Раздел - "Международные отношения" ; World development is characterized by the dialectic of two processes oppositely directed but interrelated, those of integration and disintegration. This nteraction results in various forms of political coexistence, one of which can be traced o n the example of Belgium. Belgium gained independence in 1831 and the statehood set by it was inherently fraught with conflict: its citizens belonged to the mature and well-formed ethnoses: Walloons and Flemings. For decades linguistic controversy between the two provinces? Walloonia and Flanders was exacerbated by cultural discord. The Flemish Nationalist Movement entered the political foreground with its demand of the equality of the status of the French and Flemish languages and eventually of cultural autonomy. This latent conflict emerged into the open in the 1960s when for various reasons Flanders took over economic leadership from Walloonia which in its t u rn allowed the Flemish to make b id for Flanders separation from Belgium. The country faced the problem of economic separatism, which it is trying to settle through federalization of the country. F r om the legal point of v i ew Belgium's drifting towards federalism began in the 1970s when the existence of three communities was fixed in law: the Flemish, Frankophone and German-speaking ones as well as of three regions Walloonia, Flanders and Brussels. The interim pattern of this situation was fixed in the newconstitution of 1995 which proclaimed Belgium to b e a federal state. The federal reform smoothed out the main contradictions between Flanders and Walloonia, but has not eliminated t h em altogether. However, political prudence and will for compromise of Flanders and Walloonia political forces permit to hope that all contradictions in this area will in future be settled on the basis of the consensus not to divide Belgium.