Political Geographies of the Post-Soviet Union

John O'Loughlin, Ralph S. Clem, John O'Loughlin, Ralph S. Clem

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000011791
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

This comprehensive volume observes how, after 25 years of transition and uncertainty in the countries that constituted the former Soviet Union, their political geographies remain in a state of flux. The authors explore the fluid relationship between Russia, by far the dominant economic and military power in the region, and the other former republics. They also examine new developments towards economic blocs, such as membership in the European Union or the competing Eurasian Economic Union, as well as new security arrangements in the form of military cooperation and alliance structures.

This book reflects the broad range of changes across this important world region by engaging in insightful analysis of current developments in Central Asia, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus, and separatist regions. The authors explore new state alliances and the evolving cultural and geopolitical orientations of former Soviet citizens. Some chapters also examine the dynamics of wars that have occurred in the post-Soviet space, as well as how local political developments are reflected in electoral preferences and struggles over control of public spaces.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.

Introduction: political geographies of the post-Soviet Union

John O’Loughlin and Ralph S. Clem

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 one-sixth of the world’s land surface entered a state of geopolitical flux on a scale not seen anywhere since the end of World War II, with 15 new sovereign states emerging on the territory of the former USSR. This vast expanse at the heart of the Eurasian landmass has since witnessed societal unrest, insurrections, revolutions, civil wars, and de facto secessions, (several of which have resulted in massive casualties), human suffering and infrastructure damage on a vast scale, and the displacement of millions of people. With the collapse of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), heightened tensions between the West and a resurgent Russia now exist, catalyzed by Russia’s seizure of Crimea in early 2014 and NATO’s vigorous response thereto. Russia’s somewhat problematic engagement with the European Union (EU), the creation of its own political and customs unions (especially the Eurasian Economic Union – EAEU), and the growing economic influence of China (especially in the former Soviet Central Asia) likewise complicate international relations in the post-Soviet space.

The chapters in this volume reflect a “new regional geography” that should shed light on these significant contemporary political subjects, dilemmas, and crises. Stated as “research whose scope extends beyond disciplinary boundaries to embrace current public and political debate” (Murphy and O’Loughlin 2009, 241), such work is now increasingly expected by the public as well as funding agencies and academic institutions as part of the responsibility of scholars. Presenting an interesting and rich-in-detail account is significantly enhanced if the author(s) also connect their message to two wider audiences: for the public-political where matters are debated and often hotly contested and for the academic where researchers seek empirical verification of (sometimes hyperbolic) theoretical declarations.

Toward that goal, these chapters also deal, in order of presentation, with geopolitical dynamics across the post-Soviet space through the intermediary level of individual states within that space through regions within those states and finally to specific locales within those regions. This is in keeping with our view that the best understanding of this strategically vital and complex area engages what Gerard Toal refers to as “thick geopolitics,” a concept that “. . . strives to describe the geopolitical forces, networks, and interactions that configure places and states” where the many multi-layered influences of location, distance, and place come very much into play (2017, 279). A “thick geopolitics” that is aware of local, regional, and international scalar effects on specific developments can be a holy grail for political geographers and a welcome antidote to broad brush generalizations of other social sciences and anecdotal descriptions from journalists (i.e., “thin geopolitics”).

In that spirit, the volume opens with four chapters dealing with macro-regional and international issues, another four focusing on individual states, and concluding with two that examine spatial patterns within states down to the provincial and neighborhood level. John O’Loughlin, Gerard Toal, and Vladimir Kolosov’s opening piece discusses the “Russian World” (Russkiy mir) concept in the context of the ongoing geopolitical tensions in Russia’s “Near Abroad”, that area within the post-Soviet space that Moscow traditionally considers a zone in which it has not only longstanding historical and cultural ties, but one which also now abuts NATO’s eastern frontier and thus is of vital national security interest to the Kremlin. Probing the views of persons living in strategically sensitive conflict areas by means of public opinion views and preferences within this crucial contact zone, the efficacy of geopolitically charged terms is found to vary among respondents in four different separatist regions in the Caucasus-Black Sea region, reflecting the enduring historical legacy of the Imperial and Soviet periods while underscoring the importance of place-specific factors, especially around the conduct of the 1990s wars, in matters geopolitical.

Sean Roberts in Chapter 3 explores the manner and extent to which authoritarian regimes within the post-Soviet space cooperate through regional economic integration. He finds that the imperatives of regime security often mitigate, or negate outright, the ability of these states to coordinate meaningfully on policy through the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This is especially relevant in current discussions about the possibility of economic liberalization, which is viewed as antithetical to the survival of authoritarian rule. Geopolitically, the challenges of balancing regional economic integration with the perpetuation of authoritarian rule effectively preclude the formation of a stronger bloc of states that might play a more powerful role in international affairs. As a complement to this interstate discussion which revolves around Russia, the traditional regional power, Marlene Laruelle follows in Chapter 4 with a fascinating analysis of how an outside actor, in this case the United States, seeking to build influence in the five former-Soviet Central Asia states (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan) in the post-Cold War period through an ill-conceived “Silk Road” policy, failed to understand the drivers of regional geopolitics. The US was completely outmaneuvered by Russian and Chinese initiatives based on long-standing regional/historical ties and, in the Chinese case, a willingness to make a huge financial investment in the region.

The question of whether or not Russia is seeking to and is able to establish itself as a regional hegemon, taken up in Chapter 5 by Andrej Krickovic and Maxim Bratersky, continues the macro-level geopolitical analysis of Moscow’s influence across the post-Soviet space. This chapter focusing on the use of “soft power” as a means of enticing other states within that space into its orbit (as opposed to “losing” them to Western interests). That strategy having failed in the case of Ukraine forced Russia to exert “hard power” (i.e., military force), but the authors see long term dangers in foreclosing Russian economic and soft power in the furtherance of Moscow’s regional integration goals.

Julia Langbein in Chapter 6 investigates the interface between international economic integration on the part of the EU vis-à-vis an individual post-Soviet state and counter-efforts, or lack thereof, on the part of Russia by examining the impact of these competing influences on the automotive industry in Ukraine. As it turns out, for their own reasons, both the EU and Russia failed to engage in a meaningful way with this very important sector of Ukraine’s economy, and as a consequence, this industry went through two major downturns and the ultimate result is missed opportunity for all parties concerned except Ukrainian oligarchs who manipulated the system for their own benefit.

Turning from the economic to the political-cultural domain, John O’Loughlin and Vladimir Kolosov in Chapter 7 return to an area of research in political geography that has not received adequate attention – that of the role of symbolism in promoting loyalty to, and identification with, new political units such as those that have emerged in the post-Soviet space. In the case of four de facto states that have emerged as a result of internal conflict and unrecognized by almost all members of the international community, ensuring the support of the existing populations through both provision of public goods and reliance on the continued support of the patron (Russia in these post-Soviet cases; Bakke et al. 2018) is matched by promotion of local icons. The article shows a mixed picture of success in this regard since political and cultural figures from earlier Tsarist and Soviet eras are still strongly present in all republics. Only Nagorno-Karabakh has successfully complemented state-building with recognition of locals as major symbolic players in their nation-building, while residents of Transdniestria (also known as Transnistria) at the opposite pole still identify strongly with the Soviet heritage and Abkhazia and South Ossetia show a mixed local and Russian/Soviet heritage and attachments.

The study of conflict in the North Caucasus region of Russia by Edward Holland, Frank Witmer, and John O’Loughlin in Chapter 8 uses information sources that appear in newspapers and press reports to document trends in and the spatiality of events. The North Caucasus region of Russia has been characterized by conflict since the early post-Soviet years of the 1990s, but political developments related to the Kremlin management of the region’s economy and security that rely on the partnership with Ramzan Kadyrov, president of the Chechen Republic, has dampened down the conflicts considerably and pushed the flashpoints away from Chechnya to neighboring Dagestan. The level of attacks on Russian forces might be predicted to be negatively correlated with the amount of federal spending (subsidies) in the local area, but the analysis in this article does not support this expectation, as little of the significant Kremlin largess reaches the pocketbooks of the residents of the area.

Chapter 9 by Ralph Clem tackles the seemingly impossible task of parsing and evaluating the evidence from an active war zone, in this case the Donbas conflict in eastern Ukraine. With massive amounts of news, both real and fake, emanating from the various conflict protagonists and their supporters especially in the realm of social media, it can be extremely difficult to evaluate claims and counterclaims. But close examination of social media use by war participants can also produce clear and convincing evidence of military actions, as was documented in the use of a Russian missile in shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over the Donbas war zone in July 2014 (Toal and O’Loughlin 2018). Despite such evidence, tele-vision audiences differ greatly in their views and information sources about such spectacular events. Clem’s article takes a broader view and examines a wider variety of the information on the Donbas conflict to show the evidence for Russian trans-border aggression despite official denials from the Kremlin. The conclusions of this and other works on the Ukraine conflict do not rely on official sources, nor even on journalists on the ground, thus presaging a development that marks the new era of conflict analysis in an information-overloaded world.

State-making and nation-building in the post Soviet years continues within both formal de jure and unrecognized (partially recognized) de facto republics. As David Sichinava shows in Chapter 10, the Republic of Georgia is one of the most democratic states (after the Baltic republics now in the European Union) that emerged after the 1991 Soviet implosion. Though separatist violence has resulted in an uneasy ceasefire and two de facto republics (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) in Georgia, its geopolitical orientation toward the West and away from Russia is now almost irreversible but its internal electoral map is quite unstable and unpredictable. The slow emergence of a Western-style electoral geography coincides with the beginnings of consistent (election to election) levels of support for parties that are still personalized but becoming more ideological. Building government structures and confidence in a democratic model not only requires fair electoral procedures but is also promoted by stable parties/coalitions and support bases. Existing ethnic and social cleavages in Georgia are reflected in electoral preferences and a resulting geographic polarization is visible on the maps included in the chapter.

In the last chapter, Meagan Todd’s article takes the study of conflict geography down to the truly local layer by examining the potential for social protest escalating to violence in specific areas of Moscow over access to public spaces and the control of public expenditures. Both the Russian Orthodox church and the Muslim communities within the city have tried to build edifices to serve the burgeoning numbers who attend the respective services in the atmosphere of religious freedom that is now (since the 1997 Law on Religious Freedom) guaranteed by the Russian state. However, the tiny number of mosques vastly under-serves the Muslim observant, and efforts to build new structures have been met with solid resistance from neighborhood groups and the official authorities. By contrast, the number of Orthodox churches is growing rapidly, but new building proposals sometimes run into competing claims on scarce public sites for parks and other uses. Using an ethnographic approach, Todd shows how citizen groups have differential access to the political process and achieve different rates of success in a tightly controlled political environment.

The discipline of political geography is characterized by a variety of methodologies and topical foci. Often divided by concentrations of research at the global (interstate), national and local scales, the discipline typically studies contemporary developments in evolving relations between states, the making of nations around mythical constructs and the consolidation of states, and local politics in the form of electoral contests and neighborhood politics. What holds the discipline together is a focus on “geo-politics” which can be defined in its broadest form as the intersection of political power and territory. Territory control is often the basis of power an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: political geographies of the post-Soviet Union
• 2. Who identifies with the “Russian World”? Geopolitical attitudes in southeastern Ukraine, Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria
• 3. The Eurasian Economic Union: the geopolitics of authoritarian cooperation
• 4. The US Silk Road: geopolitical imaginary or the repackaging of strategic interests?
• 5. Benevolent hegemon, neighborhood bully, or regional security provider? Russia’s efforts to promote regional integration after the 2013–2014 Ukraine crisis
• 6. (Dis-)integrating Ukraine? Domestic oligarchs, Russia, the EU, and the politics of economic integration
• 7. Building identities in post-Soviet “de facto states”: cultural and political icons in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, and Abkhazia
• 8. The decline and shifting geography of violence in Russia’s North Caucasus, 2010-2016
• 9. Clearing the Fog of War: public versus official sources and geopolitical storylines in the Russia-Ukraine conflict
• 10. Cleavages, electoral geography, and the territorialization of political parties in the Republic of Georgia
• 11. The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods
• Index