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 historical literature on interwar Polish policy on Belarusians and other minorities focuses primarily on the relationship between the regime in power and minority groups as a single block, failing to note instances in which regime policies toward specific organizations have not been uniform. Despite the fact that Belarusian ethnic identity was ambiguous and national consciousness low, no fewer than 13 political organizations in interwar Poland claimed to represent the minority. The most influential organization was the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Union Hromada. Less than two years after the organization’s inception, it was banned in 1927. This article examines why an organization like Hromada, which did not resort to violence and in fact took pains to operate within the legal framework of the Polish constitution, was shuttered by the state, while other organizations with similar profiles were allowed to operate. The article reveals that Hromada was not banned strictly due to what the government considered its radical ideology or because it was an antisystem party, but rather it was banned for its ability to suppress organizational pluralism among Belarusian organizations. The article advances the existing literature by (a) shifting away from analyzing the dynamics between a state and an ethnic group as a whole, by disaggregating the level of analysis to focus on minority political organizations, and by (b) going beyond ideology as the main explanatory variable dictating state policies toward minorities.

This article examines aspects of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’s contribution to creating a transnational Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) culture. It does so by analyzing cultural diplomacy on the Yugoslav cultural and political scene between the 1950s and 1980s. The cultural diplomacy of Yugoslavia and its nonaligned partners is seen as a form of political agency, paralleling and supplementing larger activities of forming economic and political cooperation in the Global South. Yugoslavia’s role in building NAM culture was instrumental in nurturing nascent transnationalism, which was born out of anti-colonial movements following World War II. Cultural events, bilateral agreements, and cultural institutions were used to complement Yugoslav participation in an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggle; they promoted NAM ideals and sought to create transcultural networks that would counter Western cultural hegemony. Such examples of solidarity were based in a modernist cultural ethos, but espoused political, social, and cultural forms that were indigenous to various NAM countries. For Yugoslavia, nonaligned modernism and transnationalism solidified the country’s transition from a hardline, Soviet-style state to a more open, humanist-socialist one. The history of transnational collaboration, examined through the narrative of cultural work, is an example of Yugoslav attempts at building political agency and international cooperation through the promotion of nonaligned ideals.

The last century of the Ottoman state’s existence witnessed the transformation of the term “Ottoman” from an elite, class-based, and exclusive designation to one including and identifying all whose allegiances were tied to the state. Despite this semantic shift, the verdict is still out on the question of late-Ottoman inclusivity. Indeed, exclusivist is a term more frequently coupled with policy and law. Though the former can be considered exclusivist in many instances from the late 19th century through the dissolution of the empire, the designation does not fit the legal framework and terminology that articulated belonging. To recognize this, it is imperative to approach the 1869 Ottoman Nationality Law from a comparative perspective, especially, though not strictly, with reference to Great Power laws, since these legalities are the yardstick by which Ottoman rational modernity has been measured. This article considers access to actual and potential membership in various nationality laws in relation to their Ottoman counterpart and concludes that the exclusivist designation is questionable. Instead, Ottoman law does not present an anomaly and was in many instances both more expansive and more inclusive than others—even if it has been subjected to a different vocabulary than contemporaneous laws with similar stipulations.

This article leverages saliency theory to explore how regimes may use state-controlled media to intensify nationalism and gain legitimacy. I explore mainstream news coverage in Russia and Ukraine with a particular emphasis on how political leadership frames nationalist rhetoric in the two countries to emphasize certain issues over others. I focus on relevant media content that contains nationalist rhetoric before and after the invasion of Russia into Ukraine’s territory in the spring of 2014. Content analysis suggests that political leaders in both countries have focused on political issues, while largely ignoring economic issues in their nationalist rhetoric. The analysis also shows that state leaders can successfully promote nationalism by emphasizing cultural issues and concerns.

This article focuses on two Muslim groups, Azeris and Muslim Ajarians, who are differently perceived and treated in post-Soviet Georgia. Georgian ethno-religious nationalism bases Georgianness on an ethnic affiliation to Kartvelian roots and religious adherence to Georgian Orthodoxy, and determines one’s level of inclusion in the nation accordingly; those who do not fulfill these criteria, such as Azeris, are excluded from the nation. Muslim Ajarians, despite being Georgians, also face exclusion from Georgian identity. Based on the concept of ethnodoxy, which is defined as linking of “a group’s ethnic identity to its dominant religion,” this article argues that Muslim Ajarians, who are Georgian Muslims, an unaccepted category in Georgia, receive differential treatment by their Christian fellows, whereas recognition of the religion and ethnicity of Azeris is a factor that comparatively diminishes the pressure on the community. This research demonstrates that the visibility of Muslim Ajarians’ religious practices in the public space and the construction of places of worship is less tolerated than in the case of Azeris, who have no means of becoming “proper Georgians.” The findings of fieldwork in Georgia manifested that, although minorities have various problems in Georgia, Muslim Ajarians are subjected to more differential treatment than Azeris.

The article is devoted to violence that took place in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland after the Great War. Using the theoretical insights of Stathis Kalyvas (2006), the author explores violent actors, types, and the dynamics of violence in the conflict over the neutral zone between Poland and Lithuania between 1920 and 1923. The focus is on the experiences of civilians and the social impact of violence on the formation of their national identities. The author suggests that violent ways of nation making forced the local populace to adopt national identities to ensure their security, but the process of forced nationalization was limited and may have resulted in the emergence of indifference among certain groups of the population.

This article elucidates the role of historians in times of war and the peculiarities of popular history narratives written by historians who became activists. The article focuses on historians who call themselves “Likbez. Historical Front.” This cohort gave rise to a new professional species—activist historians—who are different from so called memorians or propagandists, who work in service of authorities. Likbez historians tried to use their power to influence and promote their activist agenda not only in the realm of memory and history but also in reformation of state institutions. I argue that for Likbez historians, securitization of the past is the main strategy employed for producing historical knowledge. Historians’ work is a part of postcolonizing process observed in Ukrainian society since the Maidan protests. As the analysis shows, popular history narratives written with an open activist agenda are a result of many compromises made by scholars in the intersection of several factors: professional ambitions, political and civic aims, social and political context, popular expectations, and market environment. In line with the increased attention to agency in memory studies, this article demonstrates that historians have a much more nuanced relation to power than straightforward opposition or co-option.

Since the end of the Georgian-Abkhaz war, the often-precarious status of the Georgians displaced from Abkhazia has received significant academic attention. In contrast, the consequences of displacement from the reverse perspective—how it has affected the people who stayed behind—remains underanalyzed. Drawing on narratives collected during several months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article argues that although ethnic Abkhazians see themselves as victims of ethnic violence rather than perpetrators, the re-distribution of Georgian property nevertheless caused significant distress. Many condemned the practice of appropriation, suggesting that taking what is not one’s own is not only a violation of the property of the original owner, but also of the Abkhaz moral code and therefore shameful. To them, the trophy houses were a curse, both literally—as spaces haunted by former occupants—and metaphorically, as a source and reminder of a certain “moral corruption” within Abkhazian society. However, while the stories around the trophy houses reflect substantial intra-communal divisions, I suggest that they are also an expression of a shared postwar experience. Like the horror stories of Georgian violence, and the tales of Abkhaz heroism, they have become part of an intimate national repertoire constitutive of Abkhazia’s postwar community.

Ethnoregionalist movements across Western Europe are gaining scholarly attention. Central European states usually have limited places in those studies. Still, in Polish Upper Silesia, ethnoregionalist movements have been present since 1989 and have stable support from the inhabitants of the region. Since at least 2002, ethnoregionalists have attempted to secure political representation among the Upper Silesians. Recently registered parties have used the ethnic identity of this minority group as the main tool to gain support in political elections in the region. This article applies social science and political science perspectives to the politicization of ethnicity. These equip the researcher to answer the question: How has Silesian ethnic identity become politicized? In responding, the researcher explores the consequences of the emergence of the ethnoregionalist movement in Upper Silesia.

A significant body of literature argues that American evangelical missionaries working in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century directly contributed to the rise of Armenian nationalism. While acknowledging that missionaries had an effect on Armenian nationalism, this article finds that the impact of missionaries was much more unintended than is commonly assumed and resulted primarily from Armenian reactions to growing missionary influence. Employing new data on the biographies of Armenian nationalist leaders as well as comparative-historical methods, the article offers evidence that missionary influence spurred a backlash among the Armenian community that intensified preexisting local initiatives, increased investment in mass education in the provinces, and modernized its schooling system, all of which popularized and strengthened Armenian nationalism.

Croatia’s monumental second-place finish at the 2018 FIFA World Cup represents the highest football achievement to date for the young nation. This victory, however, masks violent internal divisions between its domestic club football teams. This article examines the most salient rivalry between Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split, two teams that have evolved to represent the interests of Croatia’s north and south, respectively. Using interviews with radical football fans, I argue that the two teams act as reservoirs for regional identity-building while violence between their fans is a microcosm for political and economic tensions between Zagreb and Split. More importantly, this rivalry exposes the dividedness of the Croatian state, as it continues to grapple with the complexity of its radical regional identities in the wake of its independence from Yugoslavia. This article contributes to the existing body of literature on sports identity and regionalisms/nationalism as well as how sporting teams shape the geographies of belonging.

This article traces changes in Polish administrative approaches toward indigenous Upper Silesians in the 1960s and 1970s. By commissioning reports from voivodeship leaders in 1967, the Ministry of Internal Affairs recognized that native Silesians held reservations toward Poland and, moreover, that postwar “Polonization” efforts may have backfired. These officials further understood the need to act quickly against “disintegration” trends. Although administrators in Katowice and Opole noted that relatively few Silesians engaged in clearly anti-Polish activities, these leaders still believed that West German influence threatened their authority in Silesia. Increasing West German involvement in the area, particularly through care packages and tourism, seemed to support this conclusion. In response to fears of West German infiltration and the rise in emigration applications, local authorities sought to bolster a distinctly Silesian identity. Opole officials in particular argued that strengthening a regional identity, rather than a Polish one, could combat the “tendency toward disintegration” in Silesia. This policy shift underscored an even greater change in attitude toward the borderland population: instead of treating native Silesians as an innate threat to Polish sovereignty, as had been the case immediately after the war, the administration now viewed them as essential for maintaining authority in western Poland.

This article analyzes how institutions influence the process of identity formation within the Polish minority communities in Belarus and Lithuania. We focus on ways that the identities of people who consider themselves Poles in Belarus and Lithuania are targeted by institutions like the state, schools, and nongovernmental organizations. We aim to shed light on how these processes are shaped by institutional settings and broader political contexts. The authors take a bottom-up approach to institutions and look at how members of the Polish communities in the two neighboring countries conceptualize the role of various institutions—NGOs, schools, Karta Polaka (the Polish Card)—to shape their sense of ethnic belonging. The article is built on a cross-case analysis. Data for the Lithuanian and Belarusian cases, consisting of interviews and secondary sources, were collected independently and then reread in light of a common research question. Through our analysis, we show differences and similarities in how analogous institutions function on the two sides of the border and elaborate on the reasons why these differences occur and what role state policy and supranational regulations play in the process.

Focusing on process tracing and using the example of fieldwork in Donbas, I develop an argument on what theoretically grounded and empirically detailed methodological solutions can be considered to mitigate the challenges of research on conflict zones and assure the robustness of any causal claims made. I first outline my assumptions about process tracing as the central case study method and its application to research on conflict zones, and then discuss in more detail data requirements, data collection, and data analysis. Using two examples of case studies on the war in and over Donbas, I illustrate how three standards of best-practice in process tracing—the need for a theory-guided inquiry, the necessity to enhance causal inference by paying attention to (and ruling out) rival explanations, and the importance of transparency in the design and execution of research—can be applied in the challenging circumstances of fieldwork-based case studies of conflict zones. I conclude by suggesting that as a minimum threshold for reliance upon causal inferences, these three standards also should align with a standard of evidence that requires both the theoretical and empirical plausibility of any conclusions drawn.

The centuries-old Turkmen community of Stavropol’ Krai in southern Russia, while currently numbering only about 15,000 people, is an integral part of the famously diverse ethnolinguistic landscape of the North Caucasus. To the extent that Euro-Atlantic scholars have noted the existence of this community at all, their comments have been rather cursory and dismissive, and it has been claimed that the North Caucasus Turkmen (virtually alone among the dozens of similarly small ethnic groups of the region) have never published anything in their own language. Intensive investigations in the bibliographic record (and in secondary sources in Russian, Turkish, and Turkmen) show that this is not actually the case, and that the North Caucasus Turkmen do have a modest record of Turkmen-language publishing stretching back a century or more. What are the implications of these published works for our understanding of Turkmen identity, the Turkmen diaspora, and the complicated multiethnic and multilingual environment of the North Caucasus? What does it mean when groups like the North Caucasus Turkmen are made all but invisible in Euro-Atlantic scholarship and Euro-Atlantic library collections?

This past decade has seen the return of Russia into the public discourse. Moscow’s influence has been making a comeback across its old sphere of influence and in other parts of the world. In particular, there has been a lot of talk lately of Russian soft power spreading across the Balkan region, especially in Serbia. However, the concept of power can be rather ambiguous, and only a theoretically informed analysis based on empirical methods can lead to genuine conclusions. This article aims to apply an existing theoretical framework on power to the context of Russian influence in Serbia, in order to find out whether Moscow has any power over Belgrade and to gauge its extent.

Following Stalin’s interpretations of the Lenin’s thesis on the merging of the nations, the Yugoslav communists first needed to “push” all nations to the same level of development. After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, the soft Yugoslav nation-building project was accelerated. During the 1950s, national Yugoslavism was stimulated in a latent way through language, culture, censuses, and changes in the constitutional and socialist system. By the end of the 1950s, the Yugoslav socialist national idea reached its peak with the 1958 Party Congress. Nevertheless, with the economic crisis in the early 1960s, and the famous Ćosić-Pirjevec debate on Yugoslavism, the Yugoslav national idea declined. This was evident on the level of the personal, national identifications of the Party members, but also in the ideological shift of the Party’s chief ideologue Edvard Kardelj. Yet, the concept of Yugoslavism was redefined in the second half of the 1960s without ethnic or national connotations. Two Yugoslavisms were created: a socialist one propagated by the Party and a national one that lived among the population in small proportions. Although the Yugoslavs were never recognized as a nation, that did not stop them from publicly advocating for their national rights.

Premised on elite accommodation, consociations provide little consideration for citizens’ input on institutional change. Likewise, valuable analyses of cross-community political participation in divided societies have emerged in recent years, yet whether the relationship between the grassroot and formal political process has broader consequences remains to be fully explored. The article examines the conditions in which nonelectoral participation takes place and the ways in which actors involved therein negotiate constraints for continuous cross-community mobilization. The structure of political systems and the nature of deep divisions in Northern Ireland and Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina invite a comparison of the consequences of nonelectoral political participation in these two illustrative case studies. The article concludes that while the formal political context shapes the likelihood of engagement on a cross-community basis, whether nonelectoral participation changes the structure of political decision-making depends on the willingness and ability of those involved to cooperate with formal institutional politics.

This article focuses on the relationship between Alevis and the Turkish and German states. It does so by examining the Turkish Alevi Opening (2009–2010) and the German Islam Conference (2006–present), two unprecedented official platforms aimed at improving Alevis’ political participation. The study asks why such state-sponsored initiatives came into existence in Turkey and Germany, and why the German Islam Conference has proven more successful from the perspective of Alevis. It argues that even though the diffusion of EU norms and pressure from transnational advocacy networks have increased awareness regarding the Alevi issue, domestic factors have been more salient in the emergence and outcome of these initiatives in both countries.