Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which were then articulated by some nationalistic political elites.

On 9 February 1918, at Brest-Litovsk, the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire) concluded an unusually favorable treaty with the government of the Ukrainian Central Rada. By its terms, in exchange for diplomatic recognition and military support against a Russian Bolshevik invasion of the Ukraine, Rada negotiators placed at the disposal of the Central Powers, but primarily Germany, a surplus of foodstuffs and agricultural products estimated at 1,000,000 tonnes. The Brotfrieden, or bread peace, as this arrangement is generally known, had three significant repercussions. First, it greatly undermined Leon Trotsky's bargaining position and obstructionist tactics, forcing the Bolsheviks to accept German terms on 3 March 1918. Second, by acquiring a rich granary, and thus no longer fearing defeat through starvation, it enabled Germany to break the iron ring of the Allied blockade. And, third, it made it impossible for the Ukraine to receive a favorable hearing or reception from the Western (French, English and American) Allies at the peace conference.

Ukranian scholars in the United States pursue a broad range of disciplines, making significant contributions to such fields of inquiry as literature, linguistics, political studies, and economics. This paper will review the contributions to the study of Ukrainian history. It will examine some of the practical problems affecting the development of the Ukrainian historical studies in the United States and then review the work of a few selected scholars, whose research and publications typify the tenor and the direction of the Ukrainian historiography outside the Soviet Union.

The title is indicative of the outcome of the federative experiment in Eastern Europe between Ukraine and its strong neighbors Muscovy, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. It should be pointed out at the outset that the idea of federation was adopted by the Ukrainian state not for the sake of federation but as a deterrent against strong neighbors, who despite serious setbacks continued to interfere with Ukrainian sovereignty. This was in effect the only option left to the Ukrainians considering the internal and external developments prior to and after the death of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.

While the national question in the USSR has received much attention in terms both of the regime's ideological approach to it and the nationalist response to that approach, the issue of the actual minority territories created in the period from the 1920s to the 1940s has attracted little attention in recent times. Disputes over the external frontier aspects of some of these territories have certainly become familiar, as in the case of the Baltic states and Moldavia, but it is less widely appreciated that disputed borders were created, and continue to exist, within the USSR itself. A number of factors may account for this. In the first place, frequent disdain has been shown in Western emigre writings toward the very relevance of the Soviet federal system and its division of the country into units based either on ethnic composition or on administratively convenient populations. So readily have these divisions been bypassed by the Communist Party's own organization, the KGB, the military, the economic planning organs, major industrial enterprises and combines, and, increasingly, the legal apparatus, that it seemed legitimate to accord the system little import. Then again, with the passage of time, it has come to be taken almost for granted that such boundaries as have been established are correctly and irrevocably drawn to delineate the peoples therein. Finally, it has often been assumed, not least by Soviet officialdom itself, that the borders are destined to prove more and more irrelevant in an era of increasing personal mobility, urbanization, industralization, mass communications, and, most especially, of progress toward the goal of full communism. Nevertheless, despite the opportunities afforded by the change of constitution in 1977 to eradicate them, the territorial units remain, along with the problems they create, many now of longstanding.

Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934) was one of the most important Ukrainian public figures of modern times. In the realm of scholarship, he was the greatest of Ukrainian historians whose ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus' charted the saga of the Ukrainian people from antiquity to modern times. He was a prolific writer and essayist whose personal bibliography lists over 2,000 titles. He was also the principal organizer of an unofficial Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Austrian Galicia—the Shevchenko Scientific Society—and towards the end of his life became the single most important cultural figure in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The mixture of neo-Renaissance and neo-Classical forms of the National Assembly in Belgrade was to become a visual paradigm of the democratic course and national sovereignty of the Kingdom of Serbia, affirming the status of this newly born nation-state in nineteenth-century Europe. Yet, the interpretation of political messages associated with the building's nineteenth-century architectural features is still in progress. The aim of this paper is to explore how the image of the National Assembly developed into the visual repository of different ideological connotations depending on the character of public events being organized, in the building or in the space in front of it either to support state ideologies or to fight against them. In addition to ideological settings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this research will focus on political meetings and public gatherings of the post-WWII state constructs, from the socialist federation of Marshal Tito to the more recent emanations of Serbian statehood. Along with analyzing the architectural forms of the building serving in different political contexts, this discussion will illuminate the appropriation of space in front of the building by examining the overall staging of public events which have become embedded in the contrasting layers of a collective memory associated with the same image: the National Assembly as the backdrop.

In this article, we examine how the Putin government is attempting to respond and adapt to the YouTube phenomenon and the vibrant oppositional online visual culture on Runet. We show how these processes are giving rise to new forms of state propaganda, shaped and driven above all by the quest for high-ranking search-engine results and the concomitant desire to appeal to the perceived new sensibilities of the Internet generation through the commissioning and production of “viral videos.” We focus in particular on the videos created by Iurii Degtiarev, a pioneer in the development of this genre, whose works we explore in light of the “Kremlingate” email leaks, which offer inside information on the strategies and aims being pursued on the online visual front of the campaign to manage the Russian mediascape, and Degtiarev's own reflections on this subject. Examining the output of young creatives patronized by the Kremlin offers a “bottom-up” view to supplement studies of the Russian ideological and media landscape as shaped by “political technologists” such as Vladislav Surkov and Gleb Pavlovskii.