This article is the second in this series, following “Part 1: The Legacy of Early Institutionalism: From Gypsy Fiefs to Gypsy Kings”, which covered the period from the arrival of Gypsies to Europe until the mid-nineteenth century and was published in Volume 32, Number 3 of Nationalities Papers. Part 2 describes the birth of the first modern forms of ethnically-based political and social organizations established by Romani elites from the nineteenth century up until the Second World War (WWII). The main pattern of the development of Romani representation and administration until the mid-nineteenth century—as described in Part 1—distinguished between institutionalization from within and without. In the time period described here, the pattern changes because the majority of organizations and institutions established in order to represent and administer Roma are started upon the initiative of Romani leaders. Some are, however, created under the umbrella or patronage of non-Romani authorities or organizations and their activities are controlled by these patrons; others are created in (various degrees of) cooperation with non-Romani authorities or organizations and a few are created and operate independently. In addition, during this period the first few non-Romani non-governmental organizations start to take interest in the plight of Roma, and some organizations are specifically created to address their plight and lobby “on their behalf.” The other pattern of the development that emerges in this period is the gradual ascent of the institutionalization to higher levels. While until the nineteenth century most of the Gypsies organized themselves locally and regionally (with the exception of the Polish Office of the Gypsy Kings and the Chief Voivods in Transylvania and Hungary), in this period we see the first attempts by Roma themselves to expand the institutionalization countrywide and even internationally. These patterns are again explored in the conclusion (and summarized in Table 1), while the main body deals with the various arrangements in a more or less chronological and geographical order.

With the rise of ethnonationalism, scholars have generated intense debates over civic nationalism versus ethnic nationalism. The Mongols at China's Edge represents another effort added to endorse ethnic nationalism with its application to the Chinese context. The author aims to “explore from diverse angles the moral and political implications and contradictions of minzu tuanjie (national unity) in the socialist China” (p. 1). A legitimate question raised by the author in the introduction is whether the regional autonomy granted to national minorities in China encourages a sense of separate nationhood for Mongols or contributes to the assimilation of Mongols into China.

First Visions

During the Soviet period Estonia, like the other national republics of the USSR, lacked a foreign policy of her own. While foreign ministries did exist, they had just a symbolic function: staffed by only five or six people, they were allowed minimal cultural and trade contacts with the Western countries and limited inter-communist party ties within the Soviet bloc. They had to report to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on every move they made and served, first and foremost, as cover organizations for the KGB. Designing more substantive foreign policies in the Baltic Republics actually began before they gained independence in 1991. In 1989–1990, the emerging political parties voiced their first visions of the future of the Baltic States, which, generally speaking, boiled down to becoming sovereign democratic states, striving for friendly relations with all countries of the world. By that time, under the pressures of perestroika and glasnost, the Soviet authorities had been compelled to loosen their grip on the foreign contacts of the union republics. Those contacts, however, could not be called yet a foreign policy. They could, rather, be identified as isolated moves in the arena of international politics.

In the fall 1989 issue of Heimatliche Weiten, the semiannual Soviet German literary journal, a bibliographical article by Victor Herdt, “Verzeichnis der russland- und sowjet-deutschen Zeitungen (1728–1989),” lists more than 150 German-language newspapers published in Russia and the Soviet Union. The entries are limited to German Russian newspapers and exclude those of other ethnic Germans, such as the Baltic, Bessarabian, or urban Germans, who differ from the German Russians in origin, culture, and history.

There is a savage irony at the core of Sovietology. Whereas the study of Soviet history and politics should have concerned itself with everything Soviet, it traditionally focused almost exclusively only on what was Russian. By ignoring the non-Russians as something not Russian and, thus, by implication, inconsequential, “Sovietology in one country” contradicted its own premises and, thereby, turned in upon, indeed even negated, itself. By setting the center over the periphery, by detaching the center from the periphery that defined the center as a center, Sovietology in effect emptied the center of its “centrality.” In so doing, Sovietology transformed itself into an inauthentic form of Russian studies—inauthentic in the sense of ostensibly being concerned with the Soviet Union, while, in reality, actually pursuing the study of something with which Sovietology was ostensibly unconcerned.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated and eventually dissolved in 1991, many of its peoples, both so-called titular nationalities and national minorities, put forth demands for independence or, at the very least, self-rule for territories that were said to represent the national patrimony. Among the many peoples who put forward such demands were Carpatho-Rusyns, who, together with fellow citizens of other national backgrounds, demanded autonomy or self-rule for the region (oblast) of Transcarpathia in far western Ukraine. This essay examines from a historical perspective the question of autonomy or self-rule for Carpatho-Rusyns and for all or part of the territory they inhabit, historic Carpathian Rus'. The autonomy question in Carpathian Rus' is hardly new, but one that goes as far back as 1848.

Even before gaining independence in December 1991 from the former USSR, Ukraine had supported Slovenia and Croatia's drive to independence from the former Yugoslavia. In May 1991, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman paid an official visit to Ukraine where then parliamentary speaker Leonid Kravchuk expressed sympathy with Croatia's desire for independence. Tudjman pointed out how Ukraine's seat at the United Nations had given it a head start in obtaining international recognition of its independent status. On 12 December 1991, twelve days after the Ukrainian referendum on independence, Kyiv became one of the first states to diplomatically recognise Croatia and Slovenia; and further, it announced its readiness to open embassies in both countries. Ukraine was the first member of the U.N. to recognise Croatia; the second and third countries, Slovenia and Lithuania, were not members of the U.N. when they recognised Croatia.