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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Problems of building a new democratic Russia based on federative principles and the region's long-refractory “national question,” forming a knotty tangle of complicated issues, have steadily remained in the political limelight. In a number of regions worldwide dramatic changes have occurred, related in one way or the other to the processes of national-territorial self-determination. As a result of this, the Eurasian political landscape has been marked by the emergence of some twenty newly independent states. Suffice it to say that the Soviet Union, a preponderant superpower feared by all, collapsed; and in Europe the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist, bringing on a long-term national conflict threatening not only regional but even global security. In East Central Europe binational Czechoslovakia split up into two independent nation states. Elsewhere, even in the absence of militarized national conflict, political processes have dramatically intensified. In Asia, for example, the multinational Chinese Republic with its Tibetan and Uighur problems, and ethnically heterogeneous India with its population speaking more than 400 languages and dialects have long attracted public attention as sources of potential instability in the region. The “Sikh issue” alone, for instance, continues to pose a threat to India. Even the North American continent, a peaceful region in terms of its political and ethnic stability, is confronted with similar problems. The integrity of Canada is still in question with the franco-lingual province of Quebec striving for independence.
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