According to the generally accepted view that nationalism is alien to communism and that internationalism disallows divisions based on nations, the existence of national communism is often interpreted as a sign of the breakup of the world communist movement. This book reexamines the evidence on the role of nations and national variations, beginning with Marx and moving through Leninism and Stalinism to Titoism, Maoism, Castroism, and current national liberation movements (e.g., in Nicaragua). Professor Zwick concludes that nationalism has always been an inherent element of communism. He demonstrates with numerous concrete cases that, rather than signaling the decline of communism, national adaptation is the source of its strength. The limits of national variation as defined by the Brezhnev Doctrine are precisely defined and examined in the cases of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The book bridges the gap between Marxist theory and communist practice with respect to the central role that nationalism will continue to play in the contemporary world. No other study presents this material in a cross-national, comparative perspective.

In this study, Bennigsen and Wimbush trace the development of the doctrine of national communism in Central Asia and the Caucasus. At the heart of this doctrine—as elaborated by the Volga Tatar, Mir-Said Sultan Galiev—was the concept of "proletarian nations," as opposed to the traditional notion of a working class. With such ideological innovations, Sultan Galiev and his contemporaries were able to reconcile Marxist nationalisms and Islam and devise an "Eastern strategy" whereby the national revolution was to be spread. The authors show that the ideas of Muslim national communism persist in the land of their birth and have spread to such developing societies as China, Algeria, and Indonesia. This doctrine is an important factor in the ideological split and increasing tensions between industrial and nonindustrial nations, East and West, and now North and South, which grip the world communist movement.

The Jewish Communist Workers' Party, the Poale Zion, provides a unique perspective on the question of how Marxism and the early Soviet Union dealt with issues of nationalism. According to Bolshevik ideology, when anti-Semitism disappeared in the new Socialist society, Jews would assimilate. In reality, such assimilation would be a very long, slow process. The Poale Zion supported the socialist struggle against oppression and exploitation of classes and nations, but it called for the formation of an international organization that would recognize the right of Jews to emigrate freely to Palestine and work for the creation of a democratic republic where people could retain their national identities and have both autonomy and representation in the union. Gurevitz analyzes the Soviet Poale Zion as representative of Jewish communism as nationalism in its purest form, and he traces the complex contradictions between Jewish nationalism and the Communist ideal of assimilation in the early years of the Soviet Union.

Contains a collection of 34 declassified National Intelligence Estimates and memoranda representing the United States Intelligence Community's most authoritative analysis of Yugoslavia, spanning four decades from the 1948 break with the Soviet Union until 1990 and the eve of the nation's collapse.

There are two popular myths concerning the relationship between communism and nationalism. The first is that nationalism and communism are wholly antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The second is the assertion that in communist Eastern Europe nationalism was oppressed before 1989, to emerge triumphant after the Berlin Wall came down. Reality was different. Certainly from 1945 onwards, communist parties presented themselves as heirs to national traditions and guardians of national interests. The communist states of Central and Eastern Europe constructed "socialist patriotism," a form of loyalty to their own state of workers and peasants. Up to 1989, communists in Eastern Europe sang the national anthem, and waved the national flag next to the red banner. The use of national images was not the exception, but the rule. From Cuba to Korea, all communist parties attempted to gain national legitimacy. This was not incidental or a deviation from Marxist orthodoxy, but ingrained in the theory and practice of the communist movement since its inception. The study of communist national legitimacy is an exciting new field. This book presents examples of communist attempts to co-opt nationalism from both sides of the iron curtain and lays bare the striking similarities between such diverse cases as the socialist patriotism of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the national line of the Portuguese communists, between Romanian communist nation building and the national ideology of the Spanish Communist Party. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.

This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia’s obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression. The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian ‘imagined community’ came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.

The most comprehensive study of Romanian politics ever published abroad, this volume represents an effort to collect and analyze data on the complex problems of Romania's journey from sultanistic national communism to a yet-unreached democratic government.

Arabs make up approximately 20 percent of the population within Israel's borders. Until the 1970s, Arab citizens of Israel were a mostly acquiescent group, but in recent decades political activism has increased dramatically among members of this minority. Certain activists within this population claim that they are a national and indigenous minority dispossessed by more recent settlers from Europe. Ethnically based political organizations inside Israel are making nationalist demands and challenging the Jewish foundations of the state. Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel investigates the rise of this new movement, which has important implications for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a whole. Political scientist Oded Haklai has written the first book to examine this manifestation of Palestinian nationalism in Israel. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with key figures, Haklai investigates how the debate over Arab minority rights within the Jewish state has given way to questioning the foundational principles of that state. This ground-breaking book not only explains the transitions in Palestinian Arab political activism in Israel but also presents new theoretical arguments about the relationship between states and societies. Haklai traces the source of Arab ethnonationalist mobilization to broader changes in the Israeli state, such as the decentralization of authority, an increase in political competition, intra-Jewish fragmentation, and a more liberalized economy. Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel avoids oversimplified explanations of ethnic conflict. Haklai's carefully researched and insightful analysis covers a neglected aspect of Israeli politics and Arab life outside the West Bank and Gaza. Scholars and policy makers interested in the future of Israel and peace in the Middle East will find it especially valuable.