ABSTRACT
Various explanations have been proposed as answers to the perplexing question of why the years of the disintegration of the USSR resulted in relatively peaceful politics in the Baltic republics while the South Caucasus suffered from civil, ethnic, and inter-republic war. This chapter outlines the major factors explaining these differences—the Soviet state shaped the twentieth-century history of Caucasia much more fundamentally than it did the Baltic peoples; the Caucasus could plausibly be understood to have benefitted from being within the Soviet Union, while the Baltic republics were thrown backward by Soviet occupation; the much later annexation of the Baltic republics was experienced as a loss not only of independence but of a higher civilizational status.
