THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE RUSSIAN BORDERLANDS IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD: THEORY, CHALLENGES, SOLUTIONS
A.K. Tulokhonov1, T.A. Boldanov2
1Baikal Institute of Nature Management, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ulan-Ude, Russia
2Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
Keywords: political geography, Russian borderlands, transboundary waters, international transport corridors, historical and cultural cross-border cooperation
Abstract
The article presents the authors’ view on the geopolitical processes currently ongoing in the Russian borderlands. The following issues are the focus for this study: maintaining the integrity of geographical space, ensuring transboundary waters are used rationally, analyzing risks and threats tied to new international transport corridors, and assessing whether transit through Russia should be restricting under the new geopolitics. We leverage works of the past and contemporary geopolitical approaches to study domestic and international practices of forming transboundary spaces and solving the problems of cross-border cooperation. The article provides rationale for the discovered specifics of borderlands’ socio-economic development and environmental cooperation in the basins of the largest North Asian rivers. We pay particular attention to the historical and cultural cooperation between the neighboring states and preserving memory of the victory over Nazism in World War II. The study’s findings are applicable in the regional management of socio-economic processes and environmental resource management in borderlands.
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