ABSTRACT
In 1991 the Soviet Union disintegrated, creating fifteen Newly Independent States across the Eurasian land mass. Some – such as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were simply reconstituted polities, which had been deprived of independence within the current century. Others, such as Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, were novel state formations, lacking strong historical legacies as independent countries. The Russian Federation – the legal and spiritual successor to the USSR – remained the world’s largest state; however, it was now ‘distanced’ from its historical periphery by international borders, foreign currencies and a political reordering involving American and European military and economic alliances. Trapped between these Newly Independent States and the Russian rump state was a fledgling minority: the Russians of the ‘new abroad’.
