A new paper notes that levels of Soviet nostalgia differ markedly between Nagorno Karabakh and other post-Soviet areas. “Frozen Fragments, Simmering Spaces: The Post-Soviet De Facto States” by Gerard Toal andJohn O’Loughlin is part of the upcoming compendium “25 Years of Independence: Questioning Post-Soviet” to be published by the Washington-based Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center for International Scholars.

Professors at Virginia Tech and University of Colorado Boulder, respectively, Toal and O’Loughlin have studied public opinion in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Nagorno Karabakh since 2010. Whereas in Karabakh over 50 percent of respondents thought the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a “right step”, less 15 percent thought so in South Ossetia and Transnistria, and less than 30 percent did in Abkhazia, including less than 25 percent among Abkhazia’s Armenian community.