The article challenges the conventional understanding of the early Soviet nationalities policy as primarily territorial, arguing that non-territorial (personal) national autonomy arrangements were a significant and integral aspect of the Soviet policy at least until the mid-1920s.
“Territorial in Principle, Personal in Practice: Early Soviet Non-Territorial National Autonomy Arrangements,” Ab Imperio 1 (2025), 181–206.
This article investigates the complex interplay of cultures in Habsburg Galicia, a region marked by its diverse linguistic, religious, and ethnic makeup. It focuses on cultural practices and suggests understanding multilingualism, overarching tropes, and intersecting identities as a form of cultural hybridity. As Galician culture was more than agglutinating several national cultures, this article suggests narrating its history as a plurale tantum.
Link to the open access article: Börries Kuzmany, “Hybrydowość kulturowa w przestrzeniach wielokulturowych. Historie kultury galicyjskiej [Cultural Hybridity in Multicultural Regions: Histories of Galician Culture]“, In: Krakowskie Pismo Kresowe 16 (2024), 13-70
On 21 November my recent monograph Accomodating National Diversity was launched at the University of Graz.
This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.
Analysing the political, cultural, and socio-economic agency of non-Ukrainians in Ukraine from a transnational perspective is at the core of this project. The study focuses primarily on Poles, Jews, and Russians, the numerically and historically most relevant nationalities, but will also examine Germans, Greeks, Belarusians, Czechs, and Moldovans. The project’s research questions are structured in five larger thematic clusters: the analysis of in-group transformations among non-Ukrainians, non-Ukrainians’ interactions with state authorities, non-Ukrainians’ relations with co-nationals outside Ukraine, the interactions among non-Ukrainians themselves, and the ways in which non-Ukrainians have experienced violence.
For more information on the project, please refer to the project website.
The NURU project invites prospective candidates to join this collaborative four-years project. The Warsaw research team calls for two position (1 PhD, 1 Post-Doc) and the Vienna team four one (1 PhD):
Click here for the detailed job advertisement.
This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.
Link to the invitation to the book launch taking place on 26 April 2024
As a visiting professor at the Lviv Polytechnic National University, Börries Kuzman gave five lectures on „Multiculturalism of (Western) Ukraine and its significance for European history“.
Link and lectures only in Ukrainian:
https://lpnu.ua/news/tryvaie-lektorii-bahatokulturnist-ukrainy-zakhidnoi-ta-ii-znachennia-dlia-ievropeiskoi-istorii
Börries Kuzmany has successfully defended his habilitation thesis entitled “Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Ein Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa” (in English: Accomodating National Diversity. A History of Non-Territorial Auotnomy in Europe).
At Lower Austria’s Pedagogical University, Börries Kuzmany gave a talk on the Russian-Ukrainian War and its historical entanglements.
Börries Kuzmany gave an interview for a production of the Austrian Television on the Habsburg Empire’s East and the Austrian era in Western Ukraine.
Broadcasted: 29 February 2024
Börries Kuzmany was awarded the 2023 Anthony D. Smith Article Prize for the best article in Nations and Nationalism: Börries Kuzmany: Objectivising national identity: the introduction of national registers in the late Habsburg Empire, in: Nations and Nationalism, 29/3 (2023).
Nations and Nationalism is one of the leading journals (Q1) in the field of history and nationalism studies.