Authors

Tsukasa Hotta¹;  ¹ Keio University, Japan

Discussion

With the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the European international order moved into a new phase. While most studies focus on the collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the German reunification, the Kremlin, in fact, also focused on a different aspect of Europe: the CSCE process stemming from the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.

Firstly, this study focuses on how the Soviet-promoted empowerment of the CSCE process increased the momentum for the Soviet republics to behave as sovereign states in a way that the Kremlin did not intend. The republics attempted to engage with the CSCE process in slightly different ways. The Baltic states, partly because they objected to their incorporation into the USSR per se, insisted on forming their delegation, separate from the Soviet delegation. On the other hand, the Russian and Ukrainian republics initially sought to expand their influence within the Soviet delegation. These tendencies would gradually change after the "parade of sovereignties" from 1990 onwards.

Secondly, this study analyses the changes and continuities between Soviet and Russian diplomacy over the CSCE process: the August 1991 coup was a significant opportunity to create a situation that greatly reduced the status of Soviet diplomats representing the entire Union and strengthened Yeltsin's arguments for the weakening of the Foreign Ministry. Amid this domestic political upheaval, the Soviet Foreign Ministry was effectively taken over by the RSFSR Foreign Ministry after being reorganised as the Ministry of External Relations of the USSR. How did the new Russian foreign policy take over elements of Soviet CSCE policy? This study also examines early Russian diplomacy over the Helsinki summit of the CSCE process, the "Helsinki-2", in March 1992.

As for the primary sources, this study is largely based on Russian and British archival documents.