Post-Soviet Secessionism

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Post-Soviet Secessionism Introductory Remarks

Abkhazia, Transnistria and North Cyprus Recognition and Non-Recognition in Ceasefire and Trade Agreements

The World-System and Post-Soviet De Facto States

Small State or Big Bargainer? Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s Agency in Russia’s and Turkey’s Near Abroad

War and State-Making in Ukraine Forging a Civic Identity from Below?

Internal Legitimacy and Governance in the Absence of Recognition The Cases of the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics”

Post-Soviet Separatism in Historical Perspective

Our Authors

Post-Soviet Secessionism
Introductory Remarks

Mikhail Minakov, Gwendolyn Sasse and Daria Isachenko

In spite of development of international and global institutions, the modern state remains a powerful construct as the legitimate means of political organization and the exclusive location of political authority. Contemporary states went through a long process of institutionalization marked by the milestones like the Westphalian peace, age of the world imperial system, The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, decolonization, Helsinki treaty, and globalization. Despite this long history, the modern state system does not fully deliver on its promise of order and security, and often leads to contestation of territorial integrity and alternative claims to sovereignty. Such claims occur within existing recognized states from groups which feel themselves excluded and prefer to aspire to their own statehood and international status. By implication, competing claims to statehood can turn into seemingly ‘frozen conflicts’, as local authorities embark upon their state-building projects in the absence of international recognition, while still participating in peace talks.

Contemporary Europe has evolved into a complex and contradictory set of states within an international order at risk. In the last three decades, the political geography of the European continent has been shaped by two simultaneous, yet contradictory processes. On the one hand, West European countries have undergone a deep, peaceful and comprehensive integration, which has resulted in the creation of a political centre in the form of the European Union (EU) and a more balanced redistribution of power between the Union and national and local governments. (As Brexit, Scotland’s referendum attempts, and Catalonian separatism show, EU did not solve all center-periphery issues, however it created legal and political frameworks for peaceful resolution of any secession attempt). On the other hand, Eastern European countries have witnessed the disintegration of complex state and regional unions, such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. In the former Eastern Bloc, the collapse of the old political institutions has stimulated an upsurge of nationalism and conservatism, resulting in the creation of newly independent, recognised states. Moreover, it has ignited irredentist and secessionist movements, which in some cases have led to the creation of de facto states.

The USSR is a good case in point here. Its dissolution resulted in the creation of fifteen new recognised states and four non-recognized statelets (Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria). These polities comprise a stable network with state-like elements that have been contesting the territorial integrity of the parental states (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova) since the early 1990ies. Each of these state-like entities has its peculiar forms of legitimacy and political economy and demonstrates systemic dependence on their sponsor states (Russia and Armenia).

Even though the post-Soviet state-like entities were long regarded as a security threat limited to Caucasus and Eastern Europe, they have developed into a source of secessionist practices and ideologies that have proliferated across parts of the continent, eventually becoming a factor of attraction for secessionist movements in Ukraine and other European countries. For example, before 2008, the population of Nagorni Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria was approximately one million while their governments were under international sanctions and were not recognised by other states. After the Russian-Georgian War in 2008, South Ossetia and Abkhazia enlarged their territories while obtaining partial recognition from states such as Russia, Nicaragua and Syria. In 2014, the outburst of Russian-backed secessionist movements in Donbas led to the creation of two more parastates, the Donetsk People Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People Republic (LNR), whose leadership used the state- and nation-building experience of the ‘older’ de facto states to institutionalise their own secessionist endeavours. As of today, this growing network of de facto states counts a population of over 4 million people. Furthermore, horizontal ties between the six de facto post-Soviet nations are growing at the level of government, trade unions and local communities while Western European secessionist movements and their activists are ardently involved in the political and military processes in Donbas.

How can we explain the evolution of post-Soviet secessionism from a phenomenon of regional importance to one that may have a bigger impact on EU member-states and their stability?

So far, studies of post-Soviet and post-communist secessionism have adopted either a macro- or micro-political approach. A group of scholars considered post-Soviet secessionism to be a part of the bigger process of transition from the Soviet Union to post-Soviet states, suggesting that smaller ethnic groups managed to secede from their mother states by using the contradictions between bigger national players. Moving from a traditional nation-state perspective, V. Tishkov (1997), N. Bougai (1996), R. Sunny and T. Martin (2001), and R. Brubaker (2011) posited that contemporary interethnic conflicts and secessionism in the region have their roots in Soviet nationality policies. However, others, such as T. De Waal (2003), D. Aphraidze & D. Siroky (2011), C. Ciobanu (2008), Ch. Zürcher (2007) and J. Hughes and G. Sasse (2011), paid more attention to the mistakes made by the elites of the new independent states, which led to interethnic clashes, secessions and frozen conflicts.

Another group of scholars focused on the internal dynamics among the populations living in the de facto states, seeking to understand how individuals, communities and economies manage to survive under the combined pressure of external sanctions and internal autocratic or warlordist regimes. V. Kolossov & J. O'Loughlin (2011), P. Kolstø (2006) and S. Fischer (2016) suggest that after almost thirty years of existence, the Eastern European de facto states evolved into a specific political reality that has its own shared political culture, model of development and peculiar role in the pan-European political environment.

There is also a tendency in secessionism studies to endorse a narrative that characterises post-Soviet secessionism as a uniquely Eastern European phenomenon. Similarly, scholars of Western European secessionist movements, such as L. Hooghe (1995), A. Bourne (2014), D. Muro and M. Vlaskamp (2016) underestimate the growing linkages between Eastern and Western European separatists.

To address this issue and to draw attention to different dimensions of secessionism in Eastern European—as well as larger Europe’s—contexts, the Ideology and Politics Journal published a special multilingual issue in 2019 (Minakov, Sasse and Isachenko 2019). The issue focused on the analysis of the complex relationships between parental states and sponsor states with unrecognized statelets in the East and West of Europe as well as the internal state-building challenges in the paternal states.

After the publication of the issue, the academic discussion continued and evolved into this volume. This book consists of papers from the published IPJ issue, some of them updated, as well as new contributions that jointly address a number of important questions. How do post-Soviet de facto states survive and continue to grow? Is there anything specific about the political ecology of Eastern Europe that provides secessionism with the possibility to launch state-making processes in spite of international sanctions and counteractions of their parental states? How are these secessionist movements embedded in a wider network of separatism in Eastern and Western Europe? And what is the impact of secessionism and war on the parental states?

This book starts with the article written by Bruno Coppieters. The author argues that seceded authorities and parental states countering secession may enter into negotiations with regard to a ceasefire or some trade agreements without implying the recognition of statehood. Coppieters shows how such processes of communication regarding the non-use of force and trade lead to the de-escalation of conflicts, but do not suspend political contestation. Which means that policies of recognition and non-recognition provide the conflicting parties with tools to defend their statuses and identities, as well as to preserve or to strengthen international security. In his article, Coppieters refers to the cases of recognition- and non-recognition-policies regarding Abkhazia, North Cyprus and Transdniestria.

In the second chapter, Mikhail Minakov applies a world-system analysis to define the status of post-Soviet non-recognised states. The author argues that these non-recognised states constitute an ‘extreme periphery’ in relation to ‘the global centre.’ In the decades after the dissolution of the USSR, these breakaway territories or communities turned into a fairly stable network of polities that oppose international law and the global order. This opposition creates a state model that has proved to be sustainable in spite of conflicts and sanctions, and that proliferates across Europe. Minakov also shows how the establishment of the two non-recognised statelets of the so-called ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Lugansk People’s Republic’ was affected not only by the political, military and economic sponsorship of Russia, but also benefitted from cooperation with the ‘governments’ and societies of Transnistria and Abkhazia. This leads the author to the conclusion that the states on the ‘extreme periphery’ tend to cooperate and proliferate regardless of international law and order.

In the third chapter, Petra Colmorgen analyses the parental states facing challenges to their sovereignty. The chapters focuses on Azerbaijan and Georgia in their entangled relations to the de facto statelets and communities living in the non-controlled territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and in neighbouring Russia and Turkey. Both parental states share fundamental similarities as peripheral states whose sovereignty has been compromised. But, at the same time, their foreign policy objectives in their relations with Russia and Turkey differ significantly. Emphasizing the ability to exert influence instead of focusing solely on the weakness of smaller states, Colmorgen demonstrates Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s agency in dealing with their powerful neighbours.

In the fourth chapter, Gwendolyn Sasse and Alice Lackner revisit the famous dictum of Charles Tilly about the link between war-making and state-making. Based on original survey data from 2017 and 2018, Sasse and Lackner analyse Ukrainian society amidst the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine, a case of secessionism encouraged and supported by neighbouring Russia. The authors identify a significant shift towards a civic identity centered on the Ukrainian polity, which contradicts the official Ukrainian state rhetoric at the time which focused on a narrower ethno-linguistic definition of the Ukrainian nation and its state. Thus, war does not necessarily increase polarization but can instead encourage a civic sense of belonging.

In the fifth chapter of this book, Nataliia Kasianenko contributes to an examination of the strategies used by the self-proclaimed governments of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and the ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ for achieving internal legitimacy. The author reviews how the two regimes use direct democracy for their purposes in the eastern Ukraine. Kasianenko argues that it is possible to attain legitimacy in the absence of external recognition and sovereignty. She shows that the two de facto authorities managed to gain some level of internal legitimacy due to the provision of basic public goods and services for the residents of the non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine.

In a concluding essay Jan Claas Behrends argues that the key to understanding post-Soviet separatism lies in the 20th century history of international and civil conflicts that shaped the unstable geopolitical order in Eastern Europe. The long-term driving force of this underlying instability is the dialectical relationship between nationalist and imperial politics. This dialectic helps to contrast post-Soviet secessionism with examples from Europe and other post-colonial settings.

We hope that our book with its discussion of secessionism challenges will encourage a wider research community to develop more nuanced perspectives on state-dissolving and -building processes in Eastern Europe and to see Europe as one region where macro- and meso-political processes are interconnected rather than being clearly separated into “east” and “west”.

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Abkhazia, Transnistria and North Cyprus Recognition and Non-Recognition in Ceasefire and Trade Agreements1

Bruno Coppieters

1. Introduction

Secessionist conflicts over territories under the control of contested states involve antagonistic positions regarding the recognition and non-recognition of status and identity. Each of the parties defends a specific position regarding the status and identity they desire for themselves or that they are willing to attribute to the other. Such activities are referred to in the present analysis as “policies of recognition.” In addition, conflicting parties also have specific political positions on the status and identity they do not want to be associated with or that they do not want to be attributed to the other, which are referred to in this chapter as “policies of non-recognition.”

Conflicting parties may have to acknowledge, or even be forced to accept, a particular status or identity for themselves, or for the other party, that is not to their liking, due to the fact that such a status or identity contradicts their policies of recognition or non-recognition. These kinds of acknowledgements should also be considered as forms of recognition, and the parties may then try to redress such a situation in the long term through new policies of recognition and non-recognition.

It is also possible that the objectives of the policies of recognition and non-recognition of a conflicting party do not coincide, which creates tension between the policies. For instance, the conflicting party may wish to reach an agreement with the other party, as this would allow them to have their rights recognized and also impose some duties on the other party, but such an agreement may require them to accept that the other party has a certain status in the negotiations, or in the agreement itself, that is not in line with their policy of non-recognition. Such a compromise implies that the first objective prevails over the second, or, in other words, that the policy of recognition takes precedence over the policy of non-recognition.

The present chapter aims to explore the policies of recognition and non-recognition of status and identity in secessionist conflicts involving contested states, where status and identity do not exclusively refer to statehood. In certain situations, contested states may be recognized as non-state actors by the government confronting breakaway, particularly in relation to negotiations on ceasefire and trade agreements, including trade regulations. Such agreements can give non-recognized entities a political and legal status in respect to their armed forces or as a trade entity, and thus a certain form of equality with the other signatories. The party that is recognized in this way may consider this to be an achievement, as this legal status grants them rights and obligations, even if it does not correspond to the status of sovereign equal that they are seeking. This chapter examines the reasons why conflicting parties and external actors accept or even favor such inclusive and asymmetric arrangements regarding rights and obligations. The question to what extent agreements on the separation of armed forces or the exchange of goods produced in disputed territories may be considered legally binding is also raised. The chapter defends the thesis that the recognition implied in such formalized relations with contested states does not suspend political and legal contestation.

The way that Abkhazia, Transnistria and North Cyprus were—or were not—involved in ceasefire and trade agreements will be compared. Although these three cases demonstrate a significant variety of characteristics, the selection is small. For that reason, a comparison of the positions of the conflicting parties in different settings and the type of agreements they reached regarding status resists generalization. The conclusions of the chapter reflect on this selection and, more particularly, the consequences that a different selection may have on the comparison.

For each of the cases, the negotiations on the agreements, as well as the agreements themselves, are analyzed. This includes the way that implementation is conceived under the agreement, although not implementation as such. Such a focus allows a comparison of the recognition and non-recognition policies of the conflicting parties regarding status and identity.

The present analysis does not give equal attention to the ceasefire and trade agreements in each of the three cases. For instance, in the Abkhazia case, more attention is given to the recognition and non-recognition policies in the ceasefire agreements than in the trade agreements. In the case of Transnistria, the opposite is true. And the policies of recognition and non-recognition of Moldova and Transnistria regarding trade are more complex than in the case of Cyprus, even though North Cyprus managed to achieve a higher status as a trade partner of Cyprus. The descriptive analysis of the various ceasefire and trade agreements, therefore, varies in length.

This chapter is divided into six sections. Following the introduction, the concepts of policies of recognition and policies of non-recognition are outlined in section two. These concepts are developed as descriptive tools. Their use in the analysis of the normative positions of the conflicting parties, as well as the difference between these concepts and the normative concept of misrecognition and the normative principle of non-recognition, are explored.

In the third section, the concept of a contested state is defined, highlighting the intersubjective dimension of state relations and disputes. A comparison is made with the concept of a de facto state. It will be demonstrated that the distinction between these two concepts in political science finds a parallel in international law in the distinction between a declaratory and a constitutive approach to statehood. This section includes a further explanation of how contested states may achieve some form of legal recognition on a non-state level.

The fourth section addresses the status question in terms of policies of recognition and non-recognition in the cases of ceasefires in Abkhazia (1994 and 2008), Transnistria (1992) and Cyprus (1974). This allows for a better understanding of these policies, as well as a better understanding of how status and identity interrelate in each of these cases. The cases are not analyzed in chronological order, but rather in respect to the status that the contested states managed to achieve. The same approach to the ordering of cases is applied in section five, which offers an analysis of the agreements regarding trade—or the lack thereof—in the conflicts over North Cyprus, Transnistria and Abkhazia.

The sixth and final section of this chapter compares the contested nature of the recognition and non-recognition achieved in these types of mutual agreements and offers a conclusion. It compares how each of the contested states has been included in ceasefire or trade agreements, and which status they achieved or avoided. This section also compares the extent to which such differences reflect particular power differentials among the conflicting parties and forms of subordination between them. Finally, it explores the potential for research on a broader comparison between conflicts on secession involving contested states.