Most scholarship on post-Communist Croatia claims that the first Croatian president, Franjo Tuđman, intentionally rehabilitated the legacy of the World War II (WWII) Croatian Ustaša and its Nazi-puppet state. The rehabilitation of the Ustaša has been linked to Tuđman's national reconciliation politics that tended toward a particular “forgetting of the past.” The national reconciliation was conceptualized as a joint struggle of both the Croatian anti-fascist Partisan and the Croatian WWII fascist Ustaša successors to achieve Croatian independence. However, the existing scholarship does not offer a comprehensive explanation of the nexus between national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of the Ustaša. Hence, this article will present how “Ustaša-nostalgia” does not stem from Tuđman's intentions, but rather from the morphological gap occurring in Tuđman's nation-building idea. Namely, Tuđman's condemnation of the entire idea of Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia eventually brought about the perception that any historical agent advocating the idea of an independent Croatia is better than any form of Croatian Yugoslavism. Finally, the article will present how contemporary Croatian society is still seeped in “Ustaša-nostalgia” due to the hesitation of the post-Tuđman Croatian politics to come to terms with the legacy of his national reconciliation politics.

This article examines the changing survival strategies of Uzbeks in the aftermath of mass violent conflict in Osh in June 2010. After the conflict, Osh Uzbeks were exposed to many difficulties. The Kyrgyz government used economic and political pressure to isolate minority groups from the titular nationality, and this opened the door to mistreatment of minorities in the form of the seizure of property, job losses, and even verbal and physical abuse. Despite this mistreatment, however, Uzbeks have proved reluctant to leave the Osh area. Uzbeks have a long history of living in the region of Osh; strong emotional and historical sentiments bind them to the region and its graveyards and sacred sites. Uzbeks have thus had to develop alternative ways to cope with the uncertainty and insecurity of their situation. They have adopted strategies which reinforce their vulnerability on the one hand, but provide security for their children during post-conflict reconstruction on the other. These strategies include avoidance of public spaces and public attention, marrying daughters early, and sending male family members to Russia as labor migrants. These strategies are geared to the underlying aims of protecting the honor of the community, maintaining social networks, and preserving Uzbek identity without attracting attention. Uzbeks describe this strategy of patience as sabyrdu.

The Taiwan model of conflict transformation and the Kosovo model of conflict settlement have specific features, and are useful for analyzing the Georgian and Russian policies toward Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There is a similarity between the Georgian strategy of engagement and the Taiwan model, with its declared readiness to interact with the other party regardless of any setbacks arising over the issue of status. Unlike the Taiwan model, however, the Georgian strategy includes no concrete view on how to involve the authorities controlling the breakaway territories or, in particular, how to have a positive impact on their relations with the outside world. A comparison between the Kosovo model and Russian policies toward these two entities demonstrates that, in deciding to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow largely drew on the moral and legal arguments put forward for the recognition of Kosovo. Russia has established political oversight over these entities, to a certain extent mirroring the Western policy of supervised independence for Kosovo. But Russia is still unable to adopt a conflict resolution policy toward Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Georgia that is based on regional integration prospects, in contrast to Western policies toward the Balkans.

During the second half of 1991, the final stage of the disintegration of the Soviet Union brought momentous political changes to the citizenry of the country. From the beginning of the post-Soviet period, the new Russian government commenced economic reforms which resulted in the freeing of retail prices, the devaluation of the ruble, and the disastrous depreciation of household savings. In daily life across the state, these events represented a turning point for Russian citizens, including those in the Komi Republic.

Like Weimar Germany, contemporary Russia is home to fascist actors and widespread nationalism. But unlike interwar Germany, the party system in post-Soviet Russia is heavily manipulated and civil society remains underdeveloped. This means that fascists have not had a chance to use elections or to penetrate civil society in order to build up political support. The continuing presence of a resolutely authoritarian, yet non-fascist “national leader” (Vladimir Putin) keeps the country from becoming a liberal democracy but it also, for now, makes it less likely that the regime will become fascist.

If one may judge by Soviet political humor on Radio Armenia, the so-called “socialist internationalism” among the many nationalities in the USSR has reflected less than a perfect “friendship of peoples” in the past: Question: What is the “friendship of peoples”? Radio Armenia: It's when an Armenian takes the hand of an Uzbek, an Uzbek that of a Latvian, a Latvian that of a Russian, a Russian that of a Kazakh, a Kazakh that of a Ukrainian, and then they all go and beat up a Georgian.

This article examines the role of ethnicity in the formation of political cleavage and is based on the analysis of the political agenda of the Polish national minority in Lithuania after the re-establishment of the independent state in 1990. It analyzes the political performance of the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania (EAPL), an ethnic-based “niche” political party that tends to keep a monopoly over the representation of interests of the Polish minority in Lithuania and collects a vast majority of the votes of citizens of Polish origin. The article considers how specific in comparison to the titular nation the interests of the Polish national minority are, and how different in comparison to the political agendas of other political parties the political agenda of the EAPL is.