In modern science, thanks to a number of prominent researchers (such as Eric Hobsbaum, Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith, Ernest Gellner and others), the causes of interethnic conflicts and nationalist sentiments have been studied quite fully. The fundamental basis for the emergence of any nation is the so-called collective national consciousness. This phenomenon represents
awareness of a sufficiently large group of people of their spiritual and blood closeness: common language, traditions, origin, historical past, unity of views on the heroic and tragic moments of history, common aspirations for the future. In modern science, there are different views on the phenomenon of a nation, however, according to the most justified of them, a nation as such arises only in the New Age of European history, in the era of industrialization and urbanization, when archaic local identifications of village communities broke (and the vast majority of the population lived in them ) and the limited world of the medieval peasant suddenly expanded to the borders of the country.
The American historian Eugene Joseph Weber aptly described these processes in his book From the Peasants to the French. This is how the identification of oneself with a specific nation and, accordingly, the opposition to others occurs. Already in this fact lies the causes of
interethnic conflicts. The fact that it is impossible to choose a nation creates from it a sacred image, as if sent by providence. The image for which, as history shows, millions are ready to die. Interestingly, no one at the same time gives his life for the honor of an association, a trade union, and so on. All that is worthy of this is that, in the opinion of man, it is impossible to change what was given from the very beginning to the end. The next layer in the foundation, which lays down the reasons for the emergence of interethnic conflicts, is the fact that any nation has its own distinctive characteristics. They have a completely different character: mental, religious, linguistic, related to
historical memory and others. The reasons for interethnic conflicts are that representatives of at least one of the nations have an alarming feeling for preserving their own national attributes: an attempt on the memory of national heroes, impaired language, and so on.
It is interesting that those nations that have long been subjected to various kinds of oppression, which have not been able to fulfill their respective needs for a long time, are particularly susceptible to protecting national dignity and interests. For example, in modern Europe, such communities are the Basques in Spain and the Flemings in Belgium. The causes of
interethnic conflicts in these regions are the continued dominance in countries of foreign communities: Castilians and Walloons, respectively. Another striking example is the Soviet state.
Interethnic conflicts in the USSR came to the surface during perestroika. And interestingly, their aspiration for national implementation was announced primarily by those who for a long time did not have their own state: the Baltic states, Ukrainians, Georgians. In turn, the peoples that had their own state at one time are today not so sensitive to
national issues. The British, French, Italians in Europe have long found a common language, "playing enough" with the idea of a nation and accepting other values.