Irredentist Secessions as a form of Territorial Conflicts in the Post-Socialist Space: eruption, intercourse, outcomes

Fadeeva Ekaterina Valerevna Senior Lecturer, Branch of the State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education of the Moscow region "Dubna University" - Dmitrov Institute of Continuing Education 141801, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Dmitrov, mkr. DZFS, 23, kab. 402 fadey8@mail.ru

1. Introduction

According to the generally accepted political narrative, the collapse of the two leading socialist states of Europe – the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia – did not lead to the emergence of large-scale territorial conflicts between the newly independent countries created on their ruins due to the automatic recognition of the administrative borders that existed at the time of the collapse as interstate. However, within these countries, quite quickly a number of nominally internal conflicts were formed for them, in which the political, economic and socio-cultural structure of the new state entities was disputed. Each of these conflicts in itself seemed to be a manifestation of some local historical, ethnic or socio-cultural characteristics of certain regions, causing their desire for autonomy within the framework of new state formations or separatism and secession from their composition. At the same time, the fact was ignored that for many "rebellious" regions, the true goal of participating in the conflict was not so much obtaining broader rights of self-government as such, as reunification with another state closer in socio-cultural characteristics, which jeopardized the principle of disintegration along administrative borders. This goal has not always been officially stated since the outbreak of the conflict, in some cases the current political context allowed us to count on the possibility of maintaining productive ties with a kindred people without directly becoming part of the "ethnic homeland", and only with the passage of time and the failure of attempts to find a compromise formula for interaction with the authorities of the newly independent states, the "rebellious" regions passed to an open course for reunification.

This allows us to conclude that many armed conflicts in the post–socialist space were initially irredentist in nature, since they pursued the goal of reuniting peoples divided between different states as a result of the dismantling of large federal states, and therefore represented irredentist secessions - a struggle for territory between the mother state (which was one of the former republics of the federation) and secession – a politically and territorially organized community living in this republic, claiming to separate from the parent state for subsequent reunification with another former republic of the federation, more attractive for secession for ethnic and/or political reasons and referred to in this article as the patron state (patronage state) of the secession^[1].

Among the conflicts of this type are the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Transnistrian and Gagauz conflicts, the South Ossetian conflict, the transition of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the war in the Donbas, the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and sometimes the Kosovo crisis. (Kosovo pursued the goal of unification with Albania, which was not previously part of the SFRY, and in this part the Kosovo conflict does not fall under the general description we have given.) The secession of Abkhazia stands apart, since at no point did it pursue the goal of joining another state after separation from Georgia, that is, it was not irredentist. The key element uniting all the cases considered is the technology of limited support from the patron State (or its society), the leading ethnic group of which is divided between different countries, despite the fact that the patron state continues to recognize the independence of the parent state and does not wage a total war with it to impose reintegration or its own version of territorial division.

Cumulatively, these conflicts, which were very heterogeneous in the initial degree of antagonism, the pace of unfolding and transition to the armed stage and the scale of violence, threatened the new territorial organization of the post-socialist space and the viability of the political order formed on its basis in the eastern part of the European continent. But if in the territory of the former Yugoslavia this manifested itself already at the initial stage of its formation (in fact, the process of the collapse of the SFRY was accompanied by the promotion of secessionist demands by local communities), then in the post-Soviet space there are a limited number and smaller scale of such conflicts, their territorial localization, moderation of the initially declared goals of "rebellious" regions and a relatively rapid transfer from the armed stage to the negotiation room was created by the illusion of their periphery, limitation and small structural significance for this space. In most domestic and foreign studies, post-Soviet conflicts appeared to be one of the factors of fragmentation, instability and conflictogenicity of this space, but not a threat to the viability of the new political order on its territory. And only the events of 2014, when such a conflict with clearly voiced irredentist goals arose on a fairly large territory of post-Maidan Ukraine, the evidence of this threat became indisputable.

Nevertheless, by now it is possible to talk about the complete or partial defeat of the irredentist secessions considered as long as the conflict with their participation at least formally did not go beyond the framework of the mother state and was not accompanied by open, official intervention of the patronage state or third states on the side of the secession: the attempt of a "quasi-independent" (without open and official intervention of the patron State) separation led to the restoration of the control of the parent state over all or part of the secession territory and the elimination of the prospects of joining the patronage states in the foreseeable future.

The present work is intended to answer two fundamental questions: firstly, why the Irredentist secession became the main form of territorial conflict in the post-socialist space, and secondly, what factors caused the successes and defeats of Irredentist secessions on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

Despite the vastness of the scientific literature on the topic of conflicts in the Balkans and the CIS in the post-bipolar period, their consideration was mainly practical, historically-oriented and did not abound in deep theoretical generalizations. In studies aimed at identifying and studying the general properties of these conflicts, their generalization was carried out according to some formal signs or according to a common historical and political context, for example, attributing them to the consequences of the collapse of large complex state entities ^{[1, 2]} or manifestations of ethno-national contradictions ^{[3, 4]}, the presence of unrecognized political parties as participants subjects, so-called de facto states ^[5], "frozen" status or their attribution to separatist or secessionist type conflicts ^[6]. For example, in A. A. Tokarev's dissertation ^[7], a model was proposed that allows predicting the success or failure of a secession depending on a combination of objective factors (geographical, ethnic, political, etc.). At the same time, in most existing studies, the territorial aspect of these conflicts is not problematized: their geographical localization over time has become perceived as a given, and the possibilities of their qualitatively different course in different political-territorial formats have not been closely studied.

The irredentist nature of the conflicts under consideration has also not been taken into account for quite a long time either in academic debates or in political practice. This was partly due to the lack of systematic pedaling of this aspect in the political discourse of the participants in these conflicts, partly with some degree of stigmatization of irredentism as a destructive trend that could lead to destabilization of the current political system, which was greatly facilitated by the promotion and maintenance of the narrative about the allegedly destructive role of Serbian nationalism and irredentism in fueling conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Russian researchers dealing with the problems of separatism and secessionism, speaking about possible types of secessions, cited their division into secessions in line with irredentism and independence ^{[8, pp. 25-29],[9, 10]}, pointed to the presence of irredentist secessions in modern Europe and the CIS ^[11], but did not delve into their specifics and they did not set out to identify differences in their origin and course from the "classical" secessions of the autonomist or separatist type. The connection between irredentism and the development of territorial conflicts was occasionally touched upon in some works of Western authors ^{[12, 13]}. However, the substantive study of irredentism in the post-Soviet space unfolds only in the 2010s and mainly concerns Russian irredentism in a predominantly negative way ^{[14, 15, 16, 17, 18]}.

Nevertheless, understanding the irredentist nature of a number of post-socialist conflicts, along with emphasizing the importance of their territorial dimension, significantly changes the assessment of their results: if for an "ordinary" secession, the main criterion for success is achieving political independence and separation from the mother state, then for an irredentist secession, the desired end result is joining a related state, and separation from the mother state it is considered only as a stage on the way to this goal. This, in turn, introduces into the circle of direct interested parties also the sister State to which the secession seeks to join, its interests and the degree of participation in the conflict, including the willingness to act as the patron state of the secession and provide it with this or that support. The presence of a patron state also raises the question of the degree of endogeneity of secessionist aspirations or their inspiration by the patronage state ^{[8, p. 28]}.

Based on this vision of the subject of the study, we will try to answer the questions posed in the work, taking into account both the structural features of the historical and political context and the subjective properties of the actors involved in this context, their motivation and the chosen strategies.

2. Irredentism and secessionism at the stage of the collapse of socialist federations

The orientation towards irredentism as a concrete political project arose in different parts of the post-socialist space at different times and on different scales, which was largely due to the degree of maturity and rootedness of the national political projects of the newly independent States at the time of their formation, as well as the degree of awareness and commitment of their population to their national identity. The nationalism of the majority of post-Yugoslav states manifested itself already at the stage of their formation in rather sharp, and sometimes radical forms. Local elites perceived the collapse of the Yugoslav federation as a long-awaited opportunity to implement their national projects to the fullest, therefore, the preservation of their own national identity outside the territory of the "native" state for a number of living peoples has become problematic, and sometimes even impossible. In such circumstances, the desire for reunification has turned into an uncontested and inevitable political choice for "foreign" Serbs and a somewhat less imperative, but very relevant choice for "foreign" Croats and Albanians. This predetermined the initial irredentist nature of the conflicts that broke out in the Balkans and their significant territorial coverage.

However, with such coverage, post-Yugoslav irredentism was quite quickly (with the help of, among other things, pressure from external players) limited by the recognition of the former administrative borders of the federation as interstate and the refusal to extend the right to political self-determination to communities that were not subjects of the former federation. This meant, firstly, the consent of potential patron states to formally consolidate new borders without putting forward large-scale territorial claims (in fact, the rejection of direct irredentism), and secondly, the forced need for national communities that found themselves outside their "native" states to build their subjectivity "from scratch" and prove the right to own political choice in direct forceful opposition to the newly formed mother state, which, in turn, was not limited by any legal framework in relation to nominally internal territories.

In the post-Soviet space, similar processes unfolded more slowly and on a much smaller scale. This was primarily due to the fact that the irredentist sentiments of a significant part of the population of the former USSR were not associated with individual national projects, but with the restoration in one form or another of the socio-cultural integrity of the former Union space, even with the preservation of the nominal independence of the new state entities. Clearly expressed irredentism already at the initial stage arose only in those regions where the new mother states declared from the very beginning national projects that deny or displace alternative socio-cultural identities. Since such trends were observed so explicitly only in the peripheral states of the post-Soviet space, the most acute secessionist-type conflicts unfolded there. At the same time, Russian irredentism as the most powerful movement capable of jeopardizing the existence of newly formed, but still very unstable mother states, was initially restrained due to expectations of a likely new interstate association based on the CIS or other political frameworks, as well as the ambiguity of the national projects of these states and the identification fluctuations of their Russian-speaking population. As a result, the irredentist sentiments of a significant part of the population of the post-Soviet space were narrowed down to several local Irredentist secessions rather widely, but insufficiently clearly expressed.

It should also be noted that potential patron states are not ready to implement irredentist projects not only in the form of direct territorial conflicts with new neighbors, but also in the form of recognition of the subjectivity and legitimacy of the claims of their foreign compatriots. Instead of openly defending their irredentist or at least secessionist aspirations, these States preferred to take the position of neutral external forces or unbiased intermediaries between the parties to the conflicts, which were supposed to develop principles for resolving conflicts in cooperation with each other without any preconditions, except for the refusal to use force. The consequence of this position was the rather rapid imposition of negotiation formats on irredentist secessions, restraining their power capabilities, but not guaranteeing them even minimal political recognition.

Thus, the format of the secessionist conflict became the only possible one for irredentist-minded national communities that found themselves outside the "native" states, in conditions when the former administrative borders received the status of internationally recognized, these communities themselves did not receive a clear legal status and the right to self-determination, and the "native" states were not ready to openly support irredentist projects are neither politically, by recognizing the subjectivity of "their" communities, nor by force resources.

3. The general scheme of irredentist secession: cases of success and failure

All cases of defeat of irredentist secessions in the conflicts we have considered are distinguished by the passage of certain stages, namely:

·         The starting point is the existence of a large federation with certain administrative borders that do not correspond to real ethnic, cultural, political borders, but become the legal basis for new states when the federation is dismantled;

· Dismantling of the federation according to the existing administrative borders, with which de facto and/or de jure both the central authorities, which are being deprived of their powers, and the authorities of the largest republic of the federation (which then becomes a patron state), who refuse to restore control over the territory by all possible means, including military ones, agree;

· Declaration by individual territories of the desire to leave the newly formed state in order to become part of a neighboring state that was previously part of a large federation and is now becoming a patron state (this stage may either follow the previous one or coincide with it in time);

·         The primary armed clash of secessions with the parent states with the tacit limited assistance of the patron states, the formation of a power balance without an unambiguous advantage of any of the parties;

· The formation of one or more negotiation formats with the condition of establishing a truce and abandoning hostilities;

·         The gradual shift of the balance of power in favor of the mother state, making the goals of the irredentist secession unattainable without the open official intervention of the patron State;

·         The escalation of the conflict, as a rule, on the part of the parent state, which puts the patron state before a choice - to openly support the secession or allow its forceful suppression.

In the cases analyzed by us, Serbia (secession of the RSK from Croatia and RS from BiH), Armenia (secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan) and Russia (secession of Transnistria from Moldova and Donbass from Ukraine until 2022, South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia until 2008), as well as Croatia (secession The Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna from Bosnia and Herzegovina) and partly Albania (secession of Kosovo from Yugoslavia until 1999). As of mid-March 2022, only the secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, the secession of Crimea from Ukraine and the secession of Kosovo from Serbia can be called relatively successful, that is, having achieved at least a full-fledged separation from the mother state. At the same time, in the first case, the secession was realized after the full-scale, official and direct intervention of the Russian armed forces in the ongoing conflict on the side of the secessions with the defeat of the armed forces of the mother state and Russia's declared obligation to protect the borders of these secessions. In the second case, the secession was the result of direct (although not advertised at first) intervention by the Russian armed forces, which provided protection for those illegal, from the point of view of Ukraine, actions that were taken to separate the Crimea, as well as a quick decision on the entry of Crimea into Russia, which extended to Crimea the obligations of full protection from the Russian states. In the third case, the successful secession of Kosovo was based on the military defeat of the JNA inflicted by NATO forces in 1999.

All attempts of irredentist secessions, as long as they enjoyed limited non-public support from the patron states, ended either in complete defeat (Republika Srpska Krajina in Croatia), or partial defeat with no chance of joining the patron state (Nagorno-Karabakh, Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna), or frozen an unrecognized status (Transnistria, Donbass), radically diverging from the original irredentist goal of secession (reunification of the people in one state), or a complete rejection of secession in exchange for limited autonomy (Gagauzia).

4. Relations of power and political balance in time

The analyzed cases allow us to formulate a hypothesis that in modern conditions, the very strategy of irredentist secession through the use of proxy structures, and not the direct involvement of the armed forces of the patron state (as a result, the features of the classic interstate territorial and intra-state conflicts are intertwined in the conflict), leads, at least, to the defeat of the secession and, therefore, the institution of a territorial dispute in the irredentist secession format (with the described features, including limited support from the patron state) leads to the mother state gaining an advantage.

This is due to a complex of reasons. The main one is that after the territorial conflict is directed along the course of an irredentist secession with limited support, the key factor determining the outcome of the confrontation is the balance of forces between the mother state and the secession. At the same time, the power potential of the patron state affects this ratio only indirectly: it is not the volume of its potential itself that is taken into account, but only the part that hypothetically can be used to support secession. This circumstance reinforces the element of instability of the entire conflict configuration and increases the motivation of the participants to use force: the parent state fears that the success of the secession will lead to the strengthening of the patron state, and increases the pressure on the secession, whereas the secession, realizing that the support of the patron state is likely to be strengthened in an escalation, it can provoke the mother state to escalate.

The power qualities of the secession, in turn, depend on its success at the stage of the primary clash and the positions from which it agrees to move into the negotiating plane. In the cases indicated by us, at the stage of the initial clash, secessions did not seek the formalized consent of the parent state to their separation and for various reasons could not impose this decision on it by force, but the parent state could not quickly suppress the secession due to the support of the latter by the patron state or due to the balance of forces at the start of the territorial dispute ^{[19, p. 126-127]}. This led to the freezing or prolongation of the conflict, when at least one of the parties was not ready to agree to the contractual consolidation of the status quo in the proposed negotiation formats, counting on the ability to change it in their favor in the future, but continued to participate in negotiations to demonstrate interest in a peaceful solution to the conflict. Some domestic researchers believe that such a freeze "actually means the victory of supporters of secession, who receive the desired statehood, albeit with a reduced international political status" ^{[20, p. 143]}. However, practice has shown that such a "reduced" status does not provide any guarantees of actual survival, nor an irreversible assertion of political subjectivity. The forceful suppression of an "unrecognized state" is not something forbidden or unacceptable for modern international law, and even in cases where certain external players (mainly the West) seek to keep the mother state from such suppression or punish it, they, as a rule, condemn not the attempt of suppression itself, but the mistakes made in in its course, violations of human rights and other humanitarian norms.

The greater the territorial scope of the secession, its geostrategic and economic significance for the mother state, the stronger its positions and chances of asserting its own subjectivity looked, but at the same time, the more actively the mother state sought to suppress secessions and the higher its willingness to subordinate its domestic and foreign policy to the goal of achieving victory in the conflict and to increase the power potential for forceful suppression of secession in the future. Therefore, during the negotiation "freezing" of the conflict, the parent state, which enjoys the support of third countries, was able to shift the balance of power in its favor, while the secession, which enjoys only limited support from the patron state, could not increase its power potential in the same proportion.

The Serbs in Croatia could not independently achieve unilateral secession and its recognition by Croatia; the exclusion of direct assistance from Serbia made the balance of power hopeless for the Republic of Serbian Krajina and led to its military defeat. The Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Russians in Transnistria, might have been able to achieve secession and its recognition as the mother state if they had achieved a complete victory with the capture of the capital of the mother state (Sarajevo, Chisinau) and imposed their will on it at the very start of the conflict in 1992, but this was not realized for political reasons. A complete victory of Nagorno-Karabakh over Azerbaijan would be unreal without Armenia's open entry into the war, a complete victory of Donbass over Ukraine in the configuration of the conflict that has developed since May 2014. (with the secession of only two regions of Donbass instead of eight regions of Novorossiya) it became unattainable without the open military intervention of Russia. The case of the secession of Kosovo, which enjoyed the support of the West, does not fully fit into this description, but in his case, the forces of the JNA were enough to suppress the Kosovo separatists.

The motivation of patron States to support secessions may undergo various changes. From the point of view of patronage states, separatists in other countries act as "internal" agents of influence, a kind of "proxy" structures, which (at first glance) should remove responsibility from the state supporting separatism in neighboring countries for a direct violation of international law, which would be obvious if the said the state has entered into a direct open conflict over the territory with its neighbor. At the same time, since this state bears the entire main burden of institutional and economic support of these entities, such responsibility can be assigned to it at any time, and this is all the more likely the more external players pursuing their geopolitical goals are ready to support the parent state against the patron state ^[21]. As a result, secessions become elements of the overall balance, firstly, between the patronage state and external players, and secondly, between the patronage and the parent states. In such conditions, the support of secession for the patron state, which does not pursue open irredentist goals, makes sense either as an element of bargaining with external players and the parent state, or as an instrument of undermining the latter from within, and outside of irredentist tasks, such undermining in itself can be regarded as excessive destabilization of the adjacent space. Over time and with the consolidation of the actual status quo, patronage States are more likely to lose motivation to support secessions, unless secessions are given the opportunity to influence their domestic policy.

Thus, the temporal factor is more likely to contribute to the failure of the secession: after freezing or delaying each of the listed conflicts, the balance of power and/or foreign policy configuration shifts in favor of the mother state, which increases the chances of the secession's defeat; limited support from the patron state is insufficient to compensate for this change.

The situation radically changes at the moment of military escalation of the conflict or the emergence of an immediate threat of such escalation, when the patronage state is faced with the prospect of an early forceful suppression of secession. In this case, the motivation to support secession may increase dramatically, but the range of forms of support remains quite wide. The patron state can indirectly prevent the forcible seizure of the secession – and this can also be considered support, or it can go to the political recognition of the secession and the establishment of special relations with it. In other words, the patronage state has no unambiguous imperative to support the irredentist goals of secession even in the event of an attempt of forceful suppression by the mother state. The choice of a specific form of support depends on many considerations, first of all, on the assessment of the potential political and material costs that this or that form of secession support may require. In some cases, there may be a situation where any form of support for an irredentist secession threatens to turn into serious costs, even if it does not provide for reunification as such, since the irredentist goals of the secession are automatically projected onto the patronage state.

The main regulatory factor limiting the full-scale support of the irredentist secession by the patron State is the principle of international law on the inviolability of borders and the inadmissibility of changing them by force, limiting the scope of intervention by the patron State of the secession if it imitates following this norm and is not ready for open intervention and changing borders by force, and is also not ready automatically use all your power potential when the mother state tries to change the result. If the interest of external players (mainly Western countries) in the victory of the mother state is added to this, this allows the latter to use force or other instruments of pressure indefinitely, forcing the secession to surrender ^[22]. In the cases we are examining, the choice of controversial strategies for supporting irredentist secessions by Serbia, Armenia and Russia can be explained by the fact that the realities of post–bipolar Europe, which excluded open forceful and contractual border changes between neighboring states, left only one way to resolve territorial conflicts - through secession. According to the generally accepted view on this issue, presented in S. V. Golunov's article, "given that the current norms of international law do not encourage annexation, it is usually more realistic for a state interested in the success of the movement of its "ethnic brethren" to seek not the annexation of the territory to itself, but a significant strengthening of its influence in the irredentist zone movements with the formal preservation of the status quo, or with the support of the self-declaration of independence by this territory" ^[23]. However, the results of such tactics for patronage States cannot be called satisfactory.

These factors seem sufficient to predict the results of a territorial conflict, provided that it develops in the format of an irredentist secession with limited support from the patron State. It is most likely that such a conflict will end in favor of the mother state, unless the secession succeeds in achieving direct and open intervention of the patronage state on its side.

5. Strategies of patron States and possible alternatives to the Irredentist secession model

The defeat of the majority of Irredentist secessions in the post-socialist space with serious political and material consequences for the patron states forces us to turn to the question of whether the choice in favor of the irredentist secession model is rational from the point of view of the interests of these states themselves. The circumstances under the influence of which this choice was made at the stage of the collapse of the Union federations were described above. But it is necessary to consider whether such a choice was uncontested and whether it was possible to reconsider it at later stages of the development of the described Irredentist secession scenario.

Firstly, these circumstances themselves were not inevitable – they were caused by the previous mistakes of these States. Serbia, Armenia and Russia did not exhaust all the possibilities, including military ones, of preserving the union states, recognized their dismantling (and at certain stages initiated it) and recognized the independence of other republics of the federation until all disputed issues that could arise as a result of separation were fully resolved. (Moreover, Armenia initiated the withdrawal from the USSR earlier than Azerbaijan under the pretext that the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh could not be solved under the authority of the union center.) By itself, the recognition by the patronage state of those states with which a territorial conflict is likely to arise due to political and ethnic heterogeneity and the proximity of part of the population to the patronage state automatically reduces the political possibilities of the patronage state, since an attempt of its open intervention and violation of the status quo can be interpreted as aggression, and covert intervention, most likely, will not allow the secession to be fixed, but will still lead to costs due to international condemnation.

Secondly, in the cases we have analyzed, making a decision on limited support for secessions even after the recognition of the independence of the parent States was not the only possible one, since at the stage of the primary clash, the balance of power between the patronage and the parent States, and sometimes between the secessions and the parent States, allowed the dispute to be resolved militarily by inflicting complete defeat on the latter. The rejection of such a development of events and contributing to the closure of irredentism within the narrow framework of certain peripheral territories in order to avoid large-scale destabilization of the newly created states meant the adoption of a scenario in which the patron states were guaranteed risks and losses due to the shift of the balance of power in favor of the parent state.

Thirdly, after negotiations within the framework of formats imposed by external players reached an impasse, there was no need to continue to keep conflicts in a "frozen" state and preserve political structures that allow the parent states to build up their power potential to strike a possible blow at secessions in the future. The exhaustion of negotiating possibilities could and should have entailed steps demonstrating the willingness of patronage States to ensure the survival and protection of "their" secessions and to transfer issues related to them to the plane of direct interaction with the parent States. The absence of such steps significantly complicated decision-making in a crisis, especially with regard to the grounds for providing direct military assistance to secessions.

Thus, the choice by Serbia, Armenia and Russia of a strategy of limited support for irredentist secessions led to losses associated with accusations of interference and attempts to acquire foreign territories, but did not allow them to obtain territorial advantages compensating for these losses, since this format of the territorial dispute led to the defeat of the secession and the consolidation of the disputed territory to the parent state. Going beyond this format, allowed by Russia in 2008 and 2022, entailed higher costs for it than those that would have followed with a full-scale open military intervention at the very start of the territorial conflict.

5. Conclusions

Comparison and synthesis of facts about the current and completed conflicts on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and the USSR allows us to draw the following conclusions:

1) irredentist secession has become the main form of territorial conflict in the post-socialist space due to the unwillingness and unwillingness of most newly independent states to question the principle of preserving the administrative borders of the former Soviet republics as interstate borders and provoke direct interstate conflicts;

2) the format of the irredentist secession in the form in which it took shape in the post-socialist space provided, firstly, the closure of irredentism within the framework of certain peripheral regions with limited opportunities for independent governance, and secondly, the denial of these regions of the right to political self-determination and to any political subjectivity as such outside the limits of the mother state (in fact, pushing them out of irredentism into secession) and, thirdly, providing these regions with limited power and economic support sufficient for self-defense, but insufficient to defeat the mother state;

3) over the past thirty years, the Irredentist secession format has proved its inefficiency and inability to prevent the emergence of large-scale interstate conflicts: at one stage or another of its development, the Irredentist secession was subjected to a direct military attack from the mother state, which forced the patron state to make a choice between suppressing a related secession and open military intervention on its side;

4) the main factor leading to such a result was the shift of the balance of power in favor of the mother state during the negotiation "freeze" of the conflict, which allows us to count on the forceful suppression of secession without the intervention of the patron state;

5) even if the patron States initially do not share the irredentist goals of secessions, at a time of crisis they are forced to provide open support to secessions and create political and legal grounds for this, thereby contributing to the realization of these goals.

^[1] In the classification of subjects involved in secessionist conflicts, we borrow the categorical apparatus from A. A. Tokarev's dissertation research ^[7]. In this article, by secessions we mean both the process/result of secession and the territorial-political entity separating.