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Viewing report
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Conflicting Theories of Ethnic Conflicts. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Feb 2009, Pages: 116
Authoritarian and oppressive though their systems
were, the socialist multiethnic states, the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia, managed to escape the nasty
face of ethnic violence until the very last days of
their existence. Beginning of the end was reached
when the truly path-breaking reform package,
perestroika, was proposed by Gorbachev. As irony of
the history, shortly those states turned into the hub
of ethnic violence that is characterized by extreme
brutality.The primary question to be answered in this
work is whether recent theories of ethnic conflict
are providing plausible explanations to violent
post-Soviet conflicts. Taking this as departure
point, the author argues that these theories can
offer only partial explanations, due to their failure
to appreciate the complexity of ethnic conflict and
attribution of too much rationality to participants
of conflicts. In this light, the author takes the
years 1988-1992 in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
scrutinizes the sub-national actors, armies and army
fractions, military, religious and political leaders,
as well as milestone events to display complexity of
a given ethnic conflict.
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