THE POST-SOVIET EXPANSE: IDEOLOGICAL ASPECT OF GEOPOLITICAL EXPANSION
Abstract
Today, the academic community treats ideology as a political weapon charged with lies.1
The political community in the West, likewise, tends toward the term’s negative implications: “The term is invariably brought up to devalue the opponent’s intellectual or political position interpreted as a promotion of its narrow interests.”2
More often than not, ideology is described as a “system of thought and values subordinated to social, economic, or political interests” designed to “conceal or at least camouflage the true interests of any particular group.”3
On the other hand, it is believed that “it is hard to contest the generally accepted interpretation of total ideology which says that in all par ties and at all times human thinking remained ideological.”4
This widens the limits of the concept of ideology; however, it is not our task to establish the degree of its potential truthfulness. We are out to confirm that ideology is a political (and geopolitical) category. Ideology is closely connected with politics either as an instrument (which suggests its negative implication) or an aim in itself (which is a positive function); sometimes it can be both at one and the same time. “As a more or less free and clear system of basic propositions which determine political trends,”5 each ideology is convinced of its absolute correctness; it supplies instructions for practical activities and directs them.
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References
See: J. Barion, Was ist Ideologie? 3.Aufl., Bonn,1974, S. 45; A. Hans, Ökonomische Ideologie und politische Theorie, Göttingen, 1972, S. 126.
J. Barion, op. cit., S. 9.
Handwörterbuch Internationale Politik, W. Woyke (Hg.), Opladen, 2000, S. 148.
K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 8.Aufl.,Frankfurt a.M., 1995, S. 70.
K. Hübner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos (Russian translation Istina mifa, Moscow, 1996, p. 338).
See: Grundelemente der Weltpolitik, Gottfried-Karl Kindermann (Hg.), 4.Aufl., München, 1991, S. 154.
Early in the 19th century, French philosopher Des-tutt de Tracy coined the term “ideology” in his Éléments d’idéologie: idéologie proprement dite, Paris, 1995. It is commonly believed that the New Age has known three “major” and incompatible ideologies: liberalism (bourgeois democracy); communism (Marxism, socialism), and fascism (National-Socialism). Any ideology contains certain values and is based on them (the West avoids the term “ideology”because of its negative connotations and prefers to use the term “system of values;” the meaning, however, remains the same and ideology is as alive as ever). The values are nu-merous; they are expressed through concepts. As a “unit of thought,” each and every concept should be specified (with-in everyday or scholarly parlance) with the help of signs (such as words) to become a term (especially if a concept is described by one word) (see: V. Dreier, Empirische Politik-forschung, München/Wien, 1997, S. 119).
W. Bergsdorf, Politik und Sprache, München/Wien,1978, S. 49.
R. Zeilinger, Ch. Rammer, Foreword to Geopolitik:
ur Ideologiekritik politischer Raumkonzepte, Band 14, Kri-tische Geographie, Wien, 2001, S. 7.
Ibidem.
A. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, Moscow, 1999, p. 92.
R. Zeilinger, Ch. Rammer, op. cit., S. 8.
See: H. Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon and Schuster,New York, 1994.
See: G. O Tuathail, “Geopolitik—zur Entstehungs-geschichte einer Disziplin,” in: Geopolitik: zur Ideologiekri-tik politischer Raumkonzepte, Band 14, S. 26.
See: D. Walter, “Imperialistische Großraumkonzepte? Anmerkungen zu einem eingängigen Bild,” in: Geopolitik:ur Ideologiekritik politischer Raumkonzepte, Band 14, S. 84.
H. Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 758-760.
Ibid., p. 758.
See: A. Federin, “Kak ne stoit obustraivat Rossiu,” Obshchina, No. 47, 1990, pp. 12-13; L. Kopelev, “Pismo Solzhenitsynu” (30.01-05.02.1985), available at [http://imwerden.de/pdf/syntaxis_37_pismo_kopeleva_solzhenicynu.pdf].
A. Dugin, op. cit., p. 35.
See: A. Dugin, Russkaia veshch, Vol. 1, Moscow, 2001, pp. 123-124.
See: G. Stöber, H. Kreutzmann, “Zum Gebrauchswert von ‘Kulturräumen,’” in: Geopolitik: zur Ideologiekritik politischer Raumkonzepte, Band 14, S. 219-222.
See: A. Dugin, Russkaia veshch, p. 227.
C. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, Telos Press Pub-lishing, 2003, p. 237.
Ibid., pp. 58-59.
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