Homelands

an exciting collaborative effort... there is no available study with this scope and intellectual boldness... this volume will be a sure hit with a broad set of reading publics, appropriate for specialists in the field and a very attractive introduction for undergraduate students in history, human rights, international relations, and many other fields'. Mark von Hagen, Professor of History, Columbia University 'well defined, authoritative, disciplined and topically innovative... a pioneering publication in an academic field which is just opening up.' Raymond Pearson, Professor of Modern European History, School of History and International Affairs, University of Ulster This new volume, by a team of international scholars, explores aspects of population displacement and statehood at a crucial juncture in modern European history, when the entire continent took on the aspect of a 'laboratory atop a mass graveyard' (Tomas Masaryk). The topic of state-building has acquired a new actuality in recent years, following the collapse of the USSR and the 'Soviet bloc' and in view of the complex, often violent, territorial and ethnic conflicts which have ensued. Many of the current dilemmas and tragedies of the region have their origins in the aftermath of World War I, when newly independent nation states, struggling to emerge from the rubble of the former Russian empire, first sought to define themselves in terms of population, territory and citizenship. The sudden reconfiguration of power in Eastern Europe after 1918 was characterized by extreme flux, in the form of massive population movements, shifting territorial borders and cultural boundaries, and new political and social formations taking shape. Acknowledging the chaotic and destructive nature of involuntary migration and the intensity of human suffering involved, the current volume also explores the extent to which refugees and returnees played an active role in negotiating their status in the new states of Eastern Europe. Based on original research in recently opened East European and Russian archives, it includes detailed case studies on Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Urals region of Soviet Russia and Armenia. Homelands examines the interactions of forced migration, state construction and myriad emerging forms of social identity. It opens up a fresh perspective on twentieth-century history and throws new light on present-day political, humanitarian and scholarly issues of crucial concern to political scientists, sociologists, geographers, refugee welfare workers, policymakers and others.