HALFORD MACKINDER AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL FORMATION OF POLITICS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

The article attempts to analyze the process of intellectual design of geopolitical thought, which in the early twentieth century, when on the eve of the Great War an attempt was made to form a geographical certainty of foreign policy strategy. The study is based on the understanding of the geographical axis of history, carried out by the British geographer H. Mackinder, who was one of the founders of British geopolitics. His approach involved identifying key geographical regions of the world that influenced the vectors of European politics in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. At this stage, H. Mackinder's understanding of the definition of the Heartland as the center of world politics of European states is studied. The geographical approach of the British thinker to identifying patterns of political development of foreign policy fit into the desire to formulate laws of foreign policy, which were undertaken in the early twentieth century and subsequently formed the basis of geopolitical science. In the practical sphere, within the framework of the development of a post-war model of world development in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference, the Heartland concept was expressed in the Versailles Peace Treaty concluded in 1919 in the form of the creation of a buffer zone between Germany and Soviet Russia.