At first blush, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova would appear to be ideal cases for the argument that countries with stronger national identities redirect their trade and institutional ties away from Russia and toward global multilateral or Western institutions. The four countries had a shorter spell as part of the USSR; they were incorporated only after World War II. Each country had a strong nationalist movement that came to power in the Supreme Soviet elections of 1990, and each subsequently boycotted the March 1991 referendum on the preservation of the USSR on the grounds that their countries were forcibly annexed and never recognized the legitimacy of the Soviet rule. And if we look at institutional membership at the end of 2001, these countries all also look fairly similar in their institutional choices; all four countries had secured membership in the WTO.

But to draw conclusions simply on the basis of the conjuncture of evidently strong nationalist sentiments in 1990 and institutional membership as it stood in 2001 would be an error for two reasons. First and foremost, the fact that these countries had strong nationalist movements and also, ultimately, all joined liberal international trade institutions begs the empirical question of whether and how nationalism was linked to institutional choice. Second, a look only at the end of the period elides important variation within these countries over the decade.