Taras Kuzio

The Crimea was the only region of Ukraine in the 1990s where separatism arose and inter-ethnic conflict potentially could have taken place between the Ukrainian central government, ethnic Russians in the Crimea, and Crimean Tatars. Such a conflict would have inevitably drawn in Russia and Turkey. Russia had large numbers of troops in the Crimea within the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine also was a nuclear military power until 1996. This book analyses two inter-related issues. Firstly, it answers the question why Ukraine-Crimea-Russia traditionally have been a triangle of conflict over a region that Ukraine, Tatars and Russia have historically claimed. Secondly, it explains why inter-ethnic violence was averted in Ukraine despite Crimea possessing many of the ingredients that existed for Ukraine to follow in the footsteps of inter-ethnic strife in its former Soviet neighbourhood in Moldova (Trans-Dniestr), Azerbaijan (Nagorno Karabakh), Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), and Russia (Chechnya).

Taras Kuzio, BA (Sussex), MA (London), PhD (Birmingham), formerly a senior research fellow at Yale, Toronto and Birmingham, is a Visiting Professor at George Washington University. He is the author of Ukrainian Security Policy (CSIS 1995), Ukraine under Kuchma (Macmillam 1997), Ukraine: State and Nation Building (Routledge 1998), Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence (Macmillan 1994 & 2000), joint author of Politics and Society in Ukraine (Westview 1999), editor of Contemporary Ukraine (M.E. Sharpe 1998), and joint editor of State and Institution Building in Ukraine (St. Martin's Press 1999), Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy (Praeger 2002) and Dilemmas of State-Led Nation Building in Ukraine (Praeger 2002). His articles have appeared in, among other periodicals, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Government and Opposition, Journal of Democracy, Politics, Journal of Political Ideologies, Contemporary Politics, Religion, State and Society, Nationalities Papers, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nations and Nationalism, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Ethnicities, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and Armed Forces and Society.