[...]... the horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing seemed to define politics and social life after the end of superpower competition These new ills were held responsible for everything from the violent breakup of Yugoslavia to the sluggishness of political reform across parts of the old eastern bloc Many of the great debates of the 1990s—over recognition of the newly independent states of eastern Europe and. .. from eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the chapters in the second half of the book focus explicitly on this region and its problems after the end of communism in 1989 and the collapse of the 6 EXTREME POLITICS Soviet Union at the end of 1991 In part, this is a result of personal interest; my own area of expertise is the postcommunist world, even though I have ventured beyond it as a political scientist and. .. field of nationalism studies in Britain, which was in part the result of the methodological dispositions of political studies itself, and in part the result of the personal backgrounds of the major scholars in the field and broader features of British academic and political life The sections that follow analyze three overarching themes in this field: the ideology of the nation and the relevance of political... disparate disciplines and arrived at substantially different conclusions about the origin of nationalist sentiment, the conduct of nationalist politics, and the future of the nation-state But among the major contributors to the field, there is a particular sensitivity to the power of nationalism and its fundamental connections to other topics of concern to students of politics, from the bases of social identity... concern for dealing with the manifestations of nationalism as by an academic interest in its origins In the last century and a half, crises at home and abroad have attracted the attention of thinkers with a special interest in nationality and self-determination The Greek crisis of the 1820s, the Bulgarian atrocities of the 1870s, the problem of Ireland, and the fate of India and other colonial possessions... continuous European nation and a settler community The political symbols and institutions of the state are part of a specific national tradition; the distinct cultures of the British Isles were blended in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries into a hybrid Britishness by the dual forces of war and Protestantism.23 At the same time, because of the legacies of colonialism and the forces of globalization,... published his Nationalism and Communism, a series of articles that surveyed the postwar landscape in central and eastern Europe and assessed the evolution of politics in the region since the consolidation of communist rule.5 Seton-Watson had been present at the creation of the communist world, just as his father, the eminent historian R W Seton-Watson, had been present at the birth of its predecessor, the shaky... nationalist politics, the sources of national identity and communal solidarity, and the legitimacy of claims about nationality and rights to self-determination The National Idea One of the major lines of debate in the study of nationalism over the past century has been whether the content of nationalist thought is a legitimate and relevant subject of research All nationalist ideologies offer at the same... intellectuals at the end of the eighteenth century, its manifestations in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century western Europe, and its spread to the captive nations of east-central Europe by the end of the nineteenth century.24 These writers share several conclusions about the origins and evolution of the national idea First, the terms nation, nationality, and nationalism are inherently protean, and any... Macartney, the great historian of nationalism in central Europe, was the grandson of a Bulgarian colonel.14 Similar points could be made about Isaiah Berlin, J L Talmon, and others with central and east European connections.15 It is not difficult to find in their writings an element of the personal, both in their appreciation for the ambiguities of national identity and in their reflections on the challenges of . from eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the chapters in the second half of the book focus explicitly on this region and its problems after the end of communism in 1989 and the collapse of the 6 EXTREME. of the old eastern bloc. Many of the great debates of the 1990s—over recognition of the newly independent states of eastern Europe and Eurasia, Western intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, the. era, the historical hiatus between the cold war and the war on terror? This book examines the history and theory of what might be called extreme politics nationalism, social violence, and large-scale