2982020003

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

Chechenya, which declared independence, was invaded twice and practically obliterated with great ferocity; the support in the Gorno-Karabagh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan was selectively extended or withdrawn to adversaries; Georgia was invaded and its two autonomies “liberated”.

Results of the Caucasus operations were summarized by defense minister, General Grachev: “Russia intends to keep three military bases in Georgia and five military bases in the Caucasus as a whole, with a to tal troop strength of 23,000”.

From the very day of-the Soviet Union collapse, the key conflict of the post-Soviet space has been played within the Commonwealth of Independent States, (est. 1991 by Russia, Ukrainę and Belarus). Two major actors, the Federation and the Ukrainę, have very different perceptions of the purpose of the organization. For the Federation, and its friends, it is an organization designed to reestablish the Russian Empire. For the Ukrainę and its allies, it is an instrument to facilitate amicable diyorce. Both sides agree on one point. Simply put — to quote professor Roman Szporluk of Harvard: — “Without Ukrainę Russia can never again be a great power”.

Now - 2014 - we are witnessing an attempt to take another step towards President Putin’s ultimate goal.

Preface -1994

Nationalism has filled the vacuum left by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europę and the Soviet Union, thus restoring the “normal” historical pattern that had been interrupted, for most of the century, by an effort to build a regional and ultimately global political system on a basis of a supra-national identity. The collapse led to the break-up of the Warsaw Pact regional security system and to the disintegration of multi-ethnic communist States. The demise of the Soviet imperial system was a replay of the earlier disintegration of European dynastie Systems (after World War One), and Western colonial empires (after World War Two), thus proving once again that nationalism has been the dominant world force of the twentieth century and promises to remain so on the threshold of the twenty-first.

The break-up of the Soviet Union left a complex legacy of destabilization. Ali of the successor States still have sizeable minorities, some indigenous and some immigrant. Some twenty-five million Russians now stranded outside Russia form crucial minorities in the new States and look to Moscow for protection¹. Minority separatism that had

1

T\venty-five million ethnic Russians lived outside the Russian Federation at the time of the last population census in 1989. Narodnoe Kbo^aisWo SSSR v 1990 g. Staństtckeskii le^begodnik, (Moscow: Finansy i Staństtka,