For decades these peripheral republics were kept in orbit by the immense power of the imperial capital, Moscow, and the transition to a new order has not been easy. In these outposts the end of the "Pax Sovietica" gave people the freedom to reinvent themselves and begin a new future, with very different results: some lost everything in bloody civil wars, others find themselves in tiny "pariah" states almost closed to the outside world. The story of six real places, existing before the world’s eyes, which together are unfinished chapters of Soviet history.