The Roma in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Questions of Ethnic Conflict and Ethnic Peace

• Published in: Nationalities papers Vol. 36; no. 3; pp. 521 - 552
• Main Author: Crowe, David M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Cambridge University Press 01.07.2008
• Subjects: 19th century; Berlin Wall; Communism; Democracy; Dictatorship; Ethnic conflict; Ethnic groups; Ethnic relations; Ethnicity; Intervention; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority & ethnic violence; Political systems; Postcommunist societies; Regions; Eastern Europe
• ISSN: 0090-5992; 1465-3923
• DOI: 10.1080/00905990802080752

The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe promised bold opportunities for the various ethnic groups populating that vast, diverse region. Yet if history had any lessons to teach these groups it was that democracy, or at least the political systems that emerged in the midst of the rubble of the Berlin Wall between 1989 and 1991, was no guarantor of whatever idealized rights the region's ethnic groups hoped would come in the wake of the collapse of the communist dictatorships that had dominated these parts of Europe for decades. Communism, had, in many instances, done nothing more than stifle the festering ethnic tensions that had exploded in the nineteenth century and short-circuited the complex, lengthy process of resolving these conflicts. Consequently, for those knowledgeable about the essence of these conflicts, it should have come as no surprise that Yugoslavia, for example, was torn asunder by ethnic violence so terrifying that it took the intervention of the Western world's great powers to end the most violent aspects of these wars of ethnicity.