The Enlightenment instilled European and European-rooted societies with certain fundamental principles which are generally taken for granted; among the most important are democracy, education, and human equality. Not all of mankind experienced this period of cultural history, but in those areas that the Enlightenment touched, a tautology functions in the collective subconscious that where there is democracy and where there is an educated people, there will be equality. Western nations—their politicians, scholars, and common folk alike—believe that a preordained consequence of the system of democratic rule in a developed country is open-mindedness and tolerance; in contrast, it is generally maintained that non-democratic governments where knowledge is evidently censored and controlled, such as those of the former Soviet Bloc, produce narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

This article examines determinants of persistent regional political cleavages in post-Communist Ukraine. The question is how significant the role of culture is compared to ethnic, economic, and religious factors in the regional divisions. This study employs correlation, factor, and regression analyses of regional support for the Communist/pro-Russian parties and presidential candidates and pro-nationalist/pro-independence parties and candidates in all national elections held from 1991 to 2006, the vote for the preservation of the Soviet Union in the March 1991 referendum, and the vote for the independence of Ukraine in the December 1991 referendum. This study shows that the pattern of these regional differences remained relatively stable from 1991 to 2006. Historical experience has a major effect on regional electoral behavior in post-Communist Ukraine. The legacy of Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule is positively associated with the pro-nationalist and pro-independence vote; the same historical legacy has a negative effect on support for pro-Communist and pro-Russian parties and presidential candidates and on the vote for the preservation of the Soviet Union.

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.

This is a presentation that will be more concerned with impressions than with numbers. I suppose we could count the number of theaters or schools that have gone out of business. Yet I am not sure that would be an advantage in a presentation about culture. Two years ago, I was having lunch at a Theater Institute in Alma-Ata. It was a very special occasion because that morning they had just slaughtered a horse for us. And as my host told me this, he loooked me right in the eye and said, “You know, this is freshly-killed horse meat. We did it just for you.” As I responded, I returned his gaze, and said: “I love it.” And actually, it was very good, but remember that the Kazakhs, like all people of the East, are very sensitive to how people from the West regard them. That is but one small demonstration of this tendency. Another was that in the course of the meal someone suddenly came in and whispered something to someone else—remember the date, late May 1990—and everyone stood up and cheered. And I asked, “What's happened?” Somebody else said, “Yeltsin has been elected.” Two people at the table subsequently made mention of Yeltsin's popularity in the non-Russian areas and said that that this was an exciting development. Kazakhs really thought that this was a change for the better. And they were right.