  The Nikolaevskiy equation has been proposed as a model for seismic waves,
electroconvection and weak turbulence; we show that it can also be used to
model transverse instabilities of fronts. This equation possesses a large-scale
"Goldstone" mode that significantly influences the stability of spatially
periodic steady solutions; indeed, all such solutions are unstable at onset,
and the equation exhibits so-called soft-mode turbulence. In many applications,
a weak damping of this neutral mode will be present, and we study the influence
of this damping on solutions to the Nikolaevskiy equation. We examine the
transition to the usual Eckhaus instability as the damping of the large-scale
mode is increased, through numerical calculation and weakly nonlinear analysis.
The latter is accomplished using asymptotically consistent systems of coupled
amplitude equations. We find that there is a critical value of the damping
below which (for a given value of the supercriticality parameter) all periodic
steady states are unstable. The last solutions to lose stability lie in a cusp
close to the left-hand side of the marginal stability curve.
