When Nationalism Fuels Decentralization and Secession: Lessons from the Cold War

[This article is chapter 6 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities.]

During the early 1990s, as the world of the old Soviet Bloc was rapidly falling apart, the economist and historian Murray Rothbard saw it all for what it was: a trend of mass decentralization and secession unfolding before the world’s eyes. The old Warsaw Pact states of Poland, Hungary, and others won both de jure and de facto independence for the first time in decades. Other gro...