CIS has Failed to Serve as Foundation for New Union, Moscow Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 26 – The Commonwealth of Independent States had two purposes, Aleksandr Dyukov says, to serve as a forum for “the civilized divorce” of the former union republics of the Soviet Union and as the basis for the preservation of the various ties that had linked them together and could lead to the formation of a new union state.

            But the CIS has not achieved either of those purposes, the scholar at the Momscow Institute of Russian History who is a member of the Presidential Council of Inter-National Relations says and is now “receding” into the past with few prospects for the future (svpressa.ru/politic/article/492283/).

            Ever more of the former union republics are entering into relationships with each other and with other countries that exclude Russia, Dyukov continues; and many of them are now thus “competitors” with Russia rather than its “strategic partners” however often they or people in the Russian capital say otherwise.

            Azerbaijan is a clear example of this: it is now an ally of Turkey and thus a competitor of Russia’s. Ukraine is openly hostile, and the countries of Central Asia are now forming alliances including Azerbaijan but not Russia and thus headed in directions ever more opposed to that of the Russian Federation.

            Indeed, except for Belarus, Moscow does not have the relationships with its neighbors tht it expected the CIS to ensure; and that means if it wants to rebuild those ties, it will have to come up with new structures rather than seek to rely on one that has hasn’t worked well up to now and isn’t likely to in the future.