Poland's post-communist development is often depicted as a contrast between a unified, engaged society of pre-1989 and a passive, divisive society of post-1989. What explains the displacement of political solidarity with a fragmented political scene? A factor specific to Poland is rooted in the struggle of Solidarity against communist power. The consequences are subsequent attempts to appropriate the values of Solidarność as political capital by competing political voices, leading to contestation about the nature of the country. This normative discourse was evident first in the post-communist divide, between forces stemming from the former communist regime and those affiliated with the opposition. More recently, the saliency of the post-communist division has receded, and a new contested discourse has surfaced among voices coming out of the Solidarity tradition. This rhetoric seeks to define a contrast between a “Solidaristic Poland” dedicated to traditional and Christian values affirming notions of exclusivity and superiority, and a “liberal Poland” dedicated to market and pluralist principles based on competition and individualism. In both political divides, the legacy of Solidarity provides useful political capital to advance distinctive visions of Poland.

In the eyes of the European public, Slovenia is still considered a Catholic country. Since before the last World War, this has had a double meaning. First of all, the Roman Catholic Church has been the leading ecclesiastical institution since the Christianization of the territory settled by Slovenes, decisively influencing the constitution of the cultural and political life of the Slovene nation, as well as its character. In spite of changed social conditions and its fate in the period of “real-socialist” rule from 1945 to 1990, the Church has preserved this role to the present time, although in different forms.

This article identifies the dynamics which shaped the eruption of civil war in Tajikistan. It argues that the mechanisms of network activation by the elites, together with the establishment of local militias and their involvement in the war through the activation of violence specialists, were important factors in bringing about the eruption of violence. This article is not about the causes of the civil war. Its aim is not to answer the question of why, but the question of how: what mechanisms led Tajikistan into civil war, how networks were activated from the top down, how mobilization was achieved at the micro level in the villages. This article stresses both macro- and micro-level mechanisms, and argues that there is a connection between the two—a look at both is necessary to understand the dynamics of the war.

In sweeping away the Tsarist political empire, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 also challenged a way of life. It provided opportunities for women in Siberia, the Sibiriachki, and in the rest of Russia, to change their lives. The revolution's democratic and Marxian socialist policies, carried to these women by the zhenotdel, determined officials in the women's department of the Communist Party, created wide possibilities for change. This essay examines Siberian women's responses—both negative and positive—to the revolution's teachings about women's rights and their equality with men. Women's cultural backgrounds—ethnic, educational, urban and rural—influenced their responses to the revolutionary call to claim their rights, their successes and failures in efforts to defend themselves from violence, their efforts to achieve health care and education, and their progress toward greater political and economic equality. This essay also explores conditions on the eve of the revolution, illustrating the variety of strata existing in Siberia's vast lands. It discusses the significant advances in women's self-awareness and their changing activities in the early and mid-1920s. The Party's political mobilization of women expanded into a critique of the social status quo. Subsequently, in the late 1920s and 1930s, the context for their activities was radically altered: political and social criticism were no longer acceptable. For women the gains of the revolution were corrupted and women lost more than they had previously gained. While one can see the throttling of the women's revolution as an indication of its fundamental weakness, one can also see it as the Party's response to a movement that was gaining strength and raising questions about the Party's primacy.

This essay is an attempt to chart recent developments in the field of Modern Greek Studies, focusing on shifting perceptions regarding Islam and Muslims. To do so, the essay positions the relevant literature in its historical context, touching upon both accomplishments and limitations. Its main proposition is that the Greek case is distinct yet connected to contemporary global contingencies and broader long-term regional dynamics. Athens remains the only European capital without a mosque. Moreover, despite recent academic endeavors, there exists today no coherent Greek field of Islamic Studies. That these absences have been brought recently under political and academic scrutiny constitutes, however, a noteworthy change. Most important, the traditional exclusion of Islam from the field of Modern Greek Studies does not suggest lack of relevance between the two but, quite to the contrary, reveals a set of loaded and complex socieconomic, geopolitical, and historical links that deserve to be studied in their own right.

In December 2001, over 150 citizens of Russia, Israel, the U.S., Ukraine and some other countries gathered in Moscow in their capacity as former activists of the non-official Jewish movement in the USSR to celebrate the 25th anniversary of an event that had never taken place—an unofficial Moscow Symposium on Jewish Culture. The symposium, which had been forbidden by the KGB, acquired an important, but symbolic, meaning (as vivid evidence of the suppression of Jewish culture in the USSR) for the very fact of its non-performance. Celebrating this (non-)event 25 years later, members of the Jewish movement who had been active for some time in the period from the late 1960s to the late 1980s talked about their struggle against the Soviet regime, emphasizing the victory they had gained together with other dissenting groups. They called for the “political support of Israel, the United States, and Russia in their fight against international terrorism,” spoke on behalf of repeal of the Jackson–Vannick amendment, voted for the establishment of a transnational association of Russian (or Russian-speaking or former Soviet) Jews, and even discussed the “historical mission of Russian Jewry.” The issue of Jewish culture was virtually omitted from the discussion.

In view of the vast scope of my topic I have to restrict myself to the most basic aspects and most recent developments in the subject area. Actually, as far as Soviet Belorussia is concerned there has not been much going on in this area. With sufficient cadres of historians to have produced the 12-volume “Belorussian Soviet Encyclopedia” (Minsk, 1969–1975) and a 5-volume “History of the Belorussian SSR” (the first three volumes appeared in 1972–1973), the topic of terminology and periodization has nonetheless been relegated to silence along with the problem of the general state of historiography. For example among the 4,500 entries in the “Bibliography of Belorussia's History: The Period of Feudalism and Capitalism” (Minsk, 1969, 437 p.) one discovers only nine articles on historiography written in the post-Stalin period, the most recent of which is dated 1965. Of the two articles reviewing the state of historical scholarship on the occasion of the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of Soviet Belorussia neither discusses or mentions discussions on the subject of historiography, let alone terminology and periodization. This strange abhorrence by Belorussian Soviet historians of their own metier still persists, as we learn from two reviewers of the third volume of the new 5-volume “History of the Belorussian SSR”: “We must note that in this volume as well as in the previous ones the historiographic part is essentially lacking.” Nevertheless, some individual historians and authors demonstrate their keen awareness of the importance of the matter. This was perhaps most perceptibly expressed in 1968 by a Grodno Professor Jazep Jucho (Yazep Yukho). Explaining the origin and history of one of the basic terms of Belorussia's past and present, the name Bielaruś, Jucho observes: “confusion in terminology leads to a distortion of the whole historical process of the development of the Belorussian people.”