ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book has four major parts, which deal with basic concepts reflected in related material throughout the volume. These include topics such as nationalism, ethnicity, political socialization, stereotyping, and authoritarianism. In the first years of the 1990s, the old enmities and rivalries that were frozen for half a century in the Cold War glacier have come to life once again. The revival of nationalism has enlivened longstanding hatreds and affected supposedly "uninvolved" countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas through new security threats, immigration and economic pressures, and other perilous means. Security questions, economic and trade issues, and intercultural contacts are linked as never before in the new search for cooperative international structures and political processes. The Bulgarian case study provides the historical, political, social, and economic background for the oppression of the Turkish minority in that country.
