Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, much of the post-Soviet periphery has been characterized by ethnic turmoil. These conflicts have exacerbated nationalist sentiments in Russia (Snyder 1993), and repeatedly provoked the country’s leadership to the extent of outright warfare. After the highly politicized conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, recent developments in Ukraine have again turned the problematic relationship between different Soviet nationalities into a matter of international interest. The conflict’s deep impact on international relations and European security underlines that it is of the utmost importance to study the ethnonationalist conflicts in the Post-Soviet sphere, and understand the actors involved in them.
When analyzing these conflicts, it is essential to recognize that the ethnic groups engaging in civil wars do not tend to function as unitary actors. In previous research, it has often been wrongly assumed that individuals act in support of the organization that represents their ethnic identity – but in practice individuals from the same ethnic background far from operate as a single group (Kalyvas 2008). A variety of scholars has recently acknowledged the importance of studying the dynamics internal to ethnic groups, and demonstrated that the number and heterogeneity of actors within them affect the dynamics, duration, and outcomes of civil wars (e.g. Bakke, Cunningham, and Seymour 2012; Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour 2012; Findley and Rudloff 2012). Indeed, civil wars involving fragmented groups tend to be “longer, more violent, and more difficult for international intervention” (Lidow 2011, 6). The internal divisions of ethnic groups therefore hold more than theoretical importance, having important implications for the practice of conflict resolution.
Even more so than other ethnic groups, one would expect secessionist movements to be cohesive in the struggle against their common enemy, i.e. the incumbent state, and in their effort to create and maintain a viable ‘counterstate’. Some separatists indeed unitedly pursue their ultimate goal of statehood, but others spend their time and resources on internal rivalries instead (Fjelde and Nilsson 2012). Why is it that some movements remain united while others fragment into competing factions? Adopting a comparative case study approach to the study of secessionist movements in Post-Soviet states, this project will explore the roles played by separatist and incumbent state institutions in processes of cohesion and fragmentation, and as such improve our understanding of civil war dynamics.
