Abstract

This contribution analyses the experience of the resource-rich southern Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and Mongolia during the transition. The seven countries faced similar challenges in the early 1990s: nation-building, transition from central planning, and realizing their resource wealth. Mongolia, as a nominally sovereign state and only informally the ‘sixteenth’ Soviet republic, faced an easier political task and could tackle macroeconomic problems (i.e. high inflation) faster. Tajikistan experienced civil war and Azerbaijan fought an interstate war against Armenia, while the other four Central Asian republics had a peaceful path to independence, with the Communist First Secretary becoming in each case the national President.