The 'Land Question' in the Russian Geopolitics of Territorial Occupation

• In Event: Land, Property, Ownership at the Imperial Crossroads I

Abstract

This paper uses the "land question" as a lens through which to trace the development of the concept of territorial sovereignty in Russian geopolitical thought and practice. It then applies the geopolitical thinking around "land" to examine the construction of territorial infrastructures of occupation in currently occupied southeastern Ukrainian territories. The practice and the idea of land ownership encapsulates a complex and overlapping entanglement between nature and state territoriality that has played a crucial role in shaping key conceptual milestones in Russian geopolitics: from Slavophilism's conceptions of the "boundless world" to Eurasianist analysis of nomadic human-land relations. Some used these imaginaries of land to argue for the dynamic expansion of the pan-Slavic nation-state based on the collective ownership of all-Slavic soil, while others theorized the development of an "ethnos" grounded in natural conditions. By analyzing these intersections/clashes between different imperial forms of land use, this study reveals how land functions not only as a valuable resource, but also as a powerful ideological construct in Russian history, providing new, and repackaging old ways to legitimize the repressive territorial rule in occupied territories during wartime.

Author

• Max Samuel Wellbrock-Talley, Kansas State U