N. K. Tikhomirov " Regional conflicts. The Problem of Southern Sudan" (Moscow, Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2006, 212 p. Ed. by A. A. Tkachenko) is a full-length historical study of the origin and evolution of the South Sudanese problem, its domestic, regional and international aspects. The author is a historian and diplomat, who has worked for many years in the Sudanese direction at the Russian Foreign Ministry, and examines the problem of Southern Sudan in the context of the country's modern and contemporary political history. At the same time, he strives for the most objective and impartial presentation possible, based on documents and facts and not deviating from the historical truth in favor of the political situation. In the chapter devoted to the period of foreign colonial rule (from the end of the 19th century to 1956), the author was able to objectively show the motives, features and contradictory results of the British colonial policy towards Southern Sudan. The section on the activities of Christian missionaries is of great interest. The author does not avoid the question of the ambiguous role of Egypt, which supported the struggle for independence of Sudan, but also those Sudanese political forces that by forcibly Arabizing the South "actually took the first step towards the future confrontation between the North and the South" (p.28). The problem of Southern Sudan is presented in the book as multidimensional, evolving under the influence of various factors-political, socio-economic, ethnic, religious and others. Thus, with the discovery of oil fields in Southern Sudan in the early 1980s, the problem acquired an additional resource dimension, which further aggravated relations between the North and the South. This circumstance, along with others, is also associated with the growing involvement of an increasing number of external actors in the conflict, which has long had a regional dimension and has repeatedly been a source of ... Read more