1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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Ethnoterritorial Conflict in the Soviet Union. 2 The factors and consequences briefly
Former Soviet Union discussed are generalizations drawn from comparative
research on nationalism and territoriality and from the
disputes that have emerged in the former USSR. They
Robert Kaiser are by no means the only important factors, and, to
Professor of Geography fully understand why some ethnoterritorial disputes
University of Missouri-Columbia escalated to violent conflict and others did not, it is
necessary to explore each dispute in detail and to
examine it from each side's perspective. Nonetheless,
Introduction it is also essential to understand the geographic vari-
ability in ethnoterritorial conflict in the former USSR
The former USSR has been the scene of scores of more generally and to place the events in this critical
active and potential ethnoterritorial conflicts. More world region in the context of a broader conceptual
than 200 ethnic and territorial disputes have been framework.
identified in this region since 1989, encompassing
nearly all the territory of the former USSR (see
figure 6). However, not all the disputes have erupted Ethnoterritorial Conflicts: Factors Underlying
into violent conflict. In Latvia and Estonia, ethnic con- Regional Differences
flict has taken the form of "constitutional nationalism"
or "ethnic democracy," as Latyian and Estonian politi- The Degree of National Consciousness
cal elites restructure ethnic relations through the use The formation of a national identity is one of the most
of legislation to exclude nonmembers.' In Transcauca- important, but also one of the most difficult, factors to
sia, ethnoterritorial conflicts between titular nations grasp. Nationalists throughout this region tend to
and indigenous minorities began before 1991 and depict their nations as "primordial organisms" that
quickly escalated to open warfare. In Central Asia, were dormant during the oppressive Soviet period and
sporadic outbreaks of ethnic violence against nontitu- were reawakened during the Gorbachev era (for
lar populations have occurred but have not been orga- example, RUKH 1989). However, it is more accurate
nized by indigenous political elites pursuing the to view the Soviet period as crucial to the national for-
politics of territorial nationalism. In the Russian Fed- mation process, during which time nations became
eration, disputes over the level of territorial autonomy mass-based communities of interest and belonging
for non-Russians have risen, but, aside from a few that developed a sense of identity and a sense of
specific republics, a process of political disintegration homeland more extensive than their local environment
comparable to that which occurred in the USSR does (Kaiser 1994). However, even though this nationaliza-
not appear to be on the horizon. tion process during the Soviet era resulted in a higher
and more mass-based national consciousness than
Rather than provide a descriptive summary of all 200 existed before, not all groups are equally national.
plus ethnoterritorial conflicts, this paper explores the
factors underyling the regional variation in the ethnot- Because national consciousness is essentially subjec-
erritorial conflicts that have arisen in the former tive, it is difficult to measure the degree to which it has
become mass-based. Soviet censuses did ask a ques-
'The term constitutional nationalism; its use by the political elites tion on national identity, and this data provided one
of the dominant nation, the consequences of the new political real- indicator of groups that were losing members as a
ity for nonmembers, and reactions leading to violent ethnoterrito-
rial conflict was recently elaborated by Robert Hayden (1992) with
reference to Yugoslavia. According to Hayden, "constitutional 2 For such a descriptive summary of the conflicts that had emerged
nationalism envisions a state in which sovereignty resides with a by 1992, see Kolossor (1992).
particular nation, the members of which are the only ones who can
decide fundamental questions of state form and identity." Ethnic
democracy has been defined by Smooha and Hanf (1992, 31) as "a
democracy in which the dominance of one ethnic group is institu-
tionalized."
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