In this special issue, our contributors move the academic conversation beyond methodological nationalism and approaches that analyze far-right movements only within their respective state contexts by interrogating the circulation of ideologies, funds, and people across sociopolitical boundaries. Our goal is to scrutinize the far right in post-communist Eastern Europe by examining the multitudinous and multidirectional ties that exist between groups at the local, regional, national, and transnational levels. Attention, moreover, is paid not just to those factors that facilitate such linkages, but also to the obstacles that hamper these flows via various detours, omissions, and other forms of resistance. In this introduction, we offer a theoretical overview and discussion of contributors’ findings to argue that conduits for the dissemination of far-right discursive frames are hardly unidirectional in nature. As a result, the transitological narratives of progress and regress typically invoked to explain the emergence of the far right offer only a partial understanding of how it mobilizes, builds alliances, and circulates ideas. We unpack the conceptual pitfalls and fallacies of transitological narratives and instead foreground the concept of multidirectionality, which opens up new avenues through which to understand how far-right groups mobilize and disseminate their narratives.

This essay focuses on analyzing the history of the evolution of the nationalist memory narrative in recent memory politics in Ukraine. It observes the political rehabilitation of the radical nationalist movement and its leaders and organizations, followed by public recognition and glorification, and the evolution of this memory narrative since the beginning of the 1990s from local memory to the centerpiece of the state politics of memory. This article examines the memorialization and commemoration of the nationalist movement at regional and national levels (sites of memory, memorial dates, renaming of topographical objects, movies, TV series, etc.), policies aimed at the promotion of the nationalist historical myth, political controversies, roles of major actors, public debates on these issues, societal responses, and international disputes.

Existing studies on legal approaches to ethnic minority representation often highlight different systems’ strengths and weaknesses. While this scholarship provides important insights into the growing body of literature on minority representation, the topic remains largely under-theorized. Because systems of ethnic minority representation clarify the organizations and philosophies of diverse states, more theoretical analyses can enrich the descriptive literature. Building on the existing scholarship, this article assesses Romania’s particular version of proportional representation regarding designated national minorities. It applies two theoretical models: (1) institutional activism and (2) ethnic intermediation. The former clarifies the establishment of Romania’s post-communist constitutional provisions regarding minority organizations, and the latter explains how small yet influential minority populations make claims to and reallocate resources from the Romanian state. Through a unique, understudied case study – the Armenian community of Romania – this article attempts to broaden ethnic minority representation scholarship by refining the theoretical frameworks of institutional activism and ethnic intermediation.

In the second decade of the 21st century, the practices, discourses, and implications of nation branding have attracted growing interest from scholars in the humanities and social sciences seeking to understand the linkages between national identities, reputations, governance, and the phenomenon of nation branding. This strand of critical research, as opposed to instrumentalist approaches, is the focus of this review. In line with the scope of the journal, the review looks at nation branding research that relates to the countries of the former communist bloc. The analysis finds that the state of the field is fragmented due to its multi-disciplinary nature. It is also argued that the field may be suffering from methodological nationalism. The discussion identifies epistemological and theoretical approaches, pointing out gaps and limitations along the way. It is suggested that research in the field can be grouped into “identity studies” and “practice studies” as a way to better understand key theoretical influences. Finally, it is proposed that future research should look at nation branding both as a field of practice that merits critical examination in its own right and as a lens that can be used to investigate changes in the state of nationhood today.

Why do some post-communist countries regularly experience democratic overturn of power while others do not? This article analyzes the role of authoritarianism, adopting a novel approach concentrating on three separate dimensions (authoritarian submission, conventionalism, authoritarian aggression). Examining Montenegro, a country that has not changed its incumbent government since the breakdown of communism, the article argues that authoritarian submission, which stands for an obedient relationship to a political authority, is a relevant factor for the domination of a single party—the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS). I test my assumptions using two surveys: the Montenegrin National Elections Study (2016) and a self-designed student survey. Notwithstanding the Montenegrin and Serb ethnic cleavage and economic preferences that remain significant for voting patterns, findings from both analyses confirm that submissive tendencies are important for voting behavior both for the national sample and for the educated young. This emphasizes the importance of psychological factors and the need to break submissive mindsets for successful democratic transformation in post-communist countries.

Social movements are not completely spontaneous. On the contrary, they depend on past events and experiences and are rooted in specific contexts. By focusing on three case studies – the student mobilizations of 2011 and 2013, the anti-government mobilizations of 2012, and the protests against the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation project of 2013 – this article aims to investigate the role of collective memory in post-2011 movements in Romania. The legacy of the past is reflected not only in a return to the symbols and frames of the anti-Communist mobilizations of 1989 and 1990, but also in the difficulties of the protesters to delimit themselves from nationalist actors, to develop global claims, and to target austerity and neoliberalism. Therefore, even in difficult economic conditions, Romanian movements found it hard to align their efforts with those of the Indignados/Occupy movements. More generally, the case of Romania proves that activism remains rooted in the local and national context, reflecting the memories, experiences, and fears of the mobilized actors, in spite of the spread of a repertoire of action from Western and southern Europe.

Post-Communist Europe has not chosen to imitate the Truth and Justice or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions set up on several other continents. The notion of reconciliation with the Communist regime is not of much interest to certain political parties, many of which are rooted in the protest against the compromises that were part of the negotiated revolutions. The model admired by post-Communist countries was the one conceived by the Germans. Almost all the countries founded specific institutions – institutes – for managing memory, with archives located in these institutes. Some have archives that date from before World War II to 1990; they handle both totalitarianisms. What is feared is that through the game of partisan appointments, these institutes will become little more than instruments in less than honest hands for use in political contests. This is especially likely given that the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) employees perform several functions: classification, prosecution, and evaluating individual applicants to certain administrative positions. The specialized literature usually explains the trials and tribulations of Poland's IPN in terms of the personalities of its different directors and the period in which each occupied that post. In this paper, we have verified this hypothesis.

Over the last three decades a great deal of research has been carried out in an attempt to explain the electoral performance of radical right parties in Europe. Most approaches concentrate on demand-side determinants and have some limitations. We compensate for these shortcomings and focus on the context of party competition and supply-side determinants (consistency of ideological discourse, functioning party propaganda, the continuity of the leader in office and strong party organization) to explain the electoral success of radical right parties in post-communist Europe. We conducted our analysis at party level in nine radical right parties in four countries from Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania) between 1990 and 2014. The bivariate and multivariate (ordinal logistic regression) analyses draw on unique data collected from primary and secondary sources.

We examine cooperation with the state using a series of survey experiments on policing conducted in late 2011 in Moscow, Russia, where distrust of the state is high and attempts to reform the police have been ineffective. Through various vignettes that place respondents in situations in which they are the witness or victim of a crime, we experimentally manipulate crime severity, identity of the perpetrator (whether the crime is committed by a police officer), monetary rewards, appeals to civic duty, and the opportunity cost of time spent reporting. Of these factors, crime severity and identity of the perpetrator are robustly associated with a propensity to report. Our research design and results contribute to a large literature on cooperation with the state by examining variables that may be more salient or function differently in countries with weak institutions than in developed democracies.

In the 25 years since the re-establishment of Baltic independence from the Soviet Union, there has been no conclusive public conversation, or “coming to terms with the past” with respect to crimes against Latvian and other persecuted groups under Communism. This paper examines how national politicians, members of the European Parliament in Brussels, representatives of Latvia's Russian-speaking minority, and the Russian government have engaged in a difficult, long-overdue conversation. Conflicting historical narratives about victimhood are at the heart of these disagreements. Special emphasis is given to Latvia's historical narrative, its development over the past 25 years, and the way it challenges Russia's interpretation of history. I argue that Latvian memory politics at the European level are a continuation of Latvia's quest for acknowledgment of its victimhood, thereby trying to finish the process started in the late 1980s when Balts first demanded acknowledgment of human rights violations they had suffered under the Soviet regime. Latvia's methods of transitional justice are examined, arguing that its memory politics at the European level are an extension of steps taken at the national level to come to terms with the past and to increase its negotiating power against Russia's neo-Soviet historical narrative.