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The Baltic Region and Central Asia: What Does It Take to Make a Region? A Critical Perspective

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Abstract

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, efforts were undertaken to keep the former member states together: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created and many attempts at integration mushroomed on the post-Soviet territory. The results were not necessarily impressive: most of the regional organizations remained paper tigers, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union continued. Due to a large variety of cultures and historical backgrounds of the newly independent states, the geographical proximity and distance between them as well as the variety of external powers influencing the respective regions, one could have expected new strong regions (in the economic, political, and institutional sense) to emerge or at least that there would be close cooperation in certain regions. However, this outcome happened only in the Baltic region. The three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania collectively joined the EU and NATO, started to actively participate in the work of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and even voiced shared concerns over the European strategy of the Northern Dimension (Aalto et al. 2003, 11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Anastasia Vishnevskaya

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  1. Anastasia Vishnevskaya
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Correspondence to Anastasia Vishnevskaya .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu , Tartu, Estonia

    Andrey Makarychev

  2. Kazan Federal University , Kazan, Russia

    Alexandra Yatsyk

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Vishnevskaya, A. (2017). The Baltic Region and Central Asia: What Does It Take to Make a Region? A Critical Perspective. In: Makarychev, A., Yatsyk, A. (eds) Borders in the Baltic Sea Region. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-352-00014-6_8

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