Managing ethnic conflict

Abstract

One of Gorbachev's principal failures was his management of the ethnic or nationalities question: the break‐up of the USSR was accelerated by renascent ethnic animosities, given voice by the possibilities of glasnost for self‐expression. Gorbachev's experience, training and philosophy led him to accept the Marxist view that ethnicity (or nationality) is not the principal division within the human race, and he inherited a tradition that held it appropriate to submerge ethnic differences in the common endeavour of building a wealthy new society ‐ a policy that appeared to have enjoyed some success. Moreover, the complexity of the issue in the former Soviet Union made such an approach virtually mandatory: it was probably insoluble on the basis of nationalist assumptions. The dismemberment of the Union may have compounded the problem by adding an inter‐state dimension to what was an internal ‘inter‐national’ problem.