ABSTRACT
Some states have created high-level government institutions to maintain links with co-ethnic communities, while others have made work with the diaspora a secondary or even tertiary policy priority. In some cases, the diaspora has been closely tied to broader foreign policy aims, while in other cases a clear distinction between the kin-state's international relations and its obligation to the diaspora has been established. Some states have defined the diaspora primarily on the basis of communities "external" to the Soviet Union and have ignored "internal" diasporas within the post-Soviet republics themselves. Diaspora politics created an apparently legitimate basis for an active Russian engagement with the internal and external affairs of the new states of Eurasia. The Jews have historically been seen as the archetypal diaspora community, but the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel altered the significance of dispersal for many Jews.
