The Selkups, a linguistic community known as Ostyak Samoyeds until the middle of the twentieth century, currently exist in two separate territorial groups in the regions of west-central and northwestern Siberia. In all, 3,612 people identified themselves as Selkups in the last Soviet census of 1989. Since there is great divergence in dialects among the various groups, some specialists suggest classifying them as three different languages: Northern, Central, and Southern Selkup. Here the Selkups of Tomsk province, who speak the central and southern dialects, will be referred to collectively as Southern Selkups.

Caught between political allegiance to the Soviet Union and a shared history with West Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) occupied an awkward position in Cold War Europe. While other countries in the Eastern Bloc already existed as nation-states before coming under Soviet control, the GDR was the product of Germany's arbitrary division. There was no specifically East German culture in 1945—only a German culture. When it came to matters of national identity, officials in the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) could not posit a unique quality of “East Germanness,” but could only highlight East Germany's difference from its western neighbor. This difference did not stem from the language and culture of the past, but the politics and ideology of the present: East Germany was socialist Germany.

Every newly emerged and nationalizing state has to confirm its legitimacy and, more often than not, employs a cultural-historical approach for that. It is even more so, if, under an authoritarian regime, the given society presents itself as a cultural-historical entity rather than a civic one based on political cohesion. The less democratic a society the more it is eager to depict itself as an organic community based on a well-bound culture and deeply rooted in the given soil. In this case the idea of an ancestral heritage is used as a substitute for political legitimacy.

The crucial question in the analysis of social unrest is why it occurs at a particular moment in history. Whether one refers to the new militant movements in the United States (“Black Power,” “Red Power,” “Ethnic Power”), Ukrainian nationalism in the Soviet Ukraine, Great Russian revitalization, or the recent World Slovak Congress held in New York; it is clear that traditional systems of social stratification in the United States and Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe are now being severely strained. As Shibutani and Kwan have emphasized, in stable stratified societies the inequality of prerogatives goes unquestioned, even by the subjugated who willingly support it. Only in periods of instability is the differential access to opportunity questioned. And dissatisfaction arises only when alternatives to the status quo are perceived. This insight is the core of the “theory of relative deprivation.”

This article investigates the creation of a Romanian football style and system of play, best espoused by the Romanian national teams of the 1990s. It does so by engaging the works of Virgil Economu (1896–1978), undoubtedly the leading Romanian practitioner in the field. The analysis develops around the notions of furia latina – Latin fury – and “élan” and traces their elaboration and implication at two different historical periods, the interwar and the postwar. Premised on these notions, Economu sought to develop a distinctly Romanian style of football play, one emphasizing speed and individual technique. The successes of Romanian football in the 1980s and early 1990s, the rise of the midfielder Gheorghe Hagi, and the popular meanings attached to them are all intimately connected with Economu's contributions. Overall, my arguments document football's crucial role for modern Romanian nationalism.

Western Ukraine comprises those areas of Ukraine annexed by the Soviet Union after September 1939. They are (1) Galicia, made up of the Soviet oblasts of Lviv, Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Drohobych (now part of Lviv oblast) and Ternopil; (2) Volynia, made up of Rivne and Volyn oblasts; (3) Bukovyna (Chernivtsi oblast); and (4) Transcarpathia (Zakarpatska oblast). In the interwar period, the Galician and Volynian territories were governed by Poland, Chernivtsi was part of Romania and Transcarpathia was ruled by Czechoslovakia. Whereas the former areas were all annexed by the USSR after the invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939, Transcarpathia became part of the Soviet Union only in June 1945.

When Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, it did so not as a nation-state, but as a “state of communities,” self-defining as multiethnic, diverse, and committed to extensive rights for minorities. In this paper, this choice is understood as a response to a dual legitimation problem. Kosovo experienced both an external legitimation challenge, regarding its contested statehood internationally, and an internal one, vis-à-vis its Serb minority. The focus on diversity and minority rights was expected to confer legitimacy on the state both externally and internally. International state-builders and the domestic political elite in post-conflict Kosovo both pursued this strategy. However, it inadvertently created an additional internal legitimation challenge, this time from within Kosovo's majority Albanian population. This dynamic is illustrated by the opposition movement “Lëvizja Vetëvendosje” (Self-Determination Movement), which rejects the framing of Kosovo as first and foremost a multiethnic state. The movement's counter-narrative represents an additional internal legitimation challenge to the new state. This paper thus finds that internationally endorsed “diversity management” through minority rights did not deliver as a panacea for the legitimacy dilemmas of the post-conflict polity. On the contrary, the “state of communities” continues to be contested by both majority and minority groups in Kosovo.

Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tudjman's announcement on 12 January 1995 that, as of 31 March, he was withdrawing Croatia's “hospitality” to the 12,000-person U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), stationed in strategic locations on its territory, was a calculated gamble. As subsequent events showed, the risk was not as great as it first appeared. The departure of the UNPROFOR buffer force seemed, on the one hand, to expose Croatia and its army, the HV, to a resumption of hostilities with the rebel Serb forces of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) and their Serbian allies in Bosnia (RS—Republika Srpska) and, possibly, the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro). The UNPROFOR presence had largely kept such hostilities in check since early 1992, and the outcome of their resumption was at best uncertain.

The consensus among specialists on the politics of socialist Yugoslavia and supporters of Slobodan Milošević is that he rose personally as the leader due to a broad appeal of his political programme. According to one version of the political programme thesis, Milošević overwhelmed his initially more powerful opponents in the leadership of Serbia in 1987 by obtaining majority support in higher ranks of the party for his nationalist programme, namely the reduction of autonomy of Kosovo. The other version of the thesis says that he extended nationalist appeals to the population at large and established control over party and state organs in the largest republic of federal Yugoslavia largely by bringing pressure from society on the political elite. In any case, Milošević emerged from the leadership struggle as a very powerful leader and was thus able to purge his rivals from the regional leadership and embark upon the implementation of a nationalist programme. The supporters of Milošević have largely agreed with the specialists. Borisav Jović, his right-hand man, claimed, “the removal of bureaucratic leadership of Serbia, which had subserviently accepted the division of Serbia in three parts,” to be one of their main achievements.

The situation of Hungarians in Slovakia since 1989 has developed in the context of the political and economic transitions of the region: from post-totalitarian states towards pluralist democracies, and from centrally-planned economies toward market systems. In addition, the end of Czechoslovakia as a united entity on December 31 1992, has directly affected the Hungarian nationality. These political, economic and social changes have had a direct impact on their situation in Slovakia.