“The Major Geopolitical Disaster” as the Prerequisite for the Post-soviet Regional Security Governance

Abstract

On April 25, 2005, during his annual statement to the Federal Assembly (the upper house of the Russian parliament), President Vladimir Putin defined the collapse of the Soviet Union as "a major geopolitical disaster of the century." (Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, 2005). This statement by the Russian President about 15 years ago was, to a large extent, resented in the West. Thus, for instance, the former President of the European Council, Donald Tusk at the conference in Batumi, Georgia, called in turn the collapse of the Soviet empire a "blessing" event for all peoples of Eastern and Central Europe (Dzekish, 2019). Nevertheless, regardless of the political connotation of Putin's statement, it is clear that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was a "watershed," that forced the former Soviet republics to redefine their relations with the countries of the world, in general and among themselves, in particular.During the Soviet period, all 15 republics were part of a single large state, conducting all areas of activity subject to the regulations of the central government in Moscow. As of the mid-1980s the politicaleconomic situation in the Soviet Union began to deteriorate. Internal unrest within the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) against "Perestroika" promoted by the first and last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, culminated in the failed coup attempt by the Party's hard-liners on August [19][20][21] 1991. Against this background on December 8, 1991 at the meeting in the Belarusian Belovezhskaya