In much of the already vast and expanding literature on nationalism there is an understandable emphasis on its political dimensions. It is generally seen as the ideological mobilization of an essentially cultural national identity—which may or may not be considered pre-existing—for the purposes of attaining sovereign state power, or in some other way influencing and affecting state power, for example attaining greater rights or autonomy within the state. Where there are no such demands directed at the state, such an understanding implies that either we are not dealing with a nation, or we are dealing with one that is still unconscious of its nationhood or that is satisfied without any political expression of that nationhood. None of these cases, in any event, would normally be considered examples of nationalism, since nationalism by definition must demand, indeed is the demand for such state expression or recognition of nationality. As John Breuilly puts it: nationalism is “above and beyond all else, about politics, and … politics is about power.”

Jaroslav Durych, a popular Czech Catholic poet and essayist, began his weekly column in Lidové listy's (People's News) 10 May 1923 issue with the following proclamation: “The Czech Nation must be Catholic!” What did Durych mean by this puzzling statement? The majority of Czechs in the new Czechoslovak state considered themselves at least nominally Catholic. Yet Durych's article did not address the confessional status of Czechoslovakia's population, nor did it address religious differences between Czechs and Slovaks. Instead, Durych concerned himself with the representation of the Czech nation in popular mythology and official symbolism. He demanded that the Czech national symbols reflect the country's majority religion and not the Protestant experiment of the late Middle Ages.

Before 1945, Masuria was part of Germany and known primarily as the scene of the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg and as an attractive summer vacationland of numerous lakes, extensive forests, and villages of characteristic wooden houses. Since 1945, Masuria has belonged to Poland, where it is known as the scene of the 1410 Battle of Tannenberg/Grunwald, and as an attractive summer vacationland. To students of nationalism and national identity, however, Masuria is interesting primarily because its predominately Polish-speaking population seems to present the clearest and best-documented example anywhere in Europe of national identity developing counter to native language. Although most Masurians spoke Polish and lived adjacent to Poland, they gave every indication over quite a long period of time of voluntary and virtually unanimous identification with the Prusso-German state and nation. They did so at a time when most of the rest of eastern Europe was increasingly subject to the influence of ethnolinguistic nationalism and the rest of the German–Polish borderlands were witness to one of Europe's classic ethnic-national rivalries. (see Maps 1 and 2)

In exploring the history of the Russian minority in Estonia during 1918–1940, one is inevitably drawn to the figure of Professor Mikhail Anatolevich Kurchinskii (1876–1939). An academic and journalist, Kurchinskii was also an important political actor devoted to the quest for a satisfactory resolution of the nationality question in Estonia and Europe. It is with good reason that Kurchinskii has been called “the most important theoretician and practical advocate of cultural autonomy amongst the [interwar] Russian minority in Estonia.” From 1927 he also served as a leading member of the Congress of European Minorities (CEM), which became the main promoter of the cultural autonomy concept on the wider European stage. During the same period he took a deep interest in the work of the Pan-Europe movement and the quest for a durable settlement of European affairs following the traumas of World War I. Until very recently, however, Kurchinskii has remained a neglected figure among historians, even within the narrow field of Baltic studies. This neglect is symptomatic of the lack of attention devoted to the political history of the Russian minority more generally. As the first group to implement Estonia's celebrated 1925 law on cultural autonomy, the interwar German minority has already formed the object of a number of studies. By contrast, Kurchinskii's failure to realize the autonomy project means that he—and, indeed, the Russian minority as a whole—barely receives a mention in most histories of Estonia. Just as Kurchinskii's aspirations regarding cultural autonomy were never realized during his lifetime, so his vision of building a “New Europe” faded against the background of economic depression and a retreat into inward-looking national particularism during the 1930s. The tragic fate that befell central and eastern Europe after 1939 has in turn tended to obscure many of the ideas and positive achievements of the interwar minorities movement. This article uses Kurchinskii's career to illuminate issues relating to the sociopolitical development of the Russian minority between the wars. In particular it compares Kurchinskii's thinking on minority issues with that of his rival Aleksei Janson (1866–1940), a socialist politician and pedagogical expert who served as Russian National Secretary in the Estonian Ministry of Education from 1922 to 1927. Finally, by linking Kurchinskii's quest for cultural autonomy to his broader thinking on the “New Europe,” the article assesses the relevance of these ideas to contemporary debates on the nationality question.

Ukraine's independence signaled the end of the post-war Russification of the school system and the beginning of a large scale Ukrainization of the educational sector. From the 1990–1991 school year to the 1997–1998 school year, the national authorities raised the proportion of Ukrainian-instructed school children from 47.9% to 62.8% nationwide. As the language of instruction in Ukraine's schools almost exclusively is either Ukrainian or Russian, the relative percentage of Russian-instructed school children, conversely, declined from 51.4% to 36.4% during the same period. Ukraine is not the only Soviet successor state that has promoted the language of the titular nationality in the sphere of education at the expense of Russian. In Kazakhstan, for example, the proportion of pupils receiving their education in Kazakh grew from 32.4% in 1990–1991 to 40.1% in 1993–1994, and the percentage of Russian-instructed children, accordingly, fell from 65.0% to 57.2%. In Moldova, the number of pupils studying exclusively in Moldovan increased from 424,000 to 447,000 between 1989–1990 and 1992–1993, while the number of pupils studying exclusively in Russian dropped from 290,000 to 262,000.

Many non-Russians in the Russian Empire were active members of imperial educated society (obshchestvo), and they often conceived of the colonial advance of Russia as part of the march of the progressive West and “civilization” itself into the backward lands of the East. Reformist empire builders who criticized the brutal wars and population transfers that marked the conquest of the southern borderlands also emphasized the civilizing mission of the empire on its eastern frontier. This article explores the conception of Russia and its empire in the work of the Azerbaijani publicist Hasan Melikov Zardabi. Zardabi was genuinely enthusiastic about Russia and the prospect of an enlightened imperial future for the lands of the former khanates on the frontier of the Iranian and Ottoman empires. The unusual circumstances of his life, however, which included exile to his remote and native village of Zardob, a small fishing village on the Kura River to the west of Baku, compelled him to re-evaluate his estimation of Russia and the benefits of imperial rule. Zardabi learned from his experience in Zardob, and grew to rethink his earlier views about civilization and the Russian Empire.