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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Second, Korenizatsiya (indigenization) policies that of the Russian population, a more localized, subna-
targeted members of the titular nation for preferential tional identity is also apparent. Both of these detract
treatment in their home republic clearly fostered a from the strength of a Russian national identity and a
more ethnically exclusionary outlook regarding the sense of homeland. As a result, there has been a lively
appropriate status of the titular nation vis a vis all debate within the Russian community over the ques-
other nations in the republic. Most nationalists have tion: "What is Russia?".
come to view all their former republic as homeland,
even while many nationalists lay claim to a more
extensive homeland. Ethnodemographic 'Tends
On the one hand, the federal' structure reduced the eth- Most nationalists view the ideal polity as an ethnically
noterritorial conflict that might otherwise have pure nation-state with all members of the nation in and
occurred-it provided the political geographic struc- no outsiders present and with political borders drawn
ture for a relatively peaceful dissolution of the USSR. on the basis of the (mythical) ancestral homeland, that
On the other hand, several of those national communi- is, the state ideally is viewed as the political geo-
ties with units that were only autonomous have graphic embodiment of the nation. However, none of
attempted to secede from the successor states in which the successor states encompasses one and only one
their homelands are located. This has resulted in con- nation (see tables 1 and 2):
flict escalation at the intrarepublic scale, which has
been particularly severe in the Caucasus. " Armenia is ethnically homogeneous but has the
highest percentage of members living outside a suc-
Territorial nationalism is strongest in the regions cessor state.
where nations are most fully formed. Again, Estonia
and Latvia-with their exclusionary citizenship laws, - Almost all Estonians, Latvians, and Georgians are
constitutions, and so forth -may be seen as most included in their respective states, but members of
nationalistic. The state-building project in these two nontitular groups are also present.
republics is synonymous with the exclusion of ethnic
others, particularly Russians, even though their poli- Demographic dilution of the indigenous nation in its
cies have excluded the population arriving since homeland, usually occurring as the result of the in-
World War II rather than all nontitular people. migration of Russians, tended to exacerbate intereth-
nic relations and was a catalyst for rising nationalism.
Ethnic conflict is more likely where two or more Latvians and Estonians experienced the greatest
nations feel a strong sense of homeland toward the demographic dilution in their homelands between
same place, where both groups have become politi- 1960 and 1990, and the feared demographic Russifica-
cized, and where the power relationship between the tion became the cornerstone of their nationalistic pro-
two groups has shifted to favor one over the other. grams (Parming, 1980). Abkhazians similarly cited
This is certainly true in the case of conflicts over Georgian in-migration and Abkhazian dilution as a
Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Abkhazia and critical factor in the need for Abkhazia to be indepen-
South Ossetia in Georgia. dent, and the Armenian declaration of independence
in Nagorno-Karabakh was preceded by a decade of
A final note under this factor: it has become increas- Azeri in-migration.
ingly apparent over the past few years that a Russian
sense of national consciousness and sense of home- By way of contrast, Kyrgyzstan has about the same
land are not well developed. Russians as the dominant level of demographic dilution as Latvia, but this has
group in the USSR experienced an overlapping sense not been a major issue in Kyrgyzstan. In the Central
of identity with the Soviet People idea, and with the
entire USSR as the Russian homeland/Socialist father-
land. Also, because of the great geographic dispersal
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