The Geographical Problem of Political and Territorial Unity. The Reasons for Ukraine’s Independence

Abstract

Over the past three decades, a debate has been developing in the world over the dynamics and legitimacy of the fragmentation of state territorial space, its sovereignty and unitary character, i.e., those geographical elements that have dominated European and later world political organization since the end of the medieval age. This discussion has been stimulated especially by the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The proliferation of declarations of independence have forced many scholars of political philosophy, law, sociology, and international relations to see that the international order, composed of sovereign territorial states, believed to be immobile and eternal (according to the principles of jus publicum europaeum), was undergoing profound changes.