The failed coup of August 1991 served to strengthen Yeltsin's personal standing and to make even more remote the possibility of keeping Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which now appealed for international recognition, within the fold. The only remaining question was if any of the other union republics could be retained within some sort of federal system. Fearing the possibility of another coup, encouraged by Yeltsin and seeing how the Baltic bids for independence had been welcomed in the West, the other non-Russians who had voted overwhelmingly for retention of the Union in the March referendum now moved quickly in support of independence. Political elites could no longer be sure of their privileges and power being preserved by either Yeltsin or Gorbachev, and moved to position themselves as leaders of potential new states. As events unfolded at a dizzying pace, popular national movements and Communist politicians engaged in a circular competition of demands, reinforcing the radicalisation of each other in the process. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk was the key player in the Soviet endgame. When he refused to send a representative to sign a Treaty on the Economic Commonwealth on 18 October and the Ukrainian people voted for independence in a separate referendum on 1 December, the fate of the Union was sealed. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Georgia were by now in effect independent states. On 8 December the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus agreed to the formation of a loose Confederation of Independent States (CIS) (see Map 12.1), and when they were joined at the eleventh hour by Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan it was all over. The
58 Tishkov Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict, pp. 135-82.
59 Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 488-95.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally dissolved on midnight of 31 December 1991.
For most of the nationalities of the former Russian Empire the process of nation-building was carried out not so much by their own efforts but on their behalf by a multinational state which was, for a time, committed to reinforcing and even creating national identities alongside a radical social and economic agenda. Though the demands ofmodernisation, centralisation and geographical mobility undermined many of these measures, enough had been achieved to lay the basis for the further development of modern nations. Propaganda and policies that switched clumsily between promoting separate national feelings, developing Soviet patriotism and celebrating the leading role of the Russians, seemed to offer enough to everyone. The rise in urbanisation and education contributed to the growth of personal and group awareness which could be channelled into controllable paths so long as relative prosperity and national elite co-operation was assured. But the crisis in the Soviet economic and political system arrived at a time when three decades of dissident activity and sporadic outbursts of broader national feeling suggested that the non-Russian nations had matured politically to a degree which made separatism a viable and eventually popular option.
For the fourteen new non-Russian states, the period since 1991 was a second, independent, period of nation-building. Lacking alternative sources of experienced political leaders, most of the states remained in the hands of Communists-turned-nationalists who had already been in power locally for many years before the break-up. Across the southern states and in Moldova, a series of border disputes, civil wars and ethnic conflicts in the first part of the 1990s left the impression that independence might have been a mistake and that the region would remain unstable for decades to come. But the resolution of most of the conflicts by force, negotiation or inertia, combined with the return of relative economic stability, made it clear that independence was there to stay, with the possible exception of Belarus, whose overtures for some form of renewed federation with Russia were rebuffed by Moscow.
The biggest controversy for the new states was how to establish a firm basis of united identity and, in particular, how to deal with the substantial Russian populations that remained within theirborders. In 1989 over 25 million Russians were living in other republics of the Soviet Union, and in the years after 1990 migration out of some of the republics, most notably in Central Asia, stood at over 5 per cent of the total population each year.60 Strict language laws were
60 Paul Kolstoe, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (London: Hurst, 1995), pp. 2, 228,
293-300.
introduced in all three Baltic republics which clearly discriminated against Russians, who were further disadvantaged by constitutional moves basing property and citizenship rights on the situation before 1939. Russian protests and threats were backed up by international pressure, leading to revisions of all the language laws by 1996. By the end of the decade, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had adapted so successfully to a free-market economy and West European norms of citizenship and human rights that they were preparing for entry into the European Union. The other states did not progress as rapidly in the same direction, partly as a result of different cultural backgrounds and a less sure economic base. In Central Asia, the clan-based patron-client networks, which had become so firmly established in Brezhnev's time, were perpetuated into the post-Soviet period. But in other respects the break with the Communist past was clear-cut, many observers' fears of the potential of Islamic fundamentalism proved unfounded and stable modern nation-states
were emerging.[290]
The Russian Federation inherited the Soviet system of autonomous republics and regions, and after the break-up of the USSR over 18 per cent of its population remained non-Russian. Almost all had declared their own sovereignty, with Yeltsin's encouragement, in 1990. In March 1992 Yeltsin, now head of an independent but still multinational state, devised a Federal Treaty that recognised the rights that the republics enjoyed in practice anyway. Even this was not enough for the largest republic, Tatarstan. A popular referendum rejected the treaty and led Russia and Tatarstan to the brink of a secession crisis. The imposition of a new constitution by Yeltsin following the consolidation of his own power in December 1993 restricted the rights granted a year and a half earlier and pushed Tatarstan ever further away. Although a strong Tatar national independence movement, Ittifak, encouraged the brinkmanship of the Tatar leadership, in the end the republic, surrounded by Russian territory and dependent on the Russian economy, could not afford to go it alone, while the Russian Federation could not afford an open conflict with such a large region. The result was a bilateral treaty signed in February 1994 which granted Tatarstan virtual self-rule in return for remaining a loyal part of the federation. In general the nationalities of the autonomous republics, who had seen the status of their national languages seriously eroded from Khrushchev's time on, engaged in an intensive ethno-national revival under perestroika and after. While this process fuelled ethnic conflict and disputes with the Centre in some areas, notably the North Caucasus, in most cases it did not lead to secessionist movements or present any serious threat to stability in the Russian Federation (see Map 13.1).
On 11 December 1994, Russian armed forces crossed into the North Caucasian Republic of Chechnya, initiating a conflict which was to cost 40,000 lives in the next eighteen months. The republic's president, former Soviet air force commander Johkar Dudayev, had come to power with Moscow's backing. But on 2 November 1991 the Chechen parliament declared full independence and in June 1992 Dudayev expelled Russian troops from the region. By late 1994, Yeltsin faced a drastic decline in his own popularity which threatened his chances in the next presidential election, due for the summer of 1996. This provided one of the motives for the invasion. In words attributed to the secretary of the Security Council Oleg Lobov, 'We need a small victorious war to raise the President's ratings.'[291] But Dudayev had also done a great deal to antagonise Moscow. Allegations of connections with organised crime groups in the Russian capital, although greatly exaggerated at the time, were not entirely without basis. The hijacking of a bus near the town of Mineral'nye Vody in the North Caucasus by Chechens in July 1994 further reinforced the notion that Chechnya was a threat to Russia's internal security. Moreover, if Chechnya was allowed to get away with a unilateral declaration of independence, what would stop the rest of the North Caucasus and other republics following suit? The presence of a small amount of oil and a major pipeline linking Russia with the major oilfields of Azerbaijan were a further incentive for Russia to re-establish control.
290
Gregory Gleason,
291
Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal,