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Daniel 7.5

And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1568.html
When the Soviet Union collapsed the countries of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine broke away. They had to navigate the fast-changing and fluid post-Cold War world economy by choosing either Europe and the European Union, or Eurasia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. But how were their national identities going to help them decide?

Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine all began from more or less the same starting point. After the Soviet Union collapsed, all post-Soviet states were quite dependent economically on Russia. In each country, the titular ethnic group was the overwhelming majority, comprising at least 73 percent of the population. Economic links with the west were few. All three were relatively advanced economically compared to other nations in the former Soviet Union, so they seemed best prepared to make an economic transition to independent statehood. None of them-unlike regions in Central Asia and the Caucasus-faced serious internal upheaval or violence.

And, Abdelal contends, mainstream nationalists in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine in the first post-Soviet decade had nearly identical ideologies and foreign policy goals.

For nationalists in all three countries, Russia was the historical "Other," the nation against which they had to defend themselves. All considered Russia a threat, not so much because they feared a military invasion over their borders, but rather because they dreaded any repercussions of economic dependence on Russia. All were strongly pro-European. It is Abdelal's belief that if Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalists had had their way, their states' foreign economic strategies during the 1990s would have been nearly identical.

For him, the political economy of post-Soviet international relations revolved around one basic question: "Did post-Soviet societies and politicians agree with their nationalists, or not?" The views of former communists-who rose to power in all three states-were crucial, as it turned out.

These are the three ribs that the bear consumes.