Blog Assignment 4
Reorganization of the Former Soviet Territories
The Soviet Union, or now lack thereof, is the perfect example of boundaries changing over time. In a 1998 Journal by Frank Cass, he delves into the changing territories post-collapse of the Soviet Union. As Cass goes to explain, the 1990s brought upon a new era of geopolitics, surrounding the “changing territorial dimensions of the world order (Newmann, 1-2).”
For some background, the Soviet Union (1922-1991), also known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR), was comprised of what are now the separate nation-states of Armenia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia (Kiprop, 2018). In 1922, a legalized union of “several Soviet republics” is what bound these territories together (Wikipedia, 2022).
As Cass argues, while some places in the world’s boundaries were becoming more permeable, the former Soviet States were experiencing the opposite effect (Newmann, 7). There was a newfound desire to have new national and ethnic separations between territories, tied up with the desire for self-government and independence (Newmann, 7-8).
This brings me to the idea of states being grounded in sovereign territory. To summarize the textbook, territory implies a “division of political power,” and sovereignty implies that there is one absolute authority for this division (Flint, 135). This makes sense to me in the case of the separating Soviet territories, as their desire to govern over their own nationalistic and ethnic territory is what led them to become their own sovereign states.
References:
Flint, C., & Taylor, P. J. (2018). Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality (7th ed.). Routledge.
Newmann, D. (Ed.). (n.d.). Geopolitics Renaissant Territory and the World Political Map. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Newman-3/publication/233448429_Geopolitics_Renaissant_Territory_sovereignty_and_the_world_political_map/links/0046353a3d20fe6493000000/Geopolitics-Renaissant-Territory-sovereignty-and-the-world-political-map.pdf
Kiprop, J. (2018, August 8). Former Soviet Union (USSR) countries. WorldAtlas. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-countries-made-up-the-former-soviet-union-ussr.html
Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, March 11). Treaty on the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist republics. Wikipedia. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Creation_of_the_Union_of_Soviet_Socialist_Republics#Bibliography
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