In the post-Cold War era, the issues of nationalism, ethnopolitics, and ethnic conflict have been most pressing in the three Transcaucasian states -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia -- and in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation. The Caucasus is extraordinarily diverse, with a...

This article focuses on religious practices among Muslims in the Republic of Georgia today. It considers relations between Muslims and other religious groups; the influence of religion on everyday life in Georgia; the relationship between the religious and national consciousness; and tensions...

This paper discusses why large-scale and sustained violence has not come to Dagestan in the Russian North Caucasus despite many sources of instability, such as territorial disputes, the influence of fundamentalist Islam, and the potential for interethnic violence. It assesses the general risk of...

This paper takes up three related questions: (1) what is the difference between ethnic and religious conflict; (2) are theories of ethnic conflict equally applicable to religious conflict; and (3) can available theories of collective violence explain why the nature of internal conflict changes...

This paper is an anthropological exploration of the concept of place, focusing on a city in Ukraine, which the author identifies as Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre. Globalization and international boundaries magnify the sense of importance of “place†in Chelnochovsk, where there is a strong...

The Great Patriotic War served as a defining moment for the Soviet Union, changing the locus of legitimacy for both regime and individual and also the way that this multi-ethnic state defined itself. The following paper examines the conflict between two men who constructed narratives of this...

The poetry and prose of the literary elite in Tajikistan took part in the strengthening of national myths as well as in the building of a national consciousness in Tajikistan before and after Perestroika. In Tajik literature of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, many defined the image of the...

Russia's defeat in the Crimean War cast new doubt upon the fundamental political traditions, social structures, national myths of the Nikolaevan era. It precipitated wide-ranging reforms, including military reforms, which were predicated on a shift in mentality. This essay examines the new...

Standard narratives of 1989 in Czechoslovakia maintain that the revolution brought two civic associations into being: the “Czech†Civic Forum (OF) and the “Slovak†Public against Violence (VPN). Thorough examination of relevant archival and newspaper evidence, however,...

This paper is an analysis of the politics of public administration reform in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic that examines why, despite the ambition and scope of such reform, its results have been disappointing and sometimes even counterproductive. It examines the genesis,...