It is often said that Western study of Soviet society is comparable to observing the tip of an iceberg. This analogy is not entirely appropriate since it ignores acts of deliberate camouflage and misinformation. This leads to a certain paradox. Although the greatest amount of available information covers the top of the iceberg, meaning Moscow, it also contains the greatest amount of deliberate misinformation. Information on areas such as Ukraine, however, is in shorter supply but at the same time it provides a more accurate picture, even if this picture is not an entirely clear one. This view suggests that sociology in Ukraine may reflect more accurately the state of sociology throughout the Soviet Union, even if it portrays a somewhat different picture than that generated by the Institute of Sociological Research in Moscow.

In May-June 1905 a special conference on education for non-Russians (inorodtsy) of the eastern Empire met in St Petersburg. The conference was organized by the Ministry of National Enlightenment (i.e. Education) with the concurrence of the Holy Synod. It was chaired by A. S. Budilovich, a member of the Council of Ministers. The conference had been preceded by an investigatory commission, also headed by Budilovich, which visited non-Russian elementary schools in the eastern regions of Russia and interviewed education officials, teachers, and parents involved in the education of non-Russians in the area. The purpose of the commission and the subsequent conference was the “examination of the presently existing legislation concerning the non-Russian schools of eastern Russia and in particular that system among them which is linked to the name of N.I. Il'minskii, compared with the schools of the general type that exist in those regions, on the one hand, and with the confessional schools (especially Moslem and Buddhist), on the other.”

In contrast to most other analyses of Romani migration, this article is based on a series of interviews conducted with Romani migrants which formed part of an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) survey. The survey results suggest that socioeconomic factors are an important catalyst in the emigration of Slovak Roma. After providing a background to the migrations, the article analyses the Communist regime's policy towards the Roma, and its impact on their socioeconomic status both prior to and after the changes of 1989. The authors identify a “Romani socialist-style middle class,” created primarily by these policies, which constitutes the primary group of migrants. Reasons for their migration include limited chances for personal development, a perception of being discriminated against and a lack of focus on developing local responses. Their migration signifies an attempt to escape from social exclusion. The article further considers the reasons why migration is seen as a preferable solution, and then moves on to an analysis of both Romani and majority perceptions of the migrations. The authors conclude with a set of recommendations for policy-makers and non-governmental organisations.

In its title, Uğrur Ümit Üngör's Making of Modern Turkey (2011) offers an elegant indication of how much has changed in the academic literature on Turkey since Bernard Lewis's 1961 Emergence of Modern Turkey. Lewis believed modern Turkey emerged; Üngör reminds us it was made. The cover pictures tell the rest of the story: where my copy of Lewis's book shows a bustling street scene, Üngör's boldly offers the ruins of an abandoned Armenian church. If it is an exaggeration to say that modern Turkey no longer represents the triumph of progress, but instead a systematic act of destruction, it is increasingly clear that younger historians, both Turkish and non-Turkish, have shifted their focus from what was gained with the advent of the republic to what was lost.

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

A probe into the changing perceptions and classifications of Silesian (i.e. the Slavic dialect and the Slavic-Germanic creole of Upper Silesia, or both construed as the ethnolect of the Silesians) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as most saliently influenced by the mutually nullifying competition of German and Polish ethnolinguistic nationalisms. This competition opened the space for the rise of the Silesian national-cum-regional movement, which sometimes undertook the task of codifying a Silesian language. Such codifications were frustrated during the periods of dictatorship and totalitarianism, which lasted in Upper Silesia from 1926/1933 to 1989. Berlin and Warsaw suppressed the possibility of the rise of a Silesian language, perceived as an ideological threat to the ethnolinguistic legitimization of German and Polish national statehood. Today, Warsaw dislikes the recent popular grassroots project to codify Silesian as a language, but, under the democratic conditions enjoyed in postcommunist Poland, the state administration has no legal means to suppress this project. The codification of Silesian gathered pace at the turning of the twenty-first century, due, among other reasons, to the rapid spread of access to the Internet. However, without the state's blessing and support, the outcome of the codification project, remains, at best, uncertain.