Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Reintegrating "Post-Soviet Space"

2000; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jod.2000.0052

1086-3214

John B. Dunlop,

Russia and Soviet political economy

The debate over the likely course of Russia's development under the presidency of Vladimir Putin has paid surprisingly little attention to Putin's goal of reintegrating Russia with other former Soviet republics. As prime minister, Putin strongly supported the treaty, signed by Boris Yeltsin and Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka on 8 December 1999, that created a new Union State (soyuznoe gosudarstvo) composed of Russia and Belarus. With Putin now at the helm, the integration of Russia and Belarus has been placed on a fast track. One likely result is that Belarus will de facto lose its political independence. "Is this the creation," President Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan wondered aloud, "of a Union State under which the oblasts [provinces] of Belarus will become subjects of the Russian Federation?" 1 It appears that this is indeed what the Putin regime intends.