CRRC, ARISC and American Councils are pleased to announce the 4th session of the Spring 2026 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
This week’s session will be held in hybrid in-person at CRRC Georgia and virtually via this Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/cMQAbBXYQROg5X5RVHY0Fg
BOOK PRESENTATION: Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Soviet Eurasia
Vincenc Kopeček, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Wednesday, April 1, 2026 at 18:30 Tbilisi time (10:30 EST)
Co-edited by Vincenc Kopeček, Martin Lepič, and Libor Jelen, and published this year by Routledge, this book focuses on the study of ethnic minorities in post- Soviet Eurasia, their self-perceptions, and their relations with ethnic majorities and dominant state- and nation-building. Contributors to the book examine strategies and networks which minorities create for preserving a group’s distinctiveness while at the same time maintaining coexistence with the majority. The chapters also study the effects of different contextual settings of these strategies and networks. Offering a unique systematic comparison of selected cases using ethnicity as the main concept, the book argues it was the Soviet notion of ethnicity which stood in the centre of the administrative structure of the Soviet Union and that it consequently had a profound impact on how individual ethnic majority and minority groups in the former USSR understood themselves and imagined each other, how political institutions in individual Soviet republics and ethnic autonomies were formed, and how this institutional setting defined the distribution of political power between ethnic majorities and minorities. It also argues that this complex system of relations between ethnic minorities and majorities has significantly changed during the past 30 years and resulted in the formation of a post-Soviet notion of ethnicity.
Vincenc Kopeček is an Associate Professor of Political Geography at the Department of Human Geography, University of Ostrava, Czechia. In his research he focuses on ethnic minorities, de facto states, foreign interference, and informal politics in Eurasia, the South Caucasus in particular. He has published in, e.g., Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Caucasus Survey, and Nationalities Papers. He is also a co-editor of De Facto States in Eurasia (Routledge 2020) and Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Soviet Eurasia (Routledge 2026).
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Works-in-Progress is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the CRRC office at Chavchavadze Ave. 5 and online. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) Georgia, the American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public. In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talks will not be recorded, and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing recordings as well or citing anything expressed therein in the press without explicit permission. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.