The deterioration in Russian-Ukrainian relations heightened in 2014 but did not begin then and has deeper roots. Both Russian presidents have had troubled relations with all five Ukrainian presidents irrespective if they were described as ‘nationalist’ or ‘pro-Russian.’ This article is the first to explain why the roots of the crisis go deeper and it does this by investigating three areas. The first is the different sources of elites in 1991 when independent Russia captured Soviet institutions and undertook top-down state building while Ukraine inherited far less and set course with bottom up state-building. The second is divergent Russian and Ukrainian national identities. The third is the resultant different transitions with Russia reverting to great power imperial nationalism and Ukraine quadruple and post-colonial transitions.

This paper analyses Georgians’ popular online discourses on Europeanisation in the period between Georgia’s initialling and signing of the Association Agreement with the EU (November 2013–June 2014). It investigates the ambivalence encountered by Georgians: Despite their long-lasting aspiration towards EU integration, hopes of gaining political security, economic stability, and cultural integration are accompanied by doubts and fears of asymmetric power relations, diminishing national sovereignty, and declining national identity. Despite these doubts, EU integration is considered to be the only right choice for the country, encouraging Georgians, who readily perform their pro-European aspirations on the international “front stage”, to push their uncertainties and respective national sentiments to the domestic “backstage”.

Looking at how divided states competed against each other in the arena of citizenship since 1949, this research observes a number of common trends. The German and Chinese case studies manifested a shared trend in large part because they faced comparable challenges and responded with similar citizenship strategies in their quest for national legitimacy and diplomatic recognition. The policy effectiveness depended on the intensity of inter-state rivalry, the Cold War diplomacy, and the global nationality trends. The tight bipolar system and the strong international cooperation on nationality in Europe (among the socialist and non-socialist blocs) explain why both German states were in more favourable circumstances in asserting their citizenship claim. These two aspects are missing in the Asian context, which explain the absence of the role of the international community in legitimising or supporting the Chinese citizenship rivalry. This paper concludes that citizenship policies in the two German states were shaped in response to one another. As compared to the German case, the Chinese and Taiwanese policies exhibited a more pragmatic and independent character.

This paper attempts to create an overview of the Ukraine twenty years after independence by presenting prevailing conceptual narrative models of Ukraine employed by Ukrainian and foreign experts. Based on the analysis of 58 interviews of Ukrainian political and intellectual elites and foreign experts, the study revealed several categories of conceptual narrative models employed by respondents: (1) a state without a national idea and a common identity; (2) a country in an unfinished transition and degradation; (3) a divided society; and (4) Ukraine as a colony or “wild capitalism”. The analysis of these categories helps to assess conflict potential in Ukraine and discuss some ideas for conflict prevention and resolution.

This article is the first to study the positive correlation between nationalism and democratic revolutions using Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution as a case study. The Orange Revolution mobilized the largest number of participants of any democratic revolution and lasted the longest, 17 days. But, the Orange Revolution was also the most regionally divided of democratic revolutions with western and central Ukrainians dominating the protestors and eastern Ukrainians opposing the protests. The civic nationalism that underpinned the Orange Revolution is rooted in Ukraine’s path dependence that has made civil society stronger in western Ukraine where Austro-Hungarian rule permitted the emergence of a Ukrainian national identity that was stymied in eastern Ukraine by the Tsarist empire.

Many scholars stress that teaching about the shared past plays a major role in the formation of national, ethnic, religious, and regional identities, in addition to influencing intergroup perceptions and relations. Through the analysis of historic narratives in history textbooks this paper shows how the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine uses state controlled history education to define their national identity and to present themselves in relations to each other. For example, history education in Ukraine portrays Russia as oppressive and aggressive enemy and emphasizes the idea of own victimhood as a core of national identity. History education in the Russian Federation condemns Ukrainian nationalism and proclaims commonality and unity of history and culture with Russian dominance over “younger brother, Ukraine”. An exploration of the mechanisms that state-controlled history education employs to define social identities in secondary school textbooks can provide an early warning of potential problems being created between the two states.

The structure of the requirements for citizenship in a Romanian city differs by and large from the structure of the same requirements in other European cities. The peculiarity lies in the lack of distinctiveness between the origin, the ethnic aspect and the civic aspect of citizenship and also in the emphasis on the language requirements for citizenship. The explanations could be traced back to the previous century and to the cultural and political project of state and nation-building. But the importance assigned to the national identity and national sovereignty issues in Romania may affect the European integration by hindering the feelings of European belonging and solidarity.

This article, using contemporary Kyrgyzstan as a case study, examines how state weakness is both reflected and reinforced at the citizens’ level. Based upon field research conducted in April and May 2007, we discuss three hypotheses. First, the inability of the state to provide essential goods and services and has deterred citizens’ willingness to fulfill their responsibilities such as paying taxes, respecting the laws, and serving in the army. Second, citizens have lost trust in their regime; some directly confront the state by joining demonstrations, strikes, and other protest activities. Finally, state weakness has negatively influenced the feeling of collective membership and reinforced sub-national identities. Declining loyalty is particularly evident among the citizens who have left the country in the prospect of better employment abroad.

Independent Kyrgyzstan has inherited the Soviet school system, including vospitaniye as an essential part. Soviet social policy was driven by the belief that building communism partly depended upon the creation of the ‘‘Soviet man.’’ Such an individual would demonstrate unwavering commitment to aims of the October Revolution, and desire to undertake the technological and scientific training required to achieve collective purposes. The resulting social cohesion among like-minded individuals would thus reinforce the economic and political aims of the USSR. A primary institutional location for the creation of such individuals was the secondary school, formally organized to achieve two distinct but equally important goals: the transmission of formal knowledge ( obrazovaniye ) and the process of social upbringing ( vospitaniye ). This paper first considers the critical nature of vospitaniye as an aim of the USSR, an aim typically underestimated in the current discourse of reforming post-Soviet schools. It then suggests contemporary dilemmas voiced by practicing educators in several Kyrgyz schools who are still charged with social upbringing, but in a climate where the ideals and values upon which vospitaniye was initially created appear no longer viable.

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.

The essay argues that Western scholars can improve their understanding of the post-Soviet Russia by studying the discipline of new Russian international relations (IR). The other objective of the essay is to move away from the excessively West-centered IR scholarship by exploring indigenous Russian perceptions and inviting a dialogue across the globe. The essay identifies key trends in Russian IR reflective of the transitional nature of Russia’s post-Soviet change. It argues that Russian IR continues to be in a stage of ideological and theoretical uncertainty, which is a result of unresolved questions of national identity. For describing Russia’s identity crisis, the authors employ Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma defined as a crisis of a larger social acceptance by Russia’s ‘‘significant other’’ (West). The essay suggests that, until this crisis is resolved, much of Russian IR debates can be understood in terms of a search for a national idea. It also introduces the authors of the issue and summarizes their contribution to our understanding of Russian and Western IR.

The article discusses, through conceptual elaboration and empirical investigation, the interplay between the perception of smallness and the concept of national identity in the case of Slovenia’s integration into the European Union. Unlike the prevailing literature on Slovenia, the authors do not take Slovenia’s smallness for granted. They argue that, in the particular case of Slovenian identity-building, smallness as an independent variable does not feature frequently at all. The research is based on methodological pluralism, with a special emphasis on political discourse, the mass media and public opinion in Slovenia