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- <text id=91TT2026>
- <title>
- Sep. 16, 1991: When the Center Does not Hold
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 16, 1991 Can This Man Save Our Schools?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 40
- NATIONALISM
- When the Center Does Not Hold
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Independence! Self-determination! Freedom! As the Soviet
- Union's many ethnic and religious groups take up these rallying
- cries with increasing conviction, it is easy to forget the dark
- side of nationalism. The first reaction to the disintegration
- of the menacing Soviet monolith may be euphoria, but all too
- often, as demonstrated by other countries where ethnic rivalries
- have shattered national integrity, bloodshed soon follows. In
- Yugoslavia fierce fighting has killed more than 300 people since
- Croatia declared independence on June 25. In Sri Lanka an
- eight-year war between Tamil guerrillas and the Sinhalese
- majority has left 18,000 dead and countless numbers homeless and
- destitute. Tamil Tigers have also been held responsible for the
- assassination last May of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv
- Gandhi, who sent in troops in July 1987 to bolster the ruling
- Sinhalese. Does this kind of deep-seated hatred and violence
- await minority Russians in Ukraine, or Ossetians in Georgia or
- ethnic Ukrainians in Moldavia? Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia offer
- a not-too-distant mirror of the mayhem that could be unleashed.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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