This work takes a path-dependent approach in analyzing the proliferation of violence in the Baltics states and the Caucasus during the independence movements of the Soviet Union. It looks at factors such as geography, history, Western support, and mobilization type in order to explain the circumstances that affected the organization of the social movements of the 1980s, and therefore their violent or nonviolent outcomes. Collective focuses on the goal of independence in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia differed from the localized and issue-specific territorial conflicts with minorities that erupted within Georgia, and in Armenia’s dispute with Azerbaijan. Factors such as the effects of imperial domination, power dynamics between minorities, international support, and the influences of living history affected these events. This research analyzes the critical juncture of democratization in order to understand the factors that so drastically shaped the trajectories of these republics to their violent or non-violent ends.