(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
type of resistance typically not provoked the same
level of titular reaction that territorial autonomy/inde-
pendence movements have.
Conclusion
There are several important lessons that have been
leamed in the emergent territorial nationalism found
in the former Soviet Union.
Conflict escalation to violent confrontation is an inter-
active process. It has normally started with territorial
nationalism of the titular nation, whose members
attempt to establish their hegemony in their home-
land.’ This in tum means that the rights and privileges
of nontitular peoples living in the emergent nationalis-
tic state are seriously eroded or restricted, resulting in
a reactive nationalism on the part of such nontitular
nations. Indigenous minorities have tended to react by
declaring their sovereignty over the geographic area
perceived as their homeland, and this has frequently
led to a strong reaction on the part of such titular
nation. This pattem of conflict escalation revolving
around territorial control is found in the Armenian-
Azeri dispute, in Georgia, in the North Caucasus, in
Ukraine (especially Crimea), and in Moldova.
In areas where the nontitular groups have not devel-
oped a strong sense of homeland with their local
places of residence, resistance in the form of political
oppositi0n—as in the case of the Russians in the Bal-
tic republics. Altematively, emigration or even accep-
tance if the nontitular group has come to identify with
the titular nation and its homeland are also reactions
7 See I-lennayake (1992), who recently elaborated a theory of
"interactive ethnonationalism.”
found among certain segments of the nontitular popu-
lation. Conflict escalation to violent confrontation is
not inevitable. Nontitular emigration is found among
nonindigenous groups in Transcaucasia and Central
Asia. Acceptance is found most often among nontitu-
lar groups that are ethnically similar to the titular
nation and whose members have lived outside their
ancentral homeland for generations.
As a final comment, several analysts of ethnoterrito-
rial conflict in the former USSR have argued that it
was the federal structure, based as it was on ethnic
homelands, that was the cause of the disintegration in
the USSR and the cause of interethnic conflict today.
They also state that the successor states are ethnically
mixed and that ethnonational identity and territorial
identity must be separated to avoid the kind of ethnot-
erritorial cleansing that has occurred in Yugoslavia
and in Transcaucasia. As laudable as this sentiment
may be, it does not accord with the reality of territorial
nationalism in the region. National identity and terri-
torial identity have been intimately interrelated, and a
rising sense of national consciousness has coincided
with a rising sense of exclusiveness toward the region
identified as the national homeland. Attempts to
decouple this geographic relationship between nation
and homeland will fail and are likely to cause height-
ened interethnic tensions and conflicts in the region. A
more informed approach to the problem of territorial
nationalism should begin with an acknowledgement
of the importance of homeland in the perceptions of
nationalists and attempt to regulate interethnic ten-
sions and conflicts that are likely to emerge as a con-
sequence of these perceptions before these conflicts
escalate to violent confrontation.
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268