EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - A Reflection on the Soviet Collapse: Ten Years After

EURASIA INSIGHT

A REFLECTION ON THE SOVIET COLLAPSE: TEN YEARS AFTER
Ariel Cohen 8/17/01

The failed August 1991 putsch against former Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev marked the coup de grace for the Soviet Union. After the collapse, an atmosphere of naìve hope and inflated expectations prevailed in both the East and the West. In the former Soviet Union, people believed that prosperity and freedom could be quickly achieved following the removal of the Communist system. Meanwhile, those in the West, especially in the United States, possessed strong faith in the ability of free-market and democratic practices to foster long-term stability. Both were disappointed.

Ten years later, pessimism and disillusionment are widespread among the elites and ordinary people in the former Soviet Union, including the states of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Changing economic and political habits has proven harder than just about anyone expected.

The August putsch opened a window of opportunity for the newly independent states to redefine their national paths, to shed their imperial legacies, and to reinvent nationalist narratives. It also granted a chance for the new governments to escape from under the burden of a planned economic system, and to integrate into the prosperous global market economy. The former Soviet republics have employed various state-building strategies. Thus far, however, they have not succeeded in placing their nations on stable sustainable development trajectories.

In retrospect, the notion that reforms could be accomplished rapidly, and with relative ease, was illusory. Political will was simply not there. Perhaps, from the start, the only realistic way to enable change was for post-Soviet states to bottom-out economically, and then to begin the slow climb out of the abyss. Most states have ended up following this route, whether they wanted to or not. And serious obstacles remain in the path to prosperity.

In the Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are mired in ethnic tension and old hatreds that have prevented resolutions to long-standing conflicts, some of which were externally supported by Russia. Solutions to these problems -- as demonstrated by the ongoing negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia � are proving stubbornly elusive.

In Central Asia, the slow pace of change is fostering a whole new set of challenges to stability. Poverty and overcrowding, especially in the Ferghana Valley, have helped transform discontent into an insurgency, conducted by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. At the very least, the IMU threat is diverting attention and resources away from strategic state-building efforts to satisfy immediate military needs.

At the same time, the inability of some states to move away from authoritarianism has complicated the transition to the 21st century’s global economy. Some states, especially Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have not made substantive efforts to overhaul the Soviet system. Others, such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, at first dallied with democratic methods. And while these two states remain more open than their Central Asian neighbors, against the backdrop of the IMU insurgency, both Astana and Bishkek have gone back to practicing a more authoritarian leadership style.

The competition to develop and transport Caspian Basin energy resources has added a geopolitical and geo-economic dimension to post-Soviet development. As the recent Iranian threats against Azerbaijan demonstrate, local disputes have potentially global ramifications.

Ultimately, the development of the Caucasus and Central Asia will be heavily influenced by Russia. Unfortunately, Moscow has shown itself to be mercurial and contradictory in its state-building choices. Immediately after the Soviet collapse, Russia attempted to build democracy and a market economy almost overnight�an effort marked by rampant corruption and emergence of robber-barons.

Now, the pomp and circumstance, if not the substance, of great power foreign policy are making a return in Moscow. But Russia has not completely ridded itself of its communist heritage, either. Symbolically, Lenin still lies unburied in the Red Square while the Soviet anthem plays, the two-headed eagle of the Romanovs decorates the Kremlin towers, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on Kremlin renovations and rebuilding the Konstantine Palace in St. Petersburg as Putin’s northern official residence.

Russia is seeking security, prestige and prosperity. It is still trying to decide what it wants to be�an empire, a republic, or a Slavic Union. One thing is certain�it cannot be all of these things. The identity that the Kremlin ends up adopting will have a significant impact on whether Russia can be considered a reliable development partner by the governments of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Other players also have the ability to influence events. Since 1991, the United States, as usual, has tried to apply the concepts of secular civil society, the rule of law, and free markets taken from its own domestic political history to areas in which no democracy, industrial-era market institutions, or working court systems had existed for centuries. The US Congress appropriated billions to be spent by the US Agency for International Development, a branch of government which had neither the area or language expertise nor the experience and tools necessary to deal with the post-communist transition. USAID’s expertise has been primarily in rural development in the Third World. The results of its efforts in the former Soviet Union over the past decade have been mixed.

Meanwhile, European Union member states, much closer to the scene, have been cynical and cautious. Germany has been preoccupied with issues related to its own reunification. And, in general, EU states have focused on the organization’s own dilemmas concerning integration and enlargement.

Despite all the disappointment, it may be too early to jump to historic conclusions about the Caucasus’ and Central Asia’s future. Chou En-Lai reportedly told Henry Kissinger in 1972 when asked to judge the results of the 1789 French Revolution: "it is too early to tell." Chou’s pronouncement may also pertain to Eurasia. The Eurasian post- imperial space is still a work in progress.

Editor�s Note: Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis (Greenwood/Praeger, 1998).

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.