THE GREAT STEPPE DOCTRINE OF UKRAINE AS DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYKHAILO KOLODZINSKYI’S GEOSTRATEGIC IDEAS

Abstract

Fundamentals of the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s military doctrine of Ukraine are highlighted from the points of view of geopolitics and geosophy. The character of the epoch when it was shaped is lined in the context of the international state of Ukraine at that time. It is stressed that one of properties of that doctrine is the idea of enlarging of Europe to the East throw the integration into it Ukrainian ethnical lands which are situated now in the Russian Federation. The content of alien Ukrainian geopolitical doctrines shaped in the time between two world wars, such as Stepan Rudnytskyi’s Baltic – Black Sea doctrine and Yurii Lypa’s Black sea doctrine is analyzed. A comparative analyze of those doctrines which was realized, argues that the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s construction, properly, like a difference from the others, oriented solely to Europe, has, as a fact, a Eurasian direction as soon as it provides enlarging boundaries of Europe throw its diffusion to Asia. It is accented also about the place of the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s geopolitical doctrine among global space constructions of the first half of the XX century such as Halford Mackinder’s and Nicholas Spykman’s geopolitical doctrines based on the idea of opposition the maritime and continental forces. It is accented that the content of the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s doctrine is oriented to the fight for domination over the Heartland as the world’s pivot. It is lined that the present day of Ukraine signified by the Russian-Ukrainian war, brightly actualizes the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s geopolitical doctrine, as soon as its realization objectively promotes the disintegration of Russia. The development of the Mykhailo Kolodzinskyi’s conception in the modern conditions provides a political rapprochement of the countries of the Great Steppe, especially Ukraine and Kazakhstan. So, a modernized Great Steppe Ukrainian geopolitical doctrine may be shaped as no opposite, but complementally to the Baltic – Black Sea conception. In the middle-time perspective Ukraine could take up one of the leading positions in the region of the Great Steppe. As a geosophical content of this renewed doctrine may become accenting on the steppe space which can win the subjectivity in the whole Eurasia. In the same time, realization of the Ukrainian Great Steppe doctrine could allow to remove Russia a monopoly on Eurasian space conceptions and formulate a non-Russian Eurasian geopolitical alternative.