Word: secessionist
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...least unusual. Only a handful of great powers of the distant past -- Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial Rome, most notably -- managed to maintain a distinct national identity while embracing, and being ruled by, an ethnic melange. The most ethnically diverse contemporary power, the Soviet Union, is beset with secessionist demands and near tribal conflicts. But such comparisons are flawed, because those empires were launched by conquest and maintained through an aggressive military presence. The U.S. was created, and continues to be redefined, primarily by voluntary immigration. This process has been one of the country's great strengths, infusing it with talent...
Nonetheless, the crisis continued to underscore the difficult role that the army must play in Gorbachev's Soviet Union. As ethnic conflicts and secessionist movements boil over in at least half a dozen republics, the military is increasingly being called upon to quell violence and to police disputes between citizens and their leaders. Faced with troop withdrawals in Eastern Europe, budget cuts at home and increasing criticism in the press, the 4 million-man armed forces have been plunging rapidly in both public esteem and institutional authority. Meeting with TIME's editors in New York City last week, Vitali Korotich...
Like what? A neo-Stalinist backlash in the U.S.S.R. restarts the cold war and threatens a hot one? Or a secessionist warlord in Belorussia grabs some nuclear weapons from Soviet stockpiles and brandishes them? Or Hungary presses revanchist claims to Transylvania? Astonishing developments might not always be as welcome as they were last year. The Administration's warning is deliberately vague. It invites listeners to fill in the blank with their own worst fears. The American manifesto for the '90s is that a specter is haunting Europe, the specter of "unpredictability" and "instability." Those were the words that Bush used...
...Secessionist fever has been simmering as well in neighboring Estonia, which last week followed its sister republic in requesting talks with Moscow. The Caucasian republic of Georgia is also flirting with defection, after parliamentarians in Tbilisi denounced their incorporation into the union. Local nationalists are calling for a boycott of parliamentary elections on March...
...epicenter of the Soviet secessionist quake is in the Baltic states, which enjoyed 20 years of independence before being re-annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 under a cynical deal between Stalin and Hitler. As a result, says Sajudis president Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania "is not seeking to establish independence, but working to restore it." Visiting the republic in January, Gorbachev tried to apply the brakes with an offer to create a new Soviet federation with increased autonomy for all republics. While every republic had a constitutional right to leave the Union, he said, a law on secession procedures first...