Common historical wisdom has it that the Peasant Revolt of 1907 and the elections of December 1937 reflected the profound anti-Semitism of the Romanian peasantry. And since the events of 1907 and 1937 have also been looked upon as decisive in determining the course of the history of the peasantry, if not of Romania as such, it seems only proper to assess the accuracy of these contentions.

The revolt of 1907 was indeed a social movement directed against the exploitation of the impoverished Moldavian and Wallachian peasantry by Romanian landlords and Jewish “arendaşi” (Leaseholders). After 1907, and throughout the interwar years, Romanian historiography and political propaganda stressed the anti-Semitic character of the uprising in an effort to exonerate the absentee, and other, Romanian landowners and to emphasize the exploitative nature of Jews and Jewish capitalism. The Jewish question was organically connected with the peasant question in a variety of ways, all condemnatory of Jewish and Judaizing capitalism.

As none of the major political parties of pro-World War I Romania—or, for that matter, few of interwar Romania as well—paid more than lip service to the economic and social plight of the peasants, it was convenient to regard the Jew as the root cause of all the evils affecting the peasantry. Before World War I, populists and, paradoxically, socialists enunciated political theories regarding “neoserfdom,” which, however different in origin, converged in demands for radical land reform. The reform came not because of such demands but because of the Bolshevik Revolution and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Officially, it was unrelated to any political ideology, certainly separated from the Jewish question which, in theory, was resolved concurrently with the peasant question through the granting of citizenship and extension of political rights to the Jews of Romania. Following the countrywide agrarian reform in Greater Romania the peasant and the Jewish questions were in fact severed as Jews and Jewish capitalism had virtually no connections with the land.

This paper has two main goals. First, it illuminates continuities between the ideas of “true Romanian-ness” as held by both the Romanian cultural elite and the Romanian political regimes in the interwar and communist periods. A manufactured definition of a “true” Romanian—as a Romanian Orthodox Christian, natively Romanian-speaking, and ethnically Romanian—formed the core of Romanian nationalism, regardless of the ruling ideology. This definition did not include the Roman and Greek Catholics of Romanian ethnicity on the grounds that they were not Orthodox Christians. It goes without saying that these criteria also excluded Hungarians, Germans and other ethnic minorities on the basis of ethnicity, language and religion. Second, the paper demonstrates that the principal ideas of Romanian nationalism developed in overt contrast to the internationalist ideological movements of both periods. Both the liberals and the Marxists misunderstood nationalism, claimed Ernest Gellner in 1964: liberals assumed that nationalism was a doomed legacy of outmoded irrationalism, superstition and savagery, and Marxists considered it a necessary but temporary stage in the path to global socialism. Gellner's comments are evidently appropriate to Romania, where nationalist responses developed first to the Westernization of the interwar period and second to communist internationalism after 1948.

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, nationality as an “ordering principle” became for the first time a significant factor for Russian imperial policy. Among the most thorny issues facing the imperial bureaucracy was the delimitation of the boundaries of the “Russian nation.” As is well known, St Petersburg never accepted either Ukrainians (at the time more often referred to as “Little Russians”) or Belarusians as separate nations. On the other hand, official Russia also did not deny the linguistic and cultural difference of these two groups entirely. Categories used in the 1897 census reflect this: under the category “mother tongue” (not surprisingly, no specific category of “nation” or “ethnicity” was included), those surveyed could respond “Great Russian,” “Little Russian,” or “Belarusian.” All three of these categories were then, however, subsumed into the larger category “Russian.” In a similar way, Russian officials never denied that Belarusians were in certain respects different from their brethren in central Russia. They did, however, indignantly reject the idea that these differences were so great as to exclude Belarusians from membership in the Russian nation.

In the twentieth century, and particularly under the influence of the Second World War, the international community, in the interests of normal relations, has considered it necessary to agree on certain fundamental principles, such as the observance of universal human rights, the right of nations to self-determination, the equality of the rights of big and small nations, impermissibility of aggression, and liberation from the yoke of colonialism. These principles are written in international conventions, the UN charter and several of its resolutions, and recognized by the majority of states.

On 24 February 1992, Belarusian foreign minister Piotr Kraǔchanka told a visiting European Community delegation in Minsk that he wanted to record his country's claim to Lithuanian border territory in the presence of an international audience. When asked whether the claims extended to Vilnius, Kraǔchanka said “yes,” but added that the border areas were really the ones at issue. In the late 1980s and early 1990s many Lithuanian officials expected Poland to make such claims on their country, to regain territory lost in 1939. By contrast Lithuanians paid little attention to what Belarusians were saying about the role of Vilnius in Belarusian history and the national identity of the 258,000 Slavs in the Vilnius region.

This article explores collective identity frames and discursive strategies employed by social movement actors mobilizing in ethnically divided societies, a context where ethnicity constitutes the primary collective category of identification. By using Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study, it analyzes movement framing in three waves of social protests that occurred in the country in the last decade. Specifically, it investigates the diverse ways in which movement leaders tackled ethnicity in their discourses. The article shows that movement leaders’ narratives rested, respectively, on the primacy of human and citizenship rights, a common feeling of deprivation, and victimhood. Their approach toward ethnicity, however, differed in each wave. Ethnicity was openly rejected in 2013, avoided and not openly contested in 2014, and accepted and approached as an opportunity to bring further support to the movement in 2018. The article highlights that ethnicity can be tackled differently by social movement actors mobilizing on nonethnic grounds in divided societies, and that it might constitute a vantage point for social mobilization rather than a drawback, contributing to raising transversal solidarity.

Research on European identity focuses mainly on majority populations in Western European countries without differentiating among specific population groups and generations, and, above all, disregarding ethnic minority groups living in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the development of European identity among three ethnic minority groups in Lithuania: Belarusians, Poles, and Russians. Theoretically, the project is based on the instrumental approach, which argues that European identity is closely related to perceived benefits from “being European,” and on the cultural approach, which holds a common history, ancestry, and culture responsible for the development of European identity. Existing research has, above all, emphasized the importance of instrumental considerations. Analyzing qualitative interviews collected in the FP7 research project “ENRI-East,” the paper compares how young and adult members of ethnic minority groups construct European identity due to “instrumental” and “cultural” considerations. The results show that both instrumental and cultural considerations are relevant and further development of European identity depends on which age group or ethnic minority group an individual belongs to.

Recent years have brought a remarkable shift in the theory of political representation. Our understanding of representation has moved beyond the traditional static and unidirectional approach, which envisions representatives as simply responding (more or less successfully) to their constituents' needs and demands. We now know that representation is a dynamic and multidirectional process in which the representatives' claims at least partially construct the constituents' interests (Saward 2010). Thus, constructivist scholars have convinced us that representation is not merely about responding to the preexisting and static interests of constituents; rather, it is a dynamic process in which representatives also construct their constituencies' interests, views, and perceptions through the claims-making process. This theoretical shift is most often advanced in discussions of women's representation (Campbell, Childs, and Lovenduski 2010; Celis et al. 2014), but it is bound to have a strong impact also on the study of ethnic minority representation in contemporary democracies. Indeed, if representation is a two-way process through which politically relevant constituencies are constructed, this should apply to ethnocultural minorities, whose “groupness” (Brubaker 2004) cannot be taken as fixed and prepolitical.

This article examines collective attitudes of American and Russian students toward national historical events that elicit pride or shame. The authors use the results of a quantitative questionnaire and analysis of in-depth interviews among students of leading American and Russian universities to identify the temporal localization, the content structure, and the prevalence of either hard or soft power in students' attitudes of pride or shame. The authors argue that perceptions of the past have been a core component of national identity and may have an impact on citizens' political behavior in the present. The authors also stress that major differences in young people's understanding of the past may influence future US-Russia relations.

Based on research in Kazakhstani and Russian archives, this article is a regional study of the 1931–1933 Soviet famine. It compares Soviet policies in the southern and northern “halves” of the Aral Sea region. While the Kazaks in the northern part of the region suffered from the famine, the Karakalpaks in the south did not. The article explains this difference by underscoring the role of the main transportation infrastructure connecting Central Asia to Russia, the Orenburg-Tashkent railway. The railway crossed the northern, Kazak, part of the Aral Sea region and made massive livestock and grain procurements possible, while the absence of any reliable transportation route connecting Karakalpakstan to Soviet industrial centers contributed to shielding the Karakalpaks from the famine. The article also investigates the consequences of the famine for the Aral Sea fishing economy. The famine led to the inversion of the relative economic importance of the northern and southern parts of the sea: if before the famine fishing was concentrated in the former, after the famine it had shifted to the latter. Finally, the article situates the administrative detachment of Karakalpakstan from Kazakstan in 1930 within the context of Stalinist economic policies in Central Asia.

This article explores the construction of Russia's role in the post-Soviet space on the popular level of geopolitical culture. This empirical study is based on an interpretative analysis of open-ended survey responses of International Relations and Political Science students in Russian universities. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to introduce the two main geopolitical meta-narratives constructed from students’ responses, Russia as a leading power and Russia as a fading power; and second, to show how they resonate with the broader discursive field on Russian identity and policies in the post-Soviet space. I argue that the two meta-narratives tell us about both support and challenges posed against the elite level of geopolitical culture, and Russia's foreign policy in the post-Soviet space. They also show variation on how Russia's role is represented, as well as on the goals which Russia should have vis-à-vis this space. The ideal role of Russia would be that of integration leader, but students disagree on whether this is the actual role now, or whether this can ever be attained. Moreover, not all would even agree with aspiring for this role; instead, Russia should re-orientate its foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

This article examines Russia's civics and history test, which has been mandatory, since January 2015, for millions of labor migrants applying for a work permit. An analysis of the test's content and of the context in which it was adopted provides a strong case to study how autocracies can use civics tests as instruments of control. Specifically, I argue that the test must be understood in light of Russia's state-sponsored nationalism, latent xenophobic sentiments, and its increasingly restrictive and incoherent migration policy. Not only are many questions irrelevant or disconnected from migrants' everyday concerns: their personal experiences of paying bribes, obtaining fake certificates, or being harassed by the police often contradict the correct answers on the exam. While it is doubtful that this test – along with several other new requirements imposed on migrants – will dissuade foreign laborers to seek employment in Russia, it is bound to make them even more vulnerable to bribes.

In managing ethno-cultural diversity, several countries in Central and Eastern Europe refer to the notion of nonterritorial/cultural autonomy in their legislation and policies, and in some of them, namely Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovenia, registered minority voters are granted the right to create their own representational, consultative, or decision-making bodies by direct or indirect elections. While a growing body of literature has examined the functioning of these elected minority councils/self-governments at various levels, numerous features of their elections have not been addressed. Elections, commonly understood as formal group decision-making processes, may fulfill various functions both in theory and practice, and these are highly context-dependent. In this regard, little is known about the role played by minority elections in intra-community relations, and whether and how these elections can contribute to increasing legitimacy and accountability and strengthening the political weight and influence of the respective minority groups. This article seeks to address these issues. Written from a theoretical perspective, but based on electoral statistics and country experiences, it comparatively explores the main issues related to the special minority elections in the five countries of analysis and assesses whether they can be considered successful forms of diversity management.

This article follows earlier discussions about the current status of Romani refugees and migrants within Europe and the role of human rights in the process of accession of Central European states to the European Union (EU), in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 13, Number 2. Romani migration opens up central issues of democratisation in Eastern Europe and of the role played by the EU in shaping that process. Human rights appear to have been accorded secondary importance and were replaced by the political doctrines of accession as efforts to manage and control migration, particularly of so-called undesirable migrants, such as the Roma, have reached a hiatus. The argument offered here is that discrimination of the Roma has been defined as no more than a social problem so that governments, both East and West, can proceed with the political agenda of enlargement. To demonstrate this point, the article reviews some Czech governmental documentation related to the treatment of Roma and places it within the context of the debate around accession within the broader framework of EU harmonisation of immigration policies.

This article explores the emerging national narratives about Muslim national identity in the period of the 1960s and 1970s. After the national recognition of a Bosnian Muslim nation, which was proposed by the members of the Central Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the intellectuals’ task to endow the national category with cultural repertoire. Hereby affirmative as well as negating discursive practices on the national status of Muslims entered the debates, which geographically expanded the republican scope of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author examines internal discussions of the LCY on that issue as well as the intellectuals’ engagement in the public spheres in Socialist Yugoslavia. By integrating the nation-building activities of intellectuals outside Yugoslavia, the author postulates for a trans-national dimension of nation-building processes.

Interbellum Poland remains an important example of a polyethnic state and society in European history. Its short existence between the wars does not diminish the importance of its many peculiar aspects, nor does the fact that it can be defined as an unsuccessful example in organizing, institutionally and socially, a polyethnic community. The theoretical definition of the Polish experience has puzzled historians in the past. Polish historiography substantially ignored or steadfastly marginalized the nationalities in the Second Republic and in earlier historical times, an attitude echoed by Marxist historians in post-bellum Poland. Now, indirectly, the topic is attracting attention again as a consequence of the new problematic caused by current European historical events both in the East and West.

The bulk of scholarly literature views nationalism as harmful to democratic transition. Yet Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan indirectly suggest that nationalism may benefit democratization. This study shows that under the right conditions nationalism can benefit democratic transition. Building on the typology of Linz and Stepan and the liberal nationalism tradition of Yael Tamir and David Miller, this study examines the transitions in Estonia and Ukraine. It introduces an important layer, the multinational federal state, into the typologies developed by Linz and Stepan to show that nationalism can prove a useful political tool of mobilization in a multiethnic setting.

The post-1989 rise of ethnic conflicts in the former Eastern Bloc have led to the renewed salience of minority rights and their prominence in international relations. The 1990s witnessed a proliferation of legal instruments and offices dedicated to minority rights at the intergovernmental level (mainly within the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Council of Europe, but also the United Nations). After decades of arguing that rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic or religious minorities can be sufficiently ensured within the framework of universal human rights, attributed to individuals regardless of group membership, liberal political theorists (most notably Will Kymlicka) have started to advocate the need to supplement these traditional human rights with minority rights (meaning certain group-differentiated rights or “special status” for minority cultures) in order to ensure justice in multicultural states.