The principle of national self-determination has been haunting the world since the French Revolution. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union alone 20 new “nation-states” were created in the 1990s—200 years after the French Revolution. They were all established on the basis of the principle of national self-determination. There may be no other term in modern political discourse which is used with more emotion and passion. Recent history has known many wars fueled by conflicting interpretations of self-determination. Woodrow Wilson thought that implementation of the principle of self-determination would lead to a better world, a world without wars and “safe for democracy.” His secretary of state, Robert Lansing, had doubts. He suspected the concept of self-determination to be “loaded with dynamite” and capable of causing even more bloodshed because it “will raise hopes which can never be realized.”

This article surveys the history of Kyiv Rus within the realm of nation building, identity and historical myths. It argues that Ukraine's elites believe that Western, Russian and Soviet schools of history on Kyiv Rus (and Ukraine) are incompatible with nation and state building.

Two schools—Ukrainophile and East Slavic—compete within Ukraine. Nevertheless, the former has been promoted as the dominant school by ruling elites, many of whom date from the Soviet Ukrainian SSR and might personally favour the East Slavic framework. As Stepanenko states, Hrushevsky “is factually theorizing the most convincing version of Ukrainian history.”

In this article, we explore the role of the early 20th-century Armenian genocide and the unresolved Karabakh conflict of the 1990s in identity shaping among the new generation of Armenian diaspora—those who grew up after the establishment of the independent Armenian state in 1991. We draw on original interviews with diasporic youth in France, the United Kingdom, and Russia—diasporas that were largely built in the aftermath of the genocide and the Karabakh war. Diaspora youth relate to these events through transmitted collective memories, but also reconnect with the distant homeland’s past and present in new ways as they engage with new possibilities of transnational digital communication and mobility. Their experiences of identity shed light on how the new generation of diasporic Armenians defines itself in relation to the past; how this past is (re)made present in their interpretations of the Karabakh conflict and in everyday behaviors; and how diasporic youth experience the dilemmas of “moving on” from traumatic narratives that for a long time have been seen as foundational to their identity.

The article explores the “fear of Islam” through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article will try to address are: How have Greek political parties reacted to public demand for the construction of a mosque? What have been the rhetorical tropes they use? How have they capitalized on current and old fears about Islam? What have been the implications of this discourse on state policies toward Islam? Have there been any differences in this discourse over time? The analysis highlights the role of historical interpretations of Greek national identity and contemporary problems related to new waves of migration due to Greece's place on the border with Turkey and with the broader Islamic world.

Good governance has been used as a development tool by international organizations and the European Union (hereinafter: EU) which has included it in cooperation agreements and promotes it within its Enlargement Policy. This paper analyzes the good governance approach in the EU's relations with Macedonia and its effects on the country's democratic policy making. The analysis shows that the Europeanization of Macedonia has an impact on the democratic processes in the country with sub-optimal results as its technocratic approach in assessing the country's readiness for EU membership has proved to be detrimental for the deliberative democratic processes. The intensive pressure for effectiveness and efficiency results in finding short cuts in rule transfer through copying and pasting legislation from member states and limiting the democratic policy making to political deliberation rather than to wide policy consultations between state and non-state actors.

Based on more than 100 interviews in European Russia, this article sheds light on the bottom-up dynamics of Russian nationalism. After offering a characterization of the post-2012 “state-civilization” discourse from above, I examine how ordinary people imagine Russia as a “state-civilization.” Interview narratives of inclusion into the nation are found to overlap with state discourse on three main lines: (1) ethno-nationalism is rejected, and Russia is imagined to be a unique, harmonious multi-ethnic space in which the Russians (russkie) lead without repressing the others; (2) Russia’s multinationalism is remembered in myths of peaceful interactions between Russians (russkie) and indigenous ethnic groups (korennyye narodi) across the imperial and Soviet past; (3) Russian culture and language are perceived as the glue that holds together a unified category of nationhood. Interview narratives on exclusion deviate from state discourse in two key areas: attitudes to the North Caucasus reveal the geopolitical-security, post-imperial aspect of the “state-civilization” identity, while stances toward non-Slavic migrants in city spaces reveal a degree of “cultural nationalism” that, while sharing characteristics with those of Western Europe, is also based on Soviet-framed notions of normality. Overall, the article contributes to debates on how Soviet legacies and Russia’s post-imperial consciousness play out in the context of the “pro-Putin consensus.”

The international community has expressed great concern about the treatment of the Uzbek minority in the south of Kyrgyzstan and has called on the majority community to make major efforts to improve the situation. The article compares the treatment of minorities in Kyrgyzstan with analogous situations in the Balkans and contends that, given the European-style ethnonational state model and democratic political system that have been adopted by independent Kyrgyzstan, such calls are unrealistic.

The military had been concerned about military patriotic education for a long time when Putin's Patriotic Education Programme was published. As soon as the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred, followed a few years later by the creation of the Russian armed forces, they had already been developing patriotic education programmes aimed primarily at youth, aided by veterans of local wars, both volunteers and recruits. The aim of this article is to show that the military version of patriotic education aims openly to encourage military service, and that the Russian state will try to enlist veterans of the Afghanistan and Chechen wars in activities linked to military patriotic education and its spread in military and civilian spheres. Our hypothesis is that the determination to bring veterans together around a common project has two aims: (1) to federate veterans around the authorities and (2) to channel a population that escapes government control and some of whose excesses on their return to civilian life (violence towards the population in the context of their function, for veterans of the Interior Ministry in particular) have darkened the image of the ministries known as the “power” ministries.

This article traces the evolution of “everyday nationalism” in North Korea and assesses its relationship to authoritarian resilience. It argues that coercion and the prospect of coercion play important roles in policing the contours of everyday nationalism. The state is able to infuse nationalism and authoritarian control into everyday life, but the “success” of its efforts has limits. This is due to social changes and the ways that material failures nurtured doubts about the legitimacy of the government among some citizens. It draws on data from North Korean state media, secondary historical literature, and 58 semi-structured interviews with North Koreans living in South Korea.

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.

There have been attempts to detail the representation of the Romani community with a focus on both the domestic and transnational political context; however, less is known about how Roma create organizing structures of representation and the role of these structures within the broader social movement. This article seeks to add to this growing research by analysing Roma representation in the transnational political context, as well as unpacking the relationship between ethnic group identity and shared interests. By understanding that ethnic group identity and shared interests are intertwined in the case of Roma, we can begin to understand the numerous challenges faced by the Roma social movement, particularly those relating to political participation and adequate representation.

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.

During the late 1980s the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia, like many other regions within the former USSR, entered into a period of political turmoil. As the grip of the Communist Party weakened, increasingly serious conflict broke out between the Romanian-speaking majority and minority activists. Separatist forces quickly established themselves in two of the republic's regions, Transnistria on the east bank of the Dnestr river and the Gagauz districts in the south. Both claimed sovereignty and forcibly resisted the authority of the central government. By 1992 severe fighting was underway, especially in Transnistria, and Moldova appeared to be on the verge of a spiral into unrestrained civil conflict. Yet, by 1995, nationalist forces in Moldova had declined, and one of the two separatist conflicts, that in the Gagauz region, had been resolved by the peaceful reintegration of the Gagauz into Moldova. The second conflict, in Transnistria, was at least partially defused, and escalation was avoided.

On August 9, 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus. Despite blatant electoral fraud and procedural violations, the official results declared Aleksandr Lukashenka reelected for a sixth term. While in the past, even the most obviously fraudulent election results have been followed by an atmosphere of resigned acceptance, this time countless Belarusians took to the streets to contest the results. What made this election different? This analysis of current affairs looks at the 2020 events through the lens of authoritarian consolidation theory, suggesting the unprecedented political mobilization was enabled by erosion in the three pillars of authoritarian stability: repression, cooptation, and legitimation. A majority of the population had been accepting the political status quo out of fear, for social and monetary security provided in exchange for loyalty, or a general understanding that there were no alternatives. Lukashenka did not realize this had largely changed. Nine months later, the foundation of the authoritarian regime is in an even worse shape. The regime’s reliance on repression further counteracts the legitimacy of the system. As a result, it seems it will be difficult for the authorities to re-consolidate authoritarianism, at least in the near future, no matter how the ‘revolution’ unfolds.

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 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.

This article takes a subjective approach to studying norm compliance in order to determine how EU conditionality and Russia's activism have affected elite attitudes toward minority policies, majority–minority relations, and language use in Estonian society in the post-accession period. The results of a Q method study and semi-structured interviews with integration elites in spring 2008 reveal four distinct viewpoints. The study casts doubt upon the success of EU conditionality in Estonia by demonstrating that European minority rights norms remain contested and have not been internalized by a substantial portion of elites. In addition, the study points to an important role for Russia's activism in the development of a more inclusive society. Russia's activism actually works against minority integration by reinforcing pre-existing domestic norms that are not compatible with European minority rights standards and by aggravating tensions over history and language, which frustrate integration efforts. This article ultimately contributes to studies on the effects of international pressure on minority integration by pointing to the need for greater attention to the ways in which multiple actors at both the international and domestic levels structure the influence of EU conditionality.

The centenary year of the Armenian genocide witnessed an escalation in cultural production and both political and academic focus. This paper looks at some of the sites and spaces, physical and discursive, in which the centenary was marked. In particular, it seeks to assess how the centenary has challenged and possibly altered the context within which we approach the genocide and its continuing legacies. The paper is positioned in the diasporic space – while recognizing that this is fluid and embodies transnational sites between “homelands” in the form of Armenia and Turkey, and “host states” where diaspora communities have resided (at least) since the genocide, in effect their homes. This paper attempts to pick out some of the themes apparent in the discourse and in the activities during 2015, from the perspective of Armenian diasporan actors, and is based on the author's observations and participation in centenary events in the USA, Lebanon, Turkey, Switzerland, and the UK, as well as interviews with participants and organizers.

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?

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.