Restorationist Geopolitics: constructing the northeastern Estonian border

Abstract

Geopolitical discourse reinforces and challenges national geopolitical narratives, nationalizing processes, and political-territorial borders. Political-territorial borders are prominent features in contemporary political geography and attract a wealth of interdisciplinary scholarship. I contribute to this scholarship by addressing Estonian restorationist geopolitical discourse and the northeastern Estonian-Russian border. I address the Estonian-Russian border through a critical approach that analyzes Estonian state discourse. This article focuses on the Estonian Internal Security Service (Kaitsepolitseiamet), a major branch of the Estonian Ministry of the Interior. I  nd that Estonian state border discourses and representations illustrate the socio-spatial consequences of Estonian nationalizing processes linked to restorationist geopolitics. The beginning of the twenty  rst century and pending EU accession were heralded as symbolizing the decline of Estonian restorationist geopolitics and the rise of Estonian political integration and accommodation with the European community; however, this analysis brings to the fore the problematic perpetuation of restorationist geopolitics through state-produced border discourse, which suggests restorationist geopolitics still thrives within the Estonian state and carries negative implications for resolving the ongoing Estonian-Russian (and now EU-Russian) border dispute.