The situation of Hungarians in Slovakia since 1989 has developed in the context of the political and economic transitions of the region: from post-totalitarian states towards pluralist democracies, and from centrally-planned economies toward market systems. In addition, the end of Czechoslovakia as a united entity on December 31 1992, has directly affected the Hungarian nationality. These political, economic and social changes have had a direct impact on their situation in Slovakia.

Over the last twenty years, the theoretical perspectives of Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner have played a large role in discussions of the origins and development of nationalism. In each of their conceptions is not only the now famous and widely agreed upon notion that “nationalism engenders nations,” and that nations “imagine” themselves into existence, but also that such development is inherently connected with underlying economic developments associated with the rise of capitalism and industrialization. For each of these theorists, communication plays a central role, a defining function, in the rise of nationalism.

In most studies of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, identity politics focuses on nationalism. Unfortunately, very few examine regional identities and how they too are politicized in similar ways for similar reasons. Istria provides a good example of how identity is politicized and how and why individuals adapt it to both internal and external influences. While in the past local and regional identities were politicized in response to colonization, more recently national divisions became more prominent. However, in the very recent past, Istrian identity again became politicized as many natives drew lines between themselves and what they saw as an external national influence emanating from Zagreb. In the 1990s, a renewed Croatian national movement competed with an Istrian regional movement. Istrian regionalists, seeking to justify taking and maintaining regional power and hoping to more quickly bring Croatia into the European Union, used this new political tactic against the nationalizing Croatian government. While both the nationalists and the regionalists claimed the other side's ideology was foreign to Istria, in actuality both have historical roots in the region. Though the competition was not as virulent as in past episodes of nationalist tension between Italians and Croats, it does fit a pattern of continuity in the region.

For over 700 years Czechs and Germans lived together in those lands which in this century would be consolidated as Czechoslovakia. It was not always a harmonious existence, but a kind of symbiosis did develop which sustained the relationship to the point where one group was unthinkable without the other. All of that changed in the twentieth century in an age characterized by awakening, intolerant ethnic nationalism and total war. Indeed, by the end of the Thirty Years' War of this century, the long Czech-German relationship in Bohemia came to a bitter, and seemingly permanent, end through the expulsion of the Germans of Czechoslovakia.

In 1913, an article in a Russian missionary journal compared two “very typical representatives” of Islamic studies in Russia: İsmail Bey Gaspıralı (1851–1914) and Nikolai Ivanovich Il'minskii (1822–1891). Nothing could better symbolize the two opposing points of view about the past, present and future of the Muslims of Russia in 1913. Il'minskii was a Russian Orthodox missionary whose ideas and efforts had formed the imperial perceptions and policies about the Muslims of the Russian empire in the late Tsarist period, while Gaspıralı was a Muslim educator and publisher whose ideas and efforts had shaped the Muslim society per se in the same period. Il'minskii, beginning in the 1860s, and Gaspıralı, beginning in the 1880s, developed two formally similar but inherently contradictory programs for the Muslims of the Russian empire. Schooling and the creation of a literary language or literary languages constituted the hearts of both of their programs. Besides their own efforts, both Gaspıralı and Il'minskii had a large number of followers that diligently worked to put their programs into practice among the Muslims of Russia. As a result of the inherent contradiction of these programs, a bitter controversy developed between what we may call the Il'minskii and Gaspıralı groups, which particularly intensified after the revolution of 1905. In this article, I will discuss the underlying causes and development of this controversy by focusing on the role of language in the programs of Gaspıralı and Il'minskii. Then, I will conclude my article with an evaluation of the legacies of these two individuals in their own time and beyond.

Romanian war-time policy towards Jews presents a paradox. In the summer and fall of 1941 Romanian military and police were killing the Jews of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina indiscriminately. In late fall of the same year, those Jews who survived the first wave of killings were forcibly deported further to the east—this time not only from Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina but from the whole of the latter's province. In the late fall of 1941, Jews from Odessa were once again murdered en masse and any survivors deported from the city. At this time, i.e. in the summer and fall of 1941, Romanian policy was at least as radical and brutal as the Germans', perhaps surpassing it in its brutality, a fact that elicited Hitler's delight and commendation. But then Romanian policy underwent a gradual but more and more pronounced change. Though Romanian authorities took part in the preparations for the deportation of Romanian Jews to the Nazi concentration camps in the summer and early fall 1942, in October of that year the Romanians abruptly terminated their participation in all preparations. In 1943 and 1944 the Romanian government even took measures to protect Romanian Jewish citizens residing in the German-ruled territories by demanding that those Jews were exempt from deportation to concentration camps and facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine from Romania. Inside Romania, Jews were still heavily discriminated against, exposed to various vexations and harsh confiscatory taxation, but the majority of them survived the war.

The official language of the medieval Kingdom of Hungaria was Latin until the mid-nineteenth century (Szekfű, 1926); the throne was occupied from the second half of the sixteenth century by the Hapsburgs. The subsequent change to Hungarian was due to several factors, but was caused above all by the ideas of the French Revolution, and by the early anti-Austrian nationalistic endeavors of the Hungarian gentry, endeavors which also expressed the economic interests of the country. As soon as the official idiom of the kingdom became Hungarian, it triggered similar aspirations among the non-Magyar minority groups against the dominating and assimilating Hungarian majority. These aspirations were prominent among the causes of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of World War I. Within the former Kingdom of Hungary the Felvidék (Upper Land) roughly coincided with what was, after 1919, Slovakia. The eastern part of the kingdom, Ardeal/Erdély/Siebenbürgen/Transylvania, which had enjoyed a certain autonomy between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, became a part of Romania in the same year. Thus, both in Romania and in Slovakia (as also in Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent in Austria) a Hungarian minority was created by the 1919 borders. Revision of the peace treaties became the focal point of Hungarian politics in the inter-war period. During World War II Hungary attained a partial revision in respect to, first, the southern part of Slovakia, and also the entire Ruténföld/Rusinsko, which had from the 1920s been administered by the Czechoslovak State); second, northern Transylvania; and third, two further areas which had belonged to the then-dissolved Yugoslav kingdom. As a consequence of these revisions, a considerable number of non-Hungarians once again became minorities in the Hungarian State. After World War II, the 1919 borders were reinstated (with two exceptions: the major exception being that Ruténföld became part of Ukraine). The situation of the minorities was also reinstated, but differently in each instance. This was the age when some kind of democratic reconciliation was on the agenda in Romania (Balogh, 1985; Lázok and Vincze, 1995; “Mit kíván,” 1946/1988), after a period of thorough self-searching and a synthesizing of historical research and political experience (see Bibó, 1946).

This chapter discusses urban developments in two major cities in Serbia, Belgrade and Novi Sad, influenced by the Balkan political crisis of the 1990s. Belgrade is the national capital of Serbia, with a dominantly Serbian population. Novi Sad is the capital of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, and home to a population of more than 20 different ethnicities. The seemingly bipolar relationship between these two cities started to emerge during the fall of Yugoslavia and has intensified during the subsequent shrinkage of the country into the current state of Serbia. The effects of war as well as migration have left their mark on the urban situation of both cities. Both cities are not old by European standards, Belgrade emerging before the rise of the Ottoman Empire and Novi Sad being a product of the eighteenth century and the rise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These two cities traditionally vary in size and ethnic make up from almost mono-ethnic Belgrade to multi-ethnic Novi Sad. This paper will explore the idea that national capitals such as Belgrade can give rise to “un-national capitals” such as Novi Sad. This will be viewed through a lens of the role of architecture and design in affecting the realities of both cities.

During the second half of 1991, the final stage of the disintegration of the Soviet Union brought momentous political changes to the citizenry of the country. From the beginning of the post-Soviet period, the new Russian government commenced economic reforms which resulted in the freeing of retail prices, the devaluation of the ruble, and the disastrous depreciation of household savings. In daily life across the state, these events represented a turning point for Russian citizens, including those in the Komi Republic.

“Belgrade ‘Targets’ Find Unity ‘From Heaven,’” read the front-page headline of a somewhat staggered New York Times, only five days after NATO bombs began falling on Serbia. Instead of hiding in bomb shelters or, as US officials had hoped, rebelling against their government, Serbs were busy singing patriotic songs at public squares, throwing rocks at the Goethe Institute, wearing medieval Serbian military uniforms and carrying signs equating Bill Clinton to Ottoman emperors, Croatian fascists and Napoleon. Thus a population which had for years expressed nothing but discontent with its government suddenly became “unified from heaven—but by the bombs, not by God.” Uniting them “behind their soldiers, their Kosovo and even President Slobodan Milošević” was, Belgrade's then-Mayor explained, a seemingly incomprehensible mélange of “myth and superstition.”

It has been said that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 but the wall around Greece is still standing. It is ironic that, while the governments of Albania, Bulgaria and Rumania have, in recent years, taken measures to safeguard the rights of national minorities, the Greek government continues to stonewall on its own national minorities while fomenting rebellion among those in other countries. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War has benefited the Macedonian minority in Greece. Greece has lost its paramount strategic importance for the western countries, which are now less likely to cast a blind eye on human rights abuses in that country. Conditions for the Macedonians in Greece have improved somewhat as individual members of the minority have become emboldened to demand their rights in public in recent years. They have attracted the attention of the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Watch, all the more so due to the heavy-handed attempts by the Greek authorities to silence recalcitrant members of the minority, as described below. The U.S. Department of State (1995: Greece 12) notes that the Greek government “continues to harass and intimidate some of these people.”

In 1929 a young Communist activist named A. Nurkhat traversed Central Asia gathering information about grassroots-level party social work and propaganda among indigenous women. An Uzbek woman who converted to Bolshevism, Nurkhat accepted the social and political reasons for the regime's push to win the support of local women in its struggle against traditional ways of life. Seeking to document these efforts, she traveled to nomadic regions and followed a “red yurt” expedition. Over one hundred red yurts operated across Kazakstan, providing literacy programs, medical treatment, and legal counseling to remote nomadic areas. When Nurkhat visited one red yurt, a Kazak man from a nearby village rushed in seeking help for his wife, who had endured more than a day in labor. The local baqsy (shaman) had been unable to induce birth and the family desperately sought help from the red yurt's nurse, an ethnic Russian, who was able successfully to deliver a healthy baby. Afterward, Nurkhat asked the red yurt's nurse, “What is the Kazak women's attitude to [Western] medical treatment?” The nurse responded,

This work highlights the case of Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army who worked and fought on the eastern fronts of World War II. An estimated 70,000–85,000 Latvians served in the Red Army, some as conscripts, others as volunteers. At least several hundred of those who volunteered were women. How are Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army represented and remembered in Soviet and post-Soviet historical accounts of World War II? Why have they not been remembered in most historical accounts of this period? How are ethnicity, gender, and associated social roles implicated in their historical marginality? These questions are situated in the context of literature on collective memory and microsociological literature on social roles, and used to develop the analytical concept of the unruly actor – historical actors who are challenges to dominant memory narratives because they fail to conform to normative social roles ascribed on the basis of, among others, gender and ethnicity. We use the case of Latvian women volunteers to articulate the argument that the marginality of some groups in dominant historical narratives can be understood in terms of their disruption of the historical “scene”, which is configured to reflect a desired social order.

In the 1920s, the Ukrainian Commissariat of Education and a circle of progressive educators aimed to radically transform the educational system in Ukraine, and, as a consequence, the skills and mentality of its graduates. To do this, they would have to teach students in a language they understood. For nearly three-quarters of the juvenile population of Ukraine, this meant instruction in Ukrainian. Although this may have sounded like a simple proposition, it was not. Throughout the pre-revolutionary period, schools had educated Ukrainian children in Russian, and teachers, regardless of their ethnicity, were trained and accustomed to teaching in it. Pre-revolutionary publications, still widely used in Soviet schools, and even the early Soviet primers were overwhelmingly written in Russian. Ukrainian national leaders had made an attempt to set up a network of Ukrainian-language schools during the country's short-lived period of independence, but their attempts were disrupted by the chaos of civil war and the fall of successive governments. It was under Soviet patronage that the “Ukrainization” of the schools reached its greatest extent; however, it was an achievement that required effort, and real qualitative change in the language of instruction was gradual.

In “Our Guests and Ourselves,” an article written in 1924 for the Prague daily newspaper Lidové noviny, Czech playwright and novelist Karel clarified for his readers the failings in Czech habits of sociability, and the unfortunate consequences of those habits for the new Czechoslovak nation. Each nationality in Prague, and each political grouping within the nationalities, tended to socialize in different clubs and cafes. The Czechs preferred to socialize only with each other, complained , and foreigners visiting Prague tended to socialize with Germans. When Czechs set themselves the task of entertaining visiting foreigners, they did so in a manner overly officious and overtly “national”: that is, Czechs dragged foreigners around from function to banquet, forcing them to listen endlessly to official pronouncements of the glories of the long-overlooked Czech nation. As yet, wrote, Prague lacked a single genuinely neutral club or grouping open to all, and comfortable for all, particularly foreigners, whom the Czechs needed badly to impress. In contrast, told his readers, he himself had just visited the kind of club the Czechs should create: the “Penklub”, in London. In the International Pen Club's London chapter, writers of different nationalities were able to enjoy one another's company, and perhaps develop a greater understanding for other countries' perspectives. The club's existence demonstrated that even England, one of the historical great powers of Europe, put great weight on creating international ties. reminded his readers that “we here have more, and more urgent, reasons for needing such [clubs].” Those “more urgent” reasons for changing Czech habits were first and foremost political reasons, in an age when sociability was politicized—and, as 's comments make clear, nationalized.

The mixture of neo-Renaissance and neo-Classical forms of the National Assembly in Belgrade was to become a visual paradigm of the democratic course and national sovereignty of the Kingdom of Serbia, affirming the status of this newly born nation-state in nineteenth-century Europe. Yet, the interpretation of political messages associated with the building's nineteenth-century architectural features is still in progress. The aim of this paper is to explore how the image of the National Assembly developed into the visual repository of different ideological connotations depending on the character of public events being organized, in the building or in the space in front of it either to support state ideologies or to fight against them. In addition to ideological settings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this research will focus on political meetings and public gatherings of the post-WWII state constructs, from the socialist federation of Marshal Tito to the more recent emanations of Serbian statehood. Along with analyzing the architectural forms of the building serving in different political contexts, this discussion will illuminate the appropriation of space in front of the building by examining the overall staging of public events which have become embedded in the contrasting layers of a collective memory associated with the same image: the National Assembly as the backdrop.

Minority language rights in Georgia, which are inseparable from economic, social and educational inequalities among the different ethnic groups, run along two axes: Georgian's relation to Russian and Georgian's relation with its own minority languages. Since the late 1980s, Moscow's diminishing power and the republic's internal fragmentation have shifted the emphasis from the first to the second. Newly independent Georgia, which is 70% Georgian, now confronts a problem familiar to many post-colonial states: what status should the multiplicity of languages in the republic have? Should Georgian be the only official language, and if so, in what contexts can non-Georgians use their native language? Such issues are part of larger questions about domination, entitlement and ethnic status, issues which have bedeviled the successive Georgian governments' attempts at state-building. In the last two years, language conflicts in Georgia have been overwhelmed by violent secessionist struggles, and the state language program which was perceived as vital to Georgia's future when it was adopted in August 1989, has become secondary today. But if the ethnically based wars are to end, language relations must be settled. As it stands, the language program is unlikely to help.

The repatriation and inclusion of Muslim Meskhetians, forcefully displaced by the Soviet government from Georgia to Central Asia during the 1940s, is still ongoing. In 1977, some Meskhetian families settled in the village of Nasakirali in western Georgia. The Soviet Georgian government built houses for the repatriates in a separate district, referred to as the “Island.” The location acquired a symbolic meaning for Meskhetians. After 40 years of repatriation, Meskhetians still remain “islanders:” isolated from the majority population, speaking a different language, practicing a different religion, and facing different employment opportunities. This study explores the coping mechanisms used by Muslim Meskhetians to sustain themselves and their families and improve their social conditions in a strictly Christian post-socialist country where “Islam is taken as a historical other.” The study primarily asks how employment/seasonal migration in Turkey changed the lives of Meskhetians by adapting their social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital and became the only viable solution for overcoming social marginalization. The study explores how informality allows social mobility, changes gender attitudes, and helps “islanders” reach the “mainland” by becoming “Halal”—truthful and reliable. The study applies Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of “capital” and “symbolic power” for understanding Meskhetians' informal economic practices.

Following the collapse of empires and the subsequent founding of self-determined nation-states, East Central Europe experienced a turning point after World War I. The new states had to transform themselves from branches of a multi-ethnic empire to independent nation-states, as well as from a system of monarchy to democracy at the same time. We argue that one cannot really understand why democracy failed in almost all East Central European states after World War I if one does not take into account the extreme challenges of this “double transformation” consisting of the interactions of the two tightly interwoven processes of nation formation and democratization. Therefore, we deem it necessary to develop a broader research program that addresses the complex interlacement of these two fundamental transformations of politics and society.

This article examines how gender equality activists in postsocialist Latvia negotiate national and transnational frameworks in their campaigns. The case study for this analysis is the 15-year evolution of one gender equality non-governmental organization (NGO), the Resource Center for Women, Marta, in Riga. RCW Malta's work has resulted in significant steps in policy reform and broader social awareness regarding questions of gender equality. In doing so, it bridges essentialist, patriarchal conceptions of the Latvian nation-state and a transnational European feminist narrative. The experience of RCW Marta affirms the continued relevance of the nation, though a redefined one, within transnationalism, which in turn contributes to a rethinking of post-socialism as a spatial and analytic category.