The Triumph of Nation-States: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia

Author(s):  
Philip G. Roeder
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-246
Author(s):  
Anthony Shay

This article looks at the multiple ways that folk dance has been staged in both the nineteenth century when character or national (the two terms were used interchangeably) dance was widely used in classical ballet, and the twentieth in which Igor Moiseyev created a new genre of dance related to it. The ballet masters that created character dance for ballet often created ballroom dances based on folk origin, but that would be suitable for the urban population. This popularity of national dance was the result of the burgeoning of romantic nationalism that swept Europe after the French Revolution. Beginning in the 1930s with Igor Moiseyev founding the first professional ‘folk dance’ company for the Soviet Union, nation states across the world established large, state-supported folk dance companies for purposes of national and ethnic representation that dominated the stages of the world for the second half of the twentieth century. These staged versions of folk dance, were, I argue an extension of nineteenth century national/character dance because their founding directors, like Igor Moiseyev, came from the era when ballet dancers were trained in that genre.


1970 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 256-276
Author(s):  
Dariusz Miszewski

During the Second World War, the national camp preached the idea of imperialism in Central Europe. Built peacefully, the Polish empire was supposed to protect the independence and security of countries in Central Europe against Germany and the Soviet Union, and thus went by the name of “the Great Poland”. As part of the empire, nation-states were retained. The national camp was opposed to the idea of the federation as promoted by the government-in-exile. The “national camp” saw the idea of federation on the regional, European and global level as obsolete. Post-war international cooperation was based on nation states and their alliances.


Author(s):  
Atola Longkumer

Of the two Asian regions, socio-economically, South Asia presents both prosperity and abject poverty, embedded in varying traditions. Central Asian states are well-endowed with natural resources and sustain a diverse cultural heritage against a backdrop of Islam. The indigenous shamanic cultures that have sustained myriad indigenous people (often described by terms such as tribals, Adivasis, minorities) for generations across South Asia need to be recognised along with its globalisation. Healing, use of traditional medicines, the position and role of women, caste hierarchy and the relationship with the other are incorporated into South Asian Christianity. ‘Anonymous Christians’ have also contributed to concepts such as ‘insider movements’ to discuss embedded followers of Jesus. In Central Asia, Charismatic Christianity is finding particular resonance. The relative freedom of religious expression has given opportunities for Christians to witness to the gospel. The potential ecumenical relationship with the existing Orthodox Church presents an opportunity for global Christianity. Christianity has received fresh interest in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the nation-states of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Theological creativity along with prophetic proclamation will be needed to balance these challenges of culture and faith in the region.


Author(s):  
Harvey M. Sapolsky

Security studies in the United States is marred by a lack of status. Opportunities within American universities are limited by the fact that the work deals with war and the use of force. Another reason for the isolation of security studies is its inherent interdisciplinary nature. It is nearly impossible to separate military technology from security policy, and there is the constant requirement in doing security analysis to understand weapons and their operational effects. However, the most serious limitation of security studies is its narrowness. Nearly all of its ranks are international relations specialists concerned primarily with relationships among and between nation-states. Absent from serious analysis are international environmental, economic, and health issues that may precede and produce political upheaval and that have their own academic specialists. The collapse of the Soviet Union raised questions about the opportunities and dangers of the United States' globally dominant position. The efforts to specify America’s new grand strategy produced a variety of expressions which fall into four main categories. The first is Primacy. Its advocates are primarily the neo-conservatives who relished America’s post-Cold War global dominance and sought to thwart any attempts to challenge this dominance. The second strategy is usually labeled Liberal Interventionism, which is also based on the dominance of American military might and urges US intervention abroad. The third strategy is the Selective Engagement. Under this strategy the United States should intervene only where vital interests are at stake. The fourth strategy focused on Restraint.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhanat Kundakbayeva ◽  
Didar Kassymova

The general perception of Western analysts and observers is that the nation-states created as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union all treat the memory of the dark, repressive aspects of the Stalinist regime in public spaces as a symbolic element in the creation of a new post-Soviet identity [Denison, Michael. 2009. “The Art of the Impossible: Political Symbolism, and the Creation of National Identity and Collective Memory in Post-Soviet Turkmenistan.”Europe-Asia Studies61 (7): 1167–1187]. We argue that the government of Kazakhstan employs non-nationalistic discourse in its treatment of Stalinist victims’ commemoration in a variety of forms, through the creation of modern memorial complexes at the sites of horrific Soviet activity (mass burial places, labor camps, and detention centers), purpose-built museum exhibitions, and the commemorative speeches of its president and other officials. Kazakhstan's strategy in commemorating its Soviet past is designed to highlight the inclusiveness of repression on all peoples living in its territory at that time, not just Kazakhs, thereby assisting in bringing together its multinational and multiethnic society. Thus, the official stance treats this discourse as an important symbolic source of shaping the collective memory of the nation, based on “a general civil identity without prioritizing one ethnic group over another — a national unity, founded on the recognition of a common system of values and principles for all citizens” [Shakirova, Svetlana. 2012. “Letters to Nazarbaev: Kazakhstan's Intellectuals Debate National Identity.” February 7. Accessed July 28, 2015.http://postsovietpost.stanford.edu/discussion/letters-nazarbaev-kazakhstans-intellectuals-debate-national-identity].


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Silverberg

Caught between political allegiance to the Soviet Union and a shared history with West Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) occupied an awkward position in Cold War Europe. While other countries in the Eastern Bloc already existed as nation-states before coming under Soviet control, the GDR was the product of Germany's arbitrary division. There was no specifically East German culture in 1945—only a German culture. When it came to matters of national identity, officials in the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) could not posit a unique quality of “East Germanness,” but could only highlight East Germany's difference from its western neighbor. This difference did not stem from the language and culture of the past, but the politics and ideology of the present: East Germany was socialist Germany.


Author(s):  
Gyorgy Csepeli

Following World War I the empires ruling East-Central Europe were replaced by a conglomerate of small nation-states inexperienced in navigating themselves in the turbulent waters of foreign policy. The paper will deal with the different coping strategies of the individual small nation-states in the newly established international scene dominated by greater powers such as Germany, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Four strategies will be discussed, such as national autism, parasitism, opportunism, and realism.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines decolonization and the changes that took place within the European empires during the early years of the Cold War. Decolonization constituted a crucial element of the new international order after the Second World War and formed part of the broader shift in the global balance of power. The war marked the end of the European-dominated system of nation states and was followed by the decline of the major European powers, with international dominance lying for a quarter of a century with the United States, challenged only by the Soviet Union. The chapter considers the challenges to colonial rule that were evident in both Africa and Asia during the inter-war years. It also discusses the imperialism and the struggles against it that have formed part of a post-war landscape in the Middle East.


Multilingua ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
István Csernicskó ◽  
Petteri Laihonen

AbstractFrom the early twentieth century to the present day, Transcarpathia has belonged to several states: the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and finally to Ukraine. The status of what counts as a minority and a majority language has changed each time the state affiliation has been changed. Based on the long term research by Csernicskó, and on the one-month fieldwork carried out by Laihonen in 2012, our goal is to provide an autonomous critical account and discourse analysis of the linguistic situation in Transcarpathia. We draw examples especially from the linguistic landscape, which documents the hybrid practices difficult to catch with other means. Different nation states have aimed to evaluate certain languages over others. However, Transcarpathia has been too far away from different national centers and it has therefore remained a periphery. In the everyday life of Transcarpathians, ironies around language repertoires, standardization and heteroglossia come into the fore, especially in the current context. Such unexpected linguistic practices or “pre-nationalist” and “non-purist” ideologies offer a change to see how certain categories, such as language, have remained in their hybrid forms and are still clearly “in the making”.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-131
Author(s):  
Vylius Leonavičius ◽  
Eglė Ozolinčiūtė

The Soviet past is crucial in understanding the processes of transformation of the Lithuanian kolkhoz system into the farming practices of free-market economy. The violent and forced incorporation of the nation-states into the Soviet Union radically transformed societies. In our analysis of kolkhoz system and its transformations, we use two different concepts – Soviet modernity and modernity of the Soviet period. These concepts let us to approach the agricultural project of the Soviet collective farming as an alternative system of social institutions for implementation of industrial farming of modern society. The concept of entangled modernity refers to interaction of two trends of modernization and defines the kolkhoz as a hybrid or a result of intertwining of two models of modernity – the universal and the Soviet one. By applying the concept of entangled modernity and hybrids to the interpretation of the kolkhoz’s post-Soviet transformation, the article explores the experiences of social actors and the inevitable human and material losses of the hybrid’s transformation. In our theoretical interpretation, we use data from interviews with former agents of the kolkhoz system and legislative documents.


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