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This paper is a contribution to the debate about how people in Central Asia recall Soviet ethnic policies and their vision of how these policies have shaped the identities of their peers and contemporaries. In order to do so, this paper utilizes the outcomes of in-depth interviews about everyday Soviet life in Uzbekistan conducted with 75 senior citizens between 2006 and 2009. These narratives demonstrate that people do not explain Soviet ethnic policies simply through the “modernization” or “victimization” dichotomy but place their experiences in between these discourses. Their recollections also highlight the pragmatic flexibility of the public's adaptive strategies to Soviet ethnic policies. This paper also argues that Soviet ethnic policy produced complicated hybrid units of identities and multiple social strata. Among those who succeeded in adapting to the Soviet realities, a new group emerged, known as Russi assimilados (Russian-speaking Sovietophiles). However, in everyday life, relations between the assimilados and their “indigenous” or “nativist” countrymen are reported to have been complicated, with clear divisions between these two groups and separate social spaces of their own for each of these strata.
This article explores the debate on local ownership in Bosnia and Herzegovina by examining the limits of international community support for reform in a divided political environment in which decision-makers and politicians have little to no interest in reform themselves. After a short review of the key issues and arguments regarding ownership in BiH, the example of education reform is presented to demonstrate the role of the OSCE as an external actor in this reform sector, and the lack of any reform progress in this field in the absence of external pressure. The article closes with reflections on whether or not external organizations can make any systemic-level impact in such a hostile reform environment, and whether the OSCE can still play a constructive role in Bosnia.
For fifty years the Soviet Bloc constituted one pole of an essentially bipolar world power distribution. Although not unprecedented (consider Imperial Germany's defiance of most of the world during 1917–18, or later phases of Napoleon's challenge to Europe), bipolarism has usually been very brief. The sheer length of time the Soviet-American confrontation dominated world politics created, on the contrary, mind-sets and reflexes which only a conscious effort can overcome.
The huge polar archipelago of Novaya Zemlya is well known as a nuclear testing site devoid of a civilian population. But in many cartographical sources, e.g., maps in the National Geographic Magazine, one can still see a set of settlements along its coasts. Soviet sources showed these settlements until 1956 (Atlas mira, 1954; Atlas mira, 1955), at a time when full military control was established on the islands. But what is the fate of these high latitude settlements now? It is their historical background and population that will be reviewed with special reference to ethnic problems, proving to be a unique experiment in the economic use of this high Arctic area.
Taken as a key area, Novaya Zemlya is the largest archipelago of the European Arctic, ca. 83,000 sq.km., consisting of two main islands and numerous smaller ones. The main islands, Northern and Southern, are separated by the narrow strait, Matochkin Shar. The huge archipelago stretches almost 900 km in a submeridional direction and is considered a structural continuation of the Urals. The mountains often rise more than 1,000 m above sea-level, the highest summit attaining 1,547 m. Almost 25% of the total area is covered by ice. The most extensive glaciation is on the northern and central parts of the Northern Island, which is a vast ice sheet and an outlet of several glaciers.
In the wake of the 1989 revolutions in East Central Europe, two parallel developments took place in rapid succession. On the one hand, strong national sentiments accompanied by a desire to set up independent nation states emerged in the countries neighboring Hungary. At the same time, the ethnic Magyar minorities, long excluded from participation in the political life of those countries, gained the ability to establish their political movements, to enter candidates in local and national elections, and to elect their own deputies in the national parliaments and local governments. On the other hand, the fate of the Magyar minorities and the guaranteeing of their rights became one of the central elements of Hungary's foreign policy in bilateral relations with its neighbors. Budapest also embarked on a major effort to make the minority problem an international issue and to achieve some form of international legal codification for minority rights. These simultaneous and, in part, contradictory developments and goals placed several dilemmas before Hungarian policy-makers that, three years later, have yet to be resolved.
Since 1991, throughout the former Soviet Union marketization has increased, and much of the social safety net has disappeared. Compared with other former Soviet republics, Estonia has fared well. In this paper, we examine the salience and seriousness of various social issues for groups in Estonia in 1996, and we compare the 1996 results with those of a survey that took place in Estonia in 1991 shortly before the coup. We also reflect on the findings in light of opportunities and challenges for Estonia.
Ethnic territorial autonomy (ETA) is an institutional way to ensure simultaneously the integrity of the state and the rights of ethnic minorities through preferential policies in certain ethnically sensitive spheres. Language preferential policies differ greatly across multilingual ETAs and can be analyzed through the concept of “language territorial regime” (LTR). In this paper, we examine LTRs along two dimensions: (1) the scope of state regulation of language use and (2) the way language rights are perceived and used. The first considers the depth and universality of state regulation of language use – “strong” or “weak.” The second concerns whether the community's approach to language rights is symbolic or pragmatic. The combination of these two dimensions allows the categorization of LTRs into four main classes: “strong parting-regime,” “strong pooling-regime,” “weak pooling-regime,” and “weak parting-regime.” A comparison of South Tyrol, Vojvodina, and Wales allows conceptualizing LTR as a system of de jure institutional arrangements of linguistic issues and practice of self-organization and perpetuation of multilingual communities.
For decades the residents of Taos, New Mexico have been afflicted by a low frequency humming—sometimes louder, sometimes almost inaudible—but never completely absent. On almost every college campus in North America, the buzz about using technology in teaching can be almost as annoying—and with each passing year, it gets louder. Although recent events in the American stock market have taken a good deal of the shine off of the idea that the Internet will fundamentally transform the economy, in higher education there seems to be no corresponding waning of enthusiasm for the infusion of new media into the educational experiences of students.
In “Our Guests and Ourselves,” an article written in 1924 for the Prague daily newspaper Lidové noviny, Czech playwright and novelist Karel clarified for his readers the failings in Czech habits of sociability, and the unfortunate consequences of those habits for the new Czechoslovak nation. Each nationality in Prague, and each political grouping within the nationalities, tended to socialize in different clubs and cafes. The Czechs preferred to socialize only with each other, complained , and foreigners visiting Prague tended to socialize with Germans. When Czechs set themselves the task of entertaining visiting foreigners, they did so in a manner overly officious and overtly “national”: that is, Czechs dragged foreigners around from function to banquet, forcing them to listen endlessly to official pronouncements of the glories of the long-overlooked Czech nation. As yet, wrote, Prague lacked a single genuinely neutral club or grouping open to all, and comfortable for all, particularly foreigners, whom the Czechs needed badly to impress. In contrast, told his readers, he himself had just visited the kind of club the Czechs should create: the “Penklub”, in London. In the International Pen Club's London chapter, writers of different nationalities were able to enjoy one another's company, and perhaps develop a greater understanding for other countries' perspectives. The club's existence demonstrated that even England, one of the historical great powers of Europe, put great weight on creating international ties. reminded his readers that “we here have more, and more urgent, reasons for needing such [clubs].” Those “more urgent” reasons for changing Czech habits were first and foremost political reasons, in an age when sociability was politicized—and, as 's comments make clear, nationalized.
The concepts of “reform” and “revision” need considerable elaboration before a systematic study of their political ramifications can be undertaken. Common usage in the West seems to indicate that “reform” in communist systems means change towards political pluralism, less ideology, and greater participation by the citizenry in political communication, aggregation, and decision-making. “Revision” and “revisionism,” which are essentially communist concepts, are also interpreted to indicate a process of “loosening up” the autocratic, bureaucratic, and ideological nature of contemporary political and socio-economic systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
“Estonia is an independent state again. The independence we waited and yearned for for such a long time has not brought with it satisfaction. The leftist and vague policy of the nomenclatura that still hangs on to power is impeding Estonia's evolution towards democracy and a market economy.