Ethnicity and Nationalism in East Central Europe and the Balkans

This is a companion volume to Ethnicity and Nationalism in Russia, the CIS and the Baltic States. It brings together scholars from the UK, Poland, Slovakia, Belgium, Greece Bulgaria and the USA to examine the legacy left by decades of communist rule and to assess the importance of the revival of ethnicity and nationalism for the fate of the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and of the Balkans as they approach the millennium. A wide range of viewpoints are presented on the key issues of national identity, state formation, nationalist ideology and the issue of territorial and ethnic identity. Different theories are outlined and differences and similarities in the process of nation building discussed. The latest research findings are presented and Western readers are offered insights via a series of comprehensive studies of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Croatia and Albania. As with its companion volume, this book demonstrates the difficulties of creating modern nation states in war-torn ex-Yugoslavia or in the post-communist countries of East-Central Europe.