Eastern Europe: on the centenary of the political project

Abstract

This article describes the characteristics of Eastern Europe as a political project. The author considers the genesis of Eastern Europe as a political region and identifies several periods in its history. The author analyses key features of sovereignization-desovereignization of the region and examines geopolitical projects of Intermarium. It is shown that Eastern Europe as such is an objective reality, whose history has not ended. At the same time, the author advances and proves the thesis that various "Baltic/Black Sea" cooperation models aimed at isolating Russia act against the interests of all participants of the political process. A number of methods, including the historical and structural functional analyses and the system approach are used in the study. The central hypothesis is that, as a political project, Intermarium reflects an important part of the systemic features of Eastern Europe as a political region. However, it is not identical to the region in terms of its geography or political regionalism. The anti-Russian sentiment of the Intermarium project is dominant. Yet, it is not immanent in this group of concepts. Reformatting the Intermarium concept in line with the new Moscow-Warsaw-Berlin cooperation model can be considered a feasible political task, which requires an adequate scientific solution. Moreover, Eastern Europe has reached the point of bifurcation. The region may become another new source of instability in Europe. Intermarium projects -a traditional object of research- have to be re-evaluated in the new political and economic conditions. This article is a step in this direction.