The experience of mapping socio-cultural boundaries in Crimea

• Published in: InterCarto. InterGIS Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 228 - 241
• Main Authors: Volkhin, Denis, Voronin, Igor, Shvets, Alexandra, Yakovlev, Andrey
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: 2020
• ISSN: 2414-9179; 2414-9209
• DOI: 10.35595/2414-9179-2020-1-26-228-241

The article deals with the essence of socio-cultural boundaries in a multiethnic region. Socio-cultural boundaries are presented by the authors as a marker of the mental unique character of the territory for those who live within it, and a likely source of interethnic tensions. In the conditions of the multiethnic region of Crimea, the probability of the existence of socio-cultural boundaries coincides with the nature of its administrative-territorial structure that arose after 2014. On the territory of the Crimean Peninsula, there appeared two subjects of administrative and territorial administration of the Russian Federation: the Republic of Crimea and the Federal city of Sevastopol. Similar bicentric division of Crimea existed during the period of the Ukrainian administrative-territorial ownership of the Peninsula, only the administrative-territorial subjects were called respectively the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Republican subordination Sevastopol. Geographically, both subjects have a common border, which runs through the territories of the Bakhchisarai municipal district of the Republic of Crimea, as well as the lands belonging to the Federal city of Sevastopol. The paper considers the possibility that the residents of the border territories of both subjects of the administrative-territorial structure of Crimea have mental differences in the awareness that they belong to different worlds: the urban one with a special political and geographical status in the case of Sevastopol and the rural — within one of the agrarian municipal territories of the Republic of Crimea. Does the artificially divided mentality mean that the inhabitants of the geographically united Crimean Peninsula have different ways of life, value orientations, and migration mobility? The proof of the existence of mental socio-cultural boundaries has been presented by the authors on the basis of a survey of rural residents living in 12 border villages of the Sevastopol region and the Bakhchisarai municipal district of the Republic of Crimea. The original maps of the results of the survey of rural residents within the Crimean administrative border have been constructed. The cartographic markers to define the values of residents of the border villages have been determined, which allows to establish the degree of manifestation of the socio-cultural boundaries between Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea.