Since the 5 October revolution that formally ushered Serbia into a democratic era, political commentators, scholars, civic activists and others have watched the country for signs of resurgent nationalism. Many perceived the primary threat to the new democratic order as the persistence of nationalism, particularly in the years after the 2003 assassination of Zoran Djindjić. Such nationalism, forged in the 1980s and 1990s, was subject to eruptions among unsavory politicians, pensioners, Mafiosi and denizens of Belgrade's suburbs and Serbia's “backward” countryside. The problem underlying this model of resurgent nationalism is that it assumes, and simultaneously constructs, nationalism as a static and unchanging arrangement of ideological and social factors that flare up and die down in response to political stimuli—the arrest of indicted war criminals, the outrageous rhetoric of populist politicians, negotiations over the status of Kosovo, or high-stakes sporting events. While there is no question that such events create discursive space for nationalist, sexist and racist agendas, the flare-up model presents a dangerous simplification of how nationalisms work.

The Pussy Riot story is clearly a story the West wanted to hear. Western journalists, politicians, and celebrities were unanimously inspired by the youthfulness and rebellion of courageous Russian feminists. Their life experience perfectly resonates with the core of these young women's messages. For Russians, however, even for those who share the most liberal values, it is not so simple. Public polls and several months of heated debates have shown that virtually everyone in this deeply conservative country has struggled to make sense of the Pussy Riot performance. So, what do Westerners not understand about Russia and what are the problems of translating feminism(s) into different cultural contexts? How does feminist protest deprived of its roots function here, and why do women in Russia not understand that Pussy Riot's story personally concerns all of them? This essay outlines the difference between Russian and Western readings of the Pussy Riot performance and, using the case of public response in Russia, contemplates the reasons for the failure of feminism in this part of the world.

This article illustrates the evolution experienced by the identity-making strategies pursued through the propagandistic exploitation of Kazakhstani foreign policy. Periodical readjustments in the focus of foreign policy rhetoric led the Kazakhstani regime to reshape the identity of the population, in order to promote forms of self-perception almost exclusively associable with the leadership that ruled the country in the post-Soviet era. Identity-making, in this context, became a crucial link in (and a key driver for) the progressive subjugation of foreign policy rhetoric to the logic of regime-building, intended here as the ensemble of concerted efforts aimed to increase the population's compliance with the leaderships' authoritarian outlooks.

In September 1989, speaking to the Republican Strike Committee of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), Erkin Nurzhanovich Auel'bekov, assistant chairman of the All-Union Soviet of Nationalities, asked a question of great importance to Soviet citizens in the increasingly fragile union: “Is there such a thing as a Soviet narod (people), or is this just an empty fiction?” For Auel'bekov and the assembled strike committee, the answer was not in doubt. “Certainly for all of us here,” he continued, “there is such a narod. There is a passport, there are Soviet people (sovetskie liudi) and, moreover, there is justification for thinking that this is the most important achievement of the past seventy years of Soviet power.” Soviet patriots, they agreed, needed to protect this narod from the process of “nationalization” that threatened the Soviet Union and its constituent people both locally in Moldova and more broadly in the union in general. The protection of this achievement in Soviet nation building became the mission of an “internationalist' ” movement as it moved from a strike campaign to stop language laws in 1989 to an election campaign in 1990. The political strike of 1989 had achieved none of its immediate goals and as internationalist activists moved into the second phase of the conflict over the future of Moldova they invoked imperiled Soviet achievements as they first attempted to take the Moldovan government through the ballot box, and failing at that, to take the eastern region of Transnistria out of Moldova.

This article surveys the history of Kyiv Rus within the realm of nation building, identity and historical myths. It argues that Ukraine's elites believe that Western, Russian and Soviet schools of history on Kyiv Rus (and Ukraine) are incompatible with nation and state building.

Two schools—Ukrainophile and East Slavic—compete within Ukraine. Nevertheless, the former has been promoted as the dominant school by ruling elites, many of whom date from the Soviet Ukrainian SSR and might personally favour the East Slavic framework. As Stepanenko states, Hrushevsky “is factually theorizing the most convincing version of Ukrainian history.”

This article assesses the analytical value of the “Kohn dichotomy” – the notion that there are two types of nationalism, resting on civic values in the West and on ethnic values outside the West. It begins by outlining the intellectual history of this dichotomy since its origin in the 1860s and by analyzing its main features. It contrasts the state traditions of Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe in three areas: the geopolitical evolution of the state, the state's perspective on its own population as reflected in efforts to measure “ethnic nationality” through such instruments as the population census, and divergences in citizenship law. It shows that data from recent programs of comparative survey research, and analysis of nationalist ideology, highlight the variety of forms that nationalism may take in the two parts of Europe. The article concludes that the “ethnic–civic” dichotomy is valuable as an ideal type with the capacity to shed light on the nature of ethnic affiliation, not as a categorical classification system. Different ethnonational groups comprise mixtures of people who use a combination of “ethnic” and “civic” reference points; they do not coincide with global territorial zones that may be identified with any level of clarity.

This article presents a study of Islamic religious symbols involved in maintaining the special status of the Tatars in post-Soviet Tatarstan. It explores how regional ethnic elites in Tatarstan use Islam (the discourse of the history of Islam in the region and Islamic symbols in the representation of the region) as a tool for legitimizing their privileged positions in the region. In addition, the article examines how Islamic culture enters into the everyday life and public space of the region, thereby, in a sense enforcing social borders between different ethnic groups. This study has two aims: a theoretical analysis of religious symbols’ role in the struggle for status in the ethnic hierarchy and the practical application of the developed theoretical framework to the case of post-Soviet Tatarstan. The author concludes that after the system of ethnic federalism was abolished in Russia, Tatars have retained their special status by appealing to Islam.

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.

Is an imagined democracy more important than actual democracy for nation-building purposes? After 20 years of independence, Central Asian countries present a mixed bag of strong and weak states, consolidated and fragmented nations. The equation of nation and state and the construction of genuine nation states remains an elusive goal in all of post-Soviet Central Asia. This paper examines the role that electoral politics has played in nation-state formation. We argue that electoral processes have been central to attempted nation-state building processes as part of efforts to legitimize authoritarian regimes; paradoxically in those few countries where (for brief periods) partial democratization actually occurred, elections contributed, at least in the short term, to nation-state fragmentation.

Parties of ethnic minorities are flourishing in a large number of ethnically divided democracies. While academic research has studied their emergence and success, we know little about intra-group party competition. This paper discusses the reasons for intra-group political plurality, with a focus on intra-party conflict and intra-group party competition: it explains the political orientation of ethnic minority parties and their intra-group challengers as a consequence of the inclusion of minority parties into government. The inclusion of minority parties into national governments produces an inherent conflict between pragmatic office-seekers and radical partisans. In minority parties that have governmental responsibilities, the pragmatist view overwhelms, while in those parties in opposition, radical voices dominate. The formation of two intra-Hungarian challenger parties in Romania and in Slovakia in 2007 and 2009 represents two very similar cases, which appear to be in line with our hypotheses.

The politics of language identity have figured heavily in the history of the people of the Republic of Moldova. Indeed the region's status as a province of Russia, Romania, and then the Soviet Union over the past 200 years has consistently been justified and, at least partially, manipulated on the basis of language issues. At the center of these struggles over language and power has been the linguistic and cultural identity of the region's autochthonous ethnicity and current demographic majority, the Moldovans. In dispute is the degree to which these Moldovans are culturally, historically, and linguistically related to the other Moldovans and Romanians across the Prut River in Romania. Under imperial Russia from 1812 to 1918 and Soviet Russia from 1944 to 1991, a proto-Moldovan identity that eschewed connections to Romania and emphasized contact with Slavic peoples was promoted in the region. Meanwhile, experts from Romania and the West have regularly argued that the eastern Moldovans are indistinguishable, historically, culturally, and linguistically, from their Romanian cousins.

This article proposes to look afresh at the legacies of communism in urban spaces in post-1989 Poland. Specifically, it investigates the fate of Red Army monuments and explores how these public spaces have been used in the multifaceted and multileveled process of post-communist identity formation. The article suggests that Red Army monuments constitute sites for the articulation of new narratives about the country's past and future which are no longer grounded in the fundamental division between “us” (the nation) and “them” (the supporters of communism) and which are far from being fixed in the binary opposition of the banished and the embraced past. The reorganization of public memory space does not only involve contesting the Soviet past or affirming independence traditions but is rather the outcome of multilayered processes rooted in particularities of time and space. Moreover, the article argues that the dichotomy “liberator versus occupier,” often employed as a viable analytical tool by scholars investigating the post-communist memorial landscape, impedes our understanding of the role played by Soviet war memorials in the process of re-imagining national and local communities in post-1989 Eastern Europe.

Kazakhstan has experienced more powerful pressures of migration unlike any other republic of the former Soviet Union. An especially great number of immigrants came to Kazakhstan during the Soviet period. Many peoples of the former Soviet Union, often against their wishes, took up residence in the republic. The recent situation in Kazakhstan is characterized by a further intensification of migratory processes. Their complicated character, both in the past and today, has, in many aspects, influenced the present-day problems of the republic.

This article compares causes and mechanisms of the mass mobilizations which took place in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010. The upheavals of 2005, the so called “Tulip Revolution,” led to the ousting of President Akaev who was replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiev. In 2010, Bakiev himself had to flee the country after violent social upheavals. As this analysis shows, the causes for both series of events were similar: neopatrimonial rule and the elite's control of resources together with oppressive tactics stirred up discontent among wide parts of the population and instigated violent protest. The mechanisms of mass mobilization, however, differed considerably. While the revolution of 2005 was carried out as the concerted action of varied political forces and NGOs, which, supported by patronage networks and traditional institutions, offered material and solidary incentives for the crowds, the great mass of people who took part in the 2010 protests were spontaneously mobilized through purposive incentives when news of the killings spread through the media.

Among the most pressing tasks confronting leaders of the Central Asian states is the reconciliation of their desire to expedite legitimation of rule by reifying titular cultural paradigms with the need to construct inclusive civic modes of national self-conception. Kazakhstan is perhaps the best example from the region wherein the construction of a multicultural, inclusive homeland concept is essential to the future of the state. The poignancy of Kazakhstan's situation relates to the fact that its population consists of nearly equal numbers of titular and non-titular peoples, often living compactly in different regions of the state. Large-scale migration of predominately European ethnic minorities from Kazakhstan's territory since the late Soviet period has coupled with high birth rates among ethnic Kazakhs and the “return migration” of diasporic Kazakhs to elevate the titular community to a 53.4% majority (from 40.1 in 1989).

The spirit of environmentalism generated some of the most memorable images of the eastern and central European independence movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1988, protesters formed a human chain around the Ignalina nuclear reactor in Lithuania. That same year, thousands of Hungarians marched through downtown Budapest to rally against their government's prospective participation in the construction of a dam on the Danube River. The environmental movements in the former eastern bloc marked the beginning of the end of Soviet era communism in Europe. However, many commentators have implied that environmental protest was a proxy for other, more politically explosive grievances. Environmentalism was decisive, it is argued, because it provided a release valve for pent-up frustrations and repressed nationalistic ardor. Re-examining the independence movement in Estonia, this article contends that environmentalism was not incidental to citizens’ larger aims. The specific, environmentally destructive activities people condemned embodied many of the features of the Soviet system that people despised generally. Resource-intensive and pollution-prone projects proposed by Moscow provoked a broadly conceived environmental revolt rather than environmental protest “in name only.” The environmentally related constituents of Estonia's independence movement included citizens’ opposition to pollution of the environment and waste of natural resources; perceived “mindlessness” of industrial policy in Estonia; the promise of new Russian-speaking immigrants to work in environmentally unfriendly industries; and economic exploitation of natural resources in Estonia for the benefit of other Soviet republics, especially the Russian RSFSR.

Freedom from the Soviet empire created an opportunity for elites of each former Soviet Socialist Republic to “nationalize” their newly independent state. Most observers of contemporary Kazakh politics would agree that Kazakhstan has taken advantage of this historic opportunity, and can thus be classified as a nationalizing state. For Rogers Brubaker, a nationalizing state is perceived by its elites as a nation-state of and for a particular nation, but simultaneously as an “incomplete” or “unrealized” nation-state. To resolve this problem of incompleteness and to counteract perceived discrimination, Brubaker argues, “nationalizing elites urge and undertake action to promote the language, culture, demographic preponderance, economic flourishing, or political hegemony of the core ethnocultural nation.” While the foundation of any Soviet successor state's nationalization program is a cluster of implemented formal policies that privilege the titular nation, these policies are often reinforced by informal practices, primarily discriminatory personnel practices, with the same function. Much has been written about Kazakhstan's nationalization strategy, and not surprisingly scholars rely on what they know about formal policies and informal practices to characterize that strategy. Little has been written, however, about the “Pugachev Rebellion” in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, and nothing has been written about the relationship between the official Kazakh reaction to what I call the “Pugachev incident,” and Kazakhstan's nationalization strategy in general. This article sorts out confusing events surrounding the Pugachev incident, and offers an interpretation of the official Kazakh reaction, which is best understood when situated in the broader context of Kazakh nationalization, to the incident.

This article traces the evolution of “everyday nationalism” in North Korea and assesses its relationship to authoritarian resilience. It argues that coercion and the prospect of coercion play important roles in policing the contours of everyday nationalism. The state is able to infuse nationalism and authoritarian control into everyday life, but the “success” of its efforts has limits. This is due to social changes and the ways that material failures nurtured doubts about the legitimacy of the government among some citizens. It draws on data from North Korean state media, secondary historical literature, and 58 semi-structured interviews with North Koreans living in South Korea.

This article surveys the official narrative on representation of Estonian identity and Estonianness through the tourism strategy implemented by Estonia from 2007 to 2015. Gathering material from brochures and documents targeting foreigners produced by the Estonian Institute and “Enterprise Estonia” (EAS) and analyzing the logic behind the interior design of Tallinn Airport, we engage with current debates on identity construction in post-Soviet spaces. In particular, we suggest that along with an established body of literature looking at the role of state actors in the construction of identity, studies should consider the role of nontraditional or non-state actors in identifying and promoting identity markers.

Early commentators on the newly independent Belarusian state of the 1990s indicated that there was something lacking in Belarusian identity. The people did not seem to respond powerfully to the new symbols of the state, use of the national language intermingled with Russian, and economic concerns appeared to trump popular concerns with promoting Belarusian language or culture. Other former Soviet states were embracing ethnic national ideals, and as such, many assumed that Belarus should follow a similar path. However, as an examination of the history of the Belarusian territory demonstrates, a national ideal based on ethnicity was problematic in Belarusian society, and as such, the ethnic notions of Belarusian identity forwarded by some Belarusian elites failed to appeal to the masses. Instead, Belarus seems better suited to a more inclusive civic identity than an exclusive ethnic one. This research examines the nature of contemporary Belarusian identity, with particular attention to the civic versus ethnic aspects of that identity. We argue that although Belarusian identity is obviously in flux and subject to heavy debate, it is currently demonstrating more civic aspects than ethnic ones. This finding is based on original survey data obtained in Belarus in 2009 and 2010.