28029-1 (Политическая география европейских меньшинств english), страница 2

Thus, the process of self-determination had a very contradictory effect. It converted a minority (and often its major portion) into a majority inside its nation state. On the other hand, it cut the minority population dwelling outside the state into multiple segments. In other words, what happened to minorities is to be determined as a "multiplication by splitting", a biological term for reproduction of simple organisms. As an example, let us consider what happened to Ukrainian irredentism? Formerly, there was only one (Soviet) populous Ukranian minority in the USSR. After the collapse, nearly 37.5 million Ukrainians constituted the majority in Ukraine. At the same time, 6.7 million Ukrainians formed 14 separate minorities in other newly independent post-Soviet states (6 of them account for over 100,000 each). In addition, two million reside as they did before in neighboring European countries, Canada and USA. Naturally, a complete repatriation back to the "motherland" is unfeasible, although the ambition is typical of a young nation-state. Initially, independent Ukraine gained a notably positive migration exchange, particularly with Russia (+110, 000 in 1992), but the declining economic situation in Ukraine soon resulted in an opposite balance (-17 thousand in 1993).

In spite of the expansion of states that pretend to be "mono-ethnic"; there was no adequate growth of their share in total European population. The share of the first proportional category (up to 5%) was about 1/5 in 1910 when it included France and Italy and has become 1/4 of the total population by 1993. Together with the next group (up to 10%), the share has increased from almost 2/5 to 1/2. The dynamics are most likely a result of certain stability of such areas where the environment is favorable for assimilation and dissolution. A greater growth of other minorities whose masses, shares and mobilized position make for self-preservation is the opposite factor, that slows down the process and determines modest results.

Finally, it should be noted that all of the above developments happened to minorities which also include millions of Asian, African and other diasporas in Europe. When added together, they surely make the Western minorities more numerous. In general terms, an average minority also became more heterogeneous, "less native" (or less rooted) and less spatially determined (less compact and local). Hence it may claim nothing above some cultural autonomy.

Three conclusions follow from this discussion:

(1) The nation-state model still is attractive for major local minorities in Europe; however, it gradually becomes a less effective tool to solve ethnic problems - neither for the multiplying states nor for the multiplying minorities themselves. Each new split engenders new minorities, new historical resentments and new conflicts.

(2) The last act of the European geopolitical drama has yielded the greatest "advance" for the former minorities in Central and Eastern portions of the continent. The act is not yet over; nobody can argue that its actual "photo image" is the final one, at least in several Balkan cases (Bosnia and Moldova) and in Transcaucasia.

(3) If some form of a new stability is achieved eventually, one cannot exclude an east to West transfer of ethnic mobilization of some ethnic minorities who would become much more numerous and claim more rights.

POLITICAL TENSIONS AND GEOPOLITICAL RISKS I

N EUROPEAN ETHNIC AREAS

We now present an evaluation of various tensions and the risks of separatism in ethnic areas of Europe. These includes specially defined areas of compact settlement of national minorities, where their number is more than 50,000 people and where they can aspire to a certain territorial autonomy. Such an area forms another ethnic (spatial) unit, and thus, differs from a purely ethnic minority. We developed quantitative methods suggested earlier (Anderson, 1990; Rugg, 1985; Quantitative..., 1989) and estimated socio-political tensions in ethnic regions in Europe, using 16 variables which can be divided in 6 groups: 1) the number (the absolute and the relative number of a minority in the country as a whole and in its area);

2) the geopolitical situation (isolated or in the neighborhood with ethnically close areas or nation-states, in dispersed or concentrated settlement);

3) the cultural situation (the percentage of a minority speaking the native tongue, its status, the relationship between its confession and the religion of the titular people;

4) the economic situation (the GDP with respect to a national average, the location on the scale "centre-periphery");

5) the political status (the experienced independent statehood, the age of a minority's belonging to a present state, the age of the boundaries of its administrative unit and 6) political mobilization (the existence of a national-territorial autonomy, of national parties and movements and their influence, other expressions of nationalism - demonstrations, violence, civil war).

All available sources of information on the boundaries of ethnic areas and the number of their titular and non-titular population are controversial and incomplete. We tried to use as much sources as possible: atlases (Foucher, 1993; Sellier and Sellier, 1991), directories (World Population, 1989; World Directory, 1990), monographs (Krejci and Velimsky, 1981; Kolossov, Glezer and Petrov; 1992, Tarkhov and Jordan, 1993), as well as our own files. We compare various sources and tried to choose the most plausible or took the average figure. Estimations, intrapolation, and extrapolation are sometimes inevitably needed. In order to reduce the element of subjectivism when exact figures were not available, all the values and estimations were converted into points. The total number of points for each group of variables and their general sum allowed comparison among separate ethnic areas and "geopolitical" and cultural macroregions of Europe - Western Europe, Central and eastern Europe (Transcaucasian republics included), Catholic-Protestant Europe, and Orthodox Europe (figure 1-5).

Despite very high index values in many "hot spots" of the former Soviet Union, any version of our calculations showed that the most dangerous is the situation in Southeastern Europe as a whole, and not in the countries from the USSR. This can be seen by the war in former Yugoslavia and by the frequent changes in local geopolitical structures and boundaries, as well as by sharp economic contrasts between neighboring regions. The tensions are especially strong along the "civilisational" boundary between Orthodox and Muslim areas. This risk is pregnant with consequences for both Western and Eastern Europe. What geopolitical scenario will be realized? Will the result be further disintegration, secessions, and military confrontation as a result of the attempts to build a nation-state with "fair" boundaries by each ethnic group? Will the creation of new state units, such as Great Serbia and Great Albania, follow? Will integration with Western Europe occur? Or will a framework of regional Central European organization be assumed?

As for the post-Soviet geopolitical space, the results demonstrated the essential role of two groups of variables: the economic situation and the cultural-historical identity of a people living in an area. The cultural-historical identity includes the spread and the status of the titular language, the contrast in religions held by the majority and the recognized minority, and the experience of statehood. These two groups of variables are "responsible" for 41% of the total political tension index variation (Table 2).

Cultural factors are most important in ethnic areas of the Baltic countries, as well as in Turkmenistan, Kirgizia, and Kazakhstan. In contrast, while the major conflict in Transdniestria does not have a purely ethnic character, the weight of the national identity factor for Moldova is minimal.

An unfavorable economic situation was the major factor for Russian and Belorussian ethnic areas, most of which are located in peripheral, backward parts of their countries. The most evident is the case of the North-Caucasian republics, which have long been ranked last in the Russian Federation according to most social indicators such as infant mortality, the relative number of kindergartens and hospitals, and the relationship between the rise in prices and average incomes. The situation in the remote Siberian autonomous districts, the areas of Amur and small indigenous Northern peoples is not much better.

One of the areas with the highest conflict potential is northeast Estonia, the region, where tensions are high (22 points). This area of a Russian-speaking population is the only ethnic area there, but due to the ethnic minority size and share in the population of the country, Estonia has the highest rank among former Soviet republics by these indicators. The geopolitical situation on the Russian-Estonian borderland and the poor state of its economy (by national measures) increase the risk of a conflict. In Latvia and Lithuania, the geopolitical situation of their ethnic areas, the spatial concentration of the minorities, and the sharp cultural contrast between ethnic and titular populations also raises the general index of the potential political tension. However, political mobilization of both Russian-speaking and other minorities in the Baltic countries remains relatively limited (Chinn and Kaiser, 1996).

Generally speaking, the conflict potential still is more significant in the well-known "old hot spots" like Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, and Moldova. In Ukraine, the number and the share of ethnocultural areas are especially considerable, and their situation is one of important factors causing geopolitical risks. Thus, ethnic relations between Russians and Ukrainians remain peaceful (Chinn and Kaiser, 1996; Kolstohe, 1995; Tishkov, 1993).

For the Russian Federation, the most acute ethnopolitical conflicts has touched its territory in Chechnia, and neighboring Ossetian and Ingush republics. These areas have the maximum general estimations of tension, at the level of 18-20 points. The war in Chechnia represented the sharpest conflict; however, its geopolitical and especially economic background was relatively moderate. This level is high also in the other areas of North Caucasus (12-16), which represents a compact and uninterrupted zone of the high risk of ethnic conflicts. In the areas of Karachaevi, Cherkessian, Balkar, and Dagestani peoples, the important values of the general index are combined with a high political mobilization.

Nevertheless, the average level of political tension in Russian ethnic areas (making up about 1/2 of their total number in the former Soviet Union) is considerably lower than in the post-Soviet space as a whole (10.6 versus 13.2). However, this is not a consolation prize, if we take into account the many latent conflicts and the situation of the Russian-speaking population outside Russian borders.

SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE

When history, geography, ethnicity and politics dominate the redrawing of an existing map, the actors and spectators are allowed to speculate about the outcome. Of course, our speculations differ due to our personal and professional skills, and to the degrees of freedom and responsibility accepted. There are also a variety of styles of the so-called scientific provision, more "real" or "optimal" (which goes much better with politics or planning) and more logically emphasized (though perhaps more fantastic or even absurd), in order to stress different versions of future, to reveal their impact, and to compare them. What a reader finds below is the latter type of a "geographic speculation".

The key question asked is about the relationship between geopolitical and ethnic integrity, or, differently phrased, about the two concepts of disintegration and of re-integration. The two corresponding versions of the future are principle-based rather than time-based. Nonetheless, they may be symbolically taken as the two successive steps, with an essential restriction: there will be no dates, and therefore no general demographic dynamics (as a background), nor secondary effects of the first scenario for the second one (such as mass migration flows and related change in birth and death rates, etc.).

The early 1990s picture of ethnic/ subnation areas, as analyzed and described above, is taken as the fixed starting point called Scenario 0. The stable parameters are combined and then recombined according to the proposed changes on the political map for the first and second scenarios. Scenario 1: General Ethnic Disintegration (Mass Secession of Ethnic Areas)

Values of both summary scores of ethnic tensions and political mobilization of a minority in its compact area when exceed the European average, according to our Scenario 0 estimations, expect some development for the secessionist hypothesis. As for the mean value used (about 13 points for general totals), it can be illustrated by the Scottish area in the UK. It is one point more then the average and exhibits the lowest level of tension in the list of cases associated with the scenario.

The list includes 48 of such "experimentally created new states", or about 30% of the total number of ethnic areas. Below, one can find a short description of their major representatives (populated by 1 million or more). The so-called countries, of course, with their very artificial names are presented (Table 3).

The two dozen cases examined in the table illustrate simply different degrees of probability and the "effectiveness" of disintegration. The less populated areas are more numerous but similar in variety. Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia, though ten times less populous, can compete however with Yugoslavian Kosovo as a leader in ethnic tension and mobilization. Figure 6 shows the ethno-political map which corresponds to the scenario. Western Europe does not appear changed, but the Balkans and Caucasus exhibit an extraordinary mosaic! Furthermore, separatism and disintegration seems to be useless in these areas in both the geopolitical and the ethnic sense. The impossibility of dividing Bosnia and Dagestan (due to their striped ethnic settlement) is symbolical for the larger regions they represent. Attempts to reach political objectives with the use of violence - with deportation and ethnic cleansing - leads only to the escalation of violence and the extension of a conflict. In the Caucasus, a number of contemporary conflicts are caused or were deepened by Stalin deportations; Bosnia represents a quite fresh evidence that the use of violence exerts an extremely long-term and negative influence on inter-ethnic relations. Only the western case, that of Ulster, might be compared to some extent with Bosnia and Dagestan. The same general distribution between East and West is indicated by the incorporation of macro-regional totals (Table 3).

The "effectiveness" of the scenario for Western Europe is seen from the fact that 14 additional "states" add only 3 more ethnic areas, but twice the absolute, proportional, and average figures of ethnic (areal) population. Ten more states in Southeastern Europe bring thirty new areas but very modest changes in their parameters, except the mean population size. This region is the best example of minorities multiplying in a form of partition. Finally, the scenario of disintegration looks least effective for the former Soviet Union, where 24 symbolically established states include an equal number of ethnic areas, the same average, but yielding a notable increase in their absolute population and percentage.

We hope that nobody takes this game seriously and implements it in practice. However, could such an endeavor be much more reasonable (if not attractive) now for Western European ethnic areas. This comes, first, from the fact that many states are not involved into the risky game at all, due to low ethnic-areal tensions. They are four of the five Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland (a unique, quiet European multinational federation), Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. Some other states get off with the minimal losses; Corsica, Sardinia and Tyrol could claim their expected independence from France and Italy. There are only three states that are slated to suffer notably from secessions: Great Britain, Belgium and Spain. Among them, only Belgium eventually disappears from the scene.