The USSR's dissolution resulted in the creation of not only fifteen recognized states but also
of four non-recognized statelets: Nagorno-Karabakh South Ossetia Abkhazia and Transnistria.
Their polities comprise networks with state-like elements. Since the early 1990s the four
pseudo-states have been continously dependent on their sponsor countries (Russia Armenia) and
contesting the territorial integrity of their parental nation-states Azerbaijan Georgia and
Moldova. In 2014 the outburst of Russia-backed separatism in Eastern Ukraine led to the
creation of two more para-states the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's
Republic (LNR) whose leaders used the experience of older de facto states. In 2020 this
growing network of de facto states counted an overall population of more than 4 million people.
The essays collected in this volume address such questions as: How do post-Soviet de facto
states survive and continue to grow? Is there anything specific about the political ecology of
Eastern Europe that provides secessionism with the possibility to launch state-making processes
in spite of international sanctions and counteractions of their parental states? How do
secessionist movements become embedded in wider networks of separatism in Eastern and Western
Europe? What is the impact of secessionism and war on the parental states? The contributors are
Jan Claas Behrends Petra Colmorgen Bruno Coppieters Nataliia Kasianenko Alice Lackner
Mikhail Minakov and Gwendolyn Sasse.
