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SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AD
Contents
Experts about the project 7
Проект очима рецензентів 151
Foreword 11
Передмова 155
Chapter 1
Social development at the boundary of millennia 17
Глава 1
Суспільний розвиток на зламі тисячоліть 161
Chapter 2
Problem of historical-sociological reflection 23
Глава 2
Проблема історико–соціологічної рефлексії
Chapter 3
Idea of cycles in the context of periodization of social
development 29
Глава 3
Ідея циклів у контексті періодизації соціального
розвитку
Chapter 4
Choice of methodological foundations
for the study 33
Глава 4
Вибір методологічних підстав дослідження 175
Chapter 5
Universal epochal cycle of social development: structure
and contents 37
Глава 5
Універсальний епохальний цикл суспільного розвитку:
структура і зміст
Chapter 6
Periodization of the world history in the light
of a new conceptual construction: global (macro)
level of analysis and prognosis 45
Глава 6
Періодизація всесвітньої історії у світлі нової
концептуальної побудови: глобальний (макро) рівень
аналізу і прогнозу 187
Chapter 7
Regional-continental (medi) level of analysis
of the historical development 53
Глава 7
Регіонально–континентальний (меді) рівень
аналізу історичного розвитку 194
Chapter 8
National-state (micro) level of analysis of the
history 63
Глава 8
Національно–державний (мікро) рівень аналізу
історії
Chapter 9
Glossary of main notions and social theories 99
Глава 9
Глосарій основних понять і соціальних теорій
Instead of conclusion 129
Висновки
Bibliography
Бібліографія 275
Appendices 135
Додатки 295
Experts about the project
1
The project by E. Afonin, O. Bandurka, and A. Martynov is referred to general sociological elaborations, being rare at present, in the sphere of conceptual analysis of the world history, which attract a growing interest of the scientific community after the crisis of the marxist and positivistic models. The authors are working at the intersection of the fundamental problems of sociology, psychology, historical science, and social forms of economic development. Of importance is the separation of the analysis of transient processes, key and critical points of the world history.
The project quite rightfully substantiates the look at post-modern as not only a philosophical but generally cultural conception of the post-industrial epoch. In this connection, the question arises on the replacement of paradigms of the theory of historical process. Here, the authors connect new possibilities with the methodology of synergetics as a science on the dynamical regularities of interaction between order and chaos. It is shown that the social development moves neither in the direction of a growth of order (as O. Comte considered) nor in the direction of degrees of freedom (H. Spencer) which requires a loosening of regular situations and creative possibilities of chaos, but is defined by the evolution of dissipative structures which synthesize chaos and order in view of a growth of stability of social systems.
According to the synergetic methodology, the socium is embedded into cycles of various hierarchies from cosmic processes to «long waves» of the economic development and vital activity of generations and individuals. A creative result of such an approach lies in the separation of universal epochal cycles of the history as units of the social analysis of specific countries and regions.
By ideas of the authors of the project, universal epochal cycles are composed from 4 transformations: 2 normative states –involution and evolution, and 2 transient processes between them – co-evolution and revolution. As a merit of the authors, we mention the empiric substantiation of 8 such universal cycles basing on the consideration, which is encyclopedic by its size, of facts of the world history. Unfortunately, the authors use the own nontraditional terminology which can lead to misunderstanding at some points. For example, the period covering I and II World Wars, cold war, the appearance of the People’s Republic of China, Islamic revolution in Iran, disintegration of the USSR and Yugoslavia, etc. is called the «evolutionary stage» of the history. In fact, the term «evolution» in the project means not gradual transformational changes but a development of innovative activity, freedom, etc., i.e., radical changes.
The authors promise to utilize the analysis of epochal cycles for solution of the prognostic problems posed by contemporaneity, though it remains to be unclear what procedures and methods will be used for these purposes. But, to this end, further investigations will be carried out.
On the whole, the project present a conception which is modern by orientation and methodology, empirically balanced by material, heuristic by promised potentialities and deserves a support.
Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor,
Honored Scientist of Ukraine
S. Krymsky
2
The appearance of a new conception concerning the complicated problems of scientific reflection of the social-historical development is a remarkable event in the domestic social science.
By positively estimating the idea of the work on the whole, I emphasize the originality of the approach advanced by the authors’ team to analysis of the world-wide historical process. The utilization of the idea of cyclicity, which is laid to the basis of the approach, is rather fruitful not only for general studies in social science but for the economic analysis of world-wide processes.
The actualization of such an analysis is quite obvious under conditions of globalization of the economy and strengthening of tendencies to the formation of the world economic system. In this context, the problem concerning the perspective of development of national states as components of the world economy becomes acute. Authors’research interdisciplinary conception is directed to a wide circle of the questions arising at the contemporary stage of social-economic development.
As very interesting, we consider the comparative basis of the study and its orientation, in particular, to the comparison of the data of economic statistics in the frameworks of separate epochal cycles for countries-leaders of the historical process, on the one hand, and developing countries, on the other hand.
Economic indices can become a weighty complementary factor for the general conception of social development which, after its publication by the Parliamentarian publishing house, can present an integral basis for elaboration of the whole complex of studies of the humanitarian and social profiles within the declared paradigm.
At the same time, the reviewed conception gives a wide place for a substantial discussion on actual fundamental-theoretical and prognostic-applied problems.
In view of the above-mentioned, this work deserves to be published to create the critical mass of new ideas whose lacking makes it impossible to perform a qualitative break-through in the field of theoretical and applied social investigations.
Director of the Institute
of International Business Cooperation,
Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor
L. Kistersky
3
The age of the human history fixed in writing is about 5000 years, and the mystery of the history as a quintessence of the unknown past, apparitional present, and undefined future remains to be sacral.
The open conception proposed by the authors’ collective is a rather successful attempt to set a number of important problems of social development in the plane of determination, which has no, unfortunately, proper explanations. In particular, the authors prove a basic possibility to develop a scientifically grounded prognosis of principal trends of development of the society.
By rejecting a vulgarly linear approach to the study of the historical process, the authors skillfully use the idea of cyclicity, in particular by considering the development of the civilization, for construction of a periodization of social-historical development within the conceptual model.
At the same time, it is worth to note that the chapter devoted to the choice of a methodological tool for studying needs a further elaboration. This is especially important from the viewpoint of tasks of identification of objects, whose investigation on the global, regional, and national-state levels requires a creation of the system of special empiric indices. It is the definition and application of just this system of indices that can give, in my opinion, the possibility to the authors to implement an efficient verification of the research conception.
I say a few words about the applied meaning of the theoretical approach proposed by the authors. First of all, the question is the possibility, in principle, to forecast main tendencies of development in a prescribed perspective. This is, at present, a very important science-wide problem and a sharp need of national and world cultures. Second, the authors have presented, in fact, sketches of a new paradigm of social-historical studies. Third, authors’ attempt of a hypothetical periodization of the world-wide historical process opens a real possibility for realization of specific political-legal, economic, culturological, and philosophical scientific investigations.
A publication of the presented conception, indeed, can become an important step to expansion of the discourse not only in the domestic social science. Under certain conditions, this conception would attract attention of representatives of the foreign social science.
Head of the Committee
of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
on Problems of Social Policy and Labour,
Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor
V. Hoshovs’ka
4.
All who dare to give a new seeing of the two-millennium past history can be divided into three principal categories: great reformers, encyclopedists, and adventurers.
Being acquainted with the creative potential of the authors, I surely assert that they do not belong to the first and to the last. They are loyal followers of encyclopedists.
Their desire –to give a possibility to the distressful mankind to look at old dimmed mirrors of its history in order that it could see a new outline of time –deserves a deep respect and all kinds of support.
The authors of the conception are advantageously distinguished by the feature which was not seen in the others for a long time, namely, a brilliant expressive pride (in the best, positive sense of this word) setting in motion their aspiration to present a new logic, a new Ariadne’s clue, to the XXI century for orientation in the labyrinths of social memory. Just this pride led the authors to such an immodest desire. However, in my opinion, it is this quality that should characterize the conceptual reinterpretation of the Epoch, because the Epoch requires an epochal (nonstandard, nontraditional, nonordinary, immodest) reinterpretation.
Such a conception has to get a chance and has a right to exist.
Candidate of Philosophical Sciences,
Member of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine
Foreword
The idea of the research project «Social development AD» ripened in the authors’collective during the last decade marked by radical changes in the world: downfall of the Berlin wall, disintegration of the USSR, subsequent economic decline in new sovereign states of Central and East Europe, and, on the contrary, economic jump of «south-asian tigers».
A new social situation, first of all in the regions of the so-called transformation, its noncontrollable and nonpredictable, in many respects, character, and the need in minimization of negative consequences of the transient period cannot help to stimulate a growth of interest in new conceptual approaches and attempts to reinterpret the past, explain the present, and foresee the future. Imperceptibly, rather quickly, and unconstrainedly, such terms as macroeconomy, world economy, geopolicy, geostrategy, globalization, international standards, all-mankind norms and priorities enter into the common use of politicians of the countries in transition. New tendencies also actualize the problem of integral indices of social (personal and social) development, without which any verification of appearing conceptual constructions is hardly possible.
Though the problem of integral indices in sociology remains unsolved, quite reassuring perspectives have arisen, in out opinion, at the last time. In this connection, we mention numerous works performed at the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine in the 90s. From the first years of the existence of the Institute (October 1990), one observed the formation of scientific trends, unusual for the soviet sociological school, such as «the theory of catastrophes», «social synergetics», «sociology of gender», «socionics», etc. Achievements of the American and West European sociological thought found an increasing recognition there. All this together along with a growing activity of the Institute in the fulfillment of empiric sociological studies and difficulties caused by a nonlinear character of transformational processes have transferred the problem of integral indices directly into the plane of practical decisions. A rather large group of researchers was engaged by its solution (Vorona V. M., Ruchka A. O., Golovakha E. I., Panina N. V., Saenko Yu. I., Donchenko O. A., et al.).
Among works devoted to the problem of integral indices, we mention the monograph by Donchenko O. A. «Societal psychics» (1994), in which he substantiates a model of societal psychics, its intrinsic properties, states, and processes. Though this work has met an ambiguous attitude, however, the societal indices grounded in it seem to be sufficiently productive. They are able, in our opinion, to correctly describe typological «static» features of the socium (in a normative stable state) and to establish the presence of points of discontinuity in its genesis –the «dynamics» (transient state).
Experiments performed by E. A. Afonin (1990-1999) became a certain supplement to the theoretical generalizations of Donchenko O. A. The former were based on the projective psychodiagnostic test, developed by E. A. Afonin, with colour preferences, which was approved on the random sampling of a volume of more than 1000 persons of both sexes, with various ages, education, and nationality in Ukraine. Russia, Belorussia, and abroad. The test reveals a sufficient technological workability and efficiency in sociological polls carried out in the frameworks of military-social investigations in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (1992-1995). A definite modification of the test ensures the realization of the sociological monitoring in Ukraine from 1992, which has established the beginning (1994) of societal (system-wide) changes, situational (short-term) formation of a rationalistic behavioural typology in the country (spring of 1995, 1996, 1998), and appearance (1999) of cuspidal tendencies related to the withdrawal of Ukraine from the crisis. These circumstances allow one to solve a number of applied prognostic problems connected with elections of people’s deputies of Ukraine, Head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the third convocation, Kyiv’s mayor, and President of Ukraine. High technological potentialities of the methodics open wide perspectives for it in solution of a number of traditional problems of the normative period (establishment of limits for age categories – for optimization of budget social payments; harmonization of relations in social institutions; dynamization of the governmental policy, etc.).
The experiments performed and their results on the whole gave the necessary basis for statement of the question on the application of the new procedure to the analysis of large social systems. The first attempt of such an analysis was made in papers: «Development of Ukraine: macrosocial approach [in Ukrainian] // Viche. –. –No. 1. –P. 45-55; Ukraine –Europe –World: on the way of co-evolution [in Ukrainian] // Visnyk Kharkiv. Derzh. Univer. –. –No. 433. –P. 13-16. The most integral conceptual exposition of the idea of this project was given in the final part of the scientific report «Social relativism or sociology of social changes» presented by one of the authors on October 22, 1998 at the conference hall of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (see Appendix 1). As a certain incentive to the beginning of an immediate development, we mention the decision of two public organizations (Ukrainian Social Innovation Society and Atlantic Council of Ukraine) and Information and Library Department of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to initiate works on realization of the idea of the project. According to the adopted decision, the preparatory stage of development and, at the same time, the campaign on attraction of the attention of the scientific community including the west one.
From the first steps of the project statement, its working group informs the scientific community in a proper way about the course of implementation of the main idea. The project booklet (see Appendix 2) was spread among the institutes of the NAS of Ukraine and colleges of Ukraine. For the purpose of a search for foreign partners, the project announcement was spread at meetings of the Section of libraries and research services of parliaments of the world in the frameworks of the 65th Conference of the International Federation of Librarian Associations (August 1999, Bangkok, Thailand) and among the participants of the Conference of correspondents of the European Center of Parliament Studies and Documentation (October 1999, Bern, Switzerland). Special letters were sent to the Representatives of UNO in Ukraine and, in particular, the coordinator of the PRUNO project Mrs. Mridula Ghosh who expresses the readiness to render support to this project. The composition of the working group is presented in Appendix 3.
We would like to say a few words about the general scheme of organization of our research project.
The project includes two research blocks. The first is a historical-sociological one. It constitutes the basis of the scientific direction, whose conception, properly, presented in this publication. The principal goals of this block consist in a periodization of the historical process and its substantial analysis at the global (macro), continental (medi), and national-state (micro) levels of analysis from the positions of the proposed approach. Here, the question is mainly the verification of systems of periodization, which are constructed by using the ideas of universal epochal cycle of the social development. The analysis of the level of national-state formations is represented by the history of the following 50 countries:
Europe (Austria, Belorussia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, Yugoslavia);
Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Korea (North), Korea (South), Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Vietnam);
Australia;
Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, South African Republic);
North America (Canada, Mexico, The United States);
South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru).
In this work, the authors do not pretend to create an absolutely exact chronology of cycles of the historical development of countries, continents, and the world history. In the work, we only make attempt to illustrate potentialities of the approach. A solution of the problem of historical periodization in the frameworks of the conception will become immediately possible only after the application of appropriate procedures (elaboration of particular indices of development, their application, and systematization of results of the study),
The second block of the project will be composed from special investigations aimed at, on the one hand, the analysis of behavior of individuals, small groups, generations, and the society on the whole as subjects of the historical process. On the other hand, as an object of research interest, we take the evolution of the most important social institutions and spheres of vital activity. In particular, we will study cycles of development of policy, economy, science, education, language, literature, arts (music, theater, architecture), etc. The working group of the project will be engaged by coordination of such investigations and will promote the publication of the results received.
Thus, the second block of the project will comprise specific disciplinary investigations in the field of social and humanitarian disciplines. At the beginning, we plan to initiate studies in the following directions:
In the frameworks of particular research conceptions, we plan to develop methodological foundations, to define a system of indices and information, and, on this base, to perform each of the objective-disciplinary investigations. It is, perhaps, the most complicated part of the study in such directions, for example, as demography because the statistical data on censuses of population have a limited historical depth (mainly, the XIX and XX centuries) and the total limits of the study are 2,000 years. In other words, difficulties in the provision of objective investigations by statistical information require that participants of the project reveal much creative and inventive activity.
Note that both the verification and measurement of societal (system-wide) indices involve a definite complexity. For example, it is known that the cost of a necessary empiric material according to the price list of the «Gellap-International» company equals about 400,000 USD. Therefore, by seeking alternative variants, the research group plans a special complex of experimental works on approbation of new Internet-technologies, in particular, organization of a separate web-site in the Internet. Such a site allows one to solve, on the whole, three important problems: first, it will give the alternative way «to gather» empiric data; second, it will ensure the open communication between the involved participants of the project; third, we obtain the perspective to edit the electronic specialized journal guaranteeing the operative publication and discussion of the most substantial results received during the realization of this project.
Openness of the project supposes both a free access to solution of its problems and a support of initiative researches on places. The working group of the project foresees an organizational assistance to similar investigations. On the web-site of the project, we intend to organize a powerful informational support to research initiatives in the field of social globalistics. More exactly, we assume to realize the informational-librarian support (the disposition of on-line librarian resources, data on authors, institutions, and countries carrying on relevant investigations, publication of main results, conduct of conferences, discussions, etc.).
The authors of the basic conception and working group of the project express their sincere gratitude all who promoted preparation and establishment of the project in various ways.
We thank the Expert Council of the Ukrainian Social Innovation Society, Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Atlantic Council of Ukraine, Scientific Council of the University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Kharkiv), Institutes of Sociology and History of Ukraine of the NAS of Ukraine, Parliamentarian Publishing House, whose constructive participation allows us to publish this open conception.
We are thankful to the companies «Socis-Gellap» and «GfK–USM» for the significant help in gathering the empiric data during 8 years.
We thank the company «Clear Water» and Ukrainian foundation for law defence Institutions for financial support this publication.
We should like to express our hope that the publication of our open conception will give a positive pulse to a wide scientific discussion. Moreover, we expect to meet a constructive criticism which «comprehends» difficulties which were encountered by the authors’team and have led to the insufficiently rigorous form of presentation of the essence of the conception.
We ask to send propositions and remarks to the executive secretary of the project, Martynov Andrei Yur’evich [off. tel. (380 44) 229-8704], and to the supervisor of the project, Afonin Eduard Andreevich [off. tel. (380 44) 226-2145; e-mail: afonin@rada.gov.ua].
CHAPTER 1
Social development at the boundary
of millennia
Under the conditions of the planetary crisis, that has emerged on the eve of the third millennium, the humanity is faced with the problem of globalization of transformational processes. Beginning as the «Great Depression» of 1929-1934 in North-American and West-European countries, these processes received a new powerful impulse at the end of the XX century, by spreading their influence on the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe and a significant part of Asia.
The new tendencies of social development and the problems of growth connected with them, actualized the research activity of representatives of social sciences. For example, by the late 60s of the XX century, A. Peccei, a famous public figure in Italy, organized the Rome Club that initiated systematic researches of global problems. The first report of this club, called «The limits of development», has become a futurological sensation. Presented by D. Medows in 1972, at the peak of «Energetic crisis», this report pessimistically stated that social forms within which the economic growth is realized, do not lead to the overall welfare but sharpen social antagonisms and conflicts.
Demographic problems, unemployment, incomplete exploitation of social and economic potentialities of the society, deficit and irrational management of resources, inefficiency of various measures, inflation, lack of security and arms race, pollution of the environment, and the destruction of biosphere – all these tendencies of a new stage of development were considered in the reports of the Rome Club2. No less pessimistic was Lindon Laroush’s3 forecast of the near future, related to the new wave of transformational processes in the former USSR.
The globalization of threats may be the price paid by the humanity for its achievements. In the latter half of the XX century, the man landed on the Moon, which can be compared to the discovery of America by Columbus. The technical-scientific revolution radically alters everyday life. The achievements of genetics put the man in one line with the Creator, though the man is hardly ready to that fact morally. The Internet is transforming our ideas of time and space.
In the frameworks of new tendencies of social development, we observe the steady establishment of the liberal world economy system based on the principles of monetarism. At the same time against this self-intensifying background, the phenomenon of the so-called “ trophy economy” is becoming remarkable, when the mechanism of overconsumption, not balanced with the adequate quantity of constructive production, is gaining strength under the conditions of moral corruption4. The controversies of the industrial development remain actual. A particular anxiety is brought up, in particular, by inevitable climatic changes caused by the extensive economic management and irreversible utilization of natural resources. The demographic factor is still fraught with the potential threat to social development: as of December 12, 1999, the world population has reached 6 billion people, having risen by 1 billion for as little as 12 years5.
Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the conflicts for redistribution of resources (natural, energetic, economic, cultural, and informational) are again becoming the reality. In the process of political, economic, and social changes, which are one of the manifestations of the essence of historical development, the new world policy is becoming more expansive. This fact is revealed by the recent events in Kosovo (Yugoslavia) that took place in 1999. The countries of the advance-guard of social development have reached the postindustrial stage of development by the end of the XX century, when human intellect and various forms of information are becoming the leading factors of the reproduction of economy.
The new postindustrial epoch has given birth to its own ideology – post-modernism. This term was introduced at the beginning of the 1980s by the French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard for the formalization of the phenomenon of skepticism relative to the rationalist tendencies of Enlightenment. The «generic features» of post-modernism are: agnosticism, pragmatism, eclecticism, and anarchodemocratism6.
post-modernism is the phenomenon of wide character, including all spheres of intellectual activity. It is based on egalitarian tendencies, contraposed to any hierarchic constructions7.
The emergence of post-modernism on the horizon of social development stimulated the need in development of new paradigms, since post-modernism denies the very possibility of the social theory. Particularly, it concerns the problem of forecasting the social development.
The history is permanently demolishing prognostic scenarios, however it has its own logic. What was considered sane, was not historical, what was considered historical, was not sane8. This can be reproduced by the social theory, that, of course, does not give exhaustive knowledge of objective reality but allows us to distance ourselves from the absolute relativism.
The end of the millennium, the formal beginning of the new historical epoch, stimulates the imperative need of a substantially new paradigm of the social theory. The history, being the existence in action, always goes beyond the narrow frame of temporal conceptual constructions in reality and, at the same time, often denies socio-philosophical prognoses. That is why, the revision of existing concepts and prognoses of social development offered before becomes actual. As known, futurological constructions are formed, as a rule, at a definite moment. With a change of the situation, rendering a substantial influence on the foreseen tendencies, the gap between the foreseen and the real is widening. That is why, the noncomprehension of a new social-political topology of the world becomes a source of faults and mistakes, a corollary of the absence of a future «far-horizon» project9.
In this context, significant is the discussion on the role of the social science in the contemporary world between former Presidents of the International Association of Sociologists I. Wallerstein and M. Archer. Whereas Wallerstein poses a new global problem of highlighting the fact of the end of one epoch and the beginning of another one as well as various forms of the transition to the latter, M. Archer accentuates the fact that the social science cannot play the role of radical transformer10.
At the same time, the discussion of the correlation of Belief and Knowledge is becoming actual for the western science. «There is no conflict between the religion and science in the East, since science is not based on the predilection to facts, and religion –only on the belief; there exist the religious cognition and cognitive religion» –states Carl-Gustav Jung11.
We emphasize the point that the society «goes through» radical social transformations in the transitional phase of development – the reform of social structures, relations and correlations, hierarchy of factors, etc. which take an important part in the system of the reproduction of social life. The processes of transitional conditions of social systems are followed by a sharp weakening of the influence of cause-effect relations which form the basis of the rational method in science. From our point of view, the realization of this fact explains a drop in efficiency and, in some cases, unsoundness of both scientific (rational) knowledge and the method of solving the task of overcoming the social crisis. Those are transitional periods (the times of «disturbance» and crises) when one can observe the growing importance of the traditional knowledge and practices backing on the intuition, popular orientations and methods, coming from ancient times, for solving vital tasks and for prognoses of the future.
It is obvious that the investigation of social development should be carried out on the principles of integration of the ancient and temporary, traditional and innovative knowledge and methods, which only together are able to give the adequate results under conditions of the transitional period of social development on the boundary of millennia.
The main scientific problem of the present research is the social development in the spatio-temporal continuum.
As the object of our analysis, we take the life cycle of the society as a subject of the historical process. We also shall investigate the genesis of societal processes, their characteristics and conditions.
We note that the analogous trend in social philosophy gives no any distinctive criteria for the rational construction of a system of classification and periodization as integral elements of a scientifically grounded foresight. In this connection, a new wave of the «traditional» discussion about progress is very significant. For example, A. Nazaratyan separates five through tendencies (vectors) of changes (on sufficiently large temporal intervals):
) rise of technologic power;
) demographic growth;
) intellectual development;
) growth of organizational complexity;
) enhancement of tolerance.
Such an approach to the progress is criticized by A. Korotaev. He states that we do not know whether the humanity is approaching its apotheosis or abyss12. Indeed, the utilitarian ideal of progress formulated by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is as follows: the sum of individual profits gives the overall profit –«the biggest happiness for the largest number of people»13. But it still remains just a philosophical utopia for the largest part of the population over the world.
The theoretical constructions continue to be created at the corresponding levels of abstraction upon the analysis of objects of various scales. It is necessary to remove the contradiction between the forms of development on the basis of the formulated universal laws and all the variety of achievements of natural sciences. The question is the social science striving to become an exact science normative for the political sphere, especially in the context of social engineering.
The solution of this main task should promote the attainment of the main objective of this research –creation of a universal and, at the same time, applied model of epochal historical cycle as the unit of analysis and the means of prognostics at the level of the specific countries, regions, and civilizations.
The research has a polydisciplinary character, which is related to the development of the main concept of cyclicity of social development in the historical context.
The expected results, which are of hypothetical character prior to a receipt of empiric data, may become a subject for further specific researches in the sphere of the sociology of history, social philosophy, politology, psychology, right, geopolicy, philology, etc.
Thus, the contemporary macrosocial situation and the condition of theoretical developments stimulate the formation of a new research paradigm of the social science on the basis of integral societal indices. Of course, unless the corresponding empirical information is received, the offered concept is a hypothesis.
CHAPTER 2
Problem of historical-
sociological reflection
A historical-sociological conception is represented as a synthesis simultaneously containing the analysis of the most important tendencies of development of specific countries and regions, interpretation of the contemporary epoch, and forecast of long-term historical development. As is well known, the history of sociological science includes similar theories. In the period of the transition from a traditional to industrial society, this problem was solved by the conceptions of O. Comte, E. Durkheim, and K.. Marx. A detailed characteristic of the industrial society was given by M.. Weber14, and that of the post-industrial society by D. Bell, A. Toffler, and others.
We have already noted that, on the boundary of the third millennium, the global transformation stimulates changes in the spiritual sphere, and actual problems become sharper due to a greater nonpredictability of behaviour of subjects of the historical process. Similar social phenomena stimulate the necessity of harmonization of interdisciplinary scientific studies, new theoretical approaches, adequate methodologies for analysis and forecast which would be relevant to the historical challenge.
Since the history of sociological thoughts is a pure source of principal ideas of the sociology of history, we turn to the analysis of the state of scientific interpretation of the problem of social development.
This problem can be solved by considering the main conceptions of social development in the historical context through the prism of problematic-chronological discourse, which allows one to show the self-identification of the main doctrines and a scientific-critical dialog between them.
On the theoretical level, the basic contraversivity was already considered in the doctrines of O. Comte (1798-1857) and Ch. L. Montesquieu (1689-1775). The latter, as distinct from O. Comte, did not trust in the idea of progress15. At the same time, Ch. L. Montesquieu advanced a fruitful idea on the influence of geographical environment on the social development and definition of a historical situation. Here, we can find the origin of geopolicy and geoeconomy which, in the period of globalization, render a growing effect on the historical situation not only in specific countries and regions but on development of the whole civilization.
As distinct from Ch. L. Montesquieu, O. Comte was a supporter of the idea of unity of the whole history of the mankind, because the single intention of the history consists in the progress of human intellect16. Therefore, sociology should be a system of positive knowledge on the society. One of the moving forces of the history was a disorder of thinking at every individual historical stage. The process of development was described by O. Comte in terms of «statics» and «dynamics». The last is characterized as a sequential change of the necessary stages of establishment of the human intellect and society for attainment of a static state, i.e., social order. Therefore, progress is comprehended as a development of the rational in persons. As for the progress of a society, O. Comte connected it with the evolution of social (human) consciousness, the sequential change of three dominating types of outlook:
) theological one, when the leading tendency of social development is the competitiveness between religious ideas and an originating scientific knowledge;
) metaphysical one, which characterizes speculative-philosophical consciousness;
) eventually at the highest stage, the scientific positive consciousness and positive style of thinking are established. This is related with the well-known optimistic aphorism of O. Comte about the creative role of science: «To know in order to foresee, and to foresee in order to be able»17. The positivistic tradition, beginning from O. Comte, is connected with ideas of social engineering, i.e., a more or less conscious definition of the vector of social development.
The all-embracing conceptualization of the history was developed by Hegel who considered the historical process as that of establishment of the notion of freedom.
The most characteristic doctrine during establishment of the evolutionary-materialistic approach to the history was that of K. Marx (1818-1883). In the marxist conception, the history is considered as a progressive natural-historical process of variations in and change of social-historical formations. This mechanism was formulated as follows: «Every social formation does not die until all productive forces, for which it presents a sufficient place, will have developed, and no new higher production relations appear until the material conditions for their existence in the midst of the very old society will have ripened»18. Such an evolutionary approach became a theoretical foundation of the activity of social democracy.
On the other hand, we recall that Marx inferred in the work «Lui Bonaparte’s brumaire, 18»: all previous revolutions improved the state apparatus, but it should be broken for the sake of establishment of the dictatorship of proletariat. Class struggle is already represented as a moving force of the history. Such a revolutionary marxism became a practical guide to action in countries with outdated rhythm of industrialization. However, the appearance of the socialist system after the II World war, which included the USSR and its satellites, did not become «the end of the pre-history». At the same time, the dogmatization of the social-philosophical theory of marxism dealed a fatal blow at it. On the other hand, the new phase in development of the industrial society, which was related with marginalization of the class structure where the proletariat formally represented a major part, has transformed the social structure of countries being in the advance-guard of the historical process.
The comprador capitalism in developing countries did not create a proletariat in the classical marxist sense of this term. Similar tendencies limited the creative potential of marxism, though impetuous events in the second half of the XX century (for example, youth riots in the Western Europe in 1968) allowed one to say about neo-marxism for some time19. In the former USSR up to the period of «perestroika» (1985-1991), the severe ideological control gave no possibility to freely develop even for a nonorthodoxal marxist thinking. The flow of denunciatory literature did not allow one to separate cereals from weeds. In fact, neo-marxist theoretical investigations were terminated without any real start. One of the last attempts was the book of S. Platonov, where the author comprehends the notion of communism and seeks for an answer to the rhetorical question about what can occur after communism. He analyzes the development of the mankind from the pre-history, i.e., the epoch of estrangement, through the epoch of destruction of private property, every of the production means of which is a stage of withdrawal of one of the layers of estrangement, to the epoch of «positive humanism», a free association of universally developing individuals20.
The notion of historical process in the materialist tradition is based on the stadial interpretation of the human history as a unit global process of development and change of formations. In the marxist paradigm, there were yet no attempts to theoretically explain the contemporary social situation of breaking the soviet model of socialism. This testifies to that marxism remains on pages of the history but on the periphery of an actual scientific discourse related with the positivistic solution of the problem of social engineering.
Comte’s positivistic tradition was developed by the English sociologist and philosopher H. Spencer (1820-1903) who connected sociology with the idea of evolution. The basis of his conception was the analogy of state with biological organism.
Similarly to a biostructure, a state has its own life circle: birth, growth, ageing, and downfall. This idea was developed by O. Spengler21 who considered the historical fate of the European civilization and by L. N. Gumi-lev who analyzed ethnogenesis22.
On the boundary of the XIX-XX centuries, a positivistic interpretation of social mechanisms was presented by E. Durkheim (1858-1917). The main idea of his conception reduces to a search for social harmony under objective conditions of division of social labour. As distinct from Marx who accented attention on the estrangement of a worker from results of his/her work under conditions when division of labour is based on private interests, Durkheim considered this problem from the viewpoint of relations between the individual and group. Since collectivistic societies are historically primary, the individual arises from the society but not the society from individuals. Social mechanisms are regulated by a search for the harmony of agreement. Moreover, organic solidarity is caused by labour division23. From the methodological viewpoint, it is worth to note the approach of Durkheim to the definition of social roles.
The absolutization of rationalization and the linear progressive theory are opposed by the conception of W. Pareto (1848-1923). Whereas O. Comte considered the evolution of the man, on the whole, as the motion from fetishism to positivism through the theological and metaphysical stages regardless of certain delays, these four images of thinking, according to Pareto, normally interact at various levels in all the time. For the whole mankind, there is no obligatory transition from one type of thinking to another in the form of a single and irreversible process, but there are transient oscillations, defined by societies and classes, relative to the influence of each of these means of thinking24. It follows that definite tasks related to the development of the society are solved at specific historical stages through a change of governing elites. New elites are formed from lower strata, flourish, and then decline25. The idea of cyclicity becomes pivotal for the social theory.
The rationalistic conception of M. Weber (1864-1920) approaches the history and sociology not as two different disciplines but as a whole methodological system. In his study, the historian aspires to define a causal significance of various elements having created a unique conjuncture, but the sociologist tries to establish interconnections (in their temporal sequence) which were observed many times or can repeat26. On the boundary of the XXI century, the discourse of social-historical reflection remains open.
CHAPTER 3
Idea of cycles
in the context of periodization
of social development
The object of conceptual analysis is the life cycle of the society as a subject of the historical process. This allows one to create an universal applied model of epochal historical cycle as the means of analysis and prognosis at the level of the history of the whole world, separate continents, and countries.
The idea of cyclicity is characteristic of the sociologic theory of Pitirim Sorokin who investigated social phenomena common for all social-cultural phenomena repeating in time and space27. Sorokin suggested the following division of the rhythms of cultural changes of the European history into periods:
|
Period |
Epoch |
|
Greece, VII-VI centuries BC |
Speculative |
|
Greece, V century BC |
Idealistic |
|
Rome, IV century BC –IV century AD |
Sensual |
|
Europe, IV-VI centuries AD |
Idealistic |
|
Europe, VI-XII centuries AD |
Speculative |
|
Europe, XII-XIV centuries AD |
Idealistic |
|
Europe, XIV century AD to the present days |
Sensual |
Sorokin distinguished the full cycle and the relative cycle. In the first case, the end phase turns into the initial phase and then the cycle begins again. But, in the relative cycle, the direction of repeating process does not fully coincide with the direction of a series of similar anterior processes28. This concept helps to explain the existence of interrupted cycles in the history of development of various nations and civilizations.
The dominant theme in the contemporary sociologic theory is the movement to the theoretical synthesis29. The exploitation of efficient methods of various conceptual origins will help to explain the key events and turning points of history. In this context, the attention is attracted by the latest concepts of cyclicity of the social development, worked out in various spheres of social sciences30. In particular, it concerns the development of the methodology of a research of long cycles. For instance, G. Taylor suggested the theory of a periodic change of the global historical process every 500 years. Moreover, the phases of a political cycle, that are under the influence of 60-year economic cycles (Kondratiev waves), change every 120 years. On the basis of analysis of these cycles, countries-hegemons for various historical periods are defined31.
Society as a complex living system, whose structural elements are permanently changing, is involved into life cycles of various hierarchies: from cosmic cycles to the life cycles of generations and separate individuals.
A. L. Chizhevsky (1897-1964) introduced the socium into cosmos, having connected the human history with the history of the Universe. By that, the correlation between the world historical process and cyclic solar activity was revealed. It is not the Sun that forces people to do something – those are social conditions that urge them to it. The Sun initiates the chain reaction of actions, whose specific sense has ripened by that moment. The Sun leads the social system, strained in a complicated way, out of the state of relative balance and serves like an exterior signal for switching it into another condition32. The concept of Chizhevsky gives objective grounds for using the methodology of natural sciences for the research of social development. The influence of the Sun’s activity upon the process of ethnogenesis is represented in the most adequate way in Gumiliev’s conception33. The development of an ethnos is shown for three existentialistic phases of the life cycle: the origin, growth, and death. The biosocial mechanism, connected with the genesis of these processes, is focused on the idea of passionarity, namely on the phenomenon of energetic pulse received by an ethnos in a definite spatio-temporal field.
The variety of the existing ethnoses is provided by the geographical differentiation.
The historical complement of Gumilev’s conception is the fundamental research by A. J. Toynbee (1889-1975). His theory of historical development is described in his 12-volume «Research of History»34. The concept of cycles is represented by the analysis of the origin, growth, and death of civilization. To define the main characteristics of the rhythm of existence of civilizations, A. Toynbee introduced the term «call-reply» explaining changes in the main stages of a life cycle of civilizations: origin, growth, fracture, and decay. The search for an efficient reply to calls of the environment is characteristic of the «father civilizations», and to calls of the natural and social nature –for subsequent civilizations. The history of 36 civilizations is represented. They are classified into three groups:
Toynbee researched the problem of historical development at two levels: definite civilizations and definite countries. The most arguable hypothesis of Toynbee’s concept is the possibility of emergence of a universal civilization. On the other hand, his colossal theoretical work has become the well of philosophical, historical, and social ideas.
The presented above opinion concerns also the scientific heritage of Osvald Spengler (1880-1936). His book «Decline of Europe. Essay on Morphology of World History» has become the classics of modernism36. Such is the contraposition of the culture and civilization, which, being the progress of history, presents a gradual development of nonorganic and perished forms. A civilization is the inevitable destination of a culture37. Spengler compared the civilization with an organism experiencing the periods of childhood, youth, maturity and senility.
The idea of comparison of the social development with the ontogenesis of an individual is theoretically prospective. There appears a possibility of involvement of methodological concepts of psychology and societal psychology in the research. This will allow us to show the correlation between the socium and an individual. The main problem of social engineering that has something in common with the ideas of cyclic development is connected with the tasks of prognostication of social-historical processes38.
Karl Popper, giving the name of «poverty of historicism» to the attempts of prophecies concerning the universal history which follows its predestined way, turns his attention to a principal impossibility of scientific forecast with the use of rational methods. First, there is no universal history of the mankind at all (there are only varied histories of different parts of the society). The second reason is that there exists a random, irrational, and unstable personal factor within the history, and, third, the human history is a unique and inimitable process39. However, the theoretical denial of Popper’s prognostic agnosticism is given by social synergetics – the science of regularities of the interaction of a social order and chaos. According to this theory, the essence of development of the social reality reduces neither to the one-sided enlargement of order (O. Comte) nor to the one-sided growth of a degree of freedom (chaos) (H. Spencer). The evolution of a dissipative structure (the synthesis of chaos and order) is the growth of a degree of synthesis of order and chaos, conditioned by the aspiration to a maximum stability40.
Social synergetics has showed the groundlessness of the mixing of terms «aim» and «sense»: the absence of any aim does not mean the absence of any sense (movement to the superattractor or to the limit state. Has reached it, the system can return to none of the former states). It is the mistake that was made by Popper in «Poverty of historicism»: by assuming that the history has no aim, he inferred that it has no sense.
We emphasize that social synergetics, looking at the social-historical development through the prism of «whirligig» of order and chaos, allows one to synthesize the ideas of social engineering and cyclicity of social development, which, from the viewpoint of applied meaning of the suggested conception, is one of the most important tasks of authors’collective.
The state of scientific development of the problem of social-historical development presents the theoretical grounds necessary for the conceptual construction of a new model of historical development in the historical context.
CHAPTER 4
Choice of methodological foundations
for the study
Methodological bases of the new paradigm have to ensure the analysis of social-historical development at the level of specific countries, regions, and civilizations, to adequately interpret important events of the contemporary epoch, and to allow one to foresee principal tendencies and perspective of the historical development.
In the modern sociological science, there occurs an actual global transformation stimulating a change of basic categorial characteristics, which implies a change in representations of the common and the single.
Objectively, the time of a change of the paradigm of social-historical development came. By a paradigm, we mean theoretically and practically important scientific achievement which give a model, statements of problems, and their solution to the scientific community for a certain time41.
A result of study will depend on the basic choice of a methodological approach. The criterion of objectivity and universality of sociological knowledge requires to study a situation in all regions and countries of the world in view of global tendencies. This allows one to clarify the fact of the termination of one epoch and appearance of the other and possible ways of the transition to it. In this context, the American sociologist I. Wallerstein outlines the aspiration of sociology to become the exact science normative for the sphere of policy42.
M. Archer comprehends conceptual problems of sociology in the opposite manner. She outlines that social science cannot play the role of radical transformer from the viewpoint of Comte’s programming of the society43. On the other hand, a use of the methodology of social engineering is connected with the orientation of scientific tools to mathematical logic44. In the context of the present investigation of social-historical development, we assume an applied utilization of appropriate methods in the process of analysis of indices of societal characteristics. After the derivation of empiric indices, they should be undergone to comparative analysis.
A realization of the methodological approach to the study must ensure the possibility of a harmonic transition from the common to the partial (civilization – country) and conversely, with the purpose to determine regular ties between social-historical phenomena and their specificity. In this case, all our positions will be restricted the time and experience we have cognized45.
On the basis of representations of cyclicity of the social development, the main methodological idea of the project proposes the instrumental possibility, which is adequate to tasks of the study, to reconstruct the objective logic of principal historical changes, which are characterized such events as «revolutions», «transformations», state overturns, diverse social protests, numerous civil conflicts, local and global wars. Similar phenomena, as a rule, appear in the so-called transient states of social development, which can serve hypothetical indicators of epochal changes.
For analysis of these phenomena, we consider the study of A. L. Chi-zhevsky46 as methodologically acceptable. He demonstrated the interrelation between a historical process in the form of the social-historical activity of the mankind and processes in the Sun, a degree of its astrophysical activity. Having established a direct connection, Chizhevsky proved his hypothesis on the actual historic data starting from 500 BC and till the XIX century. Moreover, he emphasized that non every maximum of solar activity unconditionally stimulates the corresponding maximum of the historical activity. In order that happens, the proper immanent conditions should be available as a necessary requirement (in Chizhevsky’s opinion, these are social-economic and political along with, possibly, spiritual or social-psychological conditions).
An important methodological basis of the present investigation is the idea of cyclic character of the psychical development of the man because a personality is one of the main elements of any social structure. In this context, we distinguish theoretical-practical generalizations made by D. Feldshtein47, which are substantial for our approach. By basing on the occupational approach (S. Rubinshtein, A. Leont’ev, A. Brushlinsky, et al.) and age periodization of psychological development of a personality in ontogenesis (D. El’konin), which were advanced in psychology, Feldshtein demonstrated a cyclic (periodic) character of changes in the psychological structure of a personality and, respectively, in the psychological structure of activity, in which the communicative and objective plans are alternatively actualized.
The historical origin of leading activities allows one to rationally explain (rather than to simply state) analogies to the psychical development of the mankind and, in addition, sets reasonable limits for such analogies by differentiating a true cause-effect connection and an analogy based only on the general features similar for any process of development of a large system48.
Every epoch in the psychological development of a personality consists of two periods regularly connected between themselves:
. The mastering of tasks, motives, norms of human activity and the development of emotional-consumptional sphere;
2. The mastering of means of actions and the formation of operational-technical possibilities. In this case, the transition from one epoch to the next one occurs under the appearance of a discrepancy between operational-technical possibilities and problems and motives of the activity, on whose base they were formed49.
Social changes can be considered in the context of societal processes, states, and features, which are realized in the frameworks of a unit epochal historical cycle. By societal psychics, we mean the most integral generalizing characteristics of social processes, a distinctive collective dictionary of the historical-cultural heredity of a society50. The analysis of societal characteristics is related with the methodological problem of decipherability of the historical-cultural code keeping the solution of properties of the societal psychics, which are objectified in all things encountered by the man in the historical-cultural space51.
However, the largest methodological problem arising in the process of investigation is identification of the subject of analysis, whose objective societal indices should give exact data for theoretical constructions of periodization of the social-historical process both in retrospect and prospect.
Methodological approaches used upon the elaboration of the basic conception in studying the social-historical development will be mainly conserved during the investigation of a specific applied field for further analysis in the sphere of political, legal, philological, and other sciences of the social and humanitarian profile.
CHAPTER 5
Universal epochal cycle
of social development: structure
and contents
The informative characteristic of the conception may be presented in two main aspects: through defining the theoretical principles of the social-historical development and the hypothetical periodization of the world historical process on this basis.
The society as a subject of the history and civilization goes through a large life cycle in its development. In the context of the social philosophy and the philosophy of history, this thesis has already become a trivial truth. A prominent scientist Nils Bohr said that the truth may be trivial and deep. A statement, opposite to the trivial truth is simply false, and the statement, opposite to the deep truth, is also true52. The failure to perceive the idea of cyclicity of historical processes is mainly connected with the vulgar idea of progressive development that will inevitably lead the mankind from the «kingdom of necessity» to the «kingdom of freedom», despite regressive tendencies. The perception of the idea of cyclicity in the spirit of the circuit of Ecclesiast is also connected with this conceptual approach: what took place then, is taking place now; what will take place, already took place. We conceive that the historical development of a socium is, in fact, a realization of epochal cycles, each consisting of two periods.
The first epochal period, «involution», has the semantic content of mastering the societal qualities acquired by the society in the previous period of development. The simplification of a social structure, traditionalism, and a reducion of social processes in space is characteristic of the involutionary stage. Such a society has «closed» character, helping to maintain the social stability. In such a socium, the degree of freedom of an individual is limited by influence of the collective. The emotional-sensitive psychotype of a personality is determining.
The second epochal period (evolution) is characterized by the development of social processes in space, complication of the social structure, and innovative activity. One of the tasks of the evolution is a modernization of the traditional society. The historical indication of the evolutionary period is the acquisition of new social characteristics by the society, including the actualization of signs of the own preceding period of development or attributes, characteristic of the societies at a higher level of historical development. The social balance is maintained by innovative accumulations. «Involution» and «evolution» are the normative conditions of a society53. The liberation of an individual and the strengthening of the objective-cognitive component in the psychological structure of a personality becomes the fundament of the innovative activity in the involutionary period. The main characteristic of the evolution is the stability of changes.
Normative periods in the history of the society alternate with transient periods, when the structures of the socium and fundamental institutions are transforming.
An increase in the historical activity depends on the interaction of three fundamental factors: the social-political, social-economic, and natural-cosmic. Moreover, the significant influence of the spiritual sphere should be added to the mentioned above. Let us emphasize that the absence of the preconditions for intensive activity of one of those factors does not launch the mechanism of transformation on the whole.
An important role in a change of the periods of an epochal cycle is played by the social-historical phenomena of wars. The subjects of military actions make and finish wars at various moments of the historical development. The correction of the rhythm of a cycle, defining the destiny of the whole region, or even global changes may take place in the case of invasion of a country as, for example, after world wars.
The transient periods of social development are characterized with historical phases opposite by the direction of changes: «coevolution» and «revolution». For example, the «co-evolution» is the phase of transition from the normative period of «involution» to the normative period of «evolution». This period is realized within the single epochal cycle, that is why only the polarity of the system qualities of the society or «vectors» of social development are changing under such conditions54.
As distinct from «co-evolution», «revolution» is a qualitative transformation of the entire social structure of the society. It creates the mechanism of transition from the normative condition of «evolution» to the «involution». At the same time, this process is connected with radical changes of the societal characteristics. The «revolution» as if generalizes the results of development of the society during the entire epochal cycle and opens a new cycle55.
The characteristic of a subject of history is changing in the process of development. In fact, various types of subjects are acting. For example, during the «revolution», the role of a subject-individual is activizing. Let us recall the fact that, in the period of the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794, there were the most characteristic personalities acting on the political stage. Such names as Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, Napoleon became denominative for each stage of the mentioned revolution, and the roles played by them became typical of the analysis of similar processes. The same phenomena may be observed in Russia of 1905-1917, when the cohort of revolutionary activists actually «exceeded the demand» of the history. During the transformation of the «co-evolutionary» type, the role of the subject-socium becomes more significant. Let us emphasize that, under conditions of the involutionary process, the temporal space of the society is deformed in the direction of the future that, respectively, makes the society a mythological one. In the process of the «evolution», one observes the displacement of attention to the past.
The information about the number of social roles confirms the relevance of the research hypothesis concerning the different levels of complexity of the social structures of the «involutionary» and the «evolutionary» societies. Whereas the number of social roles is about 70,000 in the countries that went through the Great Depression of 1929-1933, this number is about 30-40 thousand in the domestic area.
The discrepancy between the calendar-historic time of development of the society and the levels of biological and societal development are fundamental for antroposociogenetic development. Of adequacy for the social-historic analysis is the universal epochal cycle consisting of four interrelated elements (two opposite historical periods and two transient periods), which form the conventional scheme: «involution» – «co-evolution» – «evolution» – «revolution».
Now let us try to define specific «beacons» (the most important events in the spiritual or material spheres) on the historical material (after receiving the empirical data, this hypothesis may be reviewed). These «beacons» will give grounds for defining the possible chronological frames of every phase and the epochal cycle on the whole. After this analysis, we define an approximate number of cycles, already «processed» in the world historical process. On the grounds of such a research, it would be possible to create an adequate model of periodization of a change of epochal cycles.
Such a periodization should reflect the mechanisms of interaction at the three hierarchical levels: global, regional, and of certain countries. In this case, one may assume that the higher the hierarchical level, the later the transformational changes begin at it (for example, at the global level).
But, first of all, we make an approximate list of the elements (classifications) of the social-economic formations. The Marxist «five-element structure» –primitive communal, slave-owning, feudalist, capitalist, and communist systems – «works» to the «post-capitalist» formation.
The «three-stage» classifications are quite popular. They are presented by Morgan [wildness (since the appearance of the primitive people), barbarity (since the emergence of the primitive forms of agriculture), civilization (since the emergence of the state)] and by Bell [the pre-industrial period (the production is human-powered or animal-powered), the industrial (the basis is the work of mechanisms), the post-industrial period (the life of a society is maintained mainly by the means of the reproduction of information)]. These classifications are provided with chronological characteristics: the prehistoric epoch (before the creation of writing), antique, mediaeval, modern and contemporary time. However, this approach is too scholastic and conditional.
The creation of a more adequate single system of classification is complicated by the controversial semantic loads carried by the corresponding terminology. However, such an attempt can be undertaken.
Wildness –Barbarism –Primitive communal system
Ancient civilizations
|
Pre-industrial society |
The epoch of ancient kingdoms |
Estate-class society
|
Middle Ages |
||
|
Capitalism |
Industrial society |
Modern and contemporary time |
|
Informational society –Post-industrial society |
We emphasize that the model by Spengler56 is the most developed system of periodization in a strong accordance with the cyclic approach.
Table 1
«Simultaneous» spiritual epochs
|
1500-1200 BC |
1100-800 BC |
0-300 AD |
since 900 AD |
|
|
Vedic religion Indian culture |
Hellen-Italic “demetrian” culture The Olympic myth Antique culture |
Arabic culture syncretism (Mithra, Boal) |
Western Culture Germanic Catholicism |
|
|
The birth of a myth of the big style as the expression of the new God perception. The world’s fear and the world’s sorrow. (Spring) |
Aryan heroic legends |
Homer. Legends about Heracles and Tess |
Apocaleptics |
Bernard de Clairvaux Knightly epos. St. Francis of Assisi. |
|
The early mystico-metaphysical formation of a new view on the world. High scholasticism. (Summer) |
The most ancient parts of the Veda |
The Orphic, cosmogony |
Origen (254 AD) Mani (276 AD) Avesta, Talmud |
Thomas Aquinas (1274) Dante (1321) scholasticism |
|
Reformation: |
Brahmins |
The religion of Dionysus |
Augustinus Nestorians, Mazdak |
Hus (1415), Savonarola, Luther, Calvin |
Continued
|
1500-1200 BC |
1100-800 BC |
0-300 AD |
since 900 AD |
|
|
The beginning |
Upanishads |
Great pre- So cratics |
Byzantine, Hebrew, Syrian, Coptic, Persian literature of |
Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz (XVI - XVII centuries) |
|
The creation |
lost |
Number as measure. Pythagor (540 BC) |
Indefinite number. Algebra |
Number as function. Descartes, Pascal, Fermat (1030) |
|
|
Traces in the Upanishads |
Pythagorean union |
Mohammed (622 AD), the Paulicians, the iconoclasts |
English Puritans (1620), French Jansenists (1640) |
|
Autumn Intellectuals of big towns. The culmination of strictly intellectual creativity |
||||
|
«Enlighten-ment»: the faith in the omnipotence of intellect, the cult of «nature». «Reasonable religion» |
The Sutra, Buddha |
the Sophists, Socrates |
Sufism |
Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau |
|
The culmination |
Null as a number |
Eudox (conic section) |
Number theory, trigonometry |
Euler (1783), Laplace (1827) |
Continued
|
1500-1200 BC |
1100-800 BC |
0-300 AD |
since 900 AD |
|
|
The great concluding systems |
||||
|
of idealism: |
Yoga, Vedanta |
Platon |
Al-Farabi |
Goethe, Schelling |
|
of epistemology: |
Nyaa |
Aristotle |
Avicenna |
Hegel, Kant, Fichte |
|
Winter The beginning of outward-looking civilization. The dying of the spiritual creative power. The very life is becoming problematic |
||||
|
The materialistic view of the world: the cult of science, profit, happiness |
Sankhaya, Charvaka |
the Cynics |
Epicurean sects of the Abbasids’epoch |
Bentham, O.Comte, Darwin, Spencer, Marx |
|
Ethico-social ideals of life: the epoch of «philosophy without mathematics» |
Currents of Buddha epoch |
Hellenism |
Currents in the Islam |
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche |
|
The inner completion of the mathematic world of forms. |
lost |
Archimedes |
Al-Khoresmi, Al-Biruni |
Gauss, Riemann (1866) |
|
The decline in abstract thinking up to the professionally-scientific cathedra-philosophy |
«Six classic systems» |
Academy |
Schools of Baghdad and Basra |
Comteans |
|
The spread of the last outlook |
Indian Buddhism |
Hellenistical- Roman Stoicism |
Practical Islamic fatalism |
Ethical socialism |
Then O. Spengler presents the tables of the «simultaneous» art epochs and «simultaneous» political epochs.
The division of large historical periods into periods is presented in the book by N. A. Chmykhov57. For example, the duration of a historical epoch is approximately 532 years. In the context of the offered system of periodization, the contemporary epoch began approximately in 419 AD and will continue till 2015. It is conventionally divided into three 532-periods: 419-951 (the early feudalism), 951-1483 (the developed feudalism), 1483-2015 (the modern time).
The content of the historical process is opened through the 133-year half-stages: 419-552 AD, the migratory processes in Europe, making the lands, invaded by the Barbarians, to be habitable; the first signs of feudalism; 552-685 AD – the victory of the feudalist relations, the disappearance of the signs of the early iron epoch; 685-818 –the consolidation processes, the completion of the main migrations; 818-951 –the early feudalist society; 951-1084 – the transition to the feudalist disunity; 1084-1217 –the peak of the feudalist disunity; 1217-1350 –the transition to centralization; 1350-1483 –the establishment of centralized feudalist societies; 1483-1616 – the origin of «capitalist» relations; 1616-1749 –the coming of capitalism; 1749-1882 –the transformation of capitalism into the power acting throughout the world; 1882-2015 – the blossom and the crisis of the contemporary epoch. Despite the immanent controversy, the existing systems of periodization give «beacons» that help to continue the work.
CHAPTER 6
Periodization of the world history
in the light of a new conceptual construction: global (macro) level of analisys
and prognosis.
Let us return to the problem of definition of hypothetical periodization of the w-orld’s historical process according to the conception of the research. The assumed chronological frames may constitute up to 5000 years, i.e., from 3000 BC to 2000 AD.
It is natural that the subject of historical activity will change during this period of history, but the approach to three levels of analysis should remain unchanged. These levels are: the global level that must reflect a change of epochs at the level of civilizations; the regional level (continents and their most important territorial parts), and specific countries. The problem of the co-existence of the state and the society, the interaction of the individual (including the most prominent historical personalities) and the society – should be at the focus of attention.
The revolutionary period of the first epochal cycle characterizes the emergence of the first civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China), which is connected with the establishment of the counting of (astronomical) time. Let us cite the most prominent «eras». The 1st January 4713 BC is the beginning of Scaliger’s era, whence the uninterrupted counting of days is conducted. 3761 BC is the creation of the world according to the Hebrew calendar. The creation of the man is referred to 3113 BC by the Maya. The emergence of the most ancient (archeological) cultures is chronologically referred approximately to the same period. For example, they are the Trypillya culture (near 4000 BC), Mohenjo-Daro (India), Chatal Huyuk (Asia Minor), the first agricultural cultures in Mexico. The origin of the civilizations in Mesopotamia (Uruk) and Egypt (3000-2800 BC) (The Ancient Kingdom), the epoch of building the Pyramids, the sources of the Chinese civilization (the first legendary emperor Fu Hsi) – all this is referred to the involutionary stage of the first epochal cycle.
The transition to the co-evolutionary stage of development is connected with the processes of territorial unification (Sargon I the Accadian united all Mesopotamian territories). In Sumer near 2000 BC, punishments according to the principle of Taleon (eye for eye) are replaced by a ransom.
The mosaic migrations of ethnoses stimulated changes in the balance of force at the regional level. The Chaldean kingdom is the hegemon in the Interfluve. The Laws of Hammurapi (1750 BC). The strengthening of the Hittites. Near 1750 BC – the split of Egypt (The Upper and the Lower by the unification of nomes on the Nile). The processes of unification in China (near 1766 BC –the victory of Shan tribes over the Sia ones). The appearance of Shan-In dynasty. Social restoration processes take place in Crete (the Minoan civilization) (1700-1400 BC –the period of the «new castles»).
A growth of fight between the most ancient civilization centers of the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor for hegemony is connected with the evolutionary period of the epochal cycle. 1580-1314 BC –Egypt –the 18th dynasty –Yakhmosis I, Tuthmosis III – 15 invasive campaigns of the Pharaoh to Palestine, that turned Egypt into the «world’s state», Akhenaten (the reformator of religion, the idea of monotheism – Aten, the God of Sun). The blossom of Mycenae. The fight of Egypt against the Hittites. The beginning of migration of Aryan tribes to India. The Trojan War (13th century BC). The first epochal cycle of the world’s historic process terminated approximately at this time. The formation and struggle of ancient centers of civilization became the content of this cycle. (30-13th centuries BC).
The second epochal cycle begins with the revolutionary stage, connected with the following historical events. The political decline of Babylon (XI-VIII centuries BC), the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, the geopolitical changes in Mesopotamia. The struggle of Egypt with the «sea nations». The Western and Eastern Chou (China). The involutionary stage of the cycle is connected with the beginning of the decline of the Israelite kingdom (after David and Solomon) (935 BC) and with the imperialistic policy of Assyria in the Interfluve. The social-innovative activity at the co-evolutionary stage of the cycle is connected with nearly simultaneous important events. 770-481 BC –the period of «Spring and Autumn», connected with the intensification of fight for hegemony between the leading Chinese kingdoms, 776 BC –the traditional date of conducting the First Greek Olympics, and 753 BC – the date of the foundation of Rome. Meantime, Assyria continued the war for preserving the invaded territories in Asia Minor, which was particularly successful during the rule of Sargon II (722-705 BC).
The evolutionary stage within this cycle is connected with important changes both in the spiritual sphere (Karl Jaspers called VIII-VI centuries BC as the «axial time») and in the sociopolitical sphere. India: Upanishads. China: Taoism. Persia: Zoroastrism. Avesta. Near 664-525 BC –The Later kingdom of Egypt. Saiss dynasty. Japan: 660 BC –the official date of appearance of the Yamato dynasty. 594 BC – the reforms of Solon in Athens, new principles of the polis structure, differentiated from the Asian tradition of a state structure. 612 AD –the downfall of Assyria. Thus, the second epochal cycle had the chronological duration of about 600 years (XII-VI centuries BC).
The third epochal cycle on the revolutionary stage is identified with the beginning of the new Old Testament tradition, which is connected with the Jews’ being in the Babylonian captivity (597-586 BC) after the invasion of Judaea by the king Nebuchadnezzar II. (till 539 BC, when Babylon was captured by the Persians). One of the world religions –Buddhism –emerges at this stage (560-480 BC –Buddha). As known, the doctrine of transmigration of souls was characteristic of Pythagoreans.
The involutionary stage is connected with the strengthening of the Persians ( in the 6th century BC, they established their control practically over the whole territory of Asia Minor, including the Greek cities, and reached more than Assyria at its times). 525 BC –the Persians received the victory over Egypt. 510 BC – the establishment of a republic in Rome. China: written laws, money, Confucianism.
The co-evolutionary stage of the third epochal cycle is identified with the wars between the Greeks and the Persians (500-449 BC). At the same time, there happened the first great clash of the West and the East, the time of growth of the classic antique culture (Aeschyle, Sophocle, Pericles, Thucydides, Protagor: «the man is a measure of all things»). China: 481-281 BC –the period of «fighting kingdoms» of the «seven strongest»: Ch’in, Ch’u, Yuan, Ch’i, Wei, Chao, Han. The philosopher Mo-Czi (utopianism). The evolutionary stage of the characterized cycle is connected with the following historical events: the conflict of plebeians and patricians in Rome. 469-399 BC – Socrates. The dialectic thinking in the western civilizational tradition. 444-429 BC –the Athenian democracy. Pericles. 431-404 BC – the Peloponnesus war between Athens and Sparta for hegemony, the beginning of decline of a traditional Greek polis. The strengthening of Macedonia. The beginning of creation of the Great Chinese wall – the only artificial structure seen from the cosmos.
The third epochal cycle, impregnated with large-scale historical events, has the chronological frames of VI-V centuries BC. In fact, it is the «axial time» according to Jaspers.
The fourth epochal cycle took its start in the 6th century BC in the revolutionary phase and is connected with the sources of the Hellenism and the synthesis of the western and eastern traditions. 356-323 BC –Alexander the Great. 378-338 BC –the second Athenian naval union («The Gold Autumn of Athens»). 359-348 BC –the legist traditions (totalitarian model) of Shan Yan in the kingdom of Ch’in (China). The involutionary stage of the cycle is characterized with the wars of Diadochi for the heritage of Alexander the Great; India: the Empire of Maurya. Arthashastra –the science of policy. Rome – the end of the struggle between plebeians and patricians, the strengthening of the republican system, the spread of the Roman hegemony on the entire Apennine peninsula. The co-evolutionary stage is connected with the recognition of Buddhism as the official religion in India (Asoka 268-231 BC). The end of the Diadochian wars, the consolidation of the Hellenistic kingdoms (near 281 BC). The unification of China at the time of the Ch’in dynasty (246-201 BC). The beginning of the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage for the dominance over the Mediterranean region (264 BC). 146 BC – Rome established its power over Greece. The downfall of Carthage. The transformation of the Roman republic into the most powerful state. China: 145-87 BC –Ssu-ma Ch’ien. The classical tractate «Shi Tzi» (The Historical Notes). The evolutionary stage of the fourth epochal cycle comprises about 200 years (a hundred years BC and a hundred years AD) and is characterized with important changes: the crisis of the Roman Republic (the problems of the land reform –the activity of the brothers Gracchus); the peasant’s war in China under the guidance of Luban and the rule of the first dynasty of Han (206 BC –AD). Near 165 BC: Judaea –the revolt of the Makoveii. The establishment of the «Great Silk Way» between the Empire of Han and Rome. Civil wars, the crisis of the Roman Republic. The 1st January 45 BC –the Julian Calendar. 30 BC –Rome – emperor Octavian Augustus. We recall that, in the era of Anno Domini, there is no null year. The date of Christmas was defined in 525 AD by Dionysus the Little. China: the revolt of the «Red Brows» in 18-29 AD. China: the invention of the rice paper. Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The beginning of the Christianity in the Roman Empire. The fourth epochal cycle –IV BC – I AD. The blossom of the Roman Empire. The spiritual crisis and the appearance of the new world religion of Christianity.
The fifth epochal cycle begins approximately in the 2nd century AD. The revolutionary stage is connected with the empire traditions of Rome. China: 220-265 AD –the «triregnum» period (hegemons), 3rd century AD – the spread of the Buddhist tradition from India. 313 AD Constantine acknowledged the Christianity as the official religion in the Roman Empire. The involutionary stage of the cycle is identified with the war between Rome and Persia. 381 AD – the Ecumenical council –the censure of Aryanism, the fight with the Christian heresies. 395 AD –the division of the Roman empire to the Western and Eastern ones (the Byzantine Empire). 451 AD – the defeat of Huns on the Catalaun fields. 455 AD –the spoliation of Rome by the Vandals. Nesterians –Christianity moves to the East. The co-evolutionary stage is connected with the formation of Barbarian statehood (the Barbarization of the Western Roman Empire and the Romanization of the Barbarians). 481-511 AD –Chlodwig – the king of Francs. 419-554 AD –the Visigothic kingdom. 439-534 AD –North Africa: Vandals. Byzantine Empire: Justinian (482-565 AD). 568 AD –Langobards in Italy ( in 757 AD, they were defeated by Pippinus Brevis). 407 AD –the Roman legions left Britain («the period of seven kings»).
The evolutionary stage of the fifth epochal cycle (6th century AD) is connected with important events in the development of the world religions. Christianity. Pope Gregorius I (590-604) – the attempt to strengthen the thearchy, which became the symbol of the struggle of Vatican as a universalistic force and secular feudalists for the hegemony over Europe till the period of the Reformation. Islam: 570-632 AD – prophet Mohammed, Koran. The 20th of September, 622 AD –Hegira (the emigration of the Prophet to Mecca) –the beginning of the chronology («the null year») according to the Muslim Calendar. Buddhism: the penetration to Japan, Cambodia, Korea, Tibet. The Slavs: the struggle against the Avars. 623-658 AD –the state of Samo (Czechia, Moravia).
Therefore, the fifth epochal cycle at the global level of the world historical process chronologically comprises the period from the 2nd to the 6th centuries AD.
The sixth epochal cycle is identified within the chronological frames of approximately VII-XII centuries: from Arabic invasions, the Islamic expansion, to the crusades, whose historical content was the continuation of the process of convergence between the West and East.
The revolutionary stage of the sixth epochal cycle is connected with the crisis of development of the early-feudalist state formations or, as the history of Byzantine and Chinese states showed, with the overexertion of forces in the foregoing periods of unsuccessful wars for a regional hegemony. 618-906 AD –the dynasty of T’ang. The struggle against nomads. Peru: the state of Chimu. The involutionary stage is connected with large Arabic invasions: 638 AD –Jerusalem is captured. The Persians are defeated. 643 AD –Cairo is founded. 661 –AD – the Caliphate of Omeyads. The struggle between the Shiah (the followers of Ali) and the Sunni. 714 AD –the Arabs reached the Pyrenees (in 732, Carolus Martellus stopped them). 711 AD – India: Arabs captured Multan, the center of Hinduism. 751 AD –the victory of Arabs over the Chinese near the Talas river. 726-843 AD –the iconoclastism in the Byzantine Empire.
The co-evolutionary stage of the sixth epochal cycle is characterized by the strengthening of states, belonging to the advance-guard in various regions. 863 AD –Cyril and Methodius – the Cyrillic alphabet. 768-814 AD –Carolus Magnus –the king of Franks, since 800 AD –the emperor. Normanns campaigns. 862 AD –Rurik in Novgorod, 879-912 AD –Oleg in Kiev. 803-814 AD – the Bulgarian Khan Krum. 829 AD –the unification of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (Britain). 843 AD –Ludwig the German. 877-889 AD –Cambodia: the Empire of Angkor (Buddhism). 988 AD – Rus introduced the Byzantine Christianity. 966 AD –Poland introduced the Latin Christianity. France: 987-1328 AD –the Capetian dynasty. Germany: 919-1024 AD –the Saxon dynasty: the struggle for domination over Italy. North America: sources of the Maya civilization. 1054 AD –the split of the Orthodox and the Catholic. 1049 AD –Kiev –Illarion «The Word on the Law and Welfare». 1097 AD – the meeting of princes in Lubech: «Let Everyone Keep One’s Own Domain».
The evolutionary stage of the sixth epochal cycle is characterized with the important changes. The cities were becoming more powerful in Western Europe. Their economic life made competition to the traditional agricultural production. The first universities, the centers of free thinking that stimulated the Reformation, begin to appear. The war for power between the civil and church feudalists was becoming more intense. China: 1069-1086 AD – the reforms of Van Anshi; the substitution of working off by taxation, the administrative regulation of prices. Japan: the strengthening of samurai. 1068-1167 AD –the period of «insei». The spiritual content: 1048-1112 AD –Omar Khayyam. 1079-1142 AD –Pierre Abelard. 1096-1270 AD –the crusades for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. Despite the defeat of the West, the crusades became, in fact, «a repetition» for future colonial seizures.
Approximate chronological frames of the seventh epochal cycle can be started from the 13th century –the period of the early Italian Renaissance (in fact, it was the revolutionary stage of the «return» to the best antique traditions) to the times of the struggle of the United States for independence (1774) and the Great French Revolution (1789-1794).
The involutionary stage of that cycle is connected with the period of the Reformation of the Catholic Church, which promoted the origin of the «spirit» of capitalism. The contrasts between the «unique» West-European values and the «universal» Asian values became more apparent since that moment.
The co-evolutionary stage of the seventh epochal cycle is identified with the period of the Great geographic discoveries and the beginning of colonial seizures. The leaders in conducting the successful bourgeois revolutions – England and the Netherlands – became the organizers of these seizures. The emergence of the actually global colonial system influenced both the rhythms of the cycles of development of dependent countries and the development of colonial states themselves. The North-American United States were the first to have gained independence.
The eighth epochal cycle. Having appeared in the bosom of the global evolutionary tendencies of development, the French revolution (1789-1794) «opened» the prospect to new tendencies of the global social development that, apparently, could be connected with the notion of «modernism». As a new global tendency, it had its influence on the course of world processes by crossing the borders of a phenomenon of the purely national French history. Generating the ideals of liberty, egality, and fraternity, it was more and more apparently becoming the inheritance of the whole Europe and, with a growth of this tendency, becoming impregnate with new cultural traditions – the inheritance of the world. Its influence gave its shoots in Europe (revolutions of 1830, 1848-1849), in Russia (the revolt of the Decembrists in 1825 and the revolutions of 1905, 1917), in Japan (Meiji revolution of 1868), in China (The Sin-Hai revolution of 1911 and the revolution of 1949). In Latin America, this period comprises the time since the struggle for independence under the guidance of Simon Bolivar (19th century) to the revolution in Cuba (1959) and Nicaragua (1979). In Africa, this period began only since the time of the collapse of the colonial system (1960’s).
The involutionary period of the eighth epochal cycle may be referred to the latter half of the 19th –the first half of the 20th century. Its main content is the gradual transition from the industrial to post-industrial civilization. It is connected with the formalization of the structure of the classic bourgeois society (the revolutions of 1848-1849) and the corresponding development of industry and free market. Monopolies appeared which sharpened the struggle for the sales and raw materials markets between the leading imperialistic states between the First and Second World Wars, which are viewed more and more often as two stages of one world war.
The co-evolutionary transition of the eighth epochal cycle is «opened» by the events of the Great Depression (1929-1933) which received the second breath in the period of the 1980’s and 1990’s, by giving universal and irreversible character to the tendencies. The most important events of the period were as follows: the end of the «cold war» that marked the end of the opposition of two superpowers – the USA and the USSR; the Gulf war as the result of the call of Iraq, the regional leader, to the coalition of the leading world states under guidance of the USA; the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany (1989), the disintegration of the USSR (1990-1991) and the creation of new independent states. These events radically changed the geostrategic situation in the world. Whereas the UN Organization had only 51 member-states at the moment of its creation (1949), 185 ones enter it as of December 1994.
The dawn of the post-industrial civilization, related to a tremendous growth of informational technologies and genetic engineering and to the time named «post-modernism» by social philosophers, is only developing in the bosom of the eighth epochal cycle but will become the overall tendency in the new XXI century.
Of more complexity is the task of creating the hypothetical schemes of periodization of a change of epochal cycles for separate regions and specific countries.
CHAPTER 7
Regional-continental (medi) level
of analisys of the historical development
Here, we present a scheme of periodization of epochal cycles for specific regions.
The approach to defining the corresponding territories can be developed on the basis of criteria of the cultural-civilizational approach or geopolitic determinants. We recall the scheme of classification of civilizations, given by Toynbee58.
1. Blossomed civilizations.
1.1. Independent civilizations.
1.1.1. Separated.
.1.1.1. Meso-American (Mayan and Mexican).
1.1.1.2. Andean.
1.1.2. Independent nonseparated.
1.1.2.1. Sumer-Akkadian (united Sumerian, Hittite, and Babylonian).
1.1.2.2. Egyptian.
1.1.2.3. Aegean (Minoan).
1.1.2.4. Indus-based.
1.1.2.5. Chinese (the ancient Chinese and the principal Far Eastern).
.1.3. Son-kindred, the first group.
1.1.3.1. Syrian (from the Sumer-Akkadian, Egyptian and Aegean).
.1.3.2. Hellenic (from Aegean).
1.1.3.3. Indian (from Indus-based).
.1.4. Son-kindred, the second group.
1.1.4.1. Orthodox –Christian.
.1.4.2. Western.
1.1.4.3. Islamic (all from the Syrian and Hellenic).
1.2. Satellite Civilizations.
.2.1. Mexican (from Meso-American).
1.2.2. Pre-Columbian: in the south-west of North America (from Meso-American).
1.2.3. The Northern Andean (Colombia, Ecuador).
1.2.4. The Southern Andean (Chile, Argentina).
.2.5. Elamic (from Sumer-Akkadian).
1.2.6. Hittite (from Sumer-Akkadian).
1.2.7. Urartu (from Sumer-Akkadian).
.2.8. Iranian (from Sumer-Akkadian, then –Syrian).
1.2.9. Korean (from Chinese).
1.2.10. Japanese (from Chinese).
.2.11. Vietnamese (from Chinese).
1.2.12. Italian (from Hellenic).
1.2.13. South-Eastern Asian (from Indian, later from Islamic in Indonesia and Malaysia).
1.2.14. Tibetan.
2. Undeveloped Civilizations.
.1. The first Syrian (absorbed by the Egyptian).
2.2. The Nestorian Christian (absorbed by the Islamic).
2.3. Monophysite Christian (absorbed by the Islamic).
.4. The Far West Christian (absorbed by the Western).
2.5. The Cosmos of the Mediaeval City-State (absorbed by the Western).
3. Frozen Civilizations.
.1. Eskimoan.
3.2. Nomadic.
3.3. Ottoman.
3.4. Spartan.
The development of the civilizational approach to the historical analysis is connected with the theory of «clash of civilizations», which is popular now. The American politologist Samuel Huntington argued this thesis by that the differences between civilizations were formed for centuries. Therefore, this differentiation is more fundamental and stable than differences between ideologies and classes and is subjected to variations less of all. That is why, the conflicts of the 21st century will shift from political and ideological borders to the lines of contact of civilizations.
The contemporary picture of civilizations is identified, first of all, with the main world religions – Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The mentioned spiritual systems spread to the whole continents, exerting their influence upon the past, the present, and the future of these megaterritories.
The following cultural regions may be distinguished in the process of research of the history of the world’s culture: Arabian –Muslim, Far Eastern, Indian, African (including the regions of West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, and South Africa), Latin-American, European and North American59.
The differentiation of territories, which are under control of the naval or land forces, and marginal coastal areas is traditional for geopolitics. In the global context, the attention is focused at the level of separate continents.
In our opinion, the continental-civilizational approach will be the most optimal when researching the process of change of epochal cycles at the regional level. This approach is one of the grounds for the sample of separate countries, whose history will appear in the context of our research.
The first (the most unique from the standpoint of saturation with historical events, the population, and the presence of all three world religions) continent is Eurasia, consisting, from geographical point of view, of the western «peninsula» Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals), West, Central, and South-East Asia.
The second object of our analysis will be America (North, Central, South). The dominant religion on the continent is the Christianity in the Catholic or Protestant interpretation.
The third continent –Africa (West, Central, East, and South). «The Black Continent» from the standpoint of religion is presented by the symbiosis of Islam, heathen beliefs, and Christianity.
And, finally, we analyze Australia in the context of our research. Christianity, Islam (a part of the immigrants from Asia), and the beliefs of native Aborigines are presented there. Thus, only Antarctica, «terra incognita» is out of the research. The chronological scale will remain the same –from 3000 BC to 2000 AD.
7.1. Eurasia
We have already noted that Eurasia, of course, has the most bright and impressive history. Abstracting from the formal civilizational differences, we define the contours of epochal cycles for Asia and Europe. First of all, the analogies with contrasts of the historical development of the West and the East arise in this context. From the point of view of relatively big cycles, «the Asian model» is universal and the Western one is unique hereat, however, on the boundary of the third millennium under the influence of the global process of westernization, everything is presented vice versa. We emphasize that the roots of the Ancient Greek civilization, traditionally considered to be an ancestor of the European civilization, are in the heritage of the Mycenaean culture (2900-1470 BC), which in fact is the symbiosis of the interaction between nations of the Mediterranean ecumene and nations of the Asia Minor.
The most ancient early state formations of China, Mesopotamia, and India (Mohenjo-Daro) (4000-3000 BC) emerged under conditions of the Neolithic revolution. Thereby, the first stage of the first epochal cycle begins, in fact, for both Europe and Asia. The second stage of the cycle –involutionary one –is connected with the development of traditional agricultural civilizations in Mesopotamia (The Old Babylonian kingdom –near 1900-1600 BC), China, and India.
The co-evolutionary stage of the cycle is related to certain changes. China: near 1766 BC –the victory of the union of tribes Shan over Sa. Interfluve. The strengthening of the Hittites. 1750 BC –the Law of Hammurabi. Crete: 1700-1400 BC –the period of new palaces. Mynos.
The end of the first epochal cycle in Eurasia is identified with the evolutionary stage. The development of the Achaean civilization in Greece and Middle Assyrian Kingdom in Asia Minor (1500-1100 BC).
The second epochal cycle for Eurasia begins with the revolutionary stage of emergence of the polis system in Greece (13-12th centuries BC) that created the fundamental sociocultural distinctions between the «West» and the «East».
The involutionary stage of the second epochal cycle is connected with traditionalism of the Shan-In period in Ancient China (XIII-XII centuries BC), and the co-evolutionary stage began with events of the Trojan War (1190-1180 BC). The second epochal cycle in Eurasia finished with the evolutionary stage, with the following events-beacons: IV Babylonian dynasty (1204-1072 BC) the new kingdom of Hittites (1400-1300 BC). Italy: the peak of the Etruscan culture. Greece: Homer, Hesiode.
The revolutionary stage started the third epochal cycle for Eurasia. Greece: 776 BC. The Olympic Era. The beginning of the ephor list in Sparta. 753 BC –the traditional date of foundation of Rome. China: IV-V centuries BC. Lao Tzu. Taoism. Persia: Zoroastrianism. Avesta. India: IX-VI centuries BC. Upanishads. 583-488 BC. Buddha. 551-479 BC. Confucius.
The involutionary stage of the epochal cycle: Assyria and Persia: «the world powers» (VII-VI centuries BC).
The co-evolutionary stage is connected with the following historical events: Rome: 510 BC –the republican government. 500-449 BC –the wars between the Greeks and Persians. The rise of Athens, the «West» repulses the pressure of the «East», having defended its unique way of development. 444-429 BC –Pericles –the strategist of the Athenian democracy. 481-221 BC. China: the war for the hegemony between the largest seven kingdoms.
The third epochal cycle of historical development of Eurasia is completed by the evolutionary stage, which is identified with the following events of particular importance. Greece: 434-404 BC –The Peloponnessian war between Athens and the «totalitarian» Sparta. 427-348 BC –Platon. The Romans defeated the Etruscans and adapted their cultural tradition. China: near 400 BC –the beginning of creation of the Great Chinese wall. India –the Empire of Maurya. 378-338 BC –the Second Athenian naval union. «The Gold Autumn» of Athens. 384-322 BC –Aristotle. 356-323 BC Alexander the Great. The campaigns to the East. The first attempt of the «West» to create the universal empire by subordinating the East.
The fourth Eurasian epochal cycle is started by the revolutionary stage: 323-281 BC –the Diadochian wars. The emergence of the system of Hellenistic states, countervailing Rome in the Mediterranean region. India: 268-231 BC – Asoka. Buddhism –the official religion.
The involutionary stage of the fourth cycle: near 200 BC –Ecclesiast: «What took place is taking place now, what will take place has already taken place». Rome: 201 BC –the victory over Carthage. 196 BC – Rome politically subordinated Greece, though the conquerors were conquered by the Greek culture, which favored the process of consolidation of the European civilization.
The co-evolutionary stage of the mentioned epochal cycle is identified with the beginning of the crisis of the Roman Republic –-131 BC –the Civil wars. 153-121 BC –Gaius Gracchus –an attempt of the agricultural reform. 101-44 BC –Gaius Julius Caesar. The incursions of Germanic tribes.
The conclusion of the fourth epochal cycle is connected with the submission of Hellenistic states to Rome in 66-62 BC. Pompey –the campaign to the East. The submission of Judaea to Rome.
The fifth Eurasian epochal cycle may be schematically presented in the following way. The revolutionary stage of the cycle began with the Rome’s transformation into the «world superpower». 374 BC Herod I – the governor of Judaea. The beginning of the Christian calendar. 18-29 AD –China: The revolt of the «Red brows». 68 AD –Apostle Peter is executed. The persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire.
The involutionary stage of the mentioned cycle is identified approximately with three centuries, approximately since the rule of Emperor Trajan (98-117 AD), when the Roman Empire reached the peak of its power and had regular trade contacts with China.
The egression of Eurasia from the normative condition of development and the beginning of the co-evolutionary stage is connected with the peripetias of «the Great migration of nations». 375 AD –the incursion of Huns into Europe. 395 AD – the Western Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire. 445 the campaigns of Attila (died in 453 AD). 449 AD the beginning of invasion of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxons. Byzantine Empire: 482-565 AD –the rule of Justinian. 481-511 AD – Chlodwig, the king of Franks. Besides the Great migration of nations, the most important events of this stage of the cycle are connected with the entrance of a new world religion, Islam, to the historical stage (570-632 AD – Mohammed, the 20th of September, 622 –the beginning of Islamic Chronology) and with the «awakening» of the Slavs (623-658 –the state of Samo on the territory of the contemporary Czechia and Moravia in the struggle against the Avar khanate). 661-750 –the Caliphate of Omayyads. (The control over the territory from Central Asia to Spain). 618-906 –China: the Dynasty of T’ang. 645-858 –Japan: the emperorship. 726-843 Byzantine Empire: iconomachy.
The evolutionary stage of the fifth Eurasian epochal cycle is identified with the rule of Carolus Magnus (768-814), who was the virtual emperor of Western Europe since 800. 756 –the papal States (Vatican) were created. Rus: 862-879 Rurik. The influence of the Varangians. 863 AD –Cyril and Methodius, the creation of the Slavic writing. 864 AD –Bulgaria accepted the Christianity. 843 AD – Verdun: the division of the Empire of Carolus Magnus (France, Italy, Germany). 966 AD –Poland: Latin Christianity, 988 AD –Rus –Byzantine Christianity. 1054 AD – Pope Leo IX and Constantinopolitan patriarch Michael Cerullary laid anathema upon each other. The split: the Catholic and the Orthodox. 1071 AD –the defeat of Byzantine Empire in the battle with Turks-Seljucks near Manazkert. 1077 AD – Canossa. Henry IV –Gregorius VII –the war between the civil and the spiritual authorities for the investiture.
The evolutionary stage of the fifth epochal cycle comprises eight crusades (1096-1270) that culturally lifted European monarchies to the level of development of West Asian nations and, at the same time, spiritually prepared West Europeans to the period of the Great colonial seizures of XVII-XIX centuries. In the Asian part of Eurasia, the evolutionary stage of the epochal cycle is connected with the rise and decline of the Mongol domination.
1155-1227 –Temuchin (Chingiskhan).
1237-1240 –Mongol campaigns to Russia.
–Khublai: the attempt to invade Japan.
1279-1368 –China: the Mongol Empire Yuan.
-1526 –the Delhi Sultanate.
-1517 –the Mamelukes: Egypt, Syria.
The sixth Eurasian epochal cycle began with the Early Renaissance in Italy: 1304-1374 –Francesco Petrarca; 1313-1375 –Jiovanni Boccaccio. 1378-1449 –the great split in the Catholic Church. 1380 – the Kulikovo battle. The beginning of the growth of the Moscowian czardom. The Hundred Years’war between England and France. 1410-1431 –Joan of Arc. 1453 –the fall of Constantinople. 1440 –Johann Gutenberg: the technology of printing. 1371-1415 –Jan Hus. The beginning of the Reformation in Europe. 1492 –the «discovery» of America by Columbus. 1517 –Luther –theses. 1541 – the victory of Calvin in Geneva. 1556-1598 –Philip II the Spanish. 1581 –the independence of the Netherlands (1648). 1520-1566 –Suleyman I Kanuni.
The blossom of the Ottoman Empire. The involutionary phase of the cycle comprises practically the 17th century, when Europe changed the rhythm of historical development of numerous nations of Asia, Africa, America by its colonial seizures. 1618-1648 –the Thirty Year’s war between the Catholic and the Protestant unions in Europe. The genesis of the system of the European balance. 1683 –the defeat of the Turks near Vienna. The beginning of a decline of the Ottoman Empire (till 1918). The transition from the normative to transitive condition at the co-evolutionary stage of the cycle is connected with the European epoch of Enlightenment. 1700-1721 – the Northern War. The transformation of Russia to the Eurasian empire. 1756-1763 –the Seven Years’War that spread from Europe to the British and French colonies. 1789-1794 –the Great French Revolution. 1848-1849 – bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe. 1868 –the Meiji» reforms in Japan. 1908 –the Young Turkish revolution. 1911 –Sin-Hai Revolution in China. 1917-1921 –Revolution in Russia.
The evolutionary stage of the sixth Eurasian epochal cycle is connected with the process of «globalization» and «modernization» of the entire Eurasian area. 1914-1918 –the First World War. 1929-1933 – the Great Depression. 1939-1945 –the Second World War. 1949-1989 –«the cold war». 1958 –the creation of the European Economic Community. 1978 –reforms in the People’s Republic of China. 1985-1991 –the «perestroika» in the USSR. 1979 –the Islamic revolution in Iran. 1990-1991 –the disintegration of the USSR and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 1999 –the operation of the NATO in Kosovo.
7.2. America
Unlike Eurasia, America has no such number of epochal cycles. The beginning of the first of them is connected with the ancient state formations in South America (1800-1500 BC – Peru). The revolutionary phase of the cycle is identified with the migration of nations on the continent (near 1100 BC). Maya. 1200 BC –BC –the Chovine culture in Peru. 4th century BC –th century AD – the culture of Nasca (Peru).
The involutionary phase of the cycle on the boundary of our era is connected with the immanent development of the civilization of Maya (Northern Yucatan). The middle of the X century –the struggle between the Maya and Toltec. 1000 AD – the Vikings in Greenland, near 1200 AD –the Cusco valley. The overcoming of the normative condition is connected with the discovery of America by Columbus. The co-evolutionary stage started since 1492. 1438-1463 –Sapa Inca. 1490 – intestine feuds between the Incans: Uaskar against Ataualpa. 1500 –the discovery of Brazil by Cobral. 1519-1521 –the invasion of Mexico by Cortes. 1531-1533 –Pizarro defeated the Incans. 1535 –Canada – the property of France. 1570 –the North American Iroquois league. 1607 –Virginia: Puritans.
The evolutionary stage of the cycle is ended with the colonization of North America by the Englishmen and Frenchmen, and South America –by the Spaniards and the Portuguese. For America, the first epochal cycle came to its end in the middle of the 18th century.
The second epochal cycle began with the revolutionary events. 1775-1783 –the War of Independence of the USA. 1810-1822 –the independence of the South American states from Spain. 1783-1730 – Simon Bolivar. 1823 –the Monroe doctrine. 1861––the Civil War in the USA. 1898 –the war of the USA against Spain. The establishment of the US hegemony in South and Central America.
The involutionary stage of the cycle lasts till the middle of the 20th century and is characterized by the domination of the military regimes in most South American countries. The period of 1900-1945 is connected with the immanent preparation of the USA to playing the role of «the single superpower».
The co-evolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle began with the revolution in Cuba (1959), 1973-1989 –the rule of Pinochet in Chile, 1979 – the revolution in Nicaragua. For South and Central America, the end of the 20th century is connected with a gradual democratization of political regimes and integrational processes. 1995 –MERCOSUR: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay. 1993 – NAFTA: USA, Canada, Mexico. The free trade area from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego is planned to be created by 2005. On December 31, 1999, the USA quitted the Panama Canal Zone (1914). In fact, America entered the evolutionary stage of the cycle.
7.3. Africa
Africa was the cradle of the man. The most ancient state formations belong to the Egyptian civilization. The revolutionary stage of the first epochal cycle began practically with the emergence of the Old Egyptian Kingdom (3000-2800 BC) and the period of building the Pyramids.
The involutionary stage of the cycle is identified with the division of Egyptian nomes along the stream of Nile (near 1750 BC). It comprises about 1200 years substantially connected with the peak of might of the Ancient Egypt.
The co-evolutionary stage of the first African epochal cycle is connected with the history of the Late Egyptian kingdom (664-525 BC) and, in fact, ends with the war between Carthage and Rome for domination over the Mediterranean region and with the emergence of the Hellenistic Egypt near 200 BC. This event became the beginning of the evolutionary stage of the cycle that ended in the 7th century with the process of Islamization of Egypt.
The second African epochal cycle is connected with the history of the Negro-Australoid race (which consists of three subraces: Negritic, Negrilic, Bushman) and the transitional Ethiopian subrace.
The revolutionary stage of the cycle began on the boundary of Anno Domini with the emergence of the first state formations. West Africa: Ghana (III-XIII centuries AD), Mali (XIII-XVII centuries AD), the Songhai (Ghao) Empire (XIII-XVI centuries AD), Kanem-Bornu (VII-XVII centuries AD). Central Africa: Congo (X-XIII centuries AD), North-East Africa: the Acsum kingdom (III-IV centuries AD). Acsum embraced the Monophysite Christianity in the 4th century, which allowed Ethiopia to defend its independence in the colonial epoch. The 13th century –the peak of the might of Ethiopia.
The involutionary stage of the cycle is characterized by the beginning of the colonial seizures of Europeans (XV-XVI centuries). The export of Negro slaves to America delivered the blow upon the social relations of the African nations, which limited the possibilities of progressive development. In fact, the 300-400 years of colonial dependence deepened the external dependence of Africa by preserving the archaic social structure.
The co-evolutionary stage of the cycle is connected with the beginning of the process of decolonization. 1833 –the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. 1847 –the independence of Liberia (ex-American Negro slaves), 1858 – the Republic of South Africa. 1808-1830 –the reforms of Mohammed Ali in Egypt. 1869 –the opening of the Suez Canal.
The evolutionary stage of the second African epochal cycle began in the 1960’s with the establishment of independence of African countries and will last about one century.
7.4. Australia
Australia has a specific history. The large territory, inhabited on the boundary of Anno Domini by Aborigines practically did not have any state formations till the discovery of the continent by the Europeans (1606 –the Dutchman Willem Jantz). In fact, the revolutionary stage of the first Australian epochal cycle begins in the middle of the 18th century (1768-1779 – James Cook). The involutionary stage is identified with the war of the European immigrants against the Aborigines in the 19th – the first part of the 20th century. The co-evolutionary stage began in the latter half of the 20th century with the creation of a civilization that has an European identity.
7.5. Antarctica
Antarctica is the sixth continent of the Earth with the area of 50 million square kilometers, being twice more than the area of Australia. It is discovered in 1820 by Bellingshausen and Lazarev, the great Russian navigators. Prior to this moment, the history of the continent remained under the ice cover. The international-legal status of Antarctica is defined by the corresponding treaty of the 1st of December, 1959, which foresees the exploitation of the territory of Antarctica for peaceful purposes only, prohibits declaring the territorial claims in Antarctica, and ensures the freedom of scientific researches under the condition that natural resources be conserved and preserved60.
CHAPTER 8
National-state (micro) level of analysis
of the history
Having viewed the main points of the scheme of development of epochal cycles at the global (macro) and regional (medi) levels, we focus our attention at the research of historical cycles at the national-state (micro) level, which corresponds to the scale of our research in general.
The criteria for construction of a similar sampling may be the following: various states should be represented, first, countries of all continents, second, countries belonging to various world religions, and, third, countries with the population of at least 8 million persons as of the end of the 1990’s.
According to the criteria given above, the required sampling may be the following:
|
## |
Country |
Population (millions) |
Religion |
The beginning of development |
|
EUROPE |
||||
|
Austria |
8.039 |
Catholicism |
ХIII century |
|
|
Belgium |
.190 |
Catholicism |
1830 AD |
|
|
Bulgaria |
.628 |
Orthodox |
680 AD |
|
|
Vatican |
thousand |
Center |
750 AD |
|
|
Great Britain |
.550 |
Anglicanism |
VI century |
|
|
Greece |
.560 |
Orthodox |
VIII century BC |
|
|
Spain |
.220 |
Catholicism |
VII century AD |
|
|
Italy |
.520 |
Catholicism |
VIII century BC |
|
|
Netherlands |
.615 |
Protestantism |
ХIV century |
Continued
|
## |
Country |
Population (millions) |
Religion |
The beginning of development |
|
10. |
Germany |
.870 |
Catholicism, Protestantism. |
843 AD |
|
11. |
Poland |
.915 |
Catholicism |
960 AD |
|
12. |
Portugal |
.800 |
Catholicism |
1143 AD |
|
13. |
Russia |
.50 |
Orthodox |
1147 AD |
|
14. |
Belorussia |
.204 |
Orthodox, Uniate. |
ХII century |
|
15. |
Hungary |
.963 |
Catholicism |
1000 AD |
|
16. |
Romania |
.260 |
Orthodox |
1859 |
|
17. |
Ukraine |
.500 |
Orthodox |
988 AD |
|
18. |
France |
.160 |
Catholicism |
843 AD |
|
19. |
Czech Republic |
.320 |
Catholicism, Protestantism |
Х century |
|
20. |
Sweden |
.928 |
Protestantism |
IХ century |
|
21. |
Yugoslavia (Serbia) |
.635 |
Orthodox, Catholicism, Islam |
IХ century |
|
ASIA |
||||
|
22. |
Afghanistan |
.230 |
Islam |
ХVIII century |
|
23. |
Bangladesh |
.17 |
Islam |
1947 |
|
24. |
Vietnam |
.570 |
Buddhism |
VI century AD |
|
25. |
Israel |
.575 |
Judaism |
ХI century BC |
|
26. |
India |
.69 |
Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism |
IV century BC |
|
27. |
Indonesia |
.06 |
Islam, Catholicism. |
VI century AD |
Continued
|
## |
Country |
Population (millions) |
Religion |
The beginning of development |
|
28. |
Iraq |
.810 |
Islam |
VI century BC |
|
29. |
Iran |
.820 |
Islam |
VI century BC |
|
30. |
China |
.310 |
Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism. |
ХIV century BC |
|
31. |
Korea |
.710 + 24.550 |
Buddhism |
VI century AD |
|
32. |
Malaysia |
.770 |
Islam |
ХIII century AD |
|
33. |
Pakistan |
.572 |
Islam |
ХII century AD |
|
34. |
Saudi Arabia |
.835 |
Islam |
VI century BC |
|
35. |
Turkey |
.050 |
Islam |
1071 |
|
36. |
Japan |
.580 |
Buddhism, Shintoism |
VI century BC |
|
AFRICA |
||||
|
37. |
Algeria |
.505 |
Islam |
1711 |
|
38. |
Ethiopia |
.970 |
Monophysite Christianity |
V century AD |
|
39. |
Ghana |
17.895 |
Catholicism |
III century AD |
|
40. |
Kenya |
.460 |
Islam |
ХIV century AD |
|
41. |
Nigeria |
.470 |
Islam |
ХIV century AD |
|
42. |
Republic of South Africa |
.120 |
Catholicism, Islam |
1820 |
|
AMERICA |
||||
|
43. |
Canada |
28.975 |
Catholicism |
1608 AD |
Continued
|
## |
Country |
Population (millions) |
Religion |
The beginning of development |
|
44. |
Mexico |
.630 |
Catholicism |
VI century AD |
|
45. |
USA |
.890 |
Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam |
1607 AD |
|
46. |
Argentina |
.845 |
Catholicism |
ХVI century AD |
|
47. |
Brazil |
.640 |
Catholicism |
1500 AD |
|
48. |
Chile |
14.420 |
Catholicism |
Х century AD |
|
49. |
Peru |
.565 |
Catholicism |
VI century BC |
|
AUSTRALIA |
||||
|
50. |
Australia |
.350 |
Catholicism |
ХVII century |
First of all, we would like to emphasize the existence of the most characteristic peculiarities of the microlevel of development of cycles. Firstly, ethnic differences are becoming more clear, secondly, the chronology is changing since various nations created their political organizations in different times, thirdly, the differences in the number of epochal cycles are defined more clear, which is the consequence, on the one hand, of the historical age of a nation, and, on the other hand, of the intensity of its history.
It is worth to note that the construction of schemes of the development of epochal cycles for all countries of the presented sampling is the subject of a special research. That is why, we only demonstrate the work of our conception by the example of 11 countries, included into the representative research sampling of 50 countries.
Now let us directly examine the scheme of epochal cycles of Vatican, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, France, Ukraine, Russia, Belorussia, China, India, Japan, and the USA, representing the historical advance-guard of Europe, Asia, and America in the sampling presented above.
8.1. Vatican
The papal States is the center of the catholic world. In the context of the offered conception, we deal with a specific object. The history of Vatican cannot be examined at the national level, as the territory of the state is only 4.4 km, and the population is about 1 thousand people, mainly Catholic chaplains and the Swiss Guards. However, the state of Vatican as the embodiment of spiritual authority of the Catholic Church that has a global spreading, exerted the influence on the course of history. That is why, in our opinion, it is rightful to show the hypothetical scheme of development of the epochal cycles of Vatican.
The first epochal cycle began on the boundary of Anno Domini since the revolutionary period, whose content was the birth of Christianity as a world religion and a gradual creation of Church structures. The specific event, symbolizing this phase of development, may be the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine (68-69 AD). The involutionary stage of the first epochal cycle (70-313 AD) has, as its content, the struggle between the nascent Christian Church with the state machinery of the Roman Empire. That was the period of mass terror against Christians. In 313 AD, the Milanese edict on the latitude in religion, which turned Christianity into the state religion, was published, and the co-evolutionary stage of the cycle began. Chronologically, this phase continued till 395 when the Roman Empire split into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. For the analysis, it is important that this event legalized the differences between the Western and Eastern Christianity.
The evolutionary stage is connected with the history of decline and downfall of the Western Roman Empire (395-476 AD). During this period, the temporal power of Roman Popes is strengthening. They tried to organize a rebuff to Barbarian attacks. But to realize such intentions without necessary material and military resources turned out to be impossible. The subsequent events of VI-VII centuries turned the papal throne into the small change of Barbarian kings, who occupied an ambivalent position. On the one side, in interests of the reinforcement of their political influence, they gradually Christianized, on the other side, they shamelessly robbed Christians.
The situation was overcome by the formal creation of the papal States (756), followed by the victory of the king of franks Pippinus Brevis over Langobards and consolidation of the territory under Pope Stefan III61. These events symbolize the revolutionary phase of the second epochal cycle. The content of the new involutionary period (760-800) was a gradual strengthening of Pope’s position in spiritual and civilian affairs of Europe, reaching its culmination with the coronation of Carolus Magnus (800). The co-evolutionary phase of the cycle may be the turn to the policy of intense Christianization of Barbarian nations of the Old continent (800-846). The evolutionary period lasts from 846 through 960 when the growing authority of Rome favored the organization of an attempt of giving a rebuff to the Arabian attacks at the Southern Italy (846) and stimulated the creation of the Holy Roman Empire in 960. In fact, it meant combining the dominative possibilities of Germanic emperors with the spiritual influence of the Holy See and represented «marriage of convenience».
At the same time, growing contradictions between the Eastern and the Western Christianity led to the disruption of the Church to the Catholic and Orthodox ones in 1054. These revolutionary events opened a new epochal cycle of development of Vatican. The Lateran Synod of 1059 concluded that the only electorate of the Pope is the College of Cardinals but not civil feudalists. The content of the involutionary stage of the cycle is the exacerbation of struggle for the supremacy in the feudalist hierarchy between spiritual and civil powers. The most important event became the «travel» of Germanic emperor Heinrich IV to Canossa (1077), that led to a natural weakening of both the spiritual and civil powers and to the spread of heretical sects on the territory of Western Europe. The activity of Pope Innocentius (1198-1216), the symbol of the milestone in the history of Vatican and creation of the Dominican Society in 1215, which prepared the personnel for the Inquisition, was the co-evolutionary phase of development. The history of this period is marked by the activity of such prominent theologians as St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Albertus Magnus (1206-1280), and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In the following evolutionary period of the cycle (1216-1309), the fall of authority of the Catholic Church and its structures took place. It was favored by low moral qualities of Popes, the acquisitiveness of the church, and the growth of prices of indults.
The political subordination of the papacy to French kings became an obligate consequence of the events described above. It was the so-called Avignon capture of popes that became the symbol of social revolution and marked the beginning of the fourth epochal cycle. The further events reflected the tendency to a strengthening of national hierarchies of the Catholic Church. The remarkable event of the involutionary period of the cycle became the plague epidemic in Western Europe (1348-1349), which not only cut the number of parishioners but undermined the faith. The spirit of tendencies was reflected in the activity of John Wyclif, the professor of theology at Oxford (1320-1384), who demanded abolishment of the pope system and secularizing the property of the Church. His ideas did non gain a wide social support then. The co-evolutionary (reformist) phase of the cycle is connected with the activity of Jan Hus (1369-1415). He was the very person who created the necessary spiritual atmosphere for the future Reformation. The fight of the Catholic hierarchy, well-equipped by the civil authority against the Czech taborits defeated ultimately in 1434, became the repetition of religious wars in Europe.
The evolutionary phase of the cycle lasts from the Florentian Union (1439) –a formal union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, aimed to save Constantinople from the Turks – to the commencement of the Reformation (1517). In this period, the Inquisition becomes more active, as was guided by the instructions given in «Massacre of Witches» (1487). But a decrease of authority of the traditional Catholic Church structures was not stopped by any means.
The revolutionary stage of the fifth epochal cycle is identified with the beginning of the Reformation (1517) –the declaration of Martin Luther’s 95 theses including the demand for abolishment of indults, justification of faith regardless of Catholic structures, cheap church, and the possibility of worship in national languages. As a result of the partial victory of the Reformation, the influence of the Catholic Church decreased. That is the content of the involution phase of the cycle. Vatican’s attempts to restore its positions by means of the Counter-Reformation resulted in the mass terror of the Inquisition, prohibition of freethinking (during 1559-1966, «Indices of Prohibited Books» were regularly published). The involutionary phase lasted to 1648, till the end of the war between coalitions of Catholic and Protestant states.
The co-evolutionary phase of the cycle (1648-1656) was connected, firstly, with the renewal of Vatican’s control over national catholic hierarchies of Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy and, secondly, with the creation of the Protestant church hierarchy. The evolutionary phase of the cycle (1665-1789) is connected with the fight of the papacy for preserving its influence upon national states. The process became particularly critical because of the struggle for integration of Italy. The Great French Revolution (1789-1792) delivered a blow at the Holy See. The Italian campaign of Napoleon livened up the activity of Italian patriots, directed against the papal States. The Pope became the prisoner of the revolutionary situation which opened the sixth epochal cycle.
In the following involutionary stage (1801-1870), the forces of the united Italy, notwithstanding the proclaimed principle of Pope’s infallibility, liquidated the papal States. The co-evolutionary phase of the cycle (1871-1880) included a further desecularization of life in most European countries. The bright example was the Kulturkampf of Bismarck in the German Empire and the Pope’s declaration of being a king’s prisoner. In the evolutionary period of the cycle (1880-1928), the Catholic structures tuned themselves to the new tendencies of development. «The separation of the Church and the State», the forced refusal from attempts of dictating moral and law norms to parishioners, the acknowledgement of the principle «render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's» opened the way for reconciliation between Vatican and the Italian state.
The revolutionary phase of the seventh epochal cycle began with the Lateran agreements between Benito Mussolini and the Pope on creation of the State of the town of Vatican with the rights of a political subject (1929-1933). In the following involutionary period, the Concordat with Hitler is realized, and a struggle with the godless Soviet regime grows. Vatican is trying to preserve the Church’s institutions under the conditions of the Second World War and takes the function of the spiritual shield of the Christian civilization. The co-evolutionary phase may be hypothetically linked to the Second Vatican Synod (1962-1966), which became a successful attempt of modernization of the Catholic Church. During this period, the worship in national languages was allowed, national Episcopal conferences were established, the representatives of which formed the Pope Synod, and «The Index of Prohibited Books» was abolished. The evolutionary stage of development (since 1966) includes such important events as the election of Karol Voityla (John Paul II) to the Holy See against the 400-year monopoly of Italians, the display of new tendencies of the informational society –the creation of Vatican’s web page in the Internet (1997), public discussions on virtual confession, women’s right to be priests, permissibility of aborts, etc.
8.2. Italy
Italy has the most ancient historical tradition among the European countries mentioned above. This tradition made a significant influence upon the European civilization. The beginning of the first epochal cycle is identified with the following historical events: 753 BC –the traditional date of the foundation of Rome. King’s period. The revolutionary stage of the cycle is associated with the proscription of Tarquins from Rome in 510 BC and the establishment of Republic. 494 BC –the beginning of a social fight between plebeians and patricians. 356 BC – the first plebeian dictator. The involutionary stage is identified with the crisis development of the Roman republic. Wars against Cartage: 264-241 BC –the first Punic war. 232 BC –agrarian law of Flaminius. Land crisis. 218-201 BC –the second Punic war. Hannibal. «Delenda est Carthago». The third Punic war of 149-146 BC may be considered the turning point, the co-evolutionary phase of the first epochal cycle. This transient process covered the period when the political subordination of Greece and the crisis of the republican form of rule took place. Rome invaded the Hellenistic Egypt in 30 BC, and the evolutionary period of the first epochal cycle in the development of the country began since that time. The origin of Christianity (313 AD) and acknowledging Christianity as the state religion by Emperor Constantine were the social revolution phase and the change of the social-cultural code of development of the Roman Empire. The revolutionary stage lasted up to 395 AD –the breakdown of the Roman Empire to the Eastern and Western ones (Byzantium 1453 – the fall of Constantinople). The Western Roman Empire obtained a steady development of the involutionary stage of the second epochal cycle during the period of «the Great migration of peoples», Attila’s rule (435-453 AD), the fall of Rome (476 AD), the last attempt of restoring the unity between the Western and Eastern Empires, the rule of Justinian –the Emperor of Byzantium (482-565). According to M. Weber, the result of this rule is the culture that, on reaching its peak, loses the material base and turns into ruins62. However, the spiritual reincarnation will occur in the Renaissance period, at a new historical stage. The co-evolutionary phase of the second epochal cycle is connected with the «romanization» of Barbarian Europe, preservation of the Italian cultural area. Young nations «civilized» by falling under the influence of this area. Characteristic is the history of the state of Langobards (568-774). With the proclamation of Carolus Magnus as the emperor, one may speak about the entrance of Italy into the steady evolutionary period of development. The proclamation of the Roman Empire by the Germanic nation in 962 may be associated with the same period. The South of Italy came under the Byzantine and Arabic influence. The decisions of the Lateran Synod (since 1059) were a new quality of development, a new social form, and the revolutionary phase. They symbolized the successful attempt to synthesize of spiritual and civil hegemony of Popes.
Therefore, the beginning of the third epochal cycle is identified with the development of capitalist relations in Italian towns-states. According to M. Weber, the mediaeval sea trade towns are the nearest to typical antique big ones, but there are principal differences between industrial towns and antique polises63.
The involutionary stage (considering its results) was most productive for the South, which significantly lagged behind the North in social and economic development. These regional distinctions remain till the present moment. The Norman invasion of the Southern Italy and Sicily (1130) and transition of control over these territories to Aragon (Hispanic) dynasty also may be included to that involutionary period. Later it became the reason for Italic wars of the XVI century.
The most important events in the history of the Northern Italy at the given stage are as follows:
1250 –Florence became a republic. The abolition of serfdom. 1378 - the revolt of ciompi (pre-proletariat). 1339 - Venice –lifelong rule of Doges. The control over trade in East Mediterranean is established. 1378 –Popes returned to Rome when «the Avignon imprisonment» came to its end.
The co-evolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle began in the early Renaissance period. 1365-1321 Dante Alighieri; 1304-1374 Francesco Petrarca; 1313-1375 Jiovanni Boccaccio. The tyrants of Florence: 1434-1468 Cosimo Medici. 1469-1492 –Lorenzo the Glorious.
The evolutionary stage is identified with the high Renaissance. 1494-1559 –«Italian wars» with the French and Spaniards. 1469-1527 –Machiavelli; 1452-1519 –Leonardo da Vinci; 1483-1520 Raffaello Santi; 1475-1564 – Michelangelo; 1487-1576 –Tiziano Vecellio; 1568-1639 –T. Campanella –the ideas of utopian communism; 1548-1600 –Jiordano Bruno; 1564-1642 – Galileo Galilei. The economic decline of Italy. Delayed unification of the country divided by controversial interests of Vatican, neighboring countries, and civil discord. 1648-1799 – deepening the gap in the social-economic development between the North and South of Italy.
The development of the fourth epochal cycle is connected with the revolutionary tendencies in Europe, initiated by the Great French Revolution (1799-1815 – the wars of Napoleon). And though Italy did not demonstrate the single act of social revolution, the results of this process appeared to be achieved in the chain of events –the organization of revolutionaries «Young Italy» (1831), activating the struggle for independence and national unity (1848-1849). And finally, since the moment of creation of the Italian Kingdom – Italy enters the involutionary period of history, marked by the political activity of Garibaldi (1848-1871), the final unification of the country (1871), the seizure of Eritrea (1891) and stirring up its colonial policy.
The transformational stage of the cycle was practically realized during the rule of Italian fascists (1922-1943) under the guidance of B. Mussolini, who made an effort to realize the idea of the «Corporate» state, giving a new quality to the colonial policy, turning the Mediterranean Sea into the «Italian lake» in that period. The tendencies of the evolutionary stage of the cycle gathered momentum with the defeat of Italy in the World War II along with development of the democratic lines of the political process (1946 –proclamation of the Republic; 1957 –the Rome Treaty on creation of the European Economic Union; 1992 –«clean hands» operation, that transformed the political system of Italy, and so on).
Modern Italy is sure to be before the door of the revolutionary stage of the fifth epochal cycle.
8.3. Germany
The hypothetical scheme of epochal cycles in the history of Germany may be presented as follows. I-III centuries – the origin of a new subject of history in Europe (the revolutionary phase of the first epochal cycle), which is identified with the onset of Germanic tribes on the Roman Empire. IV-VII centuries –the involutionary stage of development, with the content of feudalization of Germanic tribes, their political subordination to the Empire of Carolus Magnus.
The co-evolutionary stage of development comprises the period of disintegration of the Empire of Carolus Magnus (772-804) which included most Germanic lands within its limits. Verdun (843) – the formal agreement on the division of Carlovingian empire –became the symbol of the new geopolitic situation. Ludwig the German and the Saxon dynasty (919-1024), in fact, closed the transient process, and the country entered the evolutionary period of its history, that takes its beginning since the proclamation of the «Holy Roman Empire» by Otto I (962). The most important historic events are connected with the fight between Germanic emperors of the Franken dynasty (1024-1125) and the dynasty of Staufens (1138-1254) for control over the Northern Italy, and exercising the policy of «push to the East». The foundation of knightly orders (Teutonic, the Order of Sword-bearers), as the instruments of exercising the colonial policy against the Slavic lands in the East, occurred in the same period. These events became the beginning of the second epochal cycle of development of the country.
The following involutionary period of the cycle is connected with a certain decline of the economy of Germanic lands, caused by the flood of Italian goods from the centers of rapid pre-capitalistic development in North-Italian towns.
The co-evolutionary phase of the cycle (since 1356) is connected with the establishment of the powerful Hanseatic trade league in the Baltic region. This league can be in some way compared with the present European Union by monopolizing markets and establishing the control over the neighboring eastern lands. Hanseatic League exerted its influence on the policy of Karl IV (1347-1378). The evolutionary period of the second epochal cycle began with his rule. The period is politically characterized with the growing political fragmentation of Germany, that was reflected in the «Gold bulla» (1356), later referred to by K. Marx as the constitution of split of Germany. The emperor was then elected by the college of electors. This situation remained practically till the middle of the 19th century. One of the reasons for such a situation was the differentiation of economic and political interests of various German lands between the North (Baltic), the East (Slavic lands), and the South (Italy, Mediterranean region).
The new chapter of the history of Germany and the revolutionary phase of the third epochal cycle are associated with the Reformation. Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536), who changed the point of view on the inner world of a mediaeval Christian, may be considered the spiritual precursor of this process. The invention of printing by Johann Gutenberg in 1445 also favored this process. In 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546) proclaimed his famous 95 theses, based on the absolution of faith. This event made the Catholic hierarchy unnecessary and practically established the direct link between the laymen and God.
The revolutionary sentiments quickly spread among the masses, and, already in 1524-1525, Germany was shaken with the Great Peasants' War. The involutionary period of the third epochal cycle, characterized by the leveling of the «patched-up» Germany in the European affairs, begins since 1555, when the Augsburg peace between religions did away with the open enmity between the Catholic and the Protestant based on the principle «whose land –whose faith». The Holy Roman Empire became the object of expansion of the external forces during the 30-year war (1618-1648) between the European coalitions of Catholic and Protestant states.
Since 1804, with the beginning of wars against Napoleon, Germany enters its co-evolutionary stage of development (1804-1834), illustrated by a rapid development of capitalist relations, particularly in the south of Germany, connected with the economic interests of France. The idea of the political unity of the country, the first step towards which was the creation of the German customs union (1834), is reviving again. However, no nationwide market was created till the unification of Germany (1871).
European bourgeois revolutions of 1848-1849 chronologically concurred with the beginning of the evolutionary period of the third epochal cycle of the German history. That is why, they were not taken up by the inner logic of development of the country and had a formally superficial influence on it. The creation of the National Convent in Frankfurt (1848), that gave a push to the development of democratic ideas in Germany, connected with the national unity, constututionalism, and other aspects, was put into practice only after 100 years during the creation of Federal Republic of Germany. The historical sense of the present evolutionary period in the history of the country was overcoming the historical inertia of the split of Germany, at first in the form of the German Empire (1871-1918), then in the Weimar republic (1919-1933), in the Third Reich (1933-1945), in the Bonn republic (1949-1990), and, at last, in the united Germany (since 1990).
Going by the programmed logic of development, Germany stimulated the European integration process. Especially, this line found its expression in its present status of leadership in European and transatlantic structures, in the «collective leadership in the contemporary world», as stated by Bill Clinton in 1997. It became the actually incontestable second world leader and the reliable ally of the USA both in the European and world policy. At the same time, according to Jurgen Habermas, since 1960’s, after the youth riots in May 1968, and particularly after the anschluss of German Democratic Republic, the tendency to augmentation of latent crisis phenomena is becoming more and more apparent: in the sphere of politics –the extinction of traditional political parties; in the economy – the growth of devastative globalization tendencies, difficulties of restructuring national industrial sectors, the problems of education and unemployment; in the social sphere –the problems of the European identity of the Eastern Germany, and the responsibility of Germany for forming a common defense and foreign policy of the European Union.
All this strengthens the assumption that Germany is approaching the commencement of the revolutionary phase of the fourth epochal cycle.
8.4. Great Britain
The peculiarities of the national historical process of Great Britain are connected with insularity of the country, its partial isolation from the European problems and the readiness to be the «Queen of seas», which have formed the peculiar national character of Great Britain.
The first epochal cycle began from the revolutionary events of liberation of the British Isles from the Roman rule and the entrance of Celtic tribes to the way of independent development (407 AD). Since the 5th century, Britain entered the involutionary period, the most important events were the permanent struggle for hegemony between its seven kingdoms: Wessex, Sussex, Essex (Saxon kingdoms), Kent (Jutes’ tribes), Mercia, Northumbria (Angles’tribes). The internal situation was complicated by the struggle against Normans (Vikings). All that created conditions for the unification of kingdoms under the rule of Alfred the Great (871-899).
However, the successes of Anglo-Saxon in the struggle against Vikings appeared to be temporary. In 1017, the Dutch king Knud den Store establishes the Norman domination over Britain. This event symbolizes the co-evolutionary changes in the country that lasted to the battle of Hastings (1066), when almost all Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was exterminated and William the Conqueror established a new aristocracy of the Norman origin in Britain. Being connected, the historical destinies of France and Britain showed themselves during the rule of Henry II Plantagenet (1154-1189). The beginning of the invasion of Ireland (1171) is connected with his name. At the same time, one could observe growing social-political contradictions between landowners during that period, the inheritors of the Conqueror, and a new urban trade-craft elite striving for the political independence.
The mentioned social-political contradiction found its solution in the following revolutionary events, opening the beginning of the second epochal cycle –the Great Charter (1215), the creation of the first parliament (1236), the peripetias of the civil war (1236-1267), the actual defeat of the royal power which allowed one to preserve the idea of parliamentarism as a backbalance to the regality. Since the end of the 13th century, the involutionary period, that lasted to the War of the Red and White Roses (1445), receives its normative background. The most important events of the involutionary period were as follows: the creation of the House of Lords (the representatives of the aristocracy, knightage) and the House of Commons (the representation of urbanites), the epidemic of plague, «the black death» (1349), Peasants' Revolt (1381), the activity of propagandist and Reformer John Wyclif (1320-1384).
The change of the dynasties of Plantagenets and Lancasters on the king’s throne of Britain and the dynastic war of Red (Lancaster) and White (York) roses (1455-1485) symbolized the transitional co-evolutionary phase of the epochal cycle. The political transformation from the limited monarchy to the absolutist monarchy occurred in this period, the process of primary capital accumulation was growing, and the conditions for the first overseas invasions were created.
The evolutionary development is identified mainly with the Tudor’s absolutism (1485-1603) and lasted to 1648. The most important social-historical events are connected with the agrarian revolution, secularization, that stimulated the development of textile industry, with the «bloody» law aimed to create the free labor market for the naissant capitalist structure of the economy. As for the spiritual sphere, the Reformation and the process of creation of the Anglican Church took place at that moment. The most significant figures of the period were Thomas More (1478 - 1535), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The joint-stock East India Company which organized external trade with colonies and stimulated the establishment of the British Empire, was created in 1600.
The revolutionary events (1648-1649), which marked the beginning of the third epochal cycle, were connected with the execution of King Charles I, the proclamation (1654) of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector. In fact, the latter meant the establishment of a radical republican system which became an abnormal event, opening a radical break with the monarchy traditionalism and paving the way to the Great French revolution. The normative involutionary period was virtually established after Cromwell’s death (1658) and confirmed with the restoration of constitutional monarchy (1689) and confirmation of the Great Charter and primary human rights and freedoms.
The main historical events of the involutionary period were as follows: the fight of Great Britain for preserving the empire (the War of Independence of the USA, 1775-1783), the competition with the revolutionary France for the hegemony in Europe and for the repartition of colonies –Trafalgar battle (1805), the continental blockade organized by Napoleon (1806-1814).
The co-evolutionary transitional phase of development, which began in the first quarter of the 19th century, is connected with the transformation of Great Britain into the «world’s workshop», the industrial revolution, the first parliamentary reform which extended the categories of people who had a right to vote (1832).
The evolutionary period takes its beginning since the middle of the 19th century and is marked by the following significant events: in political history – the classic confrontation between the Liberals (William Gladstone, 1809-1898) and the Conservatives (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881), the concession of the dominion status to Canada (1867); the colonial Boer War (1899-1902), which virtually opened a new historical period of redistribution of spheres of the colonial influence and forestalled the First World War (1914-1918). In fact, it was the fight for preserving status quo of the British Empire. The main internal political event was the foundation of the Labour Party (1900). Its activity created an alternative to the liberals and Tories at the beginning of the 20th century. When this party came to power (1924), the accents of political struggle shifted from the confrontation «liberals-conservatives» to «labourites-conservatives».
The negative consequences of the Great Depression, the USA being its epicenter, cannot help to influence the situation in Great Britain. However, due to the developed democratic institutions and efficient mechanisms of regulation of the capitalist economy, the depression did not exert so great influence on this country as on the USA.
The evolutionary period of the third epochal cycle is also connected with the disintegration of the British Empire after the Second World War (1939-1945), the changes in the balance of power between Great Britain and the USA, its former colony, the transformation of London to the strategic partner of Washington in Europe. The most outstanding events of this period are as follows: the Labourist government of C. Attlee entered the scene, marking the beginning of the end of colonial policy – the loss of India, a pearl in the crown of the British Empire, the independence of Pakistan (1945-1951); the creation of the British atom bomb during W. Churchill’s second premiership (1951-1955); the Suez crisis (1952-1956); privatization processes in the state sector and expansion of the area for private initiative during the rule of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990); the preservation of Britain’s greatness –the war with Argentina for Falkland Islands (1982); the victory of T. Blair and the «new» Labourists at the parliamentary elections (1997), and a following exclusion of hereditary peers from the poll, the reform in the House of Lords, the peace process in Ulster, decentralization (devolution) – the creation of assemblies in Scotland and Wales; the confrontation between the eurooptimists and eurosceptics on the issue of entering the Monetary union.
The analysis of events of the last period gives grounds to assume that Great Britain is standing on the threshold of the revolutionary stage of the fourth epochal cycle. The definition of a new role of the monarchy, the solution of the problems of multiracial society, and the coexistence of various cultural traditions may become the content of that cycle.
8.5. France
The hypothetical scheme of development of epochal cycles of the national history of France may be presented in a following way.
The history of France goes back to the period of establishment of the state of Franks. It would be quite natural to assume that the beginning of the first epochal cycle is connected with the revolutionary stage of origin of a new subject of history in Europe. The inclusion of the Frankish state into the Christian civilization is connected with the acceptance of Catholic Christianity (496). The victories of Chlodwig over the neighboring Germanic tribes (481-511) extended geopolitical borders, forming the present territory of France.
The involutionary stage of the cycle had the content of formation of classic West-European feudalist system (511-843), which lasted practically to the Verdun division of the Carlovingian Empire (843). The emerged historical events of the period are connected with the activity of Emperor Carolus Martellus (715-741). Due to his victory over the Arabs near Poitiers (732), the borders of Islamic expansion in Europe were finally determined. The next important figure of the period was Carolus Magnus (768-814). It is his territorial aggrandizements that laid down the background for creation of the united Europe. At the same time, the Carlovingian Empire was not a stable state formation, because it comprised various nations which were at different stages of historical development. All this predetermined the following differentiation of the single state formation and creation of the main states of Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy).
The Verdun division of the Carlovingian Empire (843) became the turning (co-evolutionary) point in the history of France. The truly French dynasty of Capetians, which came into confrontation with the British dynasty of Plantagenets, was created in this period. The King of England Henry Plantagenet invaded the French territory from La Manche to the Pyrenees (1154).
The evolutionary period of development of France during the first epochal cycle is marked by the appearance of the urban (burgher) culture and the struggle of towns for trade privileges against feudals. The Sorbonne University arises in 1136. Pierre Abailard (1079-1142) was one of the most prominent professors at this university. Large heretic movements and religious wars with Albigenses (13th century) are also characteristic of the period. French kings gradually restored their control over the territories lost before. Philippe IV (1180-1223) regained Normandy from Britain. Louis IX concluded peace with England (1259), leaving, therefore, only Aquitaine and Gascony under the British rule. The new greatness of France is confirmed by the political control over the pontiffs – the so-called Avignon imprisonment of Popes (1309-1379). The peripetias of the initial stage of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1358) became the historic event of long-duration meaning which stimulated the revolutionary processes of the second epochal cycle. Standing on the edge of ultimate defeat and seeking the ways of attraction of broad masses to take part in the war, the King of France Charles II was forced to call classes in the General states (fore-parliament). The revolutionary processes were followed by Jacquerie caused by a growth of military exactions and the attempts to enslave the population.
France was on the edge of catastrophe when it was rescued by Joan of Arc, who liberated Orleans (1429). Since that event, France gained victories over the Englishmen, and, during the rule of Louis XI (1461-1483), the political unification of France came to an end, and the conditions for absolutist monarchy, which symbolizes the peak of the involutionary period in country’s development, were created.
Having revived after the Hundred Years' War, France got engaged in the war with Germany and Spain for control over Italy. The protestant heresy appeared during the rule of Francis I (1515-1547).
Social-political contradictions which became more evident due to wars and reformist tendencies of spiritual life, raised the Fronde of civil religious wars (1562-1598), which, in fact, became the expression of co-evolutionary transformational processes. The events of the transient period lasted practically to 1629, when the Edict of mercy gave the freedom of conscience to Huguenots.
The outstanding historical events of the evolutionary period (1629-1789) were as follows: the Thirty Years' War which defined the French hegemony in Europe, a subsequent growth of the French culture, coming back to the early-Italian Renaissance. The spiritual face of the epoch was defined by the works of Francois Rabelais (1494-1533), Pierre Ronsard (1524-1585), Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Jean Bodin (1530-1596) and R. Descartes (1596-1650).
The defeat of France in the Seven Years’ War (1753-1760), the loss of colonial domains (the province of Quebec in Canada, trade outposts in India), and the ruin of country’s economy, stimulated the deep political crisis of the absolutism system which ended in the burst the Great French revolution (1789-1794). This epochal event, which had a globally historical meaning (for Western, Central, and East Europe, and also for Asia in XIX-XX centuries) resulted in opening the area for development of capitalist relations. The export of revolution during Napoleon’s wars (1799-1814), brought the bourgeois law by means of French bayonets to the most distant areas of Europe. The inability of a final victory of counterrevolution in France demonstrated all the radicality of changes.
The restoration of monarchy (1815-1848), opening the involutionary period of the third epochal cycle, was unable to change the bourgeois-democratic character of the state. The efforts to reanimate the absolutism were ruined by the revolts of the people in 1830 and 1848-1849. The following political development of the country predetermined the formation of the Third presidential republic (1875-1940).
The victory of France in the First World War did not strengthen economic positions of the country. Moreover, the ruined Germany could not pay off French military expenses by its reparations. The beginning of the conjuncture economic crisis of the Great Depression (1929-1933) became the turning co-evolutionary point in the development of France. The transient processes in France lasted up to the Algerian crisis (1958).
France enters the evolutionary period of the third epochal cycle with the return of De Gaulle to the political stage of the country.
The most important events of the period were as follows: the entrance of France into the European Economic Community (1958); French nuclear weapon test (1962); the reconciliation between France and Germany, put into life by the treaty between De Gaulle and Adenauer (1963). Student’s disturbances (May 1968) were aimed at democratization of the country’s political system and favored the rejuvenation of the country’s political elite. The enlivening of left-centralist sentiments in the country does not hold any pronounced radical character. The modern policy of France is directed to preservation of the former greatness. Its real economic position among the leading seven industrial states has a tendency to a decline. It shifted from the 4th to the 5th place according to its economic indices in the recent five years.
Quite probably, the evolutionary period of development has not exhausted its potency and will last in the first quarter of the 21st century.
8.6. Ukraine
For Ukraine, the beginning of the first epochal cycle is identified with sources of Kievian Rus’history.
It would not be groundless to assume that the revolutionary phase of the cycle is connected with the seizure of power in Novgorod and Kiev by the Norman army of Oleg (882). The establishment of control over the trade way «from Varangians to Greeks» was the sense of the event. The campaigns of Svyatoslav (964-969) also became the content of the revolutionary phase. However, they did not provide for the territorial expansion of Rus to the West, and, moreover, they uncovered the southern borders of the state, exposing them to Khasarian attacks.
The entrance of Ukraine-Rus to the involutionary period was connected with the choice of belonging to a civilization and the introduction of Christianity of the Byzantine model (988). The fight for the Kievian throne, which flared up after the death of Prince Vladimir, ended only during the rule of Yaroslav the Wise (1019-1054). The inner political situation in Kievian Rus stabilized in that period. At the same time, under the influence of the external factor, the split of the Christian church to the Catholic (ecumenical) and Orthodox (right) ones, Ukrainian lands, according to Hrushevsky, lose their own civilizational rhythm of history. The insiccation of the Byzantine sources of culture, to what Ukraine-Rus belonged, did not allow that land to find the rhythm neither in the Catholic nor in Protestant civilizational cycles64. In fact, the civilizational failure was marked along the Dnieper («East»–«West»).
The fight for political influence in the country stimulated the processes of feudal disunity, confirmed at the meeting of Princes in Lubich (1097), where they made a decision: «everyone holds his own dominion». The reinforcement of kindred North-Eastern Russian princedoms in the XI century stimulated their struggle against the parental culture of the Kievian Rus. This process was symbolized by the war for the Kievian throne between Izyaslav Mstislavitch and the Prince of Suzdal, Jury Dolgoruky (1147-1149). The situation was complicated with permanent confrontation with the nomadic nations of steppe. The assault of hordes of Polovtsians upon Kiev (1169) did not stimulate any uniting processes in the military and political spheres. Every prince strived for his own victories, trying to prove his right to be primus inter pares. The bright example is the campaign of Severian Prince Igor Svyatoslavich against Polovtsians, which ended in the defeat of Igor by the Polovtsian Khan Konchak (1185).
The peculiar correctives, amended to the historical development of the Ukraine-Rus by the steppian nations, finally weakened the political influence of Kiev as a uniting power of the Slav nations. The situation promoted the appearance of new centers of power –the beginning of a growth of the Galych-Volyn princedom (1199) and princedoms of the North-Eastern Rus.
Transient processes of the co-evolution of the first epochal cycle are identified with defeats of the North-Eastern Rus and the Mogul-Tartarian invasion of it (1237-1238). This period includes: the defeat of Kiev (1240), the creation of «Saga on Defeat of Rus» by monks. In fact, Ukraine-Rus turned into a distinctive defensive line for Europe.
The blossom of the evolutionary period is connected with the strengthening of the Lithuanian princedom that took Ukraine-Rus under its military cover: the campaign of the Lithuanian prince Gediminas to the Kievian princedom (1323). The power of the Lithuanian princedom allowed it to inflict a defeat upon the Mogul-Tartaric horde near the Blue Waters in 1362. However, the military successes, strengthened by the Kievian Union (1385) of the Great Lithuanian princedom and the Kingdom of Poland, weakened the Orthodox hierarchy, especially after the metropolitanate had moved to Moscow (1326). It opened the doors for catholic missionaries to the Ukrainian land, by strengthening the western vector in its culture and, at the same time, stimulating the interconfessional confrontation.
The consequences of Tartar-Mogul destructions became the main reason for the lag of towns of Ukraine-Rus behind the West-European towns in richness, the level of development of guild handicraft, and self-government. Though the town of Vladimir-Volynsky gained the Magdeburg right (1324), in general, the urban culture had not yet reached the West-European level.
Despite the separation of the Crimean Khanate from the Golden Horde (1443), the incursions of nomads on the Ukrainian lands still took place, what favored the emergence of list Cossacks as a special military class, defending the southern borders of the state from incursions. Later, the formations of the Zaporizhzhian Sich appear on Dnieper rapids. The enslaving of peasants intensified in this period. Such a state of affairs cannot help to influence the social-political situation in the Great Princedom of Lithuania.
The growing political tension reached their critical point because of active policy of catholicizing the Ukrainian population, finding its expression in the decisions of the Brest synod (1596) on the creation of the Uniate Church.
The second epochal cycle. Revolutionary content had the events of the first quarter of the 17th century, connected with the struggle of Ukrainian Cossacks for extending their social rights, the struggle of peasants for liberation from the serfdom oppression of Polish magnates and the struggle of all Ukrainian population for the confessional equality.
The apogee of the events became the War for liberation of the Ukrainian nation under the guidance of Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1648-1654). This period became a divide in the history of Ukraine. However, the high point of restoration of the national statehood of the period of Bogdan Khmelnitsky did not end in success. The Andrusov Peace (1667) between Moscow and Rzecz Pospolita stimulated the geopolitic split of Ukrainian lands: the Left-bank Ukraine remained in the zone of Russian influence, the Right-bank one (except Kiev) – under control of Poland. According to the figural statement of Hrushevsky, the period of Ruin had come, when Ukrainian lands were devastated by almost semicentenary uninterrupted wars.
The period involutionary by its characteristics in the history of Ukraine is connected with its following existence in the borders of Russia. The last attempt of preserving its identity found its expression in the causes that led to events of the Poltava battle (1709). The spiritual front of the period was defined by the works of Hrigory Skovoroda (1722-1794).
Ukraine loses the foretype of its statehood of this period with the destruction of the Zaporizhzhian Sich by Russian troops (1775). The gradual erosion of its social-cultural grounds proceeded. The territorial enlargement at the expense of three divisions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) and accession of the Crimea (1783) led to the spread of serfdom on the peasants of the Left-bank and Slobodian Ukraine at the same time. The «reincarnation» of Ukrainian national spirit was realized in the works of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), what gave an ideological ground to the following generations of freethinking democrats.
The defeat of the Russian Empire in the Crimean War (1854-1856) stimulated reforms, beginning with the abolishment of serfdom (1861). In fact, it became the turning co-evolutionary phase of the third epochal cycle. The bourgeois reforming of economy opened the space for the private initiative. At the same time, the differentiation of the urban Russian-speaking and country Ukrainian-speaking cultures is intensified in the growing processes of russification of Ukraine: the Valuev (1863) and Ems (1876) edicts, that appreciably limited the publishing of books and prohibited the teaching at schools in Ukrainian. All these factors distinctively restrained national-cultural development of Ukraine and manifested in a drop in efficiency of country’s cultural self-realization.
The evolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle was interrupted by the events of the Great October Socialist Revolution (1917-1921). Thus, any accelerated revolutionary processes appeared to be untenable for Ukraine on the whole, and the struggle for national liberation ended in defeat. Appearing in the unit multinational state, the USSR, Ukraine continued its development already in the involutionary period of the third epochal cycle.
The involutionary stage is connected with the realization of the policy of the «military communism» under conditions of the civil war (1918-1921). The objective specificity of the period, consisting in «acceleration» of the time of historical development and in unique peripetias of the process of mobilization of the «pursuit development», revealed later. Especially, it can be seen in the transformation of the traditional Ukrainian agrarian society to the «noncapitalist» industrial one, preserving the specific features of «multistructureness»: from the forms of quasistate slavery in the concentration camps, «petty-bourgeois» agrarian production of the «new economic policy» times, to the elements of «state capitalism».
The Second World War (1939-1945) became a tragic trial for Ukraine. It questioned the very possibility of the following historical development as a subject rather than an object of the hostile expansion. On the other side, almost all ethnically Ukrainian territories were included to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, what created the perspective for formation of a political nation.
At the same time, the involutionary period was connected with solution of the tasks of industrial development. The overall nationalization of the objects of property, the collectivization of the agrarian and industrial production, the secularization of the spiritual life did not give any freedom of choice except that defined by the policy of the single governing Communist party and the plans for country’s economic development. Possessing the enormous fertility of both the agricultural area and spiritual space, Ukraine represented an example of the fatigueless supplier of elite personnel to USSR’s bodies. This directly influenced the condition of the national elite.
The co-evolutionary phase of the third epochal cycle for Ukraine is identified with the disintegration of the USSR (1991) and the third attempt (after 1648-1654 and 1917-1921) to create a sovereign state.
8.7. Russia
Speaking on the historical destiny of Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia as a basis of the Eurasian civilizational area, one should pay attention to differences in the dynamics of development of epochal cycles of the national historical processes of three Slav nations.
The bright example of such a dissonance is the Russian history. By creating the hypothetical scheme of changes of the epochal cycles, one should pay attention to the «interference» of wave-like cycles of the historical processes within nations which were either forcibly or peacefully included in various times to the Russian Empire as the unique Eurasian geopolitic formation. The conception of Klyuchevsky (1841-1911) concerning the Russian civilization as a peculiar synthesis of the Orthodoxy and Islam seems to be efficient. This conception reflected the main peculiarities of the Russian history in the most adequate manner.
The beginning of the first epochal cycle may be identified with the revolutionary stage, whose political sense is connected with radical changes in the alignment of forces between the parental culture of the Kievian Rus and its northern princedoms. The following events may be referred to this period: the first mention of Moscow in chronicles (1147); the transfer of the «capital» princely throne from Kiev to Vladimir (1157). The seizure and destruction of Kiev by the troops of Andrei Bogolubsky (1169) was the symbolic end of the revolutionary phase.
The involutionary period of the first epochal cycle was developing since the latter half of the 12th century. The Mogul-Tartar invasion (1237-1240) became the defining event for this cycle. The Moscowian state was also forced to stand up to the military threats from the West – the opposition of Alexander Nevsky to the Swedish and Teutonic pressure (1240-1242) –which virtually determined the Eurasian geostrategy of the North-Eastern Russia.
The identification of Moscow as a center of collection of lands (1326) is referred to this period –the transfer of the capital from Vladimir-on-Klyazma. The political reinforcement of the Moscowian princes was connected with the successful opposition to the Mogul-Tartars –the Kulikovo battle (1380); the defeat of the Gold Horde by Timur-Tamerlane (1395). The seizure of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) favored the emergence of the ideology «Moscow is the Third Rome, there cannot be the fourth». The collection of lands around Moscow was followed by the addition of the Great Novgorod (1478) and the Princedom of Tver (1485). The victory over the Great Princedom of Lithuania allowed one to annex Pskov and Smolensk to Moscow (1514).
The co-evolutionary transient period is connected with the beginning of the rule of Ivan IV the Terrible. The main events of this period were as follows: the publication of the code of laws (1550); the seizure of Kazan (1552); the establishment of oprichnina (1565-1572).
The evolutionary period of the cycle is connected with the Asian territorial expansion of Russia. In particular, with the campaign of Ermak to Siberia (1581), which ended in the join of the territory that had an area of three Europes. Klyuchevsky said: «The state fattened, and the people languished». The successes of Russia in the west were not so impressive. The destructive Livonia War (1558-1583) did not allow one to solve the task for the Russia to way out to the Baltic Sea. The country remained terrestrial in the geopolitic sense.
The symbols of the evolutionary period were: the establishment of patriarchate (1589) and «troublous times» (1598-1612), connected with cessation of the Rurik’s dynasty and transition of the scepter to the Romanovs. At this time, the influence of the Moscowian czardom on the European part of Eurasia was strengthening, especially after the joining of Ukraine (1654). The new geopolitical situation on the West was legitimated by the «Eternal Peace» with Poland (1686). The analogous functions in Asia were played by the Nerchinsk Treaty with China (1689).
The reforms led by Peter I became revolutionary by the character of social changes. They began in 1698 with «the Great embassy» to Western Europe and ended with the victory over Sweden in the North War and exit to the Baltic Sea. Russia was proclaimed the empire. The involutionary period of the second epochal cycle began with the death of Peter I (1725). This period lasted to the abolishment of serfdom (1861). The following half-way bourgeois reforms of 1870s can be viewed as the co-evolutionary phase of development.
The evolutionary period of the second epochal cycle is connected with Russia’s finding solutions to the tasks of searching for a compromise between the feudalist-monarchic form of governance and the nascent forms of bourgeois democracy. In fact, this process was interrupted by the Great October Socialist Revolution (1917-1921), which established the Soviet variant of the socialist system from Brest (Belorussia) to Vladivostok, from the Arctic Ocean to Kushka (Turkmenistan). In fact, the new economic policy, which became a peculiar pullback process in the USSR, was the continuation of revolutionary processes and had the aim to «make a step back in order to make two steps forward» as Lenin said. After a complete fulfillment of its tasks, the policy was changed with the series of tasks characteristic of the soviet (involutionary) period such as «collectivization», «industrialization», «electrification», «chemicalization» and other programs of establishing an industrially developed society of the «quasiwestern» type.
The period (1954-1964) is famous with the reforms of N. S. Khrushchev and reflected all contradictions of the soviet social system. The following period of L. I. Brezhnev (1964-1982) led the country to the situation, when the USSR became the second superpower after the USA. But, at the same time, the social-economic stagnation and decline of morality became more and more obvious. Together with that, the inner potencies of intellectual and creative self-expression of the nation were growing. The period of Andropov (1982-1983) expressed itself by the attempt to start the «planned» economic transformations according to the Chinese model, preserving the stability of political institutions. Then Gorbachev (1985-1991) expanded the reforms and drove the country to the modern uncontrolled transient processes of co-evolution – the fall of the Berlin Wall and downfall of the socialist system in Europe (1989), the disintegration of the USSR and emergence of new independent states in the Central and Eastern Europe (1990-1991), the catastrophic collapse of economies of these countries, which destabilized the world’s financial system.
8.8. Belorussia
A few words about the development of epochal cycles in the history of Belorussia.
The Polotsk land was one of the first that tried to gain the political independence from Kiev. The revolutionary stage of the first epochal cycle began approximately in the 11th century with the first attempts of Kievian princes to liquidate the independence of Polotsk.
The involutionary stage began in the second half of the 12th century with the gradual development of such towns within the Polotsk Princedom as Minsk, Vitebsk, Orsha. The neighboring states of Lets and Livs in Baltics paid the tribute to Polotsk. In the latter half of the 12th century, the land of Turov separated into the independent princedom. The princedoms of Pinsk and Slutsk politically depended on the more powerful neighboring Galych-Volyn princedom. The system of independent feudal principalities had formed. One of the main events of the involutionary period became the inclusion of the Belorussia lands to the Great Princedom of Lithuania in the latter half of the 13th century and their political subdivision to Poland after the Krevs Union (1385). In the end of the 15th century, the territory between the rivers of Western Bug, Western Dvina, Sozh, and Pripyat received the name of «White Russia». The Lublin Union of Lithuania and Poland (1569) consolidated the European traditions of the history of Belorussia. Francisk Skoryna became the national enlightener of the country.
The influence of the Ukrainian history on Belorussia manifested particularly in the period of the revolt under guidance of Severyn Nalyvaiko (1594-1596), which started in the Left-bank Ukraine and spread to the Mohylev region (Belorussia).
The co-evolutionary stage is identified with the war between Russia and Poland for Polotsk, Minsk, and Vitebsk (1654-1655).
The evolutionary period of the first epochal cycle took its start since the beginning of the 17th century. The most important event of the period was the second division of Poland, which resulted in the inclusion of the Eastern Belorussia into Russia (1793). In fact, that meant a reinforcement of the tendency of changing the European vector of development of Belorussia to the Eurasian one. All territory of Belorussia was included to Russia as a result of the third division of Poland (1795). The processes of russification and spread of political and economic structures on the newly included territories became more active. The evolutionary period of the first epochal cycle chronologically comprises the latter half of the 19th century and the soviet period. The main historical events were as follows: the failed attempt to create the independent Peoples Republic of Belorussia (1918) and the declaration of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919). According to the Riga Treaty (1921), Western Belorussia was returned to Poland. However, in September, 1939, the soviet troops occupy Western Belorussia and return its territory to the USSR. The republic suffered the heaviest losses during the Second World War. After 1945, its economy was gradually recovered.
In the Soviet period, Belorussia substantively differed from its co-brother republics (Ukraine and Russia) in mentality and mass behavior, by somewhat reminding the behaviour of the West-European countries. The Soviet hierarchical mentality of servility and subordinance did not get accustomed to this country. The figure of Masherov was a brightly expressed typology in this meaning. He did not review parades on the tribune, as did his colleagues in other republics, and was easily accessible to the broad masses. However, the Soviet mentality of the brother republics identified these peculiarities with consequences of the heaviest losses during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), calling the behavior of Belorussians the highest expression of internationalism in the Soviet Union.
The 1990’s were the revolutionary expression of the historical peculiarities of the country and the transition of Belorussia to the second epochal cycle. In December 1991, Minsk became the formal capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States, emerging on the ruins of the USSR. That is not occasional. The following events in the country, the victory of Lukashenko at the presidential elections (1994), his behavior as a representative of the present political elite of the republic only confirms the hypothesis on the revolutionary character of the present social-political and spiritual processes in Belorussia. An attentive expert may, without any difficulties, behold the familiar contours of the revolutionary events in the Soviet Russia of 1917 in the national events and facts of the 1990s («the conspiracy of ambassadors», political chase of opposition, very low level, not higher that in the NEP’s period of the USSR, of spread of the private property, and so on).
8.9. China
The national-state epochal cycles have their own peculiarities in the countries of Asia and America. They are conditioned by the chronological differences and the specificity of the historical process. China is a bright example. 2397 BC is the beginning of the Chinese chronology.
The revolutionary stage of the first epochal cycle. 2205-1766 BC – the dynasty of Sa. The origin of the state tradition.
The involutionary stage –-1027 BC –the dynasty of Shan-In. 1027-771 BC – the dynasty of Western Chou.
The co-evolutionary stage, 770-481 BC, the period of «Spring and Autumn» – the obduration of fight between kingdoms for the hegemony over the Celestial Empire. Lao Tzu, Taoism. 551-479 BC –Confucius.
The evolutionary stage. 403-221 BC, the period of hegemony of three kingdoms –Han, Chao, Wei. The beginning of creation of the Great Wall of China. 221-210 BC, Czyn Shikhuan. The unity of China. The Empire of Han.
The revolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle. 316-588 –havoc in China. The Hunnish invasion. 618-907 –the dynasty of T’ang.
The involutionary stage. 751 AD – the defeat by Arabs near the Talas river. The expansion of the Chinese to the West is sustained. The Celestial Empire lose its control over the Great Silk Way. 874-901 AD –the peasants’war.
The co-evolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle. 1130-1200 – Chou Si. The revival of Confucianism. 960-1279 –the dynasty of Sun. 1190-1206 –the Genghis Khan’s invasion. 1234 –Khublai –the capital –Peking. 1271-1368 –the Mogul dynasty of Juan.
The evolutionary stage. 1368-1644 –the dynasty of Min. 1398 –the seizure of Korea. 1406-1428 – the military campaigns to Vietnam and Burma. 1405-1433 –the Pacific campaigns of Czhen Khe. 1516 –the Portuguese seized Aomin (Macao till 1999). 1624 –the Dutch in Taiwan.
The revolutionary stage of the third epochal cycle. 1639-1644 –the peasants’war. 1644-1911 –the Manchurian dynasty of Zyn. 1759 –Synczan –a new border. The expansion to the North.
The involutionary stage –«the Opiate Wars». 1795-1838 –the British imported 27 million tons of opium to China. 1842-1997 –Hong-Kong (Xianggang) under the control of England.
The co-evolutionary stage. 1853 –Tai-ping revolt. 1894-1895 –the war between China and Japan. 1866-1925 –Sun-Yat-sen.
The evolutionary stage. 1911-1913 –the Sin-Hai revolution. The struggle for independence of China. 1937 –Japanese aggression. The civil war in China between the nationalists of Gomindan and the Communists.
The revolutionary stage of the fourth epochal cycle. 1949 –the declaration of the People’s Republic of China. 1951-1953 –Korean war. The consolidation of Gomindan in Taiwan.
The involutionary stage. 1958 –«the great jump». 1966 –«the cultural revolution». 1964 –China gained the nuclear weapon. 1976 –the death of Mao Tse-tung.
The co-evolutionary stage. 1978 –Den Xiao Ping –the beginning of reforms. 1989 – the suppression of democratic movement. The return of Hong-Kong (1997), Macao (1999) under control of China. In fact, the People’s Republic of China appeared on the threshold of the evolutionary stage of historical development.
8.10. India
India is an example of the «nonhistorical» civilization, and the time is «afraid» of it. The chronology of the history of the Ancient India is eroded in distinction from the Chinese one. However, the hypothetical scheme of changes of the epochal cycles of the Indian history may be reconstructed.
The revolutionary stage of the first epochal cycle. Ancient civilizations of 2300-1700 BC. Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro near 2000 BC –the incursion of the Aryan tribes. Caste system.
The involutionary period of the cycle lasted approximately since the 10th to 5th century AD.
The co-evolutionary stage. The appearance of Buddhism. 327-325 BC –the campaign of Alexander the Great. 268-231 BC –the rule of Asoka. The wide spread of Buddhism.
The evolutionary period of the first epochal cycle is connected with the emergence of conglomerate of political units, quarrelling with each other. III-VI centuries AD –the Empire of Gupta. 616-647 –the state of Harsha. The Hinduism extrudes the Buddhism from the spiritual life.
The revolutionary phase of the second epochal cycle is identified with the Muslim invasion of the Northern India, what gave another rhythm to the historical cycle. 998-1030 –Mahmud Ghaznavid. 1206-1526 – the Deli Sultanate. The forcible Islamization of the country.
The involutionary period of the second epochal cycle. The Southern India ––the Sultanate of Bakhmani. The Empire of Widjayanahar.
The co-evolutionary stage is connected with the double pressure of the Europeans (1498 –the discovery of India by Vasco da Gama) and the Mussulmans upon the Indian civilization. 1556-1605 –Akbar. The control over the Northern India, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bengal, Gujarat, Orissa. 1451-1526 –the dynasty of Lody in the state of Bakhmani. The dynasty of the Great Moguls (moguls was the name given by the Hindu to the Mussulmans).
The evolutionary period. 1757 –the East India Company –the control over Bengal. 1784 –Pitt –the Law on the government of India. 1861-1941 Rabindranath Tagore. 1845-1846 –the first Anglo-Sikh war. 1869-1948 – Mahatma Gandhi. 1885 –the creation of the National Congress of India.
The revolutionary phase of the third epochal cycle is connected with the struggle of India for independence. 1948 –India –dominion. 1950 –the Constitution of India. The egression from the British Commonwealth.
The involutionary stage. 1962 –the Indochina war. 1971– the war between India and Pakistan. The Symla treaties. 1964 –the death of J. Nehru. 1965-1988 –Indira Gandhi.
The co-evolutionary stage. 1991 –the economic reform. May, 1998 – India carried its first nuclear weapon test.
The evolutionary period of the cycle is only taking its start and will develop in the 21st century.
8.11. Japan
The revolutionary phase of the first epochal cycle –BC –the official date of establishment of the emperor’s dynasty. Shintoism. The relation of the emperor with Amaterasu, the Goddess of Sun.
The involutionary period of the cycle –V century BC – V century AD. Traditionalism. The influence of the Chinese social-cultural tradition. 572-621 AD –Shotoku Taishi. Ranks. The beginning of the co-evolutionary phase. The spread of Zen Buddhism. 887-1068 – the rule of the clan of Fujiwara. 895 –the «closure» of Japan for foreigners. 958-1587 –the prohibition of coinage.
The evolutionary period. 1192-1333 – the shogunate of Minamoto. The samurai is the backing of the state machine. 1274-1281 –the reflections of Mongol attempts to invade Japan. 1336-1477 –the wars between the clans of the samurai.
The revolutionary phase of the second epochal cycle. 1603-1867 – the shogunate of Tokugawa. 1615 –the political unification of Japan –Edo (Tokyo) is the capital. 1636 –the closure of Japan for the European missionaries.
The involutionary period –-1703 –the epoch of genroku – the blossom of the traditional Japanese urban culture.
The co-evolutionary phase. 1853 –Perry (USA) «opened» Japan for the foreigners. 1867-1868 –the «revolution of Meiji». A successful bourgeois-democratic revolution in Japan that turned the country into the industrial «West» in the «East». The evolutionary stage of the cycle is connected with the rapid modernization. The consolidation of the Japanese military power allowed it to conduct an active expansive policy in Asia. 1894-1895 –the war between Japan and China.
The evolutionary period of the second epochal cycle. 1904-1907 –the war between Japan and Russia. 1910-1945 –the annexation of Korea. 1931 - 1945 –the control over China. Conception «Asia for Asians». 1941 -1945 –the war with the USA. The defeat of Japan.
The revolutionary period of the third epochal cycle. 1946-1949 – the occupation by the USA –a new push to the industrial modernization of Japan, strengthening its strategic alliance with the USA. 1951 –San Francisco –the peace treaty. 1951-1953 – the Korean war. The involutionary period, which began in the 1960’s, turned Japan into an industrial superpower, the third financial-economic world center after the USA and the European Union.
Inner social processes are «pushing» Japan on the way to the co-evolutionary transient processes. The indications are as follows: the financial crisis of 1997 and the projected reforms in the country – preparations to a review of the Constitution dictated by the United States of America, the deep crisis of the Liberal-Democratic party guiding the country approximately fifty years, and so on.
8.12. The United States of America
The USA represent an unique phenomenon in the world’s history. In fact, they have turned from a colony to the leading world’s state for 300 years. This fact testifies the specificity of development of the national epochal cycle. The country has come to the flourishing with a rapid rate of movement along the history. The other leading European countries «spent» millenniums to go through this process.
The revolutionary phase of the first epochal cycle is connected with establishment of the British colonies by the most «passionary» migrants from Great Britain (1607). The transportation of the social experience of emigrants from the Old World to the American soil created a generally favorable ground for the dynamic development of a new complex nation. The involutionary period of its formation covered the latter half of the 17th century. The urban culture developed here faster than in Europe. Both the urban and country cultures were free from pre-capitalistic anachronisms. On the other side, the inner tendencies of the involutionary period actively stimulated the development of the extensive slave-owning forms of the economic development of the Southern states of the country, creating pre-conditions to the following conflict between the slave-owning agrarian South and industrially growing North.
The co-evolutionary stage is identified with events of the War for Independence (1776-1783). A regular consequence of the transient moment in the development became the Declaration of Independence (1776). One could speak about the stable evolutionary-democratic development of the USA since 1783. The most outstanding historic personalities were as follows: George Washington (1732-1799) – one of the parents-founders and the first President of the USA; Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who strengthened the constitutional order in the USA; Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) – the ideologist of the American pragmatism. The positions of the USA in the Southern America were consolidated by the Monroe Doctrine (1823) that gave an indirect support to the fight for national independence of Latin-American states against the European colonial powers. The foundation of the leading political parties of the USA, Democratic (1828) and Republican (1854) ones, and the political activity of the Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) may also be referred to this period.
The revolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle is identified with the peripetias of the War between the States (1861-1865) which led to the abolishment of slavery by giving an additional impulse to development of the national market and accelerated the organic process of country’s industrialization.
The strengthening of the involutionary tendencies provided for the economic growth of the USA to the end of the 19th century and expanded the US possibilities in the sphere of external policy. After the war between America and Spain (1898), the expansion of the USA to Latin America is enlarging, which led to the establishment of political control over the majority of states of this continent. The following content of the evolutionary period became the participation of the USA in the First World War. However, the victory of isolationists over the line of President Woodraw Wilson (1919) weakened country’s external political positions in the League of Nations for some time.
Events of the Great Depression (1929-1933) became a turning (co-evolutionary) point in the history of the USA. The country entered the evolutionary period of the second epochal cycle since the times of the «New Deal» of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945). After the Second World War (1939-1945), the country turns into a superpower. This process was favored by the creation of A-bomb (1942-1945), creation of the NATO (1949), and realization of the Marshall plan (1947-1953) provided for a significant growth of the West-European economies.
The war of the US in Vietnam (1964-1973), youth protests (1968-1975), the deepening of racial problems, the Watergate process that ended in the resignation of President Richard Nixon (1974), the victory in the cold war, the beginning of the transformational processes in Central and Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the USSR (1989-1991), the presidency of Bill Clinton (1992-2000) which led the USA to the maximally possible status of the «last world’s state»65 –all this gives serious grounds to assume that the USA are standing on the threshold of revolutionary events of the third epochal cycle, their probability growing since the beginning of the 21st century.
The overall prognosis of development of the situation in the above-mentioned countries of our research sampling may be presented as the following table.
|
# |
Country |
Number of completed epochal cycles |
Developing Epochal Cycle |
Period (Phase of the Developing Epochal Cycle) |
Probability of Actualization of the Prospective Transient Period (Revolution/Co-evolution) with the beginning of |
|
Vatican |
6 |
Evol. |
High (Revol.) |
||
|
Italy |
4 |
Evol. |
High (Revol.) |
||
|
Germany |
3 |
Evol. |
High (Revol.) |
||
|
Great Britain |
3 |
Evol. |
High (Revol.) |
||
|
France |
2 |
3 |
Evol. |
It is difficult to define |
|
|
Ukraine |
2 |
Co-evol. |
Actual (Со-evol.) |
||
|
Russia |
1 |
Co-evol. |
Actual (Со-evol.) |
||
|
Belarus |
1 |
Revol. |
Actual (Revol.) |
||
|
China |
3 |
Evol. |
Actual (Со-evol.) |
||
|
India |
2 |
Evol. |
Low |
||
|
Japan |
2 |
Co-evol. |
High (Со-evol.) |
||
|
USA |
1 |
2 |
Evol. |
High (Revol.) |
The analysis of the social development with use of the methodics of universal epochal cycle in the research of a situation at the level of specific national state formations gives certain grounds to assume that, with the beginning of the new millennium, there is a growing probability that Western countries (the countries of the European historical-cultural area, in particular, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and the USA) «enter» the period of crisis – new social revolutions which will open new horizons of social development to the world. The establishment of a new-type policy, devoid of the former «party-class» heredity will be the semantic content of the naissant situation in this region. At the same time, the situation in the Asian region (taking into account the other characteristics of development and those over the whole world) will be defined by the growing tendencies, characteristic of the evolutionary period of the social development. According to the former Secretary of State of the USA James Baker, they will be as follows: «the liberalization of economies» and «the emergence of a truly world economy», «the weakening of the spirit of collectivism (communism)» and «expanding possibilities for less amplitudinous conflicts», «the development of democracy as not only the form of state governance, but as a common set of norms and cultural values», and, in general –expansion of the conflict between «the nascent global democratic culture and the new movements»66.
Thus, the hypothetical schemes of changes of the epochal cycles of the world’s history, built on the global, regional, and partially national levels, are to be empirically verified. This work assumes the development of a system of empirical indices and the conduction of necessary measurements, including the measurement of the corresponding societal indices. However, even in such a condition, the work performed confirms, in our opinion, the rightfulness of the offered conception of historical development. This conception can become a theoretical ground for the development of new methodological approaches in the system of social sciences.
CHAPTER 9
Glossary of main notions
and social theories
Anomy – state of a social system, which is characterized by the absence of commonly accepted values and norms as universal regulators of social behaviour of people. The phenomenon of anomy is inherent in social crises. The category if anomy is one of the key notions in the sociological conception of Durkheim. Under conditions of a global anomy, we observe the post-soviet society. A deepening of demoralization generates the normative reactions to the anomy: the traditionally archaic (requirement to return the old system of values) and authoritaristic (to bring a strong personality to power, which will establish «a hard order») ones. There exist two types of nonnormed reactions to the anomy: social cynicism (ignoration of norms) and extremism (orientation to destructive means of achievement of political purposes)67.
Asymmetry (asymmetria in Greek) – lacking or breaking of a symmetry as high equilibrium; a natural property inherent in all social structural formations including societal qualities, which reflect the corresponding binary indices (scales); it lies in the basis of the formation of epochal and vital historical cycles of the social development. A degree of asymmetry, e.g., of the distribution of two components of the binary indices of societal qualities of the society is historically variable and can reveal the state of evolutionary development of the society68.
Berdyaev Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1874-1948) –Russian philosopher. Berdyaev’s social theories are closely connected with his religious philosophy. He asserted that the historical process consists in a struggle of good against irrational freedom. When irrational freedom reaches a supremacy, reality begins to decay and return to the initial chaos. In the social life, a revolution is an extreme form of the return to chaos. Creation begins only in the period after the revolution, when new forms of life arise. But people never achieve the purposes they set before themselves even in creative epochs of the history. Historical failures pass the earthly time onto the eternal one in the divine life. The historical time can be symbolized with a line expanding forwards, but there is no difference between the past and the future in the existentialistic time (God’s realm), between the beginning and end. Therefore, the life at God’s realm is not a part of the history but is metahistorical. The metahistory is permanently present as a background of the history. All perversions of the personality, which are observed in the world, are overcome by means of a long-term process of development of reincarnations in many projections different from the projection of the objective world of phenomena69.
Binary (binarius in Latin) – main characteristic of all natural processes since they consist of two opposite phases or sides. Under consideration of a social structure, duality represents a binary system basing on mutually balanced forces of opposite poles70.
«Call» –«Reply» – notion introduced by A. Toynbee for designation of one of the defining characteristics of the rhythm of existence of civilizations. In Toynbee’s opinion, the passage of main stages of the life cycle by a civilization (birth, growth, fracture, degradation, and decay) is regulated by the law «call-reply»: every stage of development of a civilization is an adequate reply to a call of the environment. The last is natural for the first parent civilizations and natural-social for subsequent ones.
Calls can be stimulated by severe conditions of life, unexpected blow of enemy, or unfavorable social status. A call is created, as a rule, by the action of several factors. The absence of any call stimulates regress. A call should not be neither very weak since it stimulates no active reply nor too severe, which can stop the birth of a civilization or terminate its existence at a certain stage.
The basis of an adequate reply is created by the activity of the creative minority inventing new constructive ideas of historical transformations corresponding to a call. The development of a civilization continues until the minority is able to reproduce replies adequate to a call. Having lost this ability, the dominating minority degrades. On the opposite pole, the majority is represented by the «internal proletariat» –marginals. On the external boundaries, one can observe the concentration of the «external proletariat» – younger peoples to be backwards as compared with the fractured civilization by their level of development. However, a decline of civilizations can be postponed due to a rational policy of the governing class71.
Civilization –level of social development, material and spiritual culture72.
) form of existence of living creatures endowed by intellect, 2) synonym of culture, totality of spiritual and material achievements of the society, 3) process of establishment of a public society, 4) comparatively self-supporting integral social-historical formation localized in space and time, which can have hierarchical levels. The term was introduced by Mirabeau (1757) and used by A. Fergusson and later by L. Morgan and F. Engels for designation of the highest epoch as compared with wildness and barbarism. Spengler considered the civilization as a concluding stage of the existence of culture, and Toynbee as a unit of the historical process. The civilizational approach to study of the history is concentrated at the mosaic of cultural-historical forms classified in the proper manner. Every civilization enriched the mankind with its experience73. The American politologist S. Huntington believes that since differences between civilizations formed during centuries, they are fundamental and more stable than ideological and class differences, moreover, modern conflicts will move from political borders to the lines of contact of civilizations, especially to countries whose population is represented by different civilizational groups.
Co-evolution – phase transition opposite to a revolution (in the direction from the state of involution to the state of evolution). Co-evolution is realized under conditions of one epochal cycle and, therefore, changes only the polarity of system properties of the society or vectors of social development74.
Cycle [from kyklos (in Greek) –circle] –totality of mutually connected phenomena and processes, which reflects a completed circle of development during a certain temporal period. All the natural processes are cyclic including both the process of development of a civilization or a single society in space and time and change of forms or conditions of their existence irrespective of whether the question is cycles concerning specific spheres of social life (policy, economy, and culture) or the evolution of social signs laying in the basis of these phenomena75. Cycle is a totality of processes, works, and phenomena, which are interrelated and form a certain system or a completed circle of development76.
Depression (depressio in Latin) –) dispirited blue psychic state; 2) stagnation of the economy after a crisis of overproduction, which is characterized by a stoppage of a further fall of production, trade, etc. and, at the same time, a slight demand for goods, mass unemployment77.
Development of personality –process of formation of a personality as the social quality of an individual as a result of his socialization and education. By possessing natural anatomic-physiological preconditions to formation of the personality, a child begins to interact with the surrounding world in the process of socialization by mastering the achievements of the mankind. Aptitudes and functions of the personality, which are created during this process, reproduce historically formed human features. The child masters the reality during his activity with the assistance of adults. The process of education is a leading one for development of the personality, and the type of development of the personality is defined by a type of the group, in which the child is integrated.
East-West –geographical differentiation of the world-wide historical process attaching the civilizational and regional peculiarities to it. Objective-cultural adoptions as a consequence of peaceful contacts («Great silk way») or war conflicts (Greek-Persian wars, campaigns of Alexander the Great; crusades, great geographical discoveries; colonial captures) more often promote the acceleration of the historical development of «West» at the expense of subjection of «East». Approximately till the XV century when peculiarities of the historical development of West as a result of Reformation, Renaissance, and later Enlightenment were formed, the sociocultural values of East were universal, and those of West were unique. From the second half of the XX century, west values, conversely, are declared as universal. For example, Japan became «West» on East, and Turkey is «East» on West.
El’konin Daniil Borisovich (1904-1984) –soviet psychologist. By developing a position of the cultural-historical theory for solution of a wide circle of problems of the child psychology, he advanced the conception of periodization of the psychical development of children, based on the notion of «leading activity»78.
Epoch – period of time (usually long) in the historical development of the nature, society, science, etc., which is distinct by characteristic peculiarities and significant events, processes, and phenomena.
Epochal historical cycle in the context of the proposed conception is a hypothetical model of the scheme of a cyclic historical development from the revolutionary stage (radical qualitative overturn of the whole social structure of the society leading the development in the direction of progress or regress, which generalizes results of development of the society during the whole epochal cycle and brings it to a new stage of development, to the involution, which is the period of the mastering of new qualitative changes acquired by the society during the revolution, and further to the co-evolutionary stage. The last is a phase transition from the state of involution to the state of evolution, which conducts a epochal historical cycle to the state with maximum utilization of results of the previous stages of development, whereas evolution is preparing a new revolution opening the next epochal cycle. The approximate scheme of universal epochal historical cycle can be as follows: revolution –involution –co-evolution –evolution.
Era –) moment, from which one conducts the chronology, e.g., Christmas in Christians (our Era); 2) large historical period, epoch79.
Erikson Eric (1902-1994) –American psychologist, the representative of ego-psychology. Contrary to the thesis of psychoanalysis on the antagonism of a personality and the society, he emphasized the biosocial nature and adaptive character of behaviour of a personality, whose central integral quality is the psychosocial identity. Being subjectively experienced as the feeling of continuous self-identity, the psychosocial identity is based on the acceptance by the personality of the own integral image in the unity with diverse social connections. A change in social-cultural conditions of the existence of the personality leads to the loss of the previous identity and the necessity of formation of a new one. Personal difficulties arising in this way can cause a hard neurosis («loss of himself»). On this basis, Erikson made conclusion about the conditionality of mass neuroses by deep shocks in the life of the society on turns of the history80.
Evolution –one of the forms of development in the nature and society –continuous quantitative change, as distinct from revolution, being a radical qualitative change; evolution prepares revolution and creates the corresponding soil for it, whereas revolution completes evolution, promotes a further development, and opens quantitatively new possibilities for evolution81.
Formal group –consolidation of people for implementation of a socially prescribed activity under condition of their direct communication and interaction82.
Gender –one of the principal notions of the contemporary sociology meaning a collection of expected samples of behaviour (norms) for men and women. As distinct from the notion of sex, gender is referred, first of all, to socially formed features of «womanhood» and «manhood» (executiveness/intentionality). The term «gender» was proposed by the American psychoanalyst R. Stoller in 196883.
Gender roles depend on culture. In nomadic cultures (of nomads and gatherers), education of boys and girls is practically the same since men and women perform almost the same work. In agricultural societies, roles are more differentiated; in industrial societies, gender roles are extremely diverse. Among administration, women constitute 20% in the South Korea, 17% in the USA, and 45% in Switzerland. Gender roles also depend on epoch. From 1960 till 1995, the share of American women in labour power has grown from one third to almost three fifths84.
Gumilev Lev Nikolaevich (1912-1994) advanced a conception of development of the ethnic history. Ethnos is considered as a collective of people, which was naturally composed on the basis of an original stereotype and exists as an energetic system opposing itself to other similar collectives. Nonhomogeneity of the distribution of biochemical energy of the vital substance of the biosphere for a long-term historical time influences the behaviour of ethnic collectives in various epochs and in various regions. Gumilev called the effect performed by variations of this energy, as a specific property of the character of people, by passionarity. Passionarity is the irreversible internal aspiration to activity directed to the implementation of some goal. A passionary person can consider this goal to be more valuable than even life. Ethnogenesis is regarded as a process of development of the ethnos from the moment of its origin till disappearance or the transition to the state of homeostasis. Gumilev distinguished the phase of stationary push (search for a success with risk for life), acmic phase (aspiration to the ideal of victory, sacrifice), fracture (aspiration to well-being without any risk for life), inertial phase or obscuration (quiet inhabitants adapted to the biocenosis of an areal). An approximate scheme of the phases of ethnogenesis, composed by Gumilev, has the following form: a growth –«Be by whom you must be»; the acmic phase (passionary overheating) –«Be by himself; the passage to the phase of fracture –«We are tired of the great persons»; the phase of fracture –«Permit us to live!»; fracture –«Only not so as it was»; the transition to the inertial phase –«Be such as I»; obscuration –«Be such as we»; the transition to homeostasis –«But when will it finish?»; homeostasis –«Be satisfied by himself»; the transition to the memorial phase –«Not all is perished!»; the memorial phase –«Remember how it was nice»; and the degeneration –«We wish nothing».
Harmonization –process of achievement of the state of harmony or the dialectic «removal» of contradictions in the process of origin of the state of a self-organizing system, which is characterized by stability with respect to various destabilizing factors.
Harmony (harmonia in Greek) –) combination of music tones in a simultaneous sounding, consonance; 2) coordination, fine combination, commensurability of various properties, objects, phenomena, parts of the whole85.
Hegel Georg W. F. (1770-1830) – German philosopher. In his works, he stated the comprehension of history as a development of spirit in time. By Hegel, the goal of the history is a development of the freedom of a citizen in the civil society. Since the realization of freedom necessarily includes the fact that the «world spirit» realizes itself as free, the history is also a progress in realization of freedom. In Hegel’s opinion, the principle of historical development is the reflection of a state of the society. When the spirit of an epoch will realize itself, the form will be historically completed. Realization means the overcoming of the previously existing form of spirit and, by virtue of this, the starting point of a new spirit of the epoch. This constitutes the essential difference between Hegel’s conception of history and Marx’s conception. The last emphasizes a conditionality of the historical development by more dynamical production forces and less movable social relations. The development of the world spirit occurs not automatically. It cannot avoid the participation of people. By pursuing their private interests, people make more than they intend. Without comprehension of this fact, they realize regularities of the history by pushing its course forwards.
Historical sociology – trend of the sociological science studying social regularities of development of the society, its systems, institutions, phenomena of social life in the process of their historical evolution. In the comparison of historical phenomena and processes, one determines the common and the partial in them, changes, tendencies, stages of development. A subject of investigations of the historical sociology is the social history of a society since, according to the idea of F. de Coulange, «the history is not a collection of facts occurred in the past. It is a science of the human society». It is worth to note the tendency to synthesis of the history and the theory of sociology86.
Historical time –process of equalization of energy potentials between elements of the ethnosphere disturbed by passionary pushes87.
Involution (envolutio in Latin) –reverse development, diminution, simplification, and reduction, which are related with a loss of some function. Involution in a social development is the period of mastering the new qualitative changes acquired by the society in the course of the revolution. Involution conditionally reminds the period of socialization of the man, first of all, the period of his adaptation in the case of a change in profession88.
Jung Carl-Gustav (1875-1961) –Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist, founder of analytic psychology. He advanced the assertion that, besides the individual unconscious, there also exists the collective unconscious. The foundation of spiritual life includes the inherited experience of the previous generations, which is formed by the totality of archetypes. Archetype is a means of connection of images passing from one generation to another. According to Jung, the archetype presents structural elements of human psychics, which are hided in the collective unconscious. The last is common for all the mankind. They are inherited like the construction of body. The collection of archetypes is bounded; they lie in the basis of creation, assist to the internal unity of human culture, and make the interrelation of various epochs of development and mutual understanding of persons89.
Karma – one of the cardinal positions of the Indian philosophical thought. Its essence is that a sum of good and evil actions of every man (its karma) defines the form of a subsequent reincarnation. The law of karma regulates the infinite process of circulation of vital bodies. The buddhist interpretation of the law of karma recognizes the possibility of improvement of karma under conditions of the current existence for the sake of achievement of nirvana in prospect. The highest justice of the karmic law consists in the requital to everyone by its merits.
From the historical view point, the notion of karma is associated with the process of overcoming the certain stages of development, with «reincarnation» of civilizations during a change of epochal cycles. For example, the West Roman Empire –Empire of Carolus Magnus – Holy Roman Empire. This notion is also related to the conception of Spengler on «maternal» and «daughter» civilizations90.
Marx Karl (1818-1883) – German philosopher, the founder of scientific communism. He inferred that if every single process is a process of development, then the position of materialistic dialectics is all-embracing. Development is not a direct manifestation but the essence of processes occurring in the nature and society. The universality of development supposes the infinite variety of mutually conditioned interacting phenomena and transformation of some forms of motion of the matter to other ones. For this reason, the universal process of development is composed from a set of particular processes including those which by themselves are not processes of development. In that the development differs from a simple translation, reversible processes, and a recurrence, the universality of development does not limited. On the contrary, it can be interpreted as a contradictory unity of diversity, the unity of oppositions. The termination of development is a transition from one of its forms to the other. The ideal state would be such one, in which the free development of everyone is the condition of free development of all. A key role in social development is played by class struggle.
Mentality –structure, composition of the soul of men, ethnos, and socium, relation of their elements and states91.
Methodology of history [from Metodos (in Greek) – way of cognition and logos (in Greek) –word, doctrine] –system of principles, methods, and procedures of formation and use of the methods of historical cognition and the doctrine about this system. In the course of development of the methodology of history, one can distinguish three stages: classical one – clear contraposition of a subject and an object of historical cognition and action, comprehension of the historical reality as, on the whole, «transparent» for the subject of cognition by rational means; nonclassical one – opposition to the scientific-centrist study of the history (personalism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism); contemporary post-nonclassical methodology of history, which is characterized by the synergetic paradigm, polyvariance, efficiency of scenarios, its pluralism, nonlinearity. Historical reality is considered not as objective and independent of the will and consciousness of a subject of the global natural-historical process but, on the contrary, the individual existence of the man is perceived as a unit authentic form of the historical being92.
Model –abstract representation of a theory, its operationalization which can be empirically verified. In this case, not every measurement can be implemented directly. Therefore, in the creation of models, one uses constructs and concepts. Constructs mean the representations which can be substantially defined and measured by using a certain number of indicators. Concepts are the most general notions which can be measured by using constructs. Social modelling is a scientific method of cognition of social processes and phenomena with the help of reproducing their characteristics on other objects. The need in social modelling is conditioned by the necessity of improvement of the technology of management of the social sphere, overcoming of difficulties in the sphere of social design and prognostication, prevention of negative consequences of certain administrative decisions. Successfulness of social modelling depends on the availability of a proper theory describing the phenomenon subject to modelling and on the degree of formalization of the basis of this theory. Specificity of the laws of development of a society makes the question of the adequacy of social modelling to be more complicated than in natural sciences93.
Models of social action –means of action, which are typical of large social communities, are regulated by values and norms, and are characterized by social-economic resources as well as the level of adaptation of these communities to the institutional environment94.
Modern (moderne in French) –trend in architecture and fine arts late in the XIX –early in the XX century, which aspired to creation of a new style free of historical adoptions and to use of new technical possibilities.
Modernization – totality of various economic, political, governmental-legal, psychological, and culturological changes in a specific society in the direction of bringing it up to date and a permanent improvement; making the social and political systems and their fragments to be close to the maximally possible level of development95.
New economic policy (NEP) was carried on in the USSR in 1921-1929 as a mean to overcome the crisis generated by the policy of «war communism». NEP was a symbiosis of the restricted freedom for private initiative and regulated «state communism» under the political control of the Communist Party. The similar model is acting in China from the beginning of reforms introduced by Den Xiao Ping in 1978.
Ontogenesis [from ontos (in Greek) –existing and genesis (in Greek) – origin, development] –individual development of an organism from the moment of origin to the termination of life. The development of a personality is comprehended as a perspectively directed natural-historical process of formation of a subject with a definite form of vital activity, in which the psychical development of the man is interconditioned by a real development of the personality. A human individual reproduces achievements of the history of human culture during his intravital development. The development of activity is a condition and means of development of the personality. The historical origin of leading kinds of activity allows one to rationally explain analogies between the psychical development of an individual and historical development of the mankind. Every historical epoch and every society generate the own periodization of the psychical development of childhood, whose limits and contents are defined by a specific-historical situation, accumulating requirements of a definite society to childhood and its limits, of development of a child96.
Period –chronological interval, from the historical viewpoint, between definite important events which substantially influence the rhythm of change in stages of the social-historical development, for example, the periods of crusades, great geographical discoveries, Great French Revolution, etc.
Periodicity –periodic order of the derivative of mediated existence of a definite number of elements composing a continuous series. Periodicity consists of differences in the limits of a unit entity and is a variety of that is relatively distinct. Therefore, one should distinguish the following in any period: limits or poles of the period, b) bounded number of elements included in the period due to their properties to be between those two poles, c) internal sequence existing between two or more elements. This sequence reflects a relation between quantity and quality (i.e., the possibility of a transition of one to another). A representation of the period in the temporal dimensionality is equivalent to the definition of process. This process will be evolutionary if it exhausted and regressive (involutionary) if it ascending (or repeating)97.
Personality – 1) system of self-regulation of the social activity of the man. Its establishment makes him by a subject of this activity and social relations, into which the man enters, 2) system of psychological mechanisms of the social subjectivity of the man, which are formed only through the interaction with other persons on the basis of that culture, whose carriers they are. The human personality in its occupational manifestations reveals for other persons as a certain totality of socially significant features of the personality. The formation of personality begins with the first contacts of a newborn child with the social world and occurs in the process of socialization of the individual due to, first of all, the intercourse with other persons. The personality is a complex polystructural polyfunctional system. Common functional subsystems are: 1) mechanisms of internal regulation of the orientation of a human activity, regulation of what he makes, 2) mechanisms of internal regulation of the means of his activity, regulation of how he makes. Social properties of the personality, which are historically determined, simultaneously define a further development of the society98.
Phase [from phasis (in Greek) –appearance] – 1) definite moment, stage in development, in the change of a form or state of something or somebody; definite period in development of the historical process; 2) separate component of some inhomogeneous physico-chemical system99.
Plan of social development – scientifically substantiated system of indices of improvement of conditions of work and way of life, which is supported by corresponding calculations and forecasts of material-technical security.
Policy (politika in Greek –state social affairs) – sphere of activity related to relations between social classes, nations, and other social groups, whose kernel is the problem of conquest, retention, and use of the state power. Policy is a historical phenomenon arising with differentiation of a society. The contents of policy is defined by social relations. External policy is a continuation of the internal one with other means. Policy is a concentrated representation of the economy. However, since it is impossible to retain the economic supremacy without political power, policy has a superiority above economy100. Policy (politike in Greek –state activity) –sphere of vital activity of the society, system of definite social relations, interaction of classes, nations, other social groups, states. It is a totality of actions, measures, and institutions, which put into agreement the interests of individual classes of a separated society, realize the preferential satisfaction of interests of the economically ruling strata by means of the representation of their interests as total ones. Policy is the art of the possible, a factor of conservation of the conditionality of a differentiated society101.
Post-modernism –interdisciplinary intellectual movement, a new aspect of view and a collection of conceptual approaches to the sociocultural reality rather than a new theoretical paradigm. It involves: 1) a new tendency in self-consciousness of developed west societies, which was characterized by Lyotard as a distrust to metatheories, a refusal from «great tasks» of the mankind, which are oriented to future – ideas of progress, a sequential development of freedom, universality of knowledge, industrial-technical development, liberation of people from a burden of every-day work, 2) global state of the civilization during three last decades of the XX century.
A schematic-semantic contraposition of modernism and post-modernism was developed by the American literary critic Ikhab Hasan by the method of binary oppositions as follows:
|
Discourse of modernism |
Modernization |
Discourse of post-modernism |
Post-modernization |
|
Story |
Universalization of history |
Anti-story |
Localization of history |
|
Metatheories |
Dogma |
Antitheories |
Discourse |
|
Paradigm |
Linearity |
Syntagma |
Nonlinearity |
|
Monism |
Standardization, mass-making |
Pluralism |
Polyvariance, individuality |
|
Integrity |
Homogeneity of time |
Mottling |
Heterogeneity of time |
|
Purpose |
Dehumanization |
Play |
Humanization |
|
Hierarchy |
Bureaucratization |
Anarchy |
Democratization |
As distinct from positivism theoretically providing the process of modernization and aspiring to ground the system unity of the social world, post-modernism takes the diversity and mottling as a foundation of the contemporary world. As a distinctive feature of the corresponding conceptual approach, we consider eclecticism, equality of rights of various styles of thinking, pluralism of esthetic standards, negation of division into «high» and «lower» cultures, break with the cultural tradition of modernist enlightenment. One denies the expediency of creation of a unit theory but one recognizes the necessity to use all the theoretical heritage for implementation of a new synthesis102.
Prognosis – precognition or foreseeing based on definite data. If a prognosis is made at a certain moment and is not revised as circumstances, affecting separate elements of the prognosis, change, there are few chances for coincidence of the prognosis and reality103. Scientific prognostication of the future is a very complicated applied task of humanitarian sciences. Since it is impossible to foresee neither a final result nor the moment of termination of historical processes (moreover, the single lesson being given by history consists in that just those do not learn on its lessons who do not wish to learn), any possibility for a futurological utilization of history seems illusory. However, the new paradigm of the sociology of history allows one to develop a methodics of scientific prognostication at the level of hypothesis, in particular, by using the principles of social engineering.
Progress (progressus in Latin) – development of the new and advanced; movement to a higher level of development, to a more modern state; change to the best104.
Progress and regress –referential notions meaning the development of a society or its subsystems in the line of ascent from a less perfect state to a more modern one (progress) and the return to old obsolete forms of development, which testifies to the social stagnation and degradation (regress). Problematic is the definition of the scale of values of the criteria for the perfect state of a society. For example, marxism considers the development of a mode of production as a criterion of social progress. As for the definition of a degree of humanization of a society, one should use some other approach. All indices, fixing the movement of a society forwards and having no relation to regress (decline, degradation, and stagnation), can be empiric evidences for social progress105.
Project (projectus in Latin) –) developed plan of a building, a scheme of a technological process, etc., 2) preliminary text of a document, 3) plan, intention106.
Purposes of social development are defined depending on a specific historical situation, according to the reached level of development of social structures and institutions. The interpretation (not always rational one) of short- and long-term problems of social development fills in the social life by sense and allows one to define valuable orienting points in the context of the notions «aim» and «means».
Regress (regressus in Latin) – return, reverse motion, transition from higher forms of development to lower ones, change to the worse, opposition to progress107.
Reincarnation – possibility to transform a died ancestor to its totem and backwards; potential possibility to a revival in various forms. For example, the revival of the ancient cultural tradition during Renaissance108.
Results of social development – they can be different depending on achievement of the corresponding aims. The simplification of a social structure, regress under conditions of the transient periods of social-historical development can be a reason for negative results. On the other hand, the «price» of progress, e.g. in the case of a forcible modernization (industrialization in the USSR), can be too high, destroying the potential of social capital, i.e., the total possibility to implement the perspective of social development.
Rubinshtein Sergei Leonidovich (1889-1960) – soviet psychologist and philosopher, the founder of the occupational approach in psychology. He stated that the man and his psychics are formed and revealed in a primordially practical activity and, therefore, must be studied in their manifestations in main kinds of their activity. As the principal peculiarity of activity, Rubinshtein considered its sociality: activity is carried out only by a subject; activity as the interaction of a subject with an object is substantial and objective rather than pure symbolic and fictitious; activity is always creative and self-supporting. Activity is mediately defined by its object through its internal specific regularities (through purposes, motives, etc.) rather than directly109.
Sense of social development – one of the most abstract and simultaneously valuable categories. In the book of Frankel «Man seeking sense», it is noted that the finding of the category of sense allows one to overcome the existentialistic emptiness and to fill in life with a holistic content. This can be said about social development. This category, besides a vulgar content like the notion «American dream» or Russian expression «from dirt on throne», has a deep historic-sophistic sense, especially clearly comprehended in the periods of social cataclysms, when the vector of social-historical development is radically changed. The loss of the sense of social development testifies to the profound valuable crisis, e.g., the time of the downfall of West Roman Empire, disintegration of the USSR, etc.
Small group –social group, whose members directly interact with one another. A quantitative composition of a small group does not exceeds several tens of persons. A totality of small groups functioning in various spheres of vital activity of the society defines the social microenvironment immediately influencing the formation and development of a personality.
Social-economic policy as a conscious purposeful action is carried on along with rationalization of the state apparatus (M. Weber) and is aimed at the organic development. The need in an efficient social-economic policy as a regulative mechanism of the market element arises in crisis periods, e.g., the time of the «Great Depression» (1929-1933) and «New Deal» of President of the USA F. D. Roosevelt.
Social development –type of changes in the society which is characterized by a transition of all social relations to a qualitatively new state. Social development is a result of the interaction of the totality of social processes, whose base is a purposeful activity of persons – subjects of these processes. The mechanism of social development is functioning via both the arising of new needs in the process of activity of various social subjects and search for possibilities of their satisfaction. Social evolution as gradual quantitative changes in the social system prepares and completes the social revolution as qualitative changes in all social structures, which change due to a radical reconstruction of social relations and social institutions. A characteristic of social development is a social time, in which the direction of development reveals. The important role in the provision of stability of social development is played by social reforms and social planning110.
Social efficiency. In the science-wide meaning, the notion of «efficiency» goes back to the notion «effect», which appeared in natural sciences and primarily denoted «phenomenon» accompanied by some results. With expansion of the sphere of scientific cognition, the term «effect» became a close synonym for terms «useful result» and «useful action leading to the desired result». Efficiency characterizes the relation between levels of some activity by the degree of approach to the final or prescribed goal. From this viewpoint, efficiency plays the role of the measure of activity and presents a certain property of the system object. By applying this notion, we qualitatively and quantitatively define how some theoretical possibility of approaching the purpose with respect to the very purpose is realized. By comparing this possibility with the very purpose, it is necessary to perform measurements and then to compare by some accepted criterion. As one of the possible scientific criteria of cognition of the existing systems, efficiency eventually has the valuable nature. The estimation of relations of means to an aim separates the valuable aspect of cognition of the reality from other gnostic reasonings.
Social engineering – notion introduced into the scientific turnover by K. Popper in the 40s of the XX century. It means a totality of systemized methods, means, ways of transformation of social sciences, first of all sociological knowledge, into social programs and projects. On the other hand, social engineering is a specific branch of sociology studying the methodological and theoretical foundations of social invention, and construction of new or improvement of existing social realities. In the first case, social engineering presents itself as a practical-applied activity, and, in the second, as the science on this activity, peculiarities, and tendencies of its functioning and development. K. Popper considered social engineering as a purposeful interference of the man with social processes by «the method of trials and errors». An analogous position was occupied by F. A. Hayek who considered that the order in a society is reached with the help of rationalized spontaneity rather than through a realization of programs. Main functions of social engineering are as follows: aim-forming (creation of a new reality produces new needs); constructive-prognostic (prevention of unfavorable phenomena); expert, control, design-constructive ones. Note that social construction and innovations are the most complex forms of social-engineering activity111.
Social genesis [from societas (in Latin) –society and genesis (in Greek) – origin] –process of origin, establishment, and further development of a society as the highest form of natural organization112.
Social hierarchy –structural organization of a society or separate groups by the sign of levels with subsequent submission of lower levels to higher ones. Whereas the notion of stratification accents differences and makes every stratum (estate) autonomic, the notion of social hierarchy passes ahead the subsequent interrelation and co-submission between different levels. Social hierarchy is characterized by: functional-purposeful unity of levels composing it; dominant of subjective organizational-administrative bases of its formation and existence; predominantly vertical connections and the pyramidal model of the structure of a socium; centralization of functions and structural components with their simultaneous polycentralism, which is an indicator of stability and vital ability of hierarchic formations113.
Social law – category for designation of forms of manifestation of the social causality and universal dependence of objective, necessary, stable, and repeating ties between processes and phenomena in the society.
The social law is a law of functioning and development of the social reality. It is a law of the society not directly but only through the social reality. The social law reveals only through the activity of people since any ties between social processes and phenomena arise only due to the activity of people. Social laws are characterized by such notions and terms as type, contents and structure, mechanism, character, sphere, and direction of its action, forms of governance, functions, requirements of the law. The clarification of social laws is a necessary condition of control over social processes and prognostication of their development. The category «social law» is commonly accepted neither by the classical nor contemporary sociology114.
Social mechanism – totality of actions and deeds inalienable from their subjects-carriers, due to which various social phenomena occur and the social process is realized. A structure-forming element of the social mechanism is the interaction of social subjects, motivation of behaviour, legal and moral norms, political belief, social status and social position, institutional means. Social processes and phenomena can be a social mechanism of processes and phenomena in the wider context. The attachment of a conscious-controllable character to the social mechanism is realized through social technologies which help to attain the optimum variant of such an action. A social mechanism involves spontaneous factors complicating the prognostication of specific consequences of an action. The functioning of a social mechanism is an object of scientific investigation, and the social technology is designed with regard for the goal of a transformation, which is an object of the socioengineering activity115.
Social process –subsequent change of a state or movement of elements of a social system and its subsystems, or any social object; it occurs under influence of internal or external conditions, has a stable order of the interaction of its components, temporal duration, and orientation to one or another state of the social object. The mentioned processes are often conjugate and have symmetric structural mechanisms differing by the sign of orientation: integration and disintegration of a social system, stability (static character), mobility (dynamism) of a social structure116.
Social programs –presentation of principal positions of activity of social structures, political parties, and organizations in a definite perspective. Programs-maximum define the final aim, general problems, and give the theoretical foundation of principles and methods of their solutions. Programs-minimum define the nearest problems and specific plans of activity for achievement of the final aim. Subjects of social programming are bodies of state administration of various levels. The purposeful social programming can be an important directive planning document including the resource, executive, and temporal provision of the complex of social-economic, scientific-research, and organizational-administrative measures ensuring the most efficient and well-timed solution of the state-wide social problems117.
Social psychics –historical-cultural and psychological readiness of the socium to reproduction of definite behavioral models of reaction to a problematic situation and the necessity to solve new problems advanced by social life. The psychics of a community, i.e., a certain nonaccidental human formation (society, nation, ethnos, family, social organization) is also called by mentality, spirit of people. The societal psychics is a peculiar psychoculture realized in material phenomena (articles of culture and household, architecture, music, literature, painting, rituals, traditions), energy (rhythms of the socium reflecting in behaviour, facial expressions, rate of reactions), information («noosphere», social and natural metabolism). The societal psychics includes a group of properties, states, and processes, which are studied by using the structural-functional model due to their complexity and multidimensionality118. The societal psychics is a collective dictionary of historical-cultural heredity of the society119.
Social relations –relations between groups of persons, which occupy various positions in the society, take different participation in its economic, political, and spiritual life, differ in the life style, levels, and sources of profit, structure of consumption. Subjects of social relations are various communities of persons which actively interact on the basis of a certain means of social activity120.
Social revolution –radical qualitative changes of the social life guaranteeing a translational progressive development. One distinguishes social revolution as a social-political overturn covering the whole society and revolution as qualitative changes in separate branches of social life. Social revolution is preceded by a revolutionary situation – complex of social-economic and political preconditions for radical revolutionary changes. The intensification of political activity stimulates the appearance of revolutionary movements joining leading social-political forces at a certain stage of development of the society. Political forces of a revolution aspire to power as a means of realization of own interests. The basic sense of a social revolution consists in the redistribution of power and property. Pareto believed that the sense of a social revolution consists in a replacement of the personal composition of a ruling elite.
In the context of the proposed conception of universal epochal cycle, revolution is a phase transition, opposite to co-evolution, from one normative state (evolution) to other normative state (involution). Revolution is a final stage of development of the epochal cycle, in which the previous results are «generalized». At the same time, by changing the vector of social development and by presenting fundamentally new historical possibilities to the society, revolution «open» a new epochal cycle. In this phase, there occur radical changes of societal (system-wide) characteristics of the society, which implies the break of continuity of the epochal cycle and the appearance of the social system at a new level and a new trajectory of development121.
Social synergetics investigates the general regularities of social self-organization, i.e., interrelations of social order and social chaos. Order is a set of elements of any nature, between which there exist stable («regular») relations repeating themselves in space and time. Chaos is a set of elements, between which there are no stable (repeating themselves) relations. Since the self-organization is a qualitative structural change of some objective reality, synergetics is a theory of development. The traditional theory (dialectic conception of G. Hegel and K. Marx) considered a development as a process of transition from one order to another one. It is characteristic of synergetics that chaos is considered as the same regular stage of development as order. Synergetics looks at the process of development as a regular and, moreover, multiple alternation of order and chaos. The essence of development of the social reality reduces neither to a one-sided increase in order (O. Comte) nor to a one-sided increase in a degree of freedom (chaos) (H. Spencer). Development is a growth of the degree of synthesis of order and chaos conditioned by the aspiration to the maximum stability. The global process acquires a nonlinear and asymptotic character122.
Social time –fundamental form of social-historical existence of people and the condition for their activity. Large and small scales of the social life are connected with metric characteristics of time: duration, sequence, recurrence, one-momentariness, multi-momentariness, and rhythm. The time of existence of social subjects involves diachronic and synchronic components. The coexistence of various generations characterizes the historical sense of social reality, which makes the social time to be inhomogeneous. The social time dialectically characterizes the activity and intercourse. The social time in the modus of future can be an object of planning, prognostication, and social modelling. The relation to the historical past and future organically enters the ethnic (national) self-consciousness of individuals. The vector of social time is directed from the past through the present to the future123.
Social transformation – conversion, transition, modification. The notion of social transformation is connected with the process of co-evolution, i.e., development opposite to revolution when the polarity of social properties of the society is changed.
In the soviet ideological system, the notion «transformation» was connected with criticism of the conceptions «post-industrial society» and «state of common prosperity» related to the theoretical substantiation of the evolution of capitalism under the influence of the scientific-technical revolution, change in the forms of production management, which excludes the necessity of revolutionary struggle of the working class. After the «perestroika» (middle of the 80s of the XX century), the notion «transformation» became to be related with democratic reconstructions and economic reforms dismantling the model of «barracklike socialism».
Societal [from societas (in Greek) –common] – term proposed in 1903 by sociologist A. Keller for description of the organizational aspects of the life of a society; it is used in the interpretation of social relations inherent in historically formed communities –nation, ethnos, class, social group, society on the whole –rather than artificially created ones. The synonym of the term «societal» is the notion «system-wide»124.
Societal index – qualitative and quantitative characteristic of societal properties, states, and processes. The corresponding indices are a result of an empiric sociological study and perform the instrumental-methodological function with the purpose of verification of a hypothesis.
Societal process –sequential regular change of societal properties and states in the course of the historical development of nations, regions, civilizations. `The varieties of societal processes are identification, investment, marginalization, deviation, individuation125.
Societal properties –system of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of societal psychics. Having been expressed through the scales of binary oppositions, this system is formed by six couples of properties. The first –extroversion/introversion. Extroversion – the society is open for a dialog, is less traditional, intends to well look before others, is dynamic, is capable to assimilate large territories. Introversion – closed society, most comfortably feels itself on the own territory, alters itself but not a situation. The second pair of properties (rationality/irrationality) predestines behavioral priorities of the society – intellect or intuition. The third pair of properties (emotionality/pragmatism) characterizes the specificity of forms of a reaction –by basing on emotional-perceptible processes or on intellectual (cognitive) ones. The fourth pair (sensority/intuitivism) characterizes the aspiration to «earthly values» or to «abstract ideals». The fifth pair (externality/internality) characterizes potentialities from the viewpoint of self-definition. Eventually, the sixth pair of properties: intentionality/executivity. Intentionality is a quality characterizing the external activity of a subject. The signs of intentionality: will, self-sufficiency, organizational exactness. Executivity – property characterizing the dependence of a subject on external circumstances. Signs: slowness of actions, reflectivity of thinking. Societal indices can be represented in the form of the corresponding binary scales-oppositions, each of which is asymmetrically balanced in a stably functioning society with a prevalence of one of the parts of a binary opposition. In a transient state of the society, these parts of the index can briefly (situationally) acquire the form of symmetry and take the values of half-and-half, which is the sign of an extremely unstable (nonequilibrium) state of the society. Ukraine encountered similar states during the so-called «constitutional crisis» (II quarter of 1995), at the final stage of adoption of the Constitution (II quarter of 1996), and during elections of the Verkhovna Rada of the 13th convocation (I quarter of 1998), which outwardly manifested in the form of crisis sharpening.
Societal states – three mutually transient states of a social object in the process of development: conventional state –the reply to a call is «yes», correcting one –«no», and chaotic one –«other».
Society – complex multidimensional formation which is qualitatively different from the nature, internally divided, and simultaneously organically integral. It exists as a totality of historically formed means and forms of interaction and consolidation of individuals and their groups, in which one observes an all-round multilevel interrelation of persons. In the narrow sense: a) diachronically or synchronically fixed social organism, b) relatively self-supporting, stable, and integral part of such an organism, c) common basis, «field» of intersection and stratification of individual actions of persons (A. Toynbee), d) correlate of a state (civil society), e) correlate of a community. From positions of the abstract philosophy, society is characterized as an all-embracing system limited by conditions of sociality and semantic communication and moving in the spatial dimensionality to a world-wide planetary formation. Sociology is studying a society through the prism of of social reality as a social system with a definite organization of its elements and structures126.
Socionics –science arising at the joint of sociology, psychology, and informatics, which considers the personality, group, and nation as carriers of a certain type of informational metabolism (exchange). They interact with each other on the basis of objective laws related to the mental sphere of the man. Jung grounded the existence of 8 psychological types and introduced the notion of «psychical function» into science. Developed conscious functions of some types of personality «charm» the same functions of other types, just those which are not developed and hided into the subconsciousness. Psychical function is an ability of the man with particular skill to investigate one of the aspects of the informational flow.
Types of informational metabolism127.
|
Irrational |
Intuitive |
Logical |
Extrovert Introvert |
Don Quixote Balzac |
|
Ethical |
Extrovert Introvert |
Huxley Esenin |
||
|
Sensorial |
Logical |
Extrovert Introvert |
Alexander Great J. Gaben |
|
|
Ethical |
Extrovert Introvert |
Caesar Dumas |
||
|
Rational |
Logical |
Intuitive |
Extrovert Introvert |
J. London Descartes |
|
Sensorial |
Extrovert Introvert |
Holmes Gorky |
||
|
Ethical |
Intuitive |
Extrovert Introvert |
Hamlet Dr. Watson |
|
|
Sensorial |
Extrovert Introvert |
Hugo Dreiser |
Socium [from socium (in Latin) –common] – type of sociality existing as a stable community of persons, which is characterized by the unity of natural, social-productive, mental, etc. conditions of vital activity, genetic connection of generations, stability of a social organization, a certain level of culture. It reveals itself in the form of a society, large and small social groups. As a social reality, socium is an integral, self-organizing, vital, open system functioning due to the exchange of activity and information between individuals and communities. Production of material and mental goods is a means of existence of the socium rather than its goal. The historically appeared means of social organization is a form of solution of contradictions between individual and social bases128.
Solov’ev Vladimir Sergeevich (1853-1900) –Russian philosopher, a creator of the orthodox Christian philosophy, being anthropocentric by its character. The doctrine of God-mankind as a source of the revival of the world is used by Solov’ev for interpretation of the history of the mankind and problems of social life. In its development, the world passes the following stages: first (prior to the man) – evolution of the nature, second (human activity) –history. Since the lower level does not disappear but joins with the more perfect activity, evolution is the process of gathering the Universe but not only a process of development and improvement129.
Spengler O. (1880-1936) – German philosopher and historian, who conceptually connected ideas of development of culture and civilization. Culture is originated at the moment when the great soul awakes from the protospiritual state of the eternally infantile mankind, some face appears from the abyss of the featureless, something limited and coming from the infinity arises. Culture is flourishing on the soil of a strictly bounded landscape, to which it remains to be vegetatively bound. Culture dies when this soul realizes the full sum of its potentialities in the form of peoples, languages, dogmas, arts, states, sciences and, thus, again returns to the protospiritual element. If the purpose is reached and the idea along with all the completeness of internal possibilities is completed and realized outside, culture suddenly stiffens and die out, its blood coagulates, strengths are overtaxed – it become a civilization. In the materialistic comprehension, one believes that the laws of causal nature govern and the world history is filled by ideals of usefulness like enlightenment, humanity, peace over the world, which are denoted as aims of the history attainable with the help of progress. History is an eternal establishment and, hence, an eternal future; the nature is the appeared and. hence, the eternal past.
Stage – separate moment, interval of time in development of some movement, process, etc.130
Sztompka Piotr – contemporary Polish sociologist. He systematized main conceptions of development, which are briefly presented in his book «Sociology of social changes. –Moscow, 1996». There, he gave the principal categories such as progress, social time, historical tradition and the most influental conceptions of historical development: classical evolutionism –idealistic conception of evolution of O. Comte; naturalistic conception of evolution of H. Spencer and materialistic conception of evolution of L. Morgan; sociological conception of evolution of E. Durkheim; co-evolutionism in the cultural anthropology and sociology. There are presented the theories of modernization and historical cycles as specific conceptions of development along with the criticism of conceptions of development, in particular, a disproof of «historicism» of K. Popper.
P. Szompka presents the own conception of historical development in the context of ideas as a historical force, activity of prominent persons as agents of changes, social movements as factors of social changes and revolutions as the peak of social changes. With the conception of A. Toffler, he grounds the refusal from the idea of progress with infinite number of the stages of growth, which was the basis for almost all theories of development in sociology in the XIX–XX centuries. Infinite industrial growth cannot be an actual purpose of the mankind. If to describe the historical development in terms of continuous wave motion, then the first and second waves are agrarian and industrial epochs, and the third is an attempt to create a new civilization with nonindustrial values based on the organic coalescence of nature and technique, which corresponds to direct needs of a single person.
The idea of progress as a purpose of development of the society is connected with development of the human psychics as a regular change of psychical processes in time, which is expressed in their quantitative, qualitative, and structural transformations. The development of psychics is characterized the irreversible character of changes, orientation (i.e., ability to accumulation of changes, «building on» of new changes over previous ones) and their regular character. The development of psychics is realized in the form of phylogenesis (establishment of the structures of psychics in the course of biological evolution of a species or the sociocultural history of the mankind on the whole and its separate ethnic, social, and cultural groups) and in the form of ontogenesis (formation of psychical structures during the life of a single organism).
To modernize –to change something in accordance with contemporary requirements and tastes, to renew131.
Toynbee A. J. (1889-1975) – English historian and sociologist. He advanced the conception of civilizational development, which has two degrees of continuity. One should distinguish continuity between sequential periods and phases in the history of the society and that as a connection of the very societies in time. Chapters of history of any single society remind sequential stages of the human experience. For example, the connection between one society and the other reminds relations between the parents and child. Civilizations develop due to a gust which leads them from a call through the reply to a further call: from differentiation through integration to a new differentiation. This process has no spatial coordinates because progress named growth presents a cumulative translational movement as mastering the external world and as the internal self-determination and self-organization. Growing civilizations differ from primitive societies by translational movement at the expense of the creative minority. Toynbee denied Spengler’s idea on that the development of a civilization can be compared with the development of an organism passing the phases of childhood, youth, maturity, and senility. To dogmatically assert that some term of existence is predestined to every society is the same that to demand that every play consist of the same amount of acts. The growth of a society is interrupted by a fracture as a consequence of the internal burst which implies the loss of the property of self-determination by the society. The governing minority creates a universal state, internal proletariat –ecumenical church, and external proletariat – groups of armed barbarians. In the history of decline of any civilization, one can find a rhythm of decay. The formation of an universal state is a symptom of social decay, and a next fracture will stimulate a final decay.
Transformation – mutually stimulating changes of the models of social action, on the one hand, and functioning the social institutions related to a intentional purposeful effect of nominal establishments (formal norms, procedures, or rules), on the other hand.
Vector of social development. Vector is the segment of a straight line of definite length and direction, which represents some magnitude characterizing not only by a numerical value but also by a direction (e.g., force, speed, etc.)132. In the context of the conception under study, it defines a direction of the social-historical development at nodal and cuspidal points. A nodal point is a synonym of the notion of attractor – limiting state such that, having reached it, the system cannot return to none of its previous states. A cuspidal point –synonym of the notion of bifurcation –corresponds to a branching of some old quality into a finite set of quite definite potentially new qualities. A vector can be conditionally «positive» directed to the side of progress or «negative», which characterizes a «regressive» development. The definition of the vector of social-historical development is one of the methodological tools used in creation of a working hypothesis for development of epochal cycles133.
Vygotsky Leonid Semenovich (1896-1934) – soviet psychologist. He advanced a doctrine about development of psychic functions in the process of the mastering, mediated by intercourse, of cultural values by an individual. Cultural signs (first of all, signs of language) serve a kind of tools. By operating them, the subject can affect others and forms the own internal world, whose basic units are meanings (generalizations, cognitive components of consciousness) and senses (affective-motivational components). Psychic functions given by nature («natural») are transformed into functions of the highest level of development («cultural»). By originating in direct contacts of a child with adults, the highest functions then root themselves in his/her consciousness. On the basis of this idea, there appears a representation about «the zone of nearest development» concerning the difference in the level of difficulty of problems solved by a child without assistance (actual level of development) and that under guidance of adults. Only that education is efficient which «runs ahead» the development134.
Instead of conclusion
The applied meaning of the presented conception is defined by the possibility of implementation of a social-historical prognosis. The problem of scientifically grounded prognostication, on the one hand, is very complex methodologically and, on the other hand, is also important both in political and social-economic contexts. A. Toynbee said: «The impossibility to define a final purpose of development implies the impossibility to exactly define a character of the very development»135. As a methodological foundation of short-, middle-, and long-term prognoses, one can take the idea of formation of a universal epochal cycle. The use of this conception for futurological studies of the social-historical development at the global, regional, and national levels has certain peculiarities. However, first of all, we consider general regularities following from the proposed conception. It should be recognized that the largest methodological problem is created by a peculiar «migration» of the size of a subject under study. For example, assume that the influence of the subject «we» attains a maximum in the transient (co-evolutionary) phase of the epochal cycle as result of norms of «collectivistic moral» dominated in the previous involutionary period. Then, in the revolutionary phase of the cycle, the subject individualizes and the cohort of « revolutionaries» becomes so mass that it exceeds the demand of the society for «shakers» of bases.
In the involutionary period, the economy develops, as a rule, extensively at the expense of attraction of new irreplaceable resources. The evolutionary period of the cycle is defined by the tendency of intensive liberal development of the economy. The type of demographic reproduction also undergoes certain changes. For the involutionary period, it is characteristic the model defined by rather high rates of birth and mortality, and the traditional family occupies dominant social positions. But in the evolutionary period of the cycle, inversely, we observe that the tendency to a decrease in the levels of birth and mortality becomes defining. As a consequence, the society encounters the effect of «ageing» of the population. Egalitarian intrafamilial relations become stronger.
Of course, the proposed hypothetical scheme-prognosis can be only an illustration rather than the definition of all possibilities of the method. For example, in the political sphere, we can only say about the main tendencies of the future. Beginning from the boundary of our era (the epoch of Christ), the leading contradiction of social development is that between «the forms of religious and scientific consciousness». In this case, for countries of the West-European cultural area (modern advance-guard of the world-wide historical process), the dialectic overcoming of the mentioned contradiction occurred in the chronological frameworks of the epoch of Enlightenment. As for a new dialectic contradiction («moral –right»), it was overcome in these countries during the epochs of Modern and Post-Modern. Completing this historical period, the countries of the West Europe and North America meet a new epoch, whose content will be the contradiction between political and ordinary consciousness. Somewhat «shifted» (from the viewpoint of the global analysis, by 100-150 years) becomes the situation for the countries of the Central and East Europe and Asia, for which the contents of the epoch of Post-Modern will be still actual in the first half of the XXI century.
The change of tendencies laid in the basis of the prognosis will require the introduction of proper corrections in time. On the whole, the depth and detailed elaboration of a prognosis depend on the degree of progress in social sciences.
We have already noted that, on the global level, one can identify the completion of the involutionary stage of the eighth (the fourth one from the Christmas) epochal cycle, which sums up, on the whole, the development of the industrial civilization and «leads» the world to active vital activity according to the tendencies of the evolutionary period of the epochal cycle. Moreover, if this situation is characteristic, to a full extent, of the countries of the Asian-Eurasian megaregion, then the main tendencies of development of countries belonging now to the advance-guard of the world-wide historical process consist in their approaching to conditions of the formation of a post-industrial (informational) civilization. By using mechanisms of the newest technologies, they stimulate the creation of a global economic system. At the same time, at the threshold of the XXI century, we have observed an increase in the global inequality between countries of the core and periphery of the new system136.
Radical geopolitical changes in the 90s of the XX century transformed the system of international relations. After the disintegration of the USSR, the USA remained a single «universal» superstate and will conserve the dominant position approximately up to the middle of the XXI century. At the same time, by virtue of the development of new centers of force, a new anti-American block headed by Russia and China will be objectively formed. The international system, based on competition of many centers of force, stimulates numerous wars and generates nonstability.
The perspective of an open conflict between forces of globalization (West-European enclave) and agents of localization –presented by the European nationalism in the XX century and Islamic fundamentalism in the XXI century – can cast the world civilization into the condition of «new barbarism». This, probably, «corresponds» to the content of the transient (co-evolutionary) phase of the mankind and its final transition to the conclusive evolutionary period of the eighth (fourth) epochal cycle at the global level.
We expect different futurological fates for separate regions. For Eurasia, the tendency of completion of the formation of the «Great Europe from French Brest to Belorussian Brest becomes clear, though we do not exclude breakdowns in the process of European integration, in particular, those related to the problems of establishment of the common, external, and defensive policy of the European Community, to the fate of the common monetary unit «euro», and to the redistribution of the economic power in the frameworks of the trans-Atlantic community. Of great importance is the fate of Russia for the future of Eurasia.
The strengthening of federative unity stabilizes a situation in the region. Asia is overcoming the consequence of the financial crisis in 1997. At the same time, the competition between China, new nuclear states of Pakistan and India, and Japan, which makes its geopolitical possibilities to be stronger by the military-political alliance with the USA, will become sharper. Simultaneously, the absence of the Asian system of safety increases the nonstability generated by long-term conflicts such as the interstate India-Pakistan conflict or ethno-religious contradictions destroying Indonesia. Political contradictions can stop the tendency to the Asian economic integration, which will affect the plans of creation of the Asian-Pacific free trade zone till 2025.
Being in the gloom of poverty and local regional conflicts, Africa has hypothetical chances in the system of the global economy. Dangerous becomes the tendency of ethno-political conflicts breaking Somali and Zaire and destabilizing the situation in the region of Great Lakes. A further growth of the population can turn into a regional demographic catastrophe.
By developing integrational structures of the North-American free trade zone (NAFTA), North America gradually realizes the economic expansion into South America with the purpose to create the zone of free trade from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Democratization of the power in the countries of Latin America creates a common political field of both Americas. It is a further approaching of North and South America that will become a tendency of the next stage of the regional epochal cycle.
We note that the tendencies of social-historical development at the global and regional levels properly affect the national level of development. Moreover, the lower the hierarchical level of an «element» of the unit social system of the mankind, the stronger becomes the desynchronization of development, defined by own peculiarities.
After a withdrawal from the transformational crisis (2000-2012), Ukraine is fated, on the whole, to repeat the historical experience of West European countries and countries of North America of the post-war period but with own sociocultural peculiarities. It is expected that Ukraine will «arrive at» the revolutionary phase of the new epochal cycle in the second half of the XXI century.
From the time of disintegration of the USSR, Russia as well as Ukraine is in the stage of the transformational crisis (co-evolutionary phase of the epochal cycle). In this case, the probability of conservation of the historical «inertia» to the unification of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia by type of the European Union remains high. The conservation of uncertainty concerning the reformation of the federal structure (the fate of Russia-Belorussia union, definition of the status of Chechnya and other regions) of Russia stimulates the regional stress breaking the orthodox-moslem consensus.
Contrary to Ukraine and Russia, Belorussia is, in essence, in the revolutionary phase opening a new epochal cycle of development. In the behavior of the contemporary administration of Belorussia, we see rather expressive «revolutionary» features. In our opinion, one can say that processes and phases of development, which are opposite in orientation, occur in Belorussia, on the one hand, and in Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand. By using the symbolic language of N. Rerikh we may assume that Belorussia will become, probably, a peculiar «connective tissue» between three east-Slavonic peoples.
As for the leading states of the European Community, we note that France is completing the evolutionary stage of the cycle beginning from student disturbances in 1968. The identification of the national interests with imperatives dictated by the European Community remains problematic for this country. The main tendencies of the further social-historical development of France will be defined by the elections of President and Parliament in 2002. With the accession to power of the red-green coalition and after the national unification, stimulating the process of Integration of Europe, Germany approaches, in fact, to the revolutionary phase of a new epochal cycle. The first symptoms are a possible restructurization of the political system of the country which is related to the scandal concerning the financing of parties. We clearly observe the tendency of gradual disappearance of traditional political parties of the industrial epoch and the objective formation of parties of a «new type» as a consequence of new post-industrial values of the time of «Internet». In Great Britain, the victory of the Labour Party in elections in 1997 marked the beginning of the final phase of the evolutionary stage of a new epochal cycle. This phase of development will be brought nearer by growing tendencies to the transfer of powers from the center to places (restoration of assemblies in Scotland, Welsh, and North Ireland). In this case, of importance is the geographical and economic closeness to Europe (launch of the tunnel under the Channel, intention to carry out the referendum on joining the European Monetary Union, etc.). Italy is also on the threshold of the revolutionary stage of development. One may expect the sharpening of contradictions between the rich North and poor South, which finds itself at the center of ways of illegal migration to Europe. The threat comes from the geographical proximity of Italy to conflict zones in Balkan Peninsula, Near-East, and North Africa. Vatican finds itself in front of the choice between the weakening of positions of the Catholic Church and attempts to join all existing orthodox confessions under the roof of the universal church, which will be one of the signs of approaching «the end of times» according to the system of esoteric knowledge.
Being characterized by the Confucian tradition and peculiarities of longer epochal cycles on the boundary of the XXI century, China is «flowing» in transformational processes (1978-?) of the co-evolutionary transient period and, without any doubt, will become one of the world «centers of force» (by Brzezinski). With the appearance of the Celestial Empire on these positions, there appears a possibility to solve the problem of Taiwan on new principles of the unification of countries with coinciding vectors of social development.
India along with China (with some delay) goes on the way of the co-evolutionary stage of development of the epochal cycle. This phase of development comprises the search for an agreement between moslems and hinduists with the purpose to conserve the unity of the country. The solution of this problem allows India following China to become one of the regional leaders, pretending to the influence both in South Asia and in the whole world, in the subsequent evolutionary period.
The situation in Japan approaches to the co-evolutionary stage of the epochal cycle by actualizing the synthesis of traditional and post-modernist values. It is seen that its content will be a transformation of the society, which is still industrial in its essence though comparatively more developed than in other industrial states. Possessing shorter cycles of development as compared with China and India, Japan is «doomed», respectively, on a more radical manifestation of transformational processes. As for the last, we note the high probability of nonpredictability of events and noncontrollability of the transient situation in many respects.
The USA are on the threshold of the revolutionary phase of a new epochal cycle. A mechanism of these historical changes can be «launched» in the nearest period of 2000-2002 (the period of maximum solar activity). It is obvious that, in the first quarter of the XXI century like in the time of the «Great Depression», the USA are in prospect to be the leader of a new epoch and to open a new experience of the policy, eventually having «finished» with the traditional practice of a party-class paradigm, for the whole world.
In fact, already in the midst of the second half of the XX century with the active participation of the USA, the preconditions for such a policy were developed, the UNO being a possible precursor of the new world government. These preconditions strengthen the current tendencies to globalization of the economic development of the world.
A probable economic decline in the period of a revolutionary crisis will be compensated to a great extent due to prosperity of the economy in the 90s of the XX century and the contemporary level of the world financial control from the side of the USA. In this case, whereas nothing threatens the leadership of the country in the technological sphere, the probability of a decrease of its political influence is rather high. Indeed, the nation has already no wish to pay by lives of its soldiers for victories in local wars. At the expense of a growth of the amount of Afro-Americans, Spanish-Americans (immigrants from countries of South America), and Asian-Americans, the ethnic structure of the population of the USA will radically change in the first half of the XXI century. The situation will promote a growth of racist extremism and failures in the operation of the ethnocultural «melting crucible». In this case, it is rather probable that the «two-party» political mechanism will be broken. This can be stimulated by a possible splitting in the financial oligarchy, whose fractions can be oriented either to the conservation of workplaces in the USA or to the export of capital, which is formalized in the external strategical policy of isolation or expansion. The basis of the arising situation in the country will be formed by the new global contradiction of social development, the contradiction between the political and ordinary consciousnesses.
The verification of the working hypothesis with empiric data will allow one to refine the foreseen tendencies.
Appendices
Appendix 1
THEME OF THE PUBLIC LECTURE
PRESENTED BY DOCTOR OF SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCES E. A. AFONIN
AT V. I. VERNADSKY NATIONAL LIBRARY
ON OCTOBER 22, 1998
THEME OF THE LECTURE: «SOCIAL RELATIVISM OR
SOCIOLOGY OF THE TRANSIENT TIME OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT»
1. CYCLICITY OF NATURE AND NATURAL PROCESSES
1.1. Cycles «cosmic», «biological», «social» (by the terminology
of P. Sorokin).
1.2. Cycles of development of a personality in ontogenesis (by
the generalization of D. Feldshtein)
1.3. Experimental confirmation of the hypothesis of
evolutionary changes of «sociopsychotype» (on materials of
the complex of sociological and social-psychological
studies performed at the system of bodies of the State
Safety of the USSR in the second half of the 80s and during
elections in 1994 and 1998 in Ukraine).
1.4. Epochal social-historical cycle (author’s conception).
2. PROBLEM OF MACRO (INTEGRAL) INDICES IN SOCIOLOGY
2.1. Principle of L. Pasteur –P. Curie.
.2. Societal processes, states, features. Societal indices
(by O. Donchenko).
2.3. Statistical effects of «demographical transition».
2.4. Methods of mathematical statistics and their use in social
studies during the transient time of social development.
3. SPECIFIC SOCIOLOGICAL (MONITORING) STUDIES IN UKRAINE: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (UKRAINE, RUSSIA, AND BELORUSSIA)
. FACTOR OF SOLAR ACTIVITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SOCIAL-HISTORICAL PROCESSES. IS A SOCIAL BURST PROBABLE
IN UKRAINE ?
5. APPLIED ASPECTS OF THE NEW APPROACH.
Appendix 2
TEXT OF THE INFORMATION EXTENDED DURING THE WORK
OF THE 65TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL
FEDERATION OF LIBRARIAN ASSOCIATIONS
(IFLA 99, BANGKOK, THAILAND)
AND THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF
CORRESPONDENTS OF THE EUROPEAN CENTER OF PARLIAMENT
STUDIES AND DOCUMENTATION
(ECPRD-CORRESPONDENTS
CONFERENCE, BERN, SWITZERLAND)
Dear colleagues !
The group of scientists, representatives of nongovernmental nonprofit organizations such as the Ukrainian Social Innovation Society, Atlantic Council of Ukraine, and Librarian Department of the Ukrainian Parliament, has begun the initiative study in the context of the sociology of history, which covers the period of two millennia (AD).
PROJECT IS CONDITIONED BY:
* globalization of transformational processes;
* objectivity, irreversibility and cardinal character of current
social changes;
* noncorrespondence of the existing ideas to new conditions
of social development;
* growth of danders which acquire extreme forms during the
the transient period;
* decrease in efficiency of the activity of global, regional,
political, economic, and other international and national
institutions.
Now once again, we are faced with the urgent need to basically reinterpret the historical development, to introduce corrections to the existing ideas as for a periodization of the history, and to create efficient prognostic models of social development. Motives to the realization of these urgent needs become, in fact, the basis of our research initiative.
MAIN AIM of the basic stage of the research project is the development of an applied model of «universal epochal cycle» as a means of social analysis and prognostication. A further work on the project will be open and interdisciplinary due to the wide participation of experts in the fields of political science, economy, right, psychology, ethnology, studies of religion. language, arts, etc.
RESEARCH PLANS will be carried out on a wide historical material, which represents 50 countries of the world community chosen by geographical, cultural-religious, and demographical signs. The sampling includes 20 countries of Europe, 15 of Asia, 3 of North America, 4 of Latin America, and Australia.
The research plan foresees the use of modern methodologies, methods, and technologies. In particular, the use of Internet will be aimed at:
* telecommunication of participants;
* publication of running results of the study;
* diagnostics, etc.
GUARANTEES OF SUCCESSFULNESS OF THE PROJECT are ensured by the available methodological and methodical tools mastered by our group, which allow one to obtain a number of weighty applied results including those concerning the optimization of national budget social expenditures, international cooperation, and collective safety.
***
Dear colleagues, I hope for the constructive dialog and support of our research project.
Sincerely,
Doctor of Sociol. Sci. Eduard Afonin
Supervisor of the project,
Head of Information and Library Department
of Secretariat of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine,
President of Ukrainian Social Innovation Society
Address:
Eduard Afonin
Head of Information and Library Department
of Secretariat of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine,
3, Sadova Str., Kyiv-8, 01008
tel/fax: (380 44) 226-2145
e-mail: afonin@rada.gov.ua
Appendix 3
RECORD OF THE MEETING OF THE WORKING GROUP OF THE
PROJECT, DEVOTED TO DISCUSSION OF THE BASIC HISTORICAL-
SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION «SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AD».
RECORD NO. 1
OF THE MEETING OF THE WORKING GROUP OF THE PROJECT
«SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AD»
KYIV SEPTEMBER 10, 1999
THERE WERE PRESENT: Afonin E. A., Dr. Soc. Sci., President of the Ukrainian Social Innovation Society (USIS); Bandurka O. M., Dr. Jur. Sci., Rector of the University of Internal Affairs (Kharkiv); Kokoshyns’kyi O. A., Vice-President of the Atlantic Council of Ukraine; Malyshko M. I., Cand. Jur. Sci., Prof., Head of Chair of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts; Martynov A.Yu., Cand. Hist. Sci., researcher of the Institute of History of the NAS of Ukraine; Ryabiko V. V., Ass. Prof., Vice-President of USIS; Salamatov V. O., Cand. Psych. Sci., Head of Depart. of the Academy of State Management at President of Ukraine; Chechnev B. O., Cand. Phil. Sci., Resp. Secr. of the All-Ukrainian weekly magazine «Zakon i Biznes» (Law and Business).
AGENDA
1. Introductory word about the idea and organization of the interdisciplinary project (IP) «Social development AD»
Speaker –Afonin E. A.
2. On the conception of IP «Social development AD as an object of the sociology of history (sociology of social changes)».
Speaker –Martynov A. Yu.
HEARD:
1. Introductory word «About the idea and organization of IP «Social development AD».
Afonin E. A. presented main positions of the proposed IP «Social development A.D.». In particular, he noted that the idea of IP was maturing during the last decade, which was marked by radical and mostly unpredictable changes such as, e.g.: «downfall of the Berlin wall», «disintegration of the USSR» and economic decline of countries-republics of the former USSR, economic jump of South-Asian «tigers», etc.
The first conceptual presentation of the project idea was given by the author in the final (applied) part of the scientific report «Social relativism or sociology of the transient time of social development» made at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of the NAS of Ukraine on October 22, 1998.
The main idea of the project is such that, on the basis of ideas on cyclicity of the social development, there appears a reliable instrumental possibility to reconstruct the objective logic of principal historical changes associated with such events as «revolutions», «transformatons», state overturns, various manifestations of the element of social protest, numerous civil conflicts, local and global wars, etc. The last fall in the so-called transient conditions of the social development and can fully serve as peculiar indicators of epochal changes.
The author believes that the study of a connection between the historical process or social-historical activity of the mankind and a level of Sun’s activity, which was performed by A. Chizhevsky at the beginning of the XX century, is methodologically necessary for the analysis of epochal changes. Having established the direct connection, the researcher found no exception beginning from 500 BC. We only remark that, according to Chizhevsky, not every «maximum» of the solar activity induces a peculiar «maximum» of the historical activity. To realize the last, it is necessary the presence of appropriate internal (in author’s opinion, social-economic, political, and, we add, spiritual) preconditions.
Of important are ideas on the cyclic character of psychical development of a man since it is one of the main elements of the social structure. In particular, it is worth to note the theoretical-practical generalizations by D. Feldshein. Basing on the occupational approach (S. Rubinshtein, O. Leont’ev, A. Brushlinsky, et al.) and age periodization of psychical development of a personality in ontogenesis (D. El’konin) which were develop in the framework of psychology, This researcher proved the cyclic (periodic) character of changes in the psychical structure of a personality and, respectively, in the psychological structure of activity, where its communicative and objective plans are alternatively actualized.
I am sure that, by generalizing this idea on the theoretical basis mentioned above in the spirit of the anthroposociogenetic approach, it is quite rightfully to consider radical social changes in the context of societal processes, conditions, and features, which are realized within the limits of a unit epochal historical cycle. Indeed, the social history is composed from sequentially realized epochal historical cycles.
The above-presented and other aspects of the proposed basic conception are published in the article «Development of Ukraine: macrosocial approach [in Ukrainian] // Viche. –. –No. 1. –P. 39-49. A. Yu. Martynov will report about all this in more details.
As for the general scheme of organization of the IP, we start from the necessity to distinguish two aspects of the work. One of them is related to development of the basic sociological conception, which is elaborated now by A. Yu. Martynov. B. O. Chechnev and I will also take part in development of the methodological foundation of the project. We also hope for a running participation of each of the members of the working group as experts in elaboration of the methodological basis of the IP. To the end to ensure the principle of openness of the IP, the authors plan a special stage of approbation and expansion of the information about the basic conception by means of its publication as a separate edition (in Ukrainian, Russian, and English), as articles in the domestic sociological journal of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine and others, in Russian and Polish social-political journals, and on the special site (devoted to the project) in the Internet. We hope that such measures allow us to optimize the content of the basic conception and stimulate wide interdisciplinary (in the field of social and humanitarian sciences) practical investigations.
Openness of the project and a «free» access to the work on its tasks do not remove the possibility to deepen into special applied studies. Thus, we foresee the organizational promotion to various theoretical and practical works in the field of disciplines of the social and humanitarian trends. In particular, we expect that every member of the working group on development of the IP will prepare some applied variant of the basic conception and will carry out the proper investigation. The last can be performed by the very member of the working group directly and with attraction of other participants, persons working for doctor’s degree and post-graduates, students and lecturers, representatives of policy, economy, science, culture, and education. In the course of the basic conception of cyclic social development, as an object of special studies, one can take the development of separate social (including state ones) institutions. It is quite possible to study the cycles of development of policy, economy, science (natural or humanitarian one), education, literature, arts, sport, etc. The working group of the project takes in hands the obligation to coordinate such investigations and to promote a wide clarification of the results obtained within the frameworks of the project.
The working group is planning:
1. To carry out a wide discussion of the basic conception of the IP «Social development AD as an object of the sociology of history (sociology of social changes)».
2. To solve the problem of organization of the special web-site in the Internet, concerning the IP.
3. To prepare for publication the basic conception of the IP «Social development A.D. as an object of the sociology of history (sociology of social changes)».
QUESTIONS:
Salamatov V. – How can we take into account the contents of specific notions ? For example, in the cross cultural studies by the west-European criteria, Ukraine is a quite collectivist country. But here (in Ukraine), all say about the individualism of Ukraine’s society.
Afonin E. – By societal (macrosocial or system-wide) criteria and ideas of cyclicity which consist the base of our project, Ukraine of the soviet period was characterized by such a societal quality as «executiveness, which define its behavior on the whole as «collectivist», indeed. The corresponding social normative reveals itself at all aspects of life of the population of the soviet Ukraine, stimulating the people to sacrifice. «First, think about the Motherland and then about yourselves» – we repeated by choosing a profession or an example to imitate and by estimating himself or surrounding persons. By basing on the results of the comparative analysis, one can even state that collectivism was manifested in Ukraine even more than in Russia. A good proof of this assertion is related to the widespread opinion known at that time that Ukraine was the first among the other republics of the USSR (first of all, in comparison with Russia and Belorussia) in developing the all-people initiative upon the fulfillment of recurrent decisions of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the USSR.
Now, the post-totalitarian Ukraine is attracted to the other social dimensionality, to the other social quality. The question is the «intentionality», whose manifestations are perceived by the ordinary consciousness, in fact, as individualism. These social normative are adequate to the formula specularly opposite to that presented above: «State is strong with strong citizens». New societal qualities are established by means of nonlinear social changes, creating the so-called transient condition of th society which is characterized, for a certain time, by a fluctuation – oscillations between two normative states defined above.
Thus, it is quite justified that a west observer finds Ukraine as a «collectivist» country, and a domestic one as an «individualist» one.
Salamatov V. –I say about a different thing. The semantics of the same notions changes from one culture to another, therefore, we may meet a double and even triple context in the context of a study. Hence, it would be methodologically expedient to start from traditions of the Moscow school of logic and to consider specific notions only in the context. As known, we cannot establish societal characteristics of, e.g., the Trypillya culture.
Afonin E. –First, the approach accepted in this study allows, in principle, one to retrospectively define societal characteristics of any culture including the Trypillya one. I do not say that it is a simple task. To make this, we need a representative objective evidence, so to say, «traces» of the proper culture.
Second, the definition of societal characteristics of a modern social object is based, in our approach, on the universal, integral standardized, symbolic model, in which the mechanism of autocorrection is inherent, i.e., the ability to correct the used symbolic model with regard for natural geographical peculiarities of a specific cultural environment irrespectively of the desire of an experimenter. In other words, the apparatus complex, which is developed by us and will be utilized in the study, immanently involves the requirements of the Moscow school of logic.
In our opinion, the more serious difficulty for our investigation is its financial neediness. In fact, already at the first stage of study, we must perform the very important specific measurements of societal characteristics on the representative sampling (about 50 countries), defined in the project. These data and appropriate chronological tables allow us to reconstruct historical cycles of the countries of the sampling, region, and civilization on the whole. A total cost of derivation of the basic empiric material, by the estimates of the «Gellap-International» company, equals about 0.4 mln USD. But we hope to leave this situation with the help of an alternative procedure of measurement by using the Internet.
Salamatov V. –The comparative analysis should be performed with minimum of ideological (political) loads.
Afonin E. – The object of our analysis leaves the frameworks of political analysis since the societal level is an integral level of analysis of a holistic object, in which the political aspect emerges as a component.
HEARD:
2. On the conception of IP «Social development AD as an object of the sociology of history (sociology of social changes)».
Martynov A. presented the basic conceptual idea of the IP «Social development AD».
In particular, by characterizing the actuality of the project, he emphasizes that the mankind encounters the problems of globalization of transformational processes on the boundary of the third millennium A.D. under conditions of the planetary crisis. There appears the world economic system which influences the development of not only separate regions but the whole civilization. Ecological and demographic threats are strengthening, and wars for the redistribution of resources (natural, energetic, biological, cultural, informational, etc.) become a reality in the process of political, economic, and social changes, which are a manifestation of the essence of historical development of countries, continents, and the mankind.
In the context of the mentioned social changes and the strengthening of nonpredictability of behavior of subjects of the historical process, there arises the urgent need in harmonization of the existing ideas as for the historical development, search for new approaches, methodologies, and models for analysis and forecast, which would be adequate to the historical call.
To the basis of conceptual construction of authors’approach, the following ideas are put:
The development of the nature and natural processes, including psychical processes in a person and social-historical ones, has a cyclic character.
Social activity is an important categorial element of the social-historical analysis (S. Rubinshtein, L. Vygotsky, O. Leont’ev, A. individual and Brushlinsky, et al.). According to the psychological structure of social activity, the hierarchy of its two main plans [objective and communicative ones (D. El’konin, D. Feldshtein, et al.)] periodically changes in the process of its development. Each of them fulfills, in turn, the functions of a purpose and a means.
Global social changes are a result of the integral interaction of the political, economic, and natural factors (P. Sorokin, A. Chizhevsky, L. Gumilev). In cyclic constructions, the synchronization of the maxima of their manifestation leads, in fact, to transformational social changes.
Society as an subject of the history and civilization passes a large vital cycle in its development. The historical genesis of a socium is, in fact, the realization of epochal cycles, and each of them is composed from two normative and two transformational periods. The first epochal period «involution» is generally characterized by reducing the social processes in space, the relative simplification of a social structure, and the leading role of traditionalism. A historical task of the «involutionary» period is the organic mastering of societal characteristics acquired by the society in the previous period of development. Such a traditional society is a society of the «closed» type. It has own social normatives and mechanisms for support of a stable condition. The degree of freedom of an individual in such a society is limited by the influence of a collective. In the social-psychological relation, the emotional-sensitive behavioral psychotype of personalities becomes defining.
The second normative period, «evolution», is characterized by development of social processes in space and the complication of a social structure. The innovative activity of citizens, which is based on a growth of freedom of individuals and the objective-cognitive component in the psychological structure of personalities, becomes the leading tendency. The principal feature is the stability of changes.
Transient periods of social development are characterized by historical phases opposite by the direction of changes: «revolution» and «co-evolution». In particular, «revolution» is a radical qualitative overturn of the whole social structure of the society. It creates the mechanism of transformational transition from one normative condition of «evolution» to other normative condition «involution». All this is simultaneously connected with a radical change of societal characteristics. «Revolution» sums up, conditionally saying, the previous historical epoch (cycle) and begins a new one. «Co-evolution» is a phase transition from the normative period of «involution» to the normative period of «evolution». This transition is realized in the frameworks of one epochal cycle. Therefore, one observes only a change of the «vector» of social development in this case.
The scheme of universal epochal cycle can be presented in the following form: «revolution» –«co-evolution» –«evolution» - «revolution». We note that, in the frameworks of certain subsequently performed epochal cycles, three groups of global contradictions forming the anthroposociogenetic contents of social development are solved. The question is the contradiction between scientific and religious consciousnesses, which plays the role of a «spring» defining the dynamism of the initial cycle of social development. Against the background of the solved contradiction, there arises a contradiction, not less powerful, between legal consciousness and moral. Just this pivotal contradiction is solved at the epoch of the industrial and post-industrial societies. The newest history, which is opened before the mankind in the nearest future, will be developed under the influence of a new global contradiction between political and ordinary consciousnesses. Prior to the derivation of a comprehensive empiric information, the construction of the presented scheme is still hypothetical basically, though the available separate empiric data make it rather promising.
SPOKE:
Afonin E. – There exist attempts to describe social changes through economic and political changes and processes. However, up to now, the transient period of social development bears threats and gives a lot of unexpected surprises to us. Up to now, there is no such tool which would allow one to attain an adequate comprehension of the essence of transient processes. The social science is unable, on the whole, to cover all the completeness of these changes. At the same time, it asserts a growth of the role of a subject in the transient period of social development. In our opinion, it would be correct to state that different transient processes are accompanied by a strengthening of the role of different subjects. In particular, the role of subjects-individuals increases during a «revolution». This can be clearly traced for the revolutions of 1905-1917, when, conditionally saying, the cohort of revolutioners available at that time exceeded the demand for them. Thus, the high «competition» generated strong personalities. A completely opposite pattern is observed during a transformation («co-evolution»). In this case, the role of the subject-socium is enhanced. Just for these reasons, the TV-programs of the Russian journalist Pozner «We», having generated a series of programs with large groups of participants as acting persons, attained the high popularity in the current period of co-evolution in Russia and Ukraine. In Ukraine, these programs are: «Taboo», «Karaoke on a square», «Morning Star», «Epicenter», etc. More often reveals the phenomenon «we» in the political life of the country (political union «We», «parliamentary majority», etc.).
To a certain extent, we can refer two types of deformations of the space-time continuum to peculiar regularities accompanying two types of transient processes. During «revolution», there occurs a deformation of these structures to the direction of the future, whereas they deform in the opposite direction, in the past, during «co-evolution». All this requires a verification with empiric material.
In our opinion, as a constructive methodological principle of the chosen approach, we would take the positions of the theory of Chizhevsky concerning the influence of the solar activity on social-historical processes. But, as emphasized, this rule is satisfied only under the presence of relevant social-political, economic, and spiritual preconditions.
Now we possess the objective data of systematic observations of the solar activity during 23 cycles, every of which covers 12 years. With the purpose to use this information in the realization of the project, we plan to attach researchers of the astronomic observatory of T. Shevchenko Kyiv University.
On the processing of empiric indices, we shall employ the comparative analysis. It brightly demonstrates the relevancy of the hypothesis on different levels of complexity of the social structures of «involutionary» and «evolutionary» societies. For example, in countries suffered from the «Great Depression», the number of social roles is about 70,000. Whereas we see only 30,000-40,000 ones in our domestic space. I suppose that the specially developed system of empiric indices allows us to verify the principal idea of cyclicity of the social development.
Salamatov V. –Really, this can be described in Durkheim’s terms. The similar studies already exist.
Afonin E. –To refine, I should like to add that this approach will be realized with utilization of specific empiric indices and their dimensionalities. Thus, it will not be limited by the social-philosophical analysis.
Andrii Yur’evych, what orienting points can be taken for a period, which would be convenient for the beginning of a study of subjects of the history ? From the moment of the creation of a state or earlier ?
Martynov A. –We must find an optimum variant. Among possible variants, we select the following: pre-state formation, a certain community, or a state. The substantial complexity is presented by the problem of determination of the age of an historical subject. I recall that there is no zero year in the era «from Christmas ». The date of Christmas was defined by Dionysus the Little in 525 AD. The third millennium will begin according to the chronological scale from January 1, 2001, but, according to the astronomical scale, it is customary to take the first year of our era as the zero one. Respectively, the third millennium will begin on January 1, 2000.
There exist the methodological problems of interrupted cycles in the development of historical subjects. For example, we mention the period from 1654 till 1991 in the native history. The analogous situation exists in countries, former colonies (Africa, South-East Asia, etc.). That is, there are many exactly historical methodological problems.
Ryabiko V. –The problem is both interesting and complicated. Thus, the very approach will be mainly formed in the course of investigation.
Kokoshyns’kyi O. – Possibly, the methodological reasons should be developed by sociologists. Already now, it is expedient to form the appropriate groups of researchers for study of each of the applied problems of this complex investigation.
Malyshko M. –By passing from the global level to a local one, I already see a certain block of legal problems in the project.
Right is a written thing, and, therefore, I am in anxiety about that we cannot understand, for example, China traditions. I also think about the problem of practical results of the project. What can they be ? At the last time, I am engaged with interpretation of Nostradamus’predictions. One can analyze post factum, but to make prognosis is a difficult thing.
Afonin E. – In the transient condition, the society «lives through» institutional changes, social structures are washed out, social ties become weaker, and the hierarchy of factors defining the mechanisms of reproduction of social structures is broken. In addition, we observe a «washing out» of cause-effect connections, which lie in the foundation of the rational scientific method. Thus, scientific methods are not always adequate in the period of transformation. What can ensure the prognostic functions of the state administration under such conditions ? As is known, science acts in situations where just the cause-effect character of connections in the social structure is conserved.
It is obvious that a global study, similar to our one, should be constructed on the principles of synthesis of the ancient and scientific knowledge, methods, and methodologies. It is the integration of the traditional and the innovative that presents the means which is able to give adequate results under conditions of the transient period of social development.
Chechnev B. –The study can give an unexpected result. It is possible that the persons who are present here came to agreement to meet one thousand years ago. While studying large cycles, it is important to regard for esoteric knowledge. We stand in front of the period of a global discontinuity, which can be compared with the destruction of Atlantis. In the period of 1992-2012, there occurs the termination of cosmic evolutionary cycles: 26,000, 12,000, 9,000, 6,000, and 2,000 years. In this connection, it is worth to note the coincidence of calendars. For example, the Celtic and Maya calendars name the year of 2012 as that when time will terminate. After this, a new global evolutionary cycle will begin. The Bible says: there will be a new Earth and a new sky. It is necessary to define ourselves in methodological questions. That the academic rationality considers as a violation is removed by the God’s harmony. Our time can be define as a closed wheel. This is like a snake biting its tail. Buddhists, for example, find the way out of this situation in nirvana, and Christians in practice.
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