ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Soviet-Derg’s socialist (communist) regime of 1974-1991 and on the postcommunist (post-Soviet-Derg) period – that is, on present-day Ethiopia. The 1974 revolutionaries adopted a Soviet-style program of ‘affirmative action’ for Ethiopia’s numerous ethnic groups (‘nationalities’) in order to win much-needed legitimacy for this freshly established regime. The long-overdue land reform and guaranteed elementary education for all in at least 15 languages out of the country’s over 80 languages proved to be popular and influential policies. However, the subsequent Red Terror (1976–1977), the Great Famine (1983–1985), the wars with Eritrea and Somalia and the Ethiopian Civil War destabilized the country and nullified many of the regime’s social and economic achievements. The promise of equality and territorial autonomy at least for Ethiopia’s main ethnic groups proved elusive. The possibility of such autonomy was formally enshrined in the 1987 constitution, which also made the country into a republic, namely the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, on the basis of the Soviet Bloc model. But it was too little too late. With the fall of communism in Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, People’s Ethiopia lost its Soviet protector and the main source of developmental and military aid. In 1991, the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front), or a coalition of ethnicity-based opposition parties, won the civil war and four years later overhauled the country into an ethnolinguistic (ethnoterritorial) Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, as confirmed by the new constitution of 1995. The formal recognition of all the country’s over 80 'nations, nationalities and peoples' (ethnic groups), combined with the securing of autonomous territories already for 40 of them proved to be popular. Furthermore, unprecedented economic growth secured a degree of legitimacy for the ruling EPRDF’s de facto single-party regime. However, outstanding ethnic demands for still-new autonomous territories pose clear challenges to the political system and the country’s unity and stability.
