Using examples of American Latvians, Estonians and Ukrainians in the states of Minnesota, New Jersey and New York this article explores the ambiguous nature of integration of nationalities groups inside the Republican Party during the 1960s-1980s. Based on the analysis of available archival information, it is shown that the Republican Party intentionally brought in the ethnics during the discussed period and created the Nationalities Sections within specific electoral campaigns, Nationalities Divisions inside the state party organizations and the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council within the Republican National Committee in order to recruit the ethnics and engage in the partisan struggle with the Democrats. Consequently, the nationalities were given a sense of importance, but little real power to actually influence the internal processes inside the party. At the same time, the nationalities eagerly responded to the invitation to join the Republican national and state-level organizations specifically designed for the ethnics. Yet in doing this they perceived themselves primarily as ethnics with a distinct, mainly anti-communist, agenda and only secondarily thought of themselves as Americans dedicated to Republican politics. Consequently, the Republican political strategy of creating Nationalities Sections and Divisions seemed to integrate the ethnics on the surface, while in reality intensifying political separation and even ghettoization of the ethnics in American politics. This research initiates a larger project, which will compare the Republican and Democratic strategies of directly involving ethnic groups and minorities inside the party organizations in the second part of the twentieth century.

This paper has two main goals. First, it illuminates continuities between the ideas of “true Romanian-ness” as held by both the Romanian cultural elite and the Romanian political regimes in the interwar and communist periods. A manufactured definition of a “true” Romanian—as a Romanian Orthodox Christian, natively Romanian-speaking, and ethnically Romanian—formed the core of Romanian nationalism, regardless of the ruling ideology. This definition did not include the Roman and Greek Catholics of Romanian ethnicity on the grounds that they were not Orthodox Christians. It goes without saying that these criteria also excluded Hungarians, Germans and other ethnic minorities on the basis of ethnicity, language and religion. Second, the paper demonstrates that the principal ideas of Romanian nationalism developed in overt contrast to the internationalist ideological movements of both periods. Both the liberals and the Marxists misunderstood nationalism, claimed Ernest Gellner in 1964: liberals assumed that nationalism was a doomed legacy of outmoded irrationalism, superstition and savagery, and Marxists considered it a necessary but temporary stage in the path to global socialism. Gellner's comments are evidently appropriate to Romania, where nationalist responses developed first to the Westernization of the interwar period and second to communist internationalism after 1948.

The three eastern Slavic states—Russia, Ukraine and Belarus—have virtual foreign policies towards each other that are a product of weakly defined national identities inherited from the former USSR. In addition, this virtuality has been compounded by the presence of centrist, former high-ranking nomenklatura elites who have led all three countries at different times since 1992. Former “sovereign communist” centrist oligarchs are ideologically amorphous, in both the domestic and foreign policy arenas.

If the years 1988–1990 showed Gorbachev the difficul ties of governing a federation of republics whose titular majorities relentlessly strove for greater autonomy, even independence, then the last twelve months demonstrated to him the complexities of managing a federation of multiethnic republics (Appendix 3) whose minorities were no less determined to gain their share of self-rule and to pursue their particular interests. The signs of a potentially destabilizing problem were visible already prior to last April: the June 1989 incident in the Fergana valley in which Meskhetians were attacked by Uzbeks, and the long-smoldering Nagorno-Karabakh affair pitting an Armenian minority against the Azerbaijani majority. These are but two examples of bitter and violent interethnic strife percolating just beneath the surface of multiethnic societies throughout the Soviet Union.

The Republic of Tatarstan is located between Europe and Asia. It is important to emphasize geographical location, which is a key element in the processes of identities formation and transformation. Tatarstan is located in the core of the Russian Federation, situated in the European part of Russia and 800 kilometres from Moscow, at the confluence of the Volga and the Kama Rivers. The capital of Tatarstan is Kazan. The economic potential of the republic is based mainly on raw materials (including oil and gas), industry and agriculture. According to the constitution of the republic (approved on 6 November 1992) Tatarstan (previously known as Tataria) is defined as a multiethnic republic, with two official languages, Russian and Tatar. The largest ethnic groups are Tatars and Russians; as a consequence it makes sense to talk in terms of a bicultural society with two main confessional groups, namely Muslim and Orthodox Christians.

Since I work for the government, I must stress, by way of introduction, that whatever I say reflects my opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the U.S. government.

The grassroots environmental movement of the late 1980s in the former Soviet Union played a key role in reform politics, making or breaking candidates in the 1989–1990 contested local elections across the nation. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the social and economic crises in its successor states were significant factors in the decline and shifting focus of this mass movement. The purpose of this study is to examine the history, ideology and the current direction of Russian environmentalism in the context of the former Soviet Union, and to see how it is being reshaped in Russia today.

Research on diasporic youth identities in the British and American context has stressed hybridity, heterogeneity and multiplicity. This paper draws upon ethnographic research undertaken with Armenian girls to explore some of the tensions and ambivalences of negotiating diasporic identities in the Russian context. Diasporic identities are constructed through gender, and this paper illustrates how research participants negotiate their identities in relation to both belonging to the Armenian community and wider Russian society. At the same time, this paper examines how research participants draw differently on diasporic identifications in order to overcome tensions and ambivalences in their everyday lives. The paper shows that research participants are not inclined to reject their cultural roots in favor of new hybrid identities, but are able to recognize and appropriate different cultures in their identity negotiations.