While traditional ethnic/religious rivals had been incorporated to form the modern multiethnic communist nation-state of Yugoslavia under the forceful presence of Marshall Broz Tito, the collapse of the communist bloc and ensuing revolutionary/democratization wave engulfing East-Central Europe created tremendous uncertainty and the perception of a power vacuum throughout the former communist bloc. Conflicts would erupt based on distinctions along traditional cultural/ethnic lines. The struggle for control and territory among Yugoslavia's political elite ultimately resulted in a series of secessionist conflicts in Croatia (1991–1992), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1995) and most recently Kosovo (1999).

It is an indisputable historical fact that between 1933 and 1945 groups and individuals in many countries of Europe, as well as in other parts of the world, sympathized (for different reasons and motives) with Nazi public pronouncements, especially those critical of the post-World War I settlement. It is also an indisputable historical fact that other groups and individuals in many European countries resisted (for different reasons and motives) Nazi domination, policies and practices. Unfortunately, current historical literature does not reflect clearly this dichotomy. Some nations, because of the activities of a few, are portrayed as Nazi collaborators, regardless of the human losses they suffered under Nazi rule; and, conversely, others are presented as anti-Nazi resisters, regardless of their actual contributions.

In attempting to provide a framework for the study of linguistic minorities within Yugoslavia and peripheral areas, I shall proceed along conceptual lines suggested by economic theory. Although the terms “ethnic minority” and “linguistic minority” are often used interchangeably, the focus is on linguistic minorities since in terms of economic significance the linguistic attribute generally outweighs other attributes which define ethnic groups. After all, communications involve substantial costs, and it is precisely the distribution of these costs between linguistic groups which gives the minority status its economic dimension. The subsequent discussion hinges in part on these costs.

Although the repression and elimination of Roma from Hungarian society in the 1940s did not reach the same extent as in the German and Austrian part of the Third Reich, their characterization as lazy and work-shy, used to justify their persecution, was similar. This paper establishes the presence of racial hygienic discourse related to Roma during the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s in Hungary, and traces its survival and influence on regional policy-making in the postwar period. It furthermore explores the transformation and adaptation of racism and eugenics to the socialist ideology of equality based on citizens' participation in productive work in the early state socialist period, including the first Party declaration on the situation of Roma in Hungary in 1961. Specific attention is paid to the role of medical experts who discussed the “radical solution of the Gypsy-question” in the early 1940s and the immediate years following World War II. Reflecting on wider transformations of racism in the postcolonial and post-World War II period in Europe and North America, the paper contributes to scholarship that complicates the evaluation of the state socialist past, including the connection between medicine and politics in Cold War Europe.

The post-conflict space in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been marked by a multiplicity of statebuilding projects: in addition to the much-analyzed internationally-led statebuilding process, parallel Bosniak, Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat statebuilding trajectories exist. They seek to undermine and challenge the international statebuilding venture by appropriating and adapting the liberal statebuilding processes. This is carried out through the institutions and processes of governance put in place by international statebuilders to subvert the statebuilding trajectory. Focusing on the local appropriation of processes and institutions of governance, the paper maps out the repertoires of contention entailing boycotts, walk-outs, protests and refusals to co-operate in an attempt to explain and understand how local contention vis-à-vis the international statebuilding trajectory is carried out.

The Act of Ems of 1876 completely paralized the Ukrainian arts, including the theatre. The situation created with the enforcement of the Act in Urkaine was vividly described by the well known acter Marko Kropyvnytsky. During his visit to Kiev in 1879 he found the Ukrainian population of this city in such a state of fear, that, when he was asked to sing in Ukrainian at the house of Mykola Lysenko, a Ukrainian composer, someone stood watch outside. When strangers appeared on the street he was motioned to stop. Apparently, “volunteers” were ready to report any seditious activity to the Governor-General of Kiev, Alexander Drentelm.

Following World War I, the Allied Powers signed Minority Treaties with a number of Central and Eastern European states. These treaties delineated the status of religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities in their respective countries. Turkey would be one of the last states that sat down to the negotiation table with the Allied Powers. In the Turkish case, the Lausanne Treaty would be the defining document which set out a series of rights and freedoms for the non-Muslim minorities in the newly created nation. The present article explores how and why the non-Muslim minorities were situated in the fringes of the new nation. In doing so, the article highlights the content of the discussions in the Lausanne Conference and in the Turkish Grand National Assembly with an emphasis on the position of the Turkish political elite.

Romanian war-time policy towards Jews presents a paradox. In the summer and fall of 1941 Romanian military and police were killing the Jews of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina indiscriminately. In late fall of the same year, those Jews who survived the first wave of killings were forcibly deported further to the east—this time not only from Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina but from the whole of the latter's province. In the late fall of 1941, Jews from Odessa were once again murdered en masse and any survivors deported from the city. At this time, i.e. in the summer and fall of 1941, Romanian policy was at least as radical and brutal as the Germans', perhaps surpassing it in its brutality, a fact that elicited Hitler's delight and commendation. But then Romanian policy underwent a gradual but more and more pronounced change. Though Romanian authorities took part in the preparations for the deportation of Romanian Jews to the Nazi concentration camps in the summer and early fall 1942, in October of that year the Romanians abruptly terminated their participation in all preparations. In 1943 and 1944 the Romanian government even took measures to protect Romanian Jewish citizens residing in the German-ruled territories by demanding that those Jews were exempt from deportation to concentration camps and facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine from Romania. Inside Romania, Jews were still heavily discriminated against, exposed to various vexations and harsh confiscatory taxation, but the majority of them survived the war.