In October 1966, a conference of Czech, Slovak, and Magyar historians discussed in Bratislava (Czechoslovakia) the characteristics of Fascism in their respective countries. The nature of Slovak nationalism caught the attention of the participants. While mainly analysing Slovak-Magyar relations, the scholars touched only slightly on some of the other ethnic groups living in Slovakia, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Gypsies, and Jews. In order to study and understand Slovak nationalism during the Second World War, problems and conditions of each of the above-metnioned groups should be studied. A mutual comparison might assist in the creation of a substantive summary. Yet even a most thoroughgoing analysis of the relations between a dominant nation and the subjected minorities would not provide us with a comprehensive definition of Slovak nationalism.

This article introduces a thematic issue consisting of five articles, which analyze the complex interrelations between gender norms and representations and the construction of nationalism in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia. Drawing from gender and feminist studies, the first section explores how Central Asian nationalisms have promoted hierarchized gender roles to reinforce their legitimacy, noticeably invoking the authority of “tradition.” The second section examines not only how the Soviet period continues to shape contemporary nation-building processes in the region, but also how the latter has been creating new historical references to emancipate them from the Soviet legacy - and from the Soviet policy toward women in particular. The third section examines how gender norms promoted by Central Asian states may affect women in their everyday life and how they may negotiate, refuse, or promote these norms. In the final section, we show how “gender equality” has become a watchword of international organizations’ agendas and we analyze the production and implementation of this international agenda setting in a specific national context.

“For what we all are, really, is elegant scarecrows on fields of words.” Gabriel Liiceanu's metaphor of “discourse” is particularly revealing for the case of the Moldavian nation. When the field is already covered with scarecrows, a new one will have trouble finding a free spot and functioning properly. Rivaling nationalist and communist interpretations of Moldavian history have left little free space for an original view: historical facts have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again, so it has become increasingly difficult to create new meanings and to find fresh words.

Investigating Romanian radical right populism, I evidence the gendered nature of conceptual metaphors and provide insights on the specific masculinities that they underpin in such political discourses. With the 2004 presidential elections as a backdrop, the analysis focuses on how the radical right populist candidates articulated in their discourses the conceptual metaphor of the “strict father.” At first, the theoretical standpoints on conceptual metaphors are corroborated with the conceptualization of populist charismatic leadership. Subsequently, a gendered perspective is added to the populist conceptualizations. The leaders’ self-representation as messianic fathers of the national family is evidenced by investigating their discursive appeals to protect, discipline and punish the people. Furthermore, I elaborate how conceptual metaphors may be employed to consolidate a position of uncontested leadership and moral superiority of the radical right populist leaders.

The student and scholar interested in Baltic studies face obstacles and difficulties not encountered in more popular fields. First, and at the root of many of the problems, is that the area is not well known to the average scholar in North America, to say nothing of the general public. This, among other things, means that funding, resources and scholarly respectability are to a large degree lacking.

When Ita Myshkind learned that her husband had remarried before delivering the official get (bill of divorcement), she filed criminal charges against him in state court. “My husband,” she claimed, “Wishing to use my capital and valuable possessions, married me with the premeditated intention of divorcing me.” She complained that a few months after their marriage, he deserted her and married a certain Dveira Rafaelovich; and it was only after this blatant violation of the law that her husband hastily drew up the get without any rabbinic supervision. Efroim Myshkind, however, sharply contested his wife's account, asserting that he had sent a messenger to deliver the writ of divorce in the presence of two witnesses. “It is not at all difficult for a Jew to divorce his wife,” he wrote, “especially if she does not have a good reputation like Ita Kreines [here he used her maiden name], who spent an entire year abroad with different acquaintances.” But at the trial, the husband failed to prove that the get had satisfied all the requirements of Jewish law, much less that his wife had actually received the document. More important in the state's view, he had violated Russian civil law, which required a “spiritual authority” (in this case, a state rabbi) to supervise the divorce procedure. In October 1884, the Minsk court convicted the husband of bigamy and sentenced him to five months and ten days in prison.

Although Ita Myshkind did not achieve all her objectives (namely, forcing her husband to divorce his second wife), she did prevail on two important issues: securing material support and ensuring that her husband would not go unpunished for his crime. That a provincial Jewish woman could utilize the Russian legal system to obtain justice raises two important questions: first, when and why did some women begin to resort to the state; and second, how effective were their efforts and what was the impact on Jewish women and their society as a whole?

On 5 December 2004 the citizens of Hungary were called to decide through referendum on two issues: (1) that the health system remained under full state control, and (2) that ethnic Hungarians living in the neighboring countries were granted citizenship preferentially. Sixty-five percent of the Hungarians who went to vote gave a favorable answer to the first question, and a little more than 51% gave a yes answer to the second question. Despite this, however, the referendum failed because of the low voter turnout of only 37.49% of the electorate. According to Hungarian law, for a referendum result to be valid it is required that at least 25% of the electorate endorses it. In this referendum a little less than 19% of all franchised citizens voted for granting double citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in the neighboring countries.

I first heard of Pitirim A. Sorokin some twenty years ago as an undergraduate student. Although his name was frequently invoked by my sociology professors, it was just as frequently dismissed. Sorokin, I quickly learned, was outdated and irrelevant as far as sociology was concerned, and indeed, did not merit any of my serious reading attention. I must shamefacedly confess that I readily accepted this judgment. Its utterance admitted me into the ranks of the sociological cognoscenti of that time in one bold stroke, and simultaneously relieved me of the necessity of plowing through some thousands of pages of print which constituted the formidable quantity of Sorokin's publications. Hence, there is some degree of irony and more than an ordinary degree of pleasure in accepting the task of assessing Sorokin's contribution to American sociology. For as I have since learned, Sorokin made an enormous contribution to the development of the discipline–and his works will continue to do so in the future.

In their rapidity and chaotic character, the changes Kazakstan is experiencing create a kind of kaleidoscope. The very act of creating a state was both dramatic and unexpected. In the course of five years, referendums and changes of constitution and parliament have occurred. This calls for an attempt to etch the general line of development: whence, how and whither is the society of Kazakstan going. Such a broad approach proceeds necessarily from the premise that the modern world consists of a dense network of interrelations, into which all societies and peoples on the planet are drawn. This article examines the problem of the modern geopolitical self-determination of Kazakstan from the point of view of the Steppe and of its contribution to political traditions of the world.

This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin's third presidency, as reflected in Russian television coverage of Islam and migration. It argues that the replacement of earlier deliberately ambiguous definitions of Russian nationhood with clearly framed exclusive visions reflects the change in the regime's legitimation strategy from one based on economic performance to one based on its security record. In this context, the systematic promotion of Russian ethnonationalism for the purpose of achieving the regime's general stability began not at the time of Crimea's annexation, as it is often assumed, but at the time of Putin's reelection amidst public protests in 2012. The goal of representing the authorities as attentive to public grievances in a society where opinion polls register high levels of xenophobia has prompted state-controlled broadcasters to use ethnoracial definitions of the nation that they had previously avoided. The media campaigns analyzed here also reflect abrupt changes in the precise identity of Russia's main Others. Such instrumentally adopted sharp discursive swings are unlikely to constitute an appropriate tool for societal consensus management and for the achievement of political stability in the long term.

In the 25 years since the re-establishment of Baltic independence from the Soviet Union, there has been no conclusive public conversation, or “coming to terms with the past” with respect to crimes against Latvian and other persecuted groups under Communism. This paper examines how national politicians, members of the European Parliament in Brussels, representatives of Latvia's Russian-speaking minority, and the Russian government have engaged in a difficult, long-overdue conversation. Conflicting historical narratives about victimhood are at the heart of these disagreements. Special emphasis is given to Latvia's historical narrative, its development over the past 25 years, and the way it challenges Russia's interpretation of history. I argue that Latvian memory politics at the European level are a continuation of Latvia's quest for acknowledgment of its victimhood, thereby trying to finish the process started in the late 1980s when Balts first demanded acknowledgment of human rights violations they had suffered under the Soviet regime. Latvia's methods of transitional justice are examined, arguing that its memory politics at the European level are an extension of steps taken at the national level to come to terms with the past and to increase its negotiating power against Russia's neo-Soviet historical narrative.