The relationship between Orthodox Christianity and national identity has been one of the most contended issues in modern nationalism. The dominant religion in the Balkans, Orthodoxy has transported the identity of ethnic groups into the modern era and political leaders have employed religious institutions according to their own political agendas in the construction of “imagined communities.” Orthodoxy has a particular perception of the political field. Based on the concept of symphonia, which dates back to the Byzantine Empire, the Church claims that religious and political offices are equal and have similar responsibilities. Religious and political rulers have the mission to guide the people and the Church and state should collaborate harmoniously in fostering identity. Political leaders refer to the nationalist discourse of the Church in order to induce national cohesion. From this perspective, the relationship between religion and the construction of the nation in the Orthodox space differs from that in the Catholic or Protestant world where Churches are supranational or sub-national institutions.

Worldwide, ethnopolitics takes on various shapes. Yet, while politics involving ethnicity can be either conflictual, competitive, or cooperative, analysts typically focus either on instances of conflict or ignore the multiethnicity of states by sticking to “the comfortable integrationist presumptions of the 1950s.” All too rarely does one find analyses of policies that work in difficult situations. This global trend is intensified in the case of Eastern Europe. As this region has suffered instances of ethnic politics gone wrong—most recently in the former Yugoslavia—many analysts assume that constructive approaches to ethnic relations are impossible, even though they are needed more than ever. Here, I outline a model of ethnopolitics which is both democratic and constructive, has been used in East Central Europe in the past, and has potential for the future. In presenting the case for ethnopluralism, I outline a promising alternative to ethnic conflict or neglect.

For nearly a century, the contrast between a cultural and a political form of nationalism has been upheld. In the early twentieth century, Fredrich Meinecke made a distinction between the political nation, or Staatsnation, based on a common political history and a shared constitution, and the cultural nation, Kulturnation, based on a shared cultural heritage. The most important distinction between the two is that while membership in the former is voluntary, membership in the cultural nation is a matter not of choice, but of common objective identity. Meinecke maintained that political nationalism derived from the spirit of 1789, i.e. from the idea of the self-determination and sovereignty of the nation. Cultural nationalism, in contrast, was a striving for national individuality, characteristic of anti-Enlightenment German thought.

Historically there was a long-standing competition to control Estonian territory, primarily between Russia, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Denmark, until 1710 when this area was conquered and ruled for two centuries by Imperial Russia. In the twentieth century, the only rival to Russia's (USSR's) domination over Estonia has been Germany. A Norwegian security analyst, Olav Knudsen, says correctly that the Baltic states “fall outside all other geographical and political contexts than the Russian and to some extent the German one.” As is known, Estonia was occupied by Germany in the course of the World Wars in 1918 and 1941–44. Generally speaking, the pre-1991 history of Estonia is a good case to prove that the survival of small states as independent powers is precarious, “depending on a multitude of factors over which they have little influence.”

This article examines Yugoslav national programs of ruling political elites and its concrete implementation in education policy in interwar Yugoslavia. It is argued that at the beginning of the period Yugoslavism was not inherently incompatible with or subordinate to Serbian, Croatian or to a lesser degree Slovenian national ideas. However, the concrete ways in which Yugoslavism was formulated and adopted by ruling elites discredited the Yugoslav national idea and resulted in increasing delineation and polarization in the continuum of national ideas available in Yugoslavia. Throughout the three consecutive periods of political rule under scrutiny, ruling elites failed to reach a wider consensus regarding the Yugoslav national idea or to create a framework within which a constructive elaboration of Yugoslav national identity could take place. By the end of the interwar period, the Yugoslav national idea had become linked exclusively to conservatism, centralism, authoritarianism and, for non-Serbian elites at least, Serbian hegemony. Other national ideas gained significance as ideas providing viable alternatives for the regime's Yugoslavism.

A number of general summaries have been written on the history of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the Soviet Union, the single major Jewish structure in the Ussr during the following the Second World War. The Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) constituted a special phenomenon when compared with similar Soviet organizations. It started as an ordinary instrument of Soviet wartime propaganda, but prevailing circumstances transformed it into a meaningful Jewish structure. Following a few introductory remarks, I would like to discuss one specific aspect of this Committee, namely the nature of its membership. Most of the existing studies treat the JAC in a chronological manner. The purpose of this article is to examine the inner dynamics of the Committee and evaluate it as an elite leadership group of Soviet Jewry.

Multiple and dual citizenship in the past decades have become widely accepted worldwide. Leading scholars in citizenship studies claim that the growing tolerance of dual citizenship signals the weakening of state sovereignty and the emergence of transnational, post-national or cosmopolitan norms. This paper argues that multiple citizenship standards are neither universally accepted, nor normatively compelling. The cases referred to are intended to demonstrate that contrary to the above assessments, dual citizenship is also used by states to increase their sovereignty, for example promoting national interest abroad through expatriates and trans-border minorities. It is also argued that, in addition to the classical territorial sovereignty- and security-related dilemmas, dual-citizenship policies may violate the norms of democratic equality and popular sovereignty. The paper concludes that the inevitably growing toleration of non-monogamous state-citizen relationships should not be interpreted as a normative justification of promiscuous citizenship policies.

It was in late 1964, in a major address before the 8th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, that Tito condemned “various negative ‘traditions’” in the sphere of Yugoslav historiography. He called for resolutely “stamping out nationalistic interpretations of the cultural achievements and legacy of the past.” Tito deplored “un-Marxist, uncritical and unscientific appraisals of events and personalities in national history” which were sometimes mere repetitions of “certain bourgeois-nationalistic assessments.” He specified, “For instance, only the positive aspect of certain movements, events and persons is stressed while their negative side is hardly ever mentioned, or, if so, only in general terms and reluctantly. Further, we come across cases, although less frequently, where some sort of superiority of one national history and culture over another is stressed in some indirect way.” Tito warned that nationalistic conceptions in Yugoslav historiography often assumed a political character and led to disputes of “ugly proportions.” In 1966 Tito had occasion once again to warn that some historians were poisoning relations between the nationalities of Yugoslavia by discussing “who had what great men and when” and which nationality had “a more glorious past.”