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bpublic) and received some 1.8 million Hungarians along with bTransylvania. Indeed, the Hungarians lost another 600,000 to bCzechoslovakia and 200,000 to the Soviet Union. Let no one bdoubt that there are ferment and discontent in Eastern Europe to- bday. Not only are the Soviet satellites sitting on an ethnic explosion, bbut the most fascinating and dangerous nationalistic time bomb of ball ticks away within the huge expanse of territories known as— The Soviet Union bThe Soviet Union is a giant with massive arms of steel and bfeet of clay. The base on which it stands is rotten and bears bwithin itself the seeds of its own destruction. For there are no bfewer than 100 nationalities, religions, and ethnic groups in the bUSSR, and the ethnic Russians, according to 1980 figures, of- bficially have dropped to 52.4 percent of the total population. As bthe other ethnic groups become the majority of the state, the bvirus of nationalism that is the Kremlin’s secret terror will grow bmore dangerous. At the moment, the Russians mostly fear the bmore articulate and broadly “European” minorities—the bUkrainians, Lithuanians, Rumanians, Georgians, Armenians— band, indeed, they should. The specter of Ukrainian nationalism, bin particular (the Ukrainians constitute 20 percent of the popu- blation), is said to have been one of the factors in the Soviet in- bvasion of Czechoslovakia. An “independent” national com- bmunism on the borders of the Ukraine might have endangered bthe very foundation of the Soviet Union by a massive infection of bnationalism. The advanced European minorities look down with bcontempt on the Russians, and it would not take much to trigger bserious dissension. bBut it is in Asia that the Russians face an awesome force of bseparatism. According to 1979 figures, the birthrate of the six bMuslim republics in central Asia was five times the national av- berage. Not only that, but Western sources have estimated that bbecause of the higher proportions of young people among the bAsians, the armed forces may be half Asian and Muslim. And it bis known that serious tension already exists. bOn May 22, 1978, reliable sources reported that a massive brace riot had erupted in Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian bSoviet Republic of Tadzhik. At least 13,000 people were in- bvolved and the bloody clash was put down by troops from the b
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