Mehring
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
quote:
But does anyone regard sectarian genocide on the part of one ethnic faction of a geographic area, as the basis for building a viable, inclusive nation state?
That would depend on what the population is happy with. A recent example would be Kosovo, which isn't really a viable state but which was build on the effects of the break-up of Yugoslavia, specifically the antagonistic feeling the Albanians had for the Serbs. I'd say the break-up of Yugoslavia included plenty of sectarian genocide for most of the larger countries involved to begin with. Like the Czar and the communists in Russia/the Soviet Union, Tito tried to make the people believe they were all inhabitants of the same nation or at the least unified under the reign of the same ruler. With the death of the Czar/communism/Tito, that feeling didn't last very long.
As you so rightly say, Kosovo is not a viable state. Neither is it a sovereign state in any accepted use of the term, but a client state of interrested parties, ruled by foreign laws and effectively administered from without.
Compare the Declaration of Independence issued by the Second Continental Congress of 1776 with that of the Kosovo provincial assembly. One is a declaration of rights and principles which lit up the world and continues to inspire struggles against tyranny today The other is in essence an undertaking to implement the plan of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, whose plan was in fact withdrawn when Serbia and Russia complained, correctly, that it contravened international law. Now compare the futures of the two countries, one unfolding, the other barely hatched and, if anything, withdrawing back into its egg.
Separation may be temporary protection from Serbian domination and oppression, which I know to have been the case, but it is not independence, autonomy, the birth of a nation and tragically for all in the province, not a solution or a future. The waves of sectarian hatred dragged up from the past by ethnic leaders on all sides, jostling to control dwindling resources, are not the basis for a nation.
By all means, let Kosovo experience the realities of pseudo independence if that's what they currently want. People learn by experience and unity should not be forced on them. But they will one day have to take on the same foreign interests which exploited their country's inner tensions to break it up, powers which will not look so fondly on 'the will of the people,' when that will is not of their own cultivation, should those people decide to renounce foreign control, realising they were better off united.
Such would be a negation of seperatism to unity at a higher level than previously. It is feasible, as with the former 'Soviet' republics, only with an enormous expansion and equality of social wealth.
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ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Not every war/struggle for independence needs ethnic or truly nationalistic feelings to succeed. Take a look at the American war for independence: historians tend to agree that only about 1/3 of the population wanted to be independent initially, with 1/3 being Loyalists and 1/3 seemingly not having decided yet where they stood on the issue, but it still worked. It was only a war against tyranny for those who wanted to become independent.
The war of Independence was not a war against tyranny for those who hid from their shame at preferring tyranny to putting their lives on the line for Liberty, to those that thought the king would win and wanted to be on the winning side, or those who profited from that tyranny and feared a reverse of fortune should he lose. One might assume the heftyest number blurred with a hefty number of the indifferent, that section of society which until it sees it, is sadly unable to conceive of a world greatly different from the one they have always known.
Those who were indifferent or loyalist at first might also include those not personally affected by the tyranny, or who found ways to work around it. The permutations of an individual's relation to society are many and varied, but the 1/3 for revolution was a substantial vanguard and ample proof that the revolution's time had come, that it was popular.
Revolutions are not renouned for their adherence to the formal democratic procedure of peaceful times. That has to do with their non-peaceful nature and the fact that different social strata move towards and embrace revolution at different speeds. If the vanguard waited for the tail to catch up, it would lose the moment.
That 1/3 support is precisely what the Ukranian independence movement lacked, however unpopular the existing order might have been in one period or another.
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ORIGINAL: ComradeP It's a sort of standard reaction for a country to, if the power of its (foreign) overlord is decreasing, it will try to remove it. You don't need to, pre-revolution, have a good idea for what your future nation should look like when it's over, often it might be more viable to see what you can build on the ashes after it's over.
Oh yes you do, or you will not achieve a revolution, only a change in figurehead. Wasn't it in "The Leopard' someone says "if you want things to stay the same round here, you're going to have to make some changes."
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“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
¯ Thomas Jefferson
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RE: The problems of 1942 – possible causes and solution... - 
... it does appear the Catholics are a minority. So ignore that point. 
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