Books by Michael Thumann
Winning Peace. The End of the First World War: History, Remembrance and Current Challenges, 2019
After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was the only state subject to two peace treaties. T... more After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was the only state subject to two peace treaties. The newly established Turkey was, in parallel, the only country to turn defeat into victory. The 1923 peace settlement of Lausanne was based on the mass displacement and disenfranchisement of both Christian and Muslim populations. At the time, these measures were regarded, even by democratically elected politicians in Western Europe, as the guarantors of peace and stability.
Papers by Michael Thumann
Demokratizatsiya, 2001
Michael Thumann is Moscow bureau chief of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.Russia's multi... more Michael Thumann is Moscow bureau chief of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.Russia's multiethnic character has always been a fundamental yet often underestimated part of Russian politics. Both tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union crumbled when economic crisis and bureaucratic collapse coincided with a rebellion of minority peoples. Until 1990, only a handful of Western scholars paid attention to the problem, but it has been quite broadly discussed since. The Russian Federation, as a nation-state under reconstruction, inherited some dilemmas from its predecessors. Today, government and power structures in Russia still must cope with a great variety of ethnic groups in a vast country.The task of holding together a multicultural state was the first challenge to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and it is still high on his agenda. Under his leadership as Russia's prime minister in 1999, Moscow restarted the protracted war against the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Putin and t...
Demokratizatsiya, Mar 22, 2001
Forum für osteuropäische Ideen -und Zeitgeschichte, 2004
Nationalities Papers, 1997
The decay of Yugoslavia since 1990 has put an end to the experiment of a state of Southern Slavs.... more The decay of Yugoslavia since 1990 has put an end to the experiment of a state of Southern Slavs. At the same time it has destroyed the myth of a peaceful and strong Western Europe. The continent that had displayed an impressive performance of cooperation and skillful diplomatic maneuvering during the last years of the Cold War proved to be incapable of coping with the problems in its southeastern backyard. In the beginning of the conflict, the European Community assumed responsibility for negotiating cease-fires and a peace settlement for the embattled Yugoslav states. But all efforts were fruitless. In 1995, it was primarily the interference of the United States that brought about the peace treaty of Dayton for Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Nationalities Papers, 1997
The decay of Yugoslavia since 1990 has put an end to the experiment of a state of Southern Slavs.... more The decay of Yugoslavia since 1990 has put an end to the experiment of a state of Southern Slavs. At the same time it has destroyed the myth of a peaceful and strong Western Europe. The continent that had displayed an impressive performance of cooperation and skillful diplomatic maneuvering during the last years of the Cold War proved to be incapable of coping with the problems in its southeastern backyard. In the beginning of the conflict, the European Community assumed responsibility for negotiating cease-fires and a peace settlement for the embattled Yugoslav states. But all efforts were fruitless. In 1995, it was primarily the interference of the United States that brought about the peace treaty of Dayton for Bosnia-Hercegovina.
IPC Mercator Policy Brief, 2020
This paper describes how the Presidents of Turkey and Russia, Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin t... more This paper describes how the Presidents of Turkey and Russia, Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin take advantage of national feelings to stay in power although they had no nationalist agenda when they assumed office years before. The paper also explains that nationalism by choice has an expiry date and that it seems to work poorly in the age of COVID-19.
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Books by Michael Thumann
Papers by Michael Thumann