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.

This article explores the relationship between minority city-level and state-level political representations through the analysis of the contested implementation of state education policies in Tallinn and Riga. Referring to the US debate on this issue, the article asks what role minority incorporation into city-level power structures can play for its substantive representation. The comparison between Tallinn and Riga reveals two potential answers to this question. The case of Riga illustrates how city-level representation can be an alternative representative channel through which the minority can put pressure on state government and magnify its political voice within the country's democratic space. On the contrary, the case of Tallinn illustrates how a municipality can be an alternative locus of representation, which does not guarantee minority empowerment but rather entraps the minority at the local level within the implicit understanding that the minority (or at least the parties that get the minority vote) can “have its share” locally, but it cannot hope to influence state policies. The comparison between the two cases reveals different levels of legitimacy of the minority's voice in the democratic debate of Estonia and Latvia, and shows the risks and opportunities linked to the two models of minority city-level incorporation.

In 1929, local officials in the mountainous region of upper Ajara in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) pursued aggressive policies to force women to remove their veils and to close religious schools, provoking the Muslim peasant population to rebellion in one of the largest and most violent of such incidents in Soviet history. The central authorities in Moscow authorized the use of Red Army troops to suppress the uprising, but they also reversed the local initiatives and offered the peasants concessions. Based on Party and secret police files from the Georgian archives in Tbilisi and Batumi, this article will explore the ways in which local cadres interpreted regime policies in this Muslim region of Georgia, and the interaction of the center and periphery in dealing with national identity, Islam, gender, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region's political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,”which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies.

While Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” and its aftermath constituted something of a turning point for Russia politically - as well as personally for the women imprisoned afterwards - it was neither the first nor last of Pussy Riot's endeavors. Among other things, their series of songs, published as video clips on the web, endorsed mass protest against the Putin regime, criticized state-sponsored homophobia, and praised feminism as a possible curative for Russia's many ills. In setting forth their ideas, however, Pussy Riot's lyricists made use of traditional masculine and feminine gender norms as well as homophobia, wielding these against their opponents in the regime and thereby reinforcing them in ways that other self-identified Russian feminists found problematic at best.

In this article, I review Pussy Riot's collection of songs in chronological order, highlighting the areas where gender norms and apparent misogyny, sexism, and homophobia appear. I weave my explications of the content of Pussy Riot's productions in with the responses of Russian feminist activists to Pussy Riot's lyrics and actions. Taking into account the views of some non-feminist Russian commentators in addition to self-identified feminist activists, I discuss a range of evaluations of the content of Pussy Riot's compositions, as well as differing appraisals of the means that Pussy Riot employed to achieve what they viewed as feminist ends: undermining or even unseating the Putin regime.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the relationship between forms of political legitimacy employed by communist regimes in East and Central Europe and subsequent models of revolutionary change in 1989. The conceptual basis of the analysis lies in Max Weber's theoretical framework of legitimacy. The four cases selected for comparison are Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The attempts of de-Stalinization and reformation of these party-state regimes through the introduction of paternalistic and also more goal-oriented measures could not prevent their disintegration in the 1980s and their subsequent collapse in 1989. But, I argue, it was the withdrawal of ideological support by elites that ultimately brought communism to an end. The differences in revolutionary scenarios and transitions to democracy in the four cases indicate the importance of a shift in both rulers and masses towards interest in dialogue and compromise. Hungary and Poland represent the clearest scenarios in which communist parties acted as agents of regime change in a rational-legal direction. The Bulgarian case stands as an intermediary case between these two and Romania. Finally, Romania represents an extreme case of violent revolution and the overthrow of a traditionalist and sultanistic regime and illustrates the difficulties following a complete collapse of political authority.

The end of communism brought hopes for a wholesale liberal-democratic transformation to the republics of the former Soviet Union. However, bitter disenchantment soon followed, as resurrected nationalism undermined the republics' stability and threatened democracy. Mass nationalist movements in these countries were not observed until the regime's initial liberalization. In most cases, the high phase of nationalist mobilization was reached only after the postcommunist state elites endorsed nationalism as an official policy of the state. In each instance, nationalist strategies of the state were defined in a complex interplay of domestic and international factors. Ethnicity became politicized as a resource for political action when other resources proved inadequate or insufficient. In addition, exogenous factors often played a leading role in this development.

Writing about the rhetoric of Milorad Dodik, one certainly has to bear in mind his beginnings, especially as a 1998 RS prime minister whom Albright (1998) called a “breath of fresh air” and someone “determined to peacebuilding, reconciliation and connection of democratic alternative” in Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth BiH). Dodik's early rhetoric that brought him to power abounded in phrases such as “economic progress,” “debt return,” and “opening to the world,” while some media reports referred to him as the “America-supported man who occasionally attended Ambassador Miller's secret dinners” (Dani, 22 September 2000) (Majstorovic et al. 2010). In 1998, Dodik attended donors’ conferences and was given significant support to pursue the reforms he started, including normalization of relations with the BiH Federation and Croatia. In 1998, his results secured him between $400 million and $600 million in aid money (Beta, 13 May 1998).

Annexation into the Russian Empire transformed the cities of Central Asia. The European presence increased steadily from year to year and with it new city neighborhoods were created, often alongside the old quarters in which the autochthonous population lived. With increased immigration during the Soviet era, the majority of the population in the region's principal cities were either Slavs or Russified minorities and the common language used by all the inhabitants, including the autochthonous ones who continued to use their mother tongue, was Russian. The Soviets saw these changes as part of a process of modernization starting in the cities’ European neighborhoods which would spread progressively to the local population.

English-speakers and Bulgarian-speakers seem to read the term “minority” differently. While in English it is more a demographic term, meaning part of the population which is numerically smaller and distinctive from the largest group (the majority of the country), to Bulgarians the term has inalienable political connotations: “minority” is an ethnic or religious group, the rights of which are protected by international agreements and law with far reaching consequences.

The debate about the Roma's fate throughout the Second World War has taken on a controversial character in recent years. The focal point of this controversy is whether the Roma's persecution was racially motivated or not. Reflecting upon the Roma's treatment throughout the war period, various scholars regard social-political factors such as the wandering way of life and especially the ascription of criminality as the main reasons for discrimination against and persecution of Roma. Ultimately, the authority most responsible for the crimes against Roma in the “Old Reich” was the Criminal Office. An extreme stance is the thesis of G. Lewy, who denies not only the planned character of the persecution but also its racial/racist intention. Lewy also refutes the comparability of the Roma's fate with that of the Jews.

In 1944 Poland was re-established for the second time in the twentieth century. Between the Lublin manifesto of 22 July 1944 and the Potsdam conference of summer 1945 a communist-dominated regime had formed, which was had little in common with the Second Republic that had been founded between the declaration of independence on 9 November 1918 and the peace of Riga with Bolshevik Russia signed in March 1921. Post-war Poland was significantly smaller, geographically further to the west, and ethnically more homogeneous. The Holocaust had destroyed Europe's most sizeable Jewish population, the loss of the kresy (eastern borderlands) to the USSR had reduced the size of eastern-Slavic minorities and the expulsion of the Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia further helped to create an ethnically homogeneous country. For the first time in her history, Poland had the structure of a nation-state. Through the destruction and catastrophe of Nazi occupation and genocide the goal of firebrand Polish nationalists such as Roman Dmowski had been achieved: a Poland inhabited by ethnic Poles. Still, the new Poland was less independent than its predecessor; from 1944 onwards it was part of the emerging post-war Soviet Empire. Polish sovereignty had fallen victim to Stalin's “revolutionary-imperial paradigm.” Expansion of Moscow's power was as much a priority of the Soviet leadership as the export of Bolshevik revolution.

Numerous contemporary examples attest to the continued political salience of ethnic identification. This is the case even in multi-ethnic societies bound together by a strong overarching sense of patriotism, but it is most especially so in contexts where ethnicity has historically functioned as the building block of modern nations (Rudolph 2006). Since today’s world contains many more ethnoculturally defined nations than it does states, a tension persists between the principle of self-determination of peoples and the principle of territorial integrity of existing polities (Dembinska, Máracz, and Tonk 2014). The almost invariable overlapping of different ethno-national populations within the same territorial space renders the nation-state concept inherently problematic as a modality for ethnically based self-determination, for while all nation-state projects dictate cultural uniformity, all must contend with differing degrees of pluralism. Within the nation-state frame, those who do not profess belonging to the dominant ethnocultural community are consigned to the category of “national minority” and thereby deemed an anomaly and a barrier to the creation of a “good political order.”1 In this context, claims by minority national and ethnic communities for recognition of collective rights can be easily construed as a threat to the security of the state and its dominant ethno-national group, leading to situations of tension and—in the worst case—open conflict.

This article examines the consociational democracy installed in Kosovo after the war. Starting from the premise that the electoral system is considered one of the key instruments for the engineering of post-conflict societies with deep ethnic divisions, the article analyzes the preferences of local and international actors for the type of electoral system. In particular, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission’s reluctance to organize elections without a prior creation of an institutional base, as well as grand governing coalitions. The mechanisms of consociational democracy aim at addressing elite cooperation between different ethnic communities for building peace and stability in post-conflict societies. But focusing on the intra- and inter-community dynamics of cooperation and confrontation between elites, I conclude that the main obstacle to building a democratic multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and implementing the power-sharing arrangements was the uncertainty over the status of Kosovo.

This article gives an overview of the current position of minority self-governance within the Serbian legal order and its multilevel governance structure, with a particular focus on issues deriving from the missing legal determination of national minority councils. Although Serbia’s 2009 Law on National Minority Councils was welcomed by the international community, both national minority councils and public agencies have from the very beginning of its operation expressed serious concerns relating inter alia to the unspecified legal status of the councils. This has resulted in frequent misunderstandings in practice and, rather than being real self-governments of national minorities under public law, the councils are usually treated as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or organizations under the influence of political parties. Instead of presenting (international) political and social scientific approaches to the legal character of non-territorial autonomy in general, the article focuses on concrete legislative solutions and Constitutional Court practice regarding issues relevant to the de jure status of national minority councils in Serbia, such as election rules, competences, and funding.

Who are the people who, in the face of extreme repression, unexpectedly take to the streets en masse in an authoritarian state? This article aims to answer this question with reference to the case of the Belarusian anti-Lukashenka mass mobilization of 2020. It employs unique data from an original online protest survey among citizens of Belarus who were 18 or older and residing in the country at the time of the protests (Onuch et. al.; MOBILISE 2020 & 2021; n = 17,174), fielded August 18, 2020–January 29, 2021.2 This survey was designed to: (a) capture as many protesters as possible; and (b) capture a large enough sample of non-protesters as a comparative reference group enabling us to better understand how different anti-Lukashenka protesters (n = 11,719) were from non-protesters (n = 5,455). Guided by theoretical and empirical expectations of contentious politics scholarship, we first provide descriptive statistics about the socio-demographic characteristics of the protesters, self-reported protest grievances and claims, and median protester preferences on a range of attitudes and policies. This portrait of the protesters is followed up by regression analysis to test whether these patterns hold at a statistically significant level when comparing protesters and non-protesters.

From 2015 up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Polish citizens have undergone a major decline in their willingness to allow foreigners to reside in Poland. The following text empirically investigates whether antipathy to newcomers is driven more by cultural or economic concerns, and what role the ethnicity of immigrants plays in this antagonism. The findings suggest that the ethnicity of immigrants is significant in both the salience of the expressed hostility and in the importance given to individual factors. When considering the acceptance of immigrants of different ethnicity, Poles are most concerned about preserving their national culture, whereas worries about the burden on the national economy are uppermost when considering ethnically similar newcomers. Antipathy against ethnically similar immigrants is also much weaker than against those of different ethnicity. The over-time comparison tells us that support for the government, religiosity, and opposition to universalism values became the most important predictors of restrictionism after 2015. We assume that the increase in anti-immigration attitudes was not that much caused by the unprecedented wave of immigration, but rather by the rule of the nationalist-conservative government which politicized the issue of non-European migration and contributed to the change of public discourse.

International football is a field for national identity performances in which narratives of national belonging are articulated. Games of belonging capture discourses on and debates over national belonging. Up-and-coming national football team diversity, and its public promotion, was expected to facilitate boundary blurring in the politics of belonging; however, it caused highly contentious debates revolving around the question of who belongs to Germany and Turkey and who does not. For this reason, we ask how (ethnoculturally) diverse national football teams challenge established narratives of national belonging and, thereby, trigger debates over national belonging across time and space. We compared the media discourse on national team diversity in Germany and Turkey with a special focus on players who disrupt conceptions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, namely Mesut Özil and Nuri Şahin. Our study illustrates that upcoming international football events constitute games of belonging. Actors from the media, football associations, and politics largely demanded unilateral national belonging from the disrupters, Özil and Şahin. Both players’ reactions, however, draw on conceptions of (trans-)national belonging which challenge and conflict with established narratives of (ethno-)national belonging.

In this article, we examine the literature on the topic of Pan-Slavism that has been published in the last 20 years. We do so by paying particular attention to discussions on contemporary perspectives and manifestations of Pan-Slavism that in our view have been largely missing from academic research. We begin the article by introducing a theoretical conceptualization of Pan-Slavism in general, preparing the ground for our inspection of the academic output in the said period. We then continue by presenting our own contribution to the conceptualization and the current state of the field on Pan-Slavism, suggesting venues that future research may take towards broadening the field that has been and remains narrow. We conclude the article by summarizing the key points made therein.