The end of communism brought hopes for a wholesale liberal-democratic transformation to the republics of the former Soviet Union. However, bitter disenchantment soon followed, as resurrected nationalism undermined the republics' stability and threatened democracy. Mass nationalist movements in these countries were not observed until the regime's initial liberalization. In most cases, the high phase of nationalist mobilization was reached only after the postcommunist state elites endorsed nationalism as an official policy of the state. In each instance, nationalist strategies of the state were defined in a complex interplay of domestic and international factors. Ethnicity became politicized as a resource for political action when other resources proved inadequate or insufficient. In addition, exogenous factors often played a leading role in this development.

Gorbachev, like every Party general secretary before him, tried to maintain a centrist position, while the whole spectrum was moving toward reform. At some point, however, the centrist position became narrower and narrower while, as we saw in the last elections, the democratic process came to encompass about two-thirds of the population in the large cities. Reactionary forces, from monarchists to Stalinists, comprise about 10 percent. But lately Gorbachev seems to be reaching toward those reactionary forces for many things. The appointments to the Presidential Council, the shift in tone in the newspapers, all the stories about the republics' owing so much to the Soviet Union, the territorial demands—they are a small, but growing number of indicators portending a shift to a more conservative position. We do not know whether this shift is due to army pressure or to his fear of becoming an apprentice sorcerer who has created forces he can no longer control. I should add that the Communist ideology is losing ground every day, and there is danger of its being replaced with a chauvinist Russian ideology, a kind of national socialist ideology. If I had to choose between the Communists and the National Socialists, I would choose the Communists. At least they offer equal oppression for everybody instead of unequal oppression for selected peoples. These developments lead to the extremely dangerous idea of holding the empire at all costs. Gorbachev has the chance to become the Soviet Union's de Gaulle. For the time being, however, de Gaulle's mantle is still beyond his reach.

Russia is at present seeking to define its national interest. A new foreign policy is in the process of being formed; in a debate that has run wild, the points of reference used when formulating foreign policy in the days of Soviet Marxism have been abandoned and replaced by notions about “the Russian national interest” (Rahr 1992; Crow 1992).

The article explores the “fear of Islam” through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article will try to address are: How have Greek political parties reacted to public demand for the construction of a mosque? What have been the rhetorical tropes they use? How have they capitalized on current and old fears about Islam? What have been the implications of this discourse on state policies toward Islam? Have there been any differences in this discourse over time? The analysis highlights the role of historical interpretations of Greek national identity and contemporary problems related to new waves of migration due to Greece's place on the border with Turkey and with the broader Islamic world.