How did the collapse of the Soviet Union contribute to
the conflicts in the Balkans?

In Europe from the Balkans to the Urals, Reneo Lukic and Allen Lynch analyse the political processes that led to the disintegration of the Yugoslav, Soviet and Czechoslovak states and the international consequences that have flowed from these three collapses. The authors, who have delved deeply into primary and secondary sources in more than half a dozen European languages, look in particular at the role that 'federalism' played in the collapse of these once communist states. They conclude that the ethno-federal constitutional and administrative structure of these multinational states—that is, the fact that the various federal territories were defined in explicitly ethnic terms (the Ukrainian republic; the Slovak republic; the Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian republics, etc.) played a catalytic role in propelling the disintegration of the Yugoslav, Soviet and Czechoslovak states along nationalist lines. The absence of democratic representation, or indeed of any substantial civic representation along non-national lines in these multinational states, meant that when communism collapsed the state would collapse with it.

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