During Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the Russian government and media’s rhetorical embrace of illiberalism, patriotism, and chauvinism was accompanied and partly facilitated by the invocation of historical precedent and “correct” historical understanding. Politicians stressed the importance of a shared historical memory to Russian national identity, rendering the interpretation of history a question of patriotism. The government and state-supportive media then used “patriotic” historical memories to legitimize government policies. Through framing analysis of three significant episodes—namely, the Ukraine Crisis, imposition of sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria—I outline how the government and state-supportive media conflated these events with supposed historical precedents. This conflation made “patriotic” (or government-approved) history an everyday topic of discussion, but it also confused supporting government policy with celebrating historical triumph (or condemning historical tragedy). In this way, the government co-opted the emotional power of the history they invoked for the purposes of legitimizing their policies. This was compounded by the government and state-supportive media using and citing images and descriptions of ordinary people performing their patriotism in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated awareness of Russian history and support for the government.

The article compares the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian politics in the domains of memory and language, two prominent aspects of the politics of identity that have been sites of controversy since the early years of independence. It examines the government’s behavior in the two domains, taking into account constraints presented by opposition parties, civil society, foreign states and international organizations, and the perceived preferences of the population. In both cases, the government must reconcile the active minority’s call for a radical break with the imperial legacy and the majority’s preference for the preservation of the accustomed environment. However, the Ukrainian leadership chose very different courses for the two domains. While pursuing a rather radical nationalist agenda with regard to memory, they largely refrained from a resolute promotion of the Ukrainian language. This difference does not reflect popular preferences and rather can be explained by politicians’ misperception of what the population wants, as well as their apprehension of policies that would radically change the country’s linguistic landscape and thus their own everyday life.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, came into being in 1929 as an “integral nationalist” movement that set itself the goal of driving Polish landowners and officials out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, joining hands with Ukrainians in other countries, and establishing an independent state. The OUN defined Jews, along with Russians and Poles, as aliens and enemies. There was no need, wrote an OUN ideologist in 1929, to list all the injuries that Jews caused Ukrainians. “In addition to a number of external enemies Ukraine also has an internal enemy … Jewry and its negative consequences for our liberation cause can be liquidated only by an organized collective effort”. The article examines archival documents, publications by OUN members, and recent scholarly literature to trace the evolution of OUN thinking about Jews from 1929 through the war years, when the German occupation of Ukraine gave the OUN an opportunity to stage pogroms and persecute Jews, and the prime minister of the state that the OUN proclaimed wrote that he supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine”.

Since the end of the Cold War it has become common for Finnish academics and politicians alike to frame debates about Finnish national identity in terms of locating Finland somewhere along a continuum between East and West. Indeed, for politicians, properly locating oneself (and therefore Finland) along this continuum has often been seen as central to the winning and losing of elections. For example, the 1994 referendum on EU membership was largely interpreted precisely as an opportunity to relocate Finland further to the West. Indeed, the tendency to depict Finnish history in terms of a series of “Westernizing” moves has been notable, but has also betrayed some of the politicized elements of this view. However, this framing of Finnish national identity discourse is not only sometimes politicized but arguably is also too simplified and results in blindness towards other identity narratives that have also been important through Finnish history, and that are also evident (but rarely recognized) today as well. In this article we aim to highlight one of these that we argue has played a key role in locating Finland in the world and in formulating notions of what Finland is about, what historical role and mission it has been understood as destined to play, and what futures for the nation have been conceptualized as possible and as providing a source of subjectivity and national dignity.

The year 1989 marked a turning point for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). But unlike other places in the region, that year saw a turn towards growing political conflict which soon led to violent warfare. This paper identifies and discusses three processes that led to this outcome. The first process was the impetus towards reform of the Yugoslav federal state, its political and economic system. The second was the conflict over the future of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ). The third was the shifting meanings of ethnic and nonethnic labels and the ways in which putative “national” and “ethnic” interests came to be aligned with specific political options. By the end of 1989 these three processes had come together to spell the end of the SKJ, of the SFRY, and of “Yugoslavism” as a political identity. In their places, ruling parties threatened by changes within their own societies, as well as by pressures created by the 1989 revolutions in the region, resorted to strategies of conflict and violence in an attempt to forestall the kinds of changes and elite turnovers seen in other socialist countries.

Nationalism has been one of the domestic constraints to progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, especially in the Balkans that are dealing with multiple postwar transition realities. Ethno-nationalist challenges, often influenced by religion, have been significant in Bosnia-Herzegovina given weak state identity and democracy, competing institutionalized ethno-national identities, and slow Europeanization. Through the lenses of gendered nationalism, the societal security dilemma, and political homophobia, this article analyzes how the politics and discourse of LGBT rights during the past decade in Bosnia reveal tensions between competing and multiple identities and narratives—European, multiethnic, ethno-nationalist, and religious—using the violent response to the 2008 Queer Sarajevo Festival as a key illustration. However, in the past decade, LGBT rights have progressed and antigay backlash to LGBT visibility (in addition to stronger external leverage and other factors) has resulted in stronger activism and change. The public discourse and response to the announcement of Bosnia’s first Pride Parade represents another turning point in LGBT visibility that seems to reveal that ethno-nationalist challenges may be lessening as LGBT rights norms gain strength.

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.

This article explores the status of Turks in Bulgaria under the transition from Communism to post-Communism. After a summary of the demography of the Turkish population in Bulgaria, the paper focuses on developments in three specific areas: religious, political, and educational issues. For each issue a brief historical background is given but the emphasis is on developments since 1989. Since the article is an expanded version of a presentation on East European Linguistic Minorities, the issue of Turkish language and Turkish language education in Bulgaria is discussed in greater detail than religious and political issues. This in no way implies that the latter are any less important.

In 1990 a Mordvin scholar released an alarming forecast about the fate awaiting his people: provided that those adverse demographic trends that had established themselves over the course of the twentieth century continued, the last member of his million-strong nation would disappear by the year 2135. This statement was not the only one of its kind. During the final years of Soviet rule, the recently realized opportunity to speak out about the concerns of the non-Russian groups was being utilized speedily. Journalistic and scholarly reports on the various problems of Russia's minority groups, often painted in highly dramatic language, became common in both regional and central publications.

This article examines how defendants on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) appropriate the tribunal as a platform for national myth and group making. Specifically, the article analyzes Radovan Karadžić and Vojislav Šešelj's “performances” at The Hague in order to highlight the particular ways in which the defendants craft and mobilize the nationalist narrative. The article introduces the phenomenon of “the war criminal cult” and traces three stages of its production, including the defendants' collectivization of guilt, epitomization of The Hague as the ultimate enemy of the nation, and construction of “Serbs” as the biggest victims of international justice and of themselves as martyrs befallen with the task of defending the dignity of the nation. The “war criminal cult” is thus “made” in conversation with the “imperial West” in a collective narrative that contests the legitimacy and the intention of The Hague while disguising individual responsibility.

Because of the historic separation of western and eastern Ukraine under Polish and Russian spheres of influence, respectively, regional subpopulations have been seen as an important factor in Ukrainian politics. Arel and Wilson argue that the division on the all-important “Russian question” in Ukraine (relations with Russia and with the Russian-speaking minority) is increasingly regional: east and south versus the center and west. Hesli calculated the level of russification and industrialization in the various regions of Ukraine and concluded that both, together with geographic location, although interrelated, have their own bearing on variation in public opinion. Markus, however, has argued that despite economic, political and ethnic differences among Ukraine's regions, these differences pose less of a threat to reform than has sometimes been suggested. She further points out that speculation that the Donbass wants to unite with Russia “stems more from Russian claims to the area than from genuine indigenous sentiment.” Miller and colleagues, on the other hand, dispute the notion of regional differences independent of the socio-demographic characteristics of the local populations, challenging the conventional wisdom that there are regional political cultures that supersede any underlying demographic differences. They argue that national, political, economic and class identities represent the important cleavages in post-communist societies. The regional divide in Ukraine is thus not a foregone conclusion but a factor that bears closer examination.

Though the 1932–1933 Famine affected both Ukraine (UkrSSR) and Russia (RSFSR), there is still no clear concept of the causes of the Famine and its scale. This study is undertaken to make a comparative assessment of the 1932–1934 direct losses within and between UkrSSR and RSFSR in order to answer the questions as to whether the major grain-producing areas of both republics suffered from the Famine to the same extent and whether the intensity of regional losses was determined exclusively by the grain specialization of the region. Our results show that the regions seriously affected by the Famine comprised a much larger proportion (in terms of territory and population) of UkrSSR than of the RSFSR. The highest excess deaths in UkrSSR are found in the regions that did not play a major role in grain procurement, while in the RSFSSR four grain-producing regions suffered the most. Our analysis suggests that (a) the link between Famine losses and grain procurement is not confirmed in Ukraine, but is partially confirmed in Russia, and (b) extremely high losses are mostly found in the regions where repression policies were much more severe than those introduced elsewhere and for which nationality may be a key factor.

The collapse of the Soviet Union set Russia’s ruling elites the challenge of nation-building: while “Russians” had to be imagined as a political community on behalf of which the newly established Russian state was ruled, their national history needed to be narrated. Crucial for this enterprise was interpreting the Soviet past. Although the latter was used for political purposes by both Boris Yeltsin (who attempted to break with it) and Vladimir Putin (who established continuity with it), a politically usable interpretation of the Russian Revolutions was never found. Such is the consensus that emerged in 2017. Challenging this consensus, I argue that a specific interpretation of the Revolutions—nested within a narrative that covers Russia’s history from Kievan Rus to the contemporary Russian Federation—has been developed in Russia. Turning Russia’s politically problematic past into a politically usable one, this interpretation is (re)produced through the project Russia—My History. As Russia—My History (initially developed within the Russian Orthodox Church) is becoming a part of state-sponsored efforts to forge an “official” vision of Russian history, the interpretation of the Revolutions (re)produced through it is growing in influence in present-day Russia.

This article seeks to analyze the ideology of the RNE as represented by its undisputed leader Barkashov and by the RNE Council which he dominates. Particular attention is paid to RNE's relation to Russian ethnicity. The first part discusses Barkashov and his organization's policies with regard to the russkii (ethnic Russian) nation and to Russian nationalism. Then follows a critical review of the RNE's relation to nazism and fascism. The article then considers the RNE's ideas about how the new Russian state should be shaped, i.e., its political and economic program. Finally, the RNE is placed in the wider Russian political landscape by means of a discussion of its political friends and foes.

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.

In exploring the history of the Russian minority in Estonia during 1918–1940, one is inevitably drawn to the figure of Professor Mikhail Anatolevich Kurchinskii (1876–1939). An academic and journalist, Kurchinskii was also an important political actor devoted to the quest for a satisfactory resolution of the nationality question in Estonia and Europe. It is with good reason that Kurchinskii has been called “the most important theoretician and practical advocate of cultural autonomy amongst the [interwar] Russian minority in Estonia.” From 1927 he also served as a leading member of the Congress of European Minorities (CEM), which became the main promoter of the cultural autonomy concept on the wider European stage. During the same period he took a deep interest in the work of the Pan-Europe movement and the quest for a durable settlement of European affairs following the traumas of World War I. Until very recently, however, Kurchinskii has remained a neglected figure among historians, even within the narrow field of Baltic studies. This neglect is symptomatic of the lack of attention devoted to the political history of the Russian minority more generally. As the first group to implement Estonia's celebrated 1925 law on cultural autonomy, the interwar German minority has already formed the object of a number of studies. By contrast, Kurchinskii's failure to realize the autonomy project means that he—and, indeed, the Russian minority as a whole—barely receives a mention in most histories of Estonia. Just as Kurchinskii's aspirations regarding cultural autonomy were never realized during his lifetime, so his vision of building a “New Europe” faded against the background of economic depression and a retreat into inward-looking national particularism during the 1930s. The tragic fate that befell central and eastern Europe after 1939 has in turn tended to obscure many of the ideas and positive achievements of the interwar minorities movement. This article uses Kurchinskii's career to illuminate issues relating to the sociopolitical development of the Russian minority between the wars. In particular it compares Kurchinskii's thinking on minority issues with that of his rival Aleksei Janson (1866–1940), a socialist politician and pedagogical expert who served as Russian National Secretary in the Estonian Ministry of Education from 1922 to 1927. Finally, by linking Kurchinskii's quest for cultural autonomy to his broader thinking on the “New Europe,” the article assesses the relevance of these ideas to contemporary debates on the nationality question.

This article explores nation-building processes in the Transnistrian imagined community. While some scholars describe Transnistria’s nation-building strategy as a civic, multicultural project, the analysis of recent demographic and educational data corroborated with the close examination of local media content and official discourses—all point to the emergence of a distinct political culture marked by the increasing use of the Russian language in the public sphere, and the politicization of the Moldovan identity. Discourses about ethnic and national identity in the region have evolved as the Transnistrian elites reimagine the political community as part of the Russkii Mir. These circumstances suggest that, in the long run, the breakaway region might function as the southeastern frontline of Russian irredentism with the elites of the Pridnestrovska͡ia Moldavska͡ia Respublika continuing to call on the Russian Federation to annex the parastate instead of seeking a peaceful reintegration into Moldova.

Most scholarship on post-Communist Croatia claims that the first Croatian president, Franjo Tuđman, intentionally rehabilitated the legacy of the World War II (WWII) Croatian Ustaša and its Nazi-puppet state. The rehabilitation of the Ustaša has been linked to Tuđman's national reconciliation politics that tended toward a particular “forgetting of the past.” The national reconciliation was conceptualized as a joint struggle of both the Croatian anti-fascist Partisan and the Croatian WWII fascist Ustaša successors to achieve Croatian independence. However, the existing scholarship does not offer a comprehensive explanation of the nexus between national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of the Ustaša. Hence, this article will present how “Ustaša-nostalgia” does not stem from Tuđman's intentions, but rather from the morphological gap occurring in Tuđman's nation-building idea. Namely, Tuđman's condemnation of the entire idea of Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia eventually brought about the perception that any historical agent advocating the idea of an independent Croatia is better than any form of Croatian Yugoslavism. Finally, the article will present how contemporary Croatian society is still seeped in “Ustaša-nostalgia” due to the hesitation of the post-Tuđman Croatian politics to come to terms with the legacy of his national reconciliation politics.

The general perception of Western analysts and observers is that the nation-states created as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union all treat the memory of the dark, repressive aspects of the Stalinist regime in public spaces as a symbolic element in the creation of a new post-Soviet identity [Denison, Michael. 2009. “The Art of the Impossible: Political Symbolism, and the Creation of National Identity and Collective Memory in Post-Soviet Turkmenistan.” Europe-Asia Studies 61 (7): 1167–1187]. We argue that the government of Kazakhstan employs non-nationalistic discourse in its treatment of Stalinist victims’ commemoration in a variety of forms, through the creation of modern memorial complexes at the sites of horrific Soviet activity (mass burial places, labor camps, and detention centers), purpose-built museum exhibitions, and the commemorative speeches of its president and other officials. Kazakhstan's strategy in commemorating its Soviet past is designed to highlight the inclusiveness of repression on all peoples living in its territory at that time, not just Kazakhs, thereby assisting in bringing together its multinational and multiethnic society. Thus, the official stance treats this discourse as an important symbolic source of shaping the collective memory of the nation, based on “a general civil identity without prioritizing one ethnic group over another — a national unity, founded on the recognition of a common system of values and principles for all citizens” [Shakirova, Svetlana. 2012. “Letters to Nazarbaev: Kazakhstan's Intellectuals Debate National Identity.” February 7. Accessed July 28, 2015. http://postsovietpost.stanford.edu/discussion/letters-nazarbaev-kazakhstans-intellectuals-debate-national-identity].