Slavic geopolitics

The issue of geopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe has regained relevance in recent years. The annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014 and the subsequent war in Donbas have shown that the borders existing in our part of the continent are much less stable than one would have thought before the end of 2013. The events, which unfolded before our eyes in the first half of 2014, brought discussions of Russian imperial actions to the foreground. Supporters of Russian imperialism, such as Aleksandr Dugin and Aleksandr Prokhanov, were daily guests on mainstream Russian state TV for months. Their passionate rhetoric about the geopolitical necessity to maintain control over Novorossiya by Moscow portended a catastrophe for independent Ukraine.

From Intermarium to Three Seas

The aggressive politics of the Russian Federation forced countries directly (or potentially) threatened by Kremlin’s imperialism to look for ways to preserve their independence and security. The most classic example of this process is the renaissance of the idea of Intermarium in Poland, which followed the victory of Law and Justice (PiS) in October 2015 and is now being championed, in a somewhat revised version, under the Three Seas Initiative. Historically speaking, the concept of Intermarium was formulated at the beginning of the 20th century by Józef Piłsudski and his circles. It assumed close co-operation between countries located in between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas. Such a bloc was meant to defy Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other.

The idea of Intermarium also saw various interpretations beyond Poland’s borders. It was especially popular in Ukraine where its roots can be found, for example, in the works of Dmytro Doncov and Yuriy Lypa. However, having accepted the basic elements of Piłsudski’s idea, Ukrainian thinkers changed its sense by putting a united Ukrainian state at the centre of the Eastern European geopolitical project. This vision assumed close co-operation between Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states. Its alterations included participation of either Belarus or the Caucuses, or even the Scandinavian states.

Given the above context as well the increasing number of gatherings (summits and conferences) devoted to Intermarium or Three Seas, the publication of the book, Slavic geopolitics. Shapers of Russian, Ukrainian and Czechoslovak geopolitics and their ideological-territorial conceptions, authored by a Polish geography professor named Piotr Eberhardt, seems very timely. Composed of 12 articles focusing on the shapers and theories of Russian, Ukrainian and Czechoslovak geopolitics, as well as Polish pan-Slavism, the idea itself is excellent. Yet one may have several reservations when it comes to the book’s actual content. 

Forgotten geopoliticians

Eberhardt’s work undeniably adds real value to the current debate on grand geopolitical concepts in our region. Most of all, it brings back the ideas of many forgotten thinkers, such as Ivan Dusinky. Born in Odesa, Dusinky developed a radically maximalist programme that assumed incorporation of almost the whole of Turkey and vast areas of China and Russia. Banned by the Soviet authorities, and forgotten about for many years, these visions are now slowly and defiantly returning to Russian discourse. In fact, since the 2003 publication of Dusinsky’s book Russia’s Geopolitics, many different right-wing and imperialistic groups, including those related to the International Eurasian Movement, have started making references to these ideas even though society as a whole still has limited knowledge of them.

In Ukraine such a forgotten geopolitician was Tymish Olesiyuk – an activist of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. His vision based on the “islands” of the Ukrainian population dispersed throughout the USSR (such as the Far East or Kazakhstan), created the idea of a “Federation of a United Ukraine”. Regrettably, this idea is not presented in Eberhardt’s book even though some other equally important topics are discussed.

Beyond Ukraine, pan-Slavic geopolitical visions have been very poorly tackled in the literature. In Poland, for example, there is a lack of discussion on the views of people like Stepan Rudnytsky or the above-mentioned Lypa. The situation seems to be slightly better in the Anglo-Saxon literature where we can find a few articles or book chapters devoted to these thinkers. The same is true about discussions on inter-war Slovak politician, Milan Hodža, whose concepts are barely known beyond Slovak and Czech literature; or the author of the concept the Slavic Reich – Karel Kramář – whose ideas are mostly discussed in Czech or German texts but are not known in Poland where they could be of relevance to quite a few scholars.

Thus when it comes to factual value, Slavic geopolitics calls for praise: in particular, the presentation of Hodža and Kramář, as well as the achievements of Polish pan-Slavism at the turn of the 20th century. In many cases Eberhardt’s analyses of these works are accurate and to the point. Such is the assessment of the influence of Rudnytski’s concept of Ukrainian ethnic territory on later Ukrainian territorial theories, or the statement that ideas that were created at the turn of the 20th century cannot be assessed through the prism of today’s standards mainly because phenomena such as colonialism and conquests back then were seen as completely acceptable.

Lacking wider reflection

Unfortunately, Eberhardt’s book also has some flaws. The most striking is the incoherent structure, where information provided in the first part of the book overlaps with the second. Another weakness is the fact that it was not written by a historian. Eberhardt, to be sure, is a prominent geographer with impressive achievements, but his chapters lack a wider reflection on the geopolitical thinkers’ he discusses. Visibly, the author relies too much on the work of Feliks Koneczny. Koneczny was a theoretician of civilisation in the first half of the 20th century, popular among the Polish right. However, while his work is a very influential (and often quoted next to authors like Mikołaj Danilewski, Arnold Toynbee and Samuel Huntington), writing about Russia’s “Byzantine-Turanian cultural values” in an academic paper is a completely unnecessary intrusion.

It is also quite clear that Eberhardt only has superficial knowledge of some of the topics discussed. For example, he uncritically presents the idea of a division of Ukraine into a national West and a pro-Russian East, first discussed by Mykola Riabchuk as “two Ukraines” but which has, nonetheless, been widely  criticised. Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, for example, argues that in order to capture the real divisions within Ukraine it is better to talk about 22 Ukraines. Eberhardt fails to mention this altogether.

Certainly, Slavic geopolitics is a book that was waiting to be written. It is an accessible, general source of information on geopolitical thought from this region. However, it failed to live up to its full potential and therefore it calls for further debate, input and research. Sadly, Eberhardt had only scratched the surface.

Translated by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

Marek Wojnar is a PhD student of Eastern European History at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and a regular contributor to the Polish bimonthly Nowa Europa Wschodnia.

Book review, Eastern Europe, geopolitics, Intermarium, Polish books