This contribution looks into nationalization and education in European borderlands in the early post-World War II period. Belonging to Belgium and Poland, respectively, in the interwar years, the Eupen–St. Vith–Malmedy and the East-Upper Silesia regions came under German rule during World War II. Returned to the Belgian and Polish nation-states once the war was over, the regions experienced a pronounced upheaval in the population profile as a result of population transfers and reorientations in education curricula. The aim of these measures was to guarantee the national reliability of borderland inhabitants, with a special role being designated for teachers, who were perceived as crucial in the raising of children as national citizens imbued with certain core values. This contribution compares the methods employed by the authorities in selecting educational personnel for their borderlands, the nationalizing role teachers were to play and the way teachers gave meaning to their professional practices.

The history of each nation has some key periods that have drawn the attention of generations of researchers. Historians consider the Great Revolution of France, the rise of Hitler in Germany, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to be among the most important events, hence the events most worth studying, of these countries. Different interpretations of these events, which determined the fates of people for decades and even for centuries, cause heated debates among scholars.

This article explores the tensions inherent in how Kyrgyzstan's nationhood and statehood have been imagined and practised via an analysis of local reactions to the findings of the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission's (KIC) investigation into the 2010 Osh violence and in particular the threat narrative that developed in opposition to the investigation. In the wake of the clashes that erupted in Osh in June 2010, a recurrent theme was calls from the international community for an independent investigation. Within Kyrgyzstan, however, some politicians argued that investigations violated the republic's sovereignty. Despite local reluctance, a number of investigations did subsequently take place. Yet the reports of the respective investigations did little to quell controversy, with the KIC report being strongly criticized and declared a threat to national security. The strength of feeling demonstrated by this reaction was indicative of long-standing and unresolved tensions in Kyrgyzstan between international and local imaginings of nationhood and statehood. The article concludes by arguing that nationhood and statehood need to be reimagined to focus on reestablishing state-society relations by both local and international actors in order for Kyrgyzstan to begin repairing the already fragile sociopolitical relationships that were grievously damaged by the violence and the subsequent investigations.

In the case of Croatia, sport has proved to be a highly politicized form of national expression, functioning as a salient social field in which its “national habitus codes” are most intensively articulated, debated, and contested. An incident emblematizing this argument occurred on 19 November 2013, when the Croatian national football team secured their qualification for the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil. In front of the 25,000 people at Zagreb's Maksimir stadium, the national team player, Josip Simunić, grabbed the microphone and “greeted” all four stands with a loud chanting of Za dom (For the home(land)), to which the stands thunderously responded spremni (ready), the official salute of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist WWII quisling-state. This paper argues that the issue extends beyond politically radicalized football hooligans and has to be understood from the standpoint of “social memory.” By focusing on football, the article scrutinizes debates in the Croatian public sphere dealing with the salute Za dom – spremni. Providing an insight into its complex and multi-layered nature, this paper illustrates that Croatian football has to be understood as a field in which social memory is prominently constructed, heatedly articulated, and powerfully disseminated.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the relationship between forms of political legitimacy employed by communist regimes in East and Central Europe and subsequent models of revolutionary change in 1989. The conceptual basis of the analysis lies in Max Weber's theoretical framework of legitimacy. The four cases selected for comparison are Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The attempts of de-Stalinization and reformation of these party-state regimes through the introduction of paternalistic and also more goal-oriented measures could not prevent their disintegration in the 1980s and their subsequent collapse in 1989. But, I argue, it was the withdrawal of ideological support by elites that ultimately brought communism to an end. The differences in revolutionary scenarios and transitions to democracy in the four cases indicate the importance of a shift in both rulers and masses towards interest in dialogue and compromise. Hungary and Poland represent the clearest scenarios in which communist parties acted as agents of regime change in a rational-legal direction. The Bulgarian case stands as an intermediary case between these two and Romania. Finally, Romania represents an extreme case of violent revolution and the overthrow of a traditionalist and sultanistic regime and illustrates the difficulties following a complete collapse of political authority.

Investigating the Muslim population of Ottoman Europe is the stuff of a demographer's nightmare. There is no lack of material to study; thousands of estimates of Balkan population were made throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfortunately, almost all of them were nonsense, the prejudiced guesses of nationalistic advocates or estimates made by travellers who felt a journey through a land provided enough information for accurate estimates of population numbers.

The intractable war in Yugoslavia, the breakup of Czechslovakia, the nationalist rumblings in Hungary and Romania, and manifestations of imperial and nationalist longings in Russian politics signify nationalism's enduring potency in Central and Eastern Europe. While some foreign observers worried about this potency, the new elites largely believed that liberalism in power could overcome those forces. Liberal democracy's triumph supposedly meant the end of History, inter alia, aggressive nationalism in Eastern Europe. They believed that these national liberation movements had cooperative, mutually supportive relationships that would flower after Communism ended. Nationalist discords were due to Eastern Europe's previous historical post-1914 nightmares, but the new post-1989 states would have amicable relations with their neighbors. Ostensibly, nationalism, once freed from Soviet repression, would bring an end to Soviet rule and usher in a new ‘springtime of nations.'

The present article critically evaluates Hroch's theory in light of the Sindhi and Baloch national movements in Pakistan. At the heart of the issue are the social preconditions and the stage theory which Hroch posits to comprehend both the formation of nations and origins of the national movement. As far as social preconditions are concerned, the article contests the overarching notion in Hroch's theory that only when a complete class structure develops that the nation comes into being and the national movement itself is successful. With respect to the stage theory, the article brings into contention the variable of “intra-ethnic conflict” or the conflicts which inheres within nations. This makes the linear progression from Stage A to B to C, as Hroch identifies, difficult to achieve because within a single nation multiple national movements exist. In such a scenario, one can depict a stage theory for each national movement within a single nation. Finally, I argue, that in order to understand nation formation and national movements, it is imperative that the ideological orientation of national movements, or in other words, nationalism should also be put in proper perspective.

I shall look at language legislation passed in the republics. The subject is not as dramatic as the actions of the Black Berets. It is not as obvious as empty shelves or economic crisis, but it is interesting because language legislation can effect all people in their everyday lives. It is also interesting because the Center has left language laws largely in the hands of the republics. So here is an area in which the republics are beginning to act as independent agents. And whether or not they become independent, they will have to grapple with language as a significant policy issue.

Studies of small state foreign policy tend to draw relatively bleak conclusions when it comes to small state agency. However, I will examine alternative and more positive modalities of small state agency. One such modality is agility, the strategic maneuverability to take advantage of a chancy environment. Besides leading to dangerous rigidities and biases, particular types of foreign policy imageries and heuristics may also facilitate experimental and agile agency. In studying this possibility, Finland is chosen as an illustrative case because historically Finland has faced a particularly constraining geopolitical context and because it has managed to adapt to multiple upheavals and to different geopolitical contexts. The emphasis is on the heuristic dynamics inherent in Finnish foreign policy culture that have allowed it to actively meet the emerging challenges. Instead of taking a detailed historical approach, I seek to understand the role of the relatively flexible and combinable embodied cultural models, i.e. thick images. They allow for agency-related experimentation that may bring added value that allows Finland to exceed the constraints of the brute geopolitical position. After reviewing multiple embodied foreign policy images, I will use them to analyse New Year's speeches by the Finnish Presidents Ahtisaari and Halonen in order to see how the fickle present is made to resonate innovatively with the known, commonplace, and mythical.

For more than a quarter-century, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been one of the most important factors influencing the political map of the South Caucasus. On 12 May 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan signed a cease-fire agreement that ended military operations in the conflict zone and has been observed until recently. Negotiations for a peaceful settlement have been underway within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Minsk Group co-chaired by the USA, Russia, and France since 1992, but society and the elite in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan remain largely unprepared for compromise. Considering the settlement process a zero-sum game, they have generally accused one another of escalating the conflict and of a lack of willingness to restore peace. Other countries and international organizations involved in the negotiations do not share a vision of the future and frequently pursue their own interests. Accordingly, the Karabakh conflict could remain unresolved for decades more. The aim of the paper is a general assessment of the current stage and dynamic of this conflict and the impact of new trends and old obstacles on the prospects for further settlement.