The European Union, the post-communist world, and the shaping of national agendas by Zsuzsa Csergo and James M. Goldgeier Department of Political Science The George Washington University Washington, D.C. USA Paper prepared for the European Union Studies Association 9th Biennial Conference, March 31-April 2, 2005, Austin, Texas. The authors thank Katherine Arcieri, Elizabeth Franker and Tigran Martirosyan for their research assistance. Many of the assumptions made by Western scholars and policymakers about the future of nationalism in an increasingly integrated Europe have missed the mark. One widely held assumption has been that democratization and transnational integration will render nationalism irrelevant. Accordingly, if Europeans want to deepen integration, they have no choice but to turn their continent into a cultural "melting pot" in which individual rationality will drive peoples' choices regarding cultural identity, language, and other ethnic issues. Another broadly shared assumption has been that, if nationalism remains salient, it will likely turn violent or at least deeply conflictual. Despite the violence associated with the breakup of Yugoslavia, however, the story of post- communist Europe since 1990 belies both of these assumptions. Europe changed dramatically after 1990. The transitology literature in comparative political science focused on regime changes in Central and Eastern Europe: from communism to democracy and from state-governed economies to the market. International Relations theorists meanwhile turned to the meaning of the breakdown of the entire post-World War II bipolar international order. But after 1990, nationalism's dramatic appearance has also been an important story. The collapse of all three federative states in the former communist sphere along the national principle and the creation of nearly two dozen new states demonstrated the power of the national principle. Yet nationalism did not turn violent in most cases, and in some cases it became an important driving force behind governments' efforts to cooperate in order to join Europe's major supra-national entity, the European Union. Examples for the "cooperative" face of nationalism include the behavior of the Baltic states toward national minorities and the so-called Friendship Treaties that Hungary and its neighbors signed. Instead of either fading away or causing violent conflict, nationalism in Europe has demonstrated an amazing range of adaptability as it meets with the requirements for successful transnational integration. The force and popular appeal of nationalist demands reveals that nationalism constitutes a significant element of continuity in this region. At the same time, the end of the Cold War and the promise of European integration altered the conditions under which nationalists could articulate their interests. What has changed in Europe is that governments and other political actors that design national agendas are no longer operating in an exclusively state-dominated environment. At the end of the Cold War, the European Union played a role unique in the history of world affairs, creating a novel form of political interaction on the continent. Between a disintegrating Soviet empire and an integrating Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europeans had opportunities for pursuing national agendas that had not existed previously, and they also had severe constraints on the types of agendas they could pursue if they wanted to be accepted in the new Europe. In an enlarged European Union, the fundamental challenge is how to harmonize the principles of state sovereignty with the practice of multiple nation-building within and across state borders. The form of nationalism that most powerfully highlights the paradoxes of the cohabitation between nationalism and integration in Europe is what we define as trans-sovereign nationalism or "virtual nationalism" of governments and minority national actors. Transsovereign nationalism shares the traditional emphasis that political organization should occur along national lines; but instead of forming a nation- state either through territorial changes or the repatriation of co-nationals within its political borders, the national center creates institutions that maintain and reproduce the nation across existing state borders. This type of nationalism is not specific to the post- communist world in Europe (witness, e.g., Austria's 1979 law toward German-speakers in South Tyrol or Ireland's policies across the border in Northern Ireland). Nevertheless, the dramatic shifts in territorial borders that Central and Eastern Europe has experienced in its recent past and its complex ethnic demography, create fertile grounds for trans- sovereign nationalism in this region. As Andre Liebich writes, "West European political and linguistic boundary changes over the centuries have been moderate compared to those in East Central Europe. . . . The implications of these historical processes are significant, for both majorities and minorities in East Central Europe. . ." Most ethnic and national minorities in this region have neighboring kin-states— i.e., states in which their ethnic kin compose a titular majority. A growing interest emerged among the governments to adopt policies that would support the preservation of national identity and aim to contribute to the fostering of relationships between a kin- state and those outside this state who define themselves in some sense as co-nationals. The Constitutions of several states, such Albania, Croatia, Hungary, and Macedonia, contain commitment to care for the wellbeing of kin living abroad. Several governments, such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Slovakia adopted legislation to provide benefits to co-nationals living abroad. Moreover, many governments in the region juggle the dual roles of home state and kin state, which leads to a lack of coherence in their approach to state sovereignty. As home state governments, the new regimes after 1990 aspired to demonstrate to domestic audiences their ability finally to assert state sovereignty after decades of satellite status in the Soviet camp. Many of these governments also aimed at reinforcing state sovereignty over internal minorities that challenged "titular" notions of nationhood and demanded pluralist constitutions and in some cases even autonomy. As kin states, however, the same governments contribute to the weakening of state sovereignty by designing policies toward "kin abroad" that are citizens of other states. The complex matrix of nation-building goals indicates that the dynamics of the relationship between kin-states and their allies and competitors in Europe fundamentally challenge traditional notions of state sovereignty. In response to this challenge, the officials of European institutions that pursue integration have begun designing a common set of norms to accommodate competing national strategies while continuing to uphold the international doctrine of state sovereignty. From the beginning of post-communist transformation, the primary goal of these institutions was to assure security and stability on the continent. The crises in the former Yugoslavia demonstrated the high costs of not finding viable solutions to questions of multinationalism, especially in situations that involve kin-states, and the decade of the 1990s witnessed a remarkable growth in the adoption of international documents of minority protection. An underlying goal of these documents has been to compel governments in Europe to protect minority cultures on their territory, making it unnecessary for minority leaders to seek assistance from kin- state governments, and for kin-state governments to seek involvement in the fate of their "external minorities." Contrary to those expectations, however, kin-state activism in Central and Eastern Europe has increased despite a substantive improvement of minority rights in most societies in this region and the fact that most Central and Eastern European societies are now either part of the EU (or expect to join in the near future). The purpose of our paper is to advance the understanding of this phenomenon. First, we outline the types of kin- state strategies that have emerged as popular in the region, with a particular focus on benefit laws and citizenship laws. We then turn to an analysis of the Hungarian case, which has been seemingly the most consistent and coherent virtual nationalism policy as well as the most controversial one, attracting a great degree of attention from policy- makers in the region, European officials, and scholars of nationalism. Finally, to gain further insight into the differences on the spectrum of virtual nationalism, we discuss the strategies pursued by Romania and Russia. Kin-state strategies in post-communist Europe Kin-state strategies involve policies designed for members of ethnic or national minorities living abroad and broadly speaking have two goals: 1) the strengthening of co- ethnic communities abroad (culturally, socio-economically, institutionally) and 2) supporting/encouraging cross-border interaction (social, economic, cultural). The strategies governments use to accomplish these goals vary and include bilateral treaties with minority protection clauses (e.g., the Friendship Treaties that Hungary signed w/Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia; others in the region); kin-state efforts to influence international law, especially European law, in the direction of minority protection (especially during the debate over the European Constitution); benefit laws that provide various educational, cultural, and economic benefits to ethnic kin; and citizenship laws that provide opportunities for citizenship to ethnic kin living abroad. In the context of trans-sovereign (virtual) nationalism, our discussion focuses on benefit laws and citizenship laws, because those constitute more direct modes of kin-state engagement with "external minorities" than either bilateral treaties signed by neighboring governments or kin-state efforts aimed at influencing the content of international law. Benefit laws A number of countries in the region have adopted benefit laws. The Slovene parliament, for example, adopted a resolution in June 1996 that defined Slovenes in Slovenia and historic Slovene communities as part of "a common Slovene cultural zone" and specified those regions where ethnic Slovenes are "aboriginal" (historic) communities. This resolution provides subsidies for the activities of non-governmental organizations (sports, cultural, research, educational) that cooperate with Slovene minorities abroad, and establishes a state secretarial position and funding to coordinate policy and related activities of various Slovene ministries. The Slovak parliament adopted a benefit law in 1997 for "Slovaks living abroad," providing for a Slovak identification card based on ethnicity, issued by the Slovak Ministry of Culture. Benefits include educational opportunities, employment in Slovakia, transportation (for the elderly and handicapped), and residency in Slovakia without the usual permit needed. The following year Romania adopted a benefit law that provided for a budget to be used at the discretion of the prime minister and established a Ministerial Council for the Support of Romanian Communities Around the World (i.e., not just those in neighboring states), which is a consultative body made up of representatives from various ministries, including those for foreign affairs, cultural affairs, national education, finance, and religious affairs. The primary benefit is free higher education in Romania. As for Hungary, the parliament adopted a benefit law in 2001, and then amended this law in 2003. It provided benefits on the territory of Hungary (transportation, education, museums, libraries, health care, initially short-term employment eligibility), and it included regulations for benefits on the territory of these minorities' home states. Hungarians in neighboring states (excluding Austria) can apply for Hungarian ID cards as well as tuition for Hungarian children who study in Hungarian schools in their home country. As the discussion below will demonstrate, the adoption of the Hungarian Status law emerged as a particularly significant moment in the broader story of kin-state activism in Europe, triggering vehement reaction even in some of those neighboring states that themselves had already adopted benefit laws (Romania and Slovakia) but whose governments adamantly opposed the Hungarian law. The controversy over this law also engendered the first articulation of common "European norms" on kin-state policy. Two days after the adoption of the law, the Romanian prime minister turned to the European Commission for Democracy through Law, created by the Council of Europe (known as the Venice Commission), requesting that the Commission investigate the compatibility of the Hungarian law with European and international norms, primarily regarding states sovereignty. In the process, the Hungarian Status law became a lightning rod in the European debate over kin-state policy. For the first time, a European institution conducted a serious comparative evaluation of kin-state legislation and issued recommendations. The Venice Commission compared the following kin-state laws: the 1979 Austrian law on South Tyrolians, the 1997 Slovak law on Slovaks abroad, the 1998 Romanian law on Romanians around the world, the 1999 Russian law on co-nationals abroad; the 2000 Bulgarian law on Bulgarians abroad; the 2001 Italian law on Italian minorities in Slovenia and Croatia, and the 2001 Hungarian Status law. In its report, the Commission argued that international legal practice places the responsibility for minority rights on the states where the minorities reside, but the international community is in charge of monitoring whether states fulfill that duty. The best means for kin states to pursue their interests is through bilateral or multilateral agreements with those states in which co-ethnics reside. The Commission considers unilateral legislation for kin abroad appropriate only if the laws respect the principle of state sovereignty; ensure good neighborly relations; and uphold the principles of basic human rights and non- discrimination. On Hungary itself, the Commission recommended that there should be bilateral agreements to ensure acceptability of the use of benefits, that the kin state may not appoint organizations on the territory of another state to act on its behalf, and such laws should only be unilateral if all bilateral means have been exhausted without success. The norms against discrimination and extraterritoriality were later reinforced also in the evaluation of the law by a special rapporteur of the European Parliament. Citizenship laws Citizenship laws that become elements of kin state policy either provide preferential naturalization for those co-ethnics who want to repatriate to the kin state or grant citizenship for those who do not reside in the kin-state or do not currently want to move there. During the Cold War, for instance, the West German state provided preferential naturalization to ethnic Germans who requested "repatriation" on the basis of ethnic belonging from then-communist Eastern European countries. This policy resembled traditional nationalist efforts to create congruence between the boundaries of state and nation. The granting of citizenship to non-resident ethnic kin, however, emerges as an important policy in the repertoire of transsovereign nationalism. In Western Europe, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden are among the countries that grant citizenship without repatriation, resulting in situations of dual or multiple citizenship. As part of an effort to establish a common legal framework for such situations, the Council of Europe formed an expert commission on Multiple Citizenship in 1992 that was later renamed Citizenship Expert Commission (CJ-NA). The feasibility study that this commission recommended resulted in a European Convention on Nationality in November, completed in 1997. This Convention essentially legitimized the diversity of approaches that states take on the question of multiple citizenship, stating that "Each State shall determine under its own law who are its nationals" and that "each state is free to decide which consequences it attaches in its internal law to the fact that a national acquires or possesses another nationality." In Central and Eastern Europe, Croatia was the first country to use citizenship law as a measure to connect external kin to the state. In 1993, the Croatian government granted citizenship rights to all 4 million ethnic Croatians living abroad. In May 2003, Romania changed its citizenship law to grant citizenship to those who held Romanian citizenship before December 22, 1989 or their descendants who lost their citizenship involuntarily, regardless of whether they intended to repatriate to Romania. The following month, Moldova lifted its constitutional prohibition on dual citizenship and in little more than a year, more than fifty thousand Romanians in Moldova had received Romanian citizenship. Of these, thousands voted in the highly contested Romanian elections of 2004. Once again, what was a fairly low-key event in other countries became a viciously divisive debate in Hungary and among its neighbors, but the question of whether Hungarian minorities living in the neighboring states should be eligible for "dual citizenship" led to failed popular referendum in December 2004, because an insufficient number of people showed up to vote. We turn now to a more comprehensive analysis of Hungarian kin-state policy followed by discussions of the Romanian and Russian approaches, in an effort to explore the question of how variation in context and political actors engendered different dynamics in these cases. How Hungary becomes a special case The parliament of Hungary adopted the so-called Status law, officially named the "Law Concerning Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries," number LXII in June 2001, attracting significant attention from policy-makers in the region, European officials, and scholars of nationalism. As we have seen, the adoption of a kin-state law in Central Europe was by no means a revolutionary event, since other European governments, such as the Austrian, Italian, Croatian, Romanian, and Slovak, had already passed legislation that granted various forms of preferential treatment and benefits to their kin living in other states. The specific (tangible) benefits that the Hungarian law granted were also not dramatically different from those that had already been available for Hungarian minorities through existing forms of support. From 1990, Hungarian governments had established a range of institutions (governmental agencies and government-sponsored foundations) to link Hungarians living in neighboring countries to Hungary and encourage them to remain Hungarian "in their homeland," in regions and settlements that ethnic Hungarians had historically inhabited. The underlying logic of the Status law was consistent with the strategy, begun in 1990 and continued by all consecutive Hungarian governments that aimed to assure that Hungarians in the Carpathian basin maintain and strengthen their Hungarian language and culture, and improve their socio-economic status. Through a complex set of indirect and direct methods, all Hungarian governments sought to facilitate "Hungarian-Hungarian" interaction across the borders, and also to influence neighboring states' policies toward Hungarian minority institutions in a way that would weaken state "ownership" and strengthen the control of Hungarian minorities throughout the region over minority institutions of cultural reproduction. The expression most often used for these goals in Hungarian political discourse was the "virtualization" of state borders. The Status law merely articulated the "spirit" of this strategy in a more explicit and comprehensive form, by officially declaring that the approximately 2.5 million Hungarians living in the states of Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine are members of the Hungarian "nation," culturally defined. The law also outlined a comprehensive legal framework for linking members of this nation to each other across state borders, and thereby strengthening their economic and cultural status. If the adoption of a kin-state law was neither a rarity in Europe nor a dramatic shift in Hungary's kin-state strategy, then why did this particular piece of legislation receive so much international attention? While some analysts have argued that it reflects a promising post-modern nation-building strategy, others believe the law is dangerous, not only to the region but to the entire Westphalian state system. An obvious source of regional and international interest in this law was that its adoption brought Hungary's relations with at least two of its neighbors, Romania and Slovakia, to a low point at a time when all of these countries were lined up to join the European Union, and that these neighbors brought the case of the Status law to European institutions for arbitration. (It is important to note that Ukraine and Slovenia expressed remarkably little anxiety over the law, and Croatian officials even expressed agreement with it. Of the two states that brought formal complaints against Hungary to the European Union and the Council of Europe, Slovakia had passed a kin-state law in 1997 that included many of the same benefits for which Slovak officials vehemently criticized the Hungarian law, and Romania had adopted a kin-state law in 1998. The vehemence of the opposition to the law on the part of the Romanian and Slovak governments can be explained by the dynamics of nation-building strategies in the region in the aftermath of the communist collapse. The Hungarian effort to "virtualize" political borders was highly problematic in an area where neighboring states continued to place strong emphasis on maintaining their territorial sovereignty, which in many cases was newly acquired. The legacies of past relationships between Hungarians and their neighbors—a history of dominance and subordination followed by reversals of fortune—contributed to Romanian and Slovak perceptions that the Status law was merely a guise for the desire to reincorporate territories and "imperial" ethnic kin that Hungary had lost through the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. Hungarians are a formerly dominant group in the neighborhood and may be using EU integration to reclaim their earlier position. The largest and politically best organized Hungarian minority populations reside in Romania and Slovakia. Although only Slovakia was newly established in the aftermath of the Cold War, both of these states were governed for the better part of the first post-communist decade by political elites that opted for a centralized unitary nation- state model and adopted cultural policies that antagonized their minority populations. Under such circumstances, Hungarian minorities became subjects of two conflicting nation-building strategies: In their home states, majority nationalist governments designed institutional means for their cultural assimilation. In Budapest, consecutive kin- state governments designed means to help them maintain their Hungarian culture. The Status law defined "Hungarians living abroad" as primarily external minorities of their kin state. The Romanian and Slovak opposition to the law defied this definition and upheld the position that Hungarian minorities are these states' internal minorities. Beyond its obvious implications for territorial sovereignty, the question whether Hungarian minorities should behave as external or internal minorities, raises a great number of other issues, including the proper source of governmental responsibility for supporting minority culture and equal access to resources. The special attention that European institutions have accorded to the Hungarian Status law can be explained in the context of the dominant security and stability framework after the Cold War. Finding a common European answer to the question whether the Hungarian minorities should be considered primarily internal or external national minorities was less important from this perspective than assuring that the governments in conflict resolved their disputes peacefully. The essence of this approach was best articulated in the Pact on Stability in Europe signed in 1995, which stated that "The objectives of stability will be achieved through the promotion of good neighborly relations, including questions related to frontiers and minorities, as well as regional cooperation and the strengthening of democratic institutions." Although post-Cold War European norms placed increasing emphasis on the principles of cultural diversity and minority protection, they continued to uphold states' sovereignty over their cultural policies. The duality in the European approach that promotes minority protection while upholding state rights is evident in the text of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities that the Council of Europe adopted in 1995 and is today commonly considered a major achievement as the first legally binding international tool for minority protection. On the one hand, the Convention specifies a number of minority rights and requires states to preserve and support minority cultures (even if it consistently refers to "persons" and "individuals" rather than groups that would benefit from such rights). On the other hand, the Convention emphatically reaffirms the primacy of the principle of state sovereignty in this domain, declaring: [N]othing in the present framework convention shall be interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity or perform any act contrary to the fundamental principles of international law and in particular of the sovereign equality, territorial integrity and political independence of States. On these grounds, Western European actors consistently advocated policies that relied on bilateral agreements between a minority's home state and kin-state, coupled with accommodative domestic minority policies adopted in the minority's home state. Clearly, the unilateralism of the Status law challenged the dominant European approach to kin-state issues. In its October 2001 report about the law, the Council of Europe's Venice Commission restated the principle that kin state laws are acceptable only if they do not violate territorial sovereignty, and that one state's extraterritorial provisions are only acceptable with the consent of the other state concerned. The same message was evident in the report issued by Eric Jürgens, a rapporteur that the European Parliament appointed to evaluate the Status law. The scale of the law's potential impact on neighborly relations in the region was another source of concern. Seven states neighboring Hungary include ethnic Hungarian populations, and five of these states were newly established after the collapse of communist federations. Unsurprisingly, Western governments were particularly active in the mid-1990s in facilitating Hungary's "Friendship treaties" with its neighbors. Realizing the importance of such treaties, the Hungarian governments signed bilateral treaties with Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria even before the EU made the bilateral resolution of minority issues a pre-accession criterion in 1994. Hungary's treaties with Romania and Slovakia (which also began as early as in 1991) were the most difficult to conclude, as these two neighbors had the combination of large and politically highly organized Hungarian populations and governments that pursued a traditional (culturally homogenizing) nation-state strategy. By the time the Status law was adopted in 2001, Hungary had successfully concluded its bilateral treaties also with these two neighbors and made substantive progress toward European Union accession. The adoption of the Status law in the absence of bilateral agreements on its legitimacy and the response from Romania and Slovakia highlighted the precariousness of good neighborly relations based on the Friendship treaties. Another reason for international interest in the Status law was that the law's architects framed it as a uniquely progressive resolution of the Gellnerian dilemma (i.e. the incongruence of the political and national boundaries) within the EU framework. The ultimate goal was for all of Hungary's neighbors to join the EU (as Austria, Slovenia, and Slovakia have already done) at which point the Hungarian nation, while spread across state boundaries, will be under one supra-national Union roof. Viktor Orban said in 2001 as prime minister: I am convinced that the [Status Law] contains a number of novelties judging even by European standards and it also outlines a Hungarian concept about the Europe of the future. During the time of de Gaulle, the French thought that the European Union has to be a union of states belonging to Europe. During the time of Chancellor Kohl the Germans came to the conclusion that the Union has to be a Europe of regions. And now, we Hungarians have come up with the idea that the Europe of the future should be a Europe of communities, the Europe of national communities, and this is what the [Status Law] is all about. Despite such tempting reasons to view the Hungarian Status law as a unique articulation of national aspirations, we take a comparative approach to this law, with the purpose of understanding the nature of the form of nation-building that it represents. In the following section, we compare Hungary's nation-building efforts abroad with those of Romania and Russia. Romania was one of the harshest critics of Hungary's Status Law and has sizeable kin communities abroad that could be the focus of a more robust Bucharest-centered transsovereign strategy. Russia is a former imperial power, and like Hungarians in places like Transylvania, Russian minorities in the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union are often viewed as "imperial minorities." Each of the three states has pursued virtual nationalism to different degrees, and the extent of the differences manifested themselves primarily in the degrees of coherence in the kin-state's policies, the demand for support by minorities in the neighboring states, and the role of the EU and the new norms in Europe in shaping state strategies. At the time of its adoption, the Hungarian Status law was seemingly the most coherent articulation of virtual nationalism and also a case in which a kin-state policy reflected broad consensus in the national center and responded to, or at least was in line with, overwhelming demand by kin minorities. To be sure, there were strong disagreements in Hungary over the necessity of such a framework law as well as harsh debates about the political motives behind the Orban government's insistence on adopting this law without proper consultations either with neighboring governments whose citizens the law targeted or with leaders of the European institutions that were supposed to accommodate the law. Evidence indicated that large segments of the Hungarian political elite and public did not support important provisions of the law. Numerous Hungarian minority leaders expressed criticism of the law. Yet its adoption with an overwhelming majority of the votes (93 percent) in the Hungarian parliament in June 2001 projected a high degree of consensus at least about the main purpose of the law, which was to provide support for Hungarian minorities in the neighboring countries. The high number of applicants for Hungarian certificates indicated that the legislation responded to significant demand. In Romania, 700,000 cards were issued by mid-July 2003. These numbers suggest that a significant part of the ethnic Hungarian population outside of Hungary maintains a concept of shared Hungarian nationhood despite the separation of these territories from Hungary after 1918. With a new government after the 2002 elections, the new Hungarian parliament adopted an amended version of the law in June 2003. Hungary and Romania signed an agreement that ensured among other things that any petitioning, approval, processing and use of the Hungarian ID card had to occur on the territory of Hungary, and meanwhile Romania would acknowledge educational benefits by Hungary for ethnic Hungarians on its territory. The next phase of the Hungarian trans-sovereign project is the current debate about whether the Hungarian state should grant dual citizenship to Hungarians abroad. Besides raising significant questions about the relative coherence of the Hungarian transsovereign national strategy, this debate also highlights the way particular domestic and regional contexts and actors interact in defining acceptable and legitimate meanings of "nation" and "citizenship." What was acceptable and relatively uncontroversial in the case of Croatia and Romania again became deeply divisive in the case of Hungary. The fierce disagreements that opposing political elites have voiced in this debate in Hungary and within Hungarian minority communities abroad demonstrate that the nation- building process can be divisive not only between national boundaries but also within the nation that it attempts to integrate. The strategy to construct a unified Hungarian cultural nation in the Carpathian basin assumed away significant differences (regional and otherwise) that continue to assert themselves in the process and affect the effort to create a coherent policy. Dual citizenship as a solution had been raised before the drafting of the status law, but no one took it seriously either in Hungary or among Hungarian abroad. At first, individual intellectuals in Hungary raised it as a liberal solution based on the notion of univeralism, claiming that there should be no borders between those who like to produce and consume Hungarian culture. Then the World Alliance of Hungarians (a Budapest- centered NGO that nonetheless includes representatives of parliamentary parties in Hungary, of minority Hungarian parties outside of Hungary, of diasporas abroad, and other important personalities) raised it primarily as a "moral compensation" for Trianon, i.e., to compensate the Hungarian minorities that had suffered discrimination during decades of communism, yet maintained their identity. In 2000, before the Status law debate in parliament, a survey of Hungarians in Romania, commissioned by the Hungarian minority party leadership (that was not in favor of dual citizenship!) showed strong popular support for dual citizenship at a time when Romania did not look like a very likely candidate for EU accession, and ethnic Hungarians in Romania were afraid that the Schengen borders would permanently lock them out of Europe. The Orban government opted for a comprehensive benefit law instead (the Status law) primarily because of fears that citizenship might give added incentives to ethnic Hungarians to repatriate to Hungary, and thereby weaken those communities they would leave behind, leading to even faster assimilation among ethnic Hungarians in those states. The most influential voices in the Orban leadership claimed that institutional autonomy for Hungarian minority communities where they live and dual citizenship would exclude each other; and that autonomy is a better way to assure Hungarians' ability to maintain themselves as "complete social structures" as minorities than dual citizenship. The only organization that remained wedded to the dual citizenship idea was the World Alliance of Hungarians, which in August 2003 began collecting signatures for a public referendum. By July 2004, a sufficient number of signatures had been collected, which by law required parliament to hold a referendum. The Hungarian government (the Socialist party in alliance with Free Democrats) led the "no" campaign by publishing frightening (and unsupported) figures about the potential costs of dual citizenship and rushed to design an alternative proposal that it coined "Homeland Program Package." The package would provide for a Hungarian passport without citizenship and a "Homeland fund" to help these neighboring Hungarians thrive in their homeland. FIDESZ (the formerly governing party that had designed the Status law) then jumped off the fence and led the "yes" campaign. Its smaller ally, the MDF, called on Hungarians to vote "yes," arguing that voting "no" would send the message to Hungarians abroad that they are unwanted in Hungary, excluded from the Hungarian nation. Voting "yes" would then force parliament to do what it should have already done. What made the issue more divisive was that the political parties of Hungarians outside of Hungary were also forced to take a stand, regardless of whether they had been inclined to do so initially. After all, it was about their potential dual citizenship. The responses that Hungarian minority political elites gave reflected differences in their conditions and thus their interests. Hungarians in Vojvodina and in Ukraine are the communities currently most affected by the prospects of the Schengen border, as Romania is expected to join the Union in 2007 or 2008, Croatia is also likely to join around the same time, and the other neighbors are already EU members. Hungarians in Vojvodina and Ukraine are also the weakest Hungarian communities, with those in Ukraine the poorest, and they comprise only about 160,000 people. Those in Vojvodina number about 300,000 and currently live in daily fear, as anti-Hungarian harassment and criminal activities (such as random beatings of Hungarians, desecration of their cemeteries and sites) occur, a situation under investigation by the Council of Europe. As expected, the most enthusiastic proponents of Hungarian dual citizenship were the Hungarian parties in Vojvodina. Ethnic Croatians in Vojvodina, as well as ethnic Serbs who live in Croatia, hold dual citizenship (Serbian and Croatian), and their Croatian citizenship allows them to travel freely to Hungary—something that ethnic Hungarians are not allowed to do. In Ukraine, because the Ukrainian constitution does not allow for dual citizenship, the Hungarian parties in Ukraine would have to have the constitution amended. Of the two largest and most resourceful communities—the Hungarians living in Romania and Slovakia—those in Slovakia are already in EU members, and those in Romania expect to join in 2007. The Hungarian Coalition Party in Slovakia did not support dual citizenship until the Hungarian government began opposing it and FIDESZ supported it. The Hungarian party in Romania (RMDSZ) has been wary of the negative consequences of dual citizenship (it provides an incentive for ethnic Hungarians go move to Hungary). Still, as public opinion surveys indicated overwhelming support among constituents, the leadership began issuing statements that a "yes" vote was necessary, because Hungarians needed preferential treatment in citizenship policy The majority of the citizens of Hungary, however, jumped on neither wagon. They could not say "no," did not want to say "yes," and in the end stayed home. Only 37.5% of those eligible to vote did so, with nearly 19% of those eligible voting "yes." More important, however, was the reinforcement of political division in Hungary, and expressions of bitter disappointment among Hungarians outside Hungary. Leaders of ethnic Hungarian parties met at the beginning of January 2005 in Vojvodina, where they denounced the outcome and signed an agreement that they still want to pursue dual citizenship. So the story has not ended. Romania: In pursuit of states as "cornerstones of the new European edifice" At home, the post-communist Romanian government pursued a traditional nation- state approach to consolidate its authority. Simultaneously, this government applied for membership in the European Union, and the current Ion Iliescu regime has made serious efforts to satisfy the conditions of accession by 2007. Unlike Hungary, however, and similarly to many other post-communist states, Romania views the EU not as an alliance of communities and regions but rather as an alliance of strong states interacting with one another primarily for economic benefits. In the words of President Iliescu: The State is undoubtedly one of our oldest legacies here in Europe. It has been to this day the foundation of the rule of law both at home, within the states, and abroad, in the relations among them. The making of the European states, as an expression of the free and sovereign will of the respective peoples and nations, covers the largest part of our continent's political history. . . . The aim of change is not the dissolution of states but rather their adaptation or even radical modification, if this is required, so that they suit the new processes at home and the requirements of international integration. The states still represent the cornerstones of the new European edifice. Their identity may change, but not by weakening their contents and significance, or even by dissolution, but through enhanced relevance and functional differentiation. Yet Romania, like Hungary, is itself a kin-state, with Romanians living in Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia and even Hungary, and it too provides benefits for Romanians abroad. It makes dual citizenship available to ethnic Romanians abroad, and it provides them with cultural and educational assistance. Why then does Hungary behave more markedly as a kin state than Romania? Demography is one obvious source of the different kin-state strategies. Hungary has little reason to fear internal challenge from sub-state national groups because nearly all of the non-Hungarian ethnic communities that live in Hungary today are highly assimilated. The exception are the Roma, who have limited resources to challenge the government. A second difference lies in institutional legacies, more specifically in the process of modern state- and nation-building. Differences in institutional legacy have important implications also for the centrality of particular territories to national myths, and the extent to which these territories became part of the "homeland" component of national loyalties. The state- and nation-building process began earlier in Hungary than in Romania; therefore the sense of common Hungarian "nationhood" emerged before the border changes of the post-World War I period. The ethnic Hungarians who remained outside of Hungary after 1918 had already participated in a unitary process of Hungarian nation-building and became reluctant members of a minority that focused its energies on the revisionism that marked Hungarian politics in the interwar era. The construction of greater Romania with a unitary concept of nationhood began in earnest only after 1918. The ethnic Romanians who remained outside Romania after 1918 (or became incorporated only for the interwar decades) could not become part of a Romanian unitary nation-state project. These Romanian speakers could not develop a strong sense of common Romanian nationhood. During the same interwar period that made modern unitary nation-building possible for the first time for the Romanians, the Hungarians focused all of their energies on revisionism, trying to reclaim lost territories, the most valuable of which was Transylvania, a territory of central importance in Hungarian national myth-making— which gained central importance also in Romanian national myth-making. Hungary regained part of Transylvania in 1940 under the Second Vienna Accord with Hitler, but Romania re-acquired these lands after the end of World War II. In the Hungarian case, Transylvania and southern Slovakia were part of the Hungarian kingdom for centuries and remain central to the Hungarian national story. In Romania, on the other hand, where the writing of a unitary national story began only after 1918, the places that are outside of current Romanian borders were never fully incorporated into the national myth. Although the first modern Romanian state created at the end of the 19th century incorporated part of contemporary Moldova, this state failed to apply the modernization-cum-cultural- homogenization formula successfully in this region. When this territory became part of the Soviet Union, its Romanian-speaking population remained overwhelmingly illiterate and very poor, and they were uninterested in Romanian nationhood. The notion of Hungarian nationhood persisted among Hungarians left outside of Hungary during the communist period, even during the harshest communist regimes in Romania and Czechoslovakia—perhaps precisely because of the relentlessness of these regimes. By contrast, ethnic Romanians living in Romania's neighboring states either assimilated to the majority culture in significant numbers (as in Hungary, Serbia or Ukraine) or became subjects of separate nation-building processes (as in the Soviet Republic of Moldova). Although the initial internationalist period of the communist period tried to foster similarities across the region, Hungary and Romania developed significantly different variants of "applied Marxism," particularly after the 1960s. Hungary had a relatively liberal version of one-party rule under the Kadar regime that allowed for higher degrees of economic and cultural freedoms than the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu's Romania, the most repressive government in Central and Eastern Europe. The Ceausescu government pursued aggressive "nation-state" policies, including harsh policies of assimilation toward minority groups in Romania. Against this backdrop, the nationalist policies of the post-Ceausescu government in Romania, especially during the first tenure of President Iliescu (1990-96) were not surprising to those who viewed nationalism as a continuation of communist centralizing practices in the cultural sphere. However, the transsovereign strategy that the post-communist Hungarian government began after 1990 was not a continuation of communist practices. The Kadar government had downplayed the significance of nationalism and made comparatively little effort to maintain kinship ties with Hungarian minorities outside Hungary's borders. It appears that, at least in the case of Hungarians, the post-communist national project was able to build on a shared national myth constructed before 1918 that survived even during the period between 1918 and 1990. This continuity helps explain the continuing strength of Hungarian minority demand for kin-state support after 1990, and also raises an important theoretical question about nationalism: Once modern nation-building proceeds long enough to create a sense of common nationhood in a population, what does it take for this "nation" to be undone after dramatic institutional changes, such as border changes? Finally, there are differences between these cases in the areas of elite choices, both in the kin-state and among ethnic minorities in neighboring states. Governments in Hungary and Romania have changed character during the post-communist period, with socialist-liberal and center-right coalitions taking turns in Hungary, while in Romania, the more consensual Democratic Coalition government replaced that of Iliescu, who returned to power with a "change of heart" in his second term. But differences in governing periods do not seem fundamental, appearing to affect more the degree of emphasis on national unity and uniqueness rather than determining whether nation- building policies should continue. While some parties have shown greater flexibility than others on nation-building agendas, governments of any stripe in both Hungary and Romania must respond to the pressure from the EU to solve any potential conflicts of interest peacefully and accommodate minority cultural demands. More important in terms of elite choices are the demands made by ethnic brethren in neighboring states. The Hungarian minorities in Slovakia, Romania, and Serbia demand the Hungarian government's attention and assistance (in ways that the Hungarians living in Austria and Slovenia do not). There are no similar demands articulated by Romanians in either Moldova, a country in which Romanians are the ethnic majority, or in Ukraine. Although many Romanian cultural elites in Bucharest consider Romanians in Romania and Moldova to belong to one nation, and the Romanian government expresses clear interest in supporting the cultural reproduction of these Romanian minorities, the Romanian-speaking population of Moldova, and the Romanian minorities in Ukraine, Hungary, and Serbia have so far not indicated strong interest in a robust transsovereign nation-building project. Whether or not kin communities demand the attention of the kin-state is a key determination of the strength of a virtual nationalism agenda. Russia: the dog that didn't bark With 25 million ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation, many feared that it would only be a matter of time before Moscow moved aggressively to ensure that the rights of Russian minorities in places like northern Kazakhstan, Crimea, and the Baltics were protected. While the Russian government was sporadically threatening toward Latvia and Estonia in the 1990s, overall the strategy has not only been a virtual one, but a very weak virtual one. The historical lack of coherence of an ethnic Russian identity, the economic advantages of Russians living in the Baltics compared to their brethren in the kin-state, the desire of Russia to maintain close relations with the West, and the failure of the Russian military to subdue Chechnya have all combined to weaken any serious efforts by the Russian government to support ethnic kin, even if the rhetoric of support remains strong. Like Hungary, the Russian national myth is tied up in imperial history. But unlike Hungarians, Russians never developed a coherent national identity separate from their imperial one. Only some lands outside the Russian Federation are important for a Russian national myth, especially Ukraine—given that the Russian national story begins in Kievan Rus. Russia over the centuries expanded into all sorts of lands clearly not Russian in character. Nor does the Russian language play a similar role as a national marker. There are many non-Russians who speak Russian. During both the Tsarist and Soviet periods, Moscow sent Russians to far-flung places in the empire to help control the territories. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, however, there was little that tied Russians across the region together into a common understanding. Scholars even debate what term to use to describe Russians – Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian, and there are different words for "Russian" in the Russian language itself. Institutional legacies also vary across the region. David Laitin has described well the differences in Russian language use in the non-Russian republics of the Soviet period. In Ukraine, Russian language was used relatively equally with Ukrainian prior to break- up. In Kazakhstan, upward mobility required use of Russian. And in Latvia and Estonia, the native languages were used extensively. Thus after breakup, Russians in different parts of the former empire found themselves in very different situations. Those speaking Russian in Kazakhstan are not at a disadvantage; in Ukraine, the situation has been more mixed; whereas in Latvia or Estonia, learning the native language is critical for advancement. There are numerous scholars who have explored the puzzling question about why the last Soviet government in 1990-91 did not attempt to use massive force (there were limited uses of violence in the Caucasus and the Baltics prior to breakup) to keep the Union together. At the moment of collapse, the non-Russian republics had a great opportunity to break free because of the nature of the Yeltsin government in Russia. Boris Yeltsin's primary focus was defeating Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev's political position was president of the Union; without Union, Yeltsin as president of Russia was supreme. Furthermore, Gorbachev had become the darling of the West by promoting democracy and markets; Yeltsin sought the West's attention by being even more pro- democracy and pro-market. Yeltsin's focus was on Russia's prospects as an independent country, and especially on economic growth. He kept ties to the other republics by forming the Commonwealth of Independent States, but at least in 1992, the Russian government attitude was that those living in the Russian Federation were citizens of Russia; those living in other republics were citizens of those republics. And in the most important non-Russian republic, Ukraine, support among Russians for Ukrainian independence was quite strong, with a majority even in Russian-dominated Crimea voting yes in the December 1991 referendum on Ukrainian independence. The most liberal pro-Western figures in the Russian government began to lose their influence and position by the end of 1992. As Yeltsin sought to maintain control politically, he began to adopt more nationalist positions, including toward the diaspora. One of the most important questions concerned Russians living in the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. When the Soviet Union collapsed, over 100,000 Red Army troops were stationed in the Baltic Republics. Russia had quickly agreed to an August 31, 1993 deadline for withdrawing troops from Lithuania, which had a small ethnic Russian population and no important Russian military facilities. The other two countries had significant Russian populations (which in turn made the Latvians and Estonians more nationalist); Latvia also had an important Russian radar site and Estonia a nuclear submarine facility. The West played an important role both in constraining the more discriminatory impulses in Latvia and Estonia as well as the more extreme impulses in Russia. Latvia and Estonia were desperate to join NATO and the European Union. They had been forcibly brought into the Soviet empire even though the United States and its partners had never officially recognized their incorporation. Determined to be protected from future Russian revanchism, the two countries were careful not to violate Western principles as they proceeded to build their nation-states. Even so, Latvia has tried to limit the numbers of Russians becoming citizens in the hope that most will leave and thereby shift the demographic balance. But due to Western pressure, Latvia until recently supported schools conducted in Russian language and the citizenship law has been amended over time to allow children born after Latvian independence from the Soviet Union to become citizens if their parents so desire. The schools issue may prove troublesome in the future. Latvian law now requires that Russian-language schools (and other minority language schools) provide bilingual education. The new bilingual curricula were introduced in 2002-03, against tremendous Russian opposition. But while Russians oppose restrictions of this sort, those living in the Baltics prefer to remain there. Economic life is much better than it is in Russia. While five million Russians emigrated to Russia in the 1990s, most of these were from Central Asia, where life was not as good. As for the Russian government, Yeltsin's desire for good relations with the United States proved decisive in getting him to proceed with troop withdrawal. In 1993, Yeltsin was in a fight for his political life, culminating in his assault on the Russian parliament building in October. He then was confronted with the surprising performance by ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the parliamentary elections of December. But while Yeltsin had to cover himself politically on the right at home, relations with the United States depended to a huge extent on what he did on this issue because of the importance of the Baltics in American politics, especially on Capitol Hill. With promises of Western financial assistance for officer housing for returning Russian troops as well as for dismantling the radar site in Latvia after a transition period, Yeltsin reluctantly but decisively fulfilled his pledge to withdraw. Russian policy toward the rest of the former Soviet space remains ambivalent. Under President Vladimir Putin, the general thrust of the Russian government has been to seek greater and greater control inside Russia as well as over its neighbors. Within the borders of the Russian Federation, this has meant eliminating opposition in the Duma, the media, and in business. In foreign policy, it has meant a shift of Russian resources to an almost exclusive focus on relations with neighbors. But while Russia has sought to increase its leverage in the region (outside of the Baltics, which now are secure in the EU and NATO), it remains unclear what the government intends to do with that leverage. The Russian economic presence has increased, and there are strong economic linkages between Russians across borders, but the policy is not designed specifically to support the diaspora; it is designed to strengthen the power of the Russian state. It is hard to imagine that countries that became independent at the end of 1991 will lose that independence, especially since Russia remains relatively much weaker than it was in the Soviet period. A major question mark is the effect of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections on future Russian behavior. Were the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine merely precursors to the inability of the Russian state in the region and perhaps eventually in Russia to foist solutions on the populations. The idea of a divided Ukraine floated by a number of commentators who knew little about the country quickly subsided – the Russians in Ukraine did not attempt to secede, and the government of Russia after tremendous ineptitude during the election tried to make peace quickly with new president Viktor Yushchenko. Many of the issues of Russia's relations with its neighbors including on questions like citizenship reflect Russia's image of itself (which was enhanced after 1991 by its status internationally as the inheritor of the Soviet permanent seat on the UN Security Council and other similar kinds of international recognition) as the successor state of the Soviet Union. For example, Russia gave passports to those living in Abkhazia, a territory that is part of the Republic of Georgia. On the other hand, whereas the Russian citizenship law of 1992 had simplified procedures for gaining Russian citizenship for former citizens of the USSR, these provisions were toughened in the revised 2002 law. Boris Pastukhov, chairman of the State Duma committee for CIS affairs and relations with fellow countrymen declared after the adoption of the new law, "I find it absolutely imperative to point out that the issue of our compatriots – and there are about 20 million of them – is not adequately reflected in the law. The individual amendments that were adopted after the second reading do not provide any radical relief for the program of their possible return to their historic homeland." Conclusions The main lesson learned from an analysis of the Hungarian kin-state policy with the brief comparison to the kin-state approaches of Romania and Russia is that the Hungarian approach is not unique, but context and the political actors that participated in its design and those that challenged it within and outside of Hungary made it a special case of virtual or transsovereign nation-building. The Hungarian case provides particularly useful lessons about the emergence and impact of such a nation-building policy not only for Europe, but also for regions beyond the integrating continent. Virtual nationalism is relevant in all those regions of the world where people maintain common national stories across political borders. In many cases, people move across state borders and take their national stories with them. In others, such as those in Central and Eastern Europe, shifting state borders have created populations that perpetuate shared notions of nationhood. The 2001 Hungarian Status law became a special instance of such virtual nationalisms due primarily to the scale of its potential regional impact, the degree of coherence it projected, and the ways in which it encapsulated many of the consequences of past and current competing constructions of state and nation: past reversals of dominance and subordination, and current claims for mutual "national homelands". Many of the concerns that the Status law raised in 2001 have lost their relevance: its architects were replaced in 2002 by a new Hungarian government that revised the law in response to European pressure; Hungary and Slovakia joined the EU; and the Romanian government, in its effort to follow suit, has made significant efforts to improve its minority policies. Yet in 2004 Hungarians again became part of a highly divisive debate over another form of virtual nationalism: the question whether "dual citizenship" could be obtained on grounds of ethnic identity. The seemingly high degree of coherence in the Hungarian nation-building strategy that the 2001 Status law had manifested at the time of its adoption is seriously questioned by the controversies of the dual citizenship debate in Hungary. Moreover, the debates over minority autonomy in neighboring states have brought to the fore significant sources of fragmentation also among the Hungarian minority political elites. Nevertheless, the controversies surrounding the questions of dual citizenship and minority autonomy do not fundamentally challenge a relatively strong consensus among Hungarians that the Hungarian state should remain an active kin-state and that a common EU framework should allow Hungarians freely to interact across political borders. A comparison with Romania and Russia indicates that this consensus is not a common characteristic of all virtual nationalisms in the region. A key condition for the coherence of virtual nationalism is the legitimacy of the strategy both in the kin-state and among co- nationals across the border. Legitimacy also involves the degree to which the political leadership in the kin-state as well as among minority groups is broadly accepted in these populations. Virtual nationalism requires a community outside the borders that actively defines itself as part of the same cultural nation, as well as a national center that is both culturally and economically attractive. Failure to mobilize minorities outside the border on both the cultural and economic level makes transsovereign nationalism difficult if not impossible. The Hungarian-Romanian comparison suggests that mobilization is more successful where the kin minority participated in a robust nation-building process before its separation from the kin-state. The same comparison also indicates, however, that in such conditions the formerly dominant status of the current minority marks it as an "imperial minority"—one suspected of undying nostalgia for lost glory and hope for another reversal of fortunes. Consequently, competition for the mutually claimed cultural space continues. At the same time, the case of the Russian minorities raises the question whether "homeland" territoriality plays a similar role in all situations where border changes result in a shift in relations of ethnic dominance and subordination. Although the Russians living in the states established after the collapse of the Soviet Union had developed Russian identity before the Soviet collapse, with the possible exception of the story of Kievan Rus there was no Russian (non-Soviet) national myth which could have linked these Russian minority groups to their current home lands, i.e. the settlements in which they live today in post-Soviet states. And even in Ukraine, Russians are not clamoring for separation, aside from a small group of thugs mobilized briefly by the presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovich. Consequently, the Russian minorities could not articulate "national homeland" claims similar to those of Hungarian minorities outside of Hungary. The comparison suggests that the potential strength of virtual nation-building depends also on the role that the territory on which kin minority live today plays in a unified national story. * * * * * Europe today is an extraordinarily dynamic region. It encompasses centuries old nation-states and brand new ones. There are violent secessionists (Chechens, Basques, and the Irish Republican Army) and peaceful ones (Scots and Catalans). It is in the midst of a constitutional referendum process whose outcome will shape how Europe is governed in the future, particularly now that the EU's membership now encompasses most of the continent. The EU will soon begin formal accession talks with Turkey, and Ukraine may not be far behind. In the midst of all of these process, the EU as a supranational organization provides the opportunity for a novel, virtual form of nationalism, in which the old agenda of congruence of political and ethnic boundaries may be unwelcome and unattainable, but the formation of broad cross border ties are increasing at the same time that the actual state borders themselves are increasingly difficult to locate. David Laitin, "The Cultural Identities of a European State," Politics and Society (September 1997). Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Iván Halász, "Models of Kin- Minorities Protection in Eastern and Central Europe," Paper presented at the international conference on "The Status Law Syndrome: a Post-communist Nation Building, Citizenship, and/or Minority Protection" Budapest, October 14-17, 2004 Zsuzsa Csergo and James M. Goldgeier, "Nationalist Strategies and European Integration," Perspectives on Politics 2 (March 2004), p. 26. André Liebich, "Ethnic Minorities and Long-term Implications of EU Enlargement" in Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, ed. Jan Zielonka (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 120. These documents include: the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe's (CSCE) Copenhagen Document (1990, known also as the European Constitution on Human Rights), which included a chapter on the protection of national minorities; the Council of Europe's (CE) European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages (1992); the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National and Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992); the CE's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995), which is commonly considered a major achievement as the first legally binding international tool for minority protection; the OSCE's (the CSCE became an organization, the OSCE, in December 1994) Oslo Recommendations Regarding the Linguistic Rights of National Minorities (1998). The text of each of these laws is available on http://www.kettosallampolgarsag.mtaki.hu, accessed on January 11, 2005 European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Report on the Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by their Kin-State adopted by the Venice Commission at its 48th Plenary Meeting, (Venice, 19-20 October 2001). http://www.venice.coe.int/docs/2001/CDL-INF(2001)019-e.asp. Accessed on January 11, 2005 Eric Jürgens, "Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by Their Kin-States: The Case of the Hungarian Status Law of 19 June 2001." Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly. For the text of the Convention, see http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/166.htm. Accessed on March 11, 2005 See http://www.htmh.hu./torveny.htm for the law and related documents and other literature. Accessed on 25 August 2003. For a comprehensive volume about the Status law, see Zoltán Kántor, et al, eds., The Hungarian Status Law: Nation Building and/or Minority Protection (Sapporo, Japan: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2004), available online at http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no4_ses/contents.html. Accessed March 11, 2005 Csergo and Goldgeier, "Virtual Nationalism," Foreign Policy 125 (July-August 2001), pp. 76- 77. George Schöpflin, "A Magyar státustörvény: Politikai, kulturális és szociológiai kontextusok" In A Státustörvény: Elôzmények és következmények, ed. Zoltán Kántor ( Budapest: Teleki László Foundation, 2002), pp. 9–17; Brigid Fowler, "Fuzzing citizenship, nationalising political space: A framework for interpreting the Hungarian "status law" as a new form of kin- state policy in Central and Eastern Europe." Working Paper 40/02 of the ESRC One Europe or Several? Research programme (2002) Available at www.one-europe.ac.uk/pdf/w40fowler.pdf. Accessed 23 September 2003. Stephen Deets, "The Hungarian Status Law and the Specter of Neo-Medievalism in Europe," Paper presented for the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, March 17-March 20, 2004. Klara Kingston, "The Hungarian Status Law" in East European Perspectives, 3 (October 2001). Deets, The Hungarian Status Law and the Specter of Neo-Medievalism in Europe"; Iván Halász and Balázs Majtényi, "A magyar státustörvény a kelet-közép-europai jogi szabályozás tükrében"(Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 2002) The notion of trans-sovereign nationalism was developed in Csergo and Goldgeier, "Virtual Nationalism." For a discussion of these competing strategies, see Csergo and Goldgeier, "Nationalist Strategies and European Integration." Zsuzsa Csergo, Language and Nationalism in New European Democracies: Lessons from Post- Communist Romania and Slovakia (book manuscript, chapter 3, "Sovereignty and international integration") 94/367/CFSP: Council Decision of 14 June 1994 on the continuation of the joint action adopted by the Council on the basis of Article J.3 of the Treaty on European Union on the inaugural conference on the Stability Pact available at http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&num doc=31994D0367&model=guichett Accessed on June 1, 2004. Article 21, quoted in Bruno de Witte, "Politics versus law in the EU's approach to ethnic minorities," Europe Unbound, p. 138. European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Report on the Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by their Kin-State. http://www.venice.coe.int/docs/2001/CDL-INF(2001)019-e.asp. Accessed on January 11, 2005 Eric Jürgens, "Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by Their Kin-States: The Case of the Hungarian Status Law of 19 June 2001." Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly. Csergo and Goldgeier, "Nationalist Strategies and European Integration." BBC Monitoring Service, U.K. edition, Premier Outlines Hungarian Idea on Future European Union, July 29, 2001. See also Mark Beissinger, "How Nationalisms Spread," p. 135: "The presence of groups associated with foreign states further injects a shadow of doubt surrounding their existence (in the case of Russians, Hungarians, and Turks, for instance) these groups are identified with former occupying powers." Myra A. Waterbury, "Beyond Irredentism: Domestic Politics and Diaspora Policies in Post- Communist Hungary"; For a collection of documents and essays reflecting controversies about the law in Hungary and the neighboring countries, see Zoltán Kántor, ed., A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, tanulmányok, publicisztika (Budapest: Teleki László Alapitvány, 2002). For a description of this package, see http://www.htmh.hu/fogalmak.htm Accessed on March 11, 2005 Ion Iliescu, Integration and Globalization: A Romanian View (Bucharest: The Romanian Cultural Foundation Publishing House, 2003), p.73. Zoltan Barany, "Ethnic Mobilization without Prerequisites: The East European Gypsies" World Politics, vol. 54, no. 3 (April 2002), pp.277-307. For the history of relationship between Hungary and Hungarian minorities, see Nándor Bárdi, Tény és Való (Pozsony: Kalligram Könyvkiadó, 2004). Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). Cristina Petrescu, "Contrasting/conflicting identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans," In Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, eds. Balázs Trencsényi, Dragos Petrescu, Cristina Petrescu, Constantin Iordachi, and Zoltán Kántor (Budapest: Regio Books; Iasi: Editura Polirom, 2001), 153–78. For a comprehensive study on Moldova, see Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture, (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000). Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). See also Zsuzsa Csergo, "National Strategies and the Uses of Dichotomy," in Regio: A Review of Studies on Minorities, Politics, and Society, 2003. See, for example, Nikolai Rudensky, "Russian Minorities in the Newly Independent States: An International Problem in the Domestic Context of Russia Today," in National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, edited by Roman Szporluk (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994); David D. Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Neil Melvin, Russians Beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995). Laitin, Identity in Formation. On the Gorbachev-Yeltsin battle and the role of the West, see James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings, 2003), chapters 2-4. On the last point, see Melvin, Russians Beyond Russia, pp. 11-12. Evgenii Golovakha, Natalia Panina, and Nikolai Churilov, "Russians in Ukraine," in The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics, edited by Vladimir Shlapentokh, Munir Sendich, and Emil Payin (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), p. 64. Aurel Braun, "All Quiet on the Russian Front? Russia, Its Neighbors, and the Russian Diaspora," in The New European Diasporas: National Minorities and Conflict in Eastern Europe, edited by Michael Mandelbaum (NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000), p. 124. Ojarrs Kalnins, "Latvia: The Language of Coexistence," Transitions Online, September 1, 2004 at www.tol.cz/look/TOL/home. Accessed September 2004. Lowell W. Barrington, Erik S. Herron, and Brian D. Silver, "The Motherland is Calling: Views of Homeland among Russians in the Near Abroad," World Politics 55 (January 2003), p. 310. For further discussion, see Goldgeier and McFaul, Power and Purpose, ch. 7. Quoted in Tamara Shkel, "Learn Russian If You Want to Become a Citizen of Russia," Rossiyskaya Gazeta, April 20, 2002. See also Beissinger, "How Nationalisms Spread," p.135. 1