Conversation

I don't know what this refers to. How could the US safeguard independence of post-Soviet states? It would be more accurate to argue that President Bush was not sure that toxic nationalism was the answer to popular dissatisfaction with the USSR (see his 'chicken Kiev speech').

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The reason why Bush was very concerned is the same why *we* should be concerned by the prospect of Russia falling apart: loss of control over fissile material, nuclear proliferation, and possible nuclear use.

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Right. Cheney is cited in support of the crazy argument because we all know that Cheney for the brilliant strategist that he is. Oh wait. Thankfully, the United States had a sane president who shut Cheney down.

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OK what exactly does this mean. Should the US in 1991, instead of supporting fragile Russian democracy as it consistently did, have supported toxic nationalism and fragmentation. If so, how?

The world was changing at a break-neck speed. The question for the US was stability and security (first and foremost nuclear security). The idea that the US could profit by creating more instability and more insecurity strikes me as absurd and dangerous.

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This reminds me of the plans to break up Germany into various statelets. The US, Britain and the USSR all planned on this (though they by and large abandoned this idea by 1945). The French also had this hope, though thy were more interested in just annexing parts of Germany.

In any case, why was the idea of the dismemberment of Germany abandoned? (Not considering territory "lost" to Germany's neighbours). Well, partly for economic reasons. German unity was needed to allow economic recovery. Partly, to prevent German revanchism. Who would police this?

But of course we should recall that the only reason this was even up for discussion was that the Allies were *in* Germany. The German Reich had been vanquished, and it was possible to impose any constitution the victors deemed fit. How is this supposed to work with Russia?

I am not sure what this means. Maybe this refers to Chechnya or Tatarstan, but I don't get how Ukraine was a hurdle to Russia's policy towards Chechnya, never mind Tatarstan. I guess it's just a word soup.

Incidentally, I also think Yeltsin's atrocious invasion of Chechnya was a terrible mistake. The Russian narrative - that Chechnya was a breeding ground for organised crime and Islamic fundamentalism - is not without merit, but I fear the Russian invasion made things worse.

But I am just perplexed by what the US could have done. Recognise Chechnya's independence? Invite Dzhokhar Dudaev to the White House? How could it do it without derailing the relationship with Moscow, where Yeltsin struggled to hold ground against the Communists & the fascists?

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Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (The Henry L. Stimson...

In the mid-1990s the US was focused on the following tasks: 1) Arms control dialogue with the Russians; 2) Enlarging NATO. Both to a certain degree depended on Russia's willing or semi-willing cooperation. See my colleague

@e_sarotte

's excellent book amazon.co.uk/Not-One-Inch-P.

amazon.co.uk

Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures)

Tatarstan is in some ways an exceptional case, and the author is right to point out that there was a push for independence of Tatarstan in the years after the Soviet collapse.

Let me present some arguments as to why, I think, fragmentation of Russia is a bad idea (apart from proliferation of nukes, explained above). First, it would lead to an economic meltdown. Imagine breaking up the US into 50 different states with their currencies, tariffs etc.

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

Soviet collapse itself is a useful historical reminder of these economic problems. Just read

@VladislavZubok1

's recent book, he has it all there: amazon.co.uk/Collapse-Sovie. What does an economic meltdown lead to? Correct: chaos, misery and dictatorship. Case study: Russia.

amazon.co.uk

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Here's another argument for you: the problem of "stranded" Russians. Since Tatarstan is our case study, let's use this graph stolen from Wikipedia. "Red" represents the ethnic Russian population of Tatarstan. Will they also be "decolonized"?

Of course, the situation becomes even more dire in other regions. The notion that the millions of Russians living, say, in Siberia, do not feel themselves Russian, or want "independence" from Moscow is woefully misconstrued.

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Leaving millions of Russians "stranded" in neighbouring independent countries is a sure recipe for revanchism leading to future disaster. Case study: Ukraine.

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Then towards the end of the article we have this interesting paragraph, which seems to go against everything the author has said until now. Hello, it's *obvious* that each citizen of Russia should have the right to democratically elect his/her leaders.

I almost felt cheated at this point. What, all this build-up merely to say that Russia needs to be a democracy? But btw, here's our problem: we tend to pay too much attention to anti-colonial discourse at the expense of democratic institution-building. Case study: Turkmenistan.

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Anyway, the paragraph is actually merely a blip. In the end, the author returns to cereal contention about "de-colonizing" Russia whatever this means. Cites poor

@ABarbashin

who has never been known for crazy and delusional takes.

Forward, comrades. You have nothing to lose but clicks. Look, I recognise problems with Putin's crazy imperialism. But "de-colonizing" Russia is most emphatically *not* the answer. Stoking nationalism and separatism is *not* the answer.

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