Shortly before the Christmas of 1860, the major bookstores in Prague put on display a German-language booklet entitled Bohemian Sketches: By a Native Writer. Although the book was published anonymously, its author soon became well known: he was Jan Palacký, the son of the prominent historian and leading Czech politician Frantis̆ek Palacký. But even his famous name did not spare the young man from stormy, harsh criticism that followed after the publication of the book. For weeks the newspapers both in Prague and in Vienna scrutinized the rhetorical nuances of the book, pointing out the author's national and political biases. Surprisingly, neither of the Czech-language newspapers, Národní listy nor C̆as, that had recently entered into the public arena, stepped forward in defense of the author. The critical response in the press raises one's curiosity: what was wrong with Jan Palacký's arguments? How could someone so closely connected with Czech national leaders write such a controversial account? Moreover, considering the censorship practices and vigilant police supervision of the time, it is also worth asking how the publication could have escaped the attention of governmental surveillance.

Writing in 1862, the testy Slavophile publicist and editor Ivan Aksakov complained:

In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson stressed the role that literature, and particularly the development of the novel, actually played in building a nation as an “imagined community.” Others have emphasized how building a national literature has often gone hand in hand with the creation of a national identity (e.g. Thiesse; Jusdanis). All have underlined the strong relationship between nationalism and literature: literature is a concrete tool that builds the nation as a community; literature also serves to build and spread a national identity.

In the spring of 1990, Lithuanians surprised the world by first declaring their independence and then, after Moscow had declared the act illegal, refusing to retract their declaration even in the face of military occupation and economic blockade. Many foreign observers despaired of their “stubbornness,” but the Lithuanians' determination was based on their newly regained national pride as expressed in their concept of statehood (valstybingumas in Lithuanian and gosudarstvennost' in Russian). Lithania, they insisted, had a right and a historical destiny to be an independent state.

The concepts of “reform” and “revision” need considerable elaboration before a systematic study of their political ramifications can be undertaken. Common usage in the West seems to indicate that “reform” in communist systems means change towards political pluralism, less ideology, and greater participation by the citizenry in political communication, aggregation, and decision-making. “Revision” and “revisionism,” which are essentially communist concepts, are also interpreted to indicate a process of “loosening up” the autocratic, bureaucratic, and ideological nature of contemporary political and socio-economic systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In Rossettiren obsesioa (Rossetti's Obsession), a short and explicitly meta-literary novel published in 2000, Ramon Saizarbitoria presents a Basque writer wrestling a formidable lover: the Spanish readership. The question that Eugenia, the woman from Madrid, constantly asks the writer, “¿Qué os pasa a los vascos?” (“What's wrong with you Basques?”), encapsulates the ambiguity of the relationship which unites these two indisputably allegorical characters. The difficult interaction between the powerful Spanish literary field and the emerging Basque literary field, doomed to coexist and moved by reciprocal feelings of fascination and irritation, becomes the novel's subject matter. Is translation — and its corollary, an access to a larger literary market — a pure and neutral instrument of liberation for the writer who expresses himself in a minority language, or could it become, in certain circumstances, a threat to his autonomy?

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 exerted a deep influence on the international communist movement and greatly affected the political and economic outlook in Hungary. A less well-known legacy of the uprising is what may be called the refugee experience, a momentous chapter in the history of human migration and resettlement. An examination of this experience reveals that the appearance of the Hungarian refugees in Western Europe and the New World greatly changed the development of Hungarian ethnic communities already in existence there, and that the refugees’ presence in the West continues to have lasting influence on relations between Hungary and the West.

In the past, Hungary has been both a source of refugees and a refuge for them. Many times in her history has she offered refuge to persecuted minorities and fugitives driven out of their own countries by war or other calamities. She has also sent her own refugees to the four corners of the world, after such events as the Rákóczi Uprising of the early eighteenth century, the War of Independece of 1848-49, the revolutions of 1918-19, and the Second World War.

When Ita Myshkind learned that her husband had remarried before delivering the official get (bill of divorcement), she filed criminal charges against him in state court. “My husband,” she claimed, “Wishing to use my capital and valuable possessions, married me with the premeditated intention of divorcing me.” She complained that a few months after their marriage, he deserted her and married a certain Dveira Rafaelovich; and it was only after this blatant violation of the law that her husband hastily drew up the get without any rabbinic supervision. Efroim Myshkind, however, sharply contested his wife's account, asserting that he had sent a messenger to deliver the writ of divorce in the presence of two witnesses. “It is not at all difficult for a Jew to divorce his wife,” he wrote, “especially if she does not have a good reputation like Ita Kreines [here he used her maiden name], who spent an entire year abroad with different acquaintances.” But at the trial, the husband failed to prove that the get had satisfied all the requirements of Jewish law, much less that his wife had actually received the document. More important in the state's view, he had violated Russian civil law, which required a “spiritual authority” (in this case, a state rabbi) to supervise the divorce procedure. In October 1884, the Minsk court convicted the husband of bigamy and sentenced him to five months and ten days in prison.

Although Ita Myshkind did not achieve all her objectives (namely, forcing her husband to divorce his second wife), she did prevail on two important issues: securing material support and ensuring that her husband would not go unpunished for his crime. That a provincial Jewish woman could utilize the Russian legal system to obtain justice raises two important questions: first, when and why did some women begin to resort to the state; and second, how effective were their efforts and what was the impact on Jewish women and their society as a whole?

A dramatic population increase coupled with a reduction in per capita investment is producing a “demographic cauldron” in Soviet Central Asia. This was the focus of Professor Lewis's December 7 lecture. In his presentation, Professor Lewis outlined the political, economic and social conditions that frame a grim picture for Central Asia. The region is plagued by an unfavorable convergence of factors: a rapidly growing rural population, especially the indigenous population which is concentrated in rural areas, labor surpluses, relatively little rural or northward out-migration, deteriorating economic conditions especially in rural areas and environmental degradation, along with significant social development and, thus, rising expectations and national awareness. At current growth rates, the indigenous, the rural, the total, and the rural working-age populations will double about every generation or less. Besides, there has been little effort on the part of the central government to shift investment and resource allocation priorities to accommodate the demographic changes.

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in February 2008 catapulted the Western Balkans back to the centre stage of international security concerns. Despite affirmations to the contrary, the recognition of Kosovo's independence by major Western powers is seen as a significant precedent in international law and the way in which self-determination conflicts are handled by the international community. At the same time, it raises major questions for the stability of borders across the Western Balkans region, and possibly beyond. At the centre of many of these questions is the role of the international community—defined by the international and regional organizations present in the region, as well as by their powerful member states—in tackling the complexity of interrelated self-determination conflicts, incomplete democratization processes, growing concerns about the economic viability of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia and an ever-increasing presence of transnational organized crime networks with significant reach beyond the region.

During the closing months of World War I in late 1918 and the break-up of the historic multinational empires that for centuries had ruled most of East Central Europe, it became common practice for the varying ethnolinguistic or national groups to form councils whose goals were to determine their group's political future. These national councils, as they came to be known, seemed to appear everywhere, but perhaps most frequently in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was not only the “large” former minorities like the Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, Romanians, or Ukrainians who formed national councils, but many smaller groups acted in the same way. And, like the national councils of the larger groups who very soon created independent republics alone or in cooperation with their immediate neighbors, so, too, did some of these smaller groups proclaim their independence. Thus, in the newspapers of the time and scholarly monographs of today one can still find references to the Baranya, East Slovak, Hutsul, or Przemysl “republics” among others, which during the last few months of 1918 seemed to sprout up like mushrooms after a rainfall, but which for the most part ceased to exist when the borders of East Central Europe began to stabilize as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that opened its deliberations in early 1919.

In the eyes of the European public, Slovenia is still considered a Catholic country. Since before the last World War, this has had a double meaning. First of all, the Roman Catholic Church has been the leading ecclesiastical institution since the Christianization of the territory settled by Slovenes, decisively influencing the constitution of the cultural and political life of the Slovene nation, as well as its character. In spite of changed social conditions and its fate in the period of “real-socialist” rule from 1945 to 1990, the Church has preserved this role to the present time, although in different forms.

Is there is specific Jewish literature in France? The study of Jewish authors and their writing is not sufficient grounds to indicate that such a group exists as a sociohistoriacal entity; that their existence is real and not merely nominal. The question of the existence of Jewish literature — not to be confused with Jewish writing — is a central preoccupation of the community press, in which preferred answers are formulated with reference to an organised group of artists rather than in terms of artistic expression. We will attempt to show how and by what devices the position adopted by the press in question, often lacking in coherence and sufficient justification, has influenced that adopted by certain writers and academics.

When we talk about Slovenia in Europe, we are talking about a two-way relationship: what does Slovenia mean for Europe? and, what is Slovenia's place in Europe? The first question requires an answer to an additional question: what is Europe, and where is its development leading? As part of Europe, and as a part of its system, Slovenia must also be in harmony with it or, rather, Slovenia's attributes must not be in conflict with those of Europe, otherwise Slovenia would not integrate properly. Europe could not then accept it as a composite part, for Slovenia's development would not align with the direction in which Europe is moving.

By the end of the nineteenth century Russian legislation regarding Jews was a congeries of self-contractions and inconsistencies. On the one hand, Jews were hemmed in by numerous restrictions and repressive measures in regard to their residence rights, economic activities, communal organization, educational opportunities, and even religious practices. On the other hand, the limits of discrimination were often ill-defined, being expanded by some laws and contracted by others; in some cases important privileges were granted to various categories of Jews (for example, the right to live outside the Pale of Jewish Settlement) or to the Jewish community as a whole (for example, the right to collect certain taxes). In addition, the enforcement of this hodge-podge of rules and regulations varied from place to place and from time to time.

Ever since the advent of perestroika and glasnost in the Baltic states in 1987–88, a heightened awareness of renewed state- and nation-building has prevailed. Regional politics and development acquired new life amid the officially proclaimed imperative of “restructuring.” Yet, it was really not until the re-establishment of independence in August 1991 that restructuring of state and society took on meaning and urgency. To be sure, the trappings required of a nascent state currently include legal frameworks and institutions to carry out basic functions. But, on a more profound level, there is also the question of assessing the societal foundation on which such a new structure would (should) rest. This issue represents a far more serious decision.

The Soviet regime's contention that the nationalities problem has been solved can no longer be taken seriously. At his speech honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Soviet Union on December 21, 1972, party chief Leonid Brezhnev claimed:

By now … solving the nationalities problem, overcoming the backwardness of previously oppressed nations, is … habitual for the Soviet people. We must remember the scope and complexity of the accomplishments, in order to appreciate the wisdom … of the party, which took upon itself such a task — and accomplished it.