by Ghia Nodia

About the author: Ghia Nodia is head of the political philosophy department at the Institute of Philosophy in Tbilisi in the republic of Georgia.

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has led simultaneously to dramatic new gains for liberal democracy and to a resurgence of nationalism. Many analysts appear to regard these as contradictory phenomena, inasmuch as they consider nationalism to be fundamentally antidemocratic. I believe that this is a superficial view that distorts our understanding of what is happening in the postcommunist countries and elsewhere as well. In any case, the experience of the anticommunist revolution requires us to rethink not only the relationship between nationalism and democracy, but also many of the other basic ideas on which modern civilization is grounded.

Dim View of Nationalism

The first major attempt at...