Crises in the Post‐Soviet Space

From the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the conflict in Ukraine

Felix Jaitner, Tina Olteanu, Tobias Spöri, Felix Jaitner, Tina Olteanu, Tobias Spöri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351234443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the creation of new states and territorial conflicts of different levels of intensity. Scrutinising the post?Soviet period, this volume offers explanations for both the frequency and the intensity of crises in the region.

This book argues that the societies which emerged in the post-Soviet space share characteristic features, and that the instability and conflict-prone nature of the Soviet Union's successor states can be explained by analysing the post-independence history of the region and linking it to the emergence of overlapping economic, political and violent crises (called 'Intersecting Crises Phenomena'). Transformation itself is shown to be a decisive process and, while acknowledging specific national and regional characteristics and differences, the authors demonstrate its shared impact. This comparison across countries and over time presents patterns of crisis and crisis management common to all the successor states. It disentangles the process, highlighting the multifaceted features of post-Soviet crises and draws upon the concept of crisis to determine the tipping points of post-Soviet development.

Especially useful for scholars and students dealing with the Soviet successor states, this book should also prove interesting to those researching in the fields of communist and post?communist Studies, Eurasian politics, international relations and peace and conflict studies.

1 Crises in the post-Soviet space¹

From the dissolution of the Soviet Union to an area of ‘intersecting crises phenomena’?

Felix Jaitner, Tina Olteanu, Tobias Spöri

The strange normality of post-Soviet conflicts

The development in Ukraine since 2014 has caught the international community as well as social scientists off guard. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has displayed multiple crises among them sharp economic decline, frequent political or cultural conflicts, such as the disputed status of Russian language. The outbreak of open warfare and the transformation of the Donbass into a perpetual war zone seemed, however, inconceivable, even at the beginning of the Maidan protests in November 2013. Since the outbreak of the military conflict in East Ukraine, scholars have tried to explain the underlying dynamics by taking the conflict as an isolated event, independent from the regional context. With regard to the entire post-Soviet space, this approach reveals some analytic shortcomings. Armed conflicts in the post-Soviet space appear to be rather the norm than the exception. The region´s development is shaped by a multitude of forgotten or frozen conflicts. Against this backdrop, the recent developments in Ukraine follow a rather “typical” pattern. Comparisons throughout the entire post-Soviet space are likely to reveal common dynamics contributing to various and multiple conflicts.

A common history as well as remaining cultural, economic and political ties between the respective countries are still powerful factors in the majority of the cases. After the dissolution of the USSR, the post-Soviet space has experienced an extensive transformation with similar characteristics. For a comprehensive understanding of the causes of conflicts in the region, we need to look into commonalities before and after 1989 that have shaped the region.

We argue that conflicts in the post-Soviet space share characteristic features founded in the specific contours of the societal formations that have emerged in the region over the past 25 years. Three contradictory processes stand at the core: the (i) dissolution of the Soviet Union and the closely intertwined (ii) political and (iii) economic transformation processes. We refer to them as the post-Soviet “intersecting crises phenomena”. Due to this overlap, the post-Soviet space is more prone to climax in conflicts. We claim that the political and economic transformation processes intensify and intensified already existing contradictions stemming from the dissolution of the Soviet Union (peripheral and uneven development) instead of contributing to overcome them. The interconnectedness between the legacy of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the outcome of the political and economic transformations help to explain the developments in Ukraine, as well as other conflicts of the post-Soviet space. Latent crises are one common denominator of the whole region, paving the way for the eruption of conflict.

Studying the conflict in Ukraine as a post-Soviet conflict

In the entire post-Soviet space, most contributions on conflicts emanate from the field of security and conflict studies (Kanet and Sussex 2015; Liikanen et al. 2016; Pourchot 2008). The debate focuses predominantly on the role of NATO and the EU on the one hand, and Russia and its security interests on the other. Some scholars emphasise the destabilising effects of the eastern enlargement of NATO and the EU towards the Russian border, leading to increased tensions between Russia and the West. Debates about potential NATO-accession of Georgia or Ukraine, including intensified military co-operation, or the Eastern Neighbourhood policy of the EU openly challenge Russia´s position in the post-Soviet space, laying the foundation for further conflicts (Dzarasov 2016; Mearsheimer 2014). Other scholars stress Russia´s geopolitical resurgence since Vladimir Putin´s presidency as the crucial factor explaining increased conflicts in the region. Accordingly, armed conflicts are regarded as closely connected to Russia´s imperial ambitions to dominate the post-Soviet space (Giles 2016; Shevtsova 2015). Pursuing “a massive revisionist agenda” (Wilson 2014: 162), Russia actively seeks to revise the current international system (Major and Puglierin 2014).

The diverging approaches can be traced in the debate on the conflict in Ukraine as well, which has been the topic of numerous publications since 2015 and has stirred a controversial academic debate. Some stress the conflict in Ukraine itself, its emergence, the geopolitical context and domestic developments as explanatory factors.

A highly contested issue concerns Russia´s role and objectives in the conflict. Yekelchyk (2015: 145) concludes that Russia´s primary goal is to prevent Ukraine´s potential NATO-accession. The Russian Government prefers to contain the conflict as a frozen conflict (Götz 2015). According to Menon and Rumer (2015: 86), Russia prefers that Donbass remains an integral part of Ukraine while the region should be granted an autonomous status in order to transform it into a Russian protectorate. Other scholars, e.g. Thomas (2015), presume Russian actions are motivated by expansionist aspirations attempting to control vast territories (e.g. Transnistria, Odessa, and Mariupol). Others emphasise the EU enlargement/Russia nexus with a special focus on Ukraine (Karolewski and Cross 2017; Kuzio 2017).

Although this short overview clearly indicates that scientific research on conflicts in the post-Soviet space is an increasingly important field, the debate tends to neglect contextual factors explaining the region´s crisis-prone development. The most common approaches focus predominantly on external causes of the conflict, be it in terms of external actors such as Russia, the EU and NATO or as an outcome of long-term historical and geopolitical developments. With regard to the conflict in Ukraine, a variety of primarily domestic factors have been identified contributing to the conflict, such as the split along ethnic, linguistic, cultural and economic lines (Kudelia 2014; Zhukov 2016). Thus, the uprising in Donbass can be understood as a specific regional reaction to the permanent crises in Ukraine. Due to the country’s pronounced regional identities and social, cultural and historical heterogeneity, diverging positions and reactions on crises can be observed in different regions. The same observation could be applied to conflicts in Chechnya, Central Asia, Transnistria and Transcaucasia. This argument does not exclude a military entanglement of Russia in Donbass (on Russia´s role, see Robinson 2016), but it ascribes to the conflict a local cause entrenched in the specific contradictory societal development of Ukraine.

An attempt to grasp the complex interaction between the domestic and international level is presented by Sasse (2016) in a special issue on “International Linkages and the Dynamics of Conflict”. She understands the post-Soviet conflicts as a dynamic process resulting from linkage and leverage factors between domestic and international elites. Accordingly, external leverage increases the vulnerability of an authoritarian system, whereas linkage factors are defined as the density and diversity of linkages of a given authoritarian system to external actors. The approach tends to neglect broad societal developments, such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union or the transformation process. Moreover, the interaction between state, elite and external actors on the one hand and the people of a respective country on the other remains unclear.

Explaining post-Soviet ‘intersecting crises phenomena’

This edited volume explains the instability in the 15 successor states of the Soviet Union by scrutinising the comparatively short history of the post-Soviet space and links it to the emergence of overlapping transformation crises. Linking specific regional conflicts to broader developments allows us to reveal the crisisprone contours of the comprehensive transformation in the region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The literature on transformation starts from diverse assumptions. One concept acknowledges at a very early stage the potential for contradictory and conflictual developments within the post-Soviet space. The so-called “dilemma of simultaneity” (Elster 1990; Offe 1991) stresses the multiple challenges of the transformation process for the former state-socialist societies by incorporating various dimensions shaping the spheres of politics, economy, society, and culture. As prominently argued by Carothers (2002), the transformation does not inevitably end with fully consolidated democracies. Countries might get stuck in the ‘grey’, in the form of a hybrid between democratic and authoritarian regimes. Transformation is, therefore, also closely linked to progress, stagnation and deterioration. The last two terms already indicate that crises are an inherent element of transformation.

However, the notion of crisis is usually perceived as a rather temporary condition. Sociologist Olga Shevchenko (2009: 2) argues that the term crisis “typically evokes the connotations of a sudden rupture, of a breakdown in the natural order of things, of all that everyday life is not.” Analysing the “everyday crisis” and its effect on people´s life in Moscow in the 1990s, Shevchenko concludes that crisis on the individual level becomes a routine, an unchanging and diffuse condition blending with everyday reality (ibid.). Boris Kagarlitsky (2007) puts it in a similar way. He describes the development of the post-Soviet space as “disaster management”. Also on the macro level (society in general as compared to individuals), crisis becomes a normal and permanent condition. The increasing social polarisation intensifies societal contradictions, producing tensions, instability, and, subsequently, conflicts.

We argue that the transformation itself needs to be regarded as a decisive process. It produces manifold, overlapping crises in different societal spheres. Moreover, we claim that the dissolution of the Soviet Union is a crucial factor that needs to be taken into account. Although we acknowledge specific national and regional characteristics and differences, we claim that all respective countries share similar trends stemming from the mentioned processes of dissolution of the Soviet Union and the political and economic transformation. These three intersecting processes condense in crisis-prone societal formations. Following the approaches of Shevchenko and Kagarlitsky, we argue that crisis becomes a permanent condition, an integral part of societal development with varying intensity. Therefore, we speak of crisis, and not instability, that produces conflicts. However, it would be misleading to define conflicts exclusively as violent. Despite the ongoing crises, some post-Soviet successor-states are remarkably stable. Our understanding of conflicts incorporates struggles over resources, social rights and political power. The violent escalation of conflicts is by no means a logical consequence of post-Soviet development. It is rather a result of various factors shaping the societal formations in the region.

The comparison across countries (including the Baltics, Ukraine and Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia) and over time (since 1991) presents patterns of crisis and crisis management, which can be found in all 15 successor states. The edited volume disentangles these processes since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by highlighting the multifaceted features of post-Soviet crises. The interdisciplinary notion of crises is shared by all the authors. Applying the concept of ‘intersecting crises phenomena’, we argue for a comprehensive perspective to explain (latent and manifest) conflicts.

By post-Soviet ‘intersecting crises phenomena’ we mean three contradictory processes that predominantly shape the post-Soviet development: the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the closely intertwined political and economic transformation processes. Each process sparked comprehensive societal change in the spheres of politics, economy, culture, and society. Furthermore, these processes are interconnected, which means that the transformation of one sphere affects the remaining two. We claim that the political and economic transformation processes intensified already existing contradictions stemming from the dissolution of the Soviet Union instead of contributing to overcome them. The intersecting crises emerge as societal contradictions, ruptures and conflicts. We seek to determine how crises emerge and what impact they have on the post-Soviet countries.

Figure 1.1 Post-Soviet “intersecting crises phenomena” (ICP)

The dissolution of the Soviet Union

In the post-Soviet space, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its memory is still contested and heavily politicised. There, the range spans from anti-socialist attitudes along with the feeling of being freed from the Soviet repression, to a positive perception of the Soviet Union, sometimes nostalgic, whose disintegration brought rather negative changes. The process contributes to the understanding of post-Soviet crises and helps to explain the current conflict in Ukraine as well as similar conflicts in the post-Soviet space. The abrupt and uncontrolled dissolution of the USSR stimulated a secession-dynamic challenging the legitimacy of multi-ethnic states, which quickly spread to a number of successor-states. Out of the nation-building process in the 15 successor states of the Soviet Union emerged new problems for various societal groups. Nationalism arose in the new political entities (Isaacs and Polese 2016). The so-called “great reconfiguration” (Brubaker 2011: 1786) describes the formation of nation states with a dominant core nation. Ethnic belonging and social and political rights (e.g. citizenship, language politics) became more salient, as well as their contestation. The strategy of the political elites was twofold. They made use of identity politics in order to gain legitimacy by portraying themselves as part of the core nation, and often also as anti-communist. Nationalising discourses and policies were constructed, which often resulted in exclusive politics towards minorities (ibid. 2011: 1789–1802). Often this led to a reorganisation of the political space along national lines. An ethno-cultural framing of a nation fosters distrust towards state institutions and impedes the consolidation of a democratic system. At the same time, the emergence of nationalism in the post-Soviet space is based on economic interests. National elites in the Soviet Union favoured independence because it allowed them to control the subsequent privatisation process. The formation of national entrepreneurs was imperative in order to provide solid support for the new nation states. Exclusive politics do not only affect political rights, but also materialise in an uneven social development of certain regions or ethnic groups.

The analytic dimensions that result from the dissolution of the Soviet Union are an increase of aggressive nationalism, the growing importance of ethnic belonging, exclusive policies in terms of social and political rights (e.g. citizenship, language politics), the connection between nationalism and economic interest, and a new form of identity politics.

The political transformation

According to ...