Abstract

The New Russian Imperialists

The Soviet Union is dead, replaced on the map by Russia, fourteen independent republics and at least four slow boiling wars with more likely to come. The conflicts are beyond Russia's borders, but they inevitably find their way to her doorstep. "Russia, as the heir to the Soviet Union, has become the inner courtyard for the republics, the junkyard of all that is not needed or cannot adjust to contemporary reality," commented Moscow journalist Gleb Pavlovsky at a recent conference. The question of relations with its former fellow republics has become one of the principal fault lines in the Russian political spectrum, rivaling debates on the country's market reforms. Russian President Boris Yeltsin's government has pledged to make the rights of Russians in the republics a foreign policy priority. Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin suggested last year that Russia should be as active in support of Russian speakers in other republics as was the U.S. in "defending" its citizens in Grenada.