Ukrainians and the Black Sea. Nationalist Geography in the Post-Soviet Reality

Abstract

In the 20th Century Central and Eastern Europe the geographers engaged in nationalist movements were strongly interested in maritime affairs. They, making the national territory maps, promulgated the nation’s rights to access to the sea, national sovereignty over the coast and territorial nationalization the seaport cities. Their aim were to expand the national territory and to secure the “natural” boundaries. They strived to modernize the nation-state and to increase its position in the region and in the whole world also. The access to sea, the “window on the world”, creating own national maritime sector, were perceived as a vehicle to modernization and to equal participation in the world economy. In Ukraine, the most prominent nationalist geographer writing on maritime questions was Stepan Rudnyts’kyi (1877-1937), “father of national geography”. In his most important works, published during World War I and Ukrainian independence struggles (1914-1923) he argued for Ukraine’s wide access to Black Sea, Azov Sea and even to Caspian Sea. Geographical determinism and primordialism on national questions were the main paradigms of his works. His thoughts were continued by Yurii Lypa (1900-1944), political writer associated with Ukrainian integral nationalist movement of 30es and 40es. He is an author of “Black Sea Doctrine” – the doctrine of Ukrainian leadership in the Black Sea region. The contemporary post-Soviet Ukraine, independent since 1991, has a wide sea coast. However, the coastal region (South with Crimea) is often perceived as a separatist, pro-Russian region. There is also a discussion in Ukraine: is Ukraine a “maritime state” or only a “state near the sea”? The critical opinions on Ukraine’s maritime and Black Sea policy are often formulated. However, the inadequacy of classical nationalist visions of Ukraine as a maritime state to the contemporary (post-Soviet) reality is not only a question of Ukraine’s subjective case, but an example of deconstructing the classical nationalist model of “national state at sea” in the whole world.