ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the demographic and social consequences of armed ethnopolitical and regional conflicts in the post-Soviet set of political units. It is concerned with significant armed ethnic conflicts as well as with such low-intensity events as pogroms, which have catastrophic long-term sociopolitical consequences. The Soviet policy of forcibly redrawing the former boundaries of ethnically circumscribed civil divisions also resulted in negative consequences. Economic factors also play an important role in the development of ethnic and territorial conflicts, especially in the South of the post-Soviet space. In the Caucasus and Tajikistan, mass involvement in interethnic or interclan standoffs resulted from egregious manipulation of mass consciousness by the ideologues of national movements. The most significant human losses have occurred in Tajikistan, Chechnya, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict zone. The number of people killed in ethnopolitical and regional conflicts in the post-Soviet Union numbered about 100,000, and the number wounded is estimated at nearly.5 million.
