NATION AND INDEPENDENCE: A CENTURIES-OLD DREAM

Independence has been a centuries-old aspiration of all humanity since ancient times. It was precisely this idea that inspired revolutions in the United States, France, and Latin American countries. By the 1990s, a new stage in the struggle for human rights and freedom had begun in socialist countries. The totalitarian state systems that had dominated Eastern European countries for nearly half a century entered a period of crisis, and democratic institutions gradually began to emerge.