The general picture of early Soviet nationality policy has been one in which Moscow embarked on an inexorable path of centralization immediately after 1917. While there is much truth to this portrait it ignores the persistent rivalries within local party organizations and among the non-Great Russian nationalities. Bashkiria in the years 1917-23 is a case in point. The struggles over the creation and development of a Soviet Bashkiria touched off an intense round of acrimonious conflicts there and in Moscow among Great Russian, Bashkir, and Tatar cadres that was only resolved by the imposition of centralized authority during the twenties. The significance of this experience lies not only in its typifying the complex mosaic out of which Soviet nationality policy evolved, but also in the profound impact the question of Bashkiria had for the development of the Sultangalievist national deviation in the middle twenties.

The leader of the Iranian Revolution Āyat Allāh Rūḥ Allāh Khumaynī has strongly condemned what he considers had been a slavish imitation of the West under the overthrown Pahlavī dynasty and coined the neologism Gharbzadagī (literally “Weststrickenness”). He has called for a cultural as well as political emancipation from Western dominance. So far this emancipation has not extended to a purification of the Persian language from the numerous French loanwords which had entered it during the last sixty years. Thus the newspaper Jumhūrī-i Islāmī (“Islamic Republic”) has the subtitle Urgān-i Ḥizb-i Jumhūrī-ī Islāmī (“Organ of the Islamic Republican Party”). Urgān is of course French organe. Even more striking is the use of the term kumītah or komiteh by the revolutionary committees, usually presided by Muslim clergy, which have taken over the functions of local government in Iran. Again, kumītah is the French comité. While not many Iranian mullahs know French, or any Western language, they cannot be unaware of the Western origin of these words. We should not be surprised therefore if in the near future we witness a movement to expel from the Persian language the Western loanwords, most of all from official terminology. Most likely they will be replaced by words of Arabic rather than pure Persian origin in view of the regime's identification with Islam rather than ancient Persian culture.

The concepts of “reform” and “revision” need considerable elaboration before a systematic study of their political ramifications can be undertaken. Common usage in the West seems to indicate that “reform” in communist systems means change towards political pluralism, less ideology, and greater participation by the citizenry in political communication, aggregation, and decision-making. “Revision” and “revisionism,” which are essentially communist concepts, are also interpreted to indicate a process of “loosening up” the autocratic, bureaucratic, and ideological nature of contemporary political and socio-economic systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Trieste is located at the extreme end of the northern coast of the Adriatic, where the arm of the sea reaches most deeply into the European continent. By its position Trieste is thus a part of Central Europe no less than of the Mediterranean area — if we take into account the fact that the distance between Vienna and Trieste is less than that between Trieste and Rome. On the other hand, Trieste is in an area where the Apennine peninsula meets the Balkan, where for millenia two cultural spheres have been juxtaposed: the Eastern — Greek, Byzantine and Slavic — and the Western — Latin, Romance and German. The complexity of the geographical and cultural circumstances is further increased by the national heterogeneousness of the inhabitants, Italians and Slovenes. Italians predominate in the town, Slovenes in the countryside.

The impact of modernization is seen by scholars as one of the main problems met by minority communities. Essentially, it is similar to the main problem of ecology, which deals with the impact of modern means on natural environment, whereas the former studies the impact of such means on traditional cultures, which should be preserved for the future. Case studies are interesting here, as these problems have many sides, and new description may open new views or confirm old ones. This is all the more true if we are lucky enough to have quantitative data.

The purpose of this study is to throw light on the past economic performance of six members of Comecon — Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania — and to assess their prospects for the future. Economic problems of Eastern Europe must be placed in a broad historical perspective containing crucial ideological, political, strategic and technological factors affecting economic functions and processes. Interaction of these factors is expressed within the framework of modernization, the forces of which exert a powerful influence on economic activities.

What happened in Poland in the early 1980s is fascinating in many respects. The possibility of changing the Communist system in a peaceful manner was once again tried without much success, this time by the mass movement of industrial workers, with some additional help offered by intellectuals. The importance of these events should be fully recognized. As Persky states, “For the first time, a workers' state had been forced to concede to its workers, among other things, the ironic right to form their own working class organization to defend themselves from the workers' state.” According to Ascherson, the success of Polish workers in setting up permanent representation beyond the control of the Party was a major achievement. In this respect the events of 1980/81 differed substantially from all previous workers' uprisings in eastern Europe.

This essay concentrates on the psycho-sociological and socio-cultural aspects of relations among ethnic groups in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region, especially between Slovenes and the other ethnic groups. Therefore it will not deal with the following two points: the ethno-minority problem of the Slovenes in Italy in demographic and ecologic terms (such as, for example, the number of members in a specific group, their territorial dislocation, etc.), or the problem of their socio-professional relations and of their institutional structures (such as, the distribution of minority group members in the professional stratification, the existence of economic, political and cultural structures within the minority groups, etc.).

If one may judge by Soviet political humor on Radio Armenia, the so-called “socialist internationalism” among the many nationalities in the USSR has reflected less than a perfect “friendship of peoples” in the past: Question: What is the “friendship of peoples”? Radio Armenia: It's when an Armenian takes the hand of an Uzbek, an Uzbek that of a Latvian, a Latvian that of a Russian, a Russian that of a Kazakh, a Kazakh that of a Ukrainian, and then they all go and beat up a Georgian.

Dissent in the USSR has become a phenomenon which cannot be ignored either in the West or in the USSR. The authorities in the USSR, though upset, are compelled to recognize the existence of dissidents in the country and the troubles they cause. The attempts to stifle dissent which are mainly in the form of harsh and repressive measures undertaken by the authorities generally fail to achieve the desired results. The dissidents according to circumstances prevailing change the tactics of their struggle, but the phenomenon of dissent — the resistance to the regime — continues.

The colonial dependence of nations and their arbitrary de-nationalization in our time can neither be approved nor tolerated by democratic countries. It is also impossible to speak of human rights in countries where basic freedoms do not exist, and one basic human right is the right of every nationality to independence. Nevertheless, colonial-imperialistic relations continue to exist in today's world, and a glaring example is in the USSR.