Russia: geopolitics from the heartland

P. 192–216.

Morozova N., Astrov A.

This article accounts for the revival of geopolitics in Russian post-Soviet foreign policy thinking and also for the fact that geopolitics-inspired foreign policy prescriptions had relatively little impact on the actual conduct of Russian foreign policy. It is argued that classical geopolitics was revived in Russia in order to objectively present the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a crisis. The crisis, in turn, was constructed using a number of themes first articulated by classical Eurasians, namely ideology, modernisation and Russia's distinctiveness. However, geopolitical thinking had little practical relevance because the solution to the crisis was eventually conceptualized in non-geopolitical terms.

Keywords: геополитика, евразийство, geopolitics, кризис идентичности, identity crisis, российская внешняя политика, Russian foreign policy, eurasianism, ontological security, heartland, онтологическая безопасность, осевой регион

In book

The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.