Cordon sanitaire

Estimates of the origins and purposes


   The idea of creating a new kind of "sanitary zone" on the borders of post-communist Russia is sometimes attributed to the ex-assistant to the president for national security, a political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, although in his book The Grand Chessboard "of such a term does not (it used the term" buffer states ") and he believes that we must now speak of the isolation of Russia. Chairman of the Federation Council on International Affairs Mikhail Margelov in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta opined that the current "cordon sanitaire" of Eastern European states created by the plans of the Western geopoliticians abroad XIX-XX centuries.

   As published in 1995 book "Russia and the West: common or alienation?" Doctor of Historical Sciences, a leader of the Yabloko party, Vladimir Lukin, written in collaboration with the doctor of historical sciences, department head of the foreign policy of the Institute of USA and Canada Institute, Anatoly Utkin, states that after the collapse of the Soviet Union

    ... Added new problems. Eastern European countries of the allies have become suspicious (if not hostility) related to the subjects of Russia's European policy, which not only sought to be a bridge between Russia and the West, but rather were ready to play next "cordon sanitaire" against Russia.

   Speaking of the "cordon", Lavrov said that the new EU members are obsessed with the desire to "contain" Russia, taking a kind of historical revenge. On the goal of "cordon sanitaire" - to make Russia a geopolitical reservation, isolated from Europe, - write Modest Kolerov, Sergei Kurginian, Natalya Narochnitskaya, Sergei Markov, Mikhail Leontiev, Evgeny Minchenko, Vyacheslav Igrunov, Mikhail Margelov, Vitaly Tretyakov, Gleb Pavlovsky, and other historians, political scientists and politicians, including in post-Soviet space.