Tearing up Empire: The Military Breakup of the Soviet Union

Luyang Zhou, Zhejiang University

Physically tearing up an empire’s economic and military system brings about dysfunction. This article explains why such cost accelerates separation of some nations and decelerates it of others, by probing the military breakup of the Soviet Union. Drawing data from the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda of the Soviet Ministry of Defense (1992-93) as well as archival sources, this article identifies three paths by which successor-states quitted the Soviet military empire: (1) exiting from the former imperial defense and then establishing independent national militaries gradually; (2) seizing the former Soviet forces on their territories to establish fightable national armies immediately; (3) preserving the former imperial military system without developing national militaries. Showing that existing accounts (the availability of foreign aids, engagement in civil wars, and possession of military expertise) cannot fully explain the variation, this article explores agency, the successor-states’ civilian and military elites, who ascended with populist-nationalist backgrounds. Pointing out that these elites universally lacked experiences of administration, this article especially focuses on how they balanced technical logic and political demands.

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 Presented in Session 247. Empire and World Order