Starting from 2015, the Russian-speaking residents in Germany have expressed their anti-refugee position in the form of rallies and rising voting support for the right-wing populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Due to the absence of social cues, unlimited space, immediate responses, and minimal censorship online, platforms for communication have reflected the offline mobilization and became the major platforms for the spreadability of discriminatory discourse. This article sets out to investigate why Russian-speaking internet users residing in Germany justify anti-refugee discourse and how they construct the notion of “others.” Based on the netnographic analysis of the chosen online discussions and conducted interviews with its members, this article argues that, with the appearance of new “others,” Russian-speaking migrants have redefined their symbolic boundaries in order to draw the line between the incoming migrants and themselves—people with a migrant background. In many ways, participants of the analyzed discussions employed the politicized civilizational rhetoric that allowed them to redefine existing categorizations. This research explores, for the first time, the reasons lying behind the online populist activity of the Russian-speaking residents in Germany.

Popular publications produced in Russia on the events in the Balkans in 1877–78 offer a valuable opportunity to examine how the historical and political background of the Russo-Turkish War was conveyed to common readers, some of whom were potentially involved in the military action, or persuaded to support the cause by other means. The conceptions produced and distributed in these booklets were firmly based on pan-Slavistic ideas of Russians’ duty to help their “Slavic brothers.” The publications presented the reader with propagandistic images of Turkish enemies, which were compared to Islamic enemies of the Russian national narrative. The result was persuasive and simplified imagery leaning on dualistic representations of ethnic groups and graphic depictions of violence, effectively justifying Russia’s involvement in the events and taking a stand in the internal issues concerning Muslim minorities, too.

This study analyzes circumstances tied to the implementation of the Dayton Agreement’s provision for the reunification of Sarajevo. Three months after the signing, Sarajevo was again a united city territorially, but pre-war inhabitants of Sarajevo who identified themselves as Serbs were almost entirely absent from the reunited town under the control of the Federation government. This article addresses the causes of the flight of the Serbs, who had been living in Sarajevo’s suburbs before the start of the Bosnian war and stayed, in their view, to defend their homes. I argue that the incentives that led a majority of Sarajevan Serbs to leave the city and its surroundings were the result of actions not only of the Serb leadership but also of Bosniak leaders and the international community. Our analysis is complementary to the scholarship examining the impact of massive population migrations and displacement in the aftermath of conflicts. I analyze the dynamics of Sarajevo’s unification within the Federation and its consequences, demonstrating that once a partition is accepted at a higher level, it is almost impossible to prevent its emergence on a local level.

Why do some post-communist countries regularly experience democratic overturn of power while others do not? This article analyzes the role of authoritarianism, adopting a novel approach concentrating on three separate dimensions (authoritarian submission, conventionalism, authoritarian aggression). Examining Montenegro, a country that has not changed its incumbent government since the breakdown of communism, the article argues that authoritarian submission, which stands for an obedient relationship to a political authority, is a relevant factor for the domination of a single party—the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS). I test my assumptions using two surveys: the Montenegrin National Elections Study (2016) and a self-designed student survey. Notwithstanding the Montenegrin and Serb ethnic cleavage and economic preferences that remain significant for voting patterns, findings from both analyses confirm that submissive tendencies are important for voting behavior both for the national sample and for the educated young. This emphasizes the importance of psychological factors and the need to break submissive mindsets for successful democratic transformation in post-communist countries.

As elsewhere in Europe after the First World War, the Balkans went through a process of “paramilitarization.” Unlike the rest of Europe, there existed a strong indigenous paramilitary culture originating from the time of Ottoman rule. In the interconnected, harsh political realities of victorious Yugoslavia and vanquished Bulgaria, both states and their political elites resolved to create new paramilitary formations. While in the case of Yugoslavia and its Organization Against Bulgarian Bandits there was a resurgence of an older style paramilitary formation, in Bulgaria leading figures of the ruling Bulgarian Agrarian National Union decided to create the Orange Guards—a completely new paramilitary formation based on the existing structure of their party. The common denominator for both formations was the threat posed by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization for security, territorial integrity, and the normal development of both states. As in most cases of paramilitary formation, their existence and actions were followed by violence, often marked by extreme brutality. Both the agrarian regime and Orange Guards perished in the violent summer of 1923, when a carefully planned and executed coup d’état ended the agrarian revolutionary attempt to transform Bulgarian society. The Organization Against Bulgarian Bandits, under the new name of Peoples Self-Defense, continued to function throughout the existence of the Yugoslav kingdom.

Drawing on a post-structuralist, post-Marxist discursive approach to nation, this paper aims to (1) explore the constitutive elements of the national ideology of Polish ultras, (2) study what means of expression are used in their choreographies in order to disseminate their vision of the nation, and (3) map the events that stimulate the production of choreographies related to national issues. The study is based on the content analysis of ultras’ displays using data from a print fanzine devoted to football fandom culture in Poland. The results indicate that the national ideology of Polish ultras can be viewed as a resistance ideology. They also reveal that the national ideology of ultras is only presented in particular contexts and is not a dominant issue in their performances. The study introduces the concept of occasional nationalism, which can be a useful analytical tool to map and quantify the presence of nation in practices of articulation of a particular community.

The cult of death and the celebration of martyrdom lay at the core of interwar fascist movements across the European continent. However, it was in the Romanian Legionary Movement (also known as the Iron Guard) that these were articulated into a full-fledged ideology of thanatic ultranationalism. In this article, I examine the spectacular fascist necropolitics staged as state-sponsored funeral performances during the short-lived National Legionary State (September 14, 1940–February 14, 1941). A detailed description of the massive campaign of exhumations and reburials of the so-called “legionary martyrs” carried out during this short time span, culminating with the grandiose ceremony organized for the reburial of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on November 30, 1940, provides insight into the legionary thanatic worldview and ritual praxis. It also sheds light on the movement’s politics of commemoration, death, and afterlife and shows how these were embedded into a religious framework underpinned by theological concepts such as heroic martyrdom, vicarious atonement, and collective redemption.

In our article we examine changes experienced by media and memory systems in Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. Using as an example a popular Russian blogging platform, LiveJournal, we scrutinize how the digital practices related to commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany are influenced by the growing instrumentalization of Second World War memory for media propaganda and manipulation. Using topic modeling to analyze a large set of data on Russian users’ interactions with the platform, we examine how hegemonic and alternative interpretations of the Second World War interact on LiveJournal and how their interactions are influenced by the growing antagonism between Russia and the West. Our findings suggest that LiveJournal constitutes a fractured memory system, which is characterized by uneven representation of Second World War experiences and the growing influence of pro-government actors promoting hegemonic war narratives. However, our observations also show that instrumentalization of the past in the context of the Ukraine crisis does not necessarily interfere with digital practices of Second World War commemoration with the latter remaining unaffected by the events in Ukraine.

This article explains a normative political theory of asymmetrical federalism as it relates to the accommodation of national minorities within multinational states, using Cyprus as a case study. Many normative prescriptions emerging from traditional liberal and federal political theories and models rest on monist assumptions; therefore, there is a need to highlight the cultural and national limits of those theories and models in order to attain a democratic system in Cyprus that respects and promotes its bicommunal structure. It is suggested that multinational federalism in Cyprus necessitates constitutional asymmetry, which is likely to provide a basis for political accommodation. The article also demonstrates the necessity of multinational federalism to accommodate common and distinct identities by promoting a fuller understanding of the concept of “federal togetherness” and “federal separateness.” Such an understanding would better enable asymmetrical federalism to properly and feasibly adjust and regulate federal institutions in Cyprus.

This article assesses Russian strategic narratives towards its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014–16) based on a new database of 50 statements posted on the websites of the Russian Mission to the United Nations and the President of Russia homepage. By looking more broadly at Russian strategic narratives aimed at persuading other global actors and publics abroad and at home, this article identifies how Russia attempted to develop a story that could win global acceptance. This analysis shows that contrary to traditional Russian emphasis on sovereign responsibility and non-intervention, Russia supported claims for self-determination by separatist groups in Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used deception and disinformation in its strategic narratives as it mis-characterized these conflicts using Responsibility to Protect (R2P) language, yet mostly justified its own interventions through references to other sources of international law. Russian strategic narratives focused on delegitimizing the perceived opponents, making the case for the appropriateness of its own actions, and projecting what it proposed as the proper solution to the conflicts. It largely avoided making any references to its own involvement in the Donbas at all. Additionally, Russia’s focus on the protection of co-ethnics and Russian-speakers is reminiscent of interventions in the pre-R2P era.

Since 1990 Lithuania has been claiming that what happened there during Soviet occupation is genocide, as per the 1948 Genocide Convention, which embodies universal justice for suppressed nations and other groups. Due to Soviet actions in Lithuania throughout the periods of 1940-1941 and 1944-1990, the country lost almost one fifth of its population. The application of Lithuanian national legal regulations regarding this issue has been recently discussed in the framework of another postwar international legal instrument – the European Convention of Human Rights (1950). The goal of this article is to examine the main debates, which were revealed by the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Vasiliauskas v. Lithuania (2015) and Drėlingas v. Lithuania (2019), regarding the killings of Lithuanian partisans, including the recognition of the significance of partisans for the Lithuanian nation, the foreseeability of genocide “in part,” as well as the punishment for complicity in killing Lithuanian partisans.