No aspect of the Russian–Ukrainian war has proved more unexpected than the revelation that Ukrainian national identity both ethnic and civil is far stronger than almost anyone thought, while Russian national identity is far more fragmented and weak than most expected. That was especially surprising to many because Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on the assumption that Ukrainians are not a “real” nation unlike Russians and that his actions were advancing the interest of what the Kremlin leader chooses to call “the Russian world”. One result of this discovery has been that the Kremlin has had to take Ukrainian identity more seriously. Another has been that it has gone to great lengths to promote Russian national identity via state-controlled media, but the latter effort has come up short because Moscows ability to promote Russian identity is limited by the same three factors that have restricted previous Russian rulers: the fundamental weakness of Russian identity, the tensions inherent between identities the state supports and those it fears, and the reactions of the increasingly numerous non-Russian nationalities to any ethnic Russian identifications.

Do ethnic minority populations cope better with the transition from socialism and subsequent economic decline than Russian majority populations in post-communist Russia? Using multivariate and random-effects models for the 1994–2004 panel data and adjusting for income, urbanization, and crime, this paper demonstrates that the long-standing pattern of Muslim mortality advantage continued to persist during the post-Soviet mortality crisis in Russia. This study suggests that in the ethno-territorial federative system of Russia belonging not to autonomous republics, but to the Muslim ethno-religious communities was significant in resistance to cumulative death crisis during a period of dramatic societal changes. In fact, both living in the Caucasus environment and in the Muslim ethno-religious communities appeared to be significant factors. This study suggests that not only religion, but cultural practices based on ethno-religious and environmental prescriptions may account for collectively healthier practices and, therefore, advantageous mortality outcomes.

This paper explores the effects that different institutional mechanisms for legislative representation have on ethnic diversity in the lower chamber of the Romanian parliament. It uses an original data set to examine representational outcomes generated by a combination of proportional representation and reserved seats provisions. The findings highlight the benefits that Romania’s choice of electoral rules generated for smaller minority communities and limitations that these rules impose on the nature and extent of legislative representation of large minority groups. The paper provides evidence for qualifying the scholarly support in favour of proportional representation. It also draws attention to potential trade-offs between communal representation and ethnic inclusiveness of main political parties that the use of special mechanisms for minority representation might encourage.

Several theories of nationalism argue that ethnic and regional cultural heterogeneity are a source of conflict and alienation in a state, and therefore impede nation-building. This article tests this assertion with respect to ethnic and regional differences in Ukraine. Using a 2001 mass public opinion survey developed by the author, the article engages in bi-variate and multivariate statistical analysis of the relationship between perceived ethnic and ethno-regional diversity in Ukraine and various measures of national identity and national unity. The results of this analysis suggest that subjective cultural differences in Ukraine do not substantially undermine national identity, but they do weaken national unity.

In his recent article, Söderlund [Söderlund, P.J., 2003. The significance of structural power resources in the Russian bi-lateral treaty process 1994–1998. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36, 311–324] tests structural factors that influence the order in which the Russian regions gained a bi-lateral agreement with the federal centre, emphasizing the importance of ethnicity, religion and economy. We replicate his results, and provide an extension where we argue instead that the only significant determinants of the bi-lateral process have been economic issues. Our results are substantiated by an improved methodology that addresses several debatable choices made by the author in the original article.

The essay concentrates on Russian studies of ethnicity and identifies substantialist and relational approaches to studying ethnicity in international relations. Substantialists see the impact of ethnicity as the main organizing force of international politics and view the states as principally ethnocentric units, driven by ambitions of large ethnic groups. In their turn, relationists question these assumptions and seek to depoliticise the notion of ethnicity. Rather than concentrating on states or large ethnic groups in international politics, they take an individual as the main unit of analysis and argue that ethnicity is a choice, not a destiny. The author sees both substantialism and relationism as actively developing in Russia and associates progress in the field with further development and cross-fertilization of the two ideas.