Small (nation-)states
Small (nation-)states within/without empires and unions [SnS]
Leader: Adrian Brisku
Contemporary east-central, north-east, and south-east Europe, along with the Caucasus, are composed largely of small (nation-)states that emerged from the mid-nineteenth century as distinct entities within or beyond larger empires and unions. Drawing on both Hroch’s notion of small nations as structurally incomplete and newer understandings of small states as internationally recognized “rule-takers,” including discursive manifestations of smallness, the Small (Nation-)State Research Centre (SnS) explores and examines how these polities — and actors within them — have navigated geopolitical, economic, and cultural challenges across three periods: the late imperial era, the interwar and Cold War decades, and the post-1990 integration into European and Eurasian frameworks. It ultimately asks whether their strategies, or lack thereof, reveal enduring patterns of small state resilience or dependency shaped by contested national and ethnic narratives.
Members
Selected projects
- Specialisation in EU small states’ foreign and security policy
- National economy-building in ALB, CS and GEO in 1920's
- Jean Monnet Chair TeDEUSS - Teaching and Debating EU Small states' Security
- Soviet society and the Prague Spring
- Za hranice hegemonických narativů a mýtů. "Pohnutá minulost" v dějinách a paměti středovýchodní a jihovýchodní Evropy
- Pod tlakem internacionalizace a sekuritizace: Proměny bezpečnostní politiky evropských států
- Prosazování českého zájmu v evropských politikách (completed)
- Česká zahraniční politika v Evropské unii (completed)
Selected publications
- Hazir, Ediz. 2026. “Women on a Mission: The Oblates of the Assumption and the Transformation of Catholic Outreach in the Ottoman Balkans.” Journal of Church and State 68, no. 1: xx–xx. ISSN 0021-969X.
- Brisku, A., M. Gumiela and F. Stocker (eds). (2025). Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe: Small States Responses to Economic Changes, 1960s-1980s. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Brisku, A. (2025). The Black Sea Region during World War I and the Interwar Period: The Forging of a Modern Identity,” in Handbook on the History and Culture of the Black Sea Region, Ninja Bumann et al (eds). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 151-164.
- Panahova, L. and J. Blinka. (2025). Türkiye and Kosovar Turks: Group Identity and Kin State Identification. Archiv Orientální. 93(2), 257-281
- Panahova, L. (2025). Recognition of the EU's Actorness in the Karabakh Peace Process by Azerbaijan. Problems of Post-Communism. 72(2), 188-197
- Horák Slavomír - Lepič Martin. (2025).The 2022 protests in Karakalpakstan. From lost autonomy to regional identity consolidation? Nationalities Papers. Vol. 53, No. 5, 2025, pp. 1174-1193.
- Weiss, T. & Fernandes, S. (2025). Foreign Policy Specialisation in EU Small States: Conceptualising and Analysing an Underexplored Practice. Journal of International Relations and Development.
- Weiss, T. (2025). Specialisation (un)recognised: human rights and Western Balkans in Czech foreign policy. Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
- Weiss, T. (2025). Small states and specialisation: domestic politics, foreign policy, and their interface. Small States & Territories 8(1): 86-89.
- Hazir, E. (2025). Politico-religious Imperialism: The Protectorate of the Roman Catholics and Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire. Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule, 3(2), 167-192.
- Hazir, E. (2025). Religious Alliances and Imperial Ambitions: The Jesuit Mission to Little Armenia (1881). Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies, 42(3), 205-223.
- Menclová, Barbora. (2025). "Similar but Different: Czechoslovakia in Angola and Mozambique.“ In H. Fonseca, C. Saunders, and L. Dallywater (eds). Communist Actors in African Decolonial Transitions: Comparative Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
- Menclová, Barbora. (2025). "Czechoslovak experts in independent Lusophone Africa as a variant of economic nationalism.“ In Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe: Small State Responses to Economic Changes, 1960s-1980s. Brisku, Adrian, Gumiela, Martin and Stocker, Fredrik (eds). Bloomsbury Academic.
- Brisku, A., and K. Beshku (2025). “A Tale of Two States: Explaining the Divergent Outcomes of the EU Soft-Transformative Power in Albania and Georgia”. YSU Journal of International Affairs 1 (2): 12-42.
- Horák, Slavomír (2023). Turkmenistan in Eurasian Railway Geopolitics. Central Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 1. pp. 171–190. ISSN 1465-3354.
- Brisku, A. (2022). Sto let česko(slovensko)-albánských vztahů. Univerzita Karlova, nakladatelství Karolinum.
- Brisku, A. (2022). Njëqind vjet marrëdhënie shqiptaro-çeko(sllovake). Univerzita Karlova, nakladatelství Karolinum.
- Weiss, T., & Edwards, G. (eds) (2022). Small States and Security in Europe. Between National and International Policymaking. Routledge.
- Brisku, A. (2022). Dealing with Smallness in Hasbsburg Bohemia, Ottoman Albania and Tsarist Georgia in the late-19th and early-20th century. In Samuël Kruizinga (Ed.), The Politics of Smallness in Modern Europe. Size, Identity and International Relations since 1800.
- Brisku, A., Blauvelt, T. (2021). The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic of 1918 : Federal Aspirations, Geopolitics and National Projects. Routledge.
- Weiss, T. (2020). A small state's anticipation of institutional change: effects of the looming Brexit in the areas of the CSDP and internal market. European Security, 29(1), 1-15.
- Brisku, A. (2020). Modern Georgia. In D. Ludden (Ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (pp. 1-22). Oxford University Press.
- Švec, L. (2020). Demontáž sovětského dějinného paradigmatu v Lotyšsku na konci 80. let 20. století:některé aspekty kontinuity a diskontinuity. Slovanský přehled. Review for the History of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, 106(3), 547-567.
- Weiss, T. (2019). Between NATO and a hard place: defence spending debate in Germany and Czechia. European Security, 28(2), 193-211.
- Kolenovská, D. (2019). Československo a běloruská emigrace. In M. Kuthanová (Ed.), Z historie exilu : emigrace z území bývalého Ruského impéria v meziválečném Československu (pp. 9-15). Památník národního písemnictví.
- Brisku, A. (2018). The Place of "Europe" in the Post-soviet Georgian Modernization Discourse. In G. Zedania (Ed.), Modernization in Georgia : Theories, Discourses, Realities (pp. 107-138). Peter Lang.
- Kolenovská, D. (2018). Heros and anti-heros of the Belarusian independence project in Chechoslovakia. The Journal of Belarusian Studies, 8(3), 67-86.
- Šír, J., Emler, D., Fjodorov, J., Hamatová, K., Karasová, N., Kučera, J., Lebduška, M., Lídl, V., Lukešová, O., Pondělíček, J., Raiman, V., Samus, M., Sviták, M., Svoboda, K., Švec, L., & Buchar, J. (2017). Ruská agrese proti Ukrajině. Univerzita Karlova, nakladatelství Karolinum.
- Kolenovská, D., & Šimová, K. (2017). Cesty do utopie: Sovětské Rusko ve svědectvích meziválečných československých intelektuálů. Prostor.
- Brisku, A. (2017). Political Reform in the Ottoman and Russian Empires: A Comparative Approach. Bloomsbury Academic.
- Weiss, T. (2017). Promoting National Priorities in EU Foreign Policy: The Czech Republic's Foreign Policy in the EU. Routledge.
- Brisku, A. (2017). Renegotiating the empire, forging the nation(- state): the Bohemian/Czechoslovakian case through the political-economic thought of Thomas G. Masaryk and Karel Kramář, c. 1890-1920s. Nationalities Papers, 45(4), 632-650.
- Králová, K. (2016). Das Vermächtnis der Besatzung. Deutsch-griechische Beziehungen seit 1940. Böhlau Verlag.
- Weiss, T. (2016). Too Limited, Too Late: Evaluating the Czech Republic's Performance as a Small-State Lobbyist in EU External Policy. New Perspectives, 24(1), 53-78.
News
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SnS Talk: “Armenian and Georgian Shifting Perceptions and Geostrategies of Inbetweenness amidst EU–Russian Power Projections”
We cordially invite you to a lecture by Professor Kornely Kakachia, which will take place on Thursday, February 26, from 3:45 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in room A125 of the Jinonice Campus. The lecture is entitled Armenian and Georgian Shifting Perceptions and Geostrategies of Inbetweenness amidst EU–Russian Power Projections and will be held as part of the Small (Nation-)States Research Center programme. -
PhD student Marina Perglová contributed a chapter to the publication "Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Soviet Eurasia."
In addition to the contribution by doc. Slavomír Horák, the new publication Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Soviet Eurasia also includes a chapter by doctoral student Marina Perglová entitled Kazakhstani Russians in transition: Identity formation in times of uncertainty. -
Doc. PhDr. Slavomír Horák, Ph.D. has published a chapter entitled "Karakalpaks: Entities with and without autonomy" in a new publication
Doc. PhDr. Slavomír Horák, Ph.D. contributed to the newly published book Ethnicity and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Soviet Eurasia with his chapter Karakalpaks: Entities with and without autonomy. In his chapter, he deals with one of the largest ethnic minorities in Uzbekistan, which was the only one that could identify itself as an entity with autonomous status, and focuses on how its identity has evolved over the last 30 years. -
PhD student Ediz Hazir has published a study on French politico-religious imperialism
PhD student Ediz Hazir has published a new study entitled Politico-religious Imperialism: The Protectorate of the Roman Catholics and Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire, which examines religious protectorates as a key instrument of European rivalry in the Ottoman Empire. -
PhDr. Barbora Menclová, Ph.D. published a chapter entitled "Similar but Different: Czechoslovakia in Angola and Mozambique" in a new academic book.
PhDr. Barbora Menclová, Ph.D. has published a chapter entitled Similar but Different: Czechoslovakia in Angola and Mozambique in her new book Communist Actors in African Decolonial Transitions. -
PhD student Lamiya Panahova published an article on the role of the EU in resolving the conflict in Karabakh
Doktorandka z Katedry ruských a východních studií Lamiya Panahova publikovala v odborném časopise Problems of Post-Communism článek s názvem Recognition of the EU’s Actorness in the Karabakh Peace Process by Azerbaijan.
