# Yurii Lypa: a Black Sea Ukraine and the partition of Russia

> In the 1930s–40s the geopolitician Yurii Lypa cast Ukraine as a Black Sea state and foresaw the inevitable "partition of Russia" — ideas for which the NKVD tortured him to death in 1944.

Canonical: https://holospravdy.com/en/yurii-lypa-geopolitics
Period: mizhvoyenniy | Type: spoke | Updated: 2026-06-18

**TL;DR.** The Kremlin presents Russia as an eternal, indivisible "monolith" and Ukraine as a part of it. The Ukrainian geopolitician **Yurii Lypa** described the opposite as early as the 1930s–40s: Ukraine is an independent **Black Sea** state, while the Russian Empire is doomed to **partition**. For these ideas he was tortured to death by the NKVD in 1944, and in the West they are still not taken seriously.

## Who was Yurii Lypa

Yurii Lypa (1900–1944), the son of the prominent activist Ivan Lypa, was a physician, poet, and **geopolitician**. In the assessment of the historian Ihor Stambol, he built up concepts more relevant than anything anyone in Ukraine has formulated since[1]. His major work is a geopolitical trilogy: **"The Destiny of Ukraine"** (1938), **"The Black Sea Doctrine"** (1940), and **"The Partition of Russia"** (1941), in which he reflected on Ukraine's place in the world, its economic power, and the historical foundations of its statehood.

## Black Sea, not Muscovite

Lypa's first major thesis is Ukraine's **Black Sea orientation**. He emphasized Crimea, the Black Sea, Taurida, and the **Greek (Pontic) heritage** of the Ukrainian lands: Greek colonization, the Bosporan Kingdom, Kerch-Panticapaeum[2]. Ukraine, he argued, is rooted not in the Muscovite "north" but in the Black Sea–Mediterranean space. In "The Black Sea Doctrine" he proposed a union of Black Sea states — Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania — as a counterweight to Moscow.

## "The Partition of Russia" — a thesis ahead of its time

The most topical today is the work **"The Partition of Russia."** Stambol notes that at international conferences (including with the participation of NATO representatives) Western analysts still **do not accept** the idea of Russia's disintegration — they see it as a "monolith" that supposedly need only be reformed in a democratic direction[3]. Lypa argued the opposite 80 years ago: an empire built on the subjugation of dozens of peoples cannot be reformed, and the only humane and realistic way to overcome the threat it poses is **decolonization** — partition into its natural components.

## The price of truth

Lypa's own fate shows how much his ideas frightened Moscow. He was **tortured to death by the NKVD** in August 1944 (his body, bearing the marks of torture, was found near Yavoriv). And in the Soviet era his daughters did not even **know who their parents were**: the family was under constant surveillance[4]. This is a classic imperial practice — destroy a thinker and erase the very memory of him.

## What this means

Lypa is an example of Ukrainian geopolitical thought seeing Ukraine's distinctness and the Russian Empire's vulnerability **long before** 2022. This is no "exotica": the thesis of Russia's decolonization is today seriously discussed by scholars and politicians. Of course, Lypa was a figure of his time, an age of loud interwar ideologies, and his texts are more visionary journalism than strictly academic work. But his central intuition — that Ukraine is of the Black Sea, and that Russia is not eternal — proved far more perceptive than the notion, widespread in the West, of an "unshakable monolith."

## Citation sources

[1] summary: «Юрій Липа (син Івана Липи) — лікар, поет і геополітик, який вибудував концепції, актуальні дотепер. Його геополітична трилогія — «Призначення України», «Чорноморська доктрина» і «Розподіл Росії» — осмислювала місце України у світі, її економічну потугу й історичні підстави.» — Historian Every Saturday: Ihor Stambol. He knew how to defeat Russia: what you should know about Yuriy Lypa (19.04.2025) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAeXfBRNnZ0 (timecodes: 13:03, 40:36)

[2] summary: «Ключова теза Липи — чорноморська орієнтація України: він наголошував на Криму, Чорному морі, Тавриді й грецькій (понтійській) спадщині українських земель (грецька колонізація, Боспорське царство, Керч-Пантікапей). Тобто українська ідентичність укорінена не лише в козацтві чи Русі, а й у чорноморсько-середземноморському просторі.» — Historian Every Saturday: Ihor Stambol. He knew how to defeat Russia: what you should know about Yuriy Lypa (19.04.2025) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAeXfBRNnZ0 (timecodes: 30:22, 30:44)

[3] summary: «Найактуальніша теза — «Розподіл Росії». Стамбол зауважує: на міжнародних конференціях (зокрема за участі представників НАТО) західні аналітики не сприймають ідею розпаду Росії — бачать її «монолітом», який нібито треба лише реформувати в демократичний бік. Це, на його думку, хибно: гуманний і реальний спосіб подолати цю силу — саме її розподіл.» — Historian Every Saturday: Ihor Stambol. He knew how to defeat Russia: what you should know about Yuriy Lypa (19.04.2025) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAeXfBRNnZ0 (timecodes: 1:03:34, 1:03:51)

[4] summary: «Доля Липи трагічна: його вбили, а за радянських часів його доньки навіть не знали, хто їхні батьки — над родиною був постійний нагляд і всілякі гібридні обмеження.» — Historian Every Saturday: Ihor Stambol. He knew how to defeat Russia: what you should know about Yuriy Lypa (19.04.2025) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAeXfBRNnZ0 (timecodes: 40:04)