Where lies Russia? A search to the ‘real’ location of Russia
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2009-10
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en
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Abstract
The main question of this thesis is: Where lies Russia? To answer the question where Russia
lies seems easy. The question itself seems uninteresting and a bit strange, you can open an
atlas and see within a second where Russia lies. Digging deeper into the question, I found out
that it is not as simple as it looks. In fact, it is very difficult to answer the question. When
opening an atlas, you see that it is very simple, the world consists of countries which are
defined by their static borders. The border in this case is a simple line between countries, but
the meaning of the term ‘border’ is not generally accepted by scholars. If a border is more
complex than just a simple line between countries and the meaning of the term border is not
even generally accepted, then it seems to me that defining the location of a country just by
explaining where the borders on the map are is not sufficient to answer the question ‘where
lies country x?’. We need more to answer the question.
In my search to answer the question I used four categories: the territorial development
of Russia since the eleventh century; Russian border (politics); Russian identity and
economical and political influence (sphere of influence). In every chapter I try to find out
what the location of Russia is, and if not possible, why it is impossible to find out the location
of Russia. This leads to an overall conclusion in the last chapter.
The search leads to answers that are, in fact, completely logical, but at the same time
different than the leading discourses and everyday practices would suggest. The idea of social
construct plays an important role in the answering to the question ‘where lies Russia’. So
what at first sight seems to be a very simple question, appears to be a question which is not so
simple at all to answer. What at first sight seems to be a slightly irrelevant question (why
should you ask the location of a country when you can simply open an atlas and immediately
see what the location is?) seems to be a question which is definitely relevant when put in the
context of identity, politics and economy.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen