Kinship, ethnicity and religion in post-Communist societies

Among the consequences of perestroika and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been the rise of ethnic nationalism. In the non-Russian parts of the former USSR this process has been accompanied by the reactivation of clan and other primordial social networks which under Soviet Communism had been in abeyance. This article, based on extensive field research material, examines political and social transformation in post-Communist Kabardino-Balkariya, a Russian Muslim autonomy in the North Caucasus. In particular, it analyses the nature of the nation-building policies of the ruling regime, and its relationship with the clan system. It is also concerned with Islamic revival and Islamic radicalism in the region and their correlation with the Islam-related republican and wider federal policies. The article reveals some grey areas in the current academic debate on ethnicity and nationalism and injects more conceptual syncretism into the study of post-Communist societies

Islam in the North-Western Caucasus

Since 11 September 2001 Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, in particular, have been at the centre of media, academic and political debate in the West, the Islamic East and in the post-communist Eurasia. This debate, however, has been dominated by a decontextualized approach portraying Islamic radicalism as a homeless global force, disconnected from real people, places and histories. In reality, it has numerous regional and ethnic forms that are rooted in particular local cultural contexts, traditions, ways of life, and political and social structures. This article seeks to explore one such distinctive Muslim community represented by the Muslims of the north-western Caucasus which is administratively divided between Russia’s Muslim autonomous republics of Kabardino-Balkariia, Karachaevo-Cherkessiia and Adyghea

Turkey, the Karabakh Conflict and the Legacy of the Eastern Question

The article addresses the discursive, political and geopolitical evolution of the so-called Eastern Question by focusing on its Armenian dimension from the nineteenth century until the present. It examines major stages of the Question’s historical reconfiguration in terms of its key protagonists, beneficiaries and the ramifications for modern Turkey’s relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan. It contends that the legacy of the Eastern Question has continued to shape Turkey’s policy in the Caucasus in general and its positioning towards the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Karabakh, in particular