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