Russian and Slavonic Studies

In this volume, researchers in the fields of language in society, sociolinguistics, language politics, diaspora and identity studies explore the contacts between languages and cultures in the post-Soviet world. The book presents a range of perspectives on the ef fects of migration and of re-drawing of borders among groups and individuals for whom the Russian language has had an instrumental or symbolic prominence. How do recent geopolitical shifts impact on the policies and practices of newly independent states? How have communities and individuals come to redefine their own identities and core values? How does a cultural context in which the power relations between cultural and linguistic groups have been reversed or recalibrated affect the attitudes of each group? How does the potential for transnational identities impact on the interplay between diasporic and homeland communities? How does migration influence linguistic and parenting practices? This collection of fers answers to these and many other questions through case studies from eleven regions in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.

story of Toni, a Zagrebian sliding into middle age in a city and a country in a state of rapid transformation. 1 Toni and his family, friends, and coworkers are coming to terms (or not) with the uprooting of values brought on by the end of communism and the conflict of the nineties-accepting, confronting, and sometimes rejecting the new capitalism, media consumption, contract housing, and job markets. It is a vigorous shaking of the snow globe that provides opportunities for some but great difficulties for others. The old ways, those that Toni and his coevels-to say nothing of his parents' generation-grew up with, are still present, still influential, but they now jostle for space in a fast-changing social, political, and economic landscape. Politicians from the socialist period are around, albeit increasingly marginal. Tito is remembered and spoken of, but with ever-diminishing affection and awe. The many traumas of the Second World War and the communist period are now refracted and warped through the lens of the conflict of the nineties. War, socialism, and transition-these are the legacies in which contemporary society is enmeshed. Toni himself works at a struggling media outlet overshadowed by a more unscrupulous and therefore more successful rival. In a desperate and grievously ill-considered attempt to appease his extended family back in his home village, Toni provides to a fairly distant relative a position as an infield reporter covering the American-led invasion of Iraq. This is Boris, a man with absolutely no journalistic experience and, furthermore, a man suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his own combat experience during the 1990s. It is a recipe for disaster, and Boris's increasingly unhinged field reports from Iraq show how the new conflict has mingled with his own