This article explores the construction of Russia's role in the post-Soviet space on the popular level of geopolitical culture. This empirical study is based on an interpretative analysis of open-ended survey responses of International Relations and Political Science students in Russian universities. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to introduce the two main geopolitical meta-narratives constructed from students’ responses, Russia as a leading power and Russia as a fading power; and second, to show how they resonate with the broader discursive field on Russian identity and policies in the post-Soviet space. I argue that the two meta-narratives tell us about both support and challenges posed against the elite level of geopolitical culture, and Russia's foreign policy in the post-Soviet space. They also show variation on how Russia's role is represented, as well as on the goals which Russia should have vis-à-vis this space. The ideal role of Russia would be that of integration leader, but students disagree on whether this is the actual role now, or whether this can ever be attained. Moreover, not all would even agree with aspiring for this role; instead, Russia should re-orientate its foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

In 1925, two newspapers, both published in Uzhhorod, advocated using the Latin alphabet in the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia. Efforts by the Czech Agrarian party to consolidate the Republic played some role, but the plans mostly emerged from a longer tradition of Slavic thought which imagined literacy in more than one alphabet, conforming to more than one literary standardization. We trace the nineteenth-century history of Slavic linguistic ideologies from the original Panslavism of Jan Herkel, the “Slavic Reciprocity” of Jan Kollár and his successors, to the Kollárian Czechoslovakism used to legitimate the first Czechoslovak Republic. We survey Ruthenia's status within Czechoslovakia and then contrast two 1925 Latinization schemes: a proposal from Czech chauvinist František Svojše and a proposal from Rusyn journalist Viktor Barany. While Rusyns mostly remained with the Cyrillic alphabet, arguments made for and against Latinization show that nineteenth century Slavic ideals endured far into the twentieth century.

Hindus and Sikhs, longtime minority religious communities in Afghanistan, have played a major role in the social, cultural, and economic development of the country. Their history in Afghanistan has not been faithfully documented nor relayed beyond the country's borders by their resident educated strata or religious leaders, rendering them virtually invisible and voiceless within and outside of their country borders. The situation of Hindu and Sikh women in Afghanistan is significantly more marginalized socially and politically. Gender equality and women's rights were central to the teachings of Guru Nanak, but gradually became irrelevant to the daily lives of his followers in Afghanistan. Hindu and Sikh women have sustained their hope for change and seized any opportunity presented to play a role in the process. Active participants in the social, cultural, and religious life of their respective communities as well as in Afghanistan's government, their contributions to social changes and the political process have gone mostly unnoticed and undocumented as their rights, equality, and standing in the domestic and public arena in Afghanistan continue to erode in the face of continuous discrimination and harassment.

In the article, the author uses a sociocultural approach to analyze debates in the US press that accompanied “Russian celebrations” in 1813. During the War of 1812, the Federalist opposition to President Madison's administration organized several celebrations of Russia's victories over Napoleon, who was a de facto ally of the USA in its war against England. As a result, harsh debates arose about the relative merits of the Russian nation. Madison's supporters described Russia in extremely critical terms, while the critics of the administration mostly spoke positively of the distant country. For both sides, the Russian victories were just a pretext for formulating their own political views, but by using an image of “the Other,” they elaborated and affirmed two major characterizations of Russia: in one view, it was a barbaric and uncivilized country; in the other, a guarantor of liberty and a rapidly developing and freedom-loving nation. The main difference was summarized in a pamphlet publication of correspondence between Robert Harper and Robert Walsh. The article affirms that the level of civilization in Russia was not just used as an argument in domestic polemics, but was determined according to the demands of that polemic.

Recent unrest and the 2014 elections have corroborated the impression of Bosnia as a failing state, one that is constantly being undermined by the three-way impasse between constituent ethnic groups of Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. Major history museums in Bosnia, however, provide a more complex picture. This paper analyzes museums and exhibitions on twentieth-century history in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Jajce, with regard to their narrative strategies, their aesthetic appearance, and the commemorative practices in their respective locations. From this perspective, the use of history in building group identity in Bosnia is far from coherent. Although museums are one means to assert firmly entrenched national identities both old and new, they compete at the same time with nostalgic commemorations of socialist Yugoslavia and with equally nostalgic references to the Austrian occupation. Various civic groups struggle to assert their visions of belonging, mostly with rather modest financial means. Based on these findings, this paper will explore not only the underlying assumptions of what history and, in particular, museums are all about, but also how visions of the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina are inscribed in these uses of history – if indeed they are.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, located near Konin in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, provides a unique insight into a nationalistic discourse in contemporary Poland. It was created not only as a Catholic shrine but also as a place of patriotic indoctrination. This paper examines not only the architecture and design of the Church and the surrounding Sanctuary, but also the ideas of Rev. Eugeniusz Makulski, the site's founder, and Barbara Bielecka, its architect, in order to understand one of the important currents in a debate on the Polish post-Communist identity. A close analysis of this religious shrine is intended not only to understand this particular site but also to examine how national identity is (re)defined in architecture. As this paper shows, the employment of symbolic devices allows the creation of a coherent story of the Polish nation as a religious community with a history intrinsically linked to the Catholic Church. However, the annexation of the lay sphere (nation) by the sacred one (religion) leads to problematic results when it comes to the universality of the religion and the “nationalization” of the Catholic Church itself.

The article analyzes the Stone Dreams novel by the famous Azeri writer Akram Aylisli. Published in the Russian literary journal Druzhba Narodov (Friendship of the People) in December 2012, it condemned anti-Armenian pogroms in the republic and in the cities of Baku and Sumgait in particular at the end of the 1980s. The novel also refers to the massacre committed by Turkish troops on Christmas of 1919 in the midst of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923. At that time, Turkish commander Adif-bey ordered the mass execution of the Armenian population in the author's home village Aylis (Agulis in Armenian). Almost all Armenians were killed, with the exception of a few young girls who by the late 1980s had turned into gray-haired women. The writer knew them when he was a young man, and the whole of his narrative was based on the stories that were told by the older people in the village. The novel caused mass outrage in Azerbaijan, for allegedly being one-sided. This included mass demonstrations in front of the author's house and the public burning of his books.

This study aims to identify the attempts to form a Jordanian national identity from the establishment of the Jordanian state in 1921 to date. This study reviews the efforts of the Jordanian state, which was subject to internal, external, political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances, and variables that led to change the Jordanian national identity to incorporate religious, national, regional, ethnic, and tribal aspects. The regime has been unable to address and resolve the issue of national identity; instead, it has tried several means to circumvent the problem of national identity. The identity card is a means that the regime has used to achieve its goals. These policies led to the state's failure to define, establish, and maintain a comprehensive national identity for its citizens. The formation of a national identity has been a dilemma for Jordan since the establishment of the state; there is almost no known national identity. This situation calls for the construction of the Jordanian national identity on a fixed and clear basis to prevent its disintegration, to facilitate the process of social integration, and to build a final national identity that is both inclusive and representative. Without this identity, division and conflict may prevail in Jordanian society.

In September 2014, the people of Scotland voted on whether or not to become an independent state. The consequences of independence would have been complex –decisions about accession to the EU, currency union, defense. Seemingly less dramatic, yet no less important, are the consequences of Scotland not seceding — the effects in global law and politics of the very fact that the referendum happened, and that it failed. Many elements of the Scottish case find close parallels in claims for secession elsewhere in the world. Yet those claims more often meet less welcoming receptions. Indeed, it is not the attempt to secede, but the existing state's acquiescence that marks this case as different: The UK is the rare country that acknowledges the possibility of its own division. Great Britain's acquiescence both made Scottish secession possible and made it an outlier, whose precedential value must be closely interrogated. The key missing element is any evidence that the process was shaped by a sense of international legal obligation — indeed, the pathways of Scottish secession have been an insular affair, a function of particularly British law and politics, in which international law played little role. This article argues that the Scottish referendum provides little precedent for a changing legal norm — yet also offers a compelling model for how such a new norm ought to look. This article is about something that did not happen, and why it does not matter — but also why precisely that is so important.

This paper focuses on the complex nature of post-war multilingual landscapes in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, as shaped by the country's political shift after independence in 2008. We aim to contribute to this sociolinguistically underexplored territory through an examination of the relative predominance and visibility of the capital's most dominant languages: Albanian, Serbian, and English. Our central aim is to empirically problematize the shared co-officialdom of the Albanian and Serb languages, as put forward in the “Ahtisaari Plan” in 2007 and subsequently adopted in the State Constitution in 2008 and Language Laws in 2006 and 2008. We posit that the multilingual language policies which paint an inclusive, multi-ethnic picture of Pristina do not coincide with its monolingual Albanian reality. In addition to these empirical findings, our second aim is to contribute to the theorization of authorship in the public sphere. With reference to the Pristina context, we problematize the analytical categorization conventionally made between top-down and bottom-up agency and distinguish a third category of semi-official authorship. This third category enables us to examine the dynamic nature of the discrepancy between Kosovo's language policy and Pristina's urban linguistic reality in more detail.

The topic of international cooperation between national movements before the end of World War I (WWI) has still not received sufficient scholarly attention. It is common for national historiographies to concentrate on the case of their own nation. When it comes to international relations, however, connections with neighboring nations and national movements - chief adversaries in the achievement of national goals - are usually prioritized. Nevertheless, even before and especially during the war there was a vibrant scene where non-dominant nationalities could practice international diplomacy, conduct discussions, share experiences, build coalitions, and so on. This article explores one of such examples of international relations conducted between the representatives of two nations - the Catalans and the Lithuanians. They came in contact before the war at the Paris-based Union des Nationalités (the Union of Nationalities), an organization that was designed to unite and support non-dominant national movements. Despite being located on the opposite sides of Europe and having no apparent direct connections, the Lithuanians and the Catalans established common ground for cooperation, which especially peaked during WWI.

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested — “hyphenated” — with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy — an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other.

This essay is an attempt to chart recent developments in the field of Modern Greek Studies, focusing on shifting perceptions regarding Islam and Muslims. To do so, the essay positions the relevant literature in its historical context, touching upon both accomplishments and limitations. Its main proposition is that the Greek case is distinct yet connected to contemporary global contingencies and broader long-term regional dynamics. Athens remains the only European capital without a mosque. Moreover, despite recent academic endeavors, there exists today no coherent Greek field of Islamic Studies. That these absences have been brought recently under political and academic scrutiny constitutes, however, a noteworthy change. Most important, the traditional exclusion of Islam from the field of Modern Greek Studies does not suggest lack of relevance between the two but, quite to the contrary, reveals a set of loaded and complex socieconomic, geopolitical, and historical links that deserve to be studied in their own right.