New Eastern Europe Magazine Issue 6/2021 Vorige editie

The extremely tense situation at the Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian borders with Belarus where thousands of migrants from the Middle East are being used in the most cynical way to put pressure on European Union is a gruesome reminder of why it is so crucial to pay attention to the developments in our region. Clearly, history has not ended on the post-Soviet space and conflicts continue to break out.
Only a year ago we witnessed the second Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It took at least 5,000 lives and significantly shifted the geopolitics in the South Caucuses. One year on, we reflect on this conflict and seek a chance for lasting peace for the people of Armenia, Azerbaijan and their neighbours. We gathered opinions from authors who argue that the way forward is through shared infrastructure and transportation links. We publish these essays believing that having such a debate is an important step, even if some analysts may doubt the success of Pax Caucasia.
Even more, the situation in Belarus and at the border, Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, are elements in the long-term process of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The destruction of the empire indeed started 30 years ago when Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkievich signed the now famous Belovezha Accords which formally brought an end to the USSR. The outcome of this decision is discussed and analysed by our authors in a special section which we publish in this issue in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Warsaw office) and where we pay special attention to social aspects of the post-Soviet transformation. To put it in the words of professor Serhii Plokhy: “the disintegration of the Soviet Union is still going on and it is not peaceful”.