When the word ‘multiculturalism’ began echoing in the West after the collapse of communism in the late 1980s, many on the left sides of the ideological divide suspected it to be yet another expression of ‘post-modern capitalism.’
However, in 1991, when the new Soviet regime crushed an attempted coup by the defeated forces of Cold War communists, and broke the Soviet Union into pieces, many young people in developing nations did manage to find certain aspects of multiculturalism to their liking.
To them, it meant that now the West was opening up to allowing immigrants to live (in Europe and the US), according to their (the immigrants’) cultural mores, without having to entirely integrate to the mores of Western societies.