For 60 years, the international community has limited the right of territories to gain independence without the permission of the “parent state.” Such limits were, however, challenged when Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, in February 2008. As a result, Belgrade referred the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On 22 July 2010, it came back with its long-awaited decision. Taking a narrow view of the question, the majority argued that, in general, declarations of independence, as mere statements, do not violate international law unless stated otherwise by the Security Council. Thus, Kosovo's declaration of independence cannot be considered as being wholly “unique” – as those states that supported its statehood have claimed. On the key questions of whether Kosovo's secession is legal, or if it is even a state, they chose to avoid controversy. On these points, the international community is no clearer now than it was before the case.

This article considers how regional integration in Europe has informed processes of collective remembrance and transitional justice in Central and Eastern Europe. By taking the cases of Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic, two claims are made. First, although European institutions have not initiated top-down projects of historical reckoning, activists who have an interest in promoting engagement with the recent past have been able to draw the political, financial and/or judicial weight of European institutions behind particular reckoning initiatives, on an ad hoc basis. Second, the nature of the projects that have been realized with the assistance of European resources has varied across the region, according to the extent of prior efforts to promote collective remembrance and transitional justice at the national level. Where there have previously been constraints on historical reckoning, activists have drawn “Europe” behind efforts to promote national-level confrontations with particularly national experiences of communist rule. By contrast, where there has previously been extensive state sponsorship of collective remembrance projects and/or processes of transitional justice, European resources have been used in support of efforts to raise awareness of the repressions of communist rule, and transitions from that system of rule, among a wider, international audience.

The conflict over Transnistria is a territorial dispute in which one of the conflict parties (Transnistria) seeks independence while the other (Moldova) aims to restore its full sovereignty and territorial integrity. For close to two decades, the situation has been stagnant: a cease-fire agreement signed in 1992 in Moscow between the Russian and Moldovan presidents at the time – Boris Yeltsin and Mircea Snegur – established a trilateral peacekeeping mission (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) and a buffer zone along the Dniestr/Nistru River. Protected by these arrangements and an additional Russian military presence, Transnistria has developed into a de facto state of its own, albeit without international recognition and heavily dependent on Russia.

The outcome of Turkey's June 2011 elections temporarily quelled – though by no means entirely put to rest – growing concern over the creeping autocratic tendencies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). To ensure that democracy remains durable, the AKP must now clearly demonstrate that it is willing to shun heavy-handed tactics and instead engage the opposition in a genuine dialog regarding important matters of constitutional change, especially those related to individual rights and identity issues. A slide toward autocracy has been an all-too-common pitfall in Turkish politics over the years. Should it so choose, the AKP is well poised to break the cycle at this critical juncture in Turkish politics.

Hitler's coming to power in Germany had its key consequences upon the fate of the German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. The German community in Romania constituted no exception. After 1933, a process of radicalization can be noticed in the case of the Transylvanian Saxons, one of the several German-speaking groups in Romania. The phenomenon has already been analyzed in its political and economic dimensions, yet not so much in its social ones. This article looks at the latter aspect, its argument being that the Nazification of the Transylvanian Saxon community can be best comprehended by using a conceptual framework developed by political scientist Donald Horowitz in the early 1970s. The analysis uses a series of contemporary sources (diaries, issues of the official periodical of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania, Kirchliche Blätter), but also a wide range of secondary sources, academic and literary. Consequently, the article shows that especially after 1933, the Lutheran affiliation, highly relevant for the production and reproduction of the traditional model of Transylvanian Saxon identity, shifted from the status of a criterion of identity to a mere identification indicium. At the same time, the attraction of a (Pan-) German identity, with its Nazi anchors, became stronger and the center of gravity for Transylvanian Saxon identity radically moved towards German ethnicity, in its National-Socialist understanding.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, came into being in 1929 as an “integral nationalist” movement that set itself the goal of driving Polish landowners and officials out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, joining hands with Ukrainians in other countries, and establishing an independent state. The OUN defined Jews, along with Russians and Poles, as aliens and enemies. There was no need, wrote an OUN ideologist in 1929, to list all the injuries that Jews caused Ukrainians. “In addition to a number of external enemies Ukraine also has an internal enemy … Jewry and its negative consequences for our liberation cause can be liquidated only by an organized collective effort”. The article examines archival documents, publications by OUN members, and recent scholarly literature to trace the evolution of OUN thinking about Jews from 1929 through the war years, when the German occupation of Ukraine gave the OUN an opportunity to stage pogroms and persecute Jews, and the prime minister of the state that the OUN proclaimed wrote that he supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine”.

The background of the contemporary Macedonian “antiquization” can be found in the nineteenth century and the myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic speakers in Macedonia, adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs. The idea of Ancient Macedonian nationhood has also been included in the national mythology during the Yugoslav era. An additional factor for its preservation has been the influence of the Macedonian Diaspora. After independence, attempts to use myth of ancient descent had to be abandoned due to political pressure by Greece. Contemporary antiquization on the other hand, has been revived as an efficient tool for political mobilization. It is manifested as a belated invention and mass-production of tradition, carried out through the creation of new ceremonies, interventions in the public space and dissemination of mythological and metaphysical narratives on the origin of the nation. There have also been attempts to scientifically rationalize claims to ancient nationhood. On the political level, the process of antiquization reinforced the political primacy of its promoters, the ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), but had a negative impact on the interethnic relations and the international position of the country.

The article concerns debate about the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine. It covers the period 2004-2008.

The literature on church-state relations in post-Soviet Russia has been slowly but steadily expanding over the past two decades. The period since 2008, however, remains underdeveloped, as existing analysis has focused on specific issues rather than attempting an overview of the larger trends since the above-mentioned changes in the leadership of both institutions. Seeking to address this gap, this article explores the implications of the nearly coincidental changeovers in leadership in the Moscow Patriarchate and the secular state for church-state relations in Russia, both near and long-term. The first part of the article sets up the context for understanding the new church-state dynamic, by discussing in some detail the state of the relationship under Patriarch Aleksii II. The conclusions are that, under Aleksii tenure, the church could be considered a relatively weak institution, as it was unable for the most part to strengthen its position in Russia through legislative means. The second part focuses on the process whereby the new patriarch came to be elected in 2009, intending thereby to shed some light on Kirill I's leadership style and political agenda. The third part discusses concrete changes in the church-state relationship that have occurred on the federal level since 2008. The final section proposes some conclusions regarding the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church as a political actor in the contemporary Russian Federation, suggesting that despite the recent gains in the church's political fortunes, the ROC's position in society and particularly vis-à-vis the government remains vulnerable in key respects.

This article discusses anti-war and anti-nationalism activism that took place in Serbia and, particularly, in Belgrade during the 1990s. It analyzes anti-war activism as aiming to combat collective states of denial. Based on fieldwork research conducted in 2004-05, and particularly on an analysis of interviews conducted with anti-war activists in Belgrade, this text closely analyzes the nuanced voices and approaches to activism against war among Serbia's civil society in the 1990s. The article highlights the difference between anti-war and anti-regime activism, as well as the generation gap when considering the wars of the 1990s and their legacy. Finally, this text emphasizes the role of Women in Black as the leading anti-war group in Serbia, and examines their feminist street activism which introduced new practices of protest and political engagement in Belgrade's public sphere.

Strong civil society provides individuals with arenas to bring their interests to the attention of policymakers. In so doing, civil society organizations (CSOs) can support state policies, but can also criticize policies. This paper argues that most minority rights advocacy CSOs in the Baltic states have little say in the crafting of policy and are compartmentalized into the existing agendas, with only a few groups able to evaluate policies independently. It concludes that the Baltic civil society is weak because the CSOs working on minority issues ask policymakers either too much, or too little. The findings suggest that policymakers quell criticism of their work from the side of the CSOs by ignoring their activities. Alternatively, by funding the CSO that shores up the state agenda, policymakers delegate their responsibilities to civic actors, keep critical voices from public debates and claim that their policies have the full support of a vibrant civil society. This paper investigates the options available for civil society actors to relate to policymakers in a nationalizing state by drawing on the data collected in 77 semi-structured interviews with the CSOs working with Russian and Polish minorities in the Baltic states between 2006 and 2009.

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.

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the two major dimensions of memory and justice in the context of post-communist countries: truth-telling and retroactive justice. This interdependent and uneasy relationship is illustrated by recent attempts at constructing a new historical narrative of the communist past in Romania in the wake of the de-secretization of the files of both the Communist Party and the communist secret police (Securitate). A systematic analysis of the activity of institutions that have been directly involved in research and public education about the recent past – the National Archives, the National Council for the Study of Securitate's Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism – is undertaken. The work of these three institutional actors shows a direct relationship between truth-telling in its various forms (access to archives, opening the files and exhumations) and any subsequent retroactive justice and restitution. The main argument of the paper is that while deep-seated dichotomies between former communist and anti-communists in addressing the past still persist, a more nuanced way of seeing the regime that explores the ambiguous line that divides outright repression from cooptation is emerging.

This article analyzes electronic letters to the editor on the coverage of the riot in Kondopoga (2006) and the bombings in the Moscow subway (2010). Letters to electronic media are used for the first time as a source for popular opinion on nationalism and ethnic conflicts in Russia. The first argument of this study is methodological: a comparison between the polls and the letters suggests that letters to electronic media represent public opinion on nationalism even though Internet users still constitute a minority of Russian citizens. This study also claims that the letters under examination indicate a move from extreme nationalism to so called “banal nationalism,” the term coined by Michael Billig, during the period between 2006 and 2010. Finally, the article argues that the concept of the civic nation is not yet well understood or accepted by Russian citizens. Although this concept, expressed in Russian by the newly coined word rossiane, became somewhat more popular in 2010 than it had been in 2006, the ethnic understanding of Russian still prevails. The basis for the new identity rossiane, as it is presented in the letters, lacks common memories, myths and traditions that would resonate strongly in popular imagination.

At the core of the debate in Ukraine about Babi Yar lies the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1943 1.5 million Jews perished in Ukraine, yet a full understanding of that tragedy has been suppressed consistently by ideologies and interpretations of history that minimize or ignore this tragedy. For Soviet ideologues, admitting to the existence of the Holocaust would have been against the tenet of a “Soviet people” and the aggressive strategy of eliminating national and religious identities. A similar logic of oneness is being applied now in the ideological formation of an independent Ukraine. However, rather than one Soviet people, now there is one Ukrainian people under which numerous historical tragedies are being subsumed, and the unique national tragedies of other peoples on the territory of Ukraine, such as the massive destruction of Jews, is again being suppressed. According to this political idea assiduously advocated most recently during the Yushchenko presidency, the twentieth century in Ukraine was a battle for liberation. Within this new, exclusive history, the Holocaust, again, has found no real place. The author reviews the complicated history regarding the memorialization of the Jewish tragedy in Babi Yar through three broad chronological periods: 1943-1960, 1961-1991, and 1992-2009.

This article uses Central Asian examples to challenge theories of ethnic nationalism that locate its origins in intellectual activism (Hroch), state modernization processes (Gellner), or the rise of mass media (Anderson). Modern Uyghur cultural politics and traditional Central Asian dynastic genealogies reveal related processes used in constructing modern nationalist symbols and pre-modern ideologies of descent. Modern territorial states with ideals of social unification and bureaucratic organization rely upon nationalist discourses to elaborate and rework cultural forms into evidence for the ethnic nation. The state links citizens to institutions through nationalist content used in political discourse, schooling, and public performances. Because such content is presented as authentic but used instrumentally, its contingency and fabrication have to be concealed from view: the culturally intimate spaces of bureaucratic production of culture and narratives are separated from public performances. The creation of genealogies used to legitimate pre-modern states are similar: compositional processes and goals are kept offstage, and little is disclosed in the public historical narratives and performances.

Multiple and dual citizenship in the past decades have become widely accepted worldwide. Leading scholars in citizenship studies claim that the growing tolerance of dual citizenship signals the weakening of state sovereignty and the emergence of transnational, post-national or cosmopolitan norms. This paper argues that multiple citizenship standards are neither universally accepted, nor normatively compelling. The cases referred to are intended to demonstrate that contrary to the above assessments, dual citizenship is also used by states to increase their sovereignty, for example promoting national interest abroad through expatriates and trans-border minorities. It is also argued that, in addition to the classical territorial sovereignty- and security-related dilemmas, dual-citizenship policies may violate the norms of democratic equality and popular sovereignty. The paper concludes that the inevitably growing toleration of non-monogamous state-citizen relationships should not be interpreted as a normative justification of promiscuous citizenship policies.

Entity-voting in the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly is a veto mechanism in Bosnia's consociational institutional setting and an important reason for the country's orientation towards the political status quo. An empirical analysis of the number and nature of adopted and rejected draft laws during the legislative period 2006–2010, embedded in George Tsebelis's veto player approach, leads to the conclusion that the veto players in the parliament – either delegates from Republika Srpska or delegates from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – have pushed the consociational system of checks and balances to its extremes. Entity-voting enables the veto players to “hijack” the parliament for their exclusionary ethnic interests and discourages cooperation and compromise between the veto players. Significant legislation, which in the present article is defined as legislation relevant for the European Partnership, faces severe obstacles to getting passed. In the light of these findings, the article discusses three policy implications: institutional redesign, a change of the actors, and an active role of the European Union for providing the actors with a realistically achievable goal which they equally share. This should reset the current calculus of self-interest and encourage cooperation between the veto players.

The article intends to combine contemporary debates about nations and nationalism with a sociological perspective on collective emotions in its attempt to gain a better understanding of the process of constructing national identity. It will further present interdisciplinary evidence that collective emotions evoked in rituals instigate a number of group-related sociocognitive processes that reinforce enduring feelings of belonging and an emotional priming of collective representations. I will suggest that states of “collective effervescence” (Durkheim) do not only tie individuals to a community, but also provide a strong frame for the creation of symbols and the embodiment of shared meanings defining a community. The second part of the article analyzes examples taken from the football media coverage of the FIFA World Cups 2006 and 1974 (both were held in Germany) in order to provide a comparative case study exemplifying the proposed theoretical approach. The sample illuminates some interesting changes that invite further hypotheses about corresponding changes of national identity in a larger context.

Discussions about ethnic mobilization in eastern Europe have emphasized efforts of nationalist leaders to demarcate their community from their neighbors in mixed areas where ethnic boundaries and identities were blurred. Demarcation became a common means of defining the community both geographically and culturally, a process which later facilitated the community's mobilization. In the German Empire, however, the Polish-German demarcation was already stark, since it mostly coincided with Catholic-Protestant demarcations. But while the Polish community mobilized quickly and showed great solidarity, the German community did not. Using the Bromberg/Bydgoszcz administrative district as a model, the article argues that the local German community's internal divisions limited its ability to mobilize. Germans agreed on the need for greater German community solidarity, but differed on conceptualizations of its ideal structure and form. Liberal nationalists, envisioning a more egalitarian community defined by a common ethnicity, fought with local conservatives, who were as intent on preserving their prominence within the community as they were on struggling with the Poles. Such divisions crippled local German mobilization on any scale comparable to their Polish neighbors, suggesting that an ethnic community's self-demarcation is necessary but not sufficient to ensure its mobilization.