Nationalism and Development

Much social science theory is made and remade relative to the great events of the moment. In August 1991, one such event was the rather astonishing climacteric in the Soviet Union, the implications of which for the national state and national economic development will take quite some time to absorb. Hitherto, the state system which directs the political administration of the world, has enforced a fair degree of unity on each of the constituent national parts, making it most difficult to divide old or create new territorial states. The instincts of the Great Powers have been to retain the forms and resist territorial change, even when governments are violently overthrown. But in the case of the Soviet Union, as also Yugoslavia, the disciplines have not worked. Indeed, the new states are scarcely formed before being threatened by further subdivisions, as in the case of the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Georgia and so on. If the disciplines have weakened, the system — for so long held in place by the rivalries of the Great Powers, particularly since 1945, in the competition between Moscow and Washington — may no longer be able to enforce territorial integrity.