With the end of the Cold War, the Great Game in Central Asia has heated up once again. Once more, Central Asia has become a place for international rivalry. But this time the Great Game is not between Britain and Russia. In this second half of the Great Game, Turkey, Russia, Iran, India, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Israel are all vying for influence. China, the key player, however, is left out of the game in most accounts and is overlooked as a Central Asian power. Moreover, it is forgotten that China won the first half of the Great Game, at least as far as Xinjiang is concerned. It is my contention that China will catch everyone by surprise once again and win the second half of the Great Game in Central Asia; the Uighurs of Xinjiang will play a predominant role in this victory.

Nationalism became the bane of the Soviet empire. The disintegration of the USSR due to nationalistic forces has occurred with a swiftness that few, if any, Western Sovietologists anticipated. The four Central Asian states, with high rates of population growth and a strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, now acquire a new significance. Of these Uzbekistan, with a population of twenty million, seventy percent of whom belong to the titular national group, looms largest in terms of demographic and economic potential. The population of Uzbekistan is almost twice as large as the other nascent Central Asian nations combined, and despite severe ecological damage, produces almost two thirds of the cotton in the region, along with natural gas, gold and other minerals.

The official interpretation of the histories of the nations of the USSR emerged between 1934 and 1953 on the basis of decrees signed by Stalin and/or the Central Committee. This interpretation subsumes the histories of the non-Russian Republics within the “history of the USSR” that begins not in 1917 or 1922 in Moscow, but in prehistoric Asia. The official view recognized the non-Russian nations and republics as separate historical entities, yet imposed upon their pasts a Russocentric statist framework while denying the Russians a separate history of the RSFSR. Within this scheme the history of non-Russian nationalities before they became part of the tsarist state was built around the idea of “oppression” of “the people” and their “struggle” against native and foreign ruling classes. Russian and non-Russian “working people” were assumed always to have been “fraternal” while non-Russian political leaders, before and after incorporation, were judged according to their sympathy and/or loyalty to Russia. Russian political and cultural tutelage of non-Russians was stressed and activists in nineteenth-century national movements were labelled “reactionary” if they were not radical socialists. Official historiography admitted that non-Russians suffered political and cultural oppression but not economic colonialism under tsarist rule. In keeping with the logic of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia, the official view argued that tsarist economic development was “progressive” for non-Russians because it centralized production and tied “outlying regions” of the empire to the world market. Accordingly, the non-Russian “national bourgeoisie” were “reactionary” because both threatened the integration supposedly demanded by the forces of production. By contrast, during the twenties and the thirties, Russian/non-Russian relations in the Tsarist Empire were presented in terms of Lenin's Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Historians argued that tsarist centralism impeded the development in non-Russian provinces and that “national liberation movements” were “progressive” responses to Russian economic colonialism.

“In modern or transitional societies, politicized ethnicity has become the crucial principle of political legitimization and delegitimization of systems, states, regimes and governments.” While accepting Rothschild's formulation in general, most political analysts did not expect it to be realized in the USSR so soon in its variant of “delegitimization.”

The concept of “Western Ukraine” is not entirely a static one. As a valid unit of historical analysis it first appears in the late eighteenth century, when the Habsburg monarchy added Galicia (1772) and Bukovina (occupied 1774, annexed 1787) to its collection of territories; already part of the collection was the Ukrainian-inhabited region of Transcarpathia (depending on how one counts, it had been Habsburg since as early as 1526 or as late as the early eighteenth century). Of course, one can also read back certain features unifying Western Ukraine prior to the 1770s, such as the culturally formative influence on all three regions of the medieval Rus’ principality, later kingdom, of Galicia and Volhynia, as well as the presence of the Carpathian mountains, which was much more than a matter of mere geology (hence the Russophiles’ preferred name for Western Ukraine—Carpathian Rus'). Still, in the centuries prior to their incorporation into the Habsburg monarchy, the three regions had experienced such disparate political histories—Galicia as part of Poland, Bukovina of Moldavia, and Transcarpathia of Hungary—that there is little validity in treating them then as a historical unit.

The aim of this article is to analyze changes in the ethnic structure in the Baltics. The publication of the results of the 1989 Census data allows one to analyze the dynamics of ethnic structure in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania since the 1920s. The restoration of the de jure independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia allows one to describe accurately the factual ethno-demographic situation, because it has made available information which could not be published openly in the former USSR. Nevertheless, a major problem is posed by territorial alterations, especially in Lithuania.

There is certainly some sound logic in the observation by Trivimi Velliste, the former Foreign Minister of Estonia: “The safer Estonians feel about their independence, the more convinced they are that no one will enslave them again [and] the more likelihood they will be more generous [about Russians in Estonia].” The sad conclusion of this article is, however, that the gain of Estonians’ security has not given way to a spirit of generosity but to a more restrictive and irrational citizenship policy.

Getting a fix on Estonians’ state of mind was difficult in the years before and after September 1991. The runup and aftermath of independence produced what an observer in Estonian Life called a “psychic rollercoaster”—euphoric hopes, long periods of boredom, and moments of sheer terror as Soviet agents struck hard at Baltic independence. Earlier years of collective obedience training had produced the effect of psychic numbing. In the 1990s Estonians dared to think and feel.

The intractable war in Yugoslavia, the breakup of Czechslovakia, the nationalist rumblings in Hungary and Romania, and manifestations of imperial and nationalist longings in Russian politics signify nationalism's enduring potency in Central and Eastern Europe. While some foreign observers worried about this potency, the new elites largely believed that liberalism in power could overcome those forces. Liberal democracy's triumph supposedly meant the end of History, inter alia, aggressive nationalism in Eastern Europe. They believed that these national liberation movements had cooperative, mutually supportive relationships that would flower after Communism ended. Nationalist discords were due to Eastern Europe's previous historical post-1914 nightmares, but the new post-1989 states would have amicable relations with their neighbors. Ostensibly, nationalism, once freed from Soviet repression, would bring an end to Soviet rule and usher in a new ‘springtime of nations.'

Albania, founded at the Congress of Vlora on November 12, 1912, has a far more homogeneous national population than its neighboring states in the Balkans. The Sixth London Conference of the great powers in 1912–1913 ruthlessly divided the territories inhabited by Albanians. The conference fragmented more than half the territories inhabited by ethnic Albanian regions as follows: in the east and the northeast—Kosova, Dibra, Ohri, Struga and Pollugu up to Shkup (Scoplje); in the north—Tivari, Ulqini, Tuzi, Plava and Gucija; and in the south—Camerija. These lands, with an autochthonous Albanian population, were annexed by Serbia, Montenegro (in 1918 by the new Yugoslav State) and by Greece in 1913. Thus, the borders of Albania were confined to an area of 28,748 square kilometers and a population of a little more than 800,000.

During the last three years, extensive academic as well as public discussions of national minorities’ rights have taken place in Poland. Scholars can be roughly divided into a pro-national minorities rights group and an anti-national minorities rights group. Some strive to reconcile these two disparate positions. Similar groups can be found in the Sejm (Polish Parliament) which has been discussing the draft of a law on national minorities since Autumn 1993. This brief article investigates the situation of national minorities in Poland ever since a “specific” policy towards ethnic minorities was carried out in Poland by communist governments (though it focuses primarily on the German minority). It also reviews changes in the official policy of the Polish government, the Sejm, and assesses the prospects for the adoption of a Minorities Law, by discussing the major arguments of those groups proposing national minorities rights and those of its opponents.