1 Russian ideas of peace and peacekeeping

Abstract

Emerging as a nuclear superpower after the Second World War, the Soviet Union was a contender for ideological world dominance almost until its breakup in the early 1990s. Generations of Soviet leaders interpreted their ideology as essentially conflictual, engaging with revolutionary and armed struggles across the world. In 1973, the Soviet Union participated in its very first peacekeeping mission, working under UNEF II in Egypt; however, no other missions of significant scope ever followed this instance. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia sent significant numbers of armed forces to participate in international peacekeeping in the Balkans, but Russia then left the Balkan missions in anger after the NATO forces had gone ahead with Operation Allied Force and bombed parts of Yugoslavia outside the UN mandate (Wimelius, Eklund, and Elfving 2018). Russia has participated in several other UN missions, including those in Chad, Haiti, and East Timor (Bratersky and Lukin 2017: 139). When violence erupted in the republics of Tajikistan, Georgia, and Moldova in the 1990s, Russia became the lead nation and the backbone of forces from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in response. 1 In four cases, Russia initiated and led peacekeeping without the UN: