Petru Negura is a researcher at Moldova State University and a lecturer at the University of Regensburg. He is the author of Ni héros, ni traîtres : Les écrivains moldaves face au pouvoir soviétique sous Staline (2009).Andrei Cusco is a researcher at the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Iasi, Romania. He is the author of A Contested Borderland: Competing Russian and Romanian Visions of Bessarabia in the Second Half of the 19th and Early 20th Century (2017).Svetlana Suveica is a senior research associate at the Leibniz-Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg and an associated Professor at the University of Regensburg. Her latest monograph, Post-imperial Encounters. Transnational Designs of Bessarabia in Paris and Elsewhere, 1917–1922 (2022) won the Book Prize of the Society for Romanian Studies.

• Introduction: Popular Responses to Nation-Building in the Soviet and East European Borderlands, 1900–40 Petru Negura, Andrei Cusco, Svetlana Suveica Part 1 The Gaze of the State and the Reluctant Masses: Visions, Projects, and Failures 1 From National Indifference to Indifferent Nationality? The Ukrainian Masses and Nationhood in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union Fabian Baumann 2 “National Soul-Catching,” State Categories, and Local Responses: Jewish and Ukrainian Challenges of the Census in Eastern Galicia and Eastern Lesser Poland, 1880–1931 Martin Rohde 3 Moving between Hierarchies: Small Finnic Nationalities in the Finnish and Soviet Modernizations during the Interwar Years Takehiro Okabe Part 2 Disruptive Outsiders, Alternative Narratives, and Local Agency 4 Populism, Anarchism, and Alternative Nation-Building “From the Left” in Modern Romania: The Cases of Zamfir C. Ralli Arbore and Constantin Stere Andrei Cu?co5 The Positivist Education of Peasant Children: Village Schools, Local Agency, and the Advent of Polish Statehood Kathleen Wroblewski6 Elites, Soldiers, Locals, and the Many Faces of a Belarusian Nation Aleksandra Pomiecko Part 3 The Elites versus the People: Struggles, Tensions, Encounters 7 Treasonous Stripes: Embracing and Banning the Romanian Colors in Dualist Hungary Ágoston Berecz 8 Courting the Straggler Sheep? Hungarian Nation-Building and Popular Reactions among the Csángós, 1920–40 Gábor Egry 9 Interwar Dniester Jews between Romania and the Soviet Union: Struggles for Cultural Agency and Economic Survival Dmitry TartakovskyPart 4 Peripheral Actors and Nationalizing Designs: Between Resistance and Survival10 Dodging the Nation: Peasant Responses to Schooling and Nation-Building in the Interwar Romanian, Polish, and Soviet Borderlands Petru Negura 11 Singing a Different Tune: Jewish Converts and Musical Resistance in Interwar Bessarabia Iemima Ploscariu 12 Criminalizing Belief and Disciplining the Masses: Gendarmes and Orthodox Priests in the First Trial against Old Calendarists in Bessarabia (1934–5) Andreea Kaltenbrunner 13 Choosing the Soviet Union over Romania: The 1940 Jewish Exodus as Protest and Survival Svetlana Suveica Index

This volume masterfully bridges history from below with the study of nationalism, focusing on moments when ordinary people asserted their agency against the nationalizing agendas of states and self-proclaimed elites. It reminds us that we grasp the dynamics of nationalism and nationalization most clearly not when they proceed smoothly, but rather when they falter. Featuring leading scholars, this book offers fresh perspectives and compelling case studies about nations and their making.