Nitpick: Chechnya and Transdnistria weren't countries (at least officially). The first is part of Russia, the second officially part of Moldova.

Yes, I was torn between including them all as "ambivalent cases" or leaving them out and risk being accused of skewing the numbers in favor of my position.  ;-)

Note that my focus was on Europe, and the countries you mentioned are the European ones.

Whether they are European or not was not the issue for me.  Rather, it was whether mass "autonomization" of regions into sovereign states can happen peacefully in a short period of time.  I do not see any a priori reason why non-European examples should be treated differently than European examples.  If there were an alternate example in Africa, Asia or the Americas that came to mind, I might have used it as well.

Also note that our discussion wasn't only about violence, but disenfranchisement, too, and that's the main problem in the Baltics.

True.

I also know that there is one border-related big issue with certainty: the Ferghana Valley, home to the Central Asian tradition of Islamic fundies, was divided by Stalin between Uzbegistan, Tadjikistan and Khyrgyzistan in the most twisted way.

Stalin did twist things up pretty well, didn't he.  Again, it makes me wonder whether the Soviet Union would have come apart less violently had he left the peoples of that country alone.

Separatism can be driven by three different forces, of which just one is sufficient: (1) majority opinion of the populace in a territory, (2) power aspirations of certain politicians or potentates, (3) facts created by small groups using violence. Separatism can be blocked by the same three different kinds of forces, with the complication that in all three cases, the mover (popular majority, politician, armed group) can be within the supposed-to-separate community or the rest of the large community.

This paragraph was really helpful to me for grasping separatism.  Is this your own analysis, or a standard one among in history and/or political science?

A typical separatist struggle will not only pinch the different kinds of forces against each other (say, an armed group against a majority opinion against separation), but the various forces will try to do some gerrymandering. I mean disputes about what exactly the borders of the splitting-off part should be (compare Ireland and Croatia), deny voting rights to certain groups (beyond Czech stateless Gypsies and RUssians in the Baltics, there is Montenegro, independent only because Montenegrins living in Serbia were denied the vote), or even, ethnic cleanse (as in most cases in the post-WWI and post-WWII separations which you still don't seem to have contemplated for a big picture), be it with police or military power.

When I read this, it occurred to me that there must be some subfield of politcal science/history that focuses specifically on separatist and independence movements, though I had never been aware of any before.  A diary -- or series of diaries -- comparing and contrasting various such movements would be fascinating and really useful for these discussions.

As for the post-WWI and post-WWII separations, well I had thought of these, but I hastily assumed that conditions had changed, people had changed, to the point that where looking at more recent events -- i.e. the break-up of the USSR -- would be much more informative.  But now that you and Miguel have significantly dismantled that model of "peaceful" separatism, I'll go back further historically in the spirit of plus ça change....  (Also, a diary comparing and contrasting separatisms that only goes 20 years or so would be quite shallow.)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.