Geopolitical history as a frontier discipline of history and geopolitics
Authors:   Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospase Instrumentation, Dombrovskiy Pavel A. ,   The Herzen State Pedagogical University Saint Petersburg
Published: December 2024

The aim of the article is to analyze the scientific discipline of geohistory, which is considered as a historical and geopolitical discipline. The article reveals, first of all, the geopolitical aspect of geohistory, which is understood as the history of the interaction of states with the natural environment and among themselves. The main goal of geopolitical history is to clarify the reasons and content of the divisions and redistributions of the world between the powers, to change the structure of geographic space in accordance with the geopolitical power of states.
The first geohistorical ideas about the structure of the world were brought by the founders of geopolitics Ratzel, who created the model of the "plant" world, and Kjellen, who created the model of the "animal" world. Modern models of world structures are very diverse. Among them, it is worth mentioning the ethno-tectonic model of Sergei Pereslegin, the galactic model of Boris Isaev, six models of international relations by Morton Kaplan and others.
Geopolitical history can be presented, on the one hand, as an integral part of history, and on the other, as a component of geopolitics. Geohistory occupies an important place in the structure of geopolitics and acts as its scientific discipline.
If the content of history is a historical process, then the content of geopolitical history can be considered a geopolitical
process, which has a complex structure. Structurally, it is subdivided into eras, periods, pictures of the world and cycles.
Geopolitical history is usually divided into five eras: Tordesillas, Westphalian, Vienna, Versailles and Potsdam. To improve the structure of geohistory, we proposed to subdivide each epoch into geopolitical pictures of the world that would take into account the accumulating changes, but would not have all the features of a geopolitical epoch. In this interpretation, geohistory consists not only of six geopolitical eras, but also of eleven geopolitical pictures of the world, reflecting the struggle of the leading powers for geopolitical space and the redistribution of spheres of influence.
Important factors of geopolitical dynamics are geopolitical processes that make changes in the geopolitical picture of the
world and lead, in the end, to a change in geopolitical eras. We refer to the geopolitical processes of the New Time: great
geographical discoveries, the creation of colonial empires, the process of decolonization and the creation of new states, wars leading to the revision of state borders, revolutions and other processes that change the geopolitical picture of the world.
Like most countries, Russia is experiencing another geopolitical cycle, which in its geohistory has gone through the cycles of Independent Russia, dependent on the Horde of Russia, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Moscow kingdom, the Russian Empire, and the USSR. Today Russia is at the very beginning of the cycle of a sovereign, republican Russia. It passed only the period of inception and entered the period of accelerated development.