Among social psychologists, there has long been a debate over the concept of the stereotype. Are stereotypes meant mainly for consumption by an in-group or are they designed by and for curious outsiders? Are they primarily individual or collective? Are they benign generalizations and categories that make it easier for individuals or groups to perceive and organize the world around them? Or are they insipid and unsustainable generalizations, based on false information, exaggeration, unfairly rigid conceptual categories, or even the observer's laziness? Do they beget understanding or prejudice? These questions, many of which were first raised by Walter Lippmann when he published Public Opinion in 1922, still polarize the psychological profession today. They also continue to confound politicians who wish to construct coherent, distinct, and vibrant identities for their nations.

The centenary year of the Armenian genocide witnessed an escalation in cultural production and both political and academic focus. This paper looks at some of the sites and spaces, physical and discursive, in which the centenary was marked. In particular, it seeks to assess how the centenary has challenged and possibly altered the context within which we approach the genocide and its continuing legacies. The paper is positioned in the diasporic space – while recognizing that this is fluid and embodies transnational sites between “homelands” in the form of Armenia and Turkey, and “host states” where diaspora communities have resided (at least) since the genocide, in effect their homes. This paper attempts to pick out some of the themes apparent in the discourse and in the activities during 2015, from the perspective of Armenian diasporan actors, and is based on the author's observations and participation in centenary events in the USA, Lebanon, Turkey, Switzerland, and the UK, as well as interviews with participants and organizers.

Don—by which name I knew him since I became his graduate student in 1956—belonged to a rare breed of academicians: he was a devout man for whom the personal adventure of life and human history in its totality had a moral dimension; in his quest for understanding himself and others, there was always an underlying moral drama; there was not just the realm of the true and the false but also a fundamental layer of the right and the wrong. For Don, there was always the issue of good and evil. In the end, men and women, the lofty, such as Stolypin (about whom he wrote insightfully), and the humble, such as the Russian peasants in Siberia (to whom he also gave considerable scholarly attention), all were accountable for their individual and collective actions. We are all free moral agents, he observed, including Lenin (about whose early political struggles he wrote brilliantly). It is a perspective Don never abandoned as the Soviet Union dissolved into the amorphous and morally complex post-Soviet era, a characteristic which qualified Don as a persistent humanist. The individual human person endowed with the capacity to sustain immutable moral values was Don's ultimate interest as an historian and teacher.

The politics of memory plays an important role in the ways certain figures are evaluated and remembered, as they can be rehabilitated or vilified, or both, as these processes are contested. We explore these issues using a transition society, Georgia, as a case study. Who are the heroes and villains in Georgian collective memory? What factors influence who is seen as a hero or a villain and why? How do these selections correlate with Georgian national identity? We attempt to answer these research questions using a newly generated data set of contemporary Georgian perspectives on recent history. Our survey results show that according to a representative sample of the Georgian population, the main heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century include Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Ilia Chavchavadze, and Patriarch Ilia II. Eduard Shevardnadze, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and Vladimir Putin represent the main villains, and those that appear on both lists are Mikheil Saakashvili and Joseph Stalin. We highlight two clusters of attitudes that are indicative of how people think about Georgian national identity, mirroring civic and ethnic conceptions of nationalism. How Georgians understand national identity impacts not only who they choose as heroes or villains, but also whether they provide an answer at all.

In the fall of 1918, after over four years of war, the cohesion of Austria-Hungary collapsed. In the aftermath of the Great War, Burgenland (Western Hungary) was part of a pattern of complex territorial issues, though it was actually the smallest disputed territory between Hungary and her successor states. The region became a disputed land after the Allied Supreme Council recommended the transfer of most of it to Austria. The internal crisis in Budapest, the Habsburg restoration attempts and the activities of many militia on the ground led to an extremely dangerous situation. Diplomatic and direct military involvement of the Powers eventually resolved the issue with an agreement providing for a plebiscite on the fate of Sopron and the other smaller towns of the region. At least until 1921 Western Hungary represented an element of destabilization in Europe, while its partition was a significant event in the evolution of relations between the two new states of Hungary and Austria, and a testing ground for European diplomacy. The purpose of this article is to highlight the role of Italy in these complex events and to elucidate the contribution of its military in the formulation of clearer political strategy.

I certainly find the present times most engaging: I have had the chance to live through events that will not be neglected by historians—the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the subsequent end of the Cold War, the failed Moscow coup and the breathtaking aftermath of undoing “mankind's golden dream” in its very cradle, the Soviet Union. There is so much hope in the air for East Europeans to return to development which was thwarted by decades of imposed socialist dictatorship. The sweet taste of freedom and self-assertion helps people to overcome the economic hardships ravaging the area. From the Baltic to the Balkans, from the Tatra to the Caucasus and beyond, nations, nationalities, and minorities show signs of vitality and righteous affirmation of their own complex existence on territories fragmented by conventional boundaries established with or without their own consent or approval.