Cleaving of the North Black Sea Space: Geopolitical Disputes in the Era of Post-Truth.

Abstract

The Black Sea Region, during the centuries, has been stayed as a zone of geopolitical confrontation between borderland states of Bulgaria, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and others. Each of them, building geopolitical capacity, considers the region as a part of space of ethnogenesis, natiogenesis and politogenesis.

The modern regionalism in political practices of the neighbouring states of the Black Sea Region has demonstrated different processes. In one case, it is the mechanism of decentralization and liberalization within global integrational tendencies, in other case – the practise of realization of Post-Imperial geopolitical ideologies. In such case, it is consequently directed to ruin territorial Status Quo. These processes on the stage of emergence and formation of the “soft power” policy have been developed in the form of “nation and justice revival” policy.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the features of the Black Sea Region as borderland region and trans-boundary system, and to focus on the new features of social and informational spaces. Thus, emergence of the new actors – regional societies and local ethnocultural and diasporal groups on the political stage caused co-existence of different versions of historical “truth”, political expediency, social justice in the region.

The paper demonstrates that informational and communicational spaces became the arena for political actions of the states that conduct purposeful cultural and memorial policy. The aim of such measures has been declared the care of compatriots, preservation of memory about common past, making conditions for integration of the region to the semiotic and institutional state system.

It was concluded that all subjects of regional geopolitical relations consider the transboundation of the Northern Black Sea Region as a strategic space for further national development. It is noted that national strategies in the early twenty-first century were transformed to expanded interpretation of "nations" that "came out" along the state borders and "included" their compatriots who lost their citizenship, related ethnic groups, as well as historical and ethnogenetic spaces that in the past belonged to the states and are understood as "lost".