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The late 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the sudden rise of nationalist movements in almost all Soviet ethnic regions. It is argued that the rise ofpoliticalnationalism since the late 1980s can be explained by the development ofculturalnationalism in the previous decades, as an unintended outcome of Communist nationalities policy. All ethnic regions are examined throughout the entire history of the USSR (49 regions, 1917–1991), using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. This paper aims to make at least three contributions to the field. First, it is a methodological contribution for studying nationalism: a “quantification of history” approach. Having constructed variables from historical data, I use conventional statistical methods such as SEM. Second, this paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the role of cultural autonomy in multiethnic states. Finally, the paper statistically proves that the break between early Soviet and Stalinist nationalities policy explains the entire Soviet nationalities policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Albeit often – and fairly – degraded in the world of high culture as a populist and politicized representation of music, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – by sheer virtue of the populist and politicized nature of its essence – stands among the most consequential cultural encounters to which post-independence Azerbaijan has been exposed, in that the extent to which Baku's victory in the ESC-2011 – and the further developments this victory has generated – can potentially impact on, and contribute to, the very process of nation-building and national identity formation, with which this post-Soviet Muslim-majority country is currently struggling, is unparalleled by any of the state's earlier encounters of the kind. This paper focuses on, and examines, four intimately related ways in which the ESC and Azerbaijan's successful involvement with the latter worked to interfere with the country's nation-building: as a dubious factor in the evolution of the Western sense of self among Azerbaijanis; as a unifying force within the structure of the country's rapidly maturing civil society; as a medium working to open up a channel through which Western popular cultural elements could interfere with the evolving dynamics of, and work to globalize, indeed de-endogenize, indigenous Azerbaijani culture, on one hand, and unify the discursive realm within which the country's cultural domain is to further evolve, on the other; and, finally, as an important element serving to decouple the evolving processes within the country's cultural domain from the unfolding dynamics of conflict settlement and hence conducive to the diversification of public discourse in Azerbaijan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to characterize the culturalist theory of the nation by Florian Znaniecki. Opposing the sociological theory dominated by Western, particularly Anglo-Saxon, thinkers, Znaniecki rejected the view of the nation as a state society. He believed that the nation is a type of community constituted by a specific culture that is created by its intellectual leaders. To derive his findings, he used the knowledge gained from the experiences of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. He believed that their specific history required the development of a sociological theory that was adequate for such research, not dominated by the findings of Western sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings to light the lesser-known case of Gagauzia, an autonomous region in Moldova, to examine how global frameworks of authenticity and heritage are drawn upon and performed in three local ethnically centered initiatives. Drawing on data from twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2015 and 2018, this case study provides insight into the ways that notions of nationhood are constructed and perpetuated, with a focus on the role of a specific segment of society, ethnopolitical entrepreneurs. These are neither fully top-down nor bottom-up actors. Focusing on three Gagauzian "firsts" that claim to represent the "last" of disappearing cultural practices and identities, this article interrogates how the given initiatives fuse heritage and innovation to create metacultural discourses that advance notions of Gagauzian ethnic or national particularism. The article gives food for thought about the salience – or not – of elite actors' articulations of nation, particularly within post-Soviet societies and underscores the array of social actors involved in any nation-building activity. Further, by highlighting the heterogeneity of intersectional, lived experience and articulations of belonging, the article problematizes group-based analysis and methodological nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details how an increasingly educated and urban Buryat population became both the creators and consumers of new leisure activities in the late Soviet period. It argues that central and local authorities believed that leisure activities could help them to impress upon the Buryats that there were great benefits to living in the Soviet Union and to adopting a more pan-Soviet identity within the brotherhood of nations. They also presumed that leisure activities could aid in the building of a culture that was Buryat, Soviet, and more modern. This article examines why authorities assigned great importance to leisure and how they used and created cultural-educational institutions and mass media content to implement, direct, and promote cultural development. It analyzes various institutions such as museums, clubs, and theaters, as well as the production and consumption of local newspapers and television and radio programming that promoted educational leisure activities. In addition, it explores authorities' concerns about the rise, especially among youth, of more taboo leisure activities that deviated from the official ones that they encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region’s political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,” which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the role the Soviet Union's western borderlands annexed during World War II played in the evolution of Soviet politics of empire. Using the Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine as case studies, it argues that Sovietization had a profound impact on these borderlands, integrating them into a larger Soviet polity. However, guerrilla warfare and Soviet policy-making indirectly led to these regions becoming perceived as more Western and nationalist than other parts of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine differed in their engagement with the Western capitalist world. Different experiences of World War II and late Stalinism and contacts with the West ultimately led to this region becoming Soviet, yet different from the rest of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet West was far from uniform, perceived differences between it and the rest of the Soviet Union justified claims at the end of the 1980s that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a family of nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines the role of culture and theater as foundation for national identity formation in the Russian Far East. History of the exploration of the Far Eastern outskirts of the Russian Empire with its various indigenous populations; Settlement of Eastern Russian lands; Migrational organizations associated with the process and, specifically, with the immigration from the neighboring Eastern countries; Process of creating artistic culture in the Far Eastern provinces; Provinciality of culture in the Russian Far East: the local versus the metropolitan.

This article focuses on the emergence of Kosovo. Though current public images of Kosovo have largely been shaped by the events surrounding the violent conflict of 1999 and NATO intervention, as well as postwar ethnic violence and questions over Kosovo's unresolved status, a critical but largely understudied phase of the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is the emergence of the Albanian "parallel state" during the early 1990s. Kosovo being an autonomous province of Serbia and a constituent unit of the Yugoslav federation, the social and institutional contours of the Kosovo conflict were directly shaped by the institutional structures and cultural identities existing in the Yugoslav system.