As nations emerge from repressive regimes and societies begin to rebuild following violent intranational conflict, the notion of “facing the past” has become an increasingly important and pressing issue. How should new regimes address the crimes of their predecessors? How should societies deal with individuals who committed grave crimes against humanity? Who should be held responsible for what happened during the dark periods of violence and war?

La politique des nationalités, appelée communément la question nationale, préoccupe le parti bolchevique depuis son congrès de Bruxelles-Londres de 1903. Elle a connu une certaine évolution, liée aux circonstances politiques, pendant la longue période qui va de 1903 à 1980. Le parti bolchevique a toujours poursuivi une politique de centralisme étatique et de russification, reprenant à son compte celle qui était pratiquée du temps du tsarisme, dont la devise était “Russie une et indivisible.”

This paper investigates the clash of (language) ideologies in Estonia in the post-Communist period. In an analysis of changing Western recommendations and Estonian responses during the transition of Estonia from Soviet Socialist Republic to independent state, we trace the development of the discourses on language and citizenship rights. Different conceptions of the nation-state and of how citizenship is acquired, together with different approaches to human rights, led to disagreement between Estonian political elites and the political actors attached to international institutions. In particular, the Soviet demographic legacy posed problems.

We use a context-sensitive approach that takes account of human agency, political intervention, power, and authority in the formation of (national) language ideologies and policies. We find that the complexities of cultural and contextual differences were often ignored and misunderstood by both parties and that in their exchanges the two sides appeared to subscribe to ideal philosophical positions. In the following two decades both sides repositioned themselves and appeared to accommodate to the opposing view. In deconstructing the role of political intervention pressing for social and political inclusion and in documenting the profound feeling of victimhood that remained as a legacy from the Soviet period and the bargain that was struck, we hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of the language ideological debates surrounding the post-Communist nation-(re)building process.

Troeshchyna is a down-at-the-heels late Soviet moonscape that happens to be located on the fringe of Kyiv, though it is indistinguishable from hundreds of other socialist neighborhoods built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s anywhere between Berlin and Beijing. This Brezhnev-era district has almost no distinguishing features other than the Ukrainian capital's most robust and scraggly markets. Walk by one of Troeshchyna's neighborhood elementary schools, such as School 247, and something looks not quite appropriate for this part of the world. The school's playground will be chock full of kids from countries and cultures not traditionally associated with the central Dniepr, including children from Afghanistan, Angola, Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam.

The end of the Cold War drew increasing attention to ongoing and new ethnic conflicts—particularly because many of the high-profile new conflicts broke out amid the ruins of communism. Since 11 September 2001 there has been even more discussion about whether and how Islam contributes to international and civilizational conflict. However, there has been little work attempting to understand whether Islam plays any distinctive role in ethnic conflicts. Much work on ethnic conflict assumes that Islam is just one possible component of ethnic and national identities, and that it has no distinctive influence. Others examine whether Islam always has a similar impact on ethnic conflict—typically based upon identifying states or minority groups as having majority Muslim populations.

This article explores why the Arabs chose to keep a common language, while the Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins chose not to. The study argues that the main reason for this can be found in the ideological constrains resulting out of the salience and interaction between different religious and ethnic group building projects in former Yugoslavia and the Arab states. Political elites in both regions favored the ethnic and religious category to different extents. Language planning reflected and implemented the respective ideological imperatives resulting out of these processes. This led to different approaches in defining the common language and its subsequent standardization.