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The Year 1991: Russia’s Responsibility
(Yeltsin vs. Gorbachev)
On October 18 2004, the Russian Federation joined the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO) and so can be called a Central Asian state. This distorted the region’s geography and changed its political composition. On December 13 1991, five Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) set up this integration structure in response to the Soviet Union’s breakup and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was, at first, purely Slavic.
The events of 1991 are directly related to the present and provide answers to many of the questions raised by the transformations going on in the newly independent states (NIS) and their foreign policy. It is often—and correctly—said that the former Soviet republics were not ready for independence; in fact, it seems that Russia itself was not ready for it. Yet it was Russia that sent the ball of breakup rolling in June 1991: it declared independence and challenged the results of the all-Union referendum that took place earlier, on March 17 and formalized the will of the people to preserve the Union. Russia’s political step was absolutely senseless: all the republics that united around it in the 1920s completely depended on it. In this context, Russia’s present attempts at “gathering in the lands” it itself scattered look paradoxical. To succeed it must revise two major issues: (1) the principles of the 1991 disintegration and (2) the principles of the twenty-first century reintegration. Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian history at New York University, has correctly pointed out that those who want to understand Putin’s Russia would do best to put it in the context of a national collapse that followed the Soviet Union’s breakup. He says: “It is hard to imagine a political act more extreme than abolishing what was still, for all its crises, a nuclear superpower state of 286 million citizens. And yet Yeltsin did it, as even his sympathisers acknowledged, in a way that was ‘neither legitimate nor democratic.’ ...Political and economic alternatives still existed in Russia after 1991, and none of the factors contributing to the end of the Soviet Union were inexorable.”(1) This goes contrary to the more or less commonly accepted opinion (mainly in Russia and the Soviet successor states) that the Soviet Union was doomed because its political system was in a deep crisis. The West never expected, and did not want, this tragedy. Much was done to help President Mikhail Gorbachev to keep his country afloat.(2)
Today, Russia, when dealing with the former Soviet republics, works hard to pretend that the year 1991 can be dismissed as an ordinary event to be rectified through reunification. The laws of history and international relations (which we, the political scientists, discover and study) will not allow Russia to succeed in its integration contrivance (so far this is a contrivance and nothing more), which will remain half-backed and will look suspicious and even provocative. All integration processes develop along certain patterns and are based on certain principles and values. This much has already been proven by the theoreticians of integration.
This means that to remain within strictly academic limits, we should investigate the sources, driving forces, principles, aims, effects and even the moral fundamentals of the policies the CIS countries are pursuing in their mutual relations. This primarily applies to Russia’s policy toward its CIS colleagues. We would do best to start from the very beginning and look back at the events of 1991. The type of relations still prevailing among the NIS was imposed by Russia on the eve of the Soviet Union’s breakup. I am inclined to call it Yeltsin’s heritage. It destroyed or pushed away the type of relations born by the perestroika (a period that is almost forgotten), which I prefer to describe as Gorbachev’s approach.
As time goes on I become more and more convinced that Russia should abandon Yeltsin’s heritage for political and moral reasons. As a scholar I find it hard to fathom why the blame for the Soviet Union’s demise was shifted onto Mikhail Gorbachev, who would have died in the last ditch to keep the U.S.S.R. alive, and why, in Russia’s recent history, Boris Yeltsin is lauded as a great reformer. The facts point to the contrary. I have to say here that when talking about the need to condemn the decision that put an end to the Soviet Union, I am not driven by nostalgia over the now dead state. The past cannot be revived: my only desire is to remove the disfiguring black spots, falsifications, and ideological speculations from our ideas, opinions and historical memory in order to shape the right ideas about the past and the future.
The international dimension of 1991 calls for dotting the “i’s”—a task of primary importance for Russia. In 1991, it not only destroyed the superpower, but also put an end (thanks to Gorbachev, not Yeltsin) to the era of the bi-polar world and the Cold War. We are tempted to ask: did it end? The relations of the Cold War era are being revived. Why did Russia abandon the policy of rapprochement with the West and particularly the United States it started in the 1980s? Why is another Big Game underway in Central Asia?
It has been written many times that the geopolitical transformations in Central Asia started when the Soviet super-state left the stage and triggered the Big Game in the region. World and regional states, as well as the Central Asian countries, are all involved in the unfolding process. As distinct from the Big Game of the past, it has attracted many more entities. Russia is another important factor: all the players are adjusting their policies, to one degree or another, to its interests. More than that: the geopolitical players are firmly convinced that Central Asia is a zone of Russia’s domination (a sphere of Russia’s influence). Russian politicians and political scientists are bending over backwards in an effort to confirm this. To my mind, the West/the U.S. has already reconciled itself to this reality, of which the Russian Federation should be fully aware. Why are the ideas about the Western/American conspiracy in Central Asia still alive in Russia, which is convinced that it is being squeezed out? These questions are directly related to the dramatic year of 1991 and Russia’s responsibility for it.
From the Central Asian countries’ very first days of independence, Russia’s policy was far from ambiguous; it was changeable, or even contradictory, and can be best described as “retreat,” “retention,” and “return.”
By “retreat,” I mean the shrunken scope, the lower level, and Russia’s much diminished presence in the region, something that undermined Russia’s economy and geopolitical status. The vacuum left behind was immediately filled with the West’s growing presence.
By “retention,” I mean Moscow’s desire to preserve status quo or the current geopolitical situation without much loss for itself.
By “return,” I mean Russia’s stronger presence in the region in various forms from cultural and economic to geopolitical and strategic.
Russian expert Dmitry Trenin used the following terms to describe more or less similar realities: “leave and forget,” “outpost as placeholders,” and “Reconquista.”(3)
The three elements coexisted; they were alternatively coming to the fore or retreating, depending on the region’s changing geopolitical contexts and Russia’s position in the world. Recently, we have been watching Russia step up its involvement in the region (more about this below).
Any attempt at analyzing Russia’s policies/geopolitics in general and in Central Asia in particular should take into account the fact that the very complicated process of geopolitical transformations in the region has coincided with the emergence of a new world order and a revision of much that was previously accepted by the geopolitical theory. Today, so-called critical geopolitics is coming into being.(4)
For the purpose of this article, I will call the new trend of geopolitical thought “democratic geopolitics”, while the old practices I call “imperial geopolitics” (see the table).
In a more concise way, the difference between the two geopolitics can be formulated as follows: imperial geopolitics is based on the conviction that war is possible, while democratic geopolitics is founded on the conviction that there is no alternative to peace. An excellent work by well-known expert in geopolitics V. Tsymburskiy, Geopolitika dlia evraziyskoy Atlantidy (Geopolitics for Eurasian Atlantis), is logical historically, and geopolitically relevant, as well as strategically Russia-centered for obvious reasons. It follows along the lines of the old geopolitics and does not exclude war: “It is in the interests of Russia that Uzbekistan, a member of newly-baked GUAM,(5) remain isolated from the Caspian by the Kazakh and Turkmenian lands that can be used for the Indian Ocean route (the trade and pipeline route that connects the Indian Ocean in the south with Russia in the north via Iran, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.—F.T.).”(6) He believes that Russia should oppose all attempts to lay resource routes in Euro-Asia that bypass Russian territory and formulates the slogan “The Urals—Yes, the Caucasus—No!”(7)
Lena Jonson from the Swedish Institute of International Relations has offered a fairly clear definition of Russia’s interests in Central Asia: “Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia’s interests in Central Asia are mainly related to strategic and security concerns. The strategic interests are two-fold: first, to integrate the Central Asian states into the CIS sphere and make them close allies of Russia; and, second, to deny external powers strategic access to Central Asia.”(8) This is what traditional imperial geopolitics is all about...
[ End of sample | Please purchase the magazine for full articles ]
1. S. Cohen, “The Breakup of the Soviet Union Ended Russia’s March to Democracy,” The Guardian, December 13th 2006.
2. See, for example, a book written by Anatoly Chernyaev, former advisor to the U.S.S.R. President Gorbachev, My Six Years with Gorbachev: Notes from a Diary, transl. and ed. by R. English and E. Tucker, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 2000.
3. D. Trenin, “Russia and Central Asia: Interests, Policies, and Prospects,” in: Central Asia: Views from Washington, Moscow and Beijing, ed. by B. Rumer, D. Trenin, H. Zhao, M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2007, p. 121.
4. About new geopolitics see: Geopolitics: Global Problems and Regional Concerns, ed. by L. Tchantouridze, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Center for Defense and Security Studies, 2004 (see also: M.P. Amineh, Globalization, Geopolitics and Energy Security in Central Eurasia and the Caspian Region, Clingendael International Energy Program, The Hague, 2003).
5. Stands for: Georgia—Ukraine—Azerbaijan—Moldova (international economic organization). [Editor’s note].
6. V. Tsymburskiy, “Geopolotika dlia ‘evraziiskoy Atlantidy,’” Pro et Contra, No. 4, Vol. 4, 1999.
7. Ibid.
8. R. Allison, L. Jonson, Central Asian Security: The New International Context, The Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2001,
pp. 97-101.
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Farkhad Tolipov, Ph.D. (Political Science), Senior Advisor of the Institute for Central Asian and Caucasian Studies (Luleå, Sweden), is Assistant to Political Officer at the OSCE Centre in Tashkent, Associate Professor at the National University of Uzbekistan and Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent. He has worked as a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan, as a Senior Consultant to The Office of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and served also as Director of the Tashkent Centre of Political Science. He received his PhD from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, and has been a fellow at Harvard University, the NATO Defense College, and the Social Science Research Council in Toronto. He has widely published on the subject of Central Asian geopolitics and security. |
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| Issue 7.2 |
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Priceless Friendship
—Matteo Ricci’s Legacy
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