4.The Fracture Phase (Ethnic Sickness)

After a tumultuous Acmatic phase that "both warms and burns," fatigue sets in.

The passive majority of the members of the ethnos; having suffered enough from the ambitious aspirations of their fellow citizens, forms a new imperative: "We are tired of the great ones!" - and amicably denies support to tribesmen who want to be heroes."

          Any phase transition, as we remember, is characterized by a change in the stereotype of behavior. The fracture phase in this sense can be seen as a long, painful process of transformation of the heroic and religious stereotype of behavior of the acmatic phase into the bourgeois, pragmatic stereotype of behavior of the inertia phase.

        The phase of fracture is characterized by a sharp decrease in the number of passionaries and an increase in the number of sub-passionaries. Subpassionaries are always present within the ethnos, but they are not visible in the presence of passionaries. They manifest themselves when the ethnos is weak (like lice in times of famine).  "The subpassionaries make it difficult, if not impossible, for the creative and patriotic people, whom they often simply kill," Gumilyov wrote. At the same time, no one prevents sub-passionarians themselves from multiplying. "The ideals of patriotism, zeal for faith, and love of cultural tradition are lost, making the ethno-social system defenseless”.

        As a consequence of the sharp decline in passionarity, the resilience of the ethnic system is also reduced. Immunity drops, the national body gets sick.

         The fracture phase is the most difficult period in the life of an ethnic group. It is worse only in obscuration. This is the era of crises, civil wars, revolutions. The most unpleasant thing is that in this phase, the ethnos loses its inner unity, those very systemic ties that increase its resistance to any blow, both from the outside and from the inside. Here we observe the operation of the law of nature: due to the loss of energy that kept the ethnic system (already heterogeneous) in a state of equilibrium until the breaking point, the ethnos splits into two or three parts, which begin to fiercely enmity and war with each other. In Europe, the Catholics and Protestants, in Russia, the Reds, Whites, Greens. Brother against brother. People begin to devour themselves. And in this struggle, first of all, the passionaries die, who, when they join one camp or another, kill each other in civil wars.

        The question arises: what are the reasons for such mutual hatred? After all, they both belong to the same ethnos. (And it often happens that they belong to the same family, where one brother is for the whites, the other - for the reds.) To explain this phenomenon, Gumilev again resorts to the ethnic field hypothesis: "As a result of the decline of passionary tension, the ethnic field splits into two halves with different rhythms. In such a split probably lies the inner content of the phase of fracture, which leads to the loss of the sense of unity within the super-ethnos.

        It is important to emphasize that in the phase of fracture, along with passionarity, religious tension also falls sharply. Faith weakens and the authority and influence of the official church decreases. On this ground various sects and false teachings flourish. Nihilists, numerous God-fighters and subversives of the foundations, emerge. National traditions are eroded, morality falls, and confidence in the future is lost. This is a profound spiritual and moral crisis. If the split of the ethnic field is accompanied by an active penetration of alien cultural influences and ideas, the negative load on the ethnos increases sharply.

         The fracture phase is the most dangerous phase in the life of any ethnos (super-ethnos). If a sick ethnos is surrounded by unfriendly passionate neighbors or subject to attacks of internal enemies (or both), there is always a chance of its conquest and even disintegration as an integral system. Some nations, as already mentioned, do not survive to their natural end. When the body is weakened, there will always be pathogenic germs. The question is, how many are there? In some ethnic groups there are more of them, in others less. Some germs are more active, others less so. It's a matter of who's who.

        However, it should be noted that along with the negative phenomena in this phase there are also some positive aspects. A sharp decrease in passionarity leads to a simplification of the ethnic system, and the simplification of the system, according to Gumilyov, entails a release of free energy.

The reality of a breakdown is sometimes so unpleasant that many seeking natures channel this energy into creativity. Passionarity in this phase, though not very high, is not so small. Much of it is directed to ideological struggle and internal wars, but some of the energy finds an outlet in art, literature, science. In this era, as a rule, there is a flowering of high classical culture. In Europe it is the period from the Renaissance to the 18th century (they had the rise of culture earlier - still in the acme phase). In Russia it is the "Golden" and "Silver" centuries of Russian culture, and the achievements of Soviet culture.

         In Western Europe, the crisis falls at the end of the XIV to the beginning of the XVII centuries. Some European ethnic groups entered this phase earlier, others later. On average, the crisis lasts about 150 years, this phase is shorter than others (see Appendix A). Gumilyov wrote: "The first half of this phase was called the 'Renaissance' in Europe, although in essence it was degeneration, the second half was called the Reformation, which was not only a restructuring of outdated attitudes, but also the occasion for terrible bloodshed. In terms of ethnic history-"The Renaissance is not a rise, but a decline from overheating to an optimum," on the one hand. And on the other hand, - it is a very difficult time. If in the Middle Ages, in the epoch of overheating, in the epoch of striving for victories, people were able to keep their rulers normal; then in the period of breakdown they were powerless. Without passionaries, everyone was defenseless.

         The peak of European brokenness is during the Reformation (16th century). Civil wars during this period are fought under religious banners. Western Europe is split into two camps - Catholics and Protestants. For many decades there is a terrible massacre between them. The last to emerge from the crisis was Germany which lost about 75 percent (!) of its population during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

        It is interesting to know on what principle Europeans were divided into Catholics and Protestants. Religious tension in Europe had already subsided by the 16th century, and most of the population was rather indifferent to religion. Therefore, the main cause of the schism was not arguments about theology (in which the vast majority of people understood nothing), but that "everyone, not knowing exactly what he was for, knew exactly who he was against. Gumilyov gives the example of France: "The northwestern part of the country is inhabited by the Celts; the Celts hate Paris, and in Paris the Catholics, hence the Huguenots in Vendée. The southwest is inhabited by Gasconians; Gasconians hate Paris - Huguenots. In the south the Provençal people live; they are rather lukewarm towards Paris by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - and Provence is not actively involved in religious wars.  The central part of France, conquered a thousand years before by the Franks, is solidly Catholic.

        There is no social system here; the system here seems to have been purely psychological. Two psychological patterns emerged that proved incompatible with each other.

         In the breakdown, in the decline of passionarity sharply changes the ratio between passionarians and non-passionarians. Passionaries become few, but those who survive gain a great advantage because they have no competitors in their environment. Therefore, they can actively influence all the other members of the ethnos. And such passionary preachers as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Münzer, John of Leiden and others draw huge masses of people after them. In the ethnic sense, the Reformation is "a decrease in passionarity, with individual passionarians who can do what, in the previous phase, the majority could do.

        Europe in the period of fracture loses a huge amount of energy and becomes almost powerless. But it is saved from external enemies by its advantageous geographical position. Western Europe is a large peninsula on the very edge of the continent, protected from three sides by a natural border, the sea. From the land it was threatened in the 16th-17th centuries only by Turkey, which, entering the phase of overheating, led a broad offensive from the southeast. Turkish troops, capturing Hungary, reached Vienna, but were stopped with the help of "backward" Poles. (Incidentally, the breakdown in Europe benefited not only the Turks but also the Russians. While all the forces of Western Europe were locked in on themselves and mutual destruction, the two peer countries: Russia and Turkey had time to gain great strength. Then they would fight on equal terms for quite a long time).

        When the fracture in Germany was over, Western Europe safely entered the phase of inertia. It became invulnerable and aggressive again, "but very little like itself in the preceding period. From chivalrous it had become mercantile. Catholics and Protestants very soon forgot the old enmity and amicably began to enlighten themselves. And the Christian religion from the eighteenth century gave way to the "religion of progress”.

         If Western Europe survived its fracture almost unscathed by external invaders, then in the Ottoman Empire things ended much worse. Turkey, like Russia, entered a phase of boom in the tenth century. Conquering huge territories, Turkey by the middle of the 17th century had become a strengthened power. But by the end of XVII century the Ottoman Empire began to suffer defeats from its neighbors and lose its provinces one by one. At the end of the XVIII century, there was a breakdown and everything began to deteriorate rapidly (Turkey was then called "The Sick Man"). At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Anglo-French and Greek troops entered the country.

        What were the reasons for such a rapid decline? Even in the face of a breakdown? The main reason, said Gumilyov, was the over complication of the system because of the large influx of foreigners who entered the service of the Turkish sultan. At first they were janissaries, recruited mainly from the Balkan Slavs, then, with the creation of the fleet, - Arabs, Italians, Frenchmen and many others. Even Poles and Germans entered the Turkish service. Many of the foreigners occupied high positions in the army and the state apparatus. After the inclusion of Armenians into the empire, the system became overcomplicated and unstable. A chimera emerged because Europeans, Balkan Slavs and Armenians belonged to different super-ethnoses. Therefore, they could not integrate into the existing ethnic system.

         As long as the passionarity was high, this chimerical structure held together, but when the breakdown occurred and the level of passionarity decreased sharply, everything fell apart. Turkey (like Byzantium in the 13th century) was saved from complete collapse by a more passionate province. At the last moment, "wild" Turkmens descended from the mountains and drove the invaders out of the country. They restored the borders of Turkey, which exist to this day. Turkey was transformed from an empire into a country. And she was very lucky - there was a regeneration of the ethnic system.

        In the end of the excursion it remains to add that in Ancient Rome the phase of the fracture took place in the period of civil wars (II-I centuries B.C.) and in Byzantium - in the era of iconoclasm (VIII - first half of IX centuries). In the first case the revolution took up to 100 years and caused a lot of victims, and in the second case it lasted almost 200 years and developed into a big church split between iconoclasts and icon worshipers.

         And what about Russia? Gumilyov wrote almost nothing about the phase of breakdown in Russia, apparently guided not only by his rule - not to go further than the 18th century, but also by the fact that in Soviet times he would not have been understood, to put it mildly. Only in several interviews in the last years of his life did he say something (very little) about this period.

        Let us take the liberty, using Gumilyov's method, to examine for ourselves what was happening to our country during this crisis era. At the same time, following the methodology of ethnogenesis, we must focus on the internal, objective causes of those catastrophic events that fell to Russia in the "broken" twentieth century. All the more so since much literature has already been written about the pernicious influence of external enemies and their agents within the country. We need to do this also because the question "Whose fault is it?" is posed today just as it was a hundred years ago.

         Russia entered a phase of breakdown in the first half of the nineteenth century, around 1820-30. The first bell was the Decembrist uprising in 1825. Gumilyov said: "The crisis went on throughout the XIX century, and lower and lower.  At the beginning of the XX century there came a passionate depression". (We can add that the next depression came at the end of the XX century). The writer Leskov showed in one phrase the difference between the old, heroic, and the new, "broken" era in Russia. He wrote in 1879: "Everything then was majestic, dignified and serious, in keeping with that good and serious time, which is often contrasted with the present time which is not good and not serious".

         By the middle of the nineteenth century, the first symptoms of the disease of the national organism become apparent: disorder in power, disorder in minds, disorder in relations between classes. The unexpected defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 (after two hundred years of victories), which was not anticipated by all. (After two hundred years of victories in the acme phase!).  It was a consequence of this growing disorder.

         At this time, the clearest sign of a breakdown becomes noticeable - the split of the ethnos into warring factions with sharply different stereotypes of behavior and mentality. The beginning of this already visible split was laid by the Decembrists, then continued the confrontation between Westerners and Slavophiles, then the struggle between liberals and conservatives, and then - well, let it go ... up to the revolutions of 1905 - 1917 and the civil war between the White and Reds.

         By the middle of the 19th century another characteristic feature of breakdown appeared: the rejection of the traditional way of life and the "search for a new ground".   In connection with this, some Russian people have a blunted, if not lost, the sense of homeland (national identity). More and more anti-patriots appear among "educated" people.

        Compare. At the end of the 18th century, at the end of a heroic era, the great Russian commander Suvorov exclaims: "I am Russian! What a delight!"... At the beginning of the twentieth century the philosopher Rozanov remarks: "The French have 'dear France,' the English have 'old England,' the Germans have 'our old Fritz.' Only a man who has been through a Russian grammar school and university has "damned Russia".

         How is it surprising that every Russian, from the age of 16, clings to the party "to overthrow the state system ... ".  And here it should be emphasized that in Russia the beginning of the phase of breakdown almost coincides with the strengthening of Western influence (which "accumulated" in the entire XVIII century).

         The peculiarity of our crisis was the important circumstance that the programmed, "domestic" split of the Russian ethnos was superimposed on the programmed invasion of an alien European ideology.

        This circumstance further exacerbated intra-ethnic contradictions and increased the intensity of the struggle between the warring camps. The contact at the super-ethnic level had a negative result. Pagan culture and Protestant-Enlightenment ideology borrowed from the Romano-Germanic West not only brought confusion to the minds, they brought confusion to the historical process itself.

        Activation of the cultural influence of Western super-ethnos on Russian "educated society" occurs, as we remember, under the German Catherine II, who, flirting with Europe, she begins to "enlighten" backward Russia. At the same time, since the second half of the XVIII century, she’s gaining strength leaked from the West Freemasonry.

        (The first Freemasons appeared under Peter I and organized under Anna Ioanovna.) That is when our first liberal democrats - Novikov and Radishchev come to the scene. They call to throw off the shackles of slavery and arrange everything in the French manner. Under the mild-mannered Tsar Alexander I (a young Republican), Western liberalism in Russia was gaining serious strength. A pro-Western anti-patriotic party finally takes shape in the ruling elite, which, at Alexander's suggestion, includes many Germans. From this point on, an almost unconcealed struggle between anti-national and national begins in Russia. The Russian against the anti-Russian. For the first time in the country's history, the "Russian question" appears. We emphasize - for the first time!

         Since this question has not lost its relevance to this day, let us dwell on it in more detail. 

         What is an enlightened Russian nobleman of the beginning of XIX century? He dresses up in everything French, speaks and writes in French better than in Russian and knows the French literature better than the French themselves. That would be all right, but the problem is that many aristocrats go further: they begin not only to speak but also to think in French. And at the same time they dislike everything Russian. Or the "philosopher" Chaadayev, who in the 1830s came to the conclusion that Russia was an utterly savage country which had given the world nothing, that it was some kind of zigzag, a misunderstanding in world history. (Then, however, he came to his senses... After Nicholas I officially declared him insane.)

          One of the first to note and describe this disorder in his mind was Pushkin: "She knew little Russian, / Did not read our journals, / And barely expressed herself / In her own language ... / - and elsewhere - / You have enlightened your mind, / You saw the light of truth, / And tenderly loved foreign peoples, / And wisely hated yours" ...

Having suffered from "revolutionism" in his youth (and even, briefly, from the then fashionable Freemasonry), Pushkin not only noticed this anti-national line in high society, but also tried to fight it. The late Pushkin is a convinced patriot, actively opposing the external and internal enemies of the Fatherland. There is a convincing version that this is why he was killed.

          In Pushkin's contemporary Griboyedov we read: "Ah! If we were born to adopt everything, / If we could at least borrow a few from the Chinese, / Their wisdom and ignorance of foreigners. / Shall we then rise from the foreign power of fashion? / That our clever, vigorous people / Though in language we are not thought of as Germans." 

         The tragedy of the late Gogol is also connected to the growing confrontation between the national and the anti-national in Russia. While the young Gogol mildly criticized the existing order, liberals tolerated him and even praised him, but as soon as he switched to conservative positions, they began to harass him. The first to start was Belinsky, who wrote his famous "letter to Gogol. Then all the other "advanced people" of the time pounced on the writer. The national writer Gogol, who defended Orthodoxy and autocracy, was declared by liberals a half-mad reactionary. This harassment broke Gogol and brought his death closer.

         In the era of the "great" liberal reforms of Alexander II (60 - 70 years of XIX century), the anti-Russian party is sharply gaining strength. The pro-Western nobility is joined by the liberal intelligentsia, which at this time greatly proliferates. It is considered a sign of good form not to believe in God, to scold everything Russian and to admire everything in civilized Europe. At this time, Germanophiles and Francophiles are being replaced by Anglophiles. Along with social nihilism, national nihilism grows. Violent Russophobes appear among the "educated" Russian people. Tyutchev, who was not only a poet, but also an outstanding thinker, wrote in 1867: "It would be possible to analyze the modern phenomenon, which becomes more and more pathological. It is the Russophobia of some Russian people - by the way, quite revered ...". Dostoevsky goes on to say that if in the times of Nicholas I these people justified their dislike for Russia by the absence of freedom, then under Alexander II, when there was much more freedom, their hatred for Russia only increased.

         Dostoevsky, who also suffered from liberalism in his youth, wrote about that time: "All these beliefs about the immorality of religion and family ... all these ideas about the destruction of nationality ... in the name of universal human brotherhood. Contempt for the fatherland - all these were such influences that seized our hearts and minds..."

Here we see the standard set of nihilist of the age of breakdown - atheism, anti-patriotism, denial of the family, the denial of the Russian traditional way of life. These are the signs of ethnic disease.

         Thus, Russian liberalism, which by the beginning of the twentieth century had already had not so much a social as an anti-national connotation (in contrast to European liberalism, which was then less "anti-national"). Dostoevsky said that liberals consider everyone who is ashamed of Russia's past, who considers Russia to be "the mistake of history" to be their own. He wrote about the "liberal foam" which rose on the wave of liberation reforms: "Lousy people have suddenly gained the upper hand and began to criticize all the sacred, while previously they dared not even open their mouths.  Forty years before the February Revolution of 1917 the great patriot writer predicted that Russia will be ruined not by a revolutionary with a bomb, but by our homegrown liberal. And so it happened. Much of our ruling elite and almost all of the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the twentieth century were infected with this virus of death. Some more, some less.

        And here it should be noted that viruses of this kind are always present in the national organism, but, for the time being, the high passionarity does not allow them to multiply. Contacts with the West have never been broken, and since the 15th century foreign specialists from Europe came to work in Russia. But as long as the European cultural influence was limited, passionarity was high, and the level of education was low, the penetration of the "Western heresy" was strictly suppressed. In the breakdown, it was the opposite ... and with European influence, and with passionarity, and with education. (Not without reason Leo Tolstoy said that a lot of reading - is bad for you).

        Gumilyov wrote that when the phases of ethnogenesis change, especially in the transition from the acmatic phase to the “kraken”, fracture phase, the ethnic system becomes completely defenseless. "The systemic ties break down, their restructuring takes place. The stereotype of ethnic behavior is visibly modified and therefore easily deformed.” This is the reason of chimerization (semi-equal opposing systems that try to exist together, but can’t), of a part of ethnos in the contact zone (with non-complementary super-ethnos. - Auth. comment), i.e. destruction of the stereotype as such. Let us pay attention to this most important position of Gumilyov. It follows from this that entering the phase of breakdown, the most part of Russian nobility and intelligentsia instead of traditional stereotype of behavior (which is destroyed) received deformed stereotype-chimera of liberal type, which led them to inadequate actions and finally to their death.

         In the middle of the nineteenth century, an industrial revolution takes place in Russia. Capitalism begins to boom in the 1860s. The economy of post-reform Russia begins to be built into the world economic system, which at this time is already largely controlled by the supranational financial capital - " Finintern" (or in the old way - "world imperialism"). This circumstance initially puts the Russian economy and finance in a disadvantageous, potentially dependent position.  

        Unlike Europe, where the capitalist way of life is formed gradually (since the 16th century, and sometimes even earlier), in our country it is growing rapidly and with great distortions. We have to catch up with the Europeans again - we need modern equipment and armaments. Therefore, capitalism is imposed from above by the state, pushed artificially. All this exacerbates the internal divisions. The class structure is sharply changing, many people are losing their familiar ground. The bourgeoisie, growing by leaps and bounds, presses against the nobility on the one hand, and the peasants on the other.  From these two once major classes of society, many people fall out. A large part of the declassified elements is settling "at the bottom". By the beginning of the twentieth century, the gap between rich and poor is sharply widening. Added to the irritation is the hitherto unseen, crude and brazen luxury of the New Russian capitalists, many of whom were still recently men "like everyone else".

         The second most important feature of the Russian breakdown is the fact that the rapid growth of capitalism and the resulting severe class contradictions sharply exacerbate the naturally developing ethnic disease. The result is not just a disease, but a very serious epidemic, a plague.

      From the point of view of ethnogenesis, the deep contradiction of this epoch lies in the fact that capitalism (as a part of the world process) has already appeared in Russia and requires rapid development, while we still do not have enough people, with bourgeois stereotype of behavior, suitable for this system. They prevail in the next phase - inertia. We will not have enough of them by the beginning of the twentieth century.

        In his agrarian reform, Stolypin bet on the Russian bourgeois man (kulak), but since there were few of them, his reform stalled. It can be said that because of the lack of the bourgeoisie in Russia, all bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the early 20th century failed. After October 1917, we again had to resort to the usual collectivist forms of economy and extra-economic methods of coercion. (For more on the development of the Russian bourgeoisie, see "Why Can't We Get Capitalism Right?) 

         In the middle of the nineteenth century the first Russian revolutionaries appeared in Russia. Exactly - Russians, foreigners would join later. A striking example of a national revolutionary is L.A. Tikhomirov, in his youth - an idealist-novelist, in maturity - a convinced monarchist.

Gumilyov almost never touched the subject of revolutionary movement in his writings, but if we consider the revolutions in the context of civil wars, it is clear that in the pre-capitalist era, the catalyst for these upheavals was the ethnic factor. That is, the split of ethnicity, leading to a fierce internal struggle. Then, with the development of capitalism and the formation of the global financial oligarchy (in the XVII - XX centuries), two more factors were added: class (bourgeois-proletarian) and "Finintern" (sponsors-customers of revolutions, International Finance). These globalist factors of the revolutions seriously displaced the ethnic factor, but did not abolish it. (If we look at Marxism from the perspective of ethnology, we see that the cosmopolitan Marx, almost devoid of national identity, substitutes the deep ethnic factor, the surface - the class one. However, it should be noted that in superstition these factors can coincide (the struggle of traditional and bourgeois man - collectivist and individualist)).

        If we assess the revolutionary movement not from the usual socio-economic standpoint, but from the standpoint of ethnogenesis, we will find that revolutionaries emerge on the stage of history when the ethnic system is out of equilibrium. This is especially characteristic of the fracture phase. The revolutionary movement is an instinctive reaction to the exacerbation of the illness of the ethnos. Revolutionaries are both indicators and catalysts of this disease. They are for a radical cure. (They are national revolutionaries, anti-national - for the radical destruction.)

        In the conditions of post-reform Russia, the question of choosing a suitable revolutionary ideology is resolved very quickly. In the West, all the necessary ideologies have long been invented and already imported into Russia: socialism, Marxism, anarchism, liberalism. The choice is made according to taste.

         Regarding the borrowing of foreign ideas Gumilyov wrote: "The ideological influences of another ethnic group on unprepared neophytes act like viral infections, drugs, mass alcoholism. What in the homeland is seen as a reversible and insignificant deviation from the norm, destroys entire ethnic groups, unprepared to resist alien, enticing, intoxicating ideas". Here I must emphasize "fascinating". Gumilyov wrote this about the corrupting influence of the ideas of Gnosticism in the ancient era, but, rightly, the parallels are self-explanatory. Especially if we talk about the ideology of liberalism that grew up on the ideas of the Enlightenment (mass intellectual psychosis of the second half of XIX century - early XX century, and "perestroika" relapse in the late 80's - early 90's). Famous conservative Katkov wrote of that post-reform, "liberal" time: "There is some kind of artificial infirmity brought into our organism, there is some foreign evil which sticks to everything in us, paralyzing strength and generating painful phenomena. There is obviously a fatal discrepancy between our intelligentsia and reality. As soon as our intelligentsia speaks and acts, we fall".

        In the second half of the 19th century, the split between the two camps of "educated society": the conservatives-sovereigns and liberals-westerners (the majority of them) become sharply more pronounced. The liberals gain strength during the democratic reforms of Alexander II. This is followed by the reaction of the monarchist conservatives, who bounce back a bit under Alexander III. After his death, under the last Emperor Nicholas II, it is again the turn of the liberals. Parallel to this, since the end of the nineteenth century, a third force is gaining momentum, the revolutionaries. The authorities, represented by Pobedonostsev and later Stolypin, try to stop the growing disintegration, tame the liberals and suppress the revolutionaries. (Pobedonostsev: "Russia must be frozen, so that it does not rot. But the defenders of autocracy have nobody to fall back on - the ruling class is rapidly degenerating, having depleted the golden reserve of passionate patriots.

         The most obvious signs of this decay of the upper class are separation from their native soil, godlessness, and as a consequence, amorality, total corruption, and cronyism on all levels of government. There is an oligarchization of power. This is the main result of the "bourgeois modernization" policy of Alexander II. (This is why Alexander II is so beloved by contemporary liberal reformers.)

         The ruling elite is finally becoming a parasite, a weak parasite at that. It can no longer ensure the security of the country. Disgraceful defeat in the Russian-Japanese War (1904 - 1905) - a vivid confirmation. Any power is tested for its strength in external wars. "The history of old Russia consisted ... in being continually beaten," Comrade Stalin would later say, referring to defeats in the Crimean and Japanese wars and failures in the German War.

        During the war with Japan, most of the liberal public wishes defeat for their own country. In 1905, after the terrible defeat of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, a group of militant liberals sends the Japanese emperor a telegram congratulating him on his victory (!). As they say, there was nowhere else to go.

           It is important to note once again that by the early 20th century, not only did the country have a strong liberal opposition to the government, but the government itself, the ruling elite of the nobility, was also liberalized and Europeanized. This process began, as already mentioned, in the 18th century and went on throughout the 19th century. On this occasion, the famous "reactionary" of the Nicholas era (1825 - 1855), Count Uvarov, very accurately noted: "Our revolutionaries or reformers will come not from the lower class, but in the red and blue ribbons”. He was referring to the higher ranks of the bureaucracy.

         And here it should be stressed that during the two hundred years of Europeanization the elite of the nobility was diluted with foreigners. Even under Alexander I, a liberal and a Germanophile, almost all the top jobs in the government were filled by Germans. There is a well-known case when the hero of 1812, General Ermolov, filed a report to Alexander I: "I beg Your Imperial Majesty for the exploits listed here to make me a German.

And the next Emperor Nicholas I, who, according to comments of contemporaries, was "a type of Prussian officer," said: "Russian noblemen serve Russia, and German - and me. His grandson Alexander III, who, being an exception, was "a real Russian Tsar", was very upset when at a young age he learned that there is almost no Russian blood in him. One day he was looking through a list of generals. Reading: first, second, third, ... - all German surnames - the tenth - Major General Kozlov. - "Well, finally!"

         The history of the nineteenth century showed that while German superiors are good for Germany, they are not always good for Russia. For example, it is known that sailors of the Russian navy disliked many officers of German origin, not for any excessive strictness, but because "they have a callous soul". A case is described when one such officer ordered a dog, the favorite of the entire crew, to be thrown overboard because "a dog on deck is a disorder." (This is a reference to the killing of their officers by sailors in 1917.)    

         In a way, this was payment for the empire. After all, since the seventeenth century, Germans had been hired primarily as good military specialists. Without them in the era of conquest and strengthening of the empire could not be done. As it was impossible to do without foreign scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors and other professionals needed by the country. Over time, former teachers are firmly included in the Russian ruling elite. Well, and then everything went according to the laws of ethnogenesis, or rather - in spite of these laws. Many major Russian dignitaries during those two hundred years have become related to natives of Europe - Witte, Pleve, Sturmer, Fredericks, Bunge, Benckendorfs and many others. With the annexation of new territories to the empire - including historical Poland and the Baltic, which were part of the European super-ethnos - all the petty nobility (gentry and Baltic Germans) were equated with the Russian nobility.

         By the beginning of the 20th century, about half (!) of the noble families were non-Russian. In addition to Germans and other Western Europeans, there were many Poles and Caucasians, that is, representatives of those peoples who were not part of the Russian super-ethnos. Many of them were excellent servants to the Tzar, especially the Germans, but they never became their own. And for an ethnic system to work smoothly, especially in an extreme situation, you need your own people. That is why the famous phrase of Nicholas I, said by him at the ball to the Marquis de Custine about his entourage - a Pole, a German, a Georgian, a Finn, a baptized Jew: "But all together they are Russians!" - she is beautiful, of course, but in terms of ethnology it is overkill. (The most Russian of them was probably the Georgian.)

       As a result - on the eve of the revolution of 1917 in the central apparatus of the Russian state the Russians were in the minority! Yes, yes, exactly - in the national minority.

        Gumilyov almost does not touch upon the subject of the "Germanization" of the Russian nobility in his books (only slightly, in his latest lectures), but gives the following example. When the Russian army was retreating in 1812, the excellent military expert Barclay de Tolly, who was doing everything right, was replaced by Kutuzov, who was his own man for the Russian soldiers. The soldiers greeted the new commander-in-chief with shouts of "Hurrah!" Many fell to their knees: "Praise God!", "Father! Father dear! Lead us on!". The mood in the army immediately changed.

        This all goes back to the same questions about complementarity, the ethnic field and passionary induction (the contagiousness of passionarity in the presence of "his" passionario).

         At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, after all the partitions of Poland, the empire is filled with a large Jewish population - the inhabitants of Belorussia, Right-Bank Ukraine and historical Poland. (Individual Jews begin to penetrate into Russia as early as the 17th century under the first Romanovs. Under Peter I some of them make a successful career and enter the circle of the aristocracy: Shafirov, Divier, etc.) This mass entry of Jews creates additional tension in the ethnic system, as the Jews maintain their isolation, and actively resist all attempts of the authorities to include them in the common cause. They categorically do not want to join Russian life, unlike the Germans; they especially do not want to engage in farming nor serve in the army.

         Gumilyov, as we remember, did not deny the Jews their ethnicity and called them a "wandering super-ethnos". However, it is obvious that in the process of their wandering (starting with the Babylonian captivity), a large part of the Jews simply fell out of natural ethnogenesis, and turned into something non-national (chimerical), while retaining the old name. This division of Jews into national and non-national became especially visible in Russia in the early 20th century, when one part of the Jews broke away from their religious communities and rushed into the Russian revolution (internationalists); another went to do business in America (cosmopolitans), and the third part started to create their own state in Palestine (Zionists). Looking ahead, we note that it was the first, chimerical Jews who formed the backbone of the leading revolutionary parties in Russia, and at the first stage led the Russian revolt of 1917.

         Thus, if we look at the problem from the standpoint of ethnology, we find that by the end of the 19th century the same thing happened to Russia as happened to Turkey at the end of the 18th century. There came an over complication of the system because of the large influx of foreigners from foreign super-ethnoses, both at the level of the ruling elite, and at the level of the entire Russian super-ethnos. A line was crossed, after which the constructive diversity - "blossoming complexity" (on a Russian basis) - began to turn into destructive dissimilarity ... into a kind of little Babylon in the upper and middle classes of society.

The 3rd and most important feature of the Russian breakdown.

         On the upper and middle levels of Russian society was formed as multilayered ethnic chimera as in the Ottoman Empire, since the representatives of the other (uncomplimentary) super-ethnoses, who joined the ruling class and intelligentsia in the 17th - 19th centuries, did not become their own, and could not integrate into the existing ethnic system. Well, except for some, as an exception.

         And the ruling dynasty itself, by this time mixed with the "whole of Europe", only by name remained Russian. In Europe it was officially called "Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. Numerous Romanovs in two hundred years after Peter I - all "Germans", and almost all - Westerners. Significantly, during the February Revolution of 1917, only two (!) of the sixteen grand dukes supported the cornered Nicholas II. A striking example of apostasy - Grand Dukes Nicholas Mikhailovich (Freemason), Nicholas Nikolaevich (associated with Freemasons) and Kirill Vladimirovich (simply a Judas), which were not just liberals, but convinced opponents of historical Russia.

        It turned out that at a critical moment for the dynasty, the members of the House of Romanov opposed themselves! Although participating in a conspiracy against the Tzar, they naively believed that they would remain in power. In terms of formal logic - this is absurd, in terms of ethnogenesis – it’s a pattern. These "European people" with Protestant roots simply felt like strangers in "this" country and among "this" people. Mentally alien. And this despite their official patriotism, in which, we note, the best of them sincerely believed.

        Ethnic history teaches that patriotism in its deepest essence is not brought up, it is an innate, unconscious feeling inherited from ancestors who lived for many centuries on this land, this very land and not any other!

         In addition to the above, by the early 20th century the majority of the members of the House of Romanoff had turned into typical petty bourgeois. There were no more Passionaries among them. (There were, of course, exceptions to this rule, such as the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. But these were the exceptions. It is telling, that of the five Russian emperors of the nineteenth century, two - Alexander I and Alexander II - were bored with power and secretly dreamed of abdicating the throne in order to live out the rest of their days in a quiet family environment. And the third, Nicholas II, who personally was certainly a decent man, in 1904-1905 thought of leaving the throne to his brother and becoming patriarch.

        It is also telling that the permitted blood marriages (between cousins, uncles, and nieces) both within the expanded House of Romanoff and between the Romanoffs and the royal houses of Europe led (and could still lead) to the accumulation of hereditary diseases in this high aristocratic class. A striking example is the last Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, who passed on to Tsesarevich Alexei a serious hereditary blood disease, hemophilia. This disease, transmitted only through the female line, was inherited by her grandmother, Queen Victoria of England.

         (A remark should be made that here we give only an ethnological evaluation of the royal family, which met a martyr's death.)          

        We conclude. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian ruling class, for the most part, had degenerated and was no longer the leading class. First, it lost its passionarity, and secondly, its national identity. That is, in the end, was unable to perform its direct duties of ruling the country!

         Therefore, we can safely argue that the future of the Russian Empire with such a political elite simply did not exist! Especially in conditions of increasing external pressure (Britain, "Finintern") and the aggravation of numerous internal contradictions. Any country has a future only if a passionate and patriotic national elite is in power. But, again, with regard to Russia, not at a narrow, ethnic level, but at the level of a super-ethnos, when the ruling class includes representatives of other indigenous peoples in addition to Russians.

         If we continue to draw historical parallels, we find that something similar happened in ancient Russia more than a thousand years ago. Exactly at the time when the East Slavic ethnos was experiencing its breakdown (VII - IX centuries) Russia came under the power of foreigners-Vikings (in 862 - Novgorod), who were first allies, and then opponents of the Jewish government of Khazaria. Varangian princes proved to be completely talentless rulers: they lost all the wars, and as a result led Russia into vassal dependence on Judeo-Khazaria, to which they were obliged to pay a large tribute. Because of this exorbitant tribute the Drevlyanian prince Igor was killed. After his death, the Slav princess Olga came to power. She had abruptly changed a policy of Ancient Russia, having concluded the friendly union with Byzantium. Twenty years later, in 965 her son Svyatoslav defeated the Khazar Khaganate, after which it ceased to exist. This meant that the East Slavic ethnos, which retained its passionarity, came out of the phase of breakdown, and entered a prosperous phase of inertia, which was the cultural and economic flowering of Kievan Rus' (late X - early XII centuries).

        Let us add, however, that it was easier for our Slavic ancestors then - their breakdown was not aggravated by alien ideology invasion, neither by class contradictions, nor by NTR, nor by pressure of "Finintern". Of the factors aggravating the ethnic disease, only two - a slight over complication of the system at the level of the ruling elite (the Vikings were relatively few, and they fairly quickly dissolved among the Slavs) and the aggressive policy of the Khazars.

        But back to the beginning of the XX century. Vasily Rozanov very accurately noted the internal weakness of the "upper classes" in pre-revolutionary Russia and, as a consequence, the increased influence of foreigners, mostly Jews, on this background.

Rozanov wrote about the state and "society" in 1912: "Everything official only formally exists". It is not a problem that Russia has "facades": it is the fact that these facades are empty. And Russia is a series of voids. Empty government - empty of thought, of conviction. But do not take solace in the fact that the universities are also empty. An empty society. Empty, airy. Like an old oak: the crust, the boughs, but inside - voids and emptiness.

         And into these voids foreigners climb. It is not in the strength of their onslaught, but in the fact that there is no resistance to them.

         Let us add, however, that the force of the pressure is also a serious matter, and the stronger the pressure, the more powerful the resistance must be. But there is just not enough of it in a sharp passionate decline.

          It must be noted that Rozanov, as a deep thinker, keenly felt the edge after which Russia entered a phase of crisis and began to plunge into passionate depression. He wrote: "...from 'December 14, 1825 until now' all of our history is a deviation to the side and simply accomplished nothing. "Went into the wrong alley, and no home was found". "'Go back,' 'didn't get a visit'..."

         And here it should be emphasized: "Go back", that is to - home, on its Russian soil.    More than a hundred years have passed since then.

         At the beginning of the twentieth century between the ruling class and the people there is a final split. The boyar rulers had long been hated, but after the 1905 revolution, the worst thing happened: the tzar himself lost credibility and respect. In the eyes of a significant part of the people (including many monarchists) he is no longer the tzar-father, but a failed tzar, unable to restore order in his own country. Russian people believe in the "good Tzar" to the last, but when they lose faith, that's it - there will be turmoil.

         And, again, it was not a matter of "weakness" and "lack of will" of Tzar Nicholas Alexandrovich, but the fact that in conditions of passionate decline, ethnic division and degradation of the elite he simply had no chance left. No one in his place would have been able to cope. This explains the "loneliness", "inaction" and "fatalism" of Nicholas II during the last period of his reign. His humble turning to God in these circumstances is quite natural and justified.

         Fatigue and irritation accumulate in the people at this time. Tension is growing. And the reason for this is not only mass poverty, there have been worse times in Russia. There is something else that arouses anxiety and deafening aggression: hopelessness, "untruths of life". A sense of historical deadlock. And something else, inexplicable in words, when the usual ethnic rhythm is disrupted and intra-systemic cacophony begins to grow. People unconsciously embitter against each other. Our own become like strangers. We know the reason for this mutual repulsion. It consists in the split of a single ethnic field into several parts with different rhythms, and therefore - different stereotypes of behavior, even deeper - different worldviews.

        Against this background, there is the destruction of traditional, collectivist values and the breakdown of the familiar Russian way of life, which is immediately replaced by a new way of life - not Russian and not familiar. The most important thing that is lost in this process is faith in tomorrow. This causes not physical pain, but mental pain. After all a man needs not only food and a roof over his head, but also peace of mind. But there is no peace of mind.

        People become like compressed springs.  To paraphrase Gumilyov, we can say: There are times when it seems possible to live, but to live - not good.  Doesn't this remind you of anything?

        At the beginning of the twentieth century, more and more people are waiting for the revolution as a purification. In 1905, the boil bursts. All classes of society take part in the revolution. It is quite revealing that even among the priests and hierarchy of the Orthodox Church we see quite a few liberals - supporters of "liberation" and "democratic transformation".

        At this time in the country there is a strange situation in which "the gentlemen are fighting for freedom, and the men are fighting the gentlemen". A wave of peasant revolts sweeps across Russia. Hatred of the educated gentleman finds an outlet in the terrible pogroms of noble estates in 1905 - 1907. When the peasants not only robbed, but as it seemed, in a kind of wild madness destroyed cultural values: burned libraries, cut paintings, hacked with an axe pianos. Then exploded not only the social, but also the ethnic bomb, which was laid in the XVIII century, when there was a split of the people into two parts: "European" - the nobility, and Russian - the rest of the people. (The first mass outbreak of hatred of the non-Russian nobility we see already in the Pugachev's revolt. At that time, the men beat anyone who wore German dress.) In the kerfuffle, this civilizational contradiction went to an extreme. And after October 1917 Russia took its own.

        Apparently, the peculiarity of the breakdown phase lies in the fact that in the preceding 500 - 600 years (territory expansion, migration, population mixing) in the ethnic system accumulates a certain amount of internal contradictions, a certain negative potential, which, reaching a critical point, tears the weakened system from within. We emphasize - the ethnic system, not the social system. The social system collapses afterwards, like a superstructure. The classical contradiction between Russian Westerners and the Sozovenniks was not the only one. By that time, many splinters had already accumulated in our sprawling national organism. Sooner or later all of these were bound to become inflamed.

        In the 1905-1907 revolution, for the first time in Russian history, we see an outbreak of mass terror. Only for the first year, 1905, revolutionaries, which by this time many foreigners, mostly Jews, kill more than five thousand (!) Tzarist servants - from ordinary soldiers and townspeople to governors and ministers. Especially the police and gendarmes suffer.

Many officials refuse to take responsible positions - they are afraid they will be shot or blown up. The government shows its complete helplessness. The only force really opposing the terrorist revolutionaries on the streets is the Black Hundred, the most active part of the Russian people, united locally in Orthodox-monarchist organizations. (Example of self-organization of the Russians without any involvement of the authorities, not only did not help the Black Hundred, but on the contrary - hindered them).

        Liberal leaders, closely associated with the West, on the one hand, incite the revolutionaries, and on the other, scare the government: "If you do not make concessions to us (liberals), they (revolutionaries) will shoot at you!" The first Russian revolution has a pronounced anti-national tone. International financial capital, seeking to remove the obstacle in the face of the Russian autocracy, provides organizational and financial support to all enemies of the Orthodox monarchy, especially - the radical liberals and revolutionaries.

        In the end, the Tzar, under pressure from his liberal entourage, including his relatives, surrenders, and in October 1905 gives the "fighters for democracy" the long-awaited freedom, albeit somewhat limited. After the December outbreak, the first Russian revolution is on the decline.

        However, the internal ethnic disease had not subsided, but continued to worsen. As Pobedonostsev wrote: "The air is teeming with ... atoms of mental and moral epidemics of all kinds: their name is legion. The fish is rotting not only from the head, decay at this time affects the middle and even lower strata of the Russian people". This is especially striking at the domestic level.  Debauchery is rampant in the upper and middle classes. Adultery becomes almost the norm. Homosexuality becomes fashionable.

        Occultism, especially spiritualism, becomes widespread among the aristocracy and the intelligentsia.  For the first time in Russian history drug addicts appear; morphine and cocaine are the most popular.  In the lower classes there are domestic and street crime (a new phenomenon - hooliganism), cheap prostitution, and mass alcoholism.

        At the same time, home-grown and imported sectarianism is gaining strength. Many "prophets" of the people appear.  The number of mental illnesses and suicides skyrocketed in all classes.  In general, the set of symptoms is the same.

        At this time, the second sign of a breakdown becomes clearly visible - a collapse of the passionary tension. The number of sub-passionarians increases in all social strata. There are already many of them in the countryside, among the peasants, but many more in the big cities, where huge numbers of homeless people and criminals are accumulating. Crowds of beggars roam the roads of Russia. Escalating class contradictions with the growth of capitalism, only encourage this naturally occurring process of sub-passionarians reproduction. It is enough to read the Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from G. Ouspensky and Chekhov to Kuprin and Gilyarovsky (of course, with adjustments for "authorial subjectivism"), to see this not very cheerful picture. 

         It is not our task to give a detailed review of the fiction of this period, and Gumilyov himself does not often refer to Russian literature in his writings, but rightly so, it is hard to resist giving a few characteristic examples. The more that literature gives us, something that often cannot be given by dry historical sources - it shows the state of mind of the people.

 **      Chekhov has one very revealing story. It's called "The Cricket". At first glance, nothing special, but it is about that time (late 19th century) when the "passionate depression" had already set in. There, an old shepherd argues about the imminent demise of the world. At first he complains that everything in nature has become worse - the beasts and birds have been killed, forests have been cut down, rivers are drying up, "all plants have gone to waste...".

And there was an eclipse in the sky. In general, it all comes down to one thing... "But people have become better... ...smarter," remarks the interlocutor. "Cleverer, then, but what's the use"? - answers the old man, "God gave man brains, but took away his strength. People have become weak, extremely weak". Take me, for example... I'm worth a pittance... And yet, I have strength... I'm in my seventh decade, and I graze day and day, and even guard the night for two grivnas, and I don't sleep or get cold; my son is smarter than me, and if you put him in my place, he'll ask for a raise or go to hospital tomorrow.  I consume nothing but bread ... while the present man gets tea, vodka, buns ... and all sorts of pampering". With the gentlemen it is even worse: "The present gentleman has surpassed everything; he knows things which he should not know, but what is the use? To look at him takes pity.  He's skinny, shriveled, like a Hungarian or a Frenchman; he's got no sense, no look.  He has no heart, no place, no business, and you can't tell what he wants. Either he's sitting fishing with a fishing-net, or he's lying on his belly and reading a book, or he's stomping and talking among peasants, or he's hungry and getting a job as a clerk. The former bars were half generals, but the present ones are nothing but a scribbler...". In response, the saddened interlocutor begins to complain to the old man about his hard, hopeless life, but then he waves his hand and ends abruptly: "If the world is to perish, let it be sooner! There is no need to make a mess of things and torture people in vain. And the old man answers him: "It's a pity, brother!... Everything will be lost for nothing. And most of all, I pity the people!"

        In this little story - has everything.

         Chekhov very subtly felt his time. And it was a painful time. That's why he dreamed about what a glorious life we'll have in a hundred years. Chekhov was slightly wrong in his forecast: a hundred years later everything turned out to be the same, even worse in some respects. (True, there were several vigorous decades in between.) But the main thing is that he felt that this disease must pass sooner or later (inertia phase).

Chekhov told Gilyarovsky, who was a typical passionarii: "Your heroes are in the past, strong, powerful, with gusts; and my present ones are all acid, sour and whining.  But that's no way to rot without end..."  Someday (in a hundred years) recovery must come. And then Chekhov concludes: "Everything will repeat what it was.  Only you and I will not live to see it. Not in time you were born. Either you are three hundred years late, or you are one hundred years early.  So much for the fracture phase.

         If weakly passionate Chekhov simply and without comment showed all the rottenness of life at that time, the much more passionate Gorky urged to break this rottenness quickly. The young Gorky is a kind of Stepan Razin in literature (feted by the radical intelligentsia).

         He goes to the people to "study life," but instead of the people he encounters mostly sub-par bums, whom he describes in his early works. The real people, that is, the peasants, Gorky did not know at all, and did not love. In 1919, returning from a congress of the rural poor, he wrote in his diary: "I saw thousands of animal faces. And elsewhere, "If the peasant disappeared with his bread, the townsman would learn to get bread in the laboratory."

        His "beggarly" stories, his "Childhood" and "In People," and many other works, are simply overflowing with unhealthy, turgid, nasty people. Of course, Gorky, due to his inner discord, overly thickened the colors. But this is understandable - it was necessary to debunk and condemn the existing system. At the time, the entire "progressive intelligentsia" was waiting for a prophet of revolution, and this prophet showed up.

        Gorky perfectly portrayed the phenomenon that we used to call nihilism, while Gumilyov called it negative attitudes. In periods of passionate depression, this contagion always expands into full bloom. If you read Gorky carefully, it becomes clear that the vast majority of his characters do not like the world around them. From Thomas Gordeev to Klim Samgin. Not the social order, but the world around them. Although they may think that the cause of all the troubles is a terrible social order.

         Among the characters in Gorky's main book, The Life of Klim Samgin, we will not see a single healthy person. Everyone is sick. And if not sick, then they’re scoundrels. Klim Samgin is a moral freak, who believes in nothing and loves no one. It seems to him that he is fighting for "individual freedom," but in fact he is not fighting for anything, but is simply rushing around in fear of life. This is a completely disconnected from Russian soil, some kind of artificial person. A mutant. (Of the same breed as the characters of the artist Bosch, who struck Gorky's imagination.)  He seeks salvation in clever books, grasps one idea, then another, and finds nothing. And that makes him angry.   Samgin, like all the "advanced people" of his time, like Gorky himself, thinks that the main thing is reason, not faith.  And instead of God, he believes in "doctrines," mostly Western. Typical left-liberal intellectual. An unhappy, superfluous man.

        All the other characters in this work are no better. Half-mad merchant Lyutov, hysterical Lydia Varavka, her predatory father, embittered at the whole world, Dronov, nobleman degenerate Turoboev, some sectarians, mystics, mad prophets.  Among them, only one relatively healthy person - the Bolshevik Kutuzov, and he is a kind of fake, a poster.  Indeed, it was a sick time. It always happens in the aftermath of turmoil and revolution. At such times there are many more mentally ill and demoniacs than the normal norm. (Before the suicide attempt in 1887, the young Gorky wrote this note: "...open up my body and see what devil was sitting there.) 

        In Klima Samgin, Gorky, more than anyone else, was able to show the near-revolutionary "intelligentsia" saturated with nihilism. Even more broadly, that educated stratum, in which, at the time, as in a cauldron, a multitude of Salvationist ideas bubbled: from Nietzscheanism and God-building to liberalism and Marxism. Gorky showed well the ideological tossing and turning of the "advanced people" of that time. And his own hesitations, also.          

         And one more characteristic feature. In the works of Gorky absolutely no patriotism. However, as in Chekhov, Bunin and all the other writers of the early XX century, Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky have it, but these writers don't. In Gorky, all the patriots are "black patriots. Or at least uncultured, backward people. Some kind of obscurantists. This is very revealing. By the beginning of the XX century, Russian patriotism is completely out of fashion. (Well, like we had in the 1990s. Patriot means reactionary, the enemy of "freedom".) Kuprin and Korolenko were famous critics of the "Black Hundreds" ideology until 1917. Then, however, they came to their senses.

           Still, Dostoevsky dug the deepest of all the Russian classics! He was one of the first (following Leskov, another great Russian visionary ("Nowhere", "The Soboryane") to sense what was wrong and brilliantly described the onset of a crisis in the minds and souls of Russian people. Dostoevsky showed the main problem of breakdown - the growing disconnection, the split of Russian society, or, as Gumilyov would say, the split of the ethnic field.

        In the words of the elder Zosimas Dostoevsky says: "... in our time everyone is divided into units, everyone retreats into his hole, everyone hides from the other, hides and, what he has, he hides, and ends up pushing people away, pushing people away from himself.  The world proclaimed freedom, in recent times especially, and what do we see in their freedom: only slavery and suicide! For the world says, "You have needs, therefore satiate them..."  And what comes out of this right to multiply your needs? The rich have seclusion and spiritual suicide, and the poor have envy and murder, for the rights have been given, but the means to meet their needs have not yet been given. And further Dostoevsky foreshadows how this devilish temptation to wealth and "freedom" may end:  "...the poor's unquenchable needs and envy are so far, drowned out by drunkenness.  But soon, instead of wine they will get drunk on blood, to that they are led.

        Ethnic disease is further exacerbated by growing class contradictions: "... and there is sin among the people. And the flame of corruption multiplies even apparently hourly, it comes from above. Already merchants crave more and more honors and try to show themselves educated, ... but for this purpose they heinously neglect ancient customs and are ashamed even of the faith of their fathers. He goes to the princes, but is only a corrupted man himself.

         "The Brothers Karamazov is a novel about disunity. The schism and enmity in the Karamazov family is a schism and enmity in the Russian ethnos itself. The European-type rationalist Ivan, the Russian anarchist Dmitri, the God-seeker Alyosha, the simple scoundrel Karamazov the father - all of them are no longer a family, but some rebellious fragments.

People remained (and passionarity remained), but the family-system - no. Moreover, in what is left of the debris of the family there are clear signs of anti-system. And confirmation of this is the main antihero - Smerdyakov, who hates Russia and all of humanity.  "Are you human," says the servant Grigory to Smerdyakov, "you are not human, you came from the bath sputum, that's what you are ...".  This is worse than a sub-passionary. This is a type of moral freak with a "negative worldview" who instinctively strives for total destruction of the world around him and, at the same time, for self-destruction. Such types ("metaphysical nihilists" according to Gumilyov) become more and more numerous in Russia by the beginning of the 20th century. They begin to eat away at the body of the people like cancer cells.  Life-negating anti-systems are actively developing in sick and weak from old age ethnoses - that is, most often, in the phase of fracture and in the phase of obscuration. (Read more about anti-systems below.)  

        Dostoevsky saw something in contemporary reality that neither liberal "thinkers," who operated with superficial notions of "progress vs. backwardness," nor revolutionary publicists, who focused only on class antagonism: "the rich vs. the poor". Dostoyevsky saw the aggravation of a severe ethnic disease. When the most delicate tissues of the national organism are affected. When the nervous system is affected. When the collective brain is affected.

          The great writer showed the ethnic breakdown, as a breakdown of the Russian spirit. And the growing godlessness - as a consequence of this profound break. Dostoevsky prophetically said, and he nailed it: "Russian without Orthodoxy is rubbish...".  And will be saved only through suffering.”

         Dostoevsky's most disliked novel by revolutionaries, The Possessed, is a novel about anti-system. Dostoevsky prefaces it with an epigraph from the Gospel: "Here on the mountain a large herd of pigs grazed, and the demons asked Him to allow them to enter them. He allowed them. The demons, coming out of the man, entered the pigs; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned."

         At the end of the novel the writer prophetically says: "...You see, this is exactly like our Russia. These demons, coming out of the sick and entering the pigs, are all the plagues, all the miasmas, all the uncleanness, all the demons and all the demoniacs, that have accumulated in our great and dear sick, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries!  But a great thought and great will can and will illuminate her from above, just like that mad demoniac, and all these demons, all this filth, all this festering on the surface, ... will come out and will themselves be asking to enter the pigs ... and the sick persons will be healed and "will sit at the feet of the anointed" ... and everyone will stare in amazement ...

         This is Dostoevsky's main foresight!

         And what about the most revered classic of Russian literature - Leo Tolstoy? Count Tolstoy, as a talented man, but spiritually restless, reacts to the breakdown of the ethnic system very peculiar, one might say in a Buddhist way. Along with the preaching of "non-resistance with violence to evil," Tolstoy comes to the denial of the state, science, art and the Orthodox Church itself, that is, in fact - to the rejection of peace. If you can not change anything in this sick world - you have to leave the world. It is possible to join a sect. But not in a negative, but in the "right" way. It is better to go to your own. Tolstoy wants to become a new prophet. He sincerely seeks a means of salvation on the eve of an impending catastrophe. However, unlike Dostoevsky, who stands firmly on Russian Orthodox soil, Tolstoy, as an "educated gentleman" by birth, does not have this firm ground under his feet, or rather, stands on it with only one foot (even if barefoot and with a scythe in his hand). This is why he is reeling in different directions. Tolstoy is the spiritual neglect of Russian aristocracy. In the end – it’s all the same anti-systemicism, nihilism.

         Tolstoy's teaching is some wild mixture of Buddhism, Lutheranism and Russian anarcho-nihilism. Worse - only godless occultism. The writer's followers - the "Tolstovtsy"-are one of the many pre-revolutionary anomalies, a kind of extremists in reverse. (Once, seeing a group of people, Tolstoy remarked, "What unpleasant people!" To which he was replied, "So they are Tolstoyites!")  Instead of a prophet, Tolstoy becomes a false prophet, the banner of a mind-damaged, God-fighting intelligentsia. He rewrites the Gospel (!) and denies the divine essence of Christ. That is why the Great Russian, Saint John of Kronstadt calls him the Antichrist. 

         In the end, seized by pride, Tolstoy reaches a dead end in his heretical quest. And runs away from himself.  It is sad when the passionate depression catches up with you at the end of life. Orthodox faith is rejected, and there is nothing to lean on.

         On the day of Tolstoy's death the monk of the Valaam monastery had a vision: a cloud of demons flew across the sky toward the monastery, and among them - Tolstoy; demons attacked him, grabbed his arms, his legs, finally surrounded him and threw him into the lake.

         "The Silver Age" is already a premonition of a near catastrophe. The Decadents are not only decadent, but also hysterical. Poets and artists are fleeing from terrible reality, some to the avant-garde, some to the occult, some to the depths of their unconscious. And some just into alcohol and drug nightmares, which they then reproduce in their "creativity". They encroach on the sacred: the poets A. Blok and V. Ivanov sing of the prostitute as the Virgin Mary. A descendant of the first Russian Freemason V. Bryusov declares that he does not care whom to praise in his poems - God or the devil. "Aristocrats of the Spirit" Merezhkovsky and Hippius - enthusiastically preach a "new religious philosophy," which in fact is the old philosophy of anti-systems. Of the prose writers, especially popular is the half-mad Leonid Andreev (who is almost forgotten today). He writes about death. And he is read a lot. 

         Beginning in the unhealthy haze of Impressionism, the Silver Age ends with Malevich's Black Hole.  The Passionist depression (energy that drives the nation and its people) reaches its lowest point.

          By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Orthodox Church is noticeably losing its former authority and influence. Along with a landslide decline in passionarity, religious tension is sharply reduced. Faith weakens. On this ground intelligentsia mysticism and common people's sectarianism flourish: the whips, Skoptzy, Dukhobors and other heretics call for escape from an unpleasant reality in their "anti-worlds".

        Historical practice shows that the church, like any other social institution, is subject to degradation. And that is why it needs to be periodically cleansed of all sorts of unhealthy, including sub-passionate elements. This was the case with the Catholic Church, which by the "perilous" 16th century had rotted considerably from within - many of the clergy wallowed in corruption and other sins. It was only after going through the terrible religious wars of the Reformation that the Catholic Church was, to some little extent, purified.

         By the beginning of the 20th century a rather large layer of people who no longer enjoy authority and respect among the Russian Orthodox Church's ministers appeared. This is well traced in the folklore of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In many fairy tales and anecdotes, a common negative character is the priest, who is ridiculed and mocked in every possible way.  Of course, not all priests deserved this attitude, many of whom served and fulfilled their duties honestly.  But if we compare the attitude of the common people toward the priests and monks in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries with that of the early twentieth century, we see a considerable difference. There is less deference.

         But on the other hand, the people themselves, not to mention the "educated" classes of society, had also become different. Faith has weakened. Many people, especially urban proletarians and young people, began to regard church attendance and observance of all religious rules only as a necessary formality. No more than that. It is indicative that when after the February Revolution of 1917 compulsory attendance of church services by soldiers was abolished, about 90% of lower ranks stopped confessing and receiving Holy Communion.

         Dostoevsky described one very eloquent case back in 1876: "The village and the church in the village were on fire, the quartermaster came out and shouted to the people that if they quit defending the church and defend the pub, he would roll out the people a barrel. The church burned down, but the tavern was defended.

         These examples are as yet negligible, in view of the incalculable future horrors...". And then the writer continues: "... But is wine alone rages and corrupts people in our wonderful time? Some kind of intoxication is spreading everywhere, some kind of itch of debauchery. In the people began some unheard of perversion of ideas with widespread worship of materialism.

         Gumilyov, as always, briefly and clearly, showed the ethnic background of this spiritual degradation: "The ideological system, both religious and atheistic, being created at an early stage of ethnogenesis, turns into a symbol. A symbol becomes an indicator of an ethnos, its confession becomes part of the stereotype of behavior.  Denial of a symbol means an exit from the ethnos or a split of the ethnic field.

         Thus, the godlessness of our intelligentsia and nobility, as well as part of the people, meant not only a loss of passionarity, it meant a loss of identity and, as a consequence, the Russian unity.

         The great Dostoevsky in "The Possessed" says in the language of literature, in essence, about the same thing: "Reason and science in the life of peoples has always, now and from the beginning of centuries, performed only a secondary and service position.  Nations are composed and moved by another force, dominant and commanding, but the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable... (Now we know what this force is.) It is the force of ceaseless and ceaseless affirmation of existence and rejection of death.  The goal of the entire popular movement ... is the search for a God, one's own God, and faith in him as the only true God.  A nation is the body of God.  If a great people does not believe that it alone has the truth, it immediately ceases to be a great people and immediately turns into ethnographic material, but no longer a great people.

         Here it is the genius of the writer! No one said it better about the ethnic in Russian literature.  It is generally believed that the Russian Orthodox Church, after 1917 was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. And this is true; but again, here we must take into account that it began to disintegrate, or rather, to weaken, long before the Bolsheviks came. The disorder began with the 17th century schism in the Church. The blows that Peter I and later Catherine II dealt to the Church (of course, ahead of schedule) were in fact a consequence of this growing weakness.

This, in turn, was a consequence of decreasing religious tension in the ethnos, after the passionary overheating of the 16th-17th centuries. Although, of course, there is a reverse relationship - Western ideology was a gas pedal and "deformer" of naturally occurring entropic processes.

          For example, at the time of Joseph of Volotsk (beginning of the 16th century) the secular power also had a desire to oust the Orthodox Church, namely to take from it a part of its lands. But at that time they simply didn't dare to do it, too great was the passionate tension. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this tension has decreased dramatically.

         In this regard, it is interesting to think of the philosopher Berdyaev that the product of the secularization of Orthodox Christianity was socialism. In other words, whereas in Europe the transition from a religious society to a secular one was carried out through the replacement of Christianity with an extremely simplified doctrine of Protestantism (the fracture phase), in Russia it was carried out through the Soviet model, in which Orthodox religion was replaced by a surrogate of faith in the bright future of communism. "The Third Rome was replaced by the Third International. (But here, too, we see an artificial stirring up and deformation of the naturally occurring process of lowering religious tension in the fracture phase. This, however, is already a consequence of globalization.)

         It is therefore indicative that, after the terrible blow inflicted on the churches by the Bolsheviks, there were no serious mass (literally mass) demonstrations against this atrocity. Moreover, some of those who until recently held services in the church rushed to help the new authorities tear down crosses and icons.  Had any power tried to cancel the Orthodox Church in the 16th or 17th centuries, it would have been simply "torn to pieces"! In the XX century it turned out to be possible.

        From the point of view of science - it is an ethnic breakdown. From the perspective of the Orthodox believer - God has punished! For sins.  We can even say that ethnogenesis in the religious, spiritual sense - is the accumulation of sin ... and at the end – it’s the payback. Therefore, if all peoples lived indefinitely long, the End of the World came long ago.

Economy

         The economy of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century is also a mess. Despite its rapid growth rate, a dangerous distortion appears in industry and finance - increasing dependence on foreign capital, primarily Western European capital. The share of foreign capital in such industries as machinery, metallurgy, coal and oil production ranged from 50% to 80% (!) percent. In the advanced, for that time, chemical and electrical industry - about 90% percent. There was foreign capital in all big banks and before the revolution of 1917 its share was over 50% (!) per cent.

        Along with this, the parasitic, speculative capital is gaining strength. There appears a whole layer of swindlers from the economy who taking advantage of the underdevelopment of Russian capitalism, as well as the connivance of the corrupt government, quickly mastered the technology of "spinning" government money and inflating the "financial bubbles".

        After the subversive financial "reform" of Witte (Minister of Finance, associated with the Rothschilds), Russian gold flows freely abroad. At the same time, the government takes more and more loans from foreign banks. By 1907, Russia was in fifth place in the world in terms of economy, and in first place in terms of foreign debt! And a huge amount of credit money is brazenly embezzled. It is telling that some of the Grand Dukes, relatives of the Tzar were involved in financial fraud.

        During the First World War, the national foreign debt increases dramatically. By 1917 Russia is on the verge of losing its financial and economic independence.  The deep contradiction of underdeveloped Russian capitalism from the socio-economic point of view is that with a low surplus product, Russian capitalists seek profits comparable to the European standard, which leads to over-exploitation of workers and their impoverishment.

(After the "golden" financial reform of 1897, the caloric intake of the peasants is reduced by 25%. The slogan: "We won't eat enough, (but we'll take it out!)” It turns out that the boyars, taking advantage of the fruits of the bourgeois-democratic reforms of Alexander II, begin to rob with twice the force, the people, which the Tzar with all his desire, can no longer protect. After the first Russian Revolution the formula: "The tzar is good - the boyars are bad" is replaced by the formula: "Both the boyars are bad and the tzar is bad!", "All are bloodsuckers!"

          In our recent history, this robbery of the "boyars who sold out to foreigners" is called oligarchocracy.

         "As the passionary decline accelerates and, consequently, social restructuring does not keep up with it, there is a desire for radical solutions," Gumilyov wrote of the mechanism of breakdown. This pattern is fully applicable to the revolutionary situation in Russia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Everyone understands that the country is in disarray and that everything must be changed, but at the same time they disagree on the choice of ways and means. Everyone is in a hurry and is pushing and shoving.

         Some advocate a return to the "good old days" (the acmatic phase). These are our conservative monarchists, the ideological heirs of the Slavophiles and the Pseudo-Verniks. There are few of them in the early 20th century and they do not represent a serious force. Others advocate a "civilized life", as "all normal people", i.e. Europeans (the inertial phase). These liberal Europeanizers are in the majority among the "educated public". They are very self-confident, but do not have support among the people. A third group sees the solution in destroying everything to the ground and building a whole new world (which is generally characteristic of the fracture phase). These are the anarchists, the SR, Bolsheviks. They're still small in number, but they enjoy the instinctive support of the most passionate part of the common people, who don't understand much about politics, but can sense the chance of a revolt.

        The war with Germany, which began in 1914, dramatically accelerates the processes of internal disintegration. In the end, everything is resolved in February 1917. Radical liberals in alliance with the top generals (supported by the Masonic-oligarchic circles of the West) weave a plot against the Tzar and come to power. Most of the members of the Provisional Government are Freemasons. And, I must emphasize - the Russian Freemasons! The Lvovs, Konovalovs, Nekrasovs, Tereshchenks, etc. - are not foreigners at all. But there is not a single patriot among them!

         And what is characteristic, - to this utterly "demonized" Provisional Government immediately expresses the support of the Synod - the highest leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church! They actually refuse the tzar and call for prayer for the new "good" government.  Alas, by the beginning of XX century the poison of liberalism penetrates even the most conservative institution - the church.

          The collapse of the centuries-old Russian empire does not bother the broad strata of the "educated public" but even pleases them. Their anti-patriotic stance on the eve of all revolutions was perfectly demonstrated by philosopher Rozanov. From the point of view of a liberal, "Russia does not contain any healthy and valuable grain". Russia, in fact, does not exist. This is a terrible nightmare, a phantom, which crushes the soul of all enlightened people. From this nightmare, we flee abroad, we emigrate, and if we agree to leave ourselves in Russia, then only for the sole reason that we are in full confidence that soon this phantom will be gone, and we will scatter it.

          They have scattered it. Only they ended badly.  Those of them who remained alive after the civil war - landed "in Paris". Only these gentlemen in Paris were not taken as their own. They, like in the 18th century, were still considered "disguised Tatars" there. Therefore, our liberals turned out to be a phantom - they broke away from their native soil, but did not find a new one. It is useful to think about this for those who today are shedding tears over this (most) White Russian emigration. (White Russians were the aristocracy.)

          Well now it is time to give a final answer to the question, why have the majority of Russian nobles and intellectuals lost their national ground and turned into "liberals"? That is; where did these mutant people come from? In terms of ethnic history, the answer is simple - this freak show was born from an extramarital affair with the West. This connection lasted for more than two hundred years and in the kink it took an extremely unhealthy form. The form of a Russian-European ethnic chimera. (Chimera is an incompatible ethnic mixing.)

        "For all non-Romano-Germanic peoples the practice of Europeanization is as harmful as a blood transfusion of incompatible groups."

          So, if we briefly formulate all the negative external influences that Russia experienced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it would be:

1) the invasion of alien ideas

2) invasion of alien people

3. the invasion of alien (financial) capitalism

          Could all of this have been avoided? If we look at the problem from an ethnological perspective, NO. Russia was doomed to be infected by Western ideology and the ensuing over-complication of the ethnic system. Here, we recall, two factors had an impact: geographic and age.

        First, Russia, unlike China, for example, was not separated from Europe by great distances nor, most importantly, by natural boundaries; mountains, seas, deserts. Therefore, our travelers, and not our "travelers", went back and forth almost unhindered (especially since the 18th century). At the same time, some of "ours" stayed abroad (from the 19th century), but an even greater part of "not ours" settled in Russia.

        Second, Russia was far behind Europe in the development of secular culture, especially in science and technology. After all, we are younger than Europeans by 500 years. They just started earlier and did more. And so we constantly had to catch up with them. And in catching up, we, with Russian fervor, borrowed everything we could, both what we needed and what we did not need. More often, what we DIDN’T need. The temptations of a purely materialistic and comfortable European civilization were too great.

Dostoyevsky was right: "We began our European culture with debauchery. And we can add: quickly infected by the French shameful disease of liberalism.

         As a result, by the beginning of the XX century our "European educated" people, who had lost all sense of reality, sincerely thought that if we introduce a parliament in Russia, Russians will immediately begin to change into Europeans, and we will be as good as in Europe. Then this intellectual disorder would repeat itself during the Gorbachev period.

        Nothing can be done, an educated person is weak in the face of the temptation of alien, fascinating ideas. Especially in the phase of breakdown. And, we emphasize, not just a simple fracture, but such a fracture, which in our time coincides with the beginning of open financial globalization (after the French Revolution) and the successful use of information weapons (from the French "Encyclopedia" in the late 18th century - to the "perestroika" magazine "Ogonyok"). Since then, these two factors - ethnic and globalist - have gone hand in hand. All the way, Until now. (2017)

         In 1917, liberals showed themselves to be not bad conspirators, but very bad rulers. They did not know and did not want to know the country they were going to rule. The liberals thought that once bourgeois democracy was proclaimed, everything would work itself out. It did not. Under the control of the "democratic" Provisional Government, the country rapidly began to descend into chaos.       

         In October 1917, the Bolsheviks logically seized power. Why logically? Because both conservatives and liberals are wrong in their choice of ways to overcome the systemic crisis. Conservatives call for going back to the noble monarchy, which is unnatural in itself;  you can only go forward. Liberals, on the contrary, propose to completely change the type of culture (to European) and at the same time to go through a phase! This is even more unnatural because it contradicts the laws of ethnic history, which in their essence are the laws of nature itself. (Why does an "educated" person always want to deceive nature?) The Bolsheviks, unknowingly, offer the most adequate solution to lead the country out of the historical deadlock. Not so much ideologically, but practically.

        Note in parenthesis that we have long accepted to blame all the troubles on the Bolsheviks. Of course, it would be nice to do without them at all. But the thing is that in a breakdown, there is no choice between good and bad; there is only a choice between bad and very bad. In other words, liberals were worse.

        Since the tumultuous events of 1917 - 1920 is a turning point in the modern history of Russia, let us dwell on them in more detail.

____________

         After the October revolution of 1917, the ethnic system finally split into three main groups with different stereotypes of behavior: the "Reds", "Whites", and "Greens". And the different stereotypes, as we remember, are repulsed with each other. The stereotype of behavior of the largest group, the Reds, could be conventionally designated as Russian-collectivist; the Whites as non-Russian-bourgeois-individualist; the Greens as Russian-anarcho-kulak (which indicates a split within the peasantry itself!). This is despite the fact that the top leadership of the Reds consists mainly of non-Russians, while there are many Russian patriots and socialists in the lower ranks of the Whites. But this strangeness is within the dialectical contradiction.

        In the civil war that erupted, the same passionarians are the most active participants.  They have been killing each other for three years. The common man suffers greatly - losses amount to about 15 percent of the population. Lenin wrote of this period: "This state of extreme torment, of exhaustion ... of the Russian people one would like to compare to a man who has been beaten to a pulp, from whom one can expect neither manifestation of energy nor display of capacity for work."

        After the civil war, passionate potential decreases. On the one hand it is bad, but on the other hand, the ethnic system is brought into a state of relative stability. It happens firstly at the expense of replacing the old noble elite, the new - more passionate and ideologically motivated, and secondly, - due to "burnout" of surplus subpassionarians, which are simply destroyed for lack of use. But most importantly: the interfering, foreign element is removed from the ethnos - the so-called white (Russian) people, most of whom, being liberal Westerners, are strangers in their own country. There were few Russian statesmen and monarchists among them, while there were a lot of "reformers" (milyukovs-goochkovs), who served not Russia, but the West. All the main leaders of the White movement: Alexeyev, Kornilov, Denikin and Kolchak were "children of February 1917". They made a dizzying career just after the overthrow of the autocracy, while about half (!) of the old tzarist generals were expelled from the Russian army.

        Since the end of 1918. Denikin and, especially, Kolchak were actually subordinated to the West, which helped them with arms and equipment not at all in order to restore the might of the Russian Empire, but to turn Russia into a dependent territory, ultimately a colony. It is therefore not surprising that almost half (!) of the generals and officers of the General Staff and about one-third of the other Tzarist officers went over to serve in the Red Army. They did not want to fight "for Parliament," they wanted to fight for Russia. Behind the red Communist flag, the former Tzarist officers saw what even in their darkest dreams the leaders of Bolshevism could not see - they saw the restoration of the Russian Empire. That is, behind the class, they saw the national!

         Let us stress this once again: after the February 1917 revolution of the bourgeoisie there was no national, patriotic counter-elite which could have replaced the old, almost rotten one. They had to choose from what they had. And the common people had a gut feeling that the Reds were closer. They will not only talk. They are for social justice and they are against the outsider, the tyrant (ethnic). The peasants did not understand the intricacies of orthodox Marxism and the cosmopolitan theory of the world revolution. Just as at first they did not quite understand the fact that the Bolsheviks were headed by mostly foreigners, who were potentially just as interfering and an alien element in the ethnic system as the liberals were. The awareness of the masses of people of this unpleasant fact will come later, and it will be the main condition for the victory of the Stalinist group in the struggle for power.  

        During all of the Russian revolutions, and in the Civil War, we witness the most important pattern of fracture, discovered by Gumilyov, when "everyone, not really knowing what he was for, knew exactly who he was against". This was especially true for whites and greens, who had no intelligible programs and fought not "for" but "against". First against the Tzar, then against the Commissars, or, in general against any power (Greens). Reds, of course, had their own "for", and it was not the little-understood idea of the world proletarian commune, but a very clear idea of Justice. But still, it was the idea the Bolsheviks had thrown out - "Beat it! Beat the bloodsucking bourgeois! Beat the alien landlord! Beat the baron with glasses and a hat!” That's what's boiling over. That's what the Russian man has been waiting for.

         And he is quite understandable, our long-suffering man. He waited a long time. For a very long time.

        Here it is important to point out again the ethnological background of this mutual hatred. The Russian peasant did not like the landlord, and then the intellectual, not only because the landlord was unjustly rich, and he, the peasant poor, but also because the nobleman became a stranger to the peasant, non-Russian. (The peasantry, on the other hand, constituted an absolute majority of the population in Russia.) The stereotype of the behavior of the "educated gentleman" differed sharply from that of the peasant. The educated gentleman did not go to church, did not know the folk customs, and looked upon the peasant as some kind of savage native. And if he did talk to him, it was about something incomprehensible - about "progress", "emancipation", "freedom of speech" and other things, which are not at all necessary to an ordinary Russian person.  For example, like the lawyer Nikolai Ivanovich from A. Tolstoy's "The Way Through Troubles," who, having arrived at the front in the spring of 1917 as a commissioner of the Provisional Government, began to persuade the soldiers to fight "for freedom," and he was torn apart by the soldiers.

         The Reds, on the other hand, spoke to the people in an intelligible language.

         Of course, to be fair, it should be noted that many of the White Guard officers were decent people and loved Russia in their own way. They correctly discerned the anti-national, destructive nature of International-Bolshevism, and entered into a fierce struggle with it. But ... But they did not know what to do with the Russian people. These knights of the White movement, who were educated in Europe, wanted to "remake the Russians into Europeans". Others, the most evil, simply wanted to drive the boorish boor (peasant) back "into the cellars". That is why they lost.

         Ethnic history, which even today is poorly understood by many "educated people," teaches us that it is impossible to "drive", much less "change" the people who have not yet wasted their passionarity. However, it is possible to change the part of the people that has broken away from its native soil and ceased to be a people.   

         We conclude. If you look at the revolutionary events of the beginning of XX century not from the usual perspective of socio-economic history, but from the standpoint of the theory of ethnogenesis, we will see that in the series of revolutions of 1905 - 1917 and the civil war, two factors - ethnic and social - converged. On the split ethnos, exacerbated by the invasion of Western ideology superimposed acute class contradictions. It was two revolutions in one!

         And here, again, there is a pattern. It is in the kerfuffle that the new, bourgeois man emerges and begins to struggle for his future. After all, at crisis as we remember, there is a confrontation between two behavioral stereotypes that has been stretched over time: religious-traditional and pragmatic-bourgeois. That is why social struggle during this period is always aggravated. This is what characterizes the phase of fracture: due to a sharp decrease in the passionarity of the ethnic system, there is a continuous restructuring of the social system. (This is exactly why Marx's theory, in its collectivist part, was in demand in our country.)     

        Note that something similar happened in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries. (Protestant ethics, the advent of capitalism, a departure from tradition). But as far as Russia is concerned, it is necessary to make allowance for the climatic factor on the one hand, unfavorable for the accumulation of capital, and on the other hand, for financial globalization and technological progress. Recall that our capitalism takes an ugly and therefore particularly hateful form precisely because it does not develop gradually, but by leaps and bounds, like an explosion. If in Europe, capitalization has been going on for many centuries, in Russia it took several decades! This leap becomes physically possible, thanks to advanced Western technology, imported machines and foreign capital. It is on this yeast that the New Russian, wild and greedy capitalist appears. Undone, therefore doomed.

         If we return to the ethnic component of the Russian Revolution, it should be noted that the situation in Russia after the civil war of 1918 - 1920 is partly reminiscent of the situation in France at the end of the crisis phase. When Catholics drove the irreconcilable Huguenot Protestants out of the country, the ethnic system regained its stability. The stereotypes of French-Catholic and French-Huguenot behavior were very different - they could not get along together. But when the tensions in Europe came to an end, religious enmity gave way not so much to tolerance, but rather to indifference: what difference does it make to me if you are Catholic or Protestant? In the phase of inertia, violent passions are replaced by the simple philistine principle - live for yourself and let others live.

        So, jumping ahead a bit, if we do enter the quiet phase of inertia, the age-old enmity between reds and whites will end by itself. (Especially since today, for some reason, whites are no longer considered classical liberals, but Orthodox monarchists.) This process of smoothing things over has already begun. For example, the 2007 reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) speaks in favor of overcoming the long ethnic split.

          The Bolsheviks, taking power, which in October 1917, when Russia was "lying on the sidewalk," began immediately to bring order to the country. It was necessary to stop the anarchy that had gained momentum during the eight months of liberal-bourgeois "rule. The Bolsheviks were cool (even too cool!), but the disintegration of the country was stopped. This is the essence of October!

The October 1917 Revolution, not in the ideological sense, but in the historical sense, was the overcoming of the chaos caused by the liberal-Masonic coup of February 1917. Again, if this had not happened, Russia would have lost its independence, and its territory would have been divided between England, France, Japan and the United States into spheres of influence. (The first attempt to "rebuild" and "reform" Russia was made by the world oligarchy at that time.)

         It is important to emphasize that after October 1917, in addition to the political task, the most important economic task was solved. The Bolsheviks did something that neither monarchists nor liberals would have done - they refused to pay the tzarist debts! That is, they pulled Russia out of an almost tightened financial noose.

         Another thing is that the Bolshevik leaders of the 1917 model were not at all concerned about the fate of the Russian state. Like the liberals, they were financed from abroad, and played their own game, in which there was no place for a national ideology. The Bolsheviks relied on cosmopolitan Marxism, the most radical Western doctrine. The Communists of the first wave were staunch internationalist revolutionaries. From the outset, they were focused on the world revolution, and Russia was seen only as a "pile of brushwood," from which the world fire would be kindled. Again, they did not even think about any patriotism. Moreover, "Russian great-power chauvinism" became one of the main enemies of the new government, and up until the late 1920s, the word "patriot" meant the same thing as a counter-revolutionary. Molotov recalled, "Lenin saw the main danger in Great Russian chauvinism... It is his merit that he brought up communists in this way.

        Thus, from the ethnological point of view, after October 1917 in the shaken ethnic system there was a rotation of political chimeras: from behind the liberal chimera emerged the cosmopolitan chimera, more energetic and more capable.

        If we remember Gumilyov's position on bipolarity in ethnogenesis, then we can conclude that most of the revolutionaries of the first wave were typical passionarians with a negative sign, geared not toward complicating, but toward simplifying the system. They were anti-systemic passionaries. The famous Marxist call "Proletarians of all countries unite! - was the slogan of the first red globalizers in history, seriously aiming to merge all states and nations into one planetary commune.

        In the first decade after the revolution everything Russian was dealt a terrible blow. The Orthodox Church suffered. Russian culture suffered. Affected many honest and patriotic Russian people.  Almost everything that was in Russia before October 1917, was declared reactionary and harmful. For example, the new school programs gave a thousand years of Russian history in a stripped-down form and with sneering comments, and the main emphasis was placed on the history of the global revolutionary movement. It was the same with Russian literature: most Russian writers were banned. Pushkin was a "serf", Lermontov a "tzarist officer", Dostoevsky an "obscurantist" and a "Black Hundreds"... Even Yesenin, who embraced the revolution, was accused of "Russian chauvinism" and eventually killed. Until the early 1930s, schools taught mainly the works of revolutionary-democratic writers. In cultural life, the cosmopolitan Proletkult reigned. Painting was ruled by "new" artists like Malevich, who declared that "Imitative (i.e., classical. - Author.) art should be destroyed like the armies of imperialism"; theater was dominated by the "inventor" Meyerhold, who disfigured Russian plays by saying that we should "renounce Russia".

        Traditional values such as family, marriage, love of country, respect for one's past were rejected as bourgeois remnants. And liberated women like Kollontai openly advocated free sexual relations "without prejudice," and the socialist upbringing of children.

         And all this was, alas, quite natural. Revolution as you know has two stages: first the stage of destruction, then the stage of creation - the construction of the new on the wreckage of the old. Most of the revolutionaries who came to power in October 1917 were by their nature typical destroyers. Moreover they were very talented and energetic. They did not just fulfilled their historical task - the destruction of the old and rotten - but greatly exceeded it. "Enemies of the revolution" were beaten with terrifying cruelty; and not only liberals and socialists, but many Russian patriots as well.

          It was not a coincidence that among the revolutionaries of the first wave there were many foreigners, primarily Jews. As V. Kozhinov accurately noted: there is always less pity to break the strangers than to your own people. Inorodtsy took an active part in the Russian revolt, and at the crucial stage, which threatened a new Pugachevschina, (coup), led it, organizing and directing it in the right direction.

          There was no Russian head of its own, capable of restoring order under conditions of ethnic division (i.e., general disorder and internecine strife!). Russian Black Hundreds patriots, of which there were many within the nation, after 1907, not only could not find a support in the government, but through the efforts of Stolypin, and then the Provisional Government, they were deprived of a unified leadership and organizations. In 1917 they were completely disoriented and no longer knew whom to defend.

        In history, as we know, there are no coincidences on a global scale. On the whole, it is possible to agree with the words of one of the staunch opponents of the Soviets, who argued that the Bolsheviks' rise to power was logical - they were "an instrument of historical inevitability." And even more, "ruled Russia by God's wrath and assent".

        But most importantly, we must not forget the fact that the majority of the common people sincerely supported the Soviet power. It was their power - the poor and middle peasants, together with the workers amounted to almost 80 percent (!) of the population of the country.

         It would therefore be a great simplification to explain both revolutions of 1917 by the ill will of Russia's foreign and domestic enemies alone. (And such interpretations predominate in national-patriotic circles today.) Enemies, of course, did exist, and lots of them. But it is necessary to separate the narrow layer of leaders from the broad masses of the people, who were the main engine of the revolution.

        The revolution was ripe within Russia itself. It was a Russian revolution. It was prepared by the entire course of our history, starting with the Church Schism in the XVII century and the anti-national innovations of Peter the Great. These two time bombs let us repeat, were laid under the tzarist throne long before the appearance of the revolutionaries. The third time bomb was wild capitalism, legalized by the reforms of Alexander II, (emancipation of Russia's serfs in 1861, they weren’t serfs in name only, but they lived the same as before).

       The revolution of 1917 is rooted in the Russian ethnic divide, in the growth of Russian sub-passionality, in the accumulation of Russian hatred of the "bourgeoisie" and in the degradation of the Russian nobility. Ethnic fracture of the nineteenth century sharpened all the old and new contradictions - and an explosion followed. Well, the liberal, and then Bolshevik villain conspirators were only the catalysts and guides of this explosion. (A nadoklom is when one's own, beat one's own, and another's actively assists them.)       

        Thus, in the October Revolution of 1917 there was a superposition of two processes that had long been going on in parallel: internal (nadoklom, capitalism) and external (villains). The Bolsheviks saddled the Russian revolt, toughened it with their God-fighting and hatred of historical Russia, painting the revolution of men with satanic black colors! 

        However, when the revolutionary fighting was over, and a period of creation came, the country needed completely different people. Because to destroy is one thing, and to build is quite another. These two elements can very rarely be combined in one person. Lenin, for example, combined them to a certain extent - he was both a fanatical revolutionary subversive and a builder of a new society. Although the former certainly prevailed over the latter. (It is indicative that Lenin had a very "over-complicated" ethnic origin: Russian-German-Swedish-Jewish-Kalmykian, with possible variants.) Stalin, on the contrary, was clearly dominated by practical, creative origins. He was a revolutionary, of course, not of the last, but not at all leading. But he was an outstanding ruler. (It is also telling that the late Stalin did not consider himself a Georgian, but a "Russian of Georgian descent".)

         By the mid-20s, it was clear that there would be no world revolution. Stalin and Bukharin put forward the thesis of building socialism "in one country." (True communism would come later.) Which meant: enough revolutions - time to build. It's time to rebuild the empire. Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev spoke out sharply against it. They believed that without the victory of the Communist revolution in Europe, Russia had no chance to survive alone. Trotsky, in 1923, proposed to move the Red Army to Germany, where it was believed there was a revolutionary situation - to bring the revolution to Europe on bayonets.

         Thus, after the Civil War, there was a split in Bolshevism into two directions, two parties - the national, led by Stalin, and the international, or rather - left-globalist, led by Trotsky. Until the late 20's there was a bitter struggle between them. And this struggle was logically won by Stalin (he will finally win in the late 30's - early 40's). But he won not because he was more cunning than Trotsky, but because he kept pace with history, which demanded to return the country to its own, Russian way. Stalin was more national than Trotsky. That is why he was followed by the majority - both in the party and among the people. And Trotsky, the destroyer, went against history and was thrown overboard. The well-known law worked for us - the ethnic is always greater than the class. Even under unfavorable conditions of crisis and fracture.

        In 1928, already removed from power but not yet deported abroad, Trotsky wrote that the struggle against the old Bolshevik internationalists "forms an inseparable part of Stalin's ideology of National Socialism," and that "After every revolution reaction began with the struggle against outsiders and against foreigners”. Of course, Trotsky greatly exaggerated about Stalinist national socialism. Stalin was not a Russian nationalist. Until 1917 he was a typical national revolutionary, and after the revolution he became a Russian imperialist. But here it is important that Trotsky was well aware that after each revolution there is a setback, a reaction, during which "the revolution devours its children”. However, even understanding this, he, being a typical passionary with a minus sign, fanatically fought Stalin to the end.

         In his book "Betrayed Revolution" (1936) Trotsky accuses Stalin of committing a counter-revolutionary coup. Trotsky resents that "yesterday's class enemies are successfully assimilated by Soviet society" - restrictions on social origin were abolished; there is a turn toward petty bourgeoisie - collective farmers are allowed to own homesteads, their own cows and pigs, and combine and tractor drivers receive too high wages. (Trotsky's project - labor armies). Trotsky is particularly irritated that there is a resurgence of the family, that "nest of the Middle Ages," in Soviet society. His ideal is the isolation of children from "backward" parents, a "system of public education and care" where children will be taught communism. "Along with the seventh commandment (on the sin of adultery), the fifth commandment (on honoring the father and the mother) is completely reinstated," Trotsky writes. And this is very bad - he thinks - a little more, and the church will be restored.

         If an anti-national revolutionary Trotsky came to power, then the history of Russia just ended. So we can say that the instinct of self-preservation of the nation worked then. The people who finally came to their senses after the atrocities and outrages of revolutionary Troubles, remembered that they are the Russian people, and demanded from the authorities to restore the historical Russia. And this pressure on the government could not but lead to the "nationalization" of power, a return to national traditions and values in the new historical conditions. All this once again confirmed the old, but not everyone is aware of the truth that the ruling elite is certainly important, but in the end, it is the people themselves who make their own history. Provided that they have not lost their passionarity.

        Since the early to mid-thirties, there has been a patriotic upheaval in the country. Pre-revolutionary Russian history and Russian literature were rehabilitated and sent back into the school. Support is given to writers of national direction. (A striking example is Sholokhov, who was hounded and almost let down by the Trotskyists and saved by Stalin himself at the last minute.)

         From the late 30-ies there was a revolution in the cinematography, powerful national-patriotic films were shot: "Alexander Nevsky", "Ivan the Terrible", "Minin and Pozharsky", "Peter I", "Suvorov" and others. The same turn happens in the theater - it ceases to be "experimental". The "avant-garde" is removed from painting. By the end of the 30's the pressure on the church is reduced; its revival begins in 1943 at the initiative of Stalin. Officer ranks were returned to the army, in 1943 - shoulder straps; the Cossacks were restored. There are changes in everyday life. For example, people returned to the Christmas tree, which after 1917 was declared a bourgeois-religious relic. Many other things also change. 

         In 1936-38 a radical purge of the ruling elite takes place. The Trotskyite cosmopolitans, who constitute a very large percentage of the ruling class and the intelligentsia, are the first to fall under it. "The revolution devours its children." At the same time, however, the repression also affects many innocent people. First and foremost, by conspiracies and false denunciations, which are often unchecked by zealous and unscrupulous local executors. But, unfortunately, this is what happens with any mass repression, when the command is given, the flywheel is started and the plan has to be "pushed. As already mentioned, there are no other clean performers of dirty work. However, the main reason for the so-called excesses is not even that, but that the leadership of the OGPU - NKVD and the provincial authorities before 1938 were dominated by Russophobe Trotskyites, who used the repression machine to destroy Russian patriots - from ordinary peasants to leaders at all levels.

        As for the blame for these "overreaches" of Stalin himself, it was certainly there, because the ruler must be responsible for everything. Both for the "forest" that is cut down and for the "splinters" that fly. The only thing that can justify Stalin in this period is the undeniable fact that before 1939-40, he did not yet have all the power.

        And so he was forced to reckon with the sprawling party elite, which often sabotaged many of his endeavors. For example, an attempt to introduce an alternative election of party and Soviet "bosses" in 1935 - 36.  Stalin called this new party elite in his heart - "a cursed caste". (Doesn't that remind you of anything...?)

        Describing the cruelties of the European breakdown, Gumilyov emphasized the difference between the first and the second Inquisition, which raged during the Reformation, and which, along with the guilty, very often sent to the stake innocent people accused of witchcraft. Unlike the first Inquisition, the Second Inquisition did not check the denunciations. And there were a lot of denunciations. "Trials against witches, Gumilyov wrote, began in the XV century, and no one accused the poor women of heresy and fighting against the church. They were burned for the fact that they were not like the others.  The result was a kind of genocide: honest people who were afraid to inform, talented, causing envy, and morally impure dullards multiplied, which gave birth to the generation of the European philistine, characteristic of the 19th century.

        There is a direct parallel to the excesses and mass denunciation during Stalin's repressions (especially in 1937-38), from which Gumilyov himself suffered. 14 years of prisons and camps - that's serious.

        All this, of course, influenced both Gumilyov's attitude to Stalin's personality and his assessment of the entire era of Stalinism. (The scholar said of Stalin that "he is a typical combination of passionarity with a negative choice.") However, despite the mental trauma inflicted on him by the system, Gumilyov was quite aware of the distinction between the Bolsheviks-cosmopolitans of the first wave and the communist-statists of late Stalinism, and even called the latter "the Black Hundred Wing" in the Communist Party. At the same time, he considered the direct culprits of his troubles as fellow historians, who wrote denunciations against him.

         One of the scholar's lectures (in 1989) was a case in point. In the course of his lecture, Lev Nikolayevich mentioned how he had joined an expedition after his first term, and found himself in a remote taiga, where "for a thousand kilometers there was not a single opera. A young female listener said sympathetically, "Of course! They were the ones who put you away!" - "No, not them, my fellow scientists." The girl's mouth dropped open.

        Crises in crisis are times when all kinds of destructive elements rise to the surface like dirty foam. And these "elements" have to be dealt with. It is a question of survival. But, again, the problem is that objectively necessary repression is always used by these destroyers ("negativists") and their sub-passionary allies for their own nefarious purposes, fabricating denunciations against honest, talented and patriotic people. They are especially zealous when they themselves are caught.

        General Gorbatov, who was subjected to repressions in 1938, recollected: "My neighbor in the pits, a big boss...boasted that he slandered 300 people" (!). Decades later Vyacheslav Molotov spoke about repressions: "To purge the party is very dangerous. And they will start to purge the best ... who speak honestly, directly. And those who have everything covered up, who are ready to serve their superiors, they retain their positions". And elsewhere: "And we were framed up on purpose, and the innocent were caught... But we could not delay, the war was being prepared".

        It follows that even justified repressions against real rather than fictitious enemies of the people are always costly to the state and to the people.

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