Paths to democracy of the Post-Soviet republics: attempt at conceptualization
ENFrom the perspective of fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is possible to distinguish five basic developmental paths the post-Soviet republics followed. The societies in which an independent civil revolution took place, enter the first developmental path. However, this path of development bifurcates into two further sub-variants. Namely, civil revolutions in the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) resulted in their independence and stable democracies. On the other hand, civil revolutions in the Caucasus republics (Georgia, Armenia) proved only partially successful. Civil movements in these countries managed to gain independence, yet they were unable to build stable democracies. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine achieved sovereignty and followed the next developmental path, seceding from the Soviet Union. However, it was mainly local communist nomenclatures that initiated establishment of independent states. Democratization - characteristic of the first period of their independent existence - was counterbalanced by the subsequent emergence of autocratic tendencies that surfaced with different force and from different reasons.
