ABSTRACT
Geopolitics, persistently demonised during the days of the Soviet Union, has returned with a vengeance to haunt post-Soviet Russia. Gone are the denunciations of geopolitics as a pseudo-science, nothing more than a heinous capitalist ideological device to promote both militarism and chauvinism among the masses. Worse, it had become the instrument of 'military adventurers', among them West German revanchists, Maoists, Zionists, vilified by L. A. Modzhoryan in Geopolitika na sluzhbe voennykh avantyur, 'Geopolitics in the service of military adventurisms', published in 1974. Gone are the anti-Western diatribes published in the Soviet Military Encyclopaedia under the rubric of 'geopolitical theories of war' excoriating Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) and Rudolf Kjellén (1864-1922) for their anti- scientific, reactionary concepts, culminating in post-1945 antiCommunism and anti-Sovietism, witness NATO, CENTO and SEATO. 1 These 'anti-scientific theories' including 'geosociology' (geosotsiologiya) spawned yet more 'reactionary ideas'. For the truth the reader was directed to the entry under 'Military policy' (Politika voennaya) which reiterated the canons of the Marxist-Leninist party, emphasised the 'class character' of 'military policy', contrasting the 'Leninist defence of the socialist Motherland' with the military policy in the service of monopolycapitalism. 2 The Military Encyclopaedia minus its Soviet imprimatur published in 1994 repeated the formula 'Geopolitics: see Military Policy', the entry 'Geopolitical theories of war' refers the reader to 'Concepts of war'. 'Geostrategy' is similarly re-aligned to 'Military-political strategy'. 3
