С.Е. ПАЛЕ. ETHNOPOLITICAL CONFLICTS IN OCEANIA ¹. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012. 180 p.

The end of the XX - beginning of the XXI century revealed to the world the phenomenon of conflict politicization of ethnicity, which has become fashionable to call "rebellious ethnicity", "ethnic paradox of modernity", etc. If we turn to the seemingly geopolitically stable Europe, we will find that the manifestations of this phenomenon are not limited to the bloody collapse of the SFRY or the "velvet" Czechoslovak SSR and the ongoing conflicts in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Ulster. This also includes not only the activation of the seemingly forgotten Scottish, Welsh, Flemish, Breton or Bavarian national movements, but also the emergence of "paranationalism" (Lombard, Tuscan, etc.), which also appeals to the idea of creating its own independent "national" states within the European Union.

¹ At once I want to say about the only serious comment about the peer-reviewed publication. The title placed in the title of the review appears on the cover of the book. On the title and on the back of the title-in the bibliographic description it is called "Postcolonial conflicts in Oceania", which seems to be more consistent with its content. Thus, both the reviewer and the reader can not help but wonder what title is still considered true and under which the book of S. E. Pale should be referred to?

Similar processes in our country have had a visible impact on politics, the social sphere, the system of values of the population and its ethno-cultural and ethno-political orientations in recent decades. The collapse of the USSR, the "parade of sovereignty" of national republics within the Russian Federation, the Chechen conflict, the aggravation of interethnic tensions in the North Caucasus, Tatarstan, and Yakutia - the list of examples can easily be continued.

In this context, the work of S. E. Pale, who studied ethnopolitical conflicts based on the materials of Oceania countries, cannot but arouse interest. It would seem that these states are far from us geographically, they are small and inconspicuous in the international arena. But the essence of an ethnic conflict is unchangeable: it is a form of intergroup confrontation, when regardless of the reasons for the aggravation of the situation (real or, more often, imaginary clash of socio-political and/or economic interests, struggle for access to power, redistribution of the order of distribution of national GDP, etc.), the participants in the confrontation are mobilized according to the ethnic criterion, which is usually It is accompanied by an increase in ethnocentrism, an increase in the circulation of negative ethnic stereotypes in society, shared by an increasing number of representatives of conflicting groups of the population, and violence. According to the most rigorous estimates, more than 635,000 people were killed in such confrontations between 1989 and 2007 (the vast majority of them - about half a million people - were killed in one disastrous action: the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994) [Uppsala...].

And the ethnic subtext in the internal conflicts faced by Oceanic countries is too obvious to ignore their example. Economic and social problems, the polarization of the standard of living of various groups of the population, the confrontation between the titular ethnic group and new settlers (it does not matter that the latter may have lived in this territory for more than a hundred years, such as Indo - Fijians) - this is "written" in the context of interethnic hostility and intolerance. So the analysis of the subjects chosen by the author is extremely important not only from a purely cognitive point of view, but also from the standpoint of a scientific study of the experience of political settlement of such conflicts, which is partly useful for almost every country with a multi-ethnic population. In other words, the topic of the monograph is extremely relevant.

It should also be noted that before S. E. Pale, few people in present-day Russia turned to research on topics related to the situation in the South Pacific. Recent monographs on the problems of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and French Polynesia were published in the 1980s and early 1990s. Therefore, a book written at the intersection of history and political science acquires a special value and weight. Exploring the events of the beginning of the XXI century in the most conflict-ridden countries of the South Pacific region, the author, in fact, acts as a pioneer: in our country, over the past decades, no one has covered the situation in Oceania and the subjects of international relations related to this region in such detail.

The monograph is written on the basis of a wide range of sources, which include official publications and the press of the states listed above, neighboring countries (for example, such as Australia and New Zealand), powers involved in the affairs of Oceania - France, the United States, China, the Russian Federation, and, finally, a number of international organizations. We used materials from Internet information sites that contain the latest data on issues of interest to the author. Extensive literature on the history, economy and culture of Oceania countries has been developed. This very solid base allowed S.E. Pale to approach the problems in detail and present a comprehensive picture of the current situation in the region under study. Looking ahead, we can say that the monograph is written in a good literary language. The vivid characteristics of political figures mentioned on the pages of the monograph, the vicissitudes of political struggle, closely intertwined with the manifestations of traditional cultures, will leave few people indifferent.

Speaking about the content of the book, I will note the validity of the selection of specific research objects. For a long time, it was considered that for Oceania, compared to, say, Africa, the process of gaining political independence, which started in the 1960s, was so painless and low-conflict that this phenomenon was even called a special "Pacific path of development". But the" honeymoon " of decolonization ended rather quickly. Scientific and political circles are increasingly talking about the" Balkanization "of Oceania, an" island ethnic epidemic " (Timoshenko, 2011). As rightly emphasizes

author of the book, the beginning of the period of "troubles" can be considered "a coup d'etat on the basis of national intolerance, which took place in May 1987 in the independent state of Fiji" (p. 5). Then the entire region turned into a field of more or less intense conflicts, but the fact that the Fijian events became the subject of special attention of the author of the book is natural.

For Fiji is a typical example of how the relative stability of postcolonial society is destroyed, relatively speaking, by ethnic revenge. Two roughly equal communities of Indo-and indigenous Fijians have historically swapped places. The Indian settlers who arrived on the island in 1880 for a long time could not properly integrate into the local clan system: they lived compactly in the low-prestige Western district; "the country hardly knew mixed marriages" (p. 67), etc. In the second half of the twentieth century, the situation changed: the Indo-Fijians, having taken a dominant position in the country's economy, began to struggle to improve their political status, increasingly pushing aside the indigenous Fijians. A series of military coups followed, aimed at restoring the predominance of the indigenous population and consolidating it by law. The inter-communal conflict is far from being resolved: in conditions of equal numbers of both groups, the use of classical democratic settlement procedures (elections) only reproduces the confrontation. And it is impossible not to agree with the author that the international community can only "watch with participation" whether the current leader of the country, F. Putin, will be able to do this. Mbainimarama, who came to power unconstitutionally, achieved "social and legal equality" (p. 98).

In connection with this topic, another plot developed by the author is Australia's attempt to stop the ethnic conflict in the Solomon Islands. Its format is identical to the Fijian one: the indigenous inhabitants of Guadalcanal Island-Isatabu against the new settlers of this territory - Malaitians, who, successfully using the democratic laws of the state, first began to displace Isatabu from the logging areas (the main export item), and then from the power structures (p.108, 109). When the confrontation of ethnic groups took extremely violent forms, the Australian authorities used force methods against the combatants. The bloodshed was stopped, but the small island State failed to "preserve its independence, sovereignty, and right to its own resources" (p. 124). To this conclusion of S. E. Pale, it can be added that the relatively unified state space of the Solomon Islands has broken up along the island basis, in this case identical to the ethnic one. In short, the circle is complete.

Against this background, France's policy of resolving ethnic conflicts in New Caledonia, also studied by S.E. Pale, looks at first glance quite effective. As part of the Matignon Accords, the two communities of Kanaks (native Melanesians) and Caldos (French old-timers of the island), which had been at war for decades, concluded "the first political compromise in the history of New Caledonia between the French and the Kanaks" (p. 42): the territories were federalized and the provinces dominated by one or another ethnic group were given broad autonomy. In the future, a number of districts were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Indigenous Advisory Council; when forming the highest echelon of power, the mechanism of "integral democracy" was used (the post of president of the Territory was given to a representative of the Kaldoshei, and the vice-president - to the Kanaks). Unfortunately, this experience of unblocking ethnic confrontation is very limited, because all the measures studied by the author of the book were carried out, in fact, on the territory of France, although overseas.

The good level of S. E. Pale's book in some cases encourages discussion. First of all, we can argue about the methodological concept of ethnic conflict. The author gives a clear preference to the theories of "rational choice", which a priori link the beginning and development of ethnic conflict with the struggle of various groups of elites for resources (in the broad sense of this concept). The main way to resolve the conflict is to democratize (in the liberal-Western interpretation of this term) the political life of a given country, territory, or enclave, i.e. to introduce the "principle of balance in the distribution of resources" into the socio-political life of the local community, including with the help of external moderators (p.133). Such schemes are quite functional in the situational analysis of the social phenomenon under consideration, but are they productive in the search for its roots, and hence methods for resolving conflicts?

This is partly true, but the concept used by S. E. Pale, as well as a number of other pragmatic methods for studying the phenomenon of ethnic conflict, essentially operate with its visible appearances. Thus, the sociological concept, when explaining the root causes of conflicts between ethnic groups, focuses on the study of the correlation of social stratification of society, more precisely, social inequalities with the ethnicity of the population. The political science approach focuses too much attention on the destructive role of intellectual elites, which ensure the sublimation and politicization of natural ethnic feelings, which inevitably leads to an escalation of interethnic tension [Tigakov, 1997, pp. 312-314]. All this ultimately indicates not only the complex, multi-level nature of ethnic conflict, but also that it is a phobic form of group perception of the world, which is based on the drift of habitual ideas about the justice or injustice of the current ethnic situation. In other words, its nature is largely irrational. No rational circumstances can explain the reasons for the persistence of the ethno-nationalism of Quebec-a privileged province in all socio-political indicators of Canada. The bloody events in the Ferghana Valley in 1989 defy logic. It is still unclear what the real competition was between the dominant Uzbek population and the Meskhetian Turks, the only ethnic minority that was beaten up. Of course, the irrationalism of an ethnic conflict does not prevent its participants, especially at the "mature" stage, from pursuing their fully realized, pragmatic and mercantile goals. But it is impossible to forget about a certain "spiritual" background of ethnic mutual rejection, and the example of the states of Oceania just shows the limited possibilities of the model of rational choice.

In conclusion, I would like to note that S. E. Pale's book is well illustrated. Maps of the countries and territories under study are well chosen; they are complemented by graphs and summary tables containing the general statistical profile of the States mentioned in the text and the region as a whole. This helps the reader to gain an overall understanding of the objects of research, which is very important for understanding the specific causes and nature of conflicts in New Caledonia, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

So the book will be very interesting both for historians, political scientists, ethnologists, students of humanities universities, and for those who are interested in the current international situation in the Pacific region.

list of literature

Timoshenko V. Forgotten problems of the "unnecessary" region. Political situation in Oceania, Part 1 / / Novoe vostochnoe obozrenie, 09.01.2011 (http://www.ru.journal-nco.com/nodc/3693).

Tishkov V. A. Ocherki teorii i politiki etnichnosti v Rossii [Essays on the theory and policy of ethnicity in Russia]. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1997.

Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Dataset: One-Sided Violence against Civilians, 1989-2008 (http://www.pcr. uu.se/rcscarch/UCDP/data_and_publications/datasets.htm).

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