourses have prevailed since the agreement was ratified by both countries: on one hand, the Government of Kosovo has branded this agreement as historic, given the fact that in the last century no agreement has ever been reached between Kosovo and Serbia. On the other hand, Kosovo's political opposition has critiqued this agreement stressing that the 15-point agreement devastates Kosovo's statehood. Beyond both extreme stances, we argue that an enhanced autonomy for four northern Serb municipalities ought to be seen as a tool for integration, rather than disintegration of Kosovo statehood. This paper concludes that the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia as a top-down arrangement lacks transparency, and this might jeopardize the achievements reached through this process. Moreover, the EU position should be clearly articulated that redrawing and rearranging the borders of Kosovo and Serbia might overturn the EU's and USA's immense investments in stability, peace, and prosperity in the Western Balkans.

The emergence of a strong Cossack movement has great implications for the future of Russia and the post-Soviet space. It is at once the glorification of a mythical past and a powerful alternate vision of the future. Old questions of Cossack identity are once again being debated and a Cossack presence is strongly felt in the cities of southern Russia. In the volatile North Caucasus region the Cossack revival has increasingly assumed many of the features of national movements in other areas of the former Soviet Union.

Since the Rose Revolution (2003), Georgia has encountered an unprecedented scale of institutional reforms concomitant with the rise of American and European involvement in the “democratization” process. Various scholars have suggested that Georgian nationalism developed from an ethno-cultural basis to a more civic/liberal orientation after the Rose Revolution. This paper analyzes Georgian nationalism under President Mikheil Saakashvili to demonstrate the significant divergence between political rhetoric on national identity, the selection of symbols, and state policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church versus state policy toward ethnic minorities. The aim of this article is to examine the at times conflicting conceptions of national identity as reflected in the public policies of Saakashvili's government since the Rose Revolution. It attempts to problematize the typologies of nationalism when applied to the Georgian context and suggests conceptualizing the state-driven nationalism of the post-Rose Revolution government as “hybrid nationalism” as opposed to civic or ethno-cultural.

The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe promised bold opportunities for the various ethnic groups populating that vast, diverse region. Yet if history had any lessons to teach these groups it was that democracy, or at least the political systems that emerged in the midst of the rubble of the Berlin Wall between 1989 and 1991, was no guarantor of whatever idealized rights the region's ethnic groups hoped would come in the wake of the collapse of the communist dictatorships that had dominated these parts of Europe for decades. Communism, had, in many instances, done nothing more than stifle the festering ethnic tensions that had exploded in the nineteenth century and short-circuited the complex, lengthy process of resolving these conflicts. Consequently, for those knowledgeable about the essence of these conflicts, it should have come as no surprise that Yugoslavia, for example, was torn asunder by ethnic violence so terrifying that it took the intervention of the Western world's great powers to end the most violent aspects of these wars of ethnicity.

The Russian–Estonian border has undergone radical changes in the past two decades – from an integrated borderland between two Soviet republics to a border between nation-states and the new EU external border. Until the present day, it is a discursive battlefield that reflects the difficult relations between Russia and Estonia after the restoration of Estonia's independence. While much research has concentrated on antagonistic projects of identity politics and state-building from a top-down perspective, this paper asks how people living in the borderland make sense of the place they live in and negotiate shifts in the symbolic landscapes. Based on life-story narratives of Russian-speakers, it analyzes different ways of narrating and framing place and argues for a consideration of the plurality and ambivalences of place-making projects on the ground. Furthermore, it argues for a more balanced account of continuity and discontinuity in memory narratives by taking into account how the socialist past continues to be meaningful in the present. As the interviews show, memories of the socialist past are used for constructing belonging in the present both by countering and by reproducing national narratives of boundedness.

The need to handle ethnocultural diversity and the external pressures of Euro-Atlantic integration have led to the development of complex minority rights regimes in Central and Southeast European states. The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative analysis of the political representation dimension of these regimes, and to investigate how the regulations in this domain are related to the more general attitude of states toward diversity recognition and registration. For this purpose, we classify the states according to a series of variables concerning the manner in which ethnocultural diversity is recognized and portrayed, as well as the regulations concerning the representation of minorities, and identify patterns of their incidence. The formal-legal analysis of the constitutions, minority protection laws and of the electoral legislation of the included countries reveals a clear connection between the general attitude of the state toward diversity and the incidence of autonomies, and a less unequivocal, yet strong relationship in the case of minority representation in the national polity.