ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the states have all engaged in transitions from more authoritarian to more democratic systems. Some have ended up in civil and ethnic war; others in relatively peaceful transformations. It looks at Russia's post-Soviet "identity crisis" and go on to sketch the fragility and fluidity of state and national identities in the Southern Tier. The chapter explores the shifting identities of state actors in the Caucasus and Central Asia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the consequences of adopting intolerant or tolerant conceptions of the nation. Russia's post-Soviet "identity crisis" has been interpreted by both authoritarian nationalist writers and more democratically oriented authors in Russia as the product of the radical, imposed turn from the "natural" course of history by the Bolsheviks. Of the eight republics of the Southern Tier, five Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are ruled by former Communist first secretaries.
