My topic is foreign relations. I would like to look at the implications of the nationality problem for Moscow, for some of the union republics, for the United States, and for other Western countries. It is always difficult to draw a line between foreign policy and domestic policy, but, when one considers the implications of the nationality problem for foreign policy, it becomes especially hard to pull them apart.

The territory of this new European state is crossed by strategically important passes, the lowest in the entire Alps, leading from the Danubian basin to the Mediterranean (Italy). Thus, the Slovenes had been under cultural, civilizational and political domination of centers from these two parts of Europe until 1918. Because the mountainous land forms, dissected also by valleys and basins, were prone to processes of diffusion rather than fusion, the Slovenes became a national and political subject of their own as late as the nineteenth century. From 1918 to 1990 they were joined to Yugoslavia, a South-East European state, and learnt, to their cost, all the differences between the cultures of West and Central Europe on the one hand, and South-East and Eastern Europe and the Near East on the other. Hence the plebiscite decision by the nation for an independent state.

Imagine an intrepid web explorer looking for information on the Czech Republic. He or she might well stumble onto the SunSITE at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague. When our websurfer clicks on the “Czech Republic” link, the screen displays the image shown in Figure 1.

The decay of Yugoslavia since 1990 has put an end to the experiment of a state of Southern Slavs. At the same time it has destroyed the myth of a peaceful and strong Western Europe. The continent that had displayed an impressive performance of cooperation and skillful diplomatic maneuvering during the last years of the Cold War proved to be incapable of coping with the problems in its southeastern backyard. In the beginning of the conflict, the European Community assumed responsibility for negotiating cease-fires and a peace settlement for the embattled Yugoslav states. But all efforts were fruitless. In 1995, it was primarily the interference of the United States that brought about the peace treaty of Dayton for Bosnia-Hercegovina.

The Patriotic Front Pamyat has received a name recognition and notoriety in the Soviet and western academic literature and press which is unrivaled to this day by any other Russian nationalist organization. The vast majority of observers view Pamyat as a neo-fascist or neo-Stalinist movement. This view of Pamyat is often reenforced by drawing links between the Front and conservatives in the Party and bureaucracy. Thus, many see Pamyat either as a vehicle for conservative reaction from “above” or as a manifestation from “below” of a significant segment of the Russian population opposed to the decentralizing, liberalizing, and westernizing tendencies of perestroika. More often than not, Pamyat is viewed as both.

This paper explores the development of the German minority community in Postcommunist Poland, focusing specifically upon the Opole Silesia voivodship. I argue that the minority's successful engagement within democratic fora at all spatial scales allowed the minority to voice its concerns and secure funds to develop its community infrastructure. However, as the 1990s progressed, the minority's ability to manipulate a politics of scale declined as the policy objectives of key allies were achieved or reformulated. Furthermore, the changing contours of the minority–majority relationship within Poland have exposed significant cleavages within the minority, bringing into question the continued relevance of the German minority political party for the constituency it claims to represent.