Reply #45: Those cases are bad, but the Balkan situation predated Soviet influence

[Selatius]

Yugoslavia, much like Iraq, is an artificial creation that cobbled together several different ethnic/religious groups. Like Iraq, Yugoslavia was held together by a strong-arm dictator, and when he died, the nation splintered only a few years after. To say it was a problem of the dissolution of the USSR is to ignore past enmity in that corner of the world.

Nations like East Germany, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and many more left Soviet orbit without widespread warfare and conflict. Several of them even gave up their nuclear stockpiles and gave them to Russia or destroyed them. Czechoslovakia broke in half without violent conflict, and East Germany merged with West Germany peacefully and willingly.

I still stand by my assertion the dissolution of the Soviet Union was largely peaceful. I never said it was completely peaceful. I would say it's peaceful when compared to a hypothetical civil war for power in the lands of the USSR.