Why Territorial Disintegration Has Not Occurred in Russia: Applying State Breakdown Theories to Explain Stability

Abstract

Much has been written to explain the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Little attention, however, has been paid to understanding why post‐1991 Russia has maintained stability despite continued economic and political turmoil throughout the 1990s. This paper attempts to answer this question by applying an integrated model of territorial disintegration to examine the political, economic, demographic, and geopolitical changes in the pre‐1991 Soviet Union and post‐1991 Russia. The integrated model is constructed by synthesizing Goldstone's demographic‐structural model, Skocpol's and Collins’ geopolitical model, and a modified version of Collins’ argument of the destabilizing potential brought about by rapid market development as three alternative routes to territorial disintegration. It is found that improvement in Russia's geopolitical condition after 1991 is largely responsible for the decline in disintegrative potential. Slower population growth also rendered the demographic route less disintegrative during the 1990s. More effective taxation and the availability of foreign loans enabled the Russian state to handle its financial crises, thereby curbing the development of destabilizing forces through the dynamics proposed by Collins.