Nationalism has returned to the forefront of East Central European politics. From Poland in the west to Bulgaria in the east national identity and national conflict have again become central issues, sometimes the central issue, in the politics of the region. This resurgence of national politics has been accompanied, not surprisingly, by a parallel resurgence of scholarly interest in nationalism. Whereas just recently social scientists were writing of the decline of the nation state, today my bookshelf is stocked with titles like Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe, Europe's New Nationalism, and Minorities: The New Europe's Old Issue. I This scholarship offers three basic explanations for the renaissance of nationalism that has followed the demise of communism. The simplest explanation offered is that contemporary nationalism is a reaction to the suppression of national autonomy during the Soviet era. The Soviet Union, this argument goes, suppressed nationalism throughout the region in the name of international socialism, and when the Soviet Union collapsed a reservoir of pent-up nationalism overflowed. A second argument, related to the first, is that the communist governments channelled nationalism but did not suppress it. Caplan and Feffer, for example, argue that far from 'hibernating' during the Cold War nationalism was put to use in support of communist regimes throughout the region. 2 When those regimes fell in the revolutions of 1989-91 nationalism was standing ready to be expressed much more fully and confidently as an alternative organising framework for postcommunist governments. The third argument advanced is that the rise of nationalism in the period since the Cold War has been the result of defensive political strategies devised and carried out by the old communist leadership.3 According to this argument communist leaders have cynically adopted nationalist rhetoric and programmes, and exploited the aspirations of battered national populations, to prolong their own discredited status and power. Milosevic in Serbia is only the most egregious example of what Roszkowski has termed 'nomenklatura nationalism'.' My intention here is not to enter into this debate over the genesis of postcommunist nationalism. In fact, for my purposes I would stipulate that the explanation is some combination of these three arguments, blended in different measures in different contexts. Communist leaders and functionaries have certainly exploited nationalism for their own political benefit. But they have been able to do so effectively only because of the reservoir of nationalist feeling, and in many cases