Obviously I know the Soviet Union is 100 percent dead in a geopolitical sense, but I’ve heard that Russia still exerts a lot of control on the former republics and that much of the infrastructure of that region of the world is still carried over from the Soviet days. The Baltic states and Ukraine in particular have a very strong and tense relationship with the bear to the east.
Well, it’s a matter of Russia still being the biggest, most powerful country on the continent. By far. Even if they’re not bound politically, being bound militarily matters (more really). Remember too that after the Soviet Union collapsed all the former republics surrendered their ‘Soviet’ branded nuclear weapons to the Russian military (supposedly at least).
The Baltic states have stronger western relationships. They’ve all been NATO members since 2004. They all use the Euro as their currency. Lithuania’s active resistance to Soviet occupation continued for almost two decades after the end of WWII. The Baltics are pretty significantly different than Ukraine. It’s hard to ignore that strong a neighbor entirely but in choosing relationships they’ve looked dominantly west.
From what I’ve heard about Belarus, it seems like very little has changed since the days of the USSR. It’s still a totalitarian state, the people are still oppressed and in poverty, Russian is still an official language, and the government wants to reunite with Russia.
How much of the natural gas/oil resources are within Russian borders versus former bloc states without? I am curious as to whether recent Russian aggression was about securing more resources for themselves.
Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan have remained extremely closely integrated. The regime in Belarus as mentioned is pretty much committed to reunification as far as it allows to again retain their separate UN seat.
The Russian Manned Space Program still launches and mostly lands in Kazakhstan.
The Eurasian Economic Union is the CIS answer to the EU (the choice between which by the Ukrainian government was the spark for the current unpleasantness) with the eventual aim to the same sort of integration; it comprises Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia and has Kyrgyzstan on schedule to join. The Collective Security Treaty, a common defense pact aiming to become a counter-NATO, includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. There are Russian military bases in all of them. Uzbekistan withdrew its membership and agreement for use of their bases in 2012.
The Soviet Union was alive and well in Transnistria when I was there in 2013.
They also never bothered to rename the KGB.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be able to keep their seat at the UN; it was a founding member of the UN despite being part of the USSR (ditto for Ukraine).
Oh, right – Transdnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia operate as Russian subjects in disregard of internationally recognized boundaries with complete impunity.
You have an, um, idiosyncratic definition of ‘oppressed and in poverty’. Belarus has the 53rd highest human development level in the world (out of around 190-200 countries, depending on what you consider a country), and ranks above countries like Costa Rica, Malaysia, Barbados, and Mauritius, which are generally considered fairly prosperous success stories. It’s in the ‘high human development’ range and is the most successful nation out of the 12 non-Baltic former Soviet Republics.
Last I checked, which was a couple years ago, Belarus also had one of the world’s lowest unemployment rate (1%), and according to the World Bank (hardly a hotbed of communist agitators) it has one of the world’s lowest levels of inequality, with a Gini coefficient of 26.5 (the US is closer to 46-47).
Belarus certainly has its problems, but I’d say it’s done extremely well for itself since 1991, comparatively speaking. Certainly a hell of a lot better than the shambolic failed state to the south.
Like I always say, if Moldova had the right to leave the Soviet Union, then Transnistria had the right to leave Moldova.
Transdnistria is the most Soviet of them in my experience.
This should come as no surpise to anyone, but most residents of the former Soviet Union (not just Russians, either) say the breakup of the Soviet Union was on balance negative.
You addressed economic factors and outcomes of those but nothing in that post really looked at oppression. Some low hanging anecdotal fruit on levels of oppression is a
[quote]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/05/why-belarus-wants-to-bring-serfdom-back/) from President Alexander Lukashenko - "Yesterday, a decree was put on my table concerning – we are speaking bluntly – serfdom.” That’s his public statement not opposition hyperbole. It’s not the first attempt at something along those lines. In 2012 he did something similar putting heavy fines on workers in the state run wood processing plants who left their jobs.
The World Justice Rule of Law Index provides a better sense than the measure you mentioned. Overall it doesn’t do badly; there’s a “but” though. Belarus scores “high” on Civil Justice and Order and Security Components (ranked 30 and 33 respectively). It scores “low” near the bottom of the pack for Open Government, Fundamental Rights, and Constraints on Government Powers (79, 83 and 95 respectively.) Residents are safe and can take their neighbor to court, but the government is relatively unfettered. Effective oppressors are still oppressors. Oh and did I mention serfdom. At least they haven’t made the step back to outright slavery so they have that going for them.
But in that case does Tatarstan or Dagestan or Altai have the right to leave Russia without subjecting it to a veto from the Russians? I’d be the first one to say that deciding to use the Kruschev-era borders of the various component entities “inviolate” as those of the newly independent nations and their own sub-entities should have been immediately obvious as a recipe for trouble down the road, and it showed really quickly. But there has got to be another way.
Not legally. Union republics had the right to secede from the Soviet Union.
[quote=“DinoR, post:14, topic:712493”]
You addressed economic factors and outcomes of those but nothing in that post really looked at oppression. Some low hanging anecdotal fruit on levels of oppression is a
‘Oppression’ is a highly subjective and nearly meaningless term, which is why I didn’t address it. To disprove the conjunction statement “Belarus is A and B”, it’s only necessary to disprove either A or B, and I think I sufficiently demonstrated that Belarus is not a particularly poor, underdeveloped or economically stagnant country, certainly not by global standards.
If you care about political freedom, Belarus is not politically free, no argument from me there. I don’t particularly care, especially. It is certainly not a <I>poor</I> country. Largely because it never went through the monumental economic collapse in the other republics that accompanied the end of the state-run economy.
I find it odd that you compared Costa Rica to Belarus, as if
A. The comparison isn’t totally apples and oranges (TOTALLY different histories)
B. ANYBODY would rather live in Belarus. Costa Rica is beautiful, the people are generally quite happy, and it’s not a gray, depressing former part of the USSR. For instance.
No, I mentioned “Costa Rica, Barbados and Mauritius” as those are commonly considered examples of quite successful middle-income countries.
Incidentally, Costa Rica, in spite of its reputation as an enlightened social democratic welfare state, has very high levels of economic inequality (a bit higher than the United States in fact).
Kazakhstan has started to rethink its relationship with Russia and have begun expanding its ties with China. They’ve apparently figured out that Kazakhstan remaining on friendly terms with Russia doesn’t guarantee Russia will remain on friendly terms with Kazakhstan. So they’d like to have options if Russia begins pressuring them.