The ghost of Trianon continues to haunt Central Europe. The consequences of the unmaking of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary still confront diplomats, even more so now in the aftermath of communism and the demise of Soviet hegemony. The plight of Hungarian minorities in Hungary's neighboring states is a constant concern to diplomats as satisfactory accommodation of ethnic minorities fails throughout post-communist Eastern Europe. Specifically, a fear of destabilization on account of a crisis related to the several Hungarian minorities scattered in half a dozen adjacent states is never far from the surface.

George Y. Shevelov, known as a capable Slavist, is also praised as a very influential critic of modern Ukrainian literature. In this paper, however, we shall concern ourselves with Shevelov's linguistic interest only, and in particular with his contributions to the prehistory of Slavic: the historical phonology of Common Slavic.

In a recent reflective essay written on his dual role as a scholar and public advocate, Paul Robert Magocsi with self-deprecation described himself as a loser on the margins. The sentiment of loss came with his emotional attachment to the wrong baseball team (the Dodgers rather than the Yankees) (“The Scholar as Nation-Builder”). What is clear, however, is that Magocsi is no loser in academia. My esteemed colleagues in this symposium are echoing what has become incontrovertible: Magocsi is a towering figure in Ukrainian Studies.

At the beginning of his political career, Count Kuno Klebelsberg, the remarkable future Hungarian Minister of Culture and Education of the 1920s, prepared a statement on emigration from Hungary for Prime Minister Kálmán Széll in 1902. “[W]e must correct a great and general mistake, that might unfortunately lead to disappointment,” Klebelsberg warned the PM. “Unwilling to make a distinction among people from the point of view of nationality, we call everybody residing in Hungary a Hungarian. This is how it became fashionable to speak of 'the emigration of Hungarians' when emigration was discussed, giving the general public, unaccustomed to making distinctions, the mistaken belief that we are talking about the emigration of Hungarians who speak the native tongue. This is why the return of the emigrants and corresponding official arrangements are demanded. The case is different, however. The two largest contingents contributing to the [“Hungarian”] emigration are Slovaks and Ruthenes.”

This article examines the criticism that we received regarding our article “Romani Migrations and EU Enlargement” which was published in Volume 13, Number 2 of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (CRIA). In this reply we seek to clarify our position, pointing to distinctions between advocacy and policy analysis, between descriptive and normative statements, and to a need to examine not only the problems that the Roma face, but also those that their situation poses to policy-makers.

The Yugoslav critique of Stalinism and the concomitant elaboration of the Titoist model of self-managing socialism continue to bewilder observers East and West, as well as the Yugoslavs themselves. Thus, until recently, Chinese communist criticism that Yugoslavia had sold out to the West and become its Trojan Horse in the communist world was neatly balanced by those Western critiques which see in Titoism a communist Trojan Horse to penetrate Western defenses. Some wonder whether Yugoslavia is really a self-managing democracy or a single-party dictatorship. Others ask themselves whether Yugoslavia's decentralized economy is capitalist or socialist. Many fear for Yugoslavia's territorial integrity and national independence, particularly since Tito's death on May 4, 1980.

As in other countries of the Danubian Basin, the Hungarians of historic Subcarpathian Rus' (Hungarian—Kárpátalja), present-day Transcarpathia, did not become a national minority until 1919. Before then they were simply Hungarians—and part of the dominant state nationality—living in the northeastern corner of the Hungarian Kingdom. With the border changes that occurred in 1919-1920, the Hungarians of Transcarpathia/Subcarpathian Rus' found themselves within the borders of the new state of Czechoslovakia. Since then borders and countries have changed several times, so that Transcarpathia's Hungarians have found themselves in Czechoslovakia (1919-1938), again in Hungary (1938-1944), in the Soviet Union (1945-1991), and in an independent Ukraine (1991-present). Regardless of what state may have ruled Subcarpathian Rus'/Transcarpathia, it has remained a distinct administrative entity—at times, with a degree of autonomy—throughout most of the twentieth century.

Nicholas Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982. v, 173 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press. Maria Manoliu-Manea, ed., The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bessarabia and Bucovina. American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Humboldt State University Press, 1983. xii, 280 pp.

Here are two good books providing detailed information on Bessarabia, until 1918 a province of the Russian Empire, and, to a lesser extent, on Bukovina, once a province within the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. They include useful theoretical though somewhat debatable considerations on the history and ethnic nature of both regions. They come to proper conclusions which seem amply justified by the data and analysis which preceded them. However, both books are inadequately edited, especially the second one, and include a few statements either based on superficial generalizations or even tinted with disturbing — though perhaps unconscious — ethnocentrism.

It is very difficult to translate fully the above verse from the great Persian-speaking poet Bidil without violating its spirit in the context of the Central Asian (and other Iranian areas) culture. The spirit of the verse is not so much fatalism about life itself but is one of cynicism derived from power-lessness over one's fate. This verse is often uttered by the Central Asian intellectuals in response to questions about their relationship with the Russians and sharing of power in the Soviet bureaucracy. It does not communicate resignation. It describes the reality of the USSR, an awareness that a Central Asian is powerless to change circumstances to those favoring his/her well being and spiritual instincts. It camouflages the underlying resentment toward the dominant group, the Russians, who have the monopoly of the means of violence and who have not hesitated to use these means against the Muslim population of Central Asia on numerous occasions during the past hundred years of their rule there.

Ethnoregionalism in Europe is a phenomenon usually studied in the context of Western Europe. Still, in Central and Eastern Europe, there are some social and political movements that can be categorized as ethnoregionalist. The phenomenon started to play a role even before the Great War and in the interwar period, but was suppressed during the times of socialist regimes. It resurfaced immediately after 1989 during the times of transformation of political systems to fully democratic systems when problems of decentralization, authority, and division of power became openly discussed. In this article, I compare two such movements in the context of their political potential. The Moravian-Silesian movement in the Czech Republic and the Silesian movement in Poland have both similarities and differences, but the article mostly focuses on the evolution of these movements.

On the basis of a comparative analysis of the case studies of the Slovenian Erased and the Latvian Non-citizens, the paper endeavors to identify the reasons for the EU involvement in the latter, but not the former case. These two situations are recognized as similar enough to be compared, and endure the counter-argumentation that the different EU approach is conditioned by the specifics of the local context, not by double standards. Hence, the paper comes to a conclusion that the involvement in Latvia has been conditioned by the fear of the potentially violent conflict, the existence of a proactive kin state, and a minority, significant in number, as well as the explicitly discriminatory legal framework that was in collision with the EU economic acquis. Thus, it has been inferred that double standards occur due to the lack of EU and international interest in these situations of human rights violations, where the powerful kin state and the minority, significant in number, are absent, do not have a potential to develop into a violent conflict, do not derive from explicitly discriminatory legal provision, and do not challenge the fundamental market freedoms of the EU.

This article explores the relationship between memory, political violence, and identity among the Roma minorities in Kosovo. In the aftermath of the 1998–1999 conflict in Kosovo, countless Roma were forced to escape Albanian retaliation, accused of being Serb collaborators. Many had to resettle in enclaves near Fushë Kosovë on the outskirts of Kosovo’s capital Prishtina, others left for Serbian-controlled northern Kosovo or to neighboring countries or to Western Europe. Through an ethnographic investigation with displaced Roma families around Prishtina and in Prizren, the article examines how the communities mobilize collective memories of the violent past to adapt to a new political situation, find their place, and navigate their present within Kosovo’s social, economic, and political landscape. It shows that the past is a constant reminder of compromised loyalties toward the majority group, which in turn dictates their (non)relations. Roma voices and narratives about the violent past are not part of the dominant and official discourse; they are counter-memories, telling a story that is silenced and unrecognized by the majority.

The paper examines how the tiny ethno-cultural group of Setos constructs its identity in the multicultural context. The study examines the validity of three acculturation models and tests earlier findings on the relationship between identity and well-being. The results suggest that Setos have clearly adopted a multicultural identity strategy while not merging different identities, and that they have managed to separate the material well-being from the pride of their identity. Despite its small size and peripheral location, the Setos' way to preserve their identity in a constantly changing context is an interesting lesson for other indigenous groups, and also for bigger neighbors.

The aim of the paper is to go beyond the commonly accepted view of Sarajevo's Plavi orkestar (The Blue Orchestra) as the 1980s “teen pop-rock sensation” and illuminate the less conspicuous, but nevertheless crucial, political dimension of the band's music and visual aesthetics. This will be done by discussing several “pieces of the puzzle” essential to understanding the background to and motivations behind Plavi orkestar‘s political engagement in the second half of the 1980s: (1) the “Sarajevo factor;” (2) the Sarajevo Pop-rock School and the New Primitives “poetics of the local;” (3) the generational Yugoslavism; (4) the New Partisans “poetics of the patriotic;” and (5) the post-New Partisans “hippie ethos.” The concluding section of the paper will reflect on Plavi orkestar‘s resurgence in 1998 and explore the question of the band's continuing resonance within the post-Yugoslav and post-socialist contexts. An argument underlying the discussion of all of these elements is that Plavi orkestar's Yugoslavism of the 1980s is best understood as a soundtrack for the country that never was (i.e. a popular-cultural expression of what, from the viewpoint of a particular generational cohort and its location in the “Yugoslav socialist universe,” the community they thought of as their own ought to have been but never really was), and that the current value of this soundtrack lies in offering not only a particular window into the pre-post-socialist past but also in being a symbolic referent for a certain kind of retrospective Utopia that gauges the realities of the post-socialist – that is, neo-liberal capitalist – present and, in so doing, figures as a “normative compass” for the life of dignified existence.