The idea for this book originated during the Spring of 1989 when it was clear that Gorbachev's reforms were in the process of opening up a Pandora's box of ethnic problems which hitherto had remained largely hidden beneath the surface of Soviet politics. Since February 1988, when the Nagorno-Karabakh Soviet took the unprecedented step of calling for their region's transfer to the neighbouring Soviet republic of Armenia, the paroxysm of ethnic and...