>From: "Grant Lee" <grantlee at iinet.net.au>
>Chris said
>
>
>I think these emerging (supra)nationalisms are potentially _more_ dangerous
>than the old ones because I think the end result would probably be like a
>larger version of the multi-ethnic empires of pre-WW1 Europe
>(Austria-Hungary being the prime example) --- a world partioned off into
>several new, exclusive and antagonistic blocs.
This is the multi-polar world goal. Russia in fact already _is_ a
multi-ethnic empire containing several relatively autonomous ethnic
republics. It's not a nation state. It's quite similar to the 19th century
Russian Empire, in fact, I would say.
>
>I recall that a major reason for the failure of late C19 pan-Slavism was
>the
>fear of the western Slavs that they would be dominated by Russia's sheer
>weight of numbers, and I can see this mix failing to congeal for similar
>reasons.
Maybe. Then again, who would have thought in 1945 that France and Germany would in half a century be driving European unification? I think the development of the CIS into something like the EU, with Russia as its center, is inevitable. It will probably be more centralized than the EU, given the huge disparity in economic power between Russia and everybody else.
>Yes, not necessarily a good thing by any means. ThirdWorldism has
>contributed to the rise of Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Bin Laden, to name a few.
>Also, "ex-Soviet" nationalism, stripped of communism as it is, has lost its
>original meaning and its main attraction IMO.
I see it as a centralizing counterpull to the various local nationalisms (which can be fierce Russian nationalism is nothing compared to some of the things you can come across here). There are over 100 distinct ethnic groups here, each of which defines itself in contrast to all the others.
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