ARMENIA BEYOND CRISIS
by Maria Tsvetkova, Aleksei Nikolsky, Denis Malkov

WPS Agency
What the Papers Say (Russia)
December 26, 2008 Friday
Russia

POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS UNDER WAY WILL DIFFER FOR
INDIVIDUAL CIS COUNTRIES; Analysis of how CIS countries weather the
economic and financial crisis.

Authors of the review organized by Petersburg Politics Foundation
point out that better developed and less isolated countries of the
Commonwealth have more reasons to fear political destabilization as a
corollary of the crisis than their less advanced neighbors. Analyzing
the effect the crisis is having on CIS countries, experts divided
them into several groups.

"The CIS informal summit in Kazakhstan (December 19 – Vedomosti)
resolved to set up a special trust and an advanced technologies
center," President Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday. Judging by reports
in the Kazakh media, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Armenia will pool $10 billion into a special trust. Insiders say that
Russia’s and Kazakhstan’s contributions will be the largest of all.

Political and economic crisis has more or less spared Belarus,
Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova so far.

Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan are facing grave
economic difficulties which fortunately have no discernible effect
on these countries’ political stability. As far as specialists are
concerned, Georgia is the only representative of this group with a
political crisis unfolding. Even this crisis, however, was fomented
by the recently fought (and lost) war with Russia.

Economic difficulties worsen political destabilization in Tajikistan
and Ukraine. Following the principle "the worse, the better", Ukrainian
politicians perceive the crisis under way as an opportunity to crush
their political enemies. Tajikistan is even worse off. All but deprived
of export revenues due to the crash in the global cotton and aluminium
markets and seeing transactions from labor immigrants in Russia go
steadily down, Tajikistan is in trouble. Experts warn that the prospect
of serious social upheavals in this country is uncomfortably close.

Armenia is different. Facing no economic problems fomented by the
crisis under way, it only has to be on a lookout for potentially
menacing foreign political factors in connection with the unsolved
problem of Karabakh.

Andrei Grozin, an expert with the Institute of CIS Countries,
suspects that mass return of the so called Gastarbeiters from Russia
and Kazakhstan might complicate things enormously in Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan. "What I do not expect is a crisis-fomented destabilization
in authoritarian Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan," Grozin said.

Asked to estimate the possibility of crisis related mass disturbances
in CIS countries, political scientist Boris Shmelev gauged it
at 70% in Moldova, 65% in Tajikistan and Ukraine, and 30-35% in
Kazakhstan. (When informed of these estimates, Grozin accepted them
and attributed relative stability in Kazakhstan to the patience
typical of Asian mentality.)

Trying to cope, CIS countries seek assistance abroad. According
to Sergei Mikhalev of the Political Techniques Center, Kyrgyzstan
whose economy had always balanced on the edge of collapse chose the
simple way and asked Russia to loan it $2 billion. Serious risks are
perceived to exist for other countries where color revolutions took
place. That means Ukraine and Georgia whose economies have survived
so far only because of financial aid from international financial
institutions and the Western community.