ИСТИНА |
Войти в систему Регистрация |
|
ИСТИНА ЦЭМИ РАН |
||
Almost three decades after the Soviet collapse, many borders at the peripheries and within the post-Soviet space remain that are in one way or another – closely tied to its Soviet history. Some laid long forgotten and reemerged with newly proclaimed nation-states, while others diminished when Cold War politics and the continuities of the Soviet state ceased to exist. Both types provide a wide range of unique cases for the field of border studies and were focused by this workshop. The workshop tried to access the nature of borders from an agency centered perspective. Coming mostly from the disciplines of geography and anthropology, the contributions stressed the necessity of multidisciplinary approaches. The Soviet heritage of these border spaces makes a consideration of historical perspectives necessary for the field in general, while borderland historians can contribute with their methods in particular. While the globalisation discourse claims the creation of a 'borderless world' we observe the evolvement of a whole world of new and old borders within the post-soviet space with considera-ble effects on people living in border regions. The fragmentation of the Soviet Union resulted in the creation of a number of post-Soviet states territorially based on former Soviet Republics which suddenly transformed internal into interna-tional borders. Further fragmentations and formations of de-facto states took place, as for in-stance in Moldova (Transnistria) or Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). Finally we have very recently seen the construction of an international non-recognised border between Russia and Ukraine due to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. Not only are we facing a number of new borders which are sometimes internationally recognised and sometimes not, also the very status of borders changed. This includes for instance the EU external borders that now are drawn within the post-Soviet space, as for instance between the Baltic states and Russia. In other cases like the Central Asian Fergana Valley the transformation of internal borders of the Soviet era into international borders has not been possible, and considerable portions of the borders are still neither determined nor demarcated. The ambiguities and inconsistencies of establishing state borders not only influence international relations, but also daily routines, family ties, trade or social relations that confronted with new borderlines and associated bordering regimes people have to cope with and which frequently are causing conflicts on different levels. Borders, in this sense, are understood as continuously constructed and reconstructed entities of exclusion and inclusion. Usually they are inseparable from territory which does not imply fixed bounded spaces, but a dispersed set of power relations mobilized for different purposes by differ-ent actors on the ground. Probably nowhere this can be mapped better in its variety and topicality as in the 'border laboratory' of the post-soviet space. The intention of the workshop is thus twofold: to explore the variety of new realities of borders within the post-Soviet space not only on the level of international regimes, but first and fore-most through the eyes and voices of the people living in the border regions.