That was (mostly) a peaceful split, with countries that had been dominated by the Soviets for 50 years gaining independence. The rest of the Russian empire has been under Moscow/St Petersburg for 500 years. The ethnic Russian elites will not give up their Asian territories without a fight.
And, after what's happened to Ukraine, none of the new states will give up their nukes. We'll have a nuclear armed Dagestan, run by whoever was aggressive enough to seize power.
This is what is called over-updating on a single event. Probably the key difference is that each soviet republic was already a discrete identity based on ethnic, cultural, and historic ties, and so the default was simply to revert to that identity. For a state with no clear discrete sub-identities, nor with enough economic or military autonomy to survive as an independent state, civil war becomes much more likely as these lines are forcibly drawn.
Current Russia has plenty of sub-identities though. It’s the worlds last colonial empire, and the division lines are obvious to everyone there. The only thing keeping it all together is the army and police.
Informative thread, so thanks for that. This seems to be the key issue:
>Ethnicity, race and culture is not enough for the new states to work out. For them to succeed they must be able to pay their bills. Ergo, the principle of economic clusters will be at least as important for defining their borders as the ethnic or cultural one
Which one wins out? The fact that there is a conflict between economic cluster and ethnic cluster seems to strongly raise the likelihood of a civil war.
And, after what's happened to Ukraine, none of the new states will give up their nukes. We'll have a nuclear armed Dagestan, run by whoever was aggressive enough to seize power.