Postcommunist Russia’s Wars and Eurasianism

12 stycznia 202212 stycznia 2022 Tomasz Kamusella 0 Kōmyntarzy

Postcommunist Russia’s Wars and Eurasianism

Tomasz Kamusella
University of St Andrews

Rulers of today’s Russia have not come to terms with the decolonization of the Soviet empire, yet. They see the West’s respect for democracy and human rights as a serious political flaw. The economically and militarily many times over weaker Kremlin intends to use it for destabilizing the European Union and regain ‘its’ Soviet empire. To this end, for the past three decades, Moscow has instigated conflicts, waged never-ending border wars and supported internationally unrecognized de facto states in Europe’s post-Soviet zone. The West’s response has been muted, designed to make Moscow see reason, but to no avail. At the same time, in the much larger Asian section of the post-Soviet space, Russia remains a ‘good citizen.’ The Kremlin realizes that Beijing would not vacillate to use naked force and the full brunt of the Chinese economy to put Russia in its place. As a result, Central Asia’s post-Soviet states are left alone to act as they wish, with no Russian interference. Russia did not intervene even when Turkmenistan decided to expel ethnic Russians and suppress Russian language and culture.[1] Moscow sits on its palms, when Asia’s post-Soviet states turn away from Russia to China.[2] From this geopolitical perspective, Russia is a European country, but paradoxically, Moscow remains deeply at odds with its European origins and culture.

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Early Post-Soviet Wars

The neoimperial resurgence of Russia under Vladimir Putin’s over-two-decade-long rule is a fact. Western observers and never numerous Russian democrats parted with their early hopes, oft-repeated during the tumultuous 1990s, that Russia would soon become a ‘normal European’ country. Instead, the constant annoying of the neighboring states and the unending wars have become the postcommunist Kremlin’s regular course of action. But interestingly, in contrast to the Soviet Union’s decade-long disastrous involvement in Afghanistan, today’s Russian hawks have exclusively Europe in their sights. In 1992 the Soviet-turned-Russian army stationed in Moldova attacked the country, leading to the separation of the easternmost region of Transnistria.[3] Later, the Russian economy in free fall and social unrest spreading, between 1994 and 2000, the Kremlin turned inward to fight two ‘civil wars’ against Chechnya that attempted to leave Russia. This briefly independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was subdued at the cost of the genocidal-scale massacre of its inhabitants.[4]

This war’s murderous ‘success’ afforded an opening boost of legitimacy to Putin’s rule at its inception. The event also drew an important red line in post-Soviet politics. The decolonization effected through the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 yielded 15 states, including Russia. But no decolonization would be permitted in the case of the Russian Federation’s 21 autonomous republics with their own ethnically non-Russian titular nations. In the early 1990s, the Russian coinage of ‘new or near abroad’ (novoe / blizhnee zarubezh’e) sprang up for denoting the decolonized 14 post-Soviet states as observed from Moscow. In the popular Russian understanding, this near abroad is not ‘real abroad’ and largely remains significantly ‘Russian,’ if at this moment no longer belonging to Russia. In 2005, President Putin made this understanding of the post-Soviet space into a political statement by proclaiming that the breakup of the Soviet Union was ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20^th] century.’[5]

Russian World and Lebensraum

On this basis, two years later, in 2007, the Kremlin developed the doctrine of the ‘Russian world’ (Russkii mir).[6] Initially, the doctrine’s soft power-style focus was on Russian-speaking communities in the near abroad and on the promotion of the ‘natural unity’ of Russian language and culture.[7] But soon afterward, in terms of space, this ideologized concept of the Russkii mir morphed into postcommunist Russia’s standing claim to all the territories that used to belong not only to the Soviet Union, but also to its predecessor, the Russian Empire. From Moscow’s perspective such a combined historical tsarist-Soviet area is or should become Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. Similarly, the zone must be kept closed to any foreign powers’ penetration, epitomized in the Russian propaganda by Nato, the United States and the European Union.[8]

This neoimperial conceptualization of the exclusive sphere of influence is combined with the Kremlin’s recent adoption of the typically Central European ideology of ethnolinguistic nationalism.[9] Proponents of this ideology maintain that all speakers of a language (speech community) ‘naturally’ constitute a nation in its own right. And the area inhabited by this language’s speakers should be turned into such a linguistic nation’s ‘true’ nation-state. Often, as a nod to tradition, religion is also factored into this equation as an additional buttress of legitimization. The language and the territorial spread of its speech community are seen as intended or given ‘by god.’[10] That is why, no human force has the right to stand between the nation and its ‘true homeland.’ Putin, as Russia’s undisputed ruler (autocrat), coopted the Russian Orthodox Church to support and legitimize his decisions, as allegedly approved by the Orthodox god. In this way, the Russian Empire’s 19^th-centuyry slogan of ‘Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality’ (Pravoslavie, samoderzhavie, narodnost’) was revived for the new age of the Russkii mir.[11]

Hence, from the perspective of the ideology of the Russian world, Russia extends to wherever Russian is spoken as a leading language of everyday communication. (In such a linguistic manner the future Germany was defined in 1813[12]). All Russian-speakers are believed to be members of the Russian nation. Russia allegedly retains the legitimate right to intervene outside its current frontiers, in places where interests of such Russian-speaking groups or of Russian language and culture is imperiled from Moscow’s point of view. However, the ideal goal of the Russkii mir is to extend Russia’s current territory, so that it would fully overlap with the areas where Russian-speakers now live.[13] Hand in hand, the expansion of the Russian Orthodox Church should follow.[14] At present, the majority of the Russian nation ‘suffocates’ in the Russian Federation[15] that is too small for them.[16] In this view many Russian (Russian-speaking) communities suffer under ‘foreign rule,’ carelessly abandoned by ‘their’ careless motherland in the near abroad.[17]

The juxtaposition of too small a Russia and the ‘true’ Russia (that is, the Russian world), as defined in the biologizing terms of ethnic Russians (or Russian-speakers) reminds one of the German concept of Lebensraum, or ‘living space.’[18] In the early 20^th century prior to World War II, the German nation (or all speakers of the German language) was posed as unjustifiably constricted in its development by Germany’s diminutive territory. The subsequent global war was fought to secure all of Central and Eastern Europe for the German nation, so that to ensure its ‘natural’ growth, as intended ‘by god and biology.’[19]

The Soviet Union’s ideology of communism (also known as marxism-leninism) proposed to build a new communist civilization of classless people for the entire world.[20] As a result, this global(ized) Soviet people would replace ‘backward and exploitative’ capitalism and the world’s numerous and fractious nations with a new (centrally-planned) economy and a single classless society.[21] The people would be united by the single Soviet culture channeled through the shared communist language of de-ethnicized Russian.[22] In contrast, Putin’s doctrine of the Russian world prescribes going back to the past as a way forward. The Kremlin’s vision of a brilliant future is steeped in more ethnolinguistic nationalism and imperialism, which were typical of the early 20^th century. What is more, this Russian-inflected golden age-to-come is limited to Russia and Europe. Asia is left alone to its own devices, though whichever Asian post-Soviet polity wants the Kremlin’s support or protection, it must join Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (founded in 2015).[23] Perhaps, this self-limitation to the post-Soviet space in Europe is how Moscow tacitly acknowledges China as Asia’s hegemon, as long as Beijing keeps clear of Russia’s Siberia and from Mongolia, where the Soviet influence remains in the use of Cyrillic for writing and publishing in Mongolian.

New Wars and Post-Helsinki Europe

Following the ‘successful’ bloodbath of the Chechen Wars, Russia’s subsequent military conflicts continue to be fought in Europe, but outside of the Russian territory, that is, in the European section of the near abroad. What must be borne in mind, however, is that it was Russian attacks that commenced all the wars under analysis (perhaps, with the exception of the Transnistrian War). In 2008, the Russian troops attacked Georgia to prevent Tbilisi from reaffirming central rule on the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In this manner, to the internationally unrecognized Transnistria two more de facto states were added.[24] Six years later, in 2014, the Kremlin launched the thus far largest onslaught of the post-Soviet period, this time against Ukraine. Russia annexed Crimea on the sly and founded two more de facto polities in eastern Ukraine, namely, the ‘people’s republics’ of Donetsk (Donets’k in Ukrainian) and Lugansk (Luhansk).[25] In 2022, the hot war still continues, unlike the ‘frozen’ conflicts in Moldova or Georgia.

What happened in 2014 constitutes a historic and qualitative watershed in the postcommunist and post-Soviet history of Europe. Russia’s war on Ukraine ended the previous period, and opened a new – as yet – nameless age, which seems to be much darker and less predictable. For the first time in the history of the post-Soviet Russia, instead of founding an unrecognized de fact state, the Kremlin resorted to the outright annexation of a foreign territory, that is, Ukraine’s region of Crimea. This unilateral move breached the basic post-1945 principle of international relations in Europe, namely, inviolability of the extant international frontiers, as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.[26] For almost four decades, this act remained the pillar of political stability and security in Cold War and postcommunist Europe, until 2014, when Moscow binned the rules of the game overnight.

Furthermore, the Russian attack on Ukraine also broke the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.[27] In order to prevent the proliferation of states with nuclear weapons, Ukraine agreed to give up its stockpiles of nuclear warheads to Russia in return for the legally binding guarantee of territorial integrity and of the Ukrainian borders by Russia, the United States and Britain. (Similar terms of giving up their own nuclear weapons were extended to and accepted by Belarus and Kazakhstan.) Having acted in contravention of both treaties, Russia proved ready to behave as a rogue state. For the time being, the Kremlin ensures relative impunity for the Russian Federation, thanks to the state’s nuclear arsenal and permanent seat in the UN’s Security Council.

Political analysts ceaselessly discuss what may come next, what compels Russia’s leadership to embark on all these wars and annexations, and why.[28] Especially, in the case of the last war against Ukraine, the Kremlin’s belligerent policy of offensive neoimperialism proves extremely popular among the Russian population at large.[29] Yet, to my knowledge, no one seems to be asking the rather obvious question of why Moscow’s sword should be turned only against Europe, while Russia’s Asian neighbors are spared from its blows.

Power and Legitimacy

An answer can be the post-Soviet decolonization that stopped half-way. Initially, the Kremlin accepted the de facto decolonization of the Soviet Union, but denied the need of any further decolonization within the Russian Federation. To this end, Moscow militarily prevented such decolonization in the case of Chechnya. What is more, with the formulation of the ideology of the Russian world in 2007, the Kremlin increasingly questions the legitimacy of the decolonization of the Soviet Union, which took place three decades ago. Ominously, President Putting hints at the need of reversing this process.[30]

Furthermore, the hopes of a normal democratic and European path for post-Soviet Russia were quickly derailed, when in 1993 President Boris Yeltsin used the army to resolve his conflict with the Russian Parliament (Duma).[31] The speedily adopted new constitution (1993) made Russia into a presidential republic,[32] priming the country for authoritarian rule.[33] Besides curbing democratization, Yeltsin stopped the economic reforms half-way,[34] which simultaneously plunged the population in poverty without delivering a viable economy that would provide for all.[35] The 1998 global economic crisis hit Russia’s mainly extractive economy[36] harder than other countries’.[37] These series of socio-economic disasters made attractive the prospect of centering near-dictatorial powers in the Russian president’s hand. Yeltsin followed the public opinion, who started yearning for a Soviet-style stability, even without democracy. In turn, this public wish legitimized and fortified his extralegal (if not illegal) seizure of power.[38]

The system of post-Soviet Russia’s politics and economy stabilized under Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Putin. It can be depicted as an authoritarian pyramid with the single (invariably) male dictator at the top. He is above the law and can use power arbitrarily. This is the famous Russian ‘vertical’ of power.[39] For a while, oligarchs who seized the best functioning and most profitable chunks of Russia’s hastily privatized economy thought they would effectively wield power in the country. It was not to be. In 2000 oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who sought to unseat Putin, had to flee for his life to London.[40] Three years later, the tougher competitor, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was imprisoned, whereas his industrial empire was broken up and repossessed. After a decade, in 2013, Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky, seeking to improve Russia’s international image prior to the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi (2014).[41] By then no doubt had remained that it is the Russian President who controls the oligarchs, not the other way round.[42] Not only is Putin the undisputed dictator of Russia, but also the country’s top kleptocrat.[43]

Putin’s popularity waxes and wanes, but he is a perennially popular leader.[44] It is so, because the president makes sure that the economy works, meaning the pensioners are paid on time, alongside the state sector employees (especially, the army and security forces), while salaries grow for everyone else.[45] Yet, when a crisis strikes, as in 2008, the oil price plummets, or political decisions hit the economy, Putin falls back on patriotic jingoism.[46] The suddenly impoverished populace are happy to support the president, as long as the perceived ‘greatness’ of Russia[47] is proved again by another victorious war or annexation.[48] Imperialism is alive and well in today’s Russia.[49]

Critics are silenced,[50] political competitors assassinated,[51] or imprisoned on trumped up charges.[52] Politics in Russia is personal and vertical. There is no fair play or equality before the law. Putin is the tsar,[53] despite his modest denials.[54] The top dog controls all the state machinery and is more equal than anyone else in Russia. Elections are a show of loyalty, or even a homage to the president and his party, while the Central Election Committee makes sure to return a required high result that proves the dictator’s popularity.[55] Fraud is the norm.[56] Why to bother with elections at all? The genuine results allow the dictator to assess the overall situation, allowing to decide where a splash of public funding or a bout of repression may be needed.

Gaming the West

In 1997 the West’s seven biggest economies (G7) invited Moscow to join, yielding Group of the Eight (G8) that used to gather the world’s most important industrialized states, alongside Russia.[57] Facing the West’s stern criticism in the wake of Russia’s attack on Georgia, the Kremlin was on a charm offensive to ensure full attendance during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The games were held in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, modernized and glamorized for this purpose. The West did nothing of the Circassian protests.[58] The protesters were outraged at the fact that without any acknowledgement of the fact this global sporting event took place in their ethnic homeland exactly on the 150^th anniversary of the tsarist 1864 genocide of the Circassians.[59]

Now we know that Putin just bided his time. When the games came to an end in late February, the Russian President immediately ordered the invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.[60] The UN condemned this annexation,[61] and most of the world’s states do not recognize it.[62] The planned 2014 G8 meeting in Sochi was cancelled, and Russia was excluded from this body, which again became known under the erstwhile moniker of G7. Meanwhile, in this year’s fall, Putin was shunned during the G20 gathering (of the EU and other global North countries), held in the Australian city of Brisbane. Humiliated, the Russian President left early.[63]

On the other hand, the West came to Ukraine’s succor, the country under the widening multi-pronged Russian attack. The Kremlin was hit with ostracism and a barrage of sanctions.[64] In addition, with Saudi Arabia’s help, the price of oil was made to fall the more hurting the Russian economy.[65] Yet, most Russians and the Russian elite sided with Putin, despite these economic difficulties.[66] Imperialism worked well as a compensation for the loss in earnings and the value of salaries, alongside shortages of affordable goods in shops. Russian patriotism expressed through and whipped up by anti-Western rhetoric also let the Kremlin weather the Russian public’s outrage, which in 2017 Brussels caused by allowing Ukrainians to travel to the European Union without visas.[67] This coveted visa waver continues to be withheld from Russia’s citizens.

The Kremlin paid the West in kind by supporting far right extremists across the EU and US,[68] and through the subversion of democratic voting through web-based attacks and propaganda, be it in the case of the Brexit referendum in 2016[69] or the United States presidential election in the same year.[70] In light of GDP, Russia’s is a middling economy, equal to that of South Korea or Australia.[71] Obviously, the population of the Russian Federation is several times bigger than the number of inhabitants in either of these two countries, meaning that comparatively speaking the Russian GDP per capita is lackluster. According to this measure, Russia ranks 74^th among the world’s 226 states and territories, brushing sides with Malaysia and Kazakhstan. By comparison, Australia enjoys the 29^th position in this ranking, while South Korea – 40^th.[72]

The US GDP is more than 13 times bigger than Russia’s, and the EU’s GDP is over nine times larger. In a similar fashion, Russia’s military budget is dwarfed by what all the Nato countries spend on the military.[73] But thus far, it is the Kremlin that has had the last laugh. The Russian government has proved more adept at deploying the novel web-based techniques of hybrid warfare[74] to achieve its military and political objectives.[75]As a result, with a tiny fraction of what the West’s economy or military budget is, Moscow manages to annoy or sway the West as it wishes. Going by the West’s combined GDP only, the astounding estimate is that Russia’s hybrid military attacks against the West are 23 times more cost-effective than any of Nato’s replies. Unfortunately, it is a clear case of the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Worryingly, it appears nothing is going to change quickly in this highly unfavorable equation, when the West is preoccupied with restive China’s growing economic and military might.[76] The Russian menace is not a mere geopolitical bother, it can destabilize the West, if not tackled timely and firmly.

European Degeneration and Asian Values

The West has means and capacity to reply to Russia in kind many times over. But democratic decision-making takes time, while the values of transparency and free trade preclude any immediate tit-for-tat retaliation. Furthermore, after World War II, the European Union has been committed to maintaining peace on the continent, even at a cost to its political stature and economy. That is why, Brussels and Nato prefer diplomacy to the use of naked military force, as long as possible. Yet, the Kremlin is spoiling for an armed conflict with the current (winter 2021-22) deployment of the huge invasion armies on the border with Ukraine[77] and of the nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Belarus.[78]

Putin is playing with fire, assuming that the West will do his bidding.[79] The Western mass media are ablaze with heated discussions on what the Russian president may do (or not) next. But the West’s resolve seems to be hardening.[80] Putin keeps proposing a ‘new Yalta’ agreement to the US, Germany, Britain and France. He wants to divide Europe into spheres of influence, with the continent’s post-Soviet area (including Ukraine) earmarked for Russia. Furthermore, the Russian President presses for weakening Nato’s presence in the postcommunist countries that used to be part of the Soviet bloc.[81] But neither of the Western powers will talk to the Kremlin unilaterally, ‘over the heads’ of Central and Eastern Europe’s countries.[82] The possibility of a new Munich is far-fetched.

Putin upped the ante now, because if Nato and Brussels accepted his red lines, it would let Russia regain the Soviet Union’s position of superpower without the Soviet-style military and economic parity with the US. Furthermore, in such a case, the unity of the EU would be shattered, and Brussels could be written off as the continent’s main political force. It should be also borne in mind that the risk of war and casualties is now more acceptable to Russian society than to the EU. After the two decades of pro-Putin propaganda, most Russians are enamored of their country’s resurgent imperialism. Anyway, as the Russian President stated in 2018, Russia would always win in a nuclear confrontation, and dead Russians would go straight to heaven, entailing that their Western counterparts would be condemned to hell’s fire.[83] In reality, Russia is more vulnerable to a Nato attack, should the alliance start posturing, like the Russian Federation. For instance, the Kremlin has no chance to stop Nato troops from overrunning Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, if the West decided to launch an attack. But Putin bets on Nato’s defensive character that would prevent the alliance from taking any military initiative of this kind.

No one knows how the confrontation of Putin’s Russia with the West will end. What curiously remains unexplored is the overarching question of why post-Soviet Russia has constantly embarked on military adventurism in Europe, but carefully shied away from similarly aggressive moves in Asia. In the Manichean vision of the world pushed by the AI-enhanced Russian propaganda,[84] the West must lose because it is degenerate, as proved, for instance, by the observance of gay rights.[85] Troll farms,[86] China-style internet control,[87] and the recent silencing of the last independent mass media outlets[88] are the ultimate litmus test of Russia’s upholding of ‘true values.’ These, however, are increasingly closer to what is known in today’s China as ‘Asian values.’[89]

The Kremlin’s espousal of the vague doctrine of Eurasianism (as attested in the name Moscow’s Eurasian Economic Union) not only allows to present Russia as a bi-continental power, but also facilitates shifting between ‘European’ (Western) and ‘Asian’ (anti-Western) values and policies, as it may suit a given Russian autocrat.[90] The doctrine of Eurasianism, first formulated in the 1930s by white Russian émigrés,[91] underpins the present-day Kremlin’s neoimperial ideology of the Russian world.[92] Russia’s Asian section accounts for four fifths of the country’s total area. In this vast territory of 13 million square kilometers, only a quarter of the Russian population live, or around 35 million persons. Faced with Siberia’s harsh climate and inhospitable nature, they predominantly huddle to the country’s southern border with China and Mongolia.[93] In central and northern Siberia, members of the indigenous ethnic groups are decisively more numerous than ethnic Russians. For instance, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) – which at 2 million square kilometers is eight times bigger than Britain – the Sakhas (Yakuts) account for two-thirds of the inhabitants.

Should the West wish so, it could easily ramp up anti-Russian propaganda in the Sakha language and channel funds to the fledgling Sakha pro-independence movement.[94] Maybe the Tuvans, their republic squeezed between Russia and Mongolia, would be even more responsive to such support. Ethnic Tuvans account for over 80 percent of Tuva’s population. They remember, that their country was an ally of the Soviet Union during World War II. In return for their helping hand, Moscow stealthily annexed Tuva in 1944,[95] when the West was preoccupied with fighting against the Third Reich and Japan.[96]

Russia’s Asian Section: Caution!

Most of Asian Russia remains ethnically non-Russian. The area’s inhabitants do not fit the Kremlin’s Russian world, and some dream of independence.[97] Their co-ethnics live across the border in Mongolia and China. These ethnically non-Russian citizens of the Russian Federation have a better claim to Asian values than Moscow and the ethnic Russians. The Kremlin’s decrees and the Duma’s legislation hardly touch upon their lives. Although it is illegal in light of the Russian law, Siberians drive cars imported from Japan, not from European Russia.[98] Already close to 2 million traders from China run many sectors of the Siberian economy.[99] Much of southern Siberia, alongside today’s Mongolia, used to belong to the Chinese Empire.[100] So, Beijing has a better historical claim to this area than the Kremlin. Siberia has been part of the Chinese world for over a millennium![101] And unlike today’s Russia, China has the economic and demographic clout to develop Siberia, or annex and Sinicize it, if Beijing chooses so.[102]

With the population ten times more numerous than Russia’s, China has a much better chance of surviving any nuclear confrontation with the Russian Federation. If respect for individualism, human life and human rights is lower in Russia than in Europe, it is even lower in China.[103] Politically, demographically and economically China can sustain many times bigger casualties than Russia in the case of a war between these two countries. Russia’s population is predominantly concentrated in Europe and thinly spread out in Siberia. So, in no time, they would be subdued by a Chinese land invasion. That is why, the Kremlin is careful not to rattle its sabre in Asia. Putin is happy that Chairman Xi’s resurgent China has its own neoimperial sights zoomed on Southeastern Asia,[104] and – thus far – leaves Siberia alone. In return, the Kremlin do not pressure Central Asia’s post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan to join Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. It also appears that Moscow leans on the post-Soviet state of Kazakhstan not to criticize Beijing for the cultural genocide of China’s Uyghurs.[105]

Nato and the EU need to have a clarity of mind about the fact that Russia is a paper tiger, be it compared to China or the West. As long as the country remains an arbitrarily ruled autocracy with neoimperial pretensions, Europe and the US should stand up to the dictator in the Kremlin. Concessions would only embolden the autocrat, leaving Europe in disarray. Putin knows that Russia’s bargaining hand weakens by the year, due to the country’s waning population[106] and the general resolve to wean the world off coal and oil,[107] which may happen in the West as soon as the mid-2030s.[108] Russia’s future is in Europe, at least for three quarters of the country’s inhabitants. Military adventurism, alongside Moscow’s back permanently turned to Europe and the West would hurt these Russian citizens most.

December 2021

[1] https://www.refworld.org/docid/469f38eac.html

[2] https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/11/25/central-asian-elites-choose-china-over-russia/

[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/25469836

[4] https://archive.ph/20070821154629/http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057

[6] https://carnegieendowment.org/files/the_russian_world.pdf

[7] https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/article/view/ch.2018.010/4468

[8] https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/06/30/whose-rules-whose-sphere-russian-governance-and-influence-in-post-soviet-states-pub-71403

[9] https://www.idelreal.org/a/31502982.html

[10] Cf https://muse.jhu.edu/book/97875

[11] https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/408/