SOCIO-CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS

Ninth type – internal boundaries between territorial-administrative units within Russian Federation. This type also includes boundaries of the autonomous republics.

Tenth type – boundary that doesn't bear the status of a state one, but separates internal buffer zone from the Russian homeland. It has clearly defined character only in a Western part of the Russian Empire - USSR - CIS space.

Eleventh type – stable and well-defined boundaries between naturally dependent vassals within borders of the internal buffer zone of Russian SCS. These boundaries may be quite stable, because they never play significant role in themselves. Example: boundaries between the Baltic states.

Specific of the modern Ukrainian state lies in the combination of the heterogeneous structure of its territory and heterogeneity of its political borders. State boundary of Ukraine is represented by 7 (seven) different types of borders with each one possessing own specific qualities and dynamics of changes. Here we have the following types of the state (political) boundaries: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Tenth. Generally speaking, seven of the existing within Russian SCS types of state (political) boundaries are being represented in modern Ukraine. That's simply too much for a single state... No other post-Soviet state has to deal with such a situation. Once more, each type of a state (political) boundaries is characterized by specific evolution.Heterogeneity of a state (political) boundaries - and especially in a combination with the heterogeneous space structure - guarantees Ukrainian state all sorts of instability for an observable future. As a form of organization (of a social and political life), state usually has essentially shorter life term compare to that of socio-cultural boundaries and regions (not to mention a socio-cultural formations). And in such conditions reforms (and economic reforms in particular) become practically impossible: any successive measures would lead only to a number of unforeseen and hardly remediable consequences. Each type of the Ukrainian state boundaries may react to a radical reform / changes in its own way.

6. Socio-cultural regions and boundaries between them are very dynamic, but their dynamics may be quite strictly described theoretically. Here are some results of our 1998 researches in this regard.

THEORETICAL EVOLUTIONARY MODEL OF SPACE SOCIO-CULTURAL

ASSIMILATION & GEOPOLITICAL PROCESSES WITHIN RUSSIAN SCS

Having analysed the evolution of the socio-cultural systems, we've discovered that, when it comes to forming their own spaces, they do display some common qualities. These qualities are being reflected in the model that demonstrates a series of logically succeeding one another stages of the SCS's space self-organization.

The model is presented in the APPENDIX 5: GENERAL MODEL OF THE PROCESS OF SPACE ASSIMILATION WITHIN SCS (all graphics are designed in Word 7.0 for Windows 95).

This theoretical model fully applies to the Russian SCS analysis. The latter's present-day condition, as from our point of view, may be interpreted as a beginning of the fifth stage. At this point, situation develops, for the most part, in a direction of increasing the state heterogeneity / diversity on the SCS's periphery. And thus, the transition from one unitary state to a bigger number of states is quite natural. It's significant that all new states are located on the SCS's periphery. Some of these peripheral states may be extremely unstable, and during a brief historical perspective (within fifth and sixth stages of the SCS's space evolution) can easily disintegrate into even greater numbers of a smaller states. In a chronological sense, it may take from around ten years to a good few decades.

Principal differences of this stage also lie in a growing quantity of enclaves. Before, there were not so many of them, but at the fifth stage the number of enclaves increases drastically. In the specific conditions of Russian SCS, it's also being expressed in a considerably grown importance of enclaves. Within boundaries of the unitary state of the past, they have just been forming. During the fifth and sixth stages, all enclaves should reveal their full potential.

The other novelty of the present stage is the rise of the demarcating socio-cultural formations that separate states of the Russian SCS's internal buffer zone. Outwardly, they look as a territories that are not really considerable in width, but quite extended in length. Their configuration is completely determined by the necessity to separate some two (or more) states of the internal buffer zone. And in this connection, their shape may be of any character. Transnistrian Republic would be an appropriate example here. It is indeed formation of the new type. Such spatial units do appear only at this, fifth stage when they play the most important role for further evolution of the buffer zone and its transformation in accordance with the dominating SCS's standards. Thus, these creations shouldn't be considered as a sort of the Nature's misunderstanding.

As a rule, state formations of an enclave type as well as demarcating socio-cultural formations may be very weak and equivocal in all respects; they are to an extreme degree complicated to contact. These territories also distinguish themselves with a great instability. They may possess whatever entangled international and inter-socio-cultural statuses and connections, and flirt freely with any states and territories in the World. But in reality, they are firmly tied only to the SCS that had actually caused these formations to exist. Successfully established connection of some enclave with a foreign state formation (a part of an alien SCS) can be destroyed very fast and efficiently by the dominating (maternal) SCS.Within the following, sixth stage (according to the theory) utmost spatial diversity will find place within SCS - with maximum numbers of enclaves and demarcating socio-cultural formations, highly complicated political situation, numerous weak and frequently mutating states that may maintain extravagantly intricate internal relationships and often even imitate "leaving" their own SCS. At this stage, feeling of the SCS's total breakdown arises, but it's more of a deceptive illusion: socio-cultural system simply cannot change itself, and especially perish, due to the reasons of just geopolitical character. Socio-cultural and geopolitical levels are different, and their connection is quite relative. Beyond the question, geopolitical processes just follow in fundamental socio-cultural trends, and whatever happens at the political and geopolitical levels, evolutionary process of the SCS's space socio-cultural assimilation is in progress as usual.

Let's note once more that, from our point of view, in the late XX century, painful (in a geopolitical sense) fifth and sixth stages take place within Russian SCS. But these stages are natural and logically integrated into general process of the entire Russian SCS's evolution.

7. DYNAMICS OF THE SOCIO-CULTURAL REGIONS & ENCLAVES WITHIN THE RUSSIAN SCS's SPACE