Disintegration of an Empire?
Why Russia Won’t Go the Same Way as the Soviet Union
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Since Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, opponents of the regime have viewed Russia’s disintegration as a desirable or probable scenario. The disintegration of the Soviet Union serves as a model. Comparison, however, reveals that there is no basis for this scenario. While the union republics of the Soviet Union were already protonation states, the same cannot be said of almost any of the subjects of the Russian Federation. Only in very few of them does the titular nation have an absolute or even relative majority. In addition, by means of centralized instruments of personnel policy, Moscow over the past 20 years has weakened the governors and their regional administrations in such a way that they can hardly become the focal point for the crystallization of regional interests.
(Osteuropa 4-5/2022, pp. 111–115)