This book investigates how borders in former Soviet Union territories have evolved and shifted in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to fifteen independent states and numerous de facto states; but this process of rebordering is not finished, and social, economic, infrastructural, cultural and political networks and spaces continue to develop. This book explores the intersection between these geopolitical shifts and the individual lived experience, drawing on cases from across border regions in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Throughout, the book introduces and frames the case studies with well-informed theoretical, conceptual and methodological overviews that situate them within border studies in general and post-Soviet border spaces in particular. Overall, the book demonstrates that like a kaleidoscope, the dynamic elements in these newly evolved border regions are similar yet strikingly different in their juxtapositions, with the appearance of new configurations often dependent on changing geopolitical constellations.
This timely guide to the post-Soviet world thirty years after the Cold War will be of interest to researchers across border studies, politics, geography, social anthropology, history, Eastern European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and Caucasian Studies.
Author(s): Sabine von Löwis, Beate Eschment
Series: Routledge Borderlands Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 248
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of contributors
List of figures
List of tables
Post-Soviet Borders: A Kaleidoscope of Shifting Lives and Lands. An Introduction
PART 1 Dynamics of Bordering in the Post-Soviet Space
1 Dynamics of Bordering in the Post- Soviet Space over the Last 30 Years
2 Between the ‘ Opening to the West’ and the Trauma of Rebordering: Towards a Genealogy of Post-Soviet Border Studies
3 The Territorial Challenge in the Early Soviet State
4 Dialoguing Borders in the Post-Soviet Space through Citizen Science – Ukrainian Borderland Perspectives
PART 2 Western part
5 Within and Across Borders: Trust and Distrust in Russia’s Exclave of Kaliningrad
6 Transnistria: The Everyday of a De Facto Border
PART 3 South Caucasus
7 Experiencing the Border, Encountering the States: The Ingiloy at the Azerbaijani-Georgian Borderland
8 Borderisation of South Ossetia: The Perspective of the Border Population
9 Connected and Disconnected by the Border: The Shaping of the Turkish-Georgian Borderland
PART 4 Central Asia
10 Rethinking the Meaning of the Neighbourhood: The Transformation of the Fergana Valley’s Transborder Infrastructure
11 Integration vs Disintegration: State Borders and Border Conflicts in the Isfara Valley
12 Post-Soviet Decline or China-Induced Prosperity? Agricultural and Socio-Economic Change in the Kazakhstan-China Borderlands
Conclusion
Index
