Edited by Petru Negura, Andrei Cusco and Svetlana Suveica<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This book features contributions that examine the responses of local populations to nationalizing and state-building projects in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on bottom-up, peripheral, and marginal reactions to top-down nation-building efforts, the volume covers border regions of Romania, Austria-Hungary (before 1918), Poland, Finland, the Russian Empire, and the USSR between 1900 and 1940.
Historiography continues to privilege top-down approaches, focused on elites, institutions, and official policies. Despite previous notable works on this topic, in-depth studies of bottom-up perspectives on these regions remain rare. This volume seeks to redress the imbalance by emphasizing the perceptions, discourses, and everyday practices of ordinary people confronted with (often repressive) nation- and state-building agendas. It also addresses multiple levels of social interaction (combining perspectives from above, from below, and from the middle), involving several categories of actors and navigating through different scales of analysis. Individual and comparative case studies explore the social and political peculiarities of various local communities, particularly their evolving forms of national identification across neighboring regions.
This volume contributes to both nationalism studies, by critically engaging with the concepts of everyday ethnicity and \u201cnational indifference,\u201d and borderland studies, through a trans-sectional approach focusing on the agency of various marginalized communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Introduction: Popular Responses to Nation-Building in the Soviet and East European Borderlands, 1900\u201340 Petru Negura, Andrei Cusco, Svetlana Suveica<\/em> Product details<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part 1 The Gaze of the State and the Reluctant Masses: Visions, Projects, and Failures
1 From National Indifference to Indifferent Nationality? The Ukrainian Masses and Nationhood in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union Fabian Baumann<\/em>
2 \u201cNational Soul-Catching,\u201d State Categories, and Local Responses: Jewish and Ukrainian Challenges of the Census in Eastern Galicia and Eastern Lesser Poland, 1880\u20131931 Martin Rohde<\/em>
3 Moving between Hierarchies: Small Finnic Nationalities in the Finnish and Soviet Modernizations during the Interwar Years Takehiro Okabe<\/em>
Part 2 Disruptive Outsiders, Alternative Narratives, and Local Agency
4 Populism, Anarchism, and Alternative Nation-Building \u201cFrom the Left\u201d in Modern Romania: The Cases of Zamfir C. Ralli Arbore and Constantin Stere Andrei Cu?co<\/em>
5 The Positivist Education of Peasant Children: Village Schools, Local Agency, and the Advent of Polish Statehood Kathleen Wroblewski<\/em>
6 Elites, Soldiers, Locals, and the Many Faces of a Belarusian Nation Aleksandra Pomiecko<\/em>
Part 3 The Elites versus the People: Struggles, Tensions, Encounters
7 Treasonous Stripes: Embracing and Banning the Romanian Colors in Dualist Hungary \u00c1goston Berecz<\/em>
8 Courting the Straggler Sheep? Hungarian Nation-Building and Popular Reactions among the Cs\u00e1ng\u00f3s, 1920\u201340 G\u00e1bor Egry<\/em>
9 Interwar Dniester Jews between Romania and the Soviet Union: Struggles for Cultural Agency and Economic Survival Dmitry Tartakovsky<\/em>
Part 4 Peripheral Actors and Nationalizing Designs: Between Resistance and Survival
10 Dodging the Nation: Peasant Responses to Schooling and Nation-Building in the Interwar Romanian, Polish, and Soviet Borderlands Petru Negura<\/em>
11 Singing a Different Tune: Jewish Converts and Musical Resistance in Interwar Bessarabia Iemima Ploscariu<\/em>
12 Criminalizing Belief and Disciplining the Masses: Gendarmes and Orthodox Priests in the First Trial against Old Calendarists in Bessarabia (1934\u20135) Andreea Kaltenbrunner<\/em>
13 Choosing the Soviet Union over Romania: The 1940 Jewish Exodus as Protest and Survival Svetlana Suveica<\/em>
Index<\/p>\n\n\n\nPublished<\/strong><\/td> Nov 13 2025<\/td><\/tr> Format<\/strong><\/td> Ebook (Epub & Mobi)<\/td><\/tr> Edition<\/strong><\/td> 1st<\/td><\/tr> Extent<\/strong><\/td> 320<\/td><\/tr> ISBN<\/strong><\/td> 9781350443747<\/td><\/tr> Imprint<\/strong><\/td> Bloomsbury Academic<\/td><\/tr> Illustrations<\/strong><\/td> 7 bw illus<\/td><\/tr> Series<\/strong><\/td> A Modern History of Politics and Violence<\/a><\/td><\/tr> Publisher<\/strong><\/td> Bloomsbury Publishing<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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