№ 6 - 2006
Chernyavsky Ye.B.
Caspian Antinomies

Not only lands, but also water expanses were divided between the states that were formed on the territory of the USSR after its disintegration. But if at the Baltic Sea, at the Sea of Azov and at the Black Sea, as well as at the Lakes Chudskoye and Pskovskoye the division of waters went off relatively painlessly, then the question of water boundaries at the Caspian Sea even now still arouses heated disputes. The article seeks to substantiate the thesis that these disputes are due to the Caspian Sea’s especial status established by bilateral agreements of Persia (Iran) and the RSFSR (the USSR). On analyzing these agreements in detail, the author reveals in them a whole number of ambiguities and contradictions, whose sources he sees in the Soviet authorities’ ideological miscalculations. He finds miscalculations of an analogous kind also in the policies of today’s Russian leadership. What prevents Russia from seeing the new by-Caspian states as subjects of international relations, equivalent to herself, is, according to his conclusion, the idea of her own mission in the post-Soviet space, idea which makes her to sacrifice her national interests for the sake of a delusive hope for gaining the devotion of the leaders of the former Union republics and for keeping within the sphere of her influence the lands of the empire that crashed down in 1917.