Borders and Orders in Europe: Limits of Nation- and State-Building in Estonia, Macedonia and Moldova
The breakdown of communist rule provided new opportunities for the restoration of statehood and for national self-determination. Estonia, Moldova and Macedonia have in common a 'minority' large enough potentially to claim a share in nation- and state-building rather than being granted minority rights. Numerous cases of ethnic strife within post-communist states and beyond their borders have demonstrated that domestic ethnicity can easily internationalize ethnic relations. In the 1990s, however, the EU has entered Rogers Brubaker's classic triangle (state-nation, minority and homeland) as a fourth variable rather than a constant. Evidently, a country's contractual relation with the EU and its location in a newly divided Europe are relevant for the effectiveness of the EU's expanding toolbox for conflict prevention. Moreover, a mode of EU enlargement strictly based on conditionality implies a separation of regions of 'insiders' and 'outsiders' where different norms and strategies apply to minority issues.
A geopolitics of identity: Drawing the line between Russia and Estonia
Although narratives of national identity feature territory, myths, and historical memories presumably shared by members,1 national identity formation is an ongoing process with changeable membership and boundaries.2 One of the more complex challenges to a national “imagined community” has been the significant presence in Estonia of cultural Russians3 after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at that time one-third and now some 28% of the small country's population. The often grudging accommodation of cultural Russians by the titular nationality continues to draw attention from international organizations, scholars, and policymakers alike. Undoubtedly the commentary least welcome to Estonian governments in the last decade, however, has been the thunder of denunciation from Russia. In a great spillover from domestic concerns about Slavic identity to international relations, Estonia has been ranked as Russia's greatest enemy, and political figures across the spectrum have condemned Estonian citizenship and language policies.4
The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 . By Geoffrey Wawro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1966. Pp. 313. $59.95. ISBN 0-521-56059-4.
This expanded and reworked Yale dissertation ventures into a topic done spellbindingly two decades ago by one of the grand masters of German military affairs, Gordon Craig, whose Battle of Koeniggraetz (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1964), was published in a series commissioned by Hanson W. Baldwin. NewYork Times military affairs editor. Wawro does not approach the literary brilliance of Craig, but his work goes beyond it in several important respects. First, although Craig dealt with a good deal of the preliminary background and also the aftermath, his book focused squarely on the major battle which decided the war, whereas the book at hand deals with the entire war, which included several other battles, notably Langensalza, between Prussia and the Hanoverians in north-central Germany and Custoza between Austria and Italy in northern Italy. Secondly, whereas Craig knew the German sources as well as anyone, Wawro here uses not only German, but Austrian, French, British, and Italian ones. Of the last two, the former are important for the diplomatic background, the latter for the southern campaign area as well as for the problematic PrussianItalian relations. Thirdly,Wawro has dug deeper than Craig into primary source archives. Especially for the central emphasis of the book, the Austrians and Italians, he has mined the archives in Vienna, Rome, Naples, Milan, and Venice. For example, he uses a number of war diaries which officers from captain to field marshal kept and later deposited in military archives. Interestingly, both authors use Hans Delbriick andTheodor Fontane. Delbriick wrote half a dozen essays on the war and after his death in 1929 two of his colleagues published a fifth volume of his classic Art of War in the Framework of Political History which dealt substantially with 1866, partly on the basis of Delbriick's Berlin University lecture notes. Fontane covered the war as a newspaper correspondent and published more than a thousand pages from his eyewitness experiences, Der deutsche Krieg von 1866, 2 vols, (Berlin, 1871-72).