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Editor's note: This article is an updated version of "Russian Diaspora as a Means of Russian Foreign Policy" first published in Revista de Ştiinţe Politice. Revue des Sciences Politiques 49 (2016): 97-107. The original can be retrieved from http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice/files/numarul49 2016/10.pdf.
The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 after about fifty years of competition between two very different ideological poles. During that period, conflict zones became frozen, and the demands of different ethnic groups and peoples were quashed and rejected. The imperialism that had been started by the Russian Empire on its own territory had finally come to an end.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet republics declared their independence, one after another, and a period of reconstruction for those nations began. However, this reconstruction was hindered by political, economic, social, and demographic problems. Foremost of these problems was Russian diaspora: Russian people and Russian-speaking communities in the former Soviet republics.
The borders between the former Soviet republics were internationally recognized with the Minsk and Almaty Agreements in 1991, consequently leaving sixty million people, twenty-five million of whom were Russians, out of their home countries.1 Ethnic Russian people and other Russian-speaking ethnic communities who had settled in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), southern Caucasia (Georgia and Azerbaijan), the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia), Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldavia became minority groups after the breakup of the Soviet Union (see figure, page 44).
As these newly independent states are re-creating their national identities, their Russian and Russianspeaking populations are facing discrimination and marginalization. However, the problems these minority communities are facing in the former Soviet states have started to affect the domestic politics of the Russian Federation (thereinafter referred to as Russia). Additionally, the Russian and Russian-speaking minorities living in Russia's "near abroad" (the term used by Russians to describe the newly independent states created after the fall of the Soviet Union) are playing a key role in increasing Russia's power in the region by influencing Russian politics and helping Russia re-create its own national identity.2 Russian diaspora is clearly tied to Russian foreign policy toward countries having Russian minorities.3
This article will first consider Russian diaspora from a historical perspective, examining Russian expansion into...