The relationship between religious and national identity in the case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944)

Hitler's coming to power in Germany had its key consequences upon the fate of the German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. The German community in Romania constituted no exception. After 1933, a process of radicalization can be noticed in the case of the Transylvanian Saxons, one of the several German-speaking groups in Romania. The phenomenon has already been analyzed in its political and economic dimensions, yet not so much in its social ones. This article looks at the latter aspect, its argument being that the Nazification of the Transylvanian Saxon community can be best comprehended by using a conceptual framework developed by political scientist Donald Horowitz in the early 1970s. The analysis uses a series of contemporary sources (diaries, issues of the official periodical of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania, Kirchliche Blätter), but also a wide range of secondary sources, academic and literary. Consequently, the article shows that especially after 1933, the Lutheran affiliation, highly relevant for the production and reproduction of the traditional model of Transylvanian Saxon identity, shifted from the status of a criterion of identity to a mere identification indicium. At the same time, the attraction of a (Pan-) German identity, with its Nazi anchors, became stronger and the center of gravity for Transylvanian Saxon identity radically moved towards German ethnicity, in its National-Socialist understanding.     

Transnational networks and kin states: the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, 1878–1940

This paper focuses on the development of national identity and the formation of political organizations in the Turkish minority in the early years of the formation of the Bulgarian state from 1878 to the 1940s. It studies transnational aspects of nationalism, which is usually considered territorially bounded, by studying the impact of connections between the Turkish minority and the Ottoman Empire and later with Turkey. In addition to studying inter-state relations and their reflection in the legal and political sphere, this paper studies the flow of ideas across borders, transnational networks among political activists, and the resulting cleavage formation. Findings show that transnational connections and actors played dual roles. The circulation of political activists, contributed to the formation of national organizations which played a crucial role in (re)formulating national identity. Transnational connections increased political activity in the name of the Turkish minority. Through these organizations the community was able to make collective demands from the Bulgarian state. However, transnational connections carried debates and divisions in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. By dividing the community, they decreased the capacity for collective action.     

The Rise and Transformation of the Radical Right Movement in Denmark, 1980–2015

This article examines the rise and subsequent development and transformation of the new radical right movement in Denmark from 1980–2015. The Danish radical right emerged from xenophobic subcultures as a reaction to increasing immigration during the 1980s and evolved into a social movement of nationalist associations, militant skinheads, and neo-Nazis that attempted to conquer the streets. This attempt was met by an antiracist countermovement, which built up a coalition of left-wing militants and moderate political organizations that put a temporary end to the radical right as a social movement during the second half of the 1990s. However, from 2001 national and international circumstances offered new opportunities for the Danish radical right both in the streets and as a parliamentary voice.     

Vera Zasulich,the shooting of Trepov and the growth of political terrorism in Russia, 1878–1881

Abstract

This article is an analysis of a trial that has been described as the most momentous in the history of Imperial Russia. In January 1878 Vera Zasulich, later a correspondent of Marx and a critic of Lenin, shot at and wounded Fyodor Trepov, the Governor of St. Petersburg; her trial and acquittal a few months later sparked a wave of political terrorism in Russia that culminated on March 1, 1881 in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The article attempts to demonstrate, among other things, that the Trepov shooting was hardly the political act it was perceived to be by contemporaries who were inspired by it to resort to terrorism in an effort to overthrow autocracy. That historians as well have treated the Trepov shooting as “political'’ makes it imperative that this misperception be corrected. The author concludes from a lengthy exploration of Zasulich's motives that, in moral terms, they compare favorably with those of most terrorists today.     

Conflict diamonds and the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002)

Abstract

In the early 1990s several rebel groups turned to natural resource extraction to pay for war. A key form of this is rebel diamond production, commonly referred to as conflict diamonds, which is widely perceived as being highly beneficial to insurgent organisations. Yet in the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002), the use of conflict diamonds by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) resulted in a decisive insurgent defeat. How can this outcome be explained? Offering a nuanced understanding of how conflict diamonds affect civil war, this article shows that although diamonds generated considerable revenue for UNITA, they were not an effective method for them to take on the Angolan government. This was for two reasons: internally, the rebels greatly struggled to convert their diamond proceeds into sufficient goods and services; and externally, it left the group highly vulnerable to international countermeasures in the form of United Nations Security Council sanctions. Natural resource extraction may therefore not be as useful to rebel groups as is frequently believed.     

Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine

The article discusses recent historiography on the Ukrainian famine of 1933, arguing that whereas there is today a consensus in Ukraine that it constituted an act of genocide by Stalin's government against Ukrainians, no such agreement exists in the West. Further, Western works, while they may offer valuable insights and their conclusions notwithstanding, have tended to neglect the national issue altogether. The article demonstrates that national questions remained uppermost in the discussions of party officials about the failure of the 1932 harvest in Ukraine and argues that a more definitive study of the famine would be enhanced by discussion of the disparate views and further use of archival evidence.     

Difference unveiled: Bulgarian national imperatives and the re‐dressing of Muslim women, 1878–1989

Monique Armand and Marguerite Aymard, eds. European Bibliography of Soviet, East European and Slavonic Studies. Vol. IV — 1978. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1983. Pp. 523.

Mary M. Kritz, ed. U.S. Immigration and Refugee Policy: Global and Domestic Issues. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1983. Pp. xxi, 415.

János M. Bak and Béla K. Király, eds. From Hunyadi to Rákóczi: War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary. New York: Brooklyn College Social Science Monographs, 1982. Pp. xiv,545.     

The Critical Movement Against the 2010–2012 Education Reform in Russia: Networks,Organisations and Parties

Abstract

In 2010, Russian authorities presented a new draft law on education, which immediately became controversial. The essay examines whether user groups (parents) and low-ranking sector employees (teachers) were active in the movement critical of the reform, and how the state responded to the anti-reform movement. The movement consisted of several networks and organisations with no central node. It included teachers, parents and activists from both non-systemic groups and systemic opposition parties. Pressure from below by networks and organisations was combined with pressure from actors situated above in the political system, that is, in the Duma. Since the movement was welfare-oriented rather than fundamentally regime-critical, the Russian authorities tolerated open criticism both from civil society and inside the Duma. Some gains for teachers were won, but the movement’s proposed amendments and demands were generally rejected or only introduced in revised form.     

Public–private partnerships (ppps) in global health: the good,the bad and the ugly

Global Health Partnerships (ghps) have become ubiquitous within global health governance (ghg). Even before the onset of the global financial crisis public–private partnerships (ppps) were an omnipresent policy tool in global health and in the current austerity climate ppps have been heralded as an effective way to address a growing resource gap in ghg. Despite their omnipresence, ghps have not received adequate attention from critical scholars; few efforts have been made conceptually and theoretically to grasp how ppps are transforming the logic of ghg. We argue that ghps have contributed to the emergence of a complex global health governance architecture in which private solutions (market mechanism) are generally privileged over public approaches. Drawing on Gramscian conceptualisations of public/private, we suggest that the reshaping of the private and public realm inherent to ppps represents a further deepening of the neoliberal management of individuals and populations, allowing private interest to become more embedded within the public sphere and to influence global and national health policy making. This undermines the attempt to improve global health results as the inequitable distribution of social determinants of health, especially poverty and social exclusion, remain the main barriers to achieving health for all.     

Dismantling the Chinese mini-welfare state?: Marketization and the politics of institutional transformation, 1979–1999

This article presents a systematic examination of the workplace-based welfare system in urban China. During the pre-reform period from 1949 to 1978, most welfare provisions in China were delivered and the majority of welfare spending was spent by workplace units. Since China's market transition started in the late 1970s, this workplace-based welfare system is no longer financially sustainable, and more importantly its functioning constitutes an impediment to the formation of an institutional configuration for a market economy in China. The Chinese government has therefore experienced increasing pressure to reshape this workplace-based welfare system into a genuine welfare state, so as to shift the responsibilities of welfare provisions from individual work units to government bodies. Some institutional arrangements characteristic of welfare pluralism, which emphasize that the state, employers, and individuals share welfare responsibilities, are also incorporated into the newly emergent social welfare system in urban China.     

“Orbiting the Core”: Politics and the Meaning of Dialect in Chinese Linguistics, 1927–1957

In 1956, the Chinese Communist state launched its official language policy, which included the promulgation of a standard spoken language, called Putonghua. Their justification for this policy and their methods for implementation were guided by intellectual and ideological frameworks that formed during decades preceding the policy's rollout. In particular, Communist language reform was predicated on the conceptualization of Putonghua as a holistic language meant to serve the national body—and of local dialects, called fangyan in Chinese, as dependent on Putonghua for their very definition. This article interrogates the history of this framework. Focusing on dialect surveys from the 1930s, Chinese interpretations of Marxist linguistic theory in the early years of the Communist state, and methods of Putonghua promulgation in the late 1950s, this article reconstructs the epistemological regimes that gave meaning to the concept of independence and autonomy as they related to language in modern China.     

Between the Accepted and the Legal: Violence in Honor Disputes in Uruguay (1945–1970)

This article addresses the specific character of interpersonal violence in Uruguay during the second half of the twentieth century (1945–1970). This study tries to establish the relation between self-defense and honor as expressed by Uruguayan law and accepted social codes. Deriving from this relation, the analysis identifies the emergence of a double system for legitimizing the use of violence: the honor disputes stipulated by the law and the observance of accepted and shared sociocultural codes. Walter Benjamin and Max Weber believed that the State had to establish the monopoly on violence as a way of guaranteeing its very existence. Nevertheless, it seems from this analysis that contrary to this assumption, it was from the law itself and the spaces it left open for subjective interpretation that private violence was legitimized. Moreover, this study proposes an approach that contradicts existing research which uncritically assumes the idealized pacific character of Uruguayan society.