Brotherlands: A Family History of the East European Nations (Research Brief)

The intention is to find a different approach to certain central questions in the field: in what measure are national self-identifications a matter of choice, and in what measure a matter of previous history? does the dominant scheme of ethnicity have much to do with the empirical past, or is it itself a political creation of a certain epoch? The approach involves taking cases in which choices were clearly made, since siblings chose different self-identifications, and inquiring closely about the circumstances and motives of these choices. A secondary aim is to follow the path of the far left to the conviction that forceful resolutions of national questions are necessary.

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Timothy Snyder, of Yale University, was a 2002-03 Short-Term Travel Grants fellow.