sai24in016 “The Soviet Union Is Gone, But I's Stil Collapsing | Foreign Policy
FEATURE
The Soviet Union Is
Gone, But It’s Still
Collapsing
And 5 other
unlearned lessons
from leading
experts about
modern Russia
and the death of an
empire.
BY FP CONTRIBUTORS
DECEMBER 22, 2016
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of 15 new countries in
December 1991 remade the world overnight. The Cold War and the threat of
nuclear annihilation disappeared, and democracy and free-markets spread
across the now defeated Soviet empire. Of course, 25 years later, events didn’t
exactly unfold as initially predicted. The forces of globalization have mutated
former Soviet countries in unseen ways, emboldening autocrats and
entrenching corruption across the region. Meanwhile, the geopolitical
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animosities of the Cold War are resurgent, with relations between Moscow and
Washington at their lowest point since the Soviet-era arms race. The creation of
new countries, meanwhile, has given rise to nationalism and autocracies that
are shaping foreign-policy decisions and altering societies in unforeseen ways.
Yet, the significance of this quarter-century of change is still not fully
understood. Why did the Soviet Union really collapse and what lessons have
policymakers missed? How is history repeating itself across the lands of the
former superpower? In search of answers, Foreign Policy asked six experts with
intimate knowledge of the region from their time in finance, academia,
journalism, and policymaking. Here are the unlearned lessons from the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is still collapsing. - Serhii Plokhy
Abandonment has consequences. - Bill Browder
Ideology should not guide foreign policy. - Dmitri Trenin
Russia can't lead through imperialism. ~ Nargis Kassenova
Globalization only enriched and empowered autocrats. - Alexander Cooley
Moscow is still sacrificing innovation for state security. - Andrei Soldatov
The Soviet Union is still collapsing. 2
Serhit Plokhyy is the professor of history and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at
Harvard University. He is the author of The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union, The
Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and his latest book is The Man with the Poison Gun: A
Cold War Spy Story
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The 20th century witnessed the end of the world built and ruled by empires:
from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, which fell in the final days of
World War I, to the British and French empires, which disintegrated in the
aftermath of World War II. This decades-long process concluded with the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the mighty successor to the Russian,
Empire, which was stitched back together by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s,
only to fall apart 70 years later during the final stage of the Cold War.
Although many factors contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, from the
bankruptcy of communist ideology to the failure of the Soviet economy, the
wider context for its dissolution is often overlooked. The collapse of the Soviet
Union, like the disintegration of past empires, is a process rather than an event.
And the collapse of the last empire is still unfolding today. This process did not
end with Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation on Christmas Day 1991, and its
victims are not limited to the three people who died defending the Moscow
White House in August 1991 or the thousands of casualties from the Chechen
wars.
The rise of nation-states on the ruins of the Soviet Union, like the rise of
successor states on the remains of every other empire, mobilized ethnicity,
nationalism, and conflicting territorial claims. This process at least partly
explains the Russian annexation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine, and the burst of
popular support for those acts of aggression in the Russian Federation. As the
victim of a much more powerful neighbor's attack, Ukraine found itself ina
situation similar to that of the new states of Eastern Europe formed after World
War [on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires.
Those states struggled with the enormous tasks of nation building while trying 2
to accommodate national minorities and defend themselves against revanchist
powers claiming the loyalty of those same minorities.
Although the historical context of the collapse of empires helps us understand
the developments of the last 25 years in the former Soviet space, it also serves as
awarning for the future. The redrawing of post-imperial borders to reflect the
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“The Soviet Union Is Gone, But I's Stil Collapsing | Foreign Polcy
importance of nationality, language, and culture has generally come about as a
result of conflicts and wars, some of which went on for decades, if not centuries.
‘The Ottoman Empire began its slow-motion collapse in 1783, a process that
reached its conclusion at the end of World War I. The ongoing war in eastern
Ukraine is not the only reminder that the process of Soviet disintegration is still
incomplete. Other such reminders are the frozen or semi-frozen conflicts in
‘Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the semi-
independent state of Chechnya.
A lesson that today’s policymakers can learn from the history of imperial
collapse is that the role of the international community is paramount in sorting
out relations between former rulers and subjects. Few stable states have
emerged from the ruins of bygone empires without strong international
support, whether it is the French role in securing American independence,
Russian and British involvement in the struggle for Greek statehood, or the US,
role in supporting the aspirations of former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern
Europe. The role of outsiders has been and will remain the key to any post
imperial settlement. Looking at the current situation, it’s difficult to overstate
the role the United States and its NATO allies can play in solving the conflict in
Ukraine and other parts of the volatile post-Soviet space. The fall of the Soviet
Union, which carried the legacy of the last European empire, is still far from.
over. RETURN TO LIST.
READ MoRE Abandonment has consequences.
‘he End ofthe Bill Browder is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the head of
End of th
ColdWar_ the Global Campaign for Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.
CLICK HERE
: When the Soviet Union collapsed 25 years ago, the world
Could Mikhail
Gorbachev
Have Saved annihilation was all but eliminated. Russia transitioned into a
breathed a collective sigh of relief as the threat of nuclear
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the Soviet
Union?
CLICK HERE prosperity. In the process, however, the pendulum swung from.
democracy, and the West could refocus its efforts on peace and
PHOTOS:The intense anxiety toward Moscow to inattention and neglect.
Last Days of
theSoviet | ; , |
Union Unfortunately, while the West was ignoring Russia, it was quietly
CLICKHERE mutating into something far more dangerous than the Soviet
Union.
With no real laws or institutions, 22 Russian oligarchs stole 40 percent of the
country’s wealth from the state. The other 150 million Russians were left in
destitution and poverty, and the average life expectancy for men dropped from
65 to 57 years. Professors had to earn a living as taxi drivers; nurses became
prostitutes. The entire fabric of Russian society broke down.
Meanwhile, the West wasn’t just ignoring the looting of Russia; it was actively
facilitating it. Western banks accepted pilfered funds from Russian clients, and
Western real estate agencies welcomed oligarchs to buy their most coveted
properties in St-Tropez, Miami, and London.
‘The injustice of it all was infuriating for average Russians, and they longed for a
strongman to restore order. In 1999, they found one: Vladimir Putin. Rather
than restoring order, however, Putin replaced the 22 oligarchs with himself
alone at the top. From my own research, I estimate that in his 18 years in power
he has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people.
Putin did allow a fraction of Russia’s oil wealth to seep into the population —
just enough to prevent an uprising, but nowhere near enough to reverse the
horrible injustice of the situation. But that didn’t last long either. As the oil
boom waned, the suffering of ordinary Russians resumed, and people took to
the streets in 2011 and 2012 to protest his rule. Putin’s method of dealing with an
angry population comes from the standard dictator playbook: If your people are
mad at you, start wars. This was the real reason behind his invasion of Ukraine,
and it worked amazingly well: Putin’s approval rating skyrocketed from 65
percent to 89 percent in a few months.
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In response to the annexation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine, and the downing of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 innocent people, the West had no
choice but to respond with a range of sanctions against Russia. These sanctions,
combined with the collapse of oil prices, led to more economic hardship, which
made the Russian people even angrier. So Putin started another war, this time in
syria.
The problem the world now faces is that Putin has effectively backed himself
into a corner. Unlike any normal world leader, he cannot gracefully retire — he
would lose his money, face imprisonment, or even be killed by his
enemies. Therefore, what started out as a profit-maximizing endeavor for Putin
has transformed into an exercise in world domination to ensure his survival.
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the West still faces a
menacing threat from the Kremlin. It is now driven by kleptocracy rather than
communist ideology. But it is still the same menace, with the same nuclear
weapons, and an extremely dangerous attitude.
The real tragedy is that if Western governments hadn’t tolerated Russian
Kleptocracy over the last quarter century, we wouldn't be where we are
today. But as long as Putin and his cronies continue to keep their money safe in
Western banks, there is still leverage: Assets can be frozen, and accounts can be
refused, If one lesson is to be taken from the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is
that we in the West cannot continue to keep our heads in the sand and ignore
Kleptocracy in Russia, because the consequences are disastrous. RETURN TO LIST.
Ideology should not guide foreign policy
Dmitri Trenin is the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and served in the Soviet and
Russian armed forces from 1972 to 1993. His latest book is Should We Fear Russia?,
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“The Soviet Union Is Gone, But I's Stil Collapsing | Foreign Polcy
The Soviet Union saw itself as an ideological power. Moscow believed that
communism offered, as the old communist slogan went, a “bright future for all,
humanity.” Leaders in Moscow were convinced that communism was the right
recipe for any country, regardless of history, development, or culture — and 25
years after the collapse of the Soviet empire, that misplaced logic is still shaping
events around the globe.
‘The Soviet Union's first major success in communism promotion came in
‘Mongolia, where Moscow prided itself in shifting the country from feudalism to
socialism by the late 1930s. After World War II, in addition to Eastern Europe
and East Asia, Soviet-sponsored regimes spread across the globe, from Latin
America to East Africa, with nominal success.
But then came Afghanistan in 1979. Moscow went in first to ensure that leaders
in Kabul remained loyal to the Soviet Union, but once it was in, the mi
ion
changed to helping the Afghans build a state and society based on the Soviet
model, like it did in Mongolia. It was in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union
discovered the power of militant Islam and eventually understood that it was so
much easier to invade a deeply religious country than to reshape its society. By
the time Moscow sent military forces into the country, the Soviet Union had
revealed it
ardinal weakness: imperial overreach. Moscow was already
beginning to struggle to keep in line its allies in Eastern Europe — and to
support dozens of client states across the globe.
Discontent at home was grossly enhanced by the war in Afghanistan, which was
both costly and unnecessary. At the same time, the Soviet economy had run out
of steam by the 1980s, with infrastructure crumbling and popular rancor 2c
growing. The cost of supporting a long list of satellites and surrogates was
sapping the finances of the Soviet Union. Moscow, which had always been wary
of borrowing abroad, began to take more and more loans. In the final years of
the Soviet Union, its foreign policy was heavily influenced by the constant need
to seek more funding from abroad: The pace of domestic liberalization was
increased, steps toward the German reunification were taken, and Moscow did
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not intervene when Eastern Europe pursued its own political course in the
1980s.
The lessons from this historical episode apply first of all to the Russian
Federation, the successor to the Soviet Union, It immediately rejected any state
ideology, abandoning not only the global empire but also the lands traditionally
seen as Russia's historical heartland, such as Ukraine. Twenty-five years later, as
it seeks to rebuild itself as a global great power, Russia is realizing that founding
an empire under a different name is not in the cards. Having entered the war in
Syria, Russia has also made it clear from the start that it will not send in its
ground forces, lest Syria becomes another Afghanistan.
But the lessons shouldn't be limited to the former Soviet space. History does not
repeat itself, but it rhymes, U.S. interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in
2003 developed into massive nation-building projects under the guise of
democracy — at great human and financial cost. Any ideology, not just
communist, is a poor guide for foreign policy. Foreign military misadventures
result in disappointment at home and loss of prestige abroad. And a growing
national debt is a ticking bomb that threatens the very stability of the state.
In the end, the Soviet Union paid the ultimate price for its imperial hubris.
RETURN TO LIST.
Russia can’t lead through imperialism.
Nargis Kassenova is an associate professor and director of the Central Asian Studies Center at
the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research in Almaty.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the five new countries of Central Asia —
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — were
initially left on the outside looking in. The Belavezha Accords — the document
signed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid
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Kravchuk, and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus on Dec. 8, 1991, that marked the
dissolution of the Soviet Union and created a much looser Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) in its place — were signed with no input from the
Central Asian republics. This process revealed an important truth about
relations between the opposite sides of the Soviet empire: The Slavic leaders
called the shots, while the Central Asians accepted the consequences.
For the westward-looking Russia of the early 1990s, Central Asia was a
burdensome backwater that it did not mind shedding off. After painful efforts to
a keep a single economic space and share a currency, Yeltsin’s government
pushed other CIS states out of the ruble zone in 1993. This move was particularly
painful for Central Asian states, which were highly dependent on Russian banks
for financial transfers to stabilize their battered economies.
‘As Russia became less democratic and more nostalgic about Soviet glory in the
late 1990s, Moscow began to show interest again in Central Asia. As the Kremlin,
revived talk of its “privileged interests” and “spheres of influence,” it sought
new ways to establish itself as the center of economic and political activity in
Eurasia. Moscow poured new resources into the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, a military alliance that contains three of the five Central Asian
countries. In 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union, an economic bloc of Armenia,
Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — widely heralded by Vladimir
Putin — came into effect to more closely bind the former Soviet countries.
‘Through its alliances, Moscow continues to behave as a sovereign and not as the
first among equals in a union. When the West sanctioned Russia over its,
interference in Ukraine in 2014, Moscow responded with its own set of 2
retaliatory sanctions against European products. This was done without
consulting Belarus or Kazakhstan, the other members of the Eurasian Customs
Union, the precursor to the Eurasian Economic Union. Russia also carried out
missile attacks from the Caspian Sea to targets in Syria in fall 2015 without
taking into account the concerns of its military ally and closest partner
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Kazakhstan, which was forced to reroute flights on short notice out of the
region.
At the societal level in Russia, there is not much interest or love for Central
Asians. Millions of labor migrants from Central Asia work in Russia, sending
back money to support the families they left behind. This has grown anti-
immigrant and racist sentiments in the country, and some key opposition
politicians have even sought to channel it. Mikhail Prokhorov, a billionaire and
presidential candidate during Russia's 2012 elections, condescendingly
promised that he would close the border with “Middle Asia” (the Soviet term
referring to Central Asia minus Kazakhstan) and introduce a visa regime with
these countries, Alexei Navalny, the charismatic activist planning to run in the
2018 presidential elections, has campaigned in the past on introducing a visa
system with Central Asia and the Caucasus. With nationalism on the rise,
Central Asians have increasingly become the “other” for Russians.
This trend should urge Central Asians to keep in mind the lesson of the early
1990s. Without shared identity or a shared dream for the future, it’s impossible
to build a political community or have any kind of meaningful economic
integration. Central Asian states and societies need to reflect on their past and
present dependencies and develop identities that are separate from their Soviet
history and attachment to Russia. After 25 years, it’s time for Central Asians to
abandon the type of self-victimization typical of colonized people and truly
embrace their countries’ independence. RETURN TO LIST.
Globalization only enriched and
empowered autocrats.
Alexander Cooley is Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute and the Claire Tow of
Professor of Political Science at Barnard College in New York. His forthcoming book, co-
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authored with John Heathershaw, is Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central
Asia.
The five new countries of Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — emerged after the collapse of the Soviet
Union asa forgotten region seemingly cut off from the forces of globalization.
Scholars and policymakers came to view Central Asia as isolated, disconnected,
and insufficiently integrated into the global economy. The region’s governments
became increasingly authoritarian, and economies were left stagnant and
unreformed from their Soviet days.
The Central Asian states, however, were not exactly shielded from globalization.
Rather than facilitate the transition from a communist command economy,
Central Asia’s relationship with the liberal world system after the collapse of the
Soviet Union suggests that globalization actually encouraged capital flight,
enshrined corruption, and allowed some of the world’s most brutal dictators to
cement their rule.
This legacy of offshore finance has played out across Central Asia,
shortchanging the region’s economies and empowering its autocrats. The
region's elites may not have transitioned their countries to liberal political and
economic systems, but they did use state institutions to personally enrich
themselves — relying on anonymous shell companies and offshore bank
accounts to camouflage their shady transactions. Although the West chastised
these countries for pervasive corruption, it rarely paid attention to the
international accountants, lawyers, and external advisors who helped to
structure these illicit arrangements.
In Tajikistan, a small mountainous country north of Afghanistan, political
battles have been waged over the Tajik Aluminum Company (Talco), the
country’s largest exporter, whose management structure is registered in the
British Virgin Islands. Accusations of millions of dollars siphoned off and
embezzled overseas, allegedly by President Emomali Rahmon and his relatives,
have played out in London, Swiss, and New York courtrooms. Similarly, in
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Turkmenistan, an investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness
estimated that $2 billion to $3 billion in the country’s foreign currency reserves
— accumulated from the trade of natural gas under Turkmenistan’'s first
president, Saparmurat Niyazov — was held by Deutsche Bank in an account
that was “solely controlled” by the Turkmen president.
In oil-rich Kazakhstan, a massive bribery scandal implicated a half-dozen major
Western energy companies, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, over
lucrative energy concessions in the 1990s. The accusations alleged the
companies funneled some $80 million in bribes to senior Kazakh elites via
offshore bank accounts. In 2010, James Giffen, an American middleman
and senior advisor to President Nursultan Nazarbayey, pled guilty to one minor
violation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, after mounting a “public
authority” defense under which he argued that he acted on behalf of various
US. government entities, including the CIA, to promote American interests
through these opaque deals.
Meanwhile, in Kyrgyzstan, two presidential regimes, both of which were ousted
in separate popular uprisings in 2005 and 2010, used the USS. air base at Manas
to enrich themselves and their associates. Although the base was critical to the
US. military’s campaign in Afghanistan, billions of dollars from lucrative fuel
contracts were channeled through mysterious offshore companies registered in
Gibraltar. Neighboring Uzbekistan's economy is generally considered closed,
but it, too, was engulfed in an international bribery scandal. Gulnara Karimova,
the daughter of the country’s late president, reportedly used a variety of
offshore vehicles to structure more than $1 billion in payments and kickbacks
from Western telecommunications companies.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, outside observers have frequently
characterized Central Asia as a reclusive part of the world. However, by
overlooking how regimes strategically used offshore vehicles, bank accounts,
and financial intermediaries, the West has ignored its own complicity in
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fostering the global networks that supported autocracies in Central Asia and
around the former Soviet world. RETURN TO LIST.
Moscow is still sacrificing innovation for
state security.
Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist and cofounder of Agentura.ru, a Russian
information hub on intelligence agencies. He is the co-author of The Red Web: The Struggle
Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries
On Dec. 6, Russian President Viadimir Putin signed into law the country's
information security doctrine. The 17-page document outlines the Kremlin's
perception of the threats posed by terrorism, foreign propaganda, and cyber-
espionage, before calling for a major change — the creation of a “national
system of managing the Russian segment of the internet.” The doctrine goes on
to suggest that telecommunications and information technology (IT) companies
should consult with the security services ahead of introducing new services and
products and that the country needs to liquidate the “dependence of domestic
industries on foreign information technologies.”
Although this might seem like a bold new direction for Russia, it’s actually a
remnant of the past — and a sign that the Kremlin has learned nothing from its,
Soviet history when it comes to embracing technological change. Like the Soviet
Union before it, the Russian government and its security services are aiming to
restrict innovation for fear of the social and political upheavals it could bring.
‘That's exactly how things were organized in the Soviet Union, where authorities
traded technological development for the specter of state security. In our book
The Red Web, journalist Irina Borogan and I describe how in June 1975, Yuri
Andropov, then-chairman of the KGB, reported to the Central Committee about
Jewish “refuseniks” making international phone calls. Andropov’s
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recommendation was “to suppress the use of international communication
channels for transmission abroad of biased and slanderous information.” The
measure was adopted and worked to limit the spread of dissent, but as a result,
the Soviet Union fell far behind the West.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, accounting for this technological deficit
needed a new approach, and Vladimir Bulgak, the minister of communications
-. Rus
under former President Boris Yeltsin, was willing to break with the pas ia
desperately needed modern communications, but local industry couldn't,
provide the technology. Due to Soviet-era restrictions, the Russian
telecommunications industry now lagged behind the West by 20 to 25 years.
“We came to think that our industry would never catch up, and that meant we
had to go and buy,” Bulgak told me during an interview.
‘And Moscow did just that. In the span of three years, more than 70 percent of all
Russian intercity phone stations were replaced by modern digital ones, made in
the West, and Bulgak increased the number of international lines in the country
from 2,000 analog ones to 66,000, all of them digital.
Bulgak bought equipment from abroad, bypassing old Soviet factories at
enormous cost — many of them were forced to close, leaving thousands of
people high and dry. But by 1995, Russia had established a modern, national
communications industry. Thriving and profitable internet businesses sprang
up in the early 2000s, something that would have been impossible without the
lines and stations purchased by Bulgak.
The infrastructure of the Russian internet was built on Western technology,
primarily Cisco, an American conglomerate, because the new national telecoms
companies believed that reliability was more important than the origin of the
supplier. Putin has not learned this lesson. When Western sanctions were
imposed on Russia in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea, Putin called for
import substitution to replace foreign products with domestic ones. The new
security doctrine cements this idea, saying that “the level of dependence of the
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domestic industry from foreign IT” is too high and that this makes Russia
dependent on “foreign geopolitical interests.”
But the country’s industry simply can’t produce all the equipment that is
needed, and desperate officials have since turned to China to replace Western
technology. And although it’s an open question whether this new doctrine will
actually make Russia any safer — it will surely limit the country’s economic
Potential. RETURN TO LIST.
Top photo credit: VASILY MAXIMOV/AEP/Getty Images
FP Contributors
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