>From: "Grant Lee" <grantlee at iinet.net.au>
>
>Chris,
>
>Thanks for the Russian ethnographic links, which are interesting.
BTW, though people were talking about the break-up of Russia along ethnic lines, "Yugoslavia across 11 time zones" and so forth a few years ago, I don't think that's a danger now. Why? Because nobody oytside of extreme nationalists wants independence, because everybody who has tried it, outside the Baltics, has fallen into deep poverty and/or civil war. Who the hell wants to wind up like Georgia, let alone Chechnya? Compare wealthy Tatarstan, which remained in the Russian Federation, and impoverished Tajkistan, which didn't (and promptly fell into tribalism). The Dagestanis, which the Chechen Wahabbis were counting on joining them against Russia, instead now view Chechnya as the central threat to their existence.
>To reiterate my point: I don't see how or why one form of nationalism --
>even if it is supposedly "leftist" --- can be a successful rebuttal to
>another form of nationalism.
Because "continentalism," if you want to call it that, can in theory act as a force that keeps the various feuding nationalisms from beating the crap out of each other. It is better to identify as a "Eurasian" than as a "Russian" or a "Tatar," in my opinion.
_________________________________________________________________ Get MSN 8 and enjoy automatic e-mail virus protection. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus