Ioana Aminian Jazi and Thede Kahl, eds. Ethno-cultural Diversity in the Balkans and the Caucasus

In the Balkans and the Caucasus, the diverse ethnic and linguistic coexistence (and conflicts) can be described and analyzed like hardly anywhere else, which makes these regions especially valuable from the point of view of comparative research in the globalizing world. Though the more than dozen chapters offer plenty of space for a comparative approach, the editors of the multiauthor manuscripts exploit this possibility only in a few chapters.Located between the Rimland and Heartland, both regions represent a buffer or collision zone, a frontier indeed. The main question addressed in Keith Hitchins’ comparative paper is how the Wallachians, Moldavians, Bulgarians, and Georgians were able to maneuver among neighboring great powers, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, in the second half of the eighteenth century.Patrik Tátrai’s overview aimed to synthesize the role and brief history of ethnic mapping in Central East(ern) Europe (CEE) by introducing the various technical and theoretical issues that challenge ethnic mapping today. The paper applies a critical approach and deconstructs ethnic maps by analyzing scale, methods, represented areas and groups, colors, and toponymy. The contribution argues that these maps are instruments in power strategies.Viktor Shnirelman analyzed the strategy used by Soviet archaeologists in the 1940s and 1950s when the “punished peoples” (Chechens, Ingush, Karachai, and Balkars, among others) were still in exile and again after 1957 when they returned to the Northern Caucasus. He made a distinction between two ideological approaches—“nationalist” and “internationalist”—employed in those decades, both with a strong impact on archaeological interpretations.Babak Rezvani argues that Soviet policy on nationalities created a hierarchical ethno-territorial system in which economic and political privileges were closely related to ethnicity. Soviet censuses in Azerbaijan were inaccurate, and Soviet policymakers implemented ethnogeopolitical policies relating to ethnonyms and toponyms.Christoph Giesel’s study on “The Bosniaks in Turkey Between Assimilation and Ethnic Revival” estimates the number of Turkish citizens of Bosniak heritage (from Bosnia to North Macedonia) to be between 3 and 5 million. Despite the rigid assimilation policies pursued by the Turkish state in the twentieth century, these groups—speaking mainly a shtokavian dialect—succeeded in retaining certain forms of their “Yugoslav-Muslim” or “Bosniak” ethnicity. The article investigates the history of and reasons for migration, as well as the historical and contemporary aspects of ethnicity, nationality, identity, integration, and assimilation compared to those of Muslim Georgians.Fahri Türk and Kader Özlem analyzed the Turkish minority question in Bulgaria through the language issue. They pointed out that although the Turks have made some progress regarding the use of the Turkish language, they have not been able to achieve the introduction of Turkish as a language of instruction despite the fact that for many years, the Movement for Rights and Freedom Party (MRFP) has been a member of governing coalitions.Stéphane Voell’s comparative study focuses on the role and practice of traditional law in Northern Albania and among Svans in Georgia. Its contemporary relevance is often connected to its instrumental use in political-economic processes. But traditional law is not only a frame of reference for concrete legal processes; it is also applied in instrumental strategies of identification. With regard to the Svans in Georgia, former socially important oaths on icons are now performed more as a remembrance of old times.Florian Mühlfried argues that the notion that the cultures and societies of mountain dwellers are mainly perceived as conservative has recently been challenged by the anthropologist James Scott, who conceptualizes life in the highlands as a strategy of resistance to being governed. The chapter focuses on core features of interaction between Georgian mountain dwellers and Russian lowland power holders: military support and diplomatic relations.In their historical homeland, the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation, the Circassians number approximately 700,000 people and live primarily in three North Caucasian republics (previously autonomous regions in the Soviet Union): Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Adygeya. However, most of the ethnic Circassians (3–5 million people) live in diaspora, predominantly in Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, and the USA. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain, a re-immigration process to the North Caucasus began.Cristoph Giesel’s study, “The Alevis and Shiite-Alevi Influenced Sufi Orders in Southeast Europe,” gives an overview of religion, culture, ethnicity, history, politics, and demography. Walter Puchner, with two studies, investigates Greek cultural activities in the Black Sea area around 1900 and Romanian-Greek cultural encounters at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In his opinion, ancient history in Bucharest theatres was used as a cryptic cipher for the suppression of the Ottoman regime.Aromanian evolved where Albanian, Greek, and Balkan Slavic languages meet, both in terms of territory and dialectal convergence. At the same time, owing to the practice of transhumance, Aromanian had a large territorial cover. As another region of language contact at the other end of the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus also presents useful comparisons and contrasts with the Balkans, argues Victor Friedman. Helmut Schaller’s article investigates the role and history of Slavic elements in the Romanian language in the lexicon and in toponymy. These help trace the time and location of contacts in the Balkans. Nevertheless, whereas the great variety of studies offers a deepening of knowledge for professional scholars dealing with these regions, chapters on systematic comparison or the synthesis of the topics mentioned earlier are definitely missing.