Hi everyone and welcome to this latest episode of the Eukis Ital podcast.

And this week I'm really, really happy to welcome Michael Ignacev.

You'll all know of him if you don't know him.

He's a Canadian academic, author, TV host and former politician who's very, very well known for his

insights on democracy, on human rights and on global affairs. On democracy and human rights,

he's led them, he's sort of lived them in his real life recently as head of the Central European

University, which was in Budapest. Michael, welcome.

Great to be here, Anna. You've had such a long and illustrious career that I'm slightly despair of

trying to talk to about all the things I want to in half an hour. But I want to start, if I may,

with a book that was originally published in the 90s, Blood and Belonging,

1993, I believe, that has just been republished. And the book discusses ethnic conflict and

nationalism and their role in shaping global politics. And I suppose the obvious first question is, how has your perspective

on these things changed since you originally wrote it all those years ago? Great question.

And I think what I'm tempted to say right out of the bad is that I was right then and I'm right

now. That is to say, the one thing I did see in the early 90s,

when people were celebrating the end of communism, the end of the Iron Curtain and the reunification

of Europe, the thing I saw, and it was, I can't claim any insight, I was just thrust into my face

by circumstances, was that when democracy came to Eastern Europe, it came in the form of

ethnic majority rule and ethnic cleansing.

That is, you know, if you were a Croat and you were forming a state or you were served

forming a state and having an election, your key question would be how the minorities would vote.

And your worry if you were a minority was what will happen if

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