Things Fall Apart:
WHAT LESSONS CAN BE LEARNED FROM A COUNTRY'S COLLAPSE? ALLEN LYNCH
COMPARES YUGOSLAV AND SOVIET EXPERIENCES 


	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 10 -- What can we learn by
comparing the collapse of Yugoslavia to that of the Soviet Union? 
	That's the central question addressed in the recently released
book, "Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The Disintegration of
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union," co-authored by Allen C. Lynch,
director of the University of Virginia's Center for Russian and East
European Studies and associate professor of government and foreign
affairs at U.Va., and Reneo Lukic, professor of contemporary history
at the Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada.
	In their painstakingly researched and tightly organized
volume, the authors examine the ways in which Yugoslavia and the USSR,
two multinational, federal, communist states, dealt with issues of
ethnic nationalism and how the countries were affected when their
overarching political structures collapsed.
	"[I]mportant differences in political leadership, political
culture, and the readiness of the political leadership to use force to
preserve the political and territorial integrity of the state explain
much about the level of violence that ensued from the collapse of the
state," the authors write. While Czechoslovakia experienced a
so-called "velvet divorce," and the Soviet government was restrained
in its use of force to stop its disintegration, in Yugoslavia "failed
reforms and the rise of President Slobodan Milosevic to power in
Serbia condemned the state to a brutally violent disintegration."
	The book is published in New York by Oxford University Press
for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ($65, cloth). 
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June 10, 1997

	For more information, call Allen Lynch at (804) 924-3033 or
924-6932, or contact him by e-mail at al4u@virginia.edu. For help
reaching Lynch or for a review copy of the book, call Charlotte
Crystal at (804) 924-6858.  Television reporters should call our TV
News Office at (804) 924-7550.