ABSTRACT
Ethno-territorial conflict is the essence of the nationalist agenda throughout Eastern Europe and the former USSR, and indeed is a nearly ubiquitous feature of the contemporary ethno-political landscape in much of the rest of the world. It was not so long ago that politicians and scholars in the capitalist west and the socialist east were pronouncing ethnic nationalism dead or dying, yet the so-called ‘new nationalisms’ have risen to challenge the legitimacy and longevity of multinational, multi-homeland states in both the first and second worlds. Of course, the former colonial South has been engulfed since decolonisation in ethno-territorial conflict, which shows no sign of abatement. We are truly at the height of the Age of Nationalism today, which has survived the setbacks of fascism and world reaction against it, and Marxism-Leninism, to emerge as the dominant political ideology of the late twentieth century.
