Seminar: Da asiaterne fik bugt med Sovjetunionen

TIME: Thursday, 24 November, 13.00-15.30

VENUE: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, Christianshavn, 1401 Copenhagen K

TIME: Thursday, 24 November, 13.00-15.30

VENUE: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, Christianshavn, 1401 Copenhagen K

Twenty years ago at the beginning of December, a very secret meeting took place in a hunting lodge, Belovezhskaya Puschcha in the Brest area. The participants were Boris Yeltsin, Russia, Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine, and Stanislav Shushkevich, chairman of the Belarusian parliament.

David Marples describes the meeting the following way: “Over two days and many toasts, the three leaders and their associates resolved to form a loose association called the ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’. The decision was a decisive step in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It blasted the efforts of the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev for an agreement on a new Union Treaty and elicited anger among the remaining Soviet republics who had not been invited to the meeting.

On the initiative of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the leader of Kazakhstan, a meeting between the Central Asian republics was held on 12 December in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, where they decided to join the Commonwealth (in Russian: Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv (SNG)).

Another important meeting took place 21 December in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Leaders of 11 republics participated and signed the so-called Almaty Protocol, which declared their consent to the Belovezh Accords. The three Baltic States and Georgia didn’t participate in the meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting, Nazarbayev declared the Soviet Union dissolved”.

Vladimir Putin has called it “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”. Among others, 25 million Russians were left outside the Russian Federation, and for the next decade the former Soviet republics were facing very difficult challenges many of which are yet to be overcome.

The seminar will shed light on the causes leading to the collapse and will discuss the implications of these dramatic events.

Speakers:
David R. Marples, Professor, University of Alberta, Canada
Dmitry Ryurikov, Ambassador
Karsten Jakob Møller, Major General, Senior Analyst, DIIS

Programme:

13.00-13.15: Introduction; Karsten Jakob Møller, Major General, Senior Analyst, DIIS

13.15-14.00: Causes and Implications of the End of the Soviet Union; David R. Marples, Professor, University of Alberta, Canada

14.00-14.15: Coffee Break

14.15-15.00: A Geopolitical Catastrophe? Implications of the Collapse of the Soviet Union; Dmitry Ryurikov, Ambassador

15.00-15.30: Open Discussion

Chair: Karsten Jakob Møller, Major General, Senior Analyst, DIIS

The seminar will be held in English.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use the online registration form from the website no later than Wednesday, 23 November at 12.00 noon.

Please await confirmation by e-mail from DIIS for participation.