Monthly Report No. 12/2021

​Special Issue 30th Anniversary of the Break-up of the USSR Chart of the month Post-Soviet space marked by economic divergence by Vasily Astrov 30 years without the USSR outcomes and lessons by Ruslan Grinberg The demise of the Soviet Union 30 years ago was very abrupt and largely unexpected, even by those who set it in motion. The economic consequences of its collapse as well as those of fully embracing free market ideology without preserving the benefits of the former system proved catastrophic. The current anti-democratic and anti-western backlash in Russia is arguably the result of these policy missteps and could have been avoided, had different policies been pursued at the time. Goodbye to the ‘post-Soviet space’ by Vladislav L. Inozemtsev Thirty years after the break-up of the USSR, the term ‘post-Soviet space’ is no longer appropriate. On the one hand, there has been a sharp economic divergence between the post-Soviet republics, with the southern ‘periphery’ performing much better than the western regions. On the other hand, Russia’s foreign policy has focused increasingly on Belarus and Ukraine, opening up opportunities in Central Asia for other global players. Laws of disintegration by Artem Kochnev When it comes to analysis of the Soviet legacy in Europe, one can hardly avoid discussions about unrecognised states. This piece contributes to the discussion by analysing the constitutional design of the late Soviet Union. It argues that the origins of the breakaway republics were rooted in a contradictory institutional design, which provided political leaders with both the legitimacy and the legal grounds to exploit a nationalist agenda amid rising political activism. Monthly and quarterly statistics for Central, East and Southeast Europe