ABSTRACT
Discussion of post-Soviet societies has focused upon the nationalist element in determining the reason new states arose with the break-up of Soviet communism. Among Western policy-makers the nationalist phenomena that appeared (or seemed to have arisen) following adoption of glasnost were viewed as particularly negative. Following the August 1991 failed coup in Moscow (the Baltic states apart), it was only when Russia declared itself to be sovereign and independent that the world community came to recognize the independence and hence sovereignty of the other republics. The driving force of specifically Western policy that wanted to preserve the Union, albeit in a looser liberal democratic form, was greeted with incredulity by those in the republics. After all, they argued, did the West not want the peoples of the Soviet Union to be free? And surely that freedom could only come about by being independent. Moreover, being independent meant having a state. In most cases the new republics, particularly those in the western part of the Union, looked back in history to find some period when they had been independent before. This was considered to be highly significant in the process of “getting” a state again and fulfilling independence.
