War has been the rule in the former Soviet domains since 1991. The collapse of the USSR unleashed previously bottled-up ethnic and territorial conflicts. Some countries were rocked by revolutions. The Russian Federation, meanwhile, sought to dominate slices of the old Soviet empire but not with the aim of re-establishing the Soviet Union. Rather, these “wars of Soviet succession” were designed to revive the concept of Novorossiya, literally “New Russia,” a term evoking the imperial era.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage, an expert on U.S.-Russia relations since the end of the Cold War, argues that decades of meddling in Moldova, Georgia, Crimea and now the rest of Ukraine should be understood as part of Russia’s strategy to reassert its authority in its historical backyard after the humiliations of the 1990s. Thus, these are not unrelated hot wars and frozen conflicts in the breakaway regions of sovereign states. They are the “wars of Soviet succession.”
“It’s a helpful phrase at the moment because we still have implanted in us the sense that the end of the Cold War was a miraculous moment, which it was,” said Mr. Kimmage, who had the Russia-Ukraine portfolio as a member of the State Department’s policy planning staff from 2014-16.
“What made it miraculous – and this is a long-standing interpretation we’ve had of these years – is that it ended peacefully. I wouldn’t want to throw that narrative away, but it was a pretty optimistic narrative at the time and we are starting to see why it was perhaps excessively optimistic… There was a drive in Russia, especially after [Vladimir] Putin comes to power, to relitigate the end of the Cold War because to a degree the Russian population but especially Putin felt the Cold War ended on disadvantageous terms for Russia.”
Russian forces have remained in the breakaway region of Transnistria of Moldova since the early 1990s. Russian forces crossed Georgia’s borders in 2008 to back separatist forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia invaded and then annexed Crimea in 2014 – the same year Moscow began supporting separatist forces in the eastern Donbas region. These hot wars and frozen conflicts set the template, Mr. Kimmage said, for the all-out war for Ukraine that began in February.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: Why annexation could lead to endless conflict in eastern Ukraine
What would it take for Mr. Putin to be removed from power should his desperate attempts to turn the tide in Ukraine fail? Listen to Mr. Kimmage explain how power works in Russia by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
