ABSTRACT
The edited volume puts the conflict in Ukraine in a regional context. In the final chapter, we discuss the findings of the contributions by focusing on common patterns of the post-Soviet space: contested identity politics, oligarchic or clientelistic networks and a peripheral integration into the world market are examples for such ‘Intersecting Crises Phenomena’. Despite all given differences between the 15 successor states of the Soviet Union, all are heavily shaped by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the intertwined political and economic transformation.
We argue that the conflict in Ukraine is a prototype of post-Soviet, crisis-prone development showing clear signs of typical latent crises phenomena. For instance, ethnic and linguistic cleavages exist since the independence of the country and are inherited by the Soviet Union. However, over the conflict starting in 2014, those cleavages gained tremendously in saliency.
