Study title

This collection contains transcripts of interviews conducted during 2014-17 with representatives of minority autonomy bodies and minority NGOs, state officials, political party representatives and academic experts in Hungary, Russia, Estonia, Romania and Serbia. In Russia the interviews covered a wide range of different non-Russian ethnicity, but with particular emphasis on Tatar and Finno-Ugric minority communities. In all five country settings, interviews were also conducted with current and former politicians from across the ethno-political spectrum who had been actively involved in debates leading to the adoption (where relevant) of cultural autonomy legislation during the 1990s and beyond. This research was inspired by ongoing discussion of what is often called the the 'nationality' or 'minority' question in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): namely, how to integrate ethnically diverse societies according to democratic principles within the framework of existing state borders. The period since the fall of communism and the demise of the multinational USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia has seen sustained efforts by international organisations (most especially the Council of Europe, OSCE and EU) to enact a credible national minority rights regime capable of preventing the emergence or resurgence of ethnic conflicts within this region. Minority rights are of course not simply an issue in relation to CEE: discussion of this region can be situated within the context of broader debates on integration of minority communities and the possibility of reconfiguring existing nation states along lines of democratic multiculturalism. One particular feature of recent minority rights development in CEE has been the adoption by several states of laws based on the principle of non-territorial cultural autonomy (NTCA). First elaborated in Austro-Hungary at the turn of the 20th century, NTCA is based on the premise that in an areas of...