GEORGETA POURCHOT,
Director, OLMA/NCR, Political Science, Virginia Tech; Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC

Chapter 1: Sovereignty from Within

On the other hand, some Western circles argue that Russia, after a period of disarray following the collapse of communism, is pursuing a neo-expansionist agenda across these same countries, to reestablish its past sphere of influence. From warnings of a “neo-imperialist Russia,” to fears of an imminent second Cold War, politicians and analysts in American and European circles fear the resurgence of a powerful, heavily militarized and undemocratic Russia.[2]

In-between these typical balance of power arguments, there is little room for a third position: That Central European, Baltic and Central Asian countries are no longer push-over pawns, acting or reacting to the tug of war between two superpowers. From Poland to Kazakhstan, countries of Eurasia show that they have minds of their own,[3] and national interests they define and pursue in their own capitals, whether the traditional centers of power in the Kremlin, Washington or Brussels approve or not.[4] 

This book takes the position that the concept of ‘assertive sovereignty’ captures an emerging, inter-state dynamic in this vast region since the end of communism in 1989. Without neglecting any of the nuances of democratic transitions developed by scholars throughout the nineties, assertive sovereign states define domestic and foreign policy priorities in home capitals. They do not conform to the traditional subordination to the Kremlin illustrated by the core-periphery approach and maintain a strategic relationship with Russia while pursuing integration in regional or global structures of their own choosing. The national interest is formulated at home, not in Moscow, nor in other centers of power, and is defined by popularly elected governments. The rise of assertive sovereign states is not monolithic, nor uni-directional, it varies based on perceived interests defined by leaders of respective countries.  This dynamic has, however been perceived in the Kremlin as an attempt to “encircle” or “isolate” Russia, with subsequent diplomatic fallouts that did not help Russia’s relations with these countries, or with the Euro-Atlantic community. A continued interpretation of sovereign-mindedness as pro-Western and anti-Russian is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and lead to Russia’s isolation, at least from the Eurasian countries under discussion.

The information gathered in this book is not new, but it is presented from the vantage point of Eurasian countries interests. In so doing, this book hopes to provide fresh perspective to the polarizing rhetoric that dramatizes the actual state of relations between Russia and Eurasia, on one hand, and between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community on the other hand.

Historical Background

In 1989, the fast and peaceful collapse of the communist bloc in Eastern Europe was considered the single most dramatic, unexpected and ground breaking event of the post World War II period. With the exception of Romania, peaceful mass demonstrations or negotiated agreements led to the overthrow of communist governments from Poland to Bulgaria. With no exceptions, populations across a geographic area representing over one hundred million people rejected the communist system imposed on them by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and demanded transition to a political system that would allow freedom and economic rights. In most cases, elections were organized within one year. Constitutions were rewritten to reject the premise of the Soviet-style single party systems, and to incorporate principles of Western democratic governance and free markets.

The Kremlin witnessed these fast-paced developments without intervening and on March 11, 1990 Lithuania gave the Soviet Union the first fatal blow by declaring independence.[5] Initial Soviet political and military intervention generated large crowds of Lithuanians gathered in the capital Vilnius, vowing to reclaim their sovereignty. International pressure also mounted on the Soviet administration of Mikhail Gorbachev to recognize the sovereignty of this Baltic country. Other Soviet republics started demanding further autonomy or downright independence from Moscow.  A year later, negotiations with constituent republics led to a nationwide referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union. Boycotted by the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), two of the Caucasus countries (Armenia and Georgia) and Moldova, the referendum approved a “renewed Soviet Union” and a New Union Treaty. If approved by all constituent republics, the Soviet Union would become a federation of independent republics, with the same president, common foreign policy and military.

Hard-line communists in the Kremlin feared that the New Union Treaty, while designed to salvage the Soviet Union would in fact lead to its demise. They orchestrated a coup during president Gorbachev’s absence from Moscow in August 1991 and briefly took over power. The coup backfired. Large popular demonstrations inside and outside Moscow, and the leadership of then president of the Russian Republic, Boris Yeltsin led to the quick defeat of the coup leaders. Yeltsin strongly opposed the coup and appeared on national television to call for the restoration of order. The military troops sent to defend the coup openly sided with the demonstrators and the coup collapsed in two days.

While trying to stop the unraveling of the Soviet Union, the hard-liners in fact speeded it up. A month later, the independence of all three Baltic republics was recognized by the Kremlin. In December, 1991 Ukraine held a referendum and over 90% of the population voted in favor of independence. On December 8, the leaders of Russia, (independent) Ukraine and Belarus met in Minsk to sign the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and annul the 1922 union treaty that established the Soviet Union. Two weeks later, they met again in Alma-Ata to expand the CIS to include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.  On December 25, 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the president of the Soviet Union and the union de facto disappeared off the map.

With the disappearance of the core that held communism and its institutions together, countries on the periphery started to act more independently, asserting their national priorities with or without Russian permission. Central Europeans convened quickly and voted the self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the military bloc that the Kremlin created as a counter to NATO. On July 1st, 1991 the Pact ceased to exist.

Further more, Central Europeans and later Central Asian republics called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from their territories. The Kremlin ordered the withdrawal of its Soviet troops in Central Europe. The withdrawal of approximately half a million military stationed in East Germany started in 1990 and was fully completed by 1994. Approximately 130,000 Soviet soldiers were withdrawn from the Baltic countries by 1994. Withdrawal of 7,000 Russian troops from Georgia was negotiated for ten years, started in 2006 and remains under way. Russian troops were stationed in southern Tajikistan until 2005, to guard the border with Afghanistan.

In the middle of this turmoil, the reunification of Germany in October 1990 was as astonishing and unexpected as the collapse of the Soviet Union a year later. Yet events moved so fast that many analysts now call them inevitable - in hindsight. Soon, these dramatic changes would be overshadowed by years of civil war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia. Never a part of the Soviet Union sphere of influence, Yugoslavia disintegrated in its constituent, ethnic-based republics by mid-1991 and succumbed to secessionist civil wars that lasted until 1995. Despite a peace agreement brokered by the U.S. known as “The Dayton Accords,” Serbia’s continued claim to and military activities inside the province of Kosovo eventually led to the involvement of NATO in its first ever combat operation in 1999.[6]

By 1999, the process of dismantling the institutions of communist power was over in Central Europe and the Baltic countries. Repeated orderly, free elections were organized across the region. One country broke-up peacefully – Czechoslovakia – and two countries replaced it on the map: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (also known as Slovakia). All Central European and Baltic countries applied for NATO and EU membership, adapted their legal and administrative regulations to qualify, and were eventually admitted in both organizations. In 1999, at the fiftieth anniversary of NATO, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were the first former communist countries to be admitted into the alliance, less than a month before the NATO operation in Kosovo. In March, 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia also joined, in a second wave of post-communist NATO enlargement. In May 2004, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic were admitted into the EU. In January 2007, EU enlargement was further extended to Bulgaria and Romania. While Russia opposed NATO enlargement, by and large it refrained from its traditional mode of operation which was to intervene militarily and pressure countries out of arrangements not approved by the Kremlin.

In Central Asia, Russia and the newly independent republics struggled after 1990.[7] Russia traditionally played the role of political and economic “core” to the surrounding republics, sometimes called “the periphery” or “the near abroad.” In mid-eighties, then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced two policies to salvage the communist system, glasnost and perestroika respectively. The former referred to an “openness and transparency” in the communist system, which would lead to more freedom of speech and dissent, and would preclude the widespread corruption endemic in the system. The latter referred to the restructuring of the communist economy along more competitive and accountable practices.[8] The ultimate result of Gorbachev’s actions to reform the communist system and make it work better was its self-destruction.  

The reunification of Germany, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Germany and a united Germany member of NATO were conditions agreed between Gorbachev and Western powers in exchange for significant loans from Germany, the European Community and then Group of Seven industrialized countries. [9] 

Yeltsin’s leadership in the nineties was characterized by incomplete political and economic reforms that hurt the country more than it helped. It was during his time in office that NATO enlarged to accept the first three former communist countries, the process of EU enlargement started, and Russia strengthened relations with the Euro-Atlantic community through NATO-Russia consultative arrangements and U.S.-Russia high-level systematic consultations. It was also during Yeltsin’s terms in office that Russia witnessed recession, a degree of privatization, more freedom for the media, and more freedom for the former periphery states to make their own decisions.

Vladimir Putin’s leadership since 2000 focused on reclaiming a great power status for Russia and reasserting a measure of political and economic influence over the periphery. To a certain extent, Putin’s legacy will be a stronger Russia, domestically and internationally.

The process of de-coupling from the core had mixed and uneven results in the newly sovereign countries of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. During the nineties, governments focused on re-writing constitutions and the rules governing the economy. In many cases, political leadership was a roll-over from Soviet times.

Most former Soviet republics carry historical baggage in the form of territorial and political disputes that led the region to recurrent unrest. Central Asian countries witnessed either civil war or further disintegration. Tajikistan went through civil war between 1992-1997, with an estimated loss of one hundred thousand people and many more refugees. Georgia continues to suffer from separatist movements in North and South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Azerbaijan went through the war of independence of its constituent region, Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia still bleeds from two wars in the separatist region of Chechnya. In Moldova, the separatist region of trans-Nister demands independence.

The beginning of the 21st century brought about further changes in the region, with a series of popular revolutions that overthrew incumbent administrations. Georgia was the first country to witness a popular revolution, known as “the Rose Revolution” against the regime of incumbent president Eduard Shevardnadze. Ukraine followed with an “Orange Revolution” against perceived fraud during presidential elections. The “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgystan was yet another popular uprising against perceived power abuses by the incumbent president Askar Akayev. Peaceful transfer of power occurred in Turkmenistan, after the passing of president for life Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.

Unlike Central European transitions, Russian interference was noticeable in the way some of the Central Asian countries handled their transfer of power or resolved their territorial disputes, particularly during Putin’s two terms in office. The Kremlin used economic leverage in some cases, to “discipline” the Euro-Atlantic preferences of some leaders of the periphery. However, even Putin chose not to send military troops to settle disputes outside of Russia’s territory, as was the tradition in Soviet times. Putin also discontinued the tradition of forcefully installing puppet regimes in neighboring countries whenever the choice of domestic populations was not favored by the Kremlin. As of the writing of this book in 2007, the Russian government remains opposed to Euro-Atlantic tendencies in its former sphere of influence, translates further membership in NATO for former Soviet republics as a foreign plot directly affecting its security and is ambivalent about treating any of the former communist countries in this region with the respect they request.

Political and Socio-Economic Trends

The overthrow of communist regimes and their replacement with a different brand of political and economic system was a watershed event that proved a lot more challenging than populations or politicians seemed to realize in the early days of 1990. Across the region, elected or negotiated non-communist governments rejected the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that the Kremlin forced upon them in 1945, declared themselves “democracies”, elected to become “market economies”, rewrote constitutions, adopted human rights legislation in line with those of Western countries and overall led a conscious effort to redefine themselves according to their perceived national interests.

Politicians and the people who elected them thought they knew what they wanted but behaved as if they were not always sure. Publicly and privately, everyone seemed to want the degree of personal freedoms and wealth of Western developed countries, yet few had concrete plans to bring about massive prosperity, and even fewer had an understanding of the consensus-building mechanisms that were necessary to introduce effective change. Slowly, the political and economic transition from a closed, state-centered system to an open, democratic and free market system proved not only difficult, but also uneven, with periods better described as one-step-forward-two-steps-backwards. Poland sacked six cabinets in the first two years of post-communist transition. Czechoslovakia split into two sovereign states due to the inability of politicians to negotiate a formula for shared government. By mid-nineties, the trend of elections across the region was to return Socialist parties to government. Popular participation in elections started to go down, in a sign of disillusionment with the democratic process. Economic growth, while briefly rejuvenated by an opening to foreign direct investment (FDI) and a few uneven liberalization policies started to slow down. Unemployment was high throughout the area and corruption flourished.

As open societies already know, debates about reforms, new Constitutions, the limits of government authority, transparency and accountability yield a variety of views, some of them mutually exclusive. In this vast region emerging from a Soviet-imposed period of one-party rule, where only the view of the Communist Party counted, political debates were not part of the political culture.  Parliamentary debates tended to focus on what to do with the economy and how to do it, how to create wealth without instituting social inequality, how to insure that communist practices would not be reinstated, and how to insure that freedom of speech and of movement would be upheld.  The debates were contentious, often acrimonious and often times inconclusive.[10]

To Western observers and analysts, the situation in the region was a conundrum. Much of post-communist scholarship focused on appraising the state of democratization in these countries relative to Western standards of democratic institutional behavior. Scholars and analysts focused on assessments of stages in the transition of these countries to open, democratic systems; on the degree of openness and competition of their markets; and on the degree of corruption and respect for human rights relative to Western democracies and market economies. In fact, the focus on comparisons with hundred-year old democracies pushed the analyses so far that in the early nineties, the puzzle over exactly what was happening in the region led to analyses with self-explanatory titles. “Pluralism in Eastern Europe: not will it last, but what is it?”[11] or “Economic Chaos and Fragility of Transitions”[12] were followed by titles such as “The rise of illiberal democracy”[13] and “Why did some nations succeed in their transformations while others failed?”[14] Western analysts agreed that these dilemmas were a function of the low to inexistent level of political culture in the region and warned that it could take generations to change the communist mindset of populations and their elected leaders.

Yet none of these, and many other progressive or regressive events were orchestrated in Moscow. To Russia’s credit, Kremlin leaders discontinued the past practice of dictating how elections should be held, who should win, how the victors should govern, or how dissidents should be dealt with. Russia was collapsing itself but even before the disintegration of the Soviet empire, a decision of non-interference in the former communist countries was made in the Kremlin and carried out by successive administrations.

From Gorbachev to Putin, Russia discontinued the practice of dictating Central and East European countries how to run their affairs. In 1987, Gorbachev first introduced the revolutionary notion that countries had a right to decide for themselves what kind of society they wanted to live in. “Every nation has the right to decide whether these [communist] principles are good for it and whether it wants to adopt them in restructuring its life…’The victorious proletariat cannot impose on any other nation its own ideal of a happy life without doing damage to its own victory.’ This statement by Marx is an accurate definition of our attitude to all kinds of ‘exports of revolution.’”[15] His top officials restated and amplified this apparent change in foreign policy. Vadim Loginov, an official in the Central Committee's International Department stated in a 1988 interview that “every people and every country has the right to choose its own economic and political social system and its own aspirations, and no one has the right, in this regard, to impose, whether it be through a revolution or a counterrevolution.”[16] Appearing on a U.S. morning show in 1989, foreign ministry spokesperson Gennadi Gerasimov told his interviewers that the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead, “we now have the Frank Sinatra doctrine. He has a song, I Did It My Way. So every country decides on its own which road to take.” He was asked whether this would include Moscow accepting the rejection of communist parties in the Soviet bloc. He replied, “That’s for sure...political structures must be decided by the people who live there.”[17]

Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin kept true to the so-called Sinatra Doctrine in Central Europe, allowing the region to handle their affairs “their way,” without interference from “the core,” even if at times unhappiness with the region’s choices was voiced loud and clear.

Much of the Russian unhappiness with developments in these countries stems from an incomplete reconciliation with historic facts. When communist regimes came abruptly to an end in Eastern Europe in 1988-89, the Soviet leadership was taken by surprise by the extent of popular rejection of a system that it cultivated – and forced – on Eurasia. The Soviet leaders trying to revamp and energize the ailing state-run economy and the one-party system with glasnost and perestroika hoped that most of the countries of Eastern Europe would welcome and follow their lead. In a recent interview, Gerasimov articulated Gorbachev’s belief that given the choice, the Poles, the Czechs, you name them, would vote for socialism and friendship with Moscow. [Gorbachev] underestimated nationalistic tendencies. When he traveled to Lithuania shortly thereafter [January 1990], he used an unusual-even dangerous-tactic, which was to stop the car in the street. And of course people surrounded him. And he was trying to convince them that it was better to be with Moscow for many reasons-economic, social, you name it you will be better off and so on, we are going to change. It will be worse for you to go at it alone. But they said, “We want freedom, we want to go our own way.” It was a very big surprise for him, especially when this kind of talk happened at a gathering of the party in Vilnius, when [Algirdas] Brazauskas was in charge of the party there. And he also said, “We want to go our own way.” That was a big surprise for Gorbachev.[18]

None of the Eastern European countries were interested to fix the communist system, they were interested to abandon it and switch to a market-economy and a democratic system.

More startling to the Kremlin, once Eastern European countries rejected communism the Soviet Union itself started to do the same. The fast and peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the overnight loss of a geographic identity that Russians regarded with pride. Ever since those events, Russia has been coming to terms with new historic realities such as having to treat its former republics as equals in the political and economic process. That has proven to be a daunting task.

The policy of non-interference in former communist countries’ affairs also applied to European centers of power such as the European Union (EU) or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In fact, when Central and Eastern Europe not only rejected communism and the state-run economic system but started talking about joining the EU and NATO, the Brussels bureaucracy was caught by surprise. Neither the EU nor NATO had enlarged in several decades, they had no process or institutional framework to start cooperating with former “enemies”. As a former U.S. policy maker put it, “…in the long row of [National Security Council] file cabinets…there was no drawer labeled ‘in case of German unification, open file and follow instructions,’ nor were there any policy papers on ‘what to do if the Soviet Union disintegrates.’ We were entering uncharted territory.”[19] As former communist countries one by one reached out to new centers of power of their own choosing in Brussels and Washington, Euro-Atlantic leaders moved fast to accommodate the new wave of interest in democracy and open markets.

In that spirit, this book argues that while much scholarship focused on processes of democratization and transition in the former communist space, or on the typical ‘spheres of influence’ division, much less attention was paid to how the traditional subordination of these countries to a focal point of power, the Kremlin, influenced countries’ sovereign decisions. Assertiveness in foreign and domestic policy has been a means of shaking off political dependencies and establishing full sovereignty, a long held a dream for these countries. Assertiveness in selecting domestic and foreign policies considered the best choices for these countries was more than a matter of national identity, it was a matter of growing up and walking on their feet rather than being held by the hand by ‘big brother’ Russia. The dynamic of sovereign assertiveness is incomplete and its direction is not to be taken for granted. This dynamic explains aspects of economic and political transitions that have not yet been fully accounted for in the region. It is the task of this book to contribute to that endeavor.

Book Structure

The remainder of this book presents information about economic and political choices made by Eurasian countries from the vantage point of the countries themselves. Chapter Two gathers information about the transition of vanguard Central European countries. The chapter argues that the fast pace of domestic and foreign policy reforms of the early nineties set the tone for a thorough transformation of the former communist space and emboldened countries further east to take similar steps towards their own affairs.

Central Europeans were assertive both in domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, the region chose to develop democratic institutions, introduce market economy mechanisms, and civil society reforms of their choosing. In foreign policy, they pursued membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions such as NATO and the EU. They also chose to self-dissolve the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Cold War military counter-part in the communist world. Interestingly, Central Europe was also assertive towards its new allies in the West, which further strengthens the thesis that sovereign assertiveness in the region was not necessarily anti-Russian.

Chapter Three analyzes the spread of sovereign assertiveness further east, among former Soviet republics. The Baltic countries were the first former Soviet republics to assert their national interest in terms of a Euro-Atlantic choice. Russia lobbied against further NATO expansion to the east, and argued that membership was a choice “against Russia.” Baltic countries integration into NATO and the EU speeded up domestic reforms and demonstrated that Russia’s fears of encirclement were unwarranted.

Domestically, Baltic countries developed democratic institutions, transitioned to market economy, and introduced civil society reforms. By comparison to Central Europe, the Baltic countries vigorously defended their version of the historical record of Soviet occupation, a process that left Russia further alienated. In foreign policy, the Baltic countries refused the traditional core-periphery format of relations with Russia, and led successful bids to join Euro-Atlantic institutions.

Chapter Four highlights signs of assertive sovereignty in Central Asia, in countries that remain incomplete democracies or downright authoritarian regimes by Western standards. From Ukraine to the Caucasus, select former Soviet republics slowly set a course for Euro-Atlantic integration and started implementing domestic reforms that would enable them to qualify for membership. Even in cases where Euro-Atlantic membership was not pursued, such as in Kyrgystan, Khazakstan or Turkmenistan, assertiveness took the form of standing up to Russia and defining the terms of the political and economic discourse rather than succumbing to Moscow’s pressure. Russia continued to regard these developments as attempts at encirclement and started to counter countries’ assertiveness with political pressure in the field of energy. By 2006, leveraging energy resources to dampen the assertiveness of its former republics became a Kremlin tool to reassert Russian power in the region.

Late-bloomer republics tried to assert their interests in domestic and foreign policy but Russia yielded sufficient influence in their affairs to block or delay further decoupling of the periphery. Domestically, they attempted to reduce national dependence on Russian energy resources, re-establish the historical record of Soviet occupation, resist pressure from the Kremlin on a host of issues, and develop political and economic systems of their own choosing. In foreign policy, some refused the core-periphery format, established regional cooperative agreements with and without Russia, established bilateral regional agreements, or led (successful) rapprochement with NATO and the EU.

Final Chapter Five revisits Russia’s Western conspiracies theories, and calls for a double toning down of the rhetoric of encirclement, and that of Russia’s neo-imperialism. Russia tends to translate the assertiveness of Eurasia either as anti-Russian or as a Western conspiracy. If persistent, this state of affairs will further damage Russia’s relations with its former periphery, and with its Euro-Atlantic allies.

NATO and EU enlargement to former communist countries, the color revolutions in Central Asia, the planned positioning of military bases in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense site in Poland and the Czech Republic, Western criticism of Russia’s state of democracy, and Russia’s reluctance to make amends for Soviet abuses in Eurasia add up to the reasons why Russian politicians believe in a Western plot. None of these developments are seen as genuine, sovereign choices of the countries under discussion, but as skillfully orchestrated stages of an anti-Russian plot.

Polarized rhetoric about the imminence of a second Cold War among Russian politicians, and of the expanding neo-imperialism of Russia among Western analysts, can lead to an inimical state of affairs that is avoidable. Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community could find ways to eat humble pie together to get past historical and current differences, and make a conscious effort to modify the way they think about one another. Only then, can this vast area speak of renewed trust, based on mutual respect and cooperation towards common goals. Until then, dangerous rhetoric can grow into alternative realities that do not serve anybody.

March 14, 2008

Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., Westport, CT.

Every reproduction of this material must be accompanied by the following credit notice: The article is reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., Westport, CT. from the Eurasian Home website. 

[1] Understandably, such arguments tend to come from Russian leaders and policy analysts. Boris Yeltsin warned of a Cold Peace as early as 1995, and of a new world war in 1996, should Central Europe be “permitted entry into NATO”. See Bill Delaney, “On Invasion’s Anniversary, Yeltsin Preaches Against NATO Expansion,”CNN World News (June 22, 1996). Vladimir Putin made no secret that he opposed NATO expansion even before he became president. He did not change his mind afterwards and accused the United States of imposing its economic, political, educational and cultural policies on other countries, in an attempt to create a unipolar world of its choosing. See Vladimir Putin, “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy,” (February 10, 2007), President of Russia website, www.kremlin.ru/eng. Mikhail Gorbachev joined his voice to complain about the increasing imperialist tendencies of the United States and its Western allies, see Alex Nicholson, “Gorbachev Blames U.S. for ‘Growing Global Disarray,”Associated Press (July 28, 2007). Policy analysts picked up on their leaders’ position and some suggested that the Iron Curtain that separated “the East” from “the West” during the Cold War was being replaced by a ‘velvet curtain’ in the nineties, in an allusion to the creeping Western influence into Central Europe and beyond. See Viatcheslav Morozov, “The Forced Choice Between Russia and the West: The Geopolitics of Alienation,”Program on New Approaches to Russian Security, Policy Memo 327, 11 (Washington D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2005).

[2] There is an increasing literature dealing with the re-emergence (or continuation) of “Russian imperialism,” or “Russian nationalism” as some critics would call it. Russia is accused by some of trying to establish itself as the center of power in Central Asia, by leveraging energy resources and political influence on countries that do not seem to make decisions favorable to the Kremlin’s point of view. See Mete Skak, From Empire to Anarchy: Postcommunist Foreign Policy and International Relations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); William Zimmerman, The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993-2000 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Janusz Bugajski, Cold Peace: Russia’s New Imperialism (Connecticut: Praeger, 2004).

[3] Eurasia is used throughout this book to signify the geographic space that came under the influence of the Soviet Union after World War II. Eurasia includes countries of Central and Eastern Europe that retained sovereignty without full political power to choose their domestic political system, and the former Soviet republics that lost their identity by being incorporated into the Soviet Union.

[4] This argument was first formulated in Georgeta Pourchot, “Towards A New Dynamic in the post-Soviet Space,”Eurasia Heritage Foundation, Eurasian Home Analytical Resource on-line (October 14, 2005), eurasianhome.org.

[5] Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia form what is commonly known as ‘the Baltic countries.’ All were independent between the two world wars, and were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. The annexation was never recognized by the United States and other Western countries, and still forms the battlefield of political discord between Russia and the Baltics. Historical details follow in chapter 3.

[6] This book deals with developments in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Yugoslavia was technically never part of the Soviet sphere of influence and the secessionist wars of the mid-nineties set the region apart in terms of political and economic transitions. Developments in the countries of the former Yugoslavia are therefore not discussed in this book. The post-Balkan wars were about secession from the Yugoslav “center”, i.e. Serbia, and asserting independent-mindedness from Belgrade rather than from Moscow. For the same reason, Albania is not discussed either. While originally a party to the Warsaw Pact, Albania withdrew from the Pact in 1961, never returned to the Soviet sphere of influence, and joined the Group of Non-Aligned states.

[7] Various definitions of Central Asia exist. For the purpose of this book, Central Asia refers to the following former constituent republics of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Caucasus countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

[8] See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World (Harper & Row, New York 1987).

[9] By some estimates, the total amount of German loans to the Soviet Union and its successor states are 70 billion Deutche Marks (DM). See Manfred R. Hamm, “Soviet Withdrawal from Germany,”Perspective II, no. 5 (May-June 1992).

[10] During my brief tenure as a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputees after the first free election in May 1990, the “debates” were shouting games. Parliamentarians had many good ideas but little practical experience. Reforms were adopted in the absence of institutional structures to implement them, and many of the early reform packages had to be completely revised and voted on.

[11] Jane L. Curry, “Pluralism in Eastern Europe: Not Will It Last but What Is It?”Communist and Post-Communist Studies 26, no. 4 (December 1993): 446-61.

[12] Raymond M. Duch, “Economic Chaos and the Fragility of Democratic Transition in Former Communist Regimes,”Journal of Politics 57, no. 1 (February 1995): 121-58.

[13] Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,”Foreign Affairs (November-December 1997): 22-43.

[14] Ilya Prizel, “The First Decade after the Collapse of Communism: Why Did Some Nations Succeed in Their Political and Economic Transformations While Others Failed?”SAIS Review (Summer-Fall 1999): 1-15.

[15] Gorbachev, Perestroika, 151.

[16] Interview given to Austrian journal Neue Kronen-Zeitung (July 23, 1988), in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (July 26, 1988).

[17]“‘Sinatra Doctrine’ at Work in Warsaw Pact, Soviet Says,”Los Angeles Times (October 25, 1989).

[18] Fredo Arias-King, “From Brezhnev Doctrine to Sinatra Doctrine, Interview with Gennadi Gerasimov,”Demokratizatsiya (Spring 2005), www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200504/ai_n15328179.

[19] Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War. An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989-1992 (The Woodrow Wilson Center Press Washington DC, 1997), 6-7.

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