Soviet Territorial Expansion

"The Study of Soviet Union's Territorial Expansion"mainly focuses on Soviet Union's territorial expansion in Soviet regime period, especially during World War II. There are nine chapters altogether except for the part of introduction in this dissertation.The introduction part elucidates the source and the research status of the topic, and also discusses the innovations and the structure of the dissertation.Chapter One is the theoretical basis of this dissertation which outlines the theories concerned with territory in international laws and the geopolitical theories in international politics. Chapter Two principally reviews the territorial expansion in Russian Empire and points out its feature that is territory expanded by external wars, which helps to discover the historical origin of Soviet Union's territorial expansion.Chapter Three primarily introduces Soviet Union's territorial changes during the time between the end of the October Revolution and the eve of World War II, and also presents Lenin's policy of"Non-territory, Non-compensation".Chapters Four to Eight are the important parts, which illustrate Soviet Union's territorial expansion during World War II. Chapters Four and Five illustrate that Soviet Union annexed the area of almost 720,000 km2 during World War II, including the three Baltic countries, Bessarabia and North Bukovina of Romania, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus of Poland, Karelia and Petsamo of Finland, Outer Carpathian-Ukraine of Czechoslovakia, Konigsberg of Germany, Tannu-Uriankhai of china, Kuril islands and South Sakhalin of Japan.Chapter Six introduces Soviet Union's endeavors in diplomacy and propaganda after World War II, for confirming the gains of her territorial expansion. This part also analyzes the various"theoretical basis"proposed by Soviet Union.Chapter Seven mainly analyzes different factors which lead to Soviet Union's territorial expansion, including its roots in thought, history, economic and geopolitical environment. Chapter Eight analyzes the adverse influence of Soviet Union's territorial expansion. The territorial expansion didn't bring the sense of security to Soviet Union, but it became one of the important reasons for her decline and disintegration.Chapter Nine introduces Russian Federation's new territorial and boundary situations after the disintegration of Soviet Union. Russian Federation inherited the territorial and boundary affairs from Soviet Union, and confronted with complicated territorial and boundary disputes with her"new neighboring countries".In the conclusion part, the writer summarizes several enlightenments from the study of Soviet Union's territorial expansion: the territorial expansion would not bring the sense of security to a country; territorial sovereignty is still the main interest of different countries in the contemporary world, but territorial expansion is unworkable and outdated; territorial disputes among countries should be settled by peaceful means.