ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book offers a synoptic overview of the nation-building processes of the Soviet successor states, focusing on certain important topics. As it demonstrates the struggle for and against certain formulas in the constitutions, laws, and other official documents of the Soviet successor states was not an academic game of words for philologists. The book argues that the cultural differences between the dominant ethnic and lingistic groups in Belarus and Ukraine are very small. It discusses that the preconditions for nation-building in Russia are in many respects very different from those of the other Soviet successor states. Russia is not a "new" or newly independent state: It is the remnant of a former empire. The preconditions for national development vary enormously from the Baltics in the northwest to Central Asia in the southeast, from huge Russia to tiny Moldova.
