One of the most painful lessons mankind has learned since the rise of nationalism in the last hundred years is that language diversity fosters conflicts between states and among peoples living within one state but speaking different languages. Conversely, language uniformity makes for unity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most governments have strongly desired such uniformity. In some countries, as in America, assimilation into one language has been achieved by allowing national groups the free use of their native languages, and by relying upon the advance of education and of commercial and industrial development to break down the barriers those languages erect between various linguistic groups. In the period before the First World War, many governments sought language uniformity by forcibly repressing the languages of minorities, by Germanizing, Magyarizing, Russifying their national minority groups. Of no government was this more true than of that of the old Russian Empire, in which the “minorities” — that is, the groups other than the Great-Russians — constituted over half the population. But by attempting to suppress the languages of the Ukrainians, Georgians, Tatars and so on, the Tsarist régime did not achieve its goal of unity; rather, it aroused a host of nationalist movements which put language repression first on the bill of grievances against the government and which helped drive Tsarism to its death.