ABSTRACT
“Revisiting” the heartland appears to have been a rather popular exercise in the years following World War II, considering the number of critical studies bearing the same, or almost identical, title. 1 Yet, while the theoretical revisiting of the Eurasian heartland was going on, very few observers asked themselves whether Mackinder knew Russia at all. He had, in fact, been there once, almost the very first visitor one might say, but never within the heartland itself; he merely touched Russia’s Black Sea coast for less than three weeks, hardly stepping ashore, spending most of his time aboard a British warship anchored in the harbor of Novorossiysk. This was in January 1920 after Lord Curzon, then the Foreign Secretary, had appointed Mackinder the British High Commissioner in Southern Russia to act as liaison with the White Russian forces of General Denikin, who was attempting to wring power from the Bolsheviks. Despite the knighthood he earned for his endeavors, the mission itself, especially as far as its major political aim was concerned, ended in failure. 2
