In countries that enclose disgruntled minorities linked to hostile powers through culture or location, defense planners face a Trojan horse dilemma. Can recruits from these groups be counted on to defend the state? This article is the first to examine the manpower policies chosen in response to this dilemma in Estonia, a small republic that inherited a large Russian population of Soviet-era settlers in 1991. It builds on historical records and recent opinion polls, which give cause for concern for Estonian defense planners contemplating the allegiance of Russian heritage soldiers. But elite interviews (N = 29) suggest that force professionalism and republican rhetoric obstruct fifth column fears from influencing manpower policies. Officers created institutions that permit recruits to prove themselves on merit while the republican citizenship discourse deterred politicians from singling out “ethnic soldiers”—thus facilitating integration.

The breakup of the Soviet Union unleashed a ‘parade of sovereignties’. One of the least understood cases in this cascade is the Talish-Mughan Autonomous Republic (TMAR) declared in southeastern Azerbaijan in the summer of 1993. What explains its sudden rise and abrupt downfall? We address this question using first-hand insights from interviews (N=20) with participants in and observers close to the regional project. We find that long-standing stigmatization as a backward part of Azerbaijan, which earlier had served to incentivize assimilation, turned into a stimulus for mobilization among Talishis in the late-1980s. Fears for the future led regional elites to push for self-determination, but their project faced steep collective action problems. Once Baku restored its coercive clout, regional elites defected from the TMAR and locals rushed to dissociate themselves from their Talishness. Fifth column accusations induced outward allegiance to the state and a sudden ‘flip’ in social identification.

The ethnic composition of the Russian armed forces has been a source of popular speculation since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The literature suggests that in militaries where promotions occur on non-merit characteristics – such as ethnicity – a result can be lower morale, less information sharing, weaker cohesion, and ultimately inferior battlefield performance. Although studies of the “ethnic factor” in the imperial and Soviet armies abound, scholars lack microdata on the modern Russian military. Using a leaked dataset of information on almost 120,000 Russian service members, we show how ethnic inequalities and group hierarchies were reflected in the manpower of the Russian armed forces that invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Who are the guardians of separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia? These de facto states can be seen as self-determination movements or as outgrowths of Russian imperialism. We arbitrate between these competing scripts using a dataset that profiles officials in charge of high politics decision-making inside Georgia’s separatist entities from 1992 through 2020 (N=608). We find that most are sons of the soil, though Abkhazia’s guardians are more multicultural than South Ossetia’s. Russian emissaries seized influential posts inside the self-declared republics after 2003 and, since then, sit in on Security Council meetings, thus rendering them incapable of autonomous decision-making.

What makes individuals willing to defend their (adopted) homeland as their own? This is an essential question for all diverse societies. We turn to the case of Estonia, which inherited a sizable Russian-speaking population after the fall of the Soviet Union. Using recent polling data, we test demographic and attitudinal predictors of defense willingness among the first generation of males that have been raised in the republic since the restoration of independence. The results enable us to unpack differences between Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers, as well as disagreements among the latter, which shed light on the state of social cohesion in Estonia’s national fabric.

How did ethnic Azeris in the Marneuli, Bolnisi and Dmanisi districts, located inside Georgia but bordering Azerbaijan, react to the reorganisation of political space along national lines after the Soviet Union’s dissolution? ‘Beached’ in foreign states bent on nationalising their domains, minorities throughout Eurasia sometimes rejected and sometimes accepted their alien rulers. This essay examines reactions to this predicament among Georgia’s Azeris. Drawing on elite interviews and data from a matched-guise experiment, it concludes that locals have come to accept their host state after its state-building nationalism took an inclusive turn and the distinction between aliens and natives faded.

This book brings together a strong and international team of linguists, historians, and social and political scientists renowned for their expertise on North and South Caucasus. Their contributions paint a compelling picture of the region’s contested past and highlight some of the enduring challenges still confronting it. Taken together, the ten chapters of the book enhance our understanding of the region’s ancient languages, shed light on historical events of crucial significance, and uncover mechanisms behind political conflict and cooperation in the tinderbox that is the Caucasus.

As the USSR fell apart and independent countries took its place, minorities across Eurasia found themselves stranded in nationalizing states. This article focuses on one of these “beached diasporas”: Georgia’s Armenians. Through a mixed-methods approach, consisting of interviews with activists and a sociolinguistic experiment administered to adolescents (N = 529), we uncover differences among Armenians in their reactions to Georgia’s nationalization policies. Armenians from the borderland of Javakheti mobilized in defence of the in-group but their co-ethnics from the capital of Tbilisi opted for acculturation. These intragroup differences demonstrate that members of the same ethnic group can react to the same nationalization policies along disparate lines, thus adding nuance to the literature on beached diasporas in the post-Soviet space.