The population of the North Adriatic area has always been linguistically mixed. Slovene, Croatian and Italian populations have lived here for 14 centuries; German people moved here in the period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the city of Trieste became the official harbor of the Empire, and, as a consequence, the town grew, attracting others immigrants: Greeks, Jews, Serbs, and so on. Linguistically three main groups lived in Trieste: German, Italian and Slovene speakers. The Slovenes in Trieste owned many important activities, such as banks and trading companies. They were organized in the fields of education and culture with their own theater, private schools, library, daily newspaper and magazines. The Slovenes in Trieste also had their own political movement electing some representatives to the Parliament in Vienna. On the whole, they were considered a very well organized linguistic group. The Italians in Trieste were similarly well organized, and many supported a strong irredentist movement, economical and political organizations, as well as the theater. The German speakers were mostly immigrants who had moved to Trieste for business reasons or as civil servants.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991 led to the de-colonization of the world's last remaining empire. Taking this into account, this article seeks to argue two points. Firstly, many of the imperial policies imposed by the imperial core in the Soviet empire were similar in nature to those imposed by imperial powers in Ireland, Africa, and Asia. Secondly, the nation and state building policies of the post-Soviet colonial states are therefore similar to those adopted in many other post-colonial states because they also seek to remove some—or all—of the inherited colonial legacies. A central aspect of overcoming this legacy is re-claiming the past from the framework imposed by the former imperial core and thereby creating, or reviving, a national historiography that helps to consolidate the new national state. All states, including those traditionally defined as lying in the “civic West,” have in the past—and continue to—use national historiography, myths, and legends as a component of their national identities.

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region's political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,”which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies.

Eight years of municipal reform in Azerbaijan reflect a lack of social capital in communities. Without building social capital, achieving effectiveness of governance, as well as political stability and economic progress, in the country appears bleak.

This paper seeks to study factors such as the set of informal values, tolerance, social trust, norms and networks of voluntary associations which contribute to social capital formation within the communities of Azerbaijan. As a way of exploring the problem, we have focused on one specific area of governance-the construction of infrastructural services (i.e. roads, housing and communal services, water supply, and sewerage) in Baku, the country's capital, and in Khachmaz and Masalli, both of which are districts of Azerbaijan. The aim is to highlight and clarify the effectiveness of municipal governments in different communities of Azerbaijan from the standpoint of civic engagement and its role in this process.

Canadians of Ukrainian descent constitute a significant part of the population of the Albertan capital. Among other things, their presence is felt in the public space as Ukrainian monuments constitute a part of the landscape. The article studies three key monuments, physical manifestations of the ideology of local Ukrainian nationalist elites in Edmonton: a 1973 monument to nationalist leader Roman Shukhevych, a 1976 memorial constructed by the Ukrainian Waffen-SS in Edmonton, and a 1983 memorial to the 1932–1933 famine in the Ukrainian SSR. Representing a narrative of suffering, resistance, and redemption, all three monuments were organized by the same activists and are representative for the selective memory of an “ethnic” elite, which presents nationalist ideology as authentic Ukrainian cultural heritage. The narrative is based partly upon an uncritical cult of totalitarian, anti-Semitic, and terroristic political figures, whose war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and collaboration with Nazi Germany the nationalists deny and obfuscate. The article argues that government support and direct public funding has strengthened the radicals within the community and helped promulgate their mythology. In the case of the Ukrainian Canadian political elite, official multiculturalism underwrites a narrative at odds with the liberal democratic values it was intended to promote. The failure to deconstruct the “ethnic” building blocks of Canadian multiculturalism and the willingness to accept at face value the primordial claims and nationalist myths of “ethnic” groups has given Canadian multiculturalism the character of multi-nationalism.

1. Introduction

Until the October 1991 Soviet coup, Moldova, previously known as Bessarabia and the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, had known independence only briefly, having been part of the Russian Empire, Romania, or the Soviet Union for almost its entire history. As a result of shifting foreign influences and borders, Moldova, like most modern political entities, has a multiethnic population. The conflicting perspectives and demands of Moldova's different ethnic groups underlie many of today's controversies.