7. Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, Gumilev
Part 3, XII. Thoughts on World History
[Again, so many historical references, interesting and a bit confusing, going too fast.]
ETHNOS IN HISTORY, WHICH SETS OUT THE GENERALLY ACCEPTED WAYS OF STUDYING ETHNIC PHENOMENA, AND SHOWS THAT THE DESIRED RESULT CANNOT BE OBTAINED.
TWO ASPECTS OF WORLD HISTORY
History is the science of events in their connection and sequence. But there are many events, and their connections vary from one people to another. The task of any science is to review the whole subject under study, and history is no exception. Consequently, it is necessary to find a convenient point of review, and here arises the need for theory to precede practice, i.e. the choice of aspect. The aspect of study does not follow from this or that philosophical construction, it is dictated exclusively by practical considerations, and we refer it to the field of the theory of science only because its choice is determined not by the accumulation of material, but by the goal set at the beginning of the study. Our goal is to understand World History as the formation of one of the Earth's shells - the Ethnosphere.
In the theory of historical thought there have long been two concepts that are still in use today: world-historical and cultural-historical. The first one treats the history of peoples as a single process of progressive development, which more or less captured all the areas inhabited by people. It was first formulated in the Middle Ages as the concept of the "four empires" of the past: the Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and the fifth, the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation," which, together with the papal throne, led the Catholic unity that emerged in Western Europe at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries (Chretiente).
In this system of interpretation, "progress" was seen as the gradual expansion of territories subject to imperial authority.
When, however, in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Reformation destroyed the ideological unity of Western Europe and undermined the political hegemony of the emperors of the Habsburg dynasty, the world-historical concept still held, and was simply formulated somewhat differently. Now, "civilization" was recognized as progressive, meaning the culture of Western, again, Romano-Germanic Europe, and the former "pagans" and "schismatics" were simply renamed "savage" and "backward" peoples. Both were even attempted to be called "non-historical." This system, properly referred to as "Eurocentrism," was perceived in the nineteenth century, often unconsciously, as self-evidently implicit and not requiring proof.
The cultural-historical concept was first declared by Herodotus, who contrasted Europe with Asia. By Europe he meant the system of Hellenic polities, and by Asia he meant the Persian monarchy. Subsequently, Scythia and Ethiopia, which resembled neither Hellas nor Iran, had to be added here, and the list of cultural regions kept expanding until the entire oikumene was divided into cultural-historical areas. In the first approximation they are considered to be such in the Old World, besides Western Europe: the Middle East or Levant, India, China, the island cultural area of the Pacific Ocean, the Eurasian steppe area, Africa south of the Sahara and the circumpolar area with rudimentary ethnic groups.
The main difference between the cultural-historical school and the world-historical school is the postulate: each cultural area has its own way of development, and, therefore, one cannot speak of "backwardness" or "stagnation" of non-European peoples, but can only note their distinctiveness. The major representatives of the cultural-historical school in the nineteenth century were F. Ratzel, N. Danilevsky and K. N. Leontiev, and in the twentieth century O. Spengler, and O. N. Leontief. - O. Spengler and A. Toynbee.
WHY I DON'T AGREE WITH A. TOYNBEE
We will not go into the history of the question, as it would lead us too far away. But one author still should not be excluded from consideration. A. Toynbee proposed the concept of the emergence of "civilizations", based on the use of geographical source. In brief, it boils down to the following:
The unit of history is "society". "Societies" are divided into two classes:
"primitive," not developing, and "civilizations," of which there are twenty-one in sixteen regions. Consequently, it is assumed that two or three civilizations arose sequentially in the same territory, which are then called "daughter civilizations. Such are the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Minoan, Hellenic and orthodox Christian ones in the Balkan Peninsula, the Indian (ancient) and Hindu (medieval) in Hindustan.
In addition, "abortive" civilizations - Irish, Scandinavians, Central Asian Nestorians, and "delayed" civilizations - Eskimos, Ottomans, nomads of Eurasia, Spartans, and Polynesians - are singled out in special sections.
According to A. Toynbee, the development of societies is carried out through mimesis, i.e., imitation. In primitive societies, the imitation of elders and ancestors makes these societies static, and in "civilizations" - creative individuals, which creates the dynamics of development. Therefore, the main problem of history is to find the factor of dynamism, with A. Toynbee rejecting racism. There remains the influence of the geographical environment, and here Toynbee offers a very original solution: "Man achieves civilization not because of a biological gift (heredity) or the easy conditions of the geographical environment, but in response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty, inspiring him to a hitherto unprecedented effort"[1].
So, talent and creativity are seen as a reactive state of the organism to an external stimulus, in connection with which one of the chapters (VI) is entitled "The Worthiness of Adversity." "Challenges" are divided into three varieties:
1. Adverse natural conditions, such as the swamps in the Nile Delta, a challenge to the ancient Egyptians; the tropical forest of the Yucatan, a challenge to the Mayans; the waves of the Aegean Sea, a challenge to the Hellenes: forests and frost, a challenge to the Russians. According to this conception, English culture should be a product of rain and fog, but Toynbee does not claim this.
2. The invasion of foreigners, which can also be seen as a geographical moment (partial migrations). Thus, according to A. Toynbee, Austria overtook Bavaria and Baden in development because it was attacked by the Turks (p. 119). However, the Turks attacked Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary first, and they responded to the challenge by capitulating, and Austria was defended by the Hussars of Jan Sobieski. The example speaks not in favor of the concept, but against it.
3. Thus, the collapse of the Helleno-Roman civilization "caused" the Byzantine and Western European civilizations as a reaction to the outrages of the ancient Greeks. This, too, can be attributed to geographical conditions, taken with the time coordinate (change of biocenosis), but, alas, the "debauchery" of Byzantium was not inferior to that of Rome, and between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the creation of viable feudal kingdoms lay over 300 years. The reaction was somewhat overdue.
But the most important thing - the relationship of man to the landscape - A. Toynbee's concept is not solved, but confused. The thesis, according to which the harsh nature stimulates a person to increased activity, on the one hand, is a variant of geographical determinism, but on the other - simply wrong. The climate near Kiev, where the ancient Russian state was formed, was by no means harsh. The statement that "the domination of the steppe requires so much energy from the nomads that there is nothing left over" (p. 167-169), shows the ignorance of the author.
The Altai and Onon boron, where the Turks and Mongols formed, are resort places. If the sea that washes over Greece and Scandinavia is a "challenge," then why did the Greeks "give an answer to it" only in the eighth to sixth centuries B.C., and the Scandinavians in the ninth to twelfth centuries A.D.? And in other eras, there were no victorious Hellenes, no desperate predatory Phoenicians, no formidable Vikings, and there were sponge fishermen or herring fishermen? The Sumerians made an Eden out of Dworech, "separating the water from the land," and the Turks so neglected everything that it became a swamp again, although, according to A. Toynbee, they should have answered the "challenge" of the Tigris and Euphrates. All wrong.
No less arbitrary seems the geographical classification of civilization by region. The Byzantine and Turkish empires are enlisted in one civilization by Toynbee only because they were located on one territory, and not the Greeks and Albanians, but the Ottomans are declared as "detained" (?!) for some reason. The "Syrian civilization" got into the Judean Kingdom, the Achaemenid Empire and the Arab Caliphate, and Sumer and Babylon are divided into mother and daughter. Obviously, the criterion for classification was the arbitrariness of the author.
I have dwelt so extensively on this subject because I thought it necessary to show how easily a fruitful scientific idea can be compromised by a weak argumentation and an unfortunate application of an ill-conceived principle. I deliberately do not touch the sociological constructions of A. Toynbee, even though they contradict the chronology and the real course of events to no lesser extent. But this is clear to most readers, while the geographical concept of "challenge and response" is still taken seriously by many. And the most unfortunate thing is that after such experiences there is always a tendency to refuse to take into account and consider geographical data at all, tacitly considering nature as a stable value, not affecting historical processes. The development of an arbitrary postulate by speculative constructions leads science to a dead end.
So, both approaches have some merits and some major drawbacks. The latter are especially noticeable in the development of our theme. Thus, from the viewpoint of the world-historical school the Turkic-Mongolian peoples and their specific nomadic culture can neither be referred to eastern civilizations, nor be classified as "savages". Hence they fall out of the historian-theorist's field of vision. But because the Türks and Mongols quite strongly asserted their importance in human history, repeated attempts have been made to view them as a "barbarian periphery" of China, Iran, and Byzantium, which gave already a picture so distorted by the formulation of the problem that it simply is not good for the scientific perception. Deadlock!
At the same time, the cultural-historical school, which finds a place for the role of the Turks in human history, is not able to give an explanation of the internal patterns of their historical development, because these patterns are not only local, but also a variant of the general. And without taking into account the general, the particulars are incomprehensible, because with this approach they are incomparable and incommensurable. Unjustified discontinuities arise in raising the history of mankind. Also a dead end!
WHY I DISAGREE WITH N. I. CONRAD
But perhaps a third way would prove correct: to take from each concept a rational grain and combine them to get as close to the goal as possible. For example, it is suggested to distinguish transition periods leading from one formation and leading towards another: 1) time of transition from ancient society to the Middle Ages - Hellenism; 2) time of transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age - Renaissance; 3) time of transition from the New Age to the Newest - the middle of the 19th c. As an indicator we attract literary history: "... each (of three eras) opens with a genius literary work, announcing its coming. The first was announced by Augustine's On the City of God, the second by The Divine Comedy, the third by The Communist Manifesto.
The author of the new concept is very consistent. He searches for analogous epochs in the cultural development of non-European countries, which he does not consider either inferior or culturally dependent on Western Europe. He writes: "The transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages in the Chinese and Iranians was also accompanied by a revolution of minds... what in China is summarily called Taoism, in Iran Manichaeism. This is joined by an external factor: a system of ideology that came from outside. In China it was Buddhism, in Iran it was Islam. In the same way the era of "Renaissance" or "Renewal" can be traced. In China it was the eighth century in Central Asia, Asia, Iran and northwest India - the ninth century, finally, in Italy - the thirteenth century[4]. The third transitional epoch is not covered, which is correct, for it is not finished.
We have chosen this place from N. I. Conrad's large book only because here the author's idea is expressed most prominently and clearly. In other essays, Conrad traces not only transitional periods, but also stable forms of social existence, which he calls by established terms: Antiquity, Middle Ages, New Age[5]. He sees the main direction of the historical process in the enlargement of peoples and the expansion of the area of culture, while recognizing the polycentric nature of the genesis of world civilization and the presence of local features in the development of peoples[6]. It would seem that the way out of the impasse has been found, but let us take a closer look at the fundamental aspect of the thesis stated above.
In N.I. Konrad's concept the chronological disproportionality of the transition epochs is striking. The Hellenistic era began in the 4th century B.C. and really coincided with the crisis of the antique worldview. N.I. Konrad brings this "transitional period" up to Augustine, i.e. to V century A.D. Total - about 900 years.
The Renaissance period in Italy lasts for 150-200 years, and the third transitional epoch - half a century. Involuntarily suggests the thought that the author was dominated by the aberration of proximity, ie phenomena close to him seemed more significant than the phenomena of the distant. It is enough to compare Hellenism with the Renaissance to show that these phenomena are incommensurable, and even more - that they are values of a different order. Let us try to reconsider the problem anew, not involving new information (which will be done in its place), but confining ourselves to comparing old, indisputable data with a new, original idea. If the latter is correct, coincidence is inevitable.
ON HELLENISM.
From 336 B.C., that is, from the time when Alexander the Great crushed the hegemony of Thebes, the freedom of Athens, the greatness of Persia, the independence of India and the ancient culture of Egypt (by raising up Alexandria) to the composition of the Divine Comedy, the following happened:
The Parthians came to Iran after a brief Macedonian occupation from the Aral Sea steppes, first fascinated by the brilliance of Hellenic culture and then carried away by the depths of Zoroastrianism (250 B.C.-224 A.D.). Then came the Iranian reaction, which in modern times would be called a national reaction. Artashir Papagan broke the hegemony of the aristocracy and relied on the alliance of the petty nobility (dekhkans) and the clergy (mobeds), using the spared Parthian aristocrats as a mounted army.
At the beginning of the 6th century the nobleman Mazdak seized power and the extermination of the nobility and the clergy began, both representing the most intellectual part of the population. The coup of Khosrow Anushirvan in 530 put an end to the reform and the executions associated with it, but brought to power soldiering, yes, in the full sense of the word, for professional soldiers were paid a daily wage. The soldier's leader Chubin seized the throne in 590, but the whole Zemshchina rose up against him and he was defeated.
The last period (591-651) was the steady decay of culture and the state system until the Arab conquest, which entailed the emigration and death of all literate and educated Persians, after which a new people, with a new culture and even a new language, began to emerge.
During the period described, five changes occurred in the sphere of culture, each of which, in terms of their significance within a given system (in our case Iranian culture) is equal to the Italian Renaissance, though not similar to it either in genesis or in character and consequences: 1. The Hellenization of the Parthian steppes, i.e., the perception of an alien civilization. 2. The Iranization of the Parthian nobility, an attempt at rapprochement with their own people. 3. The Zoroastrian victory of 224-226 over the Parthian aristocracy - the alliance of throne and altar. 4. Mazdakism. 5. Reaction of Mithraism, for the Armenians called Bahram Chubin "Mihr worshipper, rebel." And against this background, a slight whiff of Christian and Gnostic ideas that affected a tiny fraction of the refined and unstable intelligentsia.
No! I cannot believe that this thousand-year period of intense creative life was only a transitional period between the Macedonian and Arab occupations. For Iran, this Parthian-Sanid period, with reminiscences like the revolt of Sumbad Magh, Babek, the plot of Afshin, and other manifestations of anti-Arab struggle, is not equivalent to the Italian Renaissance, but to the whole Romano-Germanic culture of Western Europe, from the Carolingians to the Bonapartists. A thousand years equals a thousand years, although the cultures being compared are not at all alike. But it is "otherness," as well as similarity, that is one of the tenets of N. I. Conrad's concept.
In Rome, Hellenism can be counted from one of two dates: 1) from the era of the Twelve Tables, when a group of exiles who settled on the seven hills organized themselves along the lines of the Greek polis. But if so, then almost all republican Rome falls here, and obviously this date is not suitable for the beginning of the transition period; 2) the cultural Hellenization of Rome is usually attributed to the activity of the Scipio circle in the 2nd century B.C. That's true, but N.I. Conrad attributes the Roman Republic not to the transition period, but to the establishment of the slave-owning formation. Hence, for a "transitional period" only the epoch of empire is left, which is described by N.I. Konrad as "the time of the slave-holding formations". I. Konrad claims as "a time of zenith and at the same time of disintegration". So be it.
But if so, even here we can and should distinguish several cultural and at the same time socio-political periods, each of which is equivalent to the Italian Renaissance. I repeat, equivalence is asserted only in terms of importance to contemporaries, and not at all in terms of the similarity of the nature of the phenomena.
The ancient Romans themselves did not at all regard the republic of the second or first centuries B.C. as an established political form. From the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C. to the death of Antony in 30 B.C. Rome knew no peace. The civil wars had so emaciated the Roman senate and people that the survivors were glad of any firm authority.
The "Golden Mediocrity" proclaimed by Octavian Augustus was a slogan of political stabilization, strengthening military power, and looking to the past for instructive examples. This system of worldview lasted until the death of Marcus Aurelius, i.e., about 200 years. If we consider the activities of Han Yu and the other Confucians as a "Renaissance" in China, then Pliny, Titus Livius, and Sastonius are properly and consistently characterized as a "Renaissance of antiquity" in Rome itself. After all, that is how we have agreed on the term.
The second period is the rapid conquest of Rome by Asiatic cultures. Beginning in the third century the veil-covered Isis, the thrice-magnificent Hermes, the mother of gods - Cybele, the enchantress Astarte, and, finally, the soldier-god Mitra - the unconquerable Sun - have all ruled the minds here. From Aurelian to Julian-the-Apostate, Mithraism was the state religion and official worldview of the Roman Empire. This cultural upheaval was far more significant than humanism or even the Reformation. After all, the Italians and Germans in the 16th century remained good Christians, changing only aesthetic and political ideas, and not that radically.
But even more monumental was the third shift, which swept over the entire Mediterranean in the first and fourth centuries A.D. It is usually associated with the spread of Christianity, but what is usually overlooked is that Christianity was only one of the streams of new ideas that swept over the Roman Empire. At the same time as the Christians were preached by the Gnostics of Egypt - Valentinus and Basilides, who cursed the Materia, the Gnostics of Syria - Saturninus and Mani, who equalized the elements of Good and the Markeonites, who denied the sanctity of the Old Testament, the Origenists, who insisted on its symbolic interpretation, and finally, the Gnostics, who proclaimed the supreme monism - the fullness of all things - the Divine Pleroma.
The closest to the Christian theodicy of Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian and the furthest from ancient Platonism were the Neo-platonists, despite the fact that they appropriated Plato's name to name their original doctrine. N.I. Konrad subtly notes that "the revolution of minds began and unfolded in the Roman East, but it also captured the Greco-Latin part of the "Roman circle of lands", in which there was its own crisis of the old established worldview"[8].
This is true, but then this element for the cultural history of Europe cannot be regarded as a transitional period. Indeed, what had Christianity or Manichaeism to do with the rationalistic reasoning of Seneca, the bloody mysteries of Aurelian in the Mithraeum, or the orgiastic entertainments of Heliogabalus? The new creative stream of worldview equally rejected both. It swept away decrepit ancient thought rather than continuing it. In other words, this is not a "transition period," but the breaking off of the old tradition and the creation of a new one.
The Christian and Manichean churches exhibited an intransigence which surprised their contemporaries, but which logically followed from a sense of a complete break with the ancient past. Even when the emperor Constantine decided to surrender all positions of paganism, the Christian community faced only one dilemma: whether to admit the lord of the world to himself in the rank of deacon, so that he would have a say in church affairs, or to leave him a layman, which the Carthaginian Donatus demanded, saying, "What business is the emperor to the church?" And against this background, as early as the 5th century, when the empire was being torn to pieces by barbarians, lived, worked and acted Blessed Augustine, first a Manichean, then a Christian, a talented writer and a great disputant. It should be noted that Augustine's main ideas were the forerunner not of Catholic but of heretical thought. The thesis of predestination, which effectively annulled the Catholic dogma of human free will, shifted all responsibility for the ugly things that happen in the world to the Creator. This thesis of Augustine was used and developed by Jean Calvin a thousand years later, but was not quoted in the Middle Ages.
Unlike Dante, who did not challenge the ideas of his time, but was very unhappy with his contemporaries, Augustine spent the full force of his talent in his polemic with both the views of his former Manicheans and with the humane concept of the British monk Pelagius. Pelagius preached that man's sinfulness was the result of his evil deeds and, therefore, that a good pagan was better than an evil Christian.
Augustine advanced the thesis of original sin and thereby declared all pagans inferior and justified theoretical religious intolerance. In the next five centuries this idea did not gain traction, whereas Dante's poems were recognized as unsurpassed during the poet's lifetime and brought him the fame he deserved. No, neither in their historical role, nor in their resonance, nor in their personal qualities are Augustine and Dante Alighieri different, and even more different are the periods in which they lived and wrote. And if anyone is similar to Dante, it is the great poet and denouncer of outrage, John Chrysostom. But if we accept this correction, the reasoning that follows is different. This new way seems more fruitful, although it will, however, be taken somewhat unexpectedly.
ON VISION.
The direction we have been describing, which can be called early Christian, or - conditionally - Byzantine (not in the political sense, but only in the "cultural" sense), was not recorded in secular history until the middle of the second century, that is, 150 years later than in church history. The famous dispute between Roman philosophers and the Christian apologist Justinus, who won the argument and paid for his victory with a martyr's death, took place at that time. If we start from this date, convenient because it is not controversial, we find that by the end of the fourth century (after Julian's apostasy) the new line of thought had spread not only throughout the Roman Empire, but also beyond its borders. It gave offshoots: the western one in Ireland, the southern one in Ethiopia, the eastern one in Central Asia, and the northern one in Russia, or rather, in the Goths of the Dnieper region.
Not connected politically with the main stem of the culture - the Byzantine Empire in the proper sense of the word - the peripheral Christian cultures themselves felt themselves as a whole, well, just like Iran already described, like the Greco-Roman world and later the Western European Chretiente, even though Nestorianism prevailed in Trans-European Asia and Monophysitism in Syria, Armenia and Africa.
Byzantine culture had its "Renaissance" period of Hellenic antiquity, when Greek displaced Latin from public administration (under Emperor Mauritius), and its Reformation - iconoclasm, and its Enlightenment period - under the Macedonian dynasty. And the agony of the centers of this culture came almost simultaneously: in the 13th century Ireland fell, the Nestorians of Central Asia were defeated, Constantinople became for a time the prey of predatory crusaders, and Abyssinia became a mountain fortress surrounded by Gallasians and Somalis who had converted to Islam. The frantic attempt of the Nicaea Empire to defend its position prolonged the agony for a hundred years, but already in the middle of the 14th century the Palaeologians were forced to accept the union, which meant complete submission to the West, i.e. to that newly formed cultural integrity that emerged from the conquests of Charlemagne. It is this integrity that has been accepted in European historiography as a continuation of ancient culture, which is reflected even in the composition of school textbooks.
But we think that the thousand-year period separating "Antiquity" from its "Renaissance" is more correct to consider as an independent section of cultural history rather than as a transitional period, especially since the Catholic knights and prelates did not inherit the heritage of Byzantine culture in its Greek and Irish variants, but simply incinerated it. But if so, then the Renaissance in Europe must be placed in the same line of regularity and sequence of events as the Crusades that preceded it and the colonial conquests that followed it. Yes, that's right!
Western European culture, from its inception, has sought expansion. The descendants of the barons of Charlemagne conquered the Western Slavs, the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts, displaced the Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula, and carried the war against the Muslims into the Indian Ocean basin. Descendants of medieval burghers conquered the Americas, Australia, and South Africa. Those and others conquered India, Tropical Africa, South America, Polynesia, etc. It was an expansion in space. And the humanists...? They were driven by the same incentive of acquisition. But their expansion developed in time. They set out to occupy the past, not their own, but someone else's. And they achieved this goal. The fruit of their efforts was World History on a philological basis, a phenomenon unparalleled in other cultures, for everywhere else history is usually a description of one's own ancestors, i.e., an absolutized genealogy. But if so, the "Chinese Renaissance" must have fundamental differences from the European one, and the features of similarity must be considered an accidental coincidence. N. I. Conrad holds the opposite viewpoint, and to solve this cardinal problem we will have to turn to the history of East Asia.
ON CHINA.
To begin with, it should be noted that there are two ethno-landscape regions in East Asia: the agricultural region of China and the nomadic region of Central Asia with the Tibetan Plateau. Despite the dense population of China and the small number of steppe Turks and Mongols, these cultural regions have interacted on an equal footing throughout the entire historical period. Without taking into account this ongoing struggle, the history of Asia will always be misinterpreted.
See Map of China and Central Asia (72 KB)
In the past century, it was taken for granted that Chinese culture was stable or stagnant and that development, with its ups and downs, was a property of Western Europe. This concept is an example of range-aberration, in which, for example, the sun may appear smaller than a nickel. When one studies Chinese history in sufficient detail, this aberration disappears like smoke, and it becomes apparent that the breaks in tradition and the periods of obscuration in the East and the West took place in a uniform way. The discreteness of historical development was noted by the two great ancient historians Polybius and Sima Qian, and both offered explanations for the observed phenomena based on the level of development of the science of their time[9]. Sima Qian wrote his "Historical Notes" in the I century BC, but he had already noted the period which was for him "antiquity", i.e. the past with a severed tradition.
Antiquity for Sima Qian is the era of the first three dynasties: Xia, Yin and Zhou, the fall of Zhou was followed by political and cultural disintegration. "The path of the three kingdoms proved to be like a circle: it ended and began again."[10] This, of course, does not mean that the Han dynasty literally repeated antiquity. No, It turned out to be a phenomenon of its own, with its own local features. Uniformity, according to Sima Qian, was not the real reality, but the internal law of the phenomenon, which he considered a natural law of history.
Discovered by the historian regularity not only explained the past, but also allowed to make predictions. If archaic China collapsed due to inevitable internal rhythms, then contemporary Sima Qian, and for us Ancient China, i.e. the Han Empire, could not avoid the same fate. Of course, Sima Qian could not predict the details of his country's demise, but the result had to be unambiguous. And so it turned out. In the III century the civil war drained China of its blood, and in 312 the capital of the Celestial Empire was taken by storm by the small Xiongnu militias, after that they captured all ancient Han lands in the basin of the Yellow River. The most stubborn Chinese patriots fled to the foreign fringe, the Yangtze Basin, and the agony of the ancient Chinese culture lasted there for another 250 years, almost twice as long as the agony of Rome. Meanwhile, in the homeland of the Chinese people, the nomads and mountaineers, the Huns, the Tabgachs and the Kyans (Tibetans) were rampant.
The new rise of China began in the 6th century. The leader of the Chinese ultrapatriots, the commander Yang Jian massacred the descendants of the degenerated nomadic princes and founded the Sui Dynasty. It was the "morning dawn" of medieval China, but the "evening dawn" came in the 17th century, when the Manchus defeated both the troops of the Ming Dynasty and the peasant militias of the rebel Li Zicheng. And then began a period of decline, which European scholars considered the permanent state of China and dubbed "stagnation”. The prediction of Sima Qian's concept was confirmed.
However, in the East, as compared to the West, there was one feature that provided a relatively greater continuity of cultures: hieroglyphic writing. Despite its disadvantages compared to alphabetic writing, it had the advantage that semanthemes continued to be comprehensible even when the phonetics of the developing language changed, and when ideological perceptions changed. The small number of the Chinese, who learned to read Confucius and Lao Tzu, felt the charm of their thoughts much more than the medieval monks who were studying the Bible, because the words change their meaning depending on a) the translation, b) the intonation, c) the reader's erudition and d) his system of association. Hieroglyphs, on the other hand, are as unambiguous as mathematical symbols. Therefore, the gaps between cultures within China were somewhat smaller than those between ancient (Greco-Roman) and medieval (Romano-Germanic) cultures or between Middle Persian and Arabic, i.e., Muslim, etc.
This circumstance was reflected in China's history, both politically and ideologically. Most importantly, it is this outward similarity that has misled those historians who have postulated China's stagnation, taking for it the conservatism of the hieroglyphic script. In fact, the history of China evolved no less intensely than that of the Mediterranean basin countries. But in order to see this passionate tension in the life of the ethnic groups that emerged and disappeared on Chinese territory, one must detach oneself from admiring the objects of art and the zigzags of abstract thought and consistently trace the peripetias of the thousand-year war at the edge of the Great Wall with the nomads of the Great Steppe. Our "Steppe Trilogy" is entirely devoted to this theme.
XIII. Thoughts on Ethnic History
THE PRINCIPLE OF UNCERTAINTY IN ETHNOLOGY
It would seem that all of the above examples prove the correctness of the cultural-historical school, but they themselves contain one detail that points to the correctness of the opposite point of view. For all the "cultures" we have analyzed, despite their local peculiarities, they have developed and died in such a uniform way that a general dialectical process cannot be overlooked here.
But if this is the case, not only have we not solved our problem, but we have even made it more difficult. Is it really a dead end again? No, there is a way forward, and it will open to us as soon as we turn to other sciences for analogies. Since the 17th century, physics has debated the question - does light consist of particles (corpuscles) or represent waves in the ether? Both concepts had such serious flaws that neither of them could prevail. The dispute was resolved only in the mid-20th century with the emergence of quantum mechanics. Modern physicists believe that light is neither a wave, nor a particle, but both at the same time and can exhibit both groups of properties. On this basis, the widely known uncertainty principle was formulated, according to which in the presence of two conjugate physical variables (for example, momentum and coordinate or energy and time) the value of one or the other, but not both together, can be established.
In ethnic phenomena, too, there are two forms of motion: social and biological. Consequently, one way or another, in one aspect of research or another, can describe either one or the other side of a complex phenomenon. In this case the accuracy of the description and its versatility mutually exclude each other. Having noted this, let us apply the uncertainty principle to our material.
First of all, let us change the aspect: instead of combining the methods of both schools, let us distinguish the spheres of their application. It is clear that the directly observed historical phenomena are grouped according to the cultural-historical principle, and the world-historical scheme for the facts is a Procrustean bed. But it is also clear that the essence of phenomena, not accessible to visual observation, is subject to the competence of the world-historical concept, while the discreteness (discontinuity) of development, noted and proved by the cultural-historical school, is simply one of the properties of a single, but very complex process.
Then let us change the approach. In the past century, history was studied in two ways: in gymnasiums together with geography, in universities together with philology. In our time, the second way of perceiving the subject has prevailed, and source study has taken center stage. There is, however, a great danger here: the historian runs the risk of becoming captive to the author of the source and may simply begin to retell what he has read, trying to convey its content as closely as possible to the text. But the ancient author was guided by ideas unacceptable for us, and his readers, having a different system of associations than we do, perceived what he wrote differently than the reader of our time. This means that if Herodotus or Rashid ad-Din had written for us, they would have presented the same thoughts differently. And in the literal rendering of the text, we do not grasp the meaning for the sake of which the text was written. And finally, the author of the ancient source, of course, omitted truths that were common knowledge at his time. But they are unknown to us and especially interesting.
Therefore, each source is a cryptogram for the descendants, and the restoration of its true meaning is a difficult and not always feasible task. Suffice it to recall the disputes over the Tale of Igor's Campaign. There is no guarantee that the currently existing hypothetical interpretations will not be joined by several other equally substantiated and convincing ones. In short, for our statement of the problem, source study is the best way to distract ourselves so much, that we will never return to our task - which is to comprehend the historical process.
Gymnasic methodology is another matter. Let us take from the sources what is indisputable there - the bare, dumb facts - and superimpose them on the canvas of time and space. This is what all naturalists do, extracting materials from direct observation of nature. And then it will turn out that the facts, detached from texts, have their own internal logic, are subject to statistical laws, are grouped according to the degree of similarity and difference, so that it becomes possible to study them by the comparative method.
This approach is expedient because it will allow to comprehend the already found standard of historical being - the historical integrity, but what? Now we can answer: a chain of events and phenomena, where the connection between the links is carried out through causality. Direct observation shows that these chains have beginnings and ends, i.e. there is a flash - with inertia fading from environmental resistance. This is the mechanism that explains all the indisputable observations and generalizations of the cultural-historical school.
But where do flashes come from and why are inertial processes so remarkably similar? A world-historical conception must answer this question, but, alas, the means available to historical science provide only a means of describing it. For human science, description is the limit, and interpretation by speculative philosophy will satisfy no one these days. It remains to move completely to the basis of natural science and to raise the question about the content of the concept "culture" (this or that), about that material substance, which undergoes the described changes.
TWO FRAMES OF REFERENCE.
The first thing that comes to mind, the simplest and most accessible explanation of the observed fact is the attempt to compare it with this or that formation based on this or that mode of production. This way was followed by N. I. Konrad who defined the following: "The slave-holding formation is characterized not by slavery as such, but by a social system in which slave labour plays the role of a mode of production that determines the economic basis of social existence at the given stage of the history of the people"[11]. He consistently compares this stage with "antiquity" or the ancient history of the whole world.
With equal ease he defines the notion of the "Middle Ages" as "the period of formation, establishment and flourishing of feudalism," and again for the entire Oikumene, (the known inhabited world). What is new here is only an attempt to extend socio-economic categories to the sphere of regularities or cause-and-effect relations of chains of events, and this is wrong, and here is why. The theory of historical materialism was created specifically to reflect the progressive development of society in a spiral, not to interpret changes in dynasties, military successes, the spread of epidemic diseases, or the nuances of religious concepts.
Social development has its own logic, the sequence of events has its own logic. There is a relationship and even a feedback between the two systems, but it is its presence that shows that there is not one frame of reference, but at least two. That is why it is often observed that one "culture" also lies in two or three formations, and sometimes in one, as we have shown above in the analysis of the so-called "transitional periods". Then, there are many more "cultures" than there are formations, which also speaks to the inconsistency of these concepts. And, most importantly, the two frames of reference do not contradict each other, but complement each other.
Let me explain. The features of the slave-owning formation noted in Egypt, Babylon, Hellas, India and China give the grounds to list these societies in one taxonomic group, but by no means allow to assert their genetic continuity or really existed interrelation. But as a "culture" each of the listed states interacts with their neighbors who stood on quite different stages of social development. For example, such slave-holding centers as Athens and Corinth were at one with agricultural Thebes, pastoral Aetolia and Thessaly, and even with Epirus and Macedonia, where there was a decaying clan system. But all together this is Hellas, which the ancient Greeks themselves considered a whole. But whole of what?
It was the same in ancient China! Back in the era of the "War of the Kingdoms" the peripheral states of Qin and Chu subjugated the disparate tribes of the foresters in Sichuan and southeastern China, including the proto-Malay ethnos Yue.
They and the Chinese had different social systems, but their historical destiny was common. Therefore they should be counted in different formations, related to one Khan's integrity. On the other hand, the Huns, who were able to defend their land from the Chinese aggression, are a different people from the Chinese in both aspects. It is most correct to refer them to the nomadic integrity of Eurasia together with the Usuns, semi-nomadic Di, semi-settled Sarmatians and farmers - Dinlins, despite the fact that racially and linguistically these peoples were different from each other. So why are they an integrity?
Let us leave this question open in order to answer it at the end of our study. After all, for the sake of such answers, this is undertaken. For now let us limit ourselves to noting the difference in the systems of reference, social and ethnic, and let us turn to the problem of cultural processes, for there has repeatedly been a tendency to find a solution to the problems of ethnogenesis in the history of material and spiritual culture.
CULTURAL HISTORY AND ETHNOGENESIS
One might think that since the activity of an ethnos is embodied in the works of its hands and mind, i.e., in culture, that by studying the history of local cultures we at the same time comprehend the history of the ethnoses that created them, and thus ethnogenesis as well.
If it were true, the task of the researcher would be very simple, but, alas, although there is such a connection between ethnogenesis, the history of ethnoses and the history of cultures, it is complicated by the accompanying phenomena, in all three cases different. Let us begin with the history of culture - as seen without the application of special techniques of historical synthesis.
Do the concepts of culture and ethnos or even super-ethnos coincide? As a rule, no, except in particular cases that confirm the rule. This is most clearly seen in the simple, well-known example of Hellas.
The culture of the Hellenic polities, both mainland Greece and the colonies, spread to non-Hellenic lands, for example Macedonia, which under Alexander took on the role of leader and protector of the "Hellenic cause" as early as the classical period of the 6th-4th centuries B.C. The subsequent spread of Hellenic culture covered the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Egypt, Central Asia and India, conquered by the Macedonians, as well as Latium, which adopted Hellenic culture from Athens through borrowing. This is so-called "Hellenism," i.e., the formation of a grandiose super-ethnos.
However, not all the ethnic groups that adopted Hellenic culture became part of this super-ethnos. Parthians learned to speak Greek, staged Euripides' tragedies at their kings' courts, fortified their cities according to the plans of Hellenic architects and decorated them with statues similar to those of Athens and Miletus, but remained "Turans"[12], rulers of Iran, enemies of Macedonians - Syrian Seleucids.
Carthage organized itself as a Hellenic polis, but its inhabitants, unlike the Syrians and Minor Asians, did not become like the Greeks. But the Romans, having conquered Hellas, became the heirs and guardians of its culture, retaining their ethnic traits as local characteristics. And they also transmitted the Hellenic culture to all their provinces, and after the fall of the political power of Rome to the European Romance and partly to the Germanic ethnic groups.
Thus, when we study cultural history, we see an unbroken line of tradition constantly crossing ethnic boundaries. The descendants of the Germans and Slavs adopted geometry, the idealistic philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle, Hippocratic medicine, building arts - Classicism, theater, literary genres, legal standards - Roman law and even mythology, although they made the ancient gods perform not in mysteries, but in operetta. But Hellenes and Romans are long gone. So the great culture has outlived the ethnos that created it. Both in space and time the discrepancy is obvious.
But is it legitimate to apply the term "experiencing" culture, despite all its habitualness? Culture is a creation of people, whether it is a piece of technology, a masterpiece of art, a philosophical system, a political doctrine, a scientific concept, or simply a legend of centuries past. Culture exists but does not live, for without the introduction of the creative energy of people into it, it can either be preserved or destroyed. But this "undead" influences the consciousness of its creators, molds it into bizarre forms and then stamps them until the descendants no longer perceive it. The latter is commonly referred to as "savagery" rather than liberation from outdated, irrelevant norms of ancient worldviews that have compromised themselves, like the Olympian gods in the Roman Empire. Already in the first century B.C., no one believed in these gods, although their statues stuck out at all the crossroads. Hellenes and Romans, who observed a variety of omens, who equated their commanders with gods solely out of subservience to power and authority, cynics and hypocrites, nevertheless retained empty temples, for fear of the loss of culture was stronger than contempt for it.
Somehow, in a sixth sense, people guessed: culture is painful, but it is impossible to live without it. That is why the deepest decline did not reduce the level of culture to zero. And with the lapse of time a new rise began... No, not the ancient culture, but a new ethnos that picked up the old debris from the ground and adapted it to its needs, creating new tools from it. That is the scheme of cultural transformation.
And ethnogenesis? This is the condition without which the creation or restoration of culture is impossible. After all, cultures are the work of men, and in our world there is no man without ethnos. And the creation of ethnos and its development, i.e. ethnogenesis, is like connecting an electric current to a stopped motor, after which it starts working again.
Ethnogenesis is a natural process, hence independent of the situation, formed as a result of the formation of culture. It can begin at any moment; and if a barrier of the current-cultural integrity stands in its way, it will break or be smashed against it. If, on the other hand, it begins when "the ground lies fallow," the emerging ethnos will create its own culture - as a way of existence and development. In both cases, the impulse is a blind force of natural energy, not controlled by anyone's consciousness. Such a solution to the problem follows inconsistently from the principles outlined above. (This is a provocative paragraph. Ed. Let’s see where he takes it.)
However, there is a different point of view: "...the social factors that form an ethnos, ethnic consciousness among others, lead to the emergence of a conjugated population, i.e. we have before us a picture that is directly opposite to the one given by L.N. Gumilev"[13]. Thus, the discussion is about whether being is the basis of consciousness or, on the contrary, consciousness is the basis of being? Indeed, with this formulation of the question, there is a subject for dispute. Let's sort it out.
Every scientist has the right to choose any postulate for his logical construction, even one according to which the real existence of an ethnos is not only determined but also generated by its consciousness. True, neither Christian believers nor materialists will be able to accept his opinion. Since the act of creating material reality is attributed to human consciousness, placed above or in its place as the Creator of the world, Christians will not accept it. And materialist philosophers will not accept the thesis that consciousness is primary.
But even empiricist scientists have no right to agree with the above thesis, because it violates the law of conservation of energy. After all, ethnogenesis is a process manifested in work (in the physical sense). Crusades are made, temples and palaces are built, landscapes are reconstructed, dissenters are suppressed within and outside the created system. And to do the work requires energy, the most ordinary energy, measured in kilograms or calories. To believe that consciousness, even ethnic consciousness, can be an energy generator is to assume the reality of telekinesis, which is only appropriate in science fiction.
Explanation. The stone blocks on the top of the pyramid were lifted not by ethnic consciousness, but by the muscle power of Egyptian workers, according to the "one-two-take-all" principle. And if the rope was pulled by Libyans, Nubians, Canaanites... this did not change the matter. The role of consciousness, and in this case not ethnic but personal - the engineer-builder - was to coordinate the forces at his disposal, and the difference between managing the process and the energy by which the process proceeds is obvious.
The combination of diverse ethnogenesis with social processes against a background of different cultures, inherited from eras past, and landscapes that provide people with food, also diverse, creates ethnic histories, intricately intertwined with each other. Unlike ethnogenesis, ethnic history is a multifactorial process, experiencing different influences and responding to them sensitively. At the same time, ethnic history is not as visible as the history of cultures and states, social institutions and class struggle, because the events associated with the change of phases of ethnogenesis are not recorded by the sources. In other words, ethnic history is a historical discipline that is closer than any other to the geography of the biosphere, which determines the heterogeneity that R. Grusse noted. He compared the historical panorama of the mid-20th century with the starry sky, where we observe stars that have long been extinguished but whose light has only now reached Earth, and do not see supernovae whose rays are still carried in outer space and, accordingly, are not perceived by earthly observatories.
Continuing the analogy, R. Grusse considers the countries of Islam to be in an age analogous to that of Europe in the fourteenth century, the "trecento. The invasion of France by the Germans in 1940, he compares with the campaigns of Alaric and Henzericus in the fifth century, the Japanese troops he calls the Samurai, dressed in modern uniforms. Scandinavia, by contrast, in his opinion, is in the future, on the threshold of the twenty-first century. From this we can see that R. Grusse had in mind neither social nor ethnic processes, but only their decorative side, i.e. cultural collisions.
But if even in the twentieth century, under the conditions of the equalizing urban civilization, the French orientalist found such grandiose discrepancies, then in other eras, when they were less smoothed by the general technosphere, their importance was even greater. R. Grusse believes that "most of our troubles have come from the fact that the peoples, living in the same epoch, have not submitted to a common logic or a common morality. [14]. R. Grusse believes the uneven ethnic development to be the cause of many wars and such monstrous atrocities as the German concentration camps. Indeed, in order to commit such terrible acts, not justified by a real state necessity, without agonizing remorse, one must have a mental structure that can only be presented in the form of pathology. But these are not random individual deviations, but ethnic, concerning the stable moods of the masses. So, this is the phase of ethnogenesis, which is not compatible with the one from which the initial reference point, which we take as a norm, is taken. But if we start counting from the other side, then what we consider normal will appear as pathology.
But if this is the case, then we have to find some kind of benchmark for measuring ethnic history, similar to what socio-economic formations are for social history. However, the task is complicated by the fact that on the way to its solution lies an additional difficulty: the relationship of the ethnos with its host geographic environment, which is also changing, sometimes even faster than the ethnos itself. Here Calliope is powerless and must ask her sister Urania for help.
URANIA AND CLIO
The application of geography to the solution of individual problems has met and continues to meet with both total sympathy and scathing censure. On the one hand, it is obvious that dry steppe gives for creation of economy and culture not such opportunities as tropical jungle, and on the other hand, such approach is called "geographical determinism". To begin with, let us be clear. The prominent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bodin, Montesquieu, and Herder, in keeping with the scientific level of their era, assumed that all manifestations of human activity, including culture, psychological makeup, form of government, etc., are determined by the nature of countries inhabited by different peoples. No one shares this view nowadays, but the opposite concept - "geographical nihilism"[15], which denies the importance of the geographical environment for the history of an ethnos at all, is no better.
But let us try to put the problem differently. The fact that the geographical environment does not affect the change of socio-economic formations is indisputable, but can centuries of droughts or transgressions of the inland seas (Caspian Sea) not affect the economy of the regions affected by them[16]? For example, the Caspian Sea level rising by 18 m in the 6th-14th centuries did not affect the southern, mountainous shores very much, but the vast populated territory of the Khazaria was flooded in the north. This disaster so undermined the economy of Khazaria, which, on the one hand, forced the Khazars to leave their homeland and settle in the Don and Middle Volga, but on the other - led to the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate in 965 by the Russians[17]. And similar cases in history set.
It would seem that we should simply define the competence of physical geography in ethnic history, but instead there are fruitless accusations of "geographical determinism", by which one begins to understand even just a good knowledge of geography. The reasons for this sad situation were pointed out by the historian of geography V. Yatsunsky: "Historians know little about geography, and vice versa"[18]. And this is no trouble at all! Much worse, when "geographer, as soon as he leaves the field of geographical research and begins to engage in history, ceases to be a naturalist and himself becomes a historian"[19]. It is clear in advance that there can be no luck here, just as in the opposite case. Thus the root of failures is "discovered": the statement of problems and the methodology of research are not developed. So, it must be done.
What for the historian is the end of his work, for the ethnologist and geographer is a starting point. Then it is necessary to exclude those events whose causes are known and belong to the sphere of either spontaneous development of society (social formations) or to the logic of the events themselves (personal actions of political figures). It is fruitless to connect these phenomena with geography. This leaves the sphere of ethnogenesis and migration.
This is where the interaction of human society with nature comes into play. This is especially evident when the main role is played by subsistence and simple commodity economy. The mode of production is determined by those economic opportunities that are available in the natural conditions of the territory, feeding a tribal group or nation. The mode of occupation is suggested by the landscape and gradually determines the culture of the emerged ethnic unit. When a given ethnos disappears due to transformation, migration or extermination by neighbors, what remains is a monument of the epoch - the archaeological culture, which testifies to the character of an ancient people and, consequently, to the natural conditions of the epoch in which it existed. Therefore, we are able to dissociate historical events of political nature and events caused mainly by changes in physical and geographical conditions.
All the peoples of the Earth live in landscapes at the expense of nature, but as soon as landscapes are diverse, so are peoples, for no matter how much they modify the landscape, whether by creating anthropogenic relief or by reconstructing flora and fauna, people have to feed on what nature can provide in the territory which the ethnos either inhabits or controls. But nothing in the world is immutable, and landscapes are no exception. They, like ethnic groups, have their own dynamics of development, i.e. their own history. And when the landscape changes beyond recognition, whether due to human influence, climate change, neotectonic processes or destructive microbes carrying epidemics, people have either to adapt to new conditions or die out or move to another country. Here we come to the problem of migration.
Landscape modifications are not the only cause of migrations. They also arise from population explosions or, less frequently, from social upheavals, but then they will be so different in character from the former that it is very difficult to confuse them. In any case, however, immigrants seek conditions similar to those to which they are accustomed in their homeland. The English were eager to move to a country with a temperate climate, especially to the steppes of North America, South Africa, and Australia, where they could raise sheep. The tropical regions did not lure them; there they acted mainly as colonial officials and merchants, that is, people who lived not at the expense of nature, but at the expense of the local population.
This, too, is migration, but of a very different nature. The Spaniards colonized areas with dry and hot climates, leaving out the rainforests. They settled well on the Mexican plateaus, where they broke the power of the Aztecs, but the Maya in the Yucatan survived in the tropical jungle, defending their independence in the "war of the races" against the Mexican government. - The 11th-century Yakuts penetrated the Lena River valley and raised horses there, imitating former life on the banks of Lake Baikal, but they did not encroach on the watershed taiga massifs, leaving them to the Evenks. Russian explorers in the 17th century passed through the entire Siberia, but they settled only the forest-steppe periphery of taiga and river banks, i.e. landscapes similar to those where their ancestors had formed into an ethnos. Similarly, the expanses of the former "Wild Field" in the XVIII-XIX centuries were mastered by the Ukrainians. Even in our time, the Tibetans, who left their homeland, chose Norway over blooming Bengal; they established a colony in Oslo.
Major migration is not only a historical phenomenon, but also a geographical one, for it is always associated with some restructuring of the anthropogenic landscape. Thus, we have come to the boundaries of historical geography, which should help us to find a solution to the problem posed. Let us see what it gives us.
NOTES
[1] Toynbee A. J. Study of History /Abridienent by D. Somervell. London;New York, Toronto, 1946.P. 60 sqq.
[2] Konrad N.I. West and East. С. 454.
[3] Ibid. p. 455.
[4] Ibid. С. 457.
[5] Konrad N.I. 1) On slave-owning formations // Ibid. С. 33-53; 2) The Middle Ages in Historical Science // Ibid. С. 89-118.
[6] Ibid. С. 454.
[7] Ibid. С. 37.
[8] Ibid. С. 455.
[9] Ibid. С. 54- 88.
[10] Ibid. С. 76.
[11] Ibid. С. 33.
[12] The opposition of the Iranian Turan, i.e. the sedentary Aryans who adopted Zoroastrianism, to the steppe Aryans who preserved the Deva cult, did not lose significance until the 7th century Arab conquest.
[13] Bromley Yu. V. Ethnos and Ethnography. С. 122-123.
[14] Crousset R. Bilan de l'Histoire. Paris, 1946. P. 103-104.
[15] Kalesnik S.V. General geographical regularities of the Earth. М., 1970.
[16] For more details see: Gumilev L.N. The place of historical geografiya in vostokovedeniye researches //People of Asia and Africa. 1970, - 1. С. 85-94.
[17] Gumilev L.N. Discovery of Khazaria. М.. 1966.
[18] Yatsunsky V. K. Subject and tasks of historical geography / / / Marxist-historian. 1941. - 5 (93). С. 21.
[19] Ibid. С. 27.
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