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Russian "Eurasianism"
& the Geopolitics of The Black Sea
Olga Koulieri
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Scientific Collaborator, National Defence Minister's Staff
Russia has always held a pivotal position in classical geopolitics. At the transition
from the 19th to the 20th century, in the writings of the "father" of Anglo-Saxon
geopolitical thought, the British author Halford Mackinder, can be seen the
crystallisation of the geopolitical vision which depicted Russia as the "heartland" of
Eurasia and of the wider international system. Two decades later, in 1921, the
"Eurasianism" concept was born in Russia through the publication of a book by
Peter Savitsky entitled "Exit towards the East". The division of the planet into the
"World Ocean" and the "World Island" by Mackinder (see Map 1), led also to the
attribution to Russia of the most geopolitically desirable location in the world,
through the axiom that whoever controls the heartland would be able to
permanently dominate the Eurasian landmass and consequently gain a hegemony
over the entire world.1 Subsequent to this, the systematizer of the German
geopolitical school Karl Haushofer, introduced the concept of "four spheres of vital
area" (American, German, Russian, and Japanese).2
This idea seems to have influenced the Russian "Eurasian vision" during the
proceedings for the signing of the German-Russian Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in
1939. The Germans' confirmation that the Soviet Union - by its accession to the
Axis - would put under its occupation the central-Asian part of the planet, offered
to the Soviet Union the possibility of unhindered access to the warm southern seas,
particularly the Indian Ocean, rendering it geostrategically independent from the
frozen seas of the North. Ribbentrop emphasised this benefit to the Soviet Union a
great deal, speaking of a "natural outlet to the open seas which were so important
for Russia."3 Hitler also stressed this advantage of the relationship in his talks with
Stalin.4 Stalin however, as he inclined more towards the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical
way of thought, in addition to the control of the Persian Gulf also demanded control
over Finland and over the Straits linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean,
strategic points that Germany was not willing to assign.5
The end of the Second World War led to the adoption of elements of Mackinder's
geopolitical theories, as well as those of the American geopolitical strategist
Nicholas Spykman.6 These ideas were reflected in the establishment of the NATO
alliance, as an offset to the continuing "imperial policy" of the USSR.7 Until its
collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union presented itself as the potential liberator of the
harassed social groups and of the underdeveloped third world countries, grafting
onto the international order of the communist ideology a significant dose of
"Eurasian" geopolitical vision. At the same time, from the geostrategic point of view,
the West, following Mackinder's and Spykman's theories, had integrated to the
"capitalist" camp those countries that controlled Moscow's unhindered access to the
warm seas of the South: South Korea and Japan in Far East, Germany and the
Scandinavian countries in the European North and Greece and Turkey in the
Mediterranean.
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