and the relationship between the citizen and the state. In Chapter 1,
Robert Sharlet compares the process of constitution-making in Russia
and Ukraine, the two largest Soviet successor states, whose future will
critically influence that of the region as a whole. As he points out, while
Russia's and Ukraine's constitutional development reflects the shared
legacy of the Soviet era, they part ways in several respects: where Russia
has been preoccupied with stability, seeking to define its political order
in terms of a federal system, Ukraine has wrestled with the challenge of
decolonization and independence in the guise of a unitary state, despite
the country's large Russian presence. Though Russia's first post-Soviet
constitution came into being at the end of 1993 after the executive
branch deployed tanks against the legislative branch of government, its
adoption via a referendum seems to have arrested the decline of the
state's prestige and introduced a modicum of political stability. By con-
trast, as Sharlet demonstrates, in Ukraine, the political elite's polariza-
tion has stalled the process of constitutional drafting and thereby
"adversely affected the legitimacy and unity of the state" as well as
impeded the country's economic development.

The breakdown of Communist federations and the rise of the succes-
sor states in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe raises some
fundamental questions regarding identities--both for the individual and
the state--that had been suppressed for decades. For the individual
there are issues related to one's rights as territories and sovereignties
change but the place where one lives has not. Changing conceptions of
statehood, nationality, and citizenship, along with new legal codes, can
leave both the individual and the state in vulnerable positions.

One of the central issues facing the new states concerns the definition
of citizenship. As Julie Mostov points out in Chapter 2, millions of East
Europeans have found themselves displaced as citizens of countries that
no longer exist, having to defend old identities or being forced to accept
new ones. Citizenship delineates membership in a political community,
spells out rights and obligations, and establishes boundaries for inclu-
sion. Criteria for citizenship, Mostov argues, have become subject to
competing political groups and, often, a victim of the politics of national
identity. Given that the new states tend to legitimize themselves as the
national states of particular ethnic (ethnonational) groups, such identifi-
cations often trample upon minority rights. Consequently, clashing con-
ceptions of citizenship, based on collective rights, have fueled political
conflicts in most post-Communist multi-ethnic societies. Where leaders
of both majority and minority national groups chose to exploit the incen-
diary potential of the politics of national identity to advance their own
political fortunes, as in the former Yugoslavia, they increased the
prospects for violence and war.

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