The formation of fifteen nation states on the territory of the former Soviet Union poses a series of challenges to specialists in Soviet nationalities. They are asked to pronounce on the degree of stability which the new states will enjoy and assess the dangers (mainly military) and the opportunities (mainly economic) that have arisen. The background of preconceptions about nationalism on which such judgements are based is usually characterized by an ambivalence, stemming from a feeling that the dissolution of the Soviet empire into nation states was somehow natural and inevitable, and also by the condescension of mature and powerful states which believe they have outgrown nationalism and the possibly dangerous antics of their younger brothers. Consequently, analysis of the post-Soviet scene produces tentative or confused results. This article attempts to apply a common framework of analysis across all the republics of the former Soviet Union to identify some of the broad but discrete trends which the future development of these states might take. The reader will quite reasonably question whether it makes sense to compare Estonia with Tajikistan or Russia with Moldavia. In reply, it could be argued that political scientists have been presented with an unprecedented opportunity to compare states with very different historical and cultural traditions but which, by virtue of their having been part of the Soviet Union, share remarkably similar political and social structures.

There have been Roma or Gypsies in Hungary for over 650 years. Historical records indicate that they entered Hungary between 1416 and 1417 from Transylvania during the reign of King Sigismund (1387–1437), though linguistic evidence indicates that they had begun to settle there earlier. In 1423, Sigismund granted the Gypsy leader, Ladislas, and his followers, certain rights of transit, and they began to flock to Hungary. Most settled in the outskirts of villages or towns, and became prominent in some parts of the country as blacksmiths.

From the outset, the Gypsies were subjected to varying degrees of discrimination. In the 18th century, Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780), after Pope Clement XIII granted her the right to become Apostolic ruler of Hungary, adopted policies designed to force the Roma to assimilate into Hungarian society. She outlawed use of the word Cigány and decreed that Gypsies in the future be called “new citizen,” “new peasant,” or “new Hungarian.” In 1780, the government placed 8,388 Roma children in schools where they became wards of the state, and another 9,463 in foster homes. Within a few years, all of them had run away from these institutions or the families. The Gypsies responded with some outbreaks of violence in certain areas, though in most instances they simply left Hungary for other parts of Europe.

The downfall of communist Yugoslavia and the democratization process that followed at the end of the 1980s have led to the fragmentation of the country, which was accompanied by several wars of different intensity and duration (1991–1999). From the ashes of what once was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia raised six independent states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. The situation relating to the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, after its unilateral declaration of independence at the beginning of 2008, and subsequent recognition by parts of the international community, remains unclear. Slovenia is already in the EU, while the rest of the former Yugoslav republics, within the framework of the Stabilization and Association Process of the European Union, have the status of EU Candidate or Potential Candidate countries and are slowly moving towards EU membership.

This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan's Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet's birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society's past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet's iconicity, this paper compiles 2014's celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia's spectacles of public culture and their role in nation-building and identity-formation. Rather than merely resulting from any top-down decision specifying required activities nationwide, the year's events involved numerous synergies as artists, museum and theater administrators, composers, and other cultural-sector workers benefited by responding to the potential of aligning their work with a theme as broad, as widely appreciated, and as eligible for various forms of support as this one. In addition, Turkmenistan's strong central leadership benefited from this widely shared and highly visible celebration, especially emphasizing one element within Magtymguly's eighteenth-century vision, an end to his people's tribal conflicts within a unified Turkmenistan under one leader.

Political leaders often use language as an instrument to establish their legitimacy. From the end of the 1980s, the Belarusian language became the symbol of Belarusian independence; however, it has never been the language of power. The language law of Belarus, which was adopted in 1990 and made Belarusian the official language of the state, appears to have been more a symbolic action for a new appropriation of power than the expression of a real political will. During perestroika political elites, mostly Russophones, preferred to rely on the language situation inherited from the Soviet system, in which the majority spoke Russian, rather than question a policy that could guarantee their popularity. When Alyaksander Lukashenka came to power in 1994, the gradual process of Belarusian language development was slowly reversed in order to integrate language policy into the continuity of Soviet practice. The promotion of the Russian language and the increase of discrimination against Belarusian have taken place along with the establishment of an authoritarian regime, which is based on press censorship, arrests of political opponents, and the monopolization of social, political, economic, and cultural activities. Faced with a direct threat to its existence, the Belarusian language became, as was the case during the Soviet period, a language of opposition and of counter-power. Belarusian leaders have tried to keep the Belarusian language and the discourses related to it out of power. The opposition, however, uses Belarusian as a political weapon against the regime, seeking to transform Belarusian into a future language of power. Considering the language as a crucial political issue, language policy is a way to manage and control not only the use of language, but also the discourse and the persons who are using it. In that context, language implies a speech, and the French distinction between langue and language is interesting in this respect. Language politics implies social and political representations of language and speech, which can be studied, analyzing the influence of political actors on these representations and the way in which they deal with the language problem.

On 22 December 1918 Tomáš G. Masaryk delivered his first political message as president of the fledgling Czechoslovakia. Addressing the Constituent Assembly at Hradčany in Prague, he vowed that the frontier districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, which contained a predominantly German-speaking population (and which German nationalists eventually designated collectively as the Sudetenland) would remain in the new Republic. Inimical toward and unwilling to live in a state dedicated to the sovereignty of Czechs and Slovaks, virtually all German leaders at the time of Masaryk's address were working to separate German districts from Czechoslovakia and link them with Austria.

The article examines the development of the Yugoslav state's policy of transnational political engagement of Yugoslav citizens on temporary work in the FR Germany during the late 1960s and 1970s. This politicization of labor migrations was shaped by the interplay of the internal turmoil in the Yugoslav federation and the conditions peculiar to West Germany of the time. The change of the state's perception of external migrations is being examined through the extension of the agitation apparatus of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia onto the territory of the FR Germany and the mobilization of economic emigrants against the “hostile” political emigrants residing in that country. The main goal of these measures was to maintain the emigrants' transnational links to their homeland and ensure that their political standing was kept in line with the official Yugoslav ideological tenets until the time of the prospective return migration cycle. The extraterritorial character of these measures, coupled with the specific position of Yugoslavia within the Cold War diplomacy, led to a peculiar ideological interplay and shifting web of cooperation and confrontation between various actors.

During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire retreated from the Balkans, and underwent a steady decline culminating in its final demise in the early part of the twentieth century. Sizeable communities of Muslims, derived both from those who had arrived with the Ottomans and from indigenous inhabitants who had converted to Islam, remained in the new successor states of southeast Europe. With the exception of Albania, where the Muslims formed the majority of the population, these communities became established as minorities within the new states. Upheld as ethno-national states each based on one dominant nation, the new states suffered from irredentism on the one hand, and internal tension between majority and minority populations on the other. Tension was particularly evident in the relations between the new Orthodox Christian rulers and their Muslim minority populations, which were seen as undesirable relics from the Ottoman past. In spite of such attitudes and the continuing waves of emigration, however, these Muslim communities remain an integral part of the present-day Balkans.

The present article critically evaluates the contribution of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, and the founder of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), Stepan Horak, to the genesis and development of the ASN.

Common religious, cultural, and ethnic bonds can hold communities together, while differences along these same lines often lead to calls for national independence, complicate nation building, and confound inter-communal peacemaking efforts. In particular, when religious differences exist between groups in conflict there is a marked tendency for such differences to become emphasized. This is not to say that religion is the root cause of all internecine and inter-communal conflict, which certainly is not the case. But conflicts become fundamentally altered as they rage on, and factors that were at the root cause of a conflict at its outset may no longer be the primary causes in later stages. That is, once conflicts have significantly evolved, the prior causes may no longer be the primary causes.