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TOC | Key Points | Foreword | Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | Acknowledgments | Author Sovereignty after Empire Self-Determination Movements in the Former Soviet Union Foreword A major objective of the United States Institute of Peace is to host fellows in its Jennings Randolph Program who have the background and experience to help bridge the gap between the theory of change and conflict in the international realm and the demands of governmental policymaking. Galina Starovoitova, a fellow during 1993–94, certainly met this objective. In this important work, Starovoitova, a trained ethnographer, examines the prominent self-determination movements in the former Soviet Union and arrives at some tentative criteria that could be used to assess their legitimacy. The need for such criteria, she argues, is apparent. In contrast to futurists' visions of the "global village," where national loyalties and borders erode under the forces of globalization and decentralization, Starovoitova points to the resurgence of nationalism in the post–Cold War era, particularly on the Eurasian continent. Starovoitova came to the Institute soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when serious challenges to the integrity of Soviet successor states seemed a daily occurrence. Her experience as a Soviet legislator and a Russian government official leads her to reflect on the criteria for assessing the claims of "identity" and other groups to the right of self-determination and to propose criteria cautiously, lest they promote a chaotic explosion of new micro-states. Starovoitova claims for herself no moral authority in offering such a desideratum. Rather, she states quite clearly that international organizations alone are equipped to handle the claims of ethnic minorities and other identity groups that seek to determine their own course in the international community. Yet, despite a proliferation of international norms that touch on the notion of self-determination, the issue has never acquired the kind of normative precision that characterizes universally recognized (if not necessarily universally honored) international legal principles, such as the observance of human rights and nonintervention. Starovoitova attempts to fill this lacuna by isolating some of the criteria that self-determination movements in the former Soviet Union have relied on in their appeals to national governments and the international community for redress of their grievances. The difficulty of applying such criteria is reflected in what is perhaps the most revealing and fascinating section of Starovoitova's study—her interviews with world leaders and major policy officials. Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Sam Nunn, and Jack Matlock all testify to the tension governments experience when they must weigh the dire conditions of many ethnic and other identity groups against the state's quest for stability. Starovoitova reminds us that statehood for a territorial unit seeking self-determination and, ultimately, secession necessarily means a loss of territory for established states; and states inherently fight to retain their territorial integrity and sense of national purpose. Hence, she suggests that the criteria she offers should be considered in their entirety to avoid the kind of violent conflict that typically ensues when self-determination groups advance their specific grievances against central governments—grievances the international community may find less than compelling reasons for intervention. The threshold for a territorial unit's accession to international status is thus set high, but that does not mean that any one criterion among those Starovoitova presents is any less important or deserving of attention than the others. The United States Institute of Peace has made the self-determination issue an important focus in its programs and publications, because so many disputes around the world arise from self-determination claims. During 1995–96, the Institute convened two roundtable discussions devoted solely to the myriad issues surrounding self-determination: The first addressed the theoretical nature of self-determination claims and the notion of sovereignty; the second covered the political manifestation of such claims in various countries (Peaceworks 7 and 16, respectively). The Institute's Series on Religion, Nationalism, and Intolerance also explores particular countries' experiences with self-determination movements, among other issues. In addition, Ted Robert Gurr examines the subject thoroughly in his Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts, published by the Institute's Press; and Ruth Lapidoth's Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts, also published by the Institute's Press, suggests one promising approach to the dilemma of reconciling sovereignty with self-determination. Indeed, Starovoitova's homeland is an extraordinary laboratory for isolating some or all of the criteria she proposes in the concluding section of this work. The political shock wave of the USSR's collapse still reverberates with a special intensity across some areas of the former Soviet Union, including Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Crimea, and Abkhazia. But the wave is not likely to stop there. "In the twenty-first century," Starovoitova warns, "we can expect even more claims for self-determination from the former Soviet Union, the African continent, China, and many other regions." The grand hope, of course, is that the international community will be equipped by then with some standards to settle these claims fairly and peacefully. Absent such standards, these regions will likely be the new sources of even more destructive political shocks.
Richard H. Solomon, President
TOC | Key Points | Foreword | Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | Acknowledgments | Author
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