With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of Latvia, a minority group became a majority and a majority group became a minority. This has been the situation for Latvians and Russians after August 1991. The Baltic States led the way towards first autonomy and then independence. The nationalist movement in the Latvian SSR was primarily a minority nationalist movement. Why do minorities mobilise? Gurr finds that minorities rebel for two reasons: relative deprivation and group mobilisation. Relative deprivation answers the question of why and it characterizes the status of the Latvian language and culture vis-à-vis that of Russia during the Soviet period. While relative deprivation has come under considerable criticism because of its inability to explain when a group will mobilise, the notion can be found in the nationalist rhetoric before and since the restoration of Latvian independence. Group mobilisation goes further in explaining when minorities may assert political claims. Considered in terms of changes in the political opportunity structure, the changing politics of glasnost allowed the nationalist movements to mobilise in the Baltic States.

The writing of history has a direct influence upon national identities. This is especially the case when historical writing and interpretation are contested, as they are among the three Eastern Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians). Where contestation is high, as in the Ukrainian- Russian relationship since the disintegration of the USSR, the writing and interpretation of history also impact upon their domestic and foreign policies and, most notably, their inter-state relations. Russian elites and the majority of Russians do not look upon Ukraine and Belarus as “foreign” countries.

In 1950, in the aftermath of the Second World War and after flight and expulsion had come to an end, there were about four million Germans still living in East, East Central and Southeast Europe. Between 1950 and 1975, a total of about 800,000 Aussiedler (immigrants who are recognised by the German authorities as being of German descent) passed through the West German border transit camps, and 616,000 more arrived between 1976 and 1987. Then, with the opening of the Iron Curtain, mass immigration of Aussiedler began. Against the background of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, their numbers increased rapidly from 1987 onwards. During the next nearly two decades, three million Aussiedler entered the Federal Republic of Germany. In all, more than four million migrants of officially recognised German descent migrated into Germany during the second half of the twentieth century.

Most European early-modern states transitioned from composite monarchies into centralized ones. Essentially, composite monarchies were “more than one country under the sovereignty of one ruler.” As Moscow expanded and acquired the surrounding principalities either by inheritance or force, its grand princes enacted a series of legal and administrative reforms to dissolve the differences among its territories and create a centralized monarchy. These political reforms began under Ivan III, who instituted a standardization of Muscovite legal practice and formalized a defined system of social precedence, mestnichestvo, which accorded high rank to his newly acquired provincial elites within the Muscovite social system. Change could not happen overnight, and further legal reforms by Ivan IV, in addition to new religious reforms to eradicate differences of practice among his subjects, centralized the Grand Prince's political and religious authority.

Romanian war-time policy towards Jews presents a paradox. In the summer and fall of 1941 Romanian military and police were killing the Jews of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina indiscriminately. In late fall of the same year, those Jews who survived the first wave of killings were forcibly deported further to the east—this time not only from Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina but from the whole of the latter's province. In the late fall of 1941, Jews from Odessa were once again murdered en masse and any survivors deported from the city. At this time, i.e. in the summer and fall of 1941, Romanian policy was at least as radical and brutal as the Germans', perhaps surpassing it in its brutality, a fact that elicited Hitler's delight and commendation. But then Romanian policy underwent a gradual but more and more pronounced change. Though Romanian authorities took part in the preparations for the deportation of Romanian Jews to the Nazi concentration camps in the summer and early fall 1942, in October of that year the Romanians abruptly terminated their participation in all preparations. In 1943 and 1944 the Romanian government even took measures to protect Romanian Jewish citizens residing in the German-ruled territories by demanding that those Jews were exempt from deportation to concentration camps and facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine from Romania. Inside Romania, Jews were still heavily discriminated against, exposed to various vexations and harsh confiscatory taxation, but the majority of them survived the war.