‘Arab Spring’: Causes, Features and Political Consequences For the Countries of the Middle East Region and North Africa

Abstract

The article, based on the existing historiographical and source base, outlines the causes of the revolutionary events that took place in 2010-2011 in a number of countries of the Middle East and North Africa and which became known under the name ‘Arab Spring’. The author made an attempt to classify the specified events according to the features of their course and consequences. Accordingly, four main types were distinguished: the Tunisian-Egyptian one, where in the conditions of the existence of more developed social and economic institutions, a higher level of general education and national self-awareness of the population, waves of protests ended with the overthrow of the ruling regimes and the achievement of relative stabilization; the Libyan one, the feature of which was a tough military confrontation with the intervention of external forces, which led to the collapse of the regime in Libya and the actual disintegration of the state; the Yemeni variant, in which inter-confessional, regional and inter-clan differences played an important role in the emergence of the protest movement; the Syrian version of the ‘Arab Spring’ turned out to be the most tragic and bloody. Syria has become a country where modern Russia’s desire to define its geopolitical interests and demonstrate its ability to defend them by political and military methods has become evident. It became a kind of testing ground, where the methods of war, the means of mass murder, which later Moscow began to use in Ukraine in the course of the criminal war of aggression, were practiced.