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The Byzantine lead seals of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts number in total 146 pieces, mostly collected in the region of Trebizond. They offer valuable insights into the middle Byzantine society of the Pontos region, which despite its location on the easternmost borders was connected with other, even more remote, regions of the empire. The majority of these seals come from local officials and reflect their local preoccupations, perhaps as a backlash to the dominant culture of the capital. Fifteen selected pieces from the collection are published here and provided with commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that nationalities policy under Lenin and Stalin, its commitment to territorial autonomy notwithstanding, effectively put into practice the Austro-Marxist vision of a socialist multinational state and party that patronised national culture to assuage separatist tendencies. Highlighting the ideological common ground between Habsburg remedies for imperial disintegration along national lines and Soviet policies for imperial integration along the same lines, it argues that the Bolsheviks' Marxist premise of promoting national diversity and culture to defuse nationalism was prefigured and informed by the Austro-Marxist premise of making national cultural autonomy the hallmark rather than the antithesis of socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Aboriginal Affairs was a volatile portfolio. Gough Whitlam signalled a reorientation of policy with self‐determination in 1973. However, in the succeeding decade, policy slipped back to self‐management and self‐sufficiency that were the default of the Coalition. The proposals for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission by Labor in the late 1980s brought self‐determination back into the equation and sparked much heated debate. This article focusses on the parliamentary debates around Labor's proposed legislation to establish the Commission, between 1987 and November 1989, when the debates concluded and a severely reduced Act came into being. I argue that the Coalition's hostility to the proposal demonstrated an implacable resistance to self‐determination and an agenda that sought to derail its possibility. Furthermore, I argue that the resonances between arguments for and against an Indigenous voice then and now demonstrate the radical nature of Labor's agenda in the late 1980s and suggest that arguments against the Voice to Parliament now might be conceived as unfinished business by conservative Coalition forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the nature and extent of involvement by neo-Nazi and other far-right Ukrainian organisations in the Donbas war (2014-2022) and the Odesa massacre (2014). This issue is highly politicised with contrasting narratives. The Russian and Donbas separatist governments, as well as their media, have contended that Ukraine has been a Nazi or neo-Nazi regime since a fascist coup took place in 2014, while Ukrainian and Western governments and media have maintained that such elements in the Ukrainian far-right were marginal, trivial, even non-existent. The article interrogates the historical record with primary sources in the three most relevant languages-Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The investigation reveals crucial far-right involvement in both the early stages of the war in Donbas and the Odesa massacre. Although the percentage of far-right supporters and fighters in Ukraine was relatively small, they exercised disproportionate influence in the country due to their greater reliance on violence and armed formations. The Russian government, however, exaggerated the role of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine to publicly justify the illegal invasion in February 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the impetus for the armed separatism of the Indigenous Peoples Of Biafra (IPOB). Drawing from a mixed method design utilizing a cross-sectional survey and qualitative study, seventy five (75) agitators were purposively sampled to assess the trajectory of revivified armed struggle for the independence of Biafra in Southeast Nigeria. Informed conversations on neo-Biafra movements are mainly constructed around state repression, socio-political exclusion and terrorism. This study focused on how ancient Israel's providential war victories are renegotiated in IPOB's armed struggle against the Nigerian state. The article specifically assessed how the influences from Jewish triumphant war narratives and self-rule are re-enacted in the IPOB's armed struggle towards achieving Biafra's independence in Southeast Nigeria. The findings indicated that the more religiously motivated participants are, the more their zest and proclivity to armed struggle for an independent state of Biafra (β = 0.25; t = 2.12; P < 0.05). Hence, the renewed armed struggle for an independent state of Biafra was largely traced to religious motivation and proclivity to violence F (2, 74) = 2.26, P < 0.05. In line with the findings, conclusions were drawn and implications were examined. The study uncovers the motivation behind the reinvigoration of the IPOB movement and their perception of Elohim's (God) backing to have been drawn from the Jews' past armed insurrection, war successes and eventual political freedom. This account maps into the discourse on how religious beliefs frame the struggle for political independence in postcolonial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant history of Muslim armed separatism in the Philippines obscures the insurgency's character. Insurgents espouse revolutionary war, even though this mischaracterizes the interests constituted in the insurgent cause. Patricio Abinales' critiques of the orthodoxy are applied to disambiguate the Bangsamoro cause, highlighting the insurgency's concurrent supralocal and local logics. Supralocal-local dissonance is reconciled by recasting the Bangsamoro cause as a supralocal-local bargain through Stathis Kalyvas' concept of alliance, retaining classical counterinsurgency theory's macropolitical locus but imbued with cognizance of the insurgency's micropolitics. This approach challenges the perceived finality of the insurgency after the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999, there have been renewed calls―predominantly amongst ethnic Igbos in southeast Nigeria―for the restoration of the defunct secessionist state of Biafra. The resurgent Biafran separatism has been explored through the prisms of relative marginalisation and material deprivation. However, some scholars have drifted away from dominant discussions on the rationale behind the re‐emergence of the secessionist agitations and instead focused on the myriad media that Biafran separatist movements utilise to make claims of self‐determination for Igbos. These scholars―typically linguists―invariably explore online activism by resorting to meticulous analysis of the discourses of pro‐Biafra separatists on the Internet. Whilst such robust discourse analyses of separatists’ speeches shed light on the discursive dynamics of Biafran separatism in contemporary Nigeria, they do not underscore the varied repertoires of collective action of Biafran separatists beyond Internet activism. This article fills this gap in the scholarly literature on resurgent Biafran separatism in democratic Nigeria. Drawing on the American sociologist Charles Tilly’s analytical framework of contentious contention and focusing on the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)―a transnational separatist movement―I argue that the various online and offline activities of Biafran separatists in the southeastern region be construed as repertoires of contention geared toward contesting the sovereignty of the Nigerian state in order to restore the short‐lived secessionist Biafran state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a controversial document that has not yet been studied in depth. It is a petition sent by an Alawi separatist leader from Latakia (Syria) to the newly elected French prime minister in 1936. Its aim was to persuade the French that their decision to grant Syria independence and to incorporate the Alawi district to Syria would be a mistake that could endanger the safety of the sect. This article presents for the first time in research the authentic petition and compares it with the distorted version of this document that has been available until now in Arabic literature and media. In addition, the article presents the historical background of the petition and demonstrates its relevance to recent Syrian politics. Two appendices appearing at the end of the article include a table summarizing the comparison between the original document and the previously available unreliable version, and a copy of the original petition from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had to face a series of movements, with separatist tendencies, in the West of the country, on the territory of the Transcarpathia district. These movements came from the dominant minorities in the area, who claimed the return to a certain historical status from the period before the territorial annexation of the region by the Soviet Union in 1945, or for the respect of certain rights and freedoms. The 90s were loaded with events through which national minorities reaffirmed their position within the new democratic state. Therefore, this article deals with the issue of movements with separatist tendencies undertaken by the Ruthenian and Hungarian minorities to declare the autonomy of some territories within the democratic Ukraine. Movements that were guaranteed by some political actors, movements that in the end did not have any concrete success, the actions of the Ruthenian and Hungarian leaders being more for the official recognition or strengthening of the positions of these minorities in Transcarpathia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Amazon imagery serves as a case study for the complicated relationship of lesbian separatist movements of the 1970s and the classical Greek tradition. I consider how the use of mythological figures allowed lesbian feminists to rewrite and subvert dominant patriarchal narratives in ways that furthered their revolutionary projects. I argue that the nature of mythology is fundamentally fluid, collaborative, and open to queer reinterpretations and appropriations in ways that are rich with symbolic potential. Furthermore, the creation of separatist communities approximates an act of nation-building, and it is useful to consider other attempts to construct and theorize nations, ranging from Homi Bhabha on post-/anticolonial resistance to Berlant and Freeman on Queer Nationality. In particular, when considering a lesbian movement, we should remember that queer theory is messy because queerness itself is messy and resists boundaries and classification. Furthermore, what Ward frames as "dyke methods" (or dyke-centric queer methods) insist on categories that are fluid, messy, and shifting in their classifications and drawn toward as-yet-unknown queer possibilities. To study lesbian separatists with dyke methods is to embark on "an antiessentialist and interdisciplinary project" without necessarily "making a commitment to balanced ideas" (pp. 82–83). It is my hope that a messy, queer analysis of Amazonian symbolism in the construction of a lesbian nationalism will ultimately offer intriguing, if at times contradictory, possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine the contributing role of socio-economic status on adherence to directives from the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) separatist group. A descriptive survey was used for the study, while 325 participants were sampled using the respondents' chain referral sampling technique. The study showed that socio-economic factors such as income, education and employment status contribute 35.5% to determine compliance with IPOB directives. The results of the multiple regression analysis achieved a statistical significance, R 2 = 0.355, p = 0.001, F (3,310) = 51.524. Finally, we explored the implication of these results on Integrated Separatist Agitation Theory and highlighted the scholarly and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After general Miguel Primo de Rivera's coup d'état in Spain in 1923, Francesc Macià went into French exile. The leader of the Catalan separatist movement and his political-military organization, Estat Català, organized an army. Macià's aim was to penetrate with several columns of men into Catalonia to proclaim the Catalan Republic in Barcelona. This article exposes Macià's difficulties in obtaining weapons and ammunition, describes the armament obtained and uses the conflicts which took place in Ireland between 1916 and 1923 as a frame to analyse the scope and prospects of the Catalan separatist insurrection in 1926. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central paradox in the relationship between separatism and democracy is that while democracy provides a fertile environment for separatism—often by means of democracy's own institutions, mechanisms, and policies—democratic states are also well equipped to thwart and defeat separatist movements. The same pluralistic flexibility that allows pro-independence movements to blossom provides the tools to subvert and even crush separatist aspirations. Whether stonewalled by constitutional constraints, locked into systems of regional autonomy, undercut by counter-separatist movements, or cowed by the economic consequences of going it alone, separatist movements in democratic states are likely to turn quixotic. Catalonia and Scotland—two regions that only a few years ago seemed to be on the cusp of realizing longtime dreams of independence—prominently display the paradoxical politics inherent in separatism in democratic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who are the guardians of separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia? These de facto states can be seen as self-determination movements or as outgrowths of Russian imperialism. We arbitrate between these competing scripts using a dataset that profiles officials in charge of high politics decision-making inside Georgia's separatist entities from 1992 through 2020 (N=608). We find that most are sons of the soil, though Abkhazia's guardians are more multicultural than South Ossetia's. Russian emissaries seized influential posts inside the self-declared republics after 2003 and, since then, sit in on Security Council meetings, thus rendering them incapable of autonomous decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an interval during 1970–1971 during which the Canadian Federal government established a clandestine body codenamed FAN TAN within the Prime Minister's Office to conduct surveillance of, and 'political action' against, the Quebec separatist movement. This organization, led by Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Marc Lalonde, sought to persuade the Security Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to provide intelligence in support of what was a party political entity based in the Prime Minister's Office and not in the actual national security machinery of the Privy Council Office. We examine how John Starnes, Director General of the Security Service, went to considerable lengths to resist this effort to politicize his agency, and to warn the government of the potential scandal should FAN TAN become publicly known. We conclude that the FAN TAN affair leaves a number of serious questions to be answered such as: who actually originated the scheme, its legality as well as propriety, what intelligence was used or continued to be collected after the RCMP sought to end its involvement, and why the matter was ignored by the subsequent McDonald Commission that prompted the dissolution of the Security Service.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2023, India witnessed multiple incidents of mass violence despite the weakening of several militant and separatist movements. Hindutva organisations weaponised Hindu religious festivals and processions to unleash mob and vigilante violence against Muslims. Meanwhile, Manipur, where ethnic tensions and insurgencies had declined in recent years, saw an eruption of violent clashes, potentially providing a fertile ground for the revival of militancy in the border state. Militant attacks declined in Jammu and Kashmir, and militants shifted operational focus to the thickly forested Pir Panjal region. Though the global jihadist groups failed to carry out any attacks in India in 2023, the country remained in the crosshairs of their social media propaganda. Likewise, while the support for Sikh separatism in India was weak, the movement found traction among pockets of the Sikh diaspora community in Canada, where the rhetoric for an independent Khalistan was articulated strongly. As for the Maoist insurgency, it continued to decline in terms of attacks and areas of influence. While a variety of reasons underlie India's multiple militant protests and movements, Hindutva violence appears to be playing an important role in fueling many of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of violence in Thailand's Deep South has been on a downward trend since the 2013 launch of a peace dialogue, although attacks against non-combatants remain a concern. In February 2023, a general framework known as the "Joint Comprehensive Plan towards Peace" was agreed upon between the Thai government and the separatist group Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Patani (Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, or BRN), laying out a roadmap for the conduct of a ceasefire and public consultation expected to lead to political solutions. While the newly elected Thai government has pledged to resume the peace talks with Malay-Muslim insurgents fighting for independence, its commitment and vision remain unclear. Given that the military has dominated Thai politics for nearly a decade, regaining civilian control over government operations in the Deep South could significantly change the dynamics of the conflict. However, it is doubtful if the government will be bold enough to challenge the military and other conservative forces that have long dominated conflict management in the restive region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to the norms of nation-states has always been one of the most important issues for Southeast Asian countries. This paper takes Aceh and Western Papua as examples to explore their interaction with the central government of Indonesia and try to answer why local authorities have different responses after implementing the indirect rule. This study mainly uses process tracking methods to test the interaction between the central and local governments in Indonesia. This study believes that trust is the fundamental factor that determines whether the local authorities and the central government can have a positive interaction. This reason will change the central government in the process of State-building. The study found that Aceh and Western Papua had different feedback to the central government. The key lies in whether they form a "trust" interaction, rather than whether they adopt an inclusive system (democratic system). This study concluded the feedback difference between Aceh and Western Papua as a classic case shows that, as a country, it is not only represented by the central government but also needs the "trust" of the central government and local authorities to form good governance, as well as national development effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 20 November 2018 Denis Vladimirovich Pushilin became the Head of the unrecognised Donetsk People's Republic in Eastern Ukraine. Despite his numerous proclamations aligning him with the Kremlin's propaganda apparatus, his style and imagery differs from that of Vladimir Putin. To dissect Pushilin's constructed image we used a discourse analysis methodology focusing on primary sources such as speeches, songs, images, and photographs uploaded to either Pushilin's social media accounts or the DPR administration's official website. Our research analyses Pushilin's government from the day he assumed power until the 23 February 2022, with the onset of the war in Ukraine. Our analysis focuses on core aspects of his constructed image, such as nationalism, sports as well as gender and family politics. Our findings show that while Denis Pushilin does adhere to Kremlin directives when it comes to issues crucial to Moscow, he does enjoy certain freedom when it comes to his image construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the foundational years of 1989–1992 when the Republic of Moldova obtained its independence and simultaneously suffered territorial losses due to separatist movements. The quasi-official view in today's Moldova holds that separatist movements of that era in Transnistria and Gagauzia were the results of Moscow's meddling in Moldovan affairs aimed at punishing the Moldovans' quest for independence. The paper argues that this interpretation attributes too much power to the decision-makers in Moscow, and also strips local actors of agency. Instead, the article calls for a renewed focus on the developments in Moldova itself and for discourses developed by separatist leaders and opinion-setters to be treated as representative of genuine popular sentiment. It argues that the Moldovan national movement alienated the non-Moldovan population whose primary means of communication was Russian. The article relies on personal recollections as well as numerous published primary and secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]