Civilization Russia. Challenges and Answers
Autocratic hand
He boldly sowed enlightenment,
Do not despise my native country:
He knew her purpose.
A. S. Pushkin. Stansy
He boldly sowed enlightenment,
Do not despise my native country:
He knew her purpose.
A. S. Pushkin. Stansy
Victor Vasnetsov "Baptism of Russia". Tretyakov Gallery
Challenges
One of the theories devoted to the development of mankind describes development as a clash of civilizations.
English philosopher stories A.J. Toynbee, defining the attitude of the West with other civilizations, attributed Russia to the catch-up type of development.
If, due to historical circumstances, Western civilization “outpaced” another world in technology, challenged other civilizations at a certain stage of human history, then, due to “lagging”, they had to respond to them ... or die.
The “challenge” can be understood as the following elements: expansion, capture, enslavement, unfair competition, inequitable economic and cultural exchange, restriction in development, prohibition and pressure in order to slow down or limit the development of a competitor’s growth. All these points objectively characterize the West in the fight against other civilizations and peoples.
“The victory of the West” was predetermined by a breakthrough in technology, which other systems could not achieve. The Spanish philosopher H. Ortega y Gasset wrote:
“China has reached technical heights without having a complete understanding of physics. Only modern European technology is rooted in science and owes it its unique property - the ability to develop endlessly. Any other technique - Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, oriental - reached a certain point that could not be overcome, and barely touched it, as it immediately deplored ”.
A textbook example is the complete destruction of the Mesoamerican civilization by the Spaniards. Another striking example of the struggle of civilizations was the opium wars of the 40-60. Nineteenth century. and the expansion of Western countries that followed, which forced the Qing Empire to buy drugs and provide absolute favors to Western merchants. These actions were a terrible humiliation and blow to the ethnopsychology of the Chinese, who considered their country the center of the world - Celestial, which the distant and close states of the barbarians look with envy.
Western centrist Toynbee believed that those civilizations that were able to modernize or adopt "technology" were able to resist Western civilization, and those that were not able to do so, died or were captured by the West.
The author cites examples of a number of “failed civilizations” (and he wrote his works in the 50s of the 20th century), which became colonies of the West in the 19th century, including such supercivilizations as India and China.
Let's say for the sake of justice that Toynbee predicted that the super-civilizations of India and China will rise from hibernation and will be able to still present serious surprises in the struggle of civilizations, which we are witnessing today.
Continuing to view the world through the collision and interaction of civilizations S. Huntington wrote:
“The coming to power of Marxism, first in Russia, then in China and Vietnam, became the first phase from the European international system to the post-European multi-civilization system ... Lenin. Mao and Ho Chi Minh drove it to themselves [meaning Marxist theory. - VE], to challenge Western power, as well as to mobilize their people and establish their national identity and autonomy as opposed to the West. ”
So, the catch-up type always means that the object of pressure will be the one who “catches up”, and the greater the lag at all levels (in production, the information sphere and the management of society), the greater the “challenges”. As the Russian proverb says, misfortune does not come alone - it goes by itself and leads a hundred. At the household level, it is like working in time-trouble, when, for example, due to the lack of planning of the working day or simply excessive overloading, it is not possible to cope or deal with current issues and requirements: they grow like a snowball.
Another such factor can be a formalistic approach, when in fact there are special organizations designed to solve important issues, but they do not solve anything: that is, they seem to be there, but they do not seem to be. Or they solve questions and answer “challenges” so slowly and reluctantly, at a pace that does not meet the needs, that they turn into difficult-to-solve problems requiring global efforts of more than one specialized structure.
What is the cause of the problems? The answer is always the same - the lack of a system, system of management and protection adequate to the development of society. Of course, when it comes to new and modern times, and not the early periods.
Russia: "catching up type" of development?
I would like to consider the key issues of the “catching-up type” of development in relation to the history of Russia in the framework of the “clash of civilizations”.
First. Russia - Russia at a certain moment became, so to speak, “lagged behind” compared to its European neighbors, and this lag was not related to the social structure of the country, or, to put it another way, the wrong social structure of the country, external military pressure or the peculiarities of the ethnic psychology of Russians .
Every nation or group of nations (tribes) develops within its own historical framework. There is no “law” about backward and advanced countries from the point of view of development, since such a theory is anti-scientific and akin to racism.
Again, Russia went through its “organic” path of development, and this chosen path turned out to be much more correct, say, compared to the neighboring state of the Poles and Lithuanians or with the “aristocratic” republics in north-west Eastern Europe, the republics established on the basis of the ancient Russian veche principalities, but because of the seizure of power in them by the boyar families who came to a dead end.
At the same time, we note that no fork in the road stood and could not stand at the end of the fifteenth century: either the early Moscow monarchy or the “aristocratic” republic. There is no "either - or". Only a monarchical form of government could give Russia the opportunity to develop at this historical stage. About the Novgorod and Pskov republics, the question was not about an alternative path, but about who from their neighbors would devour them in the end. Any other view on the situation with the northern republics takes us beyond the framework of a scientific approach to the problem - in the realm of fantasy and fiction.
The problem was that in this “unofficial” confrontation, because of the earlier entry of Western Europe into the path of historical development, “she won the competition”.
Here is an example from another story. Many African people of the Negroid race in the period of the eighteenth - early nineteenth centuries. reached the level of economic equilibrium of the tribes, being in harmony with the biosphere, not exploiting it predatory.
But their fragile proto-systems were swept away by European and Arab slave traders, who had superior weaponry, organization, and impact technology (bribing leaders, soldering, etc.), and the vast territories of Africa turned into neglected deserts and forests.
Did Africans lag behind the invaders? Yes. Did they lag behind in relation to their own development and interaction with the outside world (biosphere)? No and no.
Second. The indisputable fact is that Russia is a civilization. The mistake of the supporters of a purely “Western” path of development is precisely that, in their opinion, Russia should not look for something special, not search for its own path, but use ready-made models and patterns, and deviation from them leads it to the economic and political backwardness.
Although back in 1918, Mr. O. Spengler wrote that Western society views history through the prism of Western-centrism. And in this he saw a big mistake. He demanded a move from the “Ptolemaic approach to the history of Copernicus,” indicating that the world does not revolve around the West.
A. Toynbee, who wrote about the “limitations and arrogance” and egocentricity of the West, spoke out even more harshly about this. This is what Roland Barth said in his essay “The Lost Continent”, criticizing Western ideas about other civilizations:
“For them [amateur filmmakers. - VE] Journey to the East - just a walk on the azure sea under the ever-shining sun. This East (by the way, which has now become the political center of the world) appears in the film as completely banal, sleek and colored, as if on old postcards.
Reception, justifying such irresponsibility, is quite understandable: to paint the world always means to declare his rejection in one way or another ... Filled, emasculated, crushed by lush “images”, the East is thus prepared for complete destruction, to which the film condemns it. By playing with a talisman bear and comically throwing spaghetti on the deck, our film and ethnographers will easily be able to portray an East that is exotic in appearance, and in essence, deeply similar to the West, at least in its spiritualistic hypostasis. Are there any special religions in the East? Nothing terrible, the differences mean little in the face of the fundamental unity of idealism. ”
Reception, justifying such irresponsibility, is quite understandable: to paint the world always means to declare his rejection in one way or another ... Filled, emasculated, crushed by lush “images”, the East is thus prepared for complete destruction, to which the film condemns it. By playing with a talisman bear and comically throwing spaghetti on the deck, our film and ethnographers will easily be able to portray an East that is exotic in appearance, and in essence, deeply similar to the West, at least in its spiritualistic hypostasis. Are there any special religions in the East? Nothing terrible, the differences mean little in the face of the fundamental unity of idealism. ”
Let us translate French semiotics: if things, ideas and actions can be judged on the basis of Western rules and values, then these entities fit into the “Western diversity of the world”, if not, then they have no right to exist, or can only be in the role of “rogue ".
If a new ideologue appears in the West, then the whole world is obliged to support it on pain of excommunication from Western material and non-material values (sanctions).
The rules of the game are set by the West, and if someone starts to win according to these rules, then the rules simply change.
Summing up these views, the researcher of civilizations S. Huntington wrote:
“The illusions and prejudices that these scholars warned us about are still alive at the end of the twentieth century and flourished and turned into a widespread and limited concept that the European civilization of the West is the universal civilization of the world.”
The same delusions are present in the twenty-first century, introducing a split at the level of consciousness, world perception and, as a result, into the system of governance of society.
Russia - Russia is a genetically European, but a separate civilization on the territory of Europe, which, by the will of historical destinies, has linked itself together with the peoples of the East. Russia, like Byzantium, is European, but not Western civilization. And as Byzantium is not Western, not because it experienced greater influence of the East, as the supporters of the Eurasian theory assumed, but because it had other roots and sources.
The third. It should be understood that, historically, any technological, military, and social backwardness makes "lagging behind" nations into "food", directly or indirectly, for more developed ones. The Mongols, for example, who were at a lower stage of development than the overwhelming majority of the countries they had captured, had one important advantage over them: their society was organized as a system for challenges - for war.
Extensive development of human society, of course, in the presence of intense moments, implies only one scenario for the “lagging behind” - annihilation.
Fourth. The key breakthrough in the progress achieved by mankind, which occurred in the twentieth century, is associated not only with Western civilization. The Soviet Union became the most important driver of progress and brought the Russian civilization out of “catching up” into “challenging” in the twentieth century, which Russia could not offer either before or after its collapse. Please do not confuse military domination (Russia in 20-40 of the nineteenth century) and civilization that creates challenges.
By progress, we mean not only revolutionary changes in technology, but also in social engineering, humanization of human civilization as a whole. No wonder, speaking of the twentieth century, it is quite natural to speak about the century of the Soviet or Russian civilization.
What was the reason for the "backlog" of Russia? We intentionally take this word in parentheses.
We already wrote about the "Tatar-Mongolian myth" in the article on "VO": "Russia as part of the Eastern Empire?"In the next article we will try to address the real problems of lag. And summarize:
If you only try to “catch up” without changing the approach or the system - you will never catch up. Rather, drive yourself. So it is in the struggle of civilizations: they shoot horses, don't they?
To be continued ...
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