Shaky Empires, Then and Now

By MICHAEL MANDELBAUM

From Estonia on the Baltic Sea to Tadzhikistan in the Pamir mountains of Central Asia, the Soviet Union is coming apart at the seams. The U.S.S.R. as such might soon cease to exist. In its place may be a smaller, though still ! vast, country, perhaps called simply Russia, while Estonia and Tadzhikistan could be two of a dozen or more Soviet republics that become independent countries. If that happens, the world will have lost not only its first communist state but also its last great multinational empire.

Earlier in this century, imperial rulers in London, Paris and the Hague saw subject peoples demand and win their freedom. Now it seems to be Moscow's turn. It was relatively easy for the British, French and Dutch to give up colonies that were far from home and scattered around the globe. By contrast, the Soviet empire, although enormous, is concentrated on the Eurasian landmass. In debating whether the U.S.S.R.'s rebellious regions can become its peaceful neighbors, Western policymakers and analysts are turning to a historical parallel: the vanished domain of the Ottoman Turks.

The Ottomans -- whose name came from the founding chieftain, Osman -- governed many of the same territories the Kremlin sought to dominate when Joseph Stalin expanded the bounds of Soviet power after World War II. At the zenith of the empire, in the reign of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Turks controlled most of present-day Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia. Parts of the U.S.S.R. were also Ottoman possessions: the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, as well as the Caucasus, which include the strife-torn Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The similarity between the Ottoman and Soviet empires is more than a matter of geography. For nearly 300 years the Turks were in almost constant conflict with the great powers of Europe. That struggle, like the cold war, involved a clash not just of political ambitions but also of creeds. Much as the Soviet Union has embodied a communist ideology committed to world revolution, Ottoman Turkey posed to Christian Europe the challenge of militant Islam.

Moreover, much as the survival of the Soviet Union in its present form is threatened by unrest among its non-Russian minorities, the Ottoman Empire ultimately could not withstand the nationalist aspirations of its non-Turkish peoples. The Greeks, aided by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, were the first to break away in the 1820s. The last to revolt were the Arabs. Inspired by Lawrence of Arabia, they broke free of Ottoman domination during World War I, only to come under British and French rule soon afterward.

Like the Turkish empire, the Soviet Union suffers from economic backwardness, which has fueled resentment of central authority and, in the past several years, secessionism. Seeking the fruits of technology and commerce, restive nationalities turn away from Moscow and toward the outside world.

The outside world looks back with a combination of encouragement for the independence movements and wariness of the consequences if they push their cause too far too fast. Here too there is a parallel with the fate of the Ottomans. The Eastern Question, as the political dangers and opportunities of Ottoman decline were collectively known in the 19th century, provoked decades of diplomatic maneuvering and espionage, along with occasional bloodletting. In 1854 the British and French joined forces to prevent Russia from seizing Turkey's European provinces. The result was the Crimean War, which gave the world Florence Nightingale, the charge of the Light Brigade and the first modern war correspondents. Fearing the consequences of such entanglements for his own country, the German leader Otto von Bismarck declared that the Eastern Question was "not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier."

Ultimately the Ottoman decline cost Germany and the rest of Europe a great deal more than that. In June 1914 a Serbian nationalist, angry that the Austrian Habsburgs had replaced the Ottomans as the rulers of the Balkans, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering the unprecedented death and destruction of World War I.

Western intervention in the collapse of the Soviet Union could also be disastrous, since it could drag the U.S. and its allies into shooting wars between Moscow and rebellious nationalist groups. Partly for that reason, Western countries have chosen to stand aside from Soviet internal upheavals. When Moscow squeezed Lithuania earlier this year, the U.S. and its European partners held back -- and held their breath. In principle they all support self-determination for the Lithuanians and the other non-Russians. But none is prepared to risk the bones of a single NATO infantryman.

For the last century of its existence, Ottoman Turkey was so feeble that it was known as the "sick man of Europe." Today's Soviet Union is none too healthy itself, but the Kremlin still has at its disposal one of the largest armies on earth and about 26,000 nuclear weapons. The end of this empire, if it touches off wider conflict, could make the carnage of World War I seem modest by comparison.