In the current situation of societal modernization and transformation of the political system of Ukraine, one of the most important problems facing the country is the formation of a system of local self-government that can act effectively. If this institution is not developed and strengthened, there can be no discussion of the establishment of democratic, social government, of the development of the rule of law, or of an expansion of the infrastructure of civil society.

On 27 June 2004, Serbian voters went to the polls for the third time in a year to choose a president. The winner of the first two rounds of voting, Tomislav Nikolić, Deputy to the President of the extreme right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), lost the third round of voting to the more liberal Borisav Tadić by just under 8 percentage points (53.2 to 45.4), and the Radicals failed to form a ruling coalition in government. Nevertheless, more than five years after the last war in the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the largest political party in the largest of the successor states has been characterized as the most extreme right party in the Balkans today. Indeed, the Radicals have been an enduring force in Serbian politics for the past decade and a half, sometimes ruling in coalition with Slobodan Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). SRS founder Vojislav Šešelj, a flamboyant, obstreperous, highly influential figure, and his fellow Radicals have sought and in many ways succeeded in shaping the post-communist transformation of Yugoslav politics and society, calling for a return to the true spirit of Serbia, when the nation was strong because its men defended its honor as well as its borders.

Writing in 1862, the testy Slavophile publicist and editor Ivan Aksakov complained:

The relationship between Germans and Czechs has often been the crucible on which the history of Central Europe was forged. Although characterized more by enmity than amity in recent times, this was not always the case. For most of the centuries when Czechs and Germans shared the same Central European space, the cultural differences between them lacked a political dimension, and their interaction was peaceful and mutually beneficial. The Teutonic Knights named their citadel “Königsberg” in honor of the Czech ruler, Přemysl Otakar II, while German townspeople contributed their skills and crafts to the economic advancement of the Bohemian kingdom which he ruled. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, the positive aspects of this ethnic coexistence were ignored, forgotten, or suppressed by scholars and politicians, both Czech and German, who interpreted the Bohemian past in the language of national separatism.

The general perception of Western analysts and observers is that the nation-states created as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union all treat the memory of the dark, repressive aspects of the Stalinist regime in public spaces as a symbolic element in the creation of a new post-Soviet identity [Denison, Michael. 2009. “The Art of the Impossible: Political Symbolism, and the Creation of National Identity and Collective Memory in Post-Soviet Turkmenistan.” Europe-Asia Studies 61 (7): 1167–1187]. We argue that the government of Kazakhstan employs non-nationalistic discourse in its treatment of Stalinist victims’ commemoration in a variety of forms, through the creation of modern memorial complexes at the sites of horrific Soviet activity (mass burial places, labor camps, and detention centers), purpose-built museum exhibitions, and the commemorative speeches of its president and other officials. Kazakhstan's strategy in commemorating its Soviet past is designed to highlight the inclusiveness of repression on all peoples living in its territory at that time, not just Kazakhs, thereby assisting in bringing together its multinational and multiethnic society. Thus, the official stance treats this discourse as an important symbolic source of shaping the collective memory of the nation, based on “a general civil identity without prioritizing one ethnic group over another — a national unity, founded on the recognition of a common system of values and principles for all citizens” [Shakirova, Svetlana. 2012. “Letters to Nazarbaev: Kazakhstan's Intellectuals Debate National Identity.” February 7. Accessed July 28, 2015. http://postsovietpost.stanford.edu/discussion/letters-nazarbaev-kazakhstans-intellectuals-debate-national-identity].

Influential scholarship on the Brezhnev era has described the instrumental official support for Russian nationalist themes and pre-socialist imagery in public discourse as a deliberate “politics of inclusion,” designed to co-opt certain nationalist intellectuals and the sympathies of the state's core of ethnic Russians for the purpose of popular mobilization. How this policy related to and interacted with the ubiquitous official commemoration and mythologization of the Great Fatherland War during this period, however, has remained unexplored. Based on a number of the most important Russophilic publications in the censored press - the writings of the so-called “Chalmaevists” - this article contends that despite unambiguously russocentric, single-stream readings of history in general, when it came to the war in particular, nationalist intellectuals tended to muffle their russocentrism through opaque language or an avoidance of the war's larger significance, or conformed to the war's official (supra-ethnic, socialist) reading. It was only in samizdat that the essentially Russian, primordial nature of victory in 1945 could be fully articulated. The present study thus probes the limits of the concept of inclusionary politics and underscores the party leadership's apparent commitment to maintaining the war myth's predominantly supranational, socialist significance as a means of fostering all-Soviet, rather than Russian national, solidarity.

This article presents the case of the Suwałki Triangle region on the current Polish-Lithuanian border to demonstrate how local activists developed a “multicultural” interpretation of social relations to counter previously dominant nationalist narratives. It then contrasts this interpretation with a “decoloniality” framework to illustrate the limits of the multicultural approach. Decoloniality, developed by Walter Mignolo to theorize about Latin American historical experiences, finds continued hierarchies in the apparently plural social landscape, situates identity as a fluid response to these hierarchies, and privileges voices that are “delinked” from them. Decoloniality may explain the complex borderland identifications of the Suwałki Triangle – and potentially other territorialized communities – better than multiculturalism.

After its establishment in 1918–1919, Czechoslovakia was a multinational state and some of its minorities protested against their being included into it. The nationality problem was related to the collapse of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1938 and the loss of some of its territories to Germany, Poland, and Hungary. It may be pointed out that the 1920 Constitution did not recognize a separate Slovak national identity and that the Czechs and Slovaks were termed “Czechoslovaks.” The post-Munich Second Republic recognized a separate Slovak nationality; however, the state came to its end in March 1939. In 1945, after its reestablishment as a national state of the Czechs and Slovaks, the country's government attempted to liquidate the national minorities' problem in a drastic manner by transfer (expulsion) of Germans and Hungarians.

The new era of Slovene spiritual, cultural and, in a certain sense, political history, is marked by the condition of exile. The first Slovene book, printed in 1550, was written by Primož Trubar, a Protestant, emigrant and exile par excellence. Trubar and his followers translated, wrote, made plans, and worked, “for the prosperity of their homeland,” in exile; therefore, the fundamental document of Judeo-Christian civilization and culture—the Holy Bible—was translated into Slovene, in exile. Books were sent to the homeland in barrels, and young people were invited to be educated at German universities. Trubar died an exile, convinced that his cause in the homeland was, if not won, at least well on the road to success.

These have been very stimulating presentations. The conclusion we can draw from all of them is somewhat bleak—that the Soviet system is in something of a life-threatening crisis. A major part of the problem is economic. Indeed, each of the presentations provides evidence for the view that there are important economic aspects to the problems addressed by the speakers.

Is an imagined democracy more important than actual democracy for nation-building purposes? After 20 years of independence, Central Asian countries present a mixed bag of strong and weak states, consolidated and fragmented nations. The equation of nation and state and the construction of genuine nation states remains an elusive goal in all of post-Soviet Central Asia. This paper examines the role that electoral politics has played in nation-state formation. We argue that electoral processes have been central to attempted nation-state building processes as part of efforts to legitimize authoritarian regimes; paradoxically in those few countries where (for brief periods) partial democratization actually occurred, elections contributed, at least in the short term, to nation-state fragmentation.

On the eve of the referendum on Armenia's independence on September 21, 1991, Vazken I issued the following appeal to voters.

By the will of God, the citizens of our freedom loving nation and newly born Republic will respond on September 21, 1991, to the invitation for independence by declaring unanimously and loudly, “yes.”

In 1991 the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities, who had migrated to and been resident in the non-Russian regions of both the tsarist empire and Soviet Union, found themselves located beyond the borders of the newly independent Russian Federation. Despite an absence of actual, physical movement, the communities experienced a form of stationary or figurative displacement as the Soviet Union broke up and political borders demarcating their homelands moved over them. This displacement was furthered in subsequent years due to the nature and security of the environment where they lived and their often secure sense of ethnocultural and socio-economic identity being challenged through processes of political and economic transformation and increased levels of instability and uncertainty. This article focuses on members of those Russian communities who are living in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Through an analysis of narratives of their everyday lives it explores how they perceive and understand the “displacement” which has occurred, and how they are responding and actively renegotiating relationships with both their physical homeland—Uzbekistan—and their “historical” homeland—Russia. Furthermore, the article assesses how through these processes of displacement and renegotiation they are reshaping their own identities in the post-Soviet period.

The Soviet Union has a Muslim population about the size of Turkey's. Definition is a problem because Soviet censuses do not ask about religious convictions. All one can say is that those nationalities which have traditionally been predominantly Muslim number, according to the 1989 census, approximately 55 million people out of a total population which exceeds 285 million. Although it is common to refer to “Soviet Muslims” as if they constituted a monolithic community, these millions of people are in fact diverse in terms of their religious traditions, current attitudes toward their ancestral faith, nationality, and numerous other secular aspects of life as well. This essay will attempt to describe all the forms of Islamic activity among the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union, but will consider the status of Islam primarily in Central Asia, where the largest number of the Soviet Union's traditionally Muslim nationalities live, and especially the republic of Tajikistan, where the status of Islam largely resembles that of other important parts of the region.

When it comes to identity, nationalism and the various perceptions of “the Other,” postcolonial theory has inspired historians of Central and Eastern Europe for years. This inspiration, however, has not overcome a certain superficial level of slogans and catchphrases: identity is a cultural construction, yes, so it is somehow connected to the problem of power; knowledge too, since we have read Said and Foucault, is to be considered as both a result and an instrument of power. Now it seems that this superficiality will not be accepted any more. Recently, scholars of Central Europe organized a conference focusing on the questions of whether and how postcolonial theory can be applied on the study of Austria-Hungary. Was the Habsburg Empire really an Empire, can perspectives developed in Delhi be transferred to Prague and Bratislava?

This article analyzes discursive representations of Lithuania and of Belarus as Lithuania's “Other” in the context of the recent political crisis in Ukraine. Focusing on the media discourse of Lithuanian intellectuals regarding the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) and its legacy, it examines how Belarus and its role vis-à-vis Lithuania have been depicted. The analysis is informed by the discourse-historical approach within critical discourse analysis, using thematic content and argumentation schemes for studying the images ascribed to the GDL, Belarus, and Lithuania in the selected texts. Focus in the discourse of intellectuals on the GDL as a historical homeland is found to shift from history as a scholarly endeavor to the politics of history and the uses of the past in today's political projects. Belarus and the GDL emerge as topics not only historically and politically salient but also potentially dangerous for Lithuania within the setting of the events in Ukraine.

My comments on ideology, unlike the two presentations that preceded mine, which were substantive and had something to report on, will be similar to the story about the dog that did not bark: a dog that barked incessantly in the Brezhnev era, ideology has literally stopped barking since then. In this sense, the most striking aspect of contemporary Soviet ideology is its silence. From one of the most insistent features of Soviet reality under Brezhnev, ideology has retreated into a dark corner, where, presumably, it is licking its wounds and plotting a return. Ideology is far from dead, however. The ace up ideology's sleeve is, of course, the Party. As long as the Party purports to play a leading role in Soviet society—and, as Gorbachev has suggested, its role will increase under conditions of perestroika—then something like ideology will be necessary to justify and legitimate the one-party rule of a party that, even by its own criteria, does not deserve to rule, let alone to rule alone.