20 years later, ex-USSR is a cracked mosaic
By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press
14 Aug 2011
MOSCOW (AP) – First came Mikhail Gorbachev, who moved a monolithic
Soviet Union toward reform. Then in August 1991, an ill-conceived coup
attempt by clumsy and occasionally drunken men opened a crack that
could not be closed.
A few pieces of the empire fell off and floated away. Soon the rest of
the mass collapsed.
Triumphalists in the West saw the USSR’s disintegration as the
inevitable triumph of democracy, even as “the end of history.” Others,
as Russian leader Vladimir Putin, later put it, bemoaned the “greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
The shards of the Soviet Union lie somewhere between those extremes –
a jumbled pile of countries, totaling one-sixth of the world’s land
mass, that are wildly different from each other and facing futures
ranging from promising to troubling to anyone’s guess. Islamic
insurgencies threaten to explode into wide fighting, and two “frozen
conflicts” appear nowhere near resolution.
They range from Europe’s poorest nation, Moldova, to Russia, which
breeds tycoons of Pharaonic wealth. Some are genuine democracies;
others are unconvincing, or cynical, imitations; Turkmenistan is an
open dictatorship and Belarus and Uzbekistan effectively are the same.
In the assessment of the Freedom House watchdog group, three of the 15
former Soviet republics are considered free, seven not free and the
other five somewhere in between.
Russia is among the “not free,” losing ground over the past decade. By
far the largest former Soviet republic, the one with the most lavish
treasure chest of natural resources and the only one to still have
nuclear weapons, the path that Russia chooses is of key concern to the
world – and the path is far from clear.
In the first years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia’s
political scene seemed wide open, as reformers, opportunists and rabid
nationalists entered the arena. In 1996, the presidential election
competition was so intense that it forced a second round of voting,
which Boris Yeltsin won with only 53 percent of the vote.
But Putin’s Russia, though nominally a democracy, has clamped a tight
lid on any genuine opposition politics, except for the increasingly
marginal Communist Party. Authorities routinely deny opposition groups
permission to rally and police harshly break up unauthorized
gatherings; election-law changes over the past decade threw up
almost-insurmountable obstacles to independents and true opposition
groups.
President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly spoken of the need for
reform, but as a weak president who attained office only because Putin
could not run for another presidential term in 2008, his words have
had little impact. Putin, currently prime minister, is widely expected
to run for the presidency next year and would be certain to win. That
would reinforce the so-called “managed democracy” system, which many
observers believe could lead to catastrophe.
“Russia throughout its history repeatedly saw political reforms
launched only when it was already too late. And now the nation is
again heading in the same direction,” said Boris Makarenko of the
independent Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies. “The
government can’t endlessly ignore society’s opinion. If they attempt
to do that, it could lead to the scenarios of 1917 or 1991.”
Russia’s recent stability and its citizens’ willingness to accept
declining political freedoms are closely tied to the astonishing
wealth that has flowered in the country since the Soviet collapse,
hinging on world demand for its vast supplies of oil and natural gas.
Even Russians who can’t afford the multimillion-dollar apartments of
central Moscow appear excited by watching from the sidelines.
But the global economic crises of 2008 and 2011 starkly illustrated
how vulnerable Russia is to drops in hydrocarbon prices. Prolonged
economic stagnation or decline could rock the political system.
“Without growth, it would be difficult for the government to ‘buy off’
discontent,” University of California at Los Angeles professor Daniel
Treisman said in a paper for the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Russia also is plagued by an Islamic insurgency in its Caucasus
provinces, an offshoot of the two post-Soviet wars with Chechen
separatists. The violence periodically spreads deep into the
heartland, as in January when a suicide bomber killed 36 people at
Moscow’s largest airport.
Kazakhstan, smaller than Russia but still larger than all of Europe,
has also thrived on its gas reserves and other natural resources. And
its prospects for democracy are even more doubtful than Russia’s.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has led the country since the Soviet
collapse, holds unchallenged power and his party occupies every seat
in the national legislature. Yet Nazarbayev strikes a more progressive
posture than have Russia’s leaders, eagerly giving up the nuclear
weapons that Kazakhstan inherited from the Soviet Union and promoting
ethnic and religious tolerance.
However, neighboring Kyrgyzstan remains a focus of worry because of
violent animosity between ethnic groups, which exploded last year in
pogroms in the south that killed hundreds. Both the United States and
Russia have air bases in the country and stability there is a key
concern for both Moscow and Washington.
Kyrgyzstan’s moment of truth may come in national elections in
October, showing whether the country can return to the democratic path
it bloodily veered away from in recent years. Once regarded as the
region’s “island of democracy,” Kyrgyzstan since 2005 plunged into two
violent overthrows of power.
Two other former Soviet states’ moves toward democracy and the West
deteriorated but have not definitively collapsed.
Ukraine, where massive protests in 2004 ushered in a reformist
Western-leaning pro-NATO government, almost immediately devolved into
factional jealousies that effectively paralyzed the country. Voters
threw out that regime last year in favor of a Russia-friendly
president, who is under wide criticism from the West for politically
motivated prosecutions and pressure on independent news media. Ukraine
meanwhile has acquired international notoriety for frequent brawls in
parliament, and whether the country ultimately tilts West or East
remains a question.
Georgia, whose 2003 “Rose Revolution” led the way for the region’s
regime-changing mass protests, was driving firmly toward NATO and
European Union membership under reformist President Mikhail
Saakashvili. But the momentum petered out after Georgia’s five-day war
with Russia in 2008, which both the Kremlin and many Georgians blame
on Saakashvili’s impetuosity.
The two Georgian regions that split off in the war, South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, remain potential flashpoints, with Georgia alleging they are
occupied territory used as staging points for Russian terrorist
incursions.
Not far from Georgia lies another obdurate problem – Nagorno-Karabakh.
This Luxembourg-sized territory, deep inside Azerbaijan, has been
controlled by Armenian soldiers and ethnic Armenian forces since a
1994 cease-fire ended separatist fighting. More than a decade of
international mediation has brought no apparent move toward
resolution, and both sides frequently report small clashes across the
no-man’s-land that separates them. A renewal of full-scale fighting
could shake European markets because of the key oil pipeline that
passes through Azerbaijan en route to the West.
Less volatile, but equally stagnant, is the status of Transdniester, a
separatist sliver of Moldova reinforced by Russian troops.
At one extreme of the post-Soviet experience lie Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania. The first to leave when the USSR was disintegrating, these
three small countries have taken a firmly Westward course, all joining
NATO and the EU.
At the other stand authoritarian Uzbekistan, Belarus and Turkmenistan.
No change appears even remotely likely in Uzbekistan until strongman
leader Islam Karimov leaves office. Belarus’ President Alexander
Lukashenko, who has suppressed opposition and independent media,
currently faces the biggest threats to his 17-year rule as the
Soviet-style command economy collapses.
Turkmenistan, where huge natural gas revenues have transformed the
once-dismal capital into a shiny desert showpiece resembling Las
Vegas, has thrown off much of the personality cult engendered by the
late eccentric leader Saparmurat Niyazov, who had banned gold teeth
and ballet, but it remains a single-party state. However, Niyazov’s
successor has invited exiled opposition leaders to return to take part
in next year’s elections in what may be a hesitant step toward
openness.
The differing fates and prospects of the countries add up to a
historical irony: Whereas the Soviet Union sought to spread a single
ideology throughout the world, its former territory is now as varied
as the world itself.
Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenov in Moscow contributed to this story.