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Russia's Monroe Doctrine: Peacekeeping, Peacemakingor Imperial Outreach?

Historical conflicts were submerged but not eradicated in the Soviet period. Some were aggravated and new ones were added in the wake of Soviet policies. Boundary delimitation of Soviet republics generally conformed to the settlement patterns of their titular groups, each of which was encouraged to develop a “national” (albeit Soviet) identity and culture. But residual minorities remained and new immigrant minorities were added by migration flows encouraged by economic and “internationalization” policies, and as a result of mass-scale deportations of “enemies of the people.” The main result was the influx into the periphery of large numbers of Russians. Most cities and industrial centres acquired a multi-ethnic character, but the countryside has retained the indigenous ethnic colouration.

The new States are entangled in the inherited centralized web of public administra-tion, economic management, fiscal institutions and practices, and the economic division of labour, with residual vertical networks converging on Moscow. This has meant lop-sided development and economic dependence on Russia, fiscal policies still determined by the centre, and infrastructures dominated by the former cadre with ties to Moscow and loyalties to the old networks. The division of economic assets between Russia, which holds most central assets, and others has been a major problem next to the divi-sion of military assets and the negotiations over the return to Russia of strategie nuclear weapons held by Ukrainę, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Pre-Soviet and Soviet legacies are mixed together in popular attitudes — a mixture that enhances the potential for ethnic and political conflict and contributes little to the futurę of democracy. Pre-Soviet communal conflicts and ethnic antagonisms have re-surfaced, their intensity enhanced by years of official emphasis on „fraternal love” and adulation for the Russian “elder brother.” Neither the Soviet nor traditional political cultures have been noted for participatory values and behaviour, and the years of Soviet socialization served to reinforce authoritarian elements of the traditional cultures. Plu-ralism has emerged, but even in the best of circumstances the prospects for develop-ment of working democracies are at best long-range. New democratic institutions are poorly absorbed, and authoritarian models feature prominently in political behaviour.

The focus of conflict and potential destabilization in Soviet successor States has been at the junction of two powerful trends working at cross-purposes: the integrative nation-building by each newly sovereign State startingwith Russia, and the self-assertion of the minorities fired by an example of luckier predecessors or, in the case of Russian minorities, incensed over the loss of privileged status. By its very naturę, nation-building puts the titular nation in primary position. For the non-Russians the need to emphasize

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