Introduction

The Middle Ages appears before us as an era with its own special social relations and special culture. In many ways, it had a decisive influence on the development of the modern world. This fact serves as an argument for the relevance of our research.

The social class structure of medieval society was determined by the feudal mode of production, its main classes being land owners (feudal lords) and peasants. The feudal mode of production characteristic of the Middle Ages became the most important stage in the development of socio-economic relations in the history of world civilizations.

The purpose of this work is to consider the Middle Ages as a stage of world history (V-XV centuries). Job objectives:

Characterize the formation and development of Christian civilization in Europe;

Study the process of the emergence of Islam and the development of the Arab Caliphate;

Explore the conditions for the development of medieval India and China during the Middle Ages;

Assess the civilizations of pre-Columbian America.

The object of study of this work is the Middle Ages as an important component of the genesis of world civilizations. The subject of the study is the development of social, political and economic relations in various countries Middle Ages.

Research methods in this test work: general scientific, historicism and method-transition from the general to the specific.

The theoretical basis of the work was research and scientific works such specialists in the field medieval history Europe, Asia and America, as Abramov V.S., Balandin R.K., Bondarev L.G., Vasilenko I.A., Galich M.A., Piirimäe H.A., Shestakova K.D., Yakovets Yu.V.

Formation and development of Christian civilization in Europe

Christianity became the most important factor in the European cultural community; it was in the Middle Ages that it turned into one of the world religions. Christian civilization was established not just on the ruins of ancient civilization, but also on its basis; it not only denied previous values, but also rethought them. The Christian Church, its centralization, hierarchy and wealth, its worldview, law, ethics and morality - created a single feudal ideology. Christianity largely determined the difference between European medieval civilization and the civilizations of other continents of the same era.

Religion and the church filled the entire life of a person in the medieval era from birth to death. The church claimed to govern society and performed many functions that later began to belong to the state. Having monopolized culture, science, and literacy in society, the church had enormous resources that subordinated the man of the feudal era to it.

The Middle Ages began with the Great Migration of Peoples. The only organization that survived the conquest was the Christian Church, whose bishops exercised great influence over the population. The Germans gradually adopted the Christian religion. For the needs of church services, writing chronicles, royal decrees and other documents, Latin writing was used; schools were opened at churches and monasteries in which priests were trained.

The largest in Europe was the one that arose at the end of the 5th century. State of the Franks. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne with the imperial crown. The emperor became a symbol of the unity of German traditions, the Roman imperial past and Christian principles. The idea of ​​uniting the Christian world became decisive for several generations of Europeans. Charlemagne managed to create a huge power, which, in addition to Gaul, included part of the territory of Spain, Northern and Central Italy, the territories of Bavaria and Saxony, Pannonia (Hungary). The period of existence of the Carolingian state (mid-8th - early 10th centuries) was the time of the formation of a number of social institutions and the main features of the cultural and historical type inherent in medieval European civilization. In 843, the empire was divided among the descendants of Charlemagne into three kingdoms, which became the basis of the future France, Germany and Italy.

The era of medieval Christian Europe was characterized by feudalism and feudal fragmentation. Feudalism is a social system whose name comes from the word “feud”. A fief is a land holding inhabited by peasants, granted by a lord - seigneur (in Latin - “senior”) to his vassal - a subordinate person who undertakes to carry out military service for the possession of the fief. In some countries, the relationship between the owners of fiefs - feudal lords - can be imagined in the form of a ladder (the so-called feudal ladder). At the very top of it stood the king - the supreme owner of all the land in the state; it was believed that he received his power from God, who was his lord.

During the establishment of feudalism in Western Europe, the possession of a large feudal lord resembled an independent state. Such a feudal lord collected taxes from the population, had the right to judge, could declare war on other feudal lords and make peace with them. It was as if an agreement was concluded between the lord and the vassal.

In the Middle Ages, there was a widespread doctrine according to which the entire population of Europe, in accordance with God's will, is divided into three groups - three classes (people included in these classes have different rights and responsibilities). The ministers of the church (priests and monks) constituted a special layer of the population - the clergy, who were believed to guide the spiritual life of people - to take care of the salvation of the souls of Christians; knights protect the country from foreigners; peasants and townspeople are engaged agriculture and craft.

During the times of feudal fragmentation in Europe, the church was the only cohesive organization. The overwhelming majority of peasants, townspeople and knights believed that there was no salvation outside the church (that is, without the help of priests, without their prayers, without observing church rituals, you cannot go to heaven). This allowed the popes to bring the fight for supreme power in Europe.

The situation was aggravated by some dogmatic and ritual differences in the practice of the Eastern and Western churches. Periodic conflicts between churches led to the fact that in 1054 the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople cursed each other.

The power of the popes and the Catholic Church in the XI-XIII centuries. manifested itself in the organization of aggressive campaigns in the East, primarily in the Holy Land. This is what Christians call Palestine, where, according to the Gospels, Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected. The main prerequisite for the Crusades was the desire of the popes to extend their power to new countries.

The most important stage development of European medieval civilization in the X-XIII centuries. became the formation of modern states. National states in Europe began to take shape at the end of the 11th-13th centuries, and in some cases were finally formed in modern times. Simultaneously with national states, estate-representative institutions also emerged. Thus, in England in 1215 the first constitution was adopted - the Magna Carta, and in 1265 a parliament appeared. In France, under Philip the Fair (1285-1314), the Estates General, endowed with legislative functions, was first convened, in Germany under Maximilian I in the 15th century. The Imperial Diet - Reichstag was created.

In the XIV-XV centuries, Europe entered the final period of the Middle Ages, accompanied by a crisis and transformation of the foundations of medieval European civilization.

Let's draw a conclusion. Christianity became the most important factor in the European cultural community; it was in the Middle Ages that it turned into one of the world religions. The Middle Ages began with the Great Migration of Peoples. The only organization that survived the conquest was the Christian Church, whose bishops exercised great influence over the population.

In 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne with the imperial crown. The emperor became a symbol of the unity of German traditions, the Roman imperial past and Christian principles.

The era of medieval Christian Europe was characterized by feudalism and feudal fragmentation. The Church fought to end internecine wars, robberies and outrages. The situation was aggravated by some dogmatic and ritual differences in the practice of the Eastern and Western churches. The power of the popes and the Catholic Church in the XI-XIII centuries. manifested itself in the organization of aggressive campaigns in the East, primarily in the Holy Land.

In the Middle Ages, there was a widespread doctrine according to which the entire population of Europe, in accordance with God's will, was divided into three classes: ministers of the church; knights; peasants and townspeople. The most important stage in the development of European medieval civilization in the X-XIII centuries. became the formation of modern states.

When people know a lot, it is difficult to manage them.

Lao Tzu

The eyes of the entire ancient world were focused on Rome. The mortal disease of the Empire was clearly visible and absolutely understandable to contemporaries. But it was especially visible from the provinces, where the way of life of a balanced society was preserved. And the nature of the disease and possible ways of treating it were especially clearly visible from the province, where many different ancient, centuries-tested cultures were in contact. It is not surprising that it was in one of these places that Christianity arose. The most effective of the existing compensation mechanisms, incorporating both the experience of previous religions and the understanding of how to resist animal instincts in conditions of a very high level of satiety and safety. So effective that it became the foundation, the foundation of a Christian civilization hitherto unprecedented in its power and grandeur. In order not to be distracted, we have placed the biological meaning of the main provisions of Christianity in a separate chapter. Let us mention only the most basic ones, directly related to gender relations. Already in the very foundation of Christianity, in the legend of original sin, at the most superficial semantic level, we clearly see the direct anti-matriarchal content inherent there. Here it is: God (the higher mind) gave the order not to pick the fruit. However, the woman (a highly primative creature), under the influence of the Serpent (animal essence, the instinct to “steal”), picked the fruit. And she not only ripped it off, but also gave it to the man to try, so as not to bear personal responsibility. This is what women do real life, we will show this later. The man, instead of making an independent decision, followed the woman’s lead and carried out the decision made by her and imposed on him. By doing so, he took responsibility for her instinctive actions. As a result, he, she, and their offspring had global problems. The most obvious conclusion that any contemporary who observed the flabby Romans who were pushed around by their wives drew from this legend: “you cannot be henpecked, because the responsibility for a non-independent decision is enormous.” In addition, one of the commandments of Christianity is “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Moreover, Jesus included in the concept of adultery thoughts of adultery, divorce, and marriage to a divorced woman. In this way, maximum support for lifelong monogamous marriage(stable pair regime) and counteracting the herd sexual market. Well, and one more thing. Against the backdrop of the demographic crisis of Rome, which led to its fall, the cult of a woman-mother could not help but arise in an alternative opposition religion. Which is exactly what happened. Once, while walking around the Louvre, I wandered into a room dedicated to the art of early Christianity. There were practically only images of the Madonna and Child. Very revealing.

The basis of Christianity is human freedom from animal instincts. Therefore, Christianity was initially met with hostility by the ruling elite of the Empire, who were accustomed to controlling the crowd by manipulating its animal instincts. And only when the effectiveness of the new religion became obvious (Christians did not waste their time and resources on satisfying animal instincts, and therefore worked and lived better than pagans), Christianity gradually became the dominant state religion in Europe.

The integrity of the Catholic Church in the anti-matriarchal issue, namely its removal completely from female influence (vow of celibacy Catholic priests) initially gave a powerful impetus to the development of the countries under its control. Subsequently, the Holy Inquisition, having carried out a massive “witch hunt” and opposed the instinct of self-preservation to the female sexual instinct, for a long time discouraged women from the desire to dominate in society. This extended the life of European civilization by several centuries. Over the centuries of control of the instinctive programs of Europeans by Catholicism, the Christian world managed to start a scientific and technological revolution, carry out global expansion and take control of half the planet. However, unfortunately, the Catholic Church, like all the religious structures that preceded it, was overly carried away by the commercial side of its activities to the detriment of its main responsibilities. In addition, it stood in the way of the development of productive forces. And as a result, I lost control of the situation. This in turn caused a decline in morals and justified indignation of the flock. Therefore, during the Reformation of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was partly reformed and partly supplanted by more liberal Protestant denominations. This further accelerated the economic development of the respective countries and led to the transformation of their hierarchies into non-pyramidal democratic structures. Fortunately, the low-primitive gene pool had been accumulated by that time, and the composition of European societies allowed such a transition. As a result, the level of technology and material culture grew so much that life became quite safe and satisfying.

However, by that time the sad experience of Rome had been forgotten, and Protestant denominations were formed more to suit the current political and economic situation without a clear understanding of the danger of liberating instincts. In addition, they were deprived of real power, and therefore an effective system of intimidation. That is, the ability to contrast the herd animal instincts of parishioners with the instinct of self-preservation. The compensation mechanism has lost real power and has become helpless. The Protestant clergy did not take a vow of celibacy and had already become controlled by the female part of society. Christian commandments were no longer perceived in the same way as by contemporaries of the fall of Rome, as something obvious. The demands of traditional Christianity were now largely seen as a set of meaningless life-complicating restrictions that stood in the way of pleasure. And so, under the noble slogans of individual freedom, education and the fight against medieval obscurantism, the cultural tradition was changed, and the animal instincts of the level of the human herd were released from control. The job was completed by some human males who did not have an understanding of the role of religion in the evolution of Humanity, but were overwhelmed by the animal instinctive desire to obtain the highest rank in the scientific hierarchy. They found nothing better than to kick the now defenseless super-dominant - God - to increase their own authority. One of them announced that “God is dead.” Another is that “religion is the opium of the people.” The third explained the origin of religion solely by cowardice and ignorance ancient man. And he presented its functional purpose solely as a means of oppressing workers. Along the way, he spewed out so much nonsense that hundreds of millions of people spent a century dealing with the consequences. The rest rushed to assent to these learned males, break down the “senseless” dogmas and violate cultural prohibitions. Thus was born liberalism and personal freedom. That is, a system for liberating instincts at the level of an animal herd. This trend is usually called the decline of morals, morality, and spirituality. And since then, almost every intellectual instinctively strives to perform the learned ritual of self-affirmation. Declare your militant atheism and the independence of your animal instincts from the needs of society, the so-called. "personal freedom". The church was separated from the state and began to be subject to regular attacks from “enlightened” individuals.

A logical continuation of the beginning of the imbalance in European societies was the strengthening of the now unrestrained dominance of women in society, which resulted in the suffragette movement, and later in feminism. The herd sexual market was immediately revived and splashed out onto the streets of European cities with a colorful array of fashionable women's outfits, establishing a culture of sexual provocation. Promoting your product of planned demand - sex using the latest technologies of show business, fashion, style and media. Subjugating political life states The era of modern matriarchy has begun. The stage of natural degradation of the sexual and hierarchical structures of society, deprived of a system of counteraction to animal instincts. Collapse of the Roman Empire, take two.

Religion as a rewiring system, a species trait and a parameter of natural selection. Types of religions – 3 types of working with instincts (prohibition, adaptation and compensation with the help of other instincts). Logic of the historical process.

If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.

Voltaire

Attention, important definition!

Religion is a set of beliefs, rules and rituals created as a counterbalance to human animal instincts (so-called passions). It serves to adapt a person’s behavior and condition to the conditions of a large society, satiety and safety, which are unnatural for his biological organization. As a super-dominant to put pressure on a person’s motivation through his hierarchical instinct, religion uses the image of God (gods). One of the main functions (the greatest function, to be precise) of religion is to counteract the excessive dominance of women in conditions of satiety and security that are unnatural for the existence of a living being. A cultural tradition is closely connected with religion, later enshrined in the form of laws, complementing and duplicating the functions of religion. Typically, law and tradition take on a regulatory and punitive function, and religion takes on ongoing everyday work, including individual psychological work with people.

Religion provides individuals with a set of rules and an algorithm of behavior necessary to maintain the effectiveness of society as a whole, as well as the effectiveness of the individual within society.

U biological species Homo sapiens, with the consolidation of tribes and the advent of material culture, natural selection took a fundamentally new path. The main parameter of selection was the ability to compensate for herd-level instincts that were harmful in new conditions. Mainly, such a compensation mechanism as religion and tradition.

Without religion, which neutralizes the primitive animal instincts of the individual, society cannot exist; it quickly degrades and disintegrates into pyramidal primitive hierarchies. Therefore, any society that wants to survive carefully preserves its religion and traditions. The method of neutralizing animal instincts that has already proven its effectiveness, that is, is a guarantee of viability.

The progress of society is manifested either in the growth of the pyramid or in its transformation into a mushroom-shaped structure. In both cases, there is a decrease in primacy. Regression is associated with an increase in primacy, the adoption of pyramidal hierarchies and the disintegration of large structures into small ones.

The highly primative composition of society corresponds to a pyramidal structure and religion with a powerful system of intimidation. For those with low primacy, there is no pyramidal democratic structure and complex legislation. Societies with different compositions and hierarchical structures do not mix with each other and do not transform into each other except over a significant historical period sufficient for genetic selection or as a result of genocide. In extreme cases, they coexist independently or as alien autonomous inclusions within each other (diaspora, gang, mafia clan, etc.). The phenomenon is called cultural incompatibility.

The lower the primitiveness of a society, the higher the level of organization and material culture. The process of reducing innate primacy and developing mechanisms that neutralize herd instincts is called civilization. A society with a low average primacy of individuals and neutralized herd instincts is civilized.

Let us repeat again, more straightforwardly, figuratively and clearly:

In modern technical language, a person is like a biorobot that finds itself in conditions very different from those for which it was designed. In particular, the software embedded in the computer that controls the behavior of this biorobot does not comply with these new conditions. Therefore, the behavior of the biorobot is not adequate to these new conditions. And to ensure the functioning of this biorobot, it needs to be reprogrammed. And these biorobots turned out to be so advanced that they created a system for reprogramming themselves. Religion is such a reprogramming system that adapts this biorobot to new conditions.

Thus, these people - biorobots are divided into 3 categories.

1. Reprogrammed. These are people with instinctive programs adapted to specific living conditions and production technologies. The harmful elements of these programs are disabled or suppressed. Useful – initiated and developed. In addition, new programs learned during the training process are activated. The behavior of such reprogrammed people is, on average, adequate to the new conditions of existence and production technologies. Therefore, a society consisting of such reprogrammed people works effectively. It is developing successfully and withstanding competition from other companies.

2. Not reprogrammed. These are people with instinctive programs that are unadapted to new living conditions. Such people, living in a civilized society, behave as if in a primitive herd. According to its herd firmware. Examples of harmful areas of the programs that control them: uncontrolled aggression, the “steal” instinct, a free sexual market. The behavior of these people is inadequate to the new, civilized conditions of existence. The more such people in a society, the lower the efficiency of this society. It develops worse, loses stability and loses to competing societies. Therefore, a balanced society is forced to get rid of non-reprogrammed people by the method of destruction, expulsion and isolation. Or he tries to reprogram them.

3. Reprogrammed differently. These are the so-called Gentiles. They are reprogrammed to exist in a different type of society. Their behavior, at best, is only partially adequate to the conditions of existence and production technologies of a given society. And they strive to build their own societies within the one in which they live (diasporas, national mafias, etc.). These alien inclusions weaken society. Therefore, a balanced society gets rid of people of other faiths as if they were not reprogrammed or reprograms them a second time.

Therefore, in most balanced societies, a single mandatory system of reprogramming has been adopted - the state religion. A systematic struggle is being waged against non-believers and people of other faiths. Faith in a balanced society is a criterion for the adequacy of behavior, an identifier of “friend or foe,” as well as a means of facilitating communication between individuals. First of all, in the process of reproduction. Therefore, programs for intergender interaction are debugged especially carefully. In an unbalanced society, on the contrary, tolerance is inculcated, that is, tolerance towards people of other faiths. But at the moment when there are too many people of other faiths, they usually destroy the indigenous tolerant population of an unbalanced society. And they occupy the vacated territory. Classic examples from the recent past are Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo. Biorobots of different sexes with incompatible, conflicting active programs cannot form a stable pair in principle. Therefore, in an unbalanced society, the internal pair structure collapses.

Modern man differs from his ancient, herd-dwelling ancestor in two main ways. Firstly, this is the level of satiety and security of existence, and secondly, the level of primacy. Thus, the reprogramming system is formed taking into account the values ​​of these two parameters that exist at the time of formation of the reprogramming system. However, every time the values ​​of these parameters change in society in one direction or another, the reprogramming system fails. Therefore, the degradation or development of various societies periodically occurs and the associated emergence of new and reformation of old reprogramming systems - religions. Gumilyov called these vibrations the word “passionary”.

This simple principle contains the entire logic of the historical process of human development.

There are three ways to work with harmful instinctive programs.

1. Adapt to them. This path predominates in Hinduism. Through “spiritual practices” a person “knows himself”, that is, studies his emotional states into which his instincts lead him. Then he learns to immerse himself in a state in which he does not experience emotional discomfort from the fact that his instinctive programs contradict reason and reality. However, for such a blissful state one has to pay with reduced motivation for activity, and therefore with low overall efficiency of society as a whole. Society has been stagnating for centuries, although it is stable.

2. Introduce a strict system of prohibitions and regulations, securing it with the authority of God and the fear of punishment during life and after death. This path, for example, is well implemented in Islam. It works too. But society remains highly primitive and ineffective. The consequence is a low standard of living if there are no oil fields. In addition, creative areas of human activity are blocked, since they are difficult to combine with strictly regulated thinking. Rigidly regulated thinking is more suitable for soldiers, as it is very easy to manipulate it into fanaticism. Therefore, Islam is often the religion of militarized societies.

3. Neutralize some instinctive programs with the help of others. This path is best realized in Christianity. However, in parallel with the first two. Christianity in general has absorbed many useful things from more ancient religions.

Generally speaking, theoretically, there is a fourth way - to equip a person’s mind with complete knowledge about his instincts. Then a person will be able to control them independently. This path has not yet been implemented anywhere due to the lack of such knowledge. However, with the publication of this book, this path becomes possible.

Usually religion duplicates law. The law creates a direct threat, acting through the instinct of self-preservation. And religion creates additional psychological barriers, acting on all available instinctive programs.

Zaichenko A. S.

1. Some statistics. From the small sects of the first followers of Christ to the largest world religion, which for hundreds of years determined the course of development of world civilization, this is the path traveled by Christianity. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia in beginning of XXI century, the total number of Christians in the world exceeded 2 billion 120 million people, which amounted to more than a third of all humanity. For more than 100 years, Christianity has generally managed to maintain its representation in the total population of the globe at this maximum level. For comparison, the number of Muslims is 1.3, and Buddhists - 0.9 billion people. Over five million workers work in the field of Christian ministry around the world. Continued blessings resulted in Christians becoming the owners of enormous wealth through hard work and godly accumulation. The total value of personal property owned by church members alone is $12.7 trillion, and annual Christian giving is $220 billion. Christians own over 400 million computers. The dissemination of the Word of God is based on a solid publishing base: over 70 million copies of the Bible and 110 million of the New Testament are published annually. 4 thousand radio and television stations reach 600 million people with the Good News. Geographically, Christianity established itself even more impressively. Over half of the world's population lives in countries of Christian culture.

Within Christianity, not all denominations grew at the same rate. The annual growth rates were among:

Pentecostals - 8.1%

Evangelical Christians - 5.4%

all Protestants - 3.3%

Catholics - 1.3%

Orthodox - annual fall

Christianity remains a heroic creed. And today, thousands of Christians die every year at the hands of persecutors and pogromists. In 1900, 35 thousand martyrs died for their faith, in 1970 - already 230 thousand, today every year 165 thousand Christians give their lives for Christ..

Not all churches managed to maintain their positions in the world. The undisputed leader remains the Roman Catholic Church, which unites over 1 billion members of local churches, which is almost half of the entire Christian population of the globe. Decades of the dominance of communism dealt a blow to the Orthodox Church and, above all, to Russian Orthodoxy. For almost a thousand years, until the beginning of the century, these churches ranked second in the number of their adherents, ahead of the Protestants. In 2000, there were half as many of them as Protestants. Perhaps the most great success in the twentieth century fell on Pentecostals and charismatics, whose numbers increased 150 times in this century. True, the overwhelming majority of this growth occurred in the young churches of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, many of which are sometimes difficult to classify as Christian.

Speaking about Christianity as a decisive factor in world history and modernity, we can distinguish three main forms of influence on the world around us: a) through Christian civilization, b) through Christianity as a world religion, c) through personal, living faith in Christ and staying in constant contact with the Lord through prayer and the Word of God, that is, the Bible. All these three forms of the presence of Christianity in the world have always been literally permeated with common features:

- love for one's neighbor;

- the desire for a spiritual, as well as personal and social ideal, perfection, the highest manifestation of which is God;

- the desire for the truth of the primary source, continuous knowledge of God, his creation, and the world around us.

2.Christian civilization

From the very beginning of its appearance, the religious impact of Christianity on those around them was so deep and comprehensive that it relatively quickly, in 150-200 years, formed an integral Christian civilization from culturally and ethnically diverse population groups. Love for one's neighbor, as a phenomenal sign of the new faith, was expressed and consolidated not only in words and declarations, but in the practice of regular fraternal communication, church services, prayers, Lord's supper. For example, only one epistle of the Apostle Paul, which speaks of mutual love and respect at the common Lord's Supper (1 Cor.: 11, 17-22), casually raises such important issues as the equality of women, respect for physical labor, the personal dignity of people of different class, social, racial, ethnic and linguistic background. It was through the prism of New Testament love for one's neighbor that for the first time in human history these problems were put on the agenda of social reform and, ultimately, successfully resolved. Gradually, this phenomenal sign of the new faith penetrated deeply into the culture and gave the peoples belonging to the Christian civilization such norms of behavior as respect for human life, recognition of the autonomy of the individual, his dignity. Later, these values ​​developed into a whole complex of ideas of Christian humanism, legal consciousness and principles of civil, democratic society. Currently, already severed from their Christian fundamental principles, they have degenerated into the norms of egocentrism and socio-political conformism, the rules of “political correctness.” Comfort and maintaining very high standards of material and social life come first.

Another contribution of Christianity to modern civilization was the consolidation of the ability of European culture for self-development. It gradually matured and took hold through the desire of millions of believers for the spiritual and then social ideal expressed in the person of Jesus Christ. In social terms, this means a continuous search and achievement of ever more advanced forms of social, political and economic organization of society, and the basic institutions of the state. All previous and current civilizations were static, sedentary cultures, focused on the values ​​of one dominant ethnic group. All these are dormant cultures, which even today, despite all their external dynamism, essentially remain slave cultures, captured by the general process of expansion of Christian civilization. The very institutions and mechanisms of the political reorganization of society on the basis of constitutional democracy and economic growth and scientific and technological development, the creation of the basic institutions of civil society, the very phenomenon of social development - all this was born in the depths of Christianity, and then generously donated by it to the rest of the world. But a world based on other, non-Christian values ​​cannot accept them. History knows of numerous attempts to perceive and borrow Christian experience, when peoples and states of other cultures tried to reproduce entire fragments of Christian civilization. Quite often, attempts were made to reproduce political, social and state institutions, and even more often - systems of education, industry and scientific and technical potential. Overwhelmingly, the effect of these borrowings was minimal. Examples of unsuccessful attempts at copying include the policy of catch-up development in pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet experiment in building communism in the USSR, and numerous plans for the modernization of society undertaken by third world countries in the past and present.

The desire for truth, for knowledge of God's creation, inherent in Christianity, gradually led to the creation of modern science, and, more broadly, to the formation of a scientific way of thinking. In general, it can be argued that Christian principles of worldview not only gave rise to modern science and technology, economics, political and civil institutions of society, but also constantly give them impetus for development.

3. Christianity as a world creed

If we move on to a more specific form of representation of Christianity in the world, that is, Christianity as a world religion, then here too, love for one’s neighbor, the desire for a spiritual ideal and perfection, and the search for truth have made this church a unique social institution in the history of mankind.

Although the percentage of Christians in the total population continues to grow in 2000. reached 34.4%, and their absolute number exceeded 2 billion, the real picture is much more serious.

In relation to Christianity, the entire population of the world can be divided into three main categories:

non-Christians

nominal Christians

Evangelical Christians (born again Christians)

Non-Christians are represented by agnostics, atheists and believers of other religions. The most significant part of the population of the countries of Christian civilization are non-believers (about 50%) and representatives of nominal Christianity (slightly more than 30%). In the last century, it was the fastest growing category of the world's population. If the number of Christians over the past 100 years has increased by 3.8 times, then the number of Muslims has increased by 6 times; atheists - 10 times; non-believers (agnostics) - 30 times. Overall, this reflected the ongoing dynamics of secularization. At the same time, non-believers in the countries of Christian civilization share many of the principles of a free democratic structure of society, respect for individual rights, and basic moral standards of behavior, which are based on the values ​​of biblical Christianity.

Nominal Christians are people who formally identify themselves with Christianity on the basis of a common historical and cultural heritage rather than on the basis of value beliefs. In practice, such a criterion for classifying people into this group is their irregular attendance at church services. The number of such Christians has been continuously declining over the past hundred years. One of the manifestations of the crisis of nominal Christianity at the local level is the fact that the average number of ordinary church parishes has decreased: in 1960. it amounted to 1000 people now - 670.

Evangelical Christians. This includes believers who have a personal relationship with Christ, actively participate in the life of their communities, and consciously strive to fulfill the basic covenants of the Lord in their lives. In terms of numbers, the followers of Christ are not doing well. There are now just over 150 million of us in the world, or 2.5% of the world's population. But here it is necessary to take into account a number of circumstances.

Firstly, as history shows, it was the minority, represented by active defenders of the faith, that very often determined the course of development of its main events, be it in the field of politics, economics, or religion. This was the case at the beginning of the emergence of Christianity, during the Reformation, during the October Revolution in Russia.

Secondly, throughout all the centuries of the victorious development of Christianity, the number of truly faithful believers to God was small and barely exceeded 1-2% of the total population, even in the countries of Christian civilization. Let us remember Ancient Israel and the prophets. Throughout almost all of its history, the number who remained faithful to the Lord did not exceed this threshold. The same thing happened in medieval Europe and Russia. All the talk about the fall of faith in recent days often replaces this question with a statement of a crisis in the moral and ethical sphere, which is indeed rapidly developing in most countries of Christian culture. At the same time, they often refer to the trend of a steady decline in the number of nominal Christians. Now in Russia, according to domestic and foreign sociological studies, about 5% of Orthodox Christians can be considered believers, even according to the simplified criteria of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church themselves.

Thirdly, Christ never said that mechanical crowding of churches would be a sign of God's grace. On the contrary, for centuries to come he predicted that there would be many called, but few chosen. The fact of a constant and absolute minority of believers in Christ, instead of despair, should remind us of the creative power of a lit candle. It is in this regard that we need to understand the famous phrase of the English Puritans of the 17th century: “Thank God that we are few.”

Fourth, we have great hope. We are already close to fulfilling one of the main commandments of Christ: “Go and teach the nations.” The evangelistic mission entrusted by the Lord to his servants is nearing its end. Notice another row of numbers. According to the same magazine “World Evangelization”, the proportion of the population that had never heard of Christ in the total number of all peoples of the world in 1900. amounted to 48.7%, in 1970 - 37.6%, in 1970 — 18.7%, in 2000 - 16.6%, in 2025 (according to forecasts) - 7.1%. It can be assumed that in the historically foreseeable future the message of Salvation will become the property of all living people and the mission of the Church here on Earth will be fulfilled.

2.5 Christian civilization

When people know a lot, it is difficult to manage them.

The eyes of the entire ancient world were focused on Rome. The mortal disease of the Empire was clearly visible and absolutely understandable to contemporaries. But it was observed especially well from the provinces; both the nature of the disease and possible ways of treating it were visible, where the way of life of a balanced society was preserved and where many different ancient, centuries-tested cultures were in contact. It is not surprising that it was in one of these places that Christianity arose. The most effective of the existing compensation mechanisms, incorporating both the experience of previous religions and the understanding of how to resist animal instincts in conditions of a very high level of satiety and safety. So effective that it became the foundation, the foundation of a Christian civilization hitherto unprecedented in its power and grandeur. In order not to be distracted, we have placed the biological meaning of the main provisions of Christianity in a separate chapter. Let us mention only the most basic ones, directly related to gender relations. Already in the very foundation of Christianity, in the legend of original sin, at the most superficial semantic level, we clearly see the direct anti-matriarchal content inherent there. Here it is: God (the higher mind) gave the order not to pick the fruit. However, the woman (a highly primative creature), under the influence of the Serpent (animal essence, the instinct to “steal”), picked the fruit. And she not only ripped it off, but also gave it to the man to try, so as not to bear personal responsibility. This is what women do in real life, but we’ll talk about that later. The man, instead of making an independent decision, followed the woman’s lead and carried out the decision made by her and imposed on him. By doing so, he took responsibility for her instinctive actions. As a result, he, she, and their offspring had global problems. The most obvious conclusion that any contemporary who observed the flabby Romans who were pushed around by their wives drew from this legend: “You cannot be henpecked, because the responsibility for a non-independent decision is enormous.” In addition, one of the commandments of Christianity is “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Moreover, Jesus included in the concept of adultery thoughts of adultery, divorce, and marriage to a divorced woman. In this way, maximum support was provided for lifelong monogamous marriage (stable pair regime) and opposition to the herd sexual market. Well, and one more thing. Against the backdrop of the demographic crisis of Rome, which led to its fall, the cult of a woman-mother could not help but arise in an alternative opposition religion. Which is exactly what happened. Once, while walking around the Louvre, I wandered into a room dedicated to the art of early Christianity. There were practically only images of the Madonna and Child. Very revealing.

The basis of Christianity is human freedom from animal instincts. Therefore, Christianity was initially met with hostility by the ruling elite of the Empire, who were accustomed to controlling the crowd by manipulating its animal instincts. And only when the effectiveness of the new religion became obvious (Christians did not waste their time and resources on satisfying animal instincts, and therefore worked and lived better than pagans), Christianity gradually became the dominant state religion in Europe.

The integrity of the Catholic Church in the anti-matriarchal issue, namely its removal completely from female influence (the vow of celibacy of Catholic priests), initially gave a powerful impetus to the development of the countries under its control. Subsequently, the Holy Inquisition, having carried out a massive “witch hunt” and opposed the instinct of self-preservation to the female sexual instinct, for a long time discouraged women from the desire to dominate in society. This extended the life of European civilization by several centuries. Over the centuries of control of the instinctive programs of Europeans by Catholicism, the Christian world managed to start a scientific and technological revolution, carry out global expansion and take control of half the planet. However, unfortunately, the Catholic Church, like all the religious structures that preceded it, was overly carried away by the commercial side of its activities to the detriment of its main responsibilities. In addition, it stood in the way of the development of productive forces. And as a result, I lost control of the situation. This in turn caused a decline in morals and justified indignation of the flock. Therefore, during the Reformation of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was partly reformed and partly supplanted by more liberal Protestant denominations. This further accelerated the economic development of the respective countries and led to the transformation of their hierarchies into non-pyramidal democratic structures. Fortunately, the low-primitive gene pool had been accumulated by that time, and the composition of European societies allowed such a transition. As a result, the level of technology and material culture grew so much that life became quite safe and satisfying.

However, by that time the sad experience of Rome had been forgotten, and Protestant denominations were formed more to suit the current political and economic situation without a clear understanding of the danger of liberating instincts. In addition, they were deprived of real power, and therefore an effective system of intimidation. That is, the ability to contrast the herd animal instincts of parishioners with the instinct of self-preservation. The compensation mechanism has lost real power and has become helpless. The Protestant clergy did not take a vow of celibacy and had already become controlled by the female part of society. Christian commandments were no longer perceived in the same way as by contemporaries of the fall of Rome, as something obvious. The demands of traditional Christianity were now largely seen as a set of meaningless life-complicating restrictions that stood in the way of pleasure. And so, under the noble slogans of individual freedom, education and the fight against medieval obscurantism, the cultural tradition was changed, and the animal instincts of the level of the human herd were released from control. The job was completed by some human males who did not have an understanding of the role of religion in the evolution of Humanity, but were overwhelmed by the animal instinctive desire to obtain the highest rank in the scientific hierarchy. They found nothing better than to kick the now defenseless super-dominant - God - to increase their own authority. One of them announced that “God is dead.” Another is that “religion is the opium of the people.” The third explained the origin of religion solely by the cowardice and ignorance of ancient man. And he presented its functional purpose solely as a means of oppressing workers. Along the way, he spewed out so much nonsense that hundreds of millions of people spent a century dealing with the consequences. The rest rushed to assent to these learned males, break down the “senseless” dogmas and violate cultural prohibitions. Thus liberalism and individual freedom were born. That is, a system for liberating instincts at the level of an animal herd. This trend is usually called the decline of morals, morality, and spirituality. And since then, almost every intellectual instinctively strives to perform the learned ritual of self-affirmation. Declare your militant atheism and the independence of your animal instincts from the needs of society, the so-called. "personal freedom". The church was separated from the state and began to be subject to regular attacks from “enlightened” individuals.

A logical continuation of the beginning of the imbalance in European societies was the strengthening of the now unrestrained dominance of women in society, which resulted in the suffragette movement, and later in feminism. The herd sexual market was immediately revived and splashed out onto the streets of European cities with a colorful array of fashionable women's outfits, establishing a culture of sexual provocation. Promoting their product of planned demand - sex with the help of the latest technologies of show business, fashion, style and media, subjugating the political life of states. The era of modern matriarchy has begun. The stage of natural degradation of the sexual and hierarchical structures of society, deprived of a system of counteraction to animal instincts. Collapse of the Roman Empire, take two.

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Chapter 5. Third civilization? “What is that, knowing that, we will know everything?..” For the entire existence of mankind, there have been only two spiritual civilizations. The first is among the Old Testament Jews, the second is among the New Testament Russians... With the first, everything is, in general, clear. They were chosen as

Russia is going through a crisis. Not only the one that shakes the stock exchanges and banks, but the more important, existential one - its essence lies in the painful choice of the path of development. Essentially, this is a protracted search for self-identification, a search that has not stopped over the past three and a half centuries, starting with the “book justice” carried out under Patriarch Nikon. Peter's reforms, revolutions and counter-revolutions of the twentieth century mark the most radical attempts to correct the historical route of Russia, at all stages associated with attempts to clarify or revise its place in the system of historical coordinates, its place in world history and the concert of world civilizations. The question of Russia's place in the world was behind historically significant decisions dictated by pragmatic considerations similar to those made by Peter the Great. He was also behind the historical cataclysms that befell the country under the weight of uncontrollable and uncontrollable processes, although they were accompanied political programs and utopian projects of the participants in the events - what happened during the period of three revolutions hundred years ago. The centuries-long suspension of this question, which creates the illusion of its unsolvability, as well as the diversity of hasty answers to it, reveal not so much the unfoundedness of the thinkers, ideologists and politicians, how much of its objective difficulty. The quintessence of this issue can be indicated by the following set of identifiers: Russia and Europe, Russia and the East, Russia and the Byzantine heritage, Russia and the Eurasian steppe, and - more importantly - Russia and Christianity, Russia and Orthodoxy, Russia and Western confessions.

And the question itself is, essentially, whether Russia belongs or does not belong to Europe. The cartographic answer to it is either obvious and trivial, or conditional and belongs to the field of geographical nomenclature, and in this formulation the question itself is empty rhetoric. And its problematic essence lies, of course, in something else: does it belong Orthodox Russia European civilization? In other words, does the Christian civilization of Europe include Byzantium and its heirs, and among them Russia, or does it not? And if it does, then in what capacity? How can a world that is culturally homogeneous with Western Europe and only due to historically layered deviations from the standard need correction? Or does Christian Europe have two components - East and West, which, although significantly different from each other, have a genetic relationship? Despite all the seemingly indisputable evidence of an affirmative answer to last question, this answer is unacceptable for many, for example, for Russian Westerners or, at the other end of the ideological spectrum, for Eurasians.

In other words, in the course of such simple reasoning, a logical necessity is revealed for a correct understanding of Russia’s place in the world and in history; it is necessary to form an adequate idea of ​​such a phenomenon as Europe. Geographically, Europe is a part of the world, which, however, is not at the same time a continent, differing in this from Africa or Australia. Part of the world is a concept from the field of geography, but in relation to Europe and Asia, the geographical factor in itself does not serve as a basis for their delimitation, because Europe is only a large peninsula in the west of the Eurasian continent. Europe and Asia are distinguished not because of geography, but because of history, and even more precisely, because they belong to different civilizations. But since the toponyms “Europe” and “Asia” are included in a geographical context, and geography forces cartographic unambiguity, the boundary between them is drawn with such certainty that does not completely coincide with the more fluid boundaries between civilizations, but only partially correlates with them.

However, this border did not remain unchanged over the centuries: in ancient times it was drawn along the Tanais (Don), in the Middle Ages - along the Volga, in modern times it was drawn along the Ural Range, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea and then along the Greater Caucasus Range. But the tendency to shift this border - to the expansion of Europe at the expense of Asia - continues today; at least, this trend is evidenced by such an international political act as the admission of the newly formed Transcaucasian and Central Asian states to European organizations. There is also logic in measuring the latitudinal extent of Europe not by four, as was generally accepted recently, but by twelve time zones, considering its eastern limit not the Urals, but Russian shores Pacific Ocean.

Such movements of the border between Europe and Asia are not caused by continental shifts or other geological disasters; behind them are phenomena of a religious, political, social, in other words, historical nature. Considering the issue from this point of view, it should be clarified that the unilateral expansion of Europe to the east in the field of geographical nomenclature does not adequately reflect the real historical process, which demonstrates, rather, the pulsating rhythm of movements of the actual border between European and Asian civilizations, so that more than once in history it also shifted in the opposite – western – direction; at least this was the case in the time of Genghis Khan or Mohammed the Conqueror, under whose successors Asia twice advanced as far as Vienna. And almost a thousand years before the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman hordes ended in defeat, the armed expansion of Asia into Europe was carried out from the south, from Africa, and was stopped in the heart of modern France, near Poitiers.

To the question of what European civilization is, the most laconic answer is that it is a Christian civilization, and as such it ranks alongside Muslim, Confucian or Hindu civilizations. This answer, however, needs a number of caveats. The original center of Christianity, as is well known, was not in Europe, but in Asia, in Palestine. Europe, long before its Christianization, crossed the line separating primitive, or patriarchal, if you like, prehistoric societies from civilization, which presupposes the existence of states, writing, complex social system, as well as urban-type settlements. All this in the south of Europe - on the island of Crete and then in the Peloponnese and Attica - appeared for the first time already in the 2nd millennium BC. In this regard, it is necessary to clarify: when characterizing the civilization of Europe as Christian, one should not completely identify the concepts of “European” and “Christian” civilizations; such a rapprochement between them only indicates the face of Europe that it had over the centuries - at least in the second half of the 1st and 2nd millennium AD, but, of course, not initially. And yet, the right of European civilization to call it Christian is supported by the fact that in ancient times the meaning of the toponym “Europe” was significantly more local, and in relation to that era, the well-known analogue of medieval Christian Europe was the world of the classical Mediterranean, which included the coastal territories of three parts Sveta; The Mediterranean, and not Europe, remained in ancient times the region of Christian civilization, but only until the expansion of Islam, which confused the old historical and geographical maps.

It is also obvious that both in the past and now Christian civilization goes far beyond the borders of Europe: not to mention Russian Siberia, Lebanon, Armenia, Georgia (for some unknown reason, which committed recent years cartographic revolution and included itself in Europe, despite the fact that Turkey, located to the west of it, with the exception of truly European Thrace, quietly remains in Asia), it is also Christian America - North and South, comparable in our century to Europe and population size, and its political and economic weight. And yet, by birthright, America must yield to Europe the priority right to the name “Christian civilization.” At the same time, Islam is present both historically and currently in Europe: in the past - in Spain and the Balkans, now - at least in Turkish Thrace, Albania, the North Caucasus and fragmentarily in the Volga region and the Urals. A special problem, from the point of view of the geographical distribution of civilizations, is the Muslim diaspora in Western Europe.

Another necessary consideration regarding the Christianity of Europe is related to the fact that in lately It has become almost a generally accepted cliche to characterize modern society in Europe and America as a post-Christian world. There are a number of obvious sad circumstances behind this statement - to be convinced of this, just turn on the TV. But this matter is still too fresh and new: the crisis state of Christian Europe is indisputable, but equally indisputable is the failure of the experiments that took place already in the twentieth century to build new post-Christian Ordnungs. There is every reason to hope that the project currently underway to establish a society of political correctness in Europe, America and throughout the entire expanse of the earth, militant and intolerant of any otherness, ignoring the religious and ethical values ​​of peoples, will end in the same miscarriage as the projects of the Nuremberg dreamers of a thousand-year Reich . In any case, remaining within the framework of history and retrospection and distracting from the unseemly momentariness and dangerous prospects, it is permissible to hold on to the good old term - Christian Europe, without turning a blind eye to the shoots that have long languished on European soil, from which the nightmares of the twentieth century grew - one of these escapes was the Great French Revolution, although it was, of course, not the first uprising against Christ in baptized Europe.

The identification of Christian civilization as a kind of integrity is at odds with the concepts of a number of prominent historians and philosophers who adhered to a multi-civilizational approach to history. Thus, the concept of N.Ya. is built on the opposition of Romano-Germanic Europe and Russia as the center of the Slavic world. Danilevsky, who systematizes and takes to provoking extremes the more flexible and cautious ideas of the early Slavophiles. The Eurasians, placing the Byzantine heritage at the forefront of Russian civilization, at the same time closely brought Russia closer to the nomadic world of the Turkic-Mongol tribes, considering the influence of the steppe on Rus' to be deeper than the superficial influence of the Christian West, in other words, they adhered to the ancient maxim of Joseph de Maistre: “If you scratch a Russian, a Tatar will be revealed,” finding in her a reason not for self-abasement, but for pride. O. Spengler in the list of cultures, which he calls approximately the same thing that A. Toynbee calls civilizations, does not mention Christian culture, contrasting Western culture with Arabic, which for him also covers the Byzantine world, while considering Russia as another type of culture , different and separate from the Byzantine and called by him, not without clumsy German wit, Siberian. In A. Toynbee, Western Christian and Eastern Christian civilizations are presented not in isolation from each other and solely in contrast, as in Spengler or Danilevsky, but taking into account the commonality of their origin from the Greco-Roman civilization under the influence of Christian leaven. However, Toynbee sees in them not varieties of the same thing, but two different civilizations.

In other words, the crux of the question posed is whether, speaking briefly, Byzantium and Russia, on the one hand, and the West, on the other, are modifications of the same culture or two different worlds, the related features and historical connections of which are secondary. The first answer seems more convincing, if not obvious. In order to perceive no less a difference between the east and west of Europe than between the Eastern Christian world and the world of Islam or the nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppe, a fair amount of passion is required.

But while insisting on the existence of a single Christian civilization, one should not ignore the very real and even morphological differences within it, which mainly come down to the difference between its two varieties - the West, Catholic and Protestant, and the Christian East - Orthodox, but also Monophysite and Nestorian. Although divisions within Christian civilization are of a confessional nature, this does not mean that there is an exact correspondence between confessional pluralism and the diversity of varieties of Christian culture. Doctrinally, Orthodoxy is closer to Catholicism than Lutheranism or Calvinism, but Protestant Europe in terms of civilization differs from Catholic Europe incomparably less than from the Orthodox East. The explanation for this circumstance lies on the surface and is due to the fact that the Reformation is a relatively late phenomenon: Protestantism appeared too late to radically modify the already established culture of the part of Western Europe that was covered by it. At the same time, this chronological argument cannot be extrapolated beyond the given particular case. The confessional division between Diaphysites, Monophysites and Nestorians dates back to the beginning of the 4th century, but the family ties that bind Orthodox world with the worlds of Coptic and Syrian Christianity, turned out to be more durable than those that connect Western Christian and Eastern Christian civilizations, the church unity of which lasted longer - until the 11th century.

The Western modification of Christian civilization, naturally, extends far beyond the borders of Europe, but, unlike the Eastern, not overland, but across the Atlantic, covering South and North America, Australia, New Zealand and a number of enclaves in Asia and Africa. At the same time, the specific character of Latin American civilization, which distinguishes it from Catholic Europe, has no religious basis and is rooted in the intense impact on it of the destroyed local cultures of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas. As for the civilization of North America, a decisive constitutive contribution to its formation was made by sectarian dissidence, marginal in the homeland of North American culture - in Western Europe; and the cultures of the North American Indians, virtually destroyed by the colonists along with their carriers, left their heritage mainly on geographical map America with its Oklahoma and Mississippi and even in the famous art of scalping the pioneers of the Wild West.

But the subject of our reflections is Europe, and not the entire Christian world. There are reasons to present both Eastern Christian and Western Christian civilizations in the form of more fragmented structures. The Christian East in this case can be divided into three regions: the southern - in the Balkans, Cyprus and Transcaucasia, including both Orthodox Georgia and Monophysite Armenia, and the northern, Russian, which naturally also includes Ukraine and Belarus, with a long presence Georgia and Armenia within Russia and the ties of close ethnic kinship between the Balkan Orthodox Slavs and Slavic Russia singled out Christian Transcaucasia, as well as the territory of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia with its Bosnian enclaves and Montenegro, into an area intermediate between the Greek and Russian versions of Eastern Christian civilization. The third region of the Eastern Christian world is Ethiopia, located almost in the very heart of Africa, whose culture is a unique modification of the Coptic civilization of Egypt.

The Western Christian world has a structure no less complex than the Christian East. At the same time, the confessional factor only partially influences the lines of division. The cultural core of Western Europe can be outlined as follows: Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Austria, Switzerland, northern and central Italy, Spanish Catalonia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, but not Slovakia or Croatia. At the same time, the division of this region into its Catholic and Protestant factions, taking place approximately according to the Roman limes, although it has a very real basis, is still secondary in comparison with the cultural boundaries that separate this region as a whole from Great Britain or Spain and even from southern Italy. The fundamental historical phenomenon on which this structure is based is the empire of Charlemagne. A curious circumstance, which may be more than just a curious coincidence, is the almost exact correspondence of the historical boundaries of the cultural core of Western Europe with the boundaries of the European Union in its original composition, when it was still called the Common Market. But apparently, it was only a historical joke that the eastern border The empire of Charlemagne was reproduced almost literally when the Iron Curtain divided Europe, so that Germany was cut in two, approximately along the Elbe, as during the wars of Charlemagne with the German pagan Saxons.

Outside this civilizational core of Western Europe, Scandinavian and not completely homogeneous with it, on the one hand, Icelandic, and on the other, Finnish and Baltic Sea, as well as British and the fundamentally different Catholic culture can be distinguished as special and peripheral cultural modifications and Celtic in its ethnic and cultural roots in Ireland, the Iberian civilization in Spain and Portugal, but also the Basque in the Pyrenees, southern Italian, which includes Sicily, closely related to the mainland south of Italy, and the distinctive culture of Sardinia, as well as Corsica, despite its political belonging to France. A very special corner of southern Europe is Catholic and at the same time Arabic-speaking Malta. Finally, the Catholic east of Western Europe also belongs to Western Christian civilization.

Western and Eastern varieties of Christian civilization have coexisted in parallel not since the baptism of Europe. The Christian West significantly diverged from the Christian East in the era of papacy and feudalism, crusades and scholasticism, in other words, in the 2nd millennium after the birth of Christ, but the process of separation began, naturally, earlier: in the east - under Emperor Heraclius, who radically revised the policies of his predecessors, who sought to maintain or restore the unity and integrity of the Roman Empire, and took a decisive step towards the Hellenization of New Rome; in the west - the events that took place at the turn of the 8th–9th centuries, when Charlemagne and Pope Leo III actually created the Western Roman Empire for the first time, had a similar significance. The fruits of division ripened by 1054. And the textbook date for the division of the united Roman Empire into two - Western and Eastern - the year 395, marked by the death of the holy Emperor Theodosius the Great and his will, is completely fictitious: in the same way that Saint Theodosius divided the empire between his sons in his will, it was divided more than once and before him, when in the presence of co-rulers and with the territorial distribution of their power, the unity of the legal system was preserved - it was rather similar to the allocation of appanages to the younger sons of the Moscow sovereigns under Ivan III and his successors, when in fact the appanage system had already ceased to exist in Rus' .

The ethnic factor was important, but still not of paramount importance in the actual divergence of Christian civilization into Western and Eastern: the invasions and conquests of German barbarians in the West and the baptism of the southern and eastern Slavs from the Greeks. But in the first case, the essence of the matter was not that the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians or Vandals changed the nature of the civilization of Rome by conquering it, but that the culture of the Germanic Arians, which was itself permeated with the influence of Rome, then opposed to the civilization of a united Greco-Latin Rome, disappeared , left its mark on the civilization of the Catholic West. As for the baptism of Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus', these events took place when the breakdown of the united Christian world was already an accomplished fact.

There are serious grounds for asserting that at the turn of the millennium there was not a division of the united Christian world into two factions, but a separation of the Catholic West from the Orthodox Christian world, which in the East remained in its essential features the same as it had previously been in both Greek and Western Europe. the Latin half of the unified Roman Empire, especially in its provincial periphery, be it in Georgia, Sicily or even Ireland. This statement is unfounded, but it can only become convincing if it is based on factual material, which has no place in the article, and yet this idea can at least be illustrated by pointing to the architecture of the ancients Christian churches not only the new, but also the old Rome, on the one hand, and the Gothic cathedrals of France and Germany, which are so different from them, on the other.

The dichotomy of Christian Europe finds a well-known parallel in the dichotomy of Greek and Latin elements in a single classical world pre-Christian antiquity. But this duality of them did not mean parity even then. The essence of their relationship can be expressed in the most succinct way by the following formula: as a result of the political and military expansion of Rome, which conquered the Greek-speaking kingdoms and city-states, the insufficiently mature Roman culture was absorbed by the Greek, which was then in that cosmopolitan stage of its history, which is usually called Hellenism. At the same time, it is necessary to clarify that Rome experienced various influences of the Hellenic element - through Magna Graecia, which occupied the south of modern Italy, through the Etruscans - from the very beginning of its history, and these influences are not hypothetical, they are clearly traceable.

Finally, ancient civilization Europe is the one that was discovered recently, at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, the Cretan-Mycenaean, which, like the classical Greco-Roman and Christian - Western and Eastern, is, as can be seen from its name, also unique chronologically biased dichotomy.

In the recent past, at least as far back as the 19th century, European history was almost identified with world history. On the pages of the corresponding compendiums, in addition to detailed European stories, there were only incomparably more laconic sketches of the history of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran and, quite marginally, India and China. The legacy of literary imperialism has now been overcome in historiography; at least, Eurocentrism is no longer an openly declared position of most European historians, especially politically correct historians.

This does not mean, however, that classical Eurocentrism has been completely eradicated. It has been preserved in a transformed form and remains a quite popular ideological trend. Only now, at the center of world history, they no longer place European history itself with the Christian leaven of its culture, but “Western civilization,” in which the European element itself is pushed to the periphery, and the brainchild of Europe, the United States, is placed at the forefront, while “Western civilization "is presented as a model for non-Western countries, gradually included in its orbit as they modernize, and the end result of this process, in the paradoxical and provocative expression of Fukuyama, whose consciousness was disproportionately affected by the fall of the Berlin Wall, is an end of history that is not apocalyptic, and progressive, like the Marxist advent of communism, only in capitalist clothes, or, even more vulgar, in the form of happy endings of Hollywood products.

An irresistible theoretical criticism of this concept was given by one of the most profound modern political scientists - S.-F. Huntington, and September 11, 2001, together with the subsequent failures of the aggressive actions of the only superpower, clearly illustrated the illusory nature of yet another fashionable utopia. And yet, in moderate doses, Eurocentrism in a perverted form of Western centrism, or Atlanticism, has survived to this day: both in the works of writing authors, and in the minds of the non-writing public, and in the affairs of politicians.

The most popular and trivial justification for this orientation of consciousness is the idea of ​​progress, since it is believed that, moving along the path of progress, the West has bypassed other regions of the world. This conviction is so ingrained in the minds of modern publicists, especially the most frivolous and reptilian of them - modern Russian liberals, that in line with this logic they often - and, it seems, without any sense of incongruity from the point of view of traditional geography - economically developed countries are also considered to be part of the West. Japan, solely due to the high indicators of its GDP and the beneficial, from the point of view of Russian liberals, presence of American occupation bases on its soil. But Japan can only be considered the West if you look at it from Los Angeles, from Hollywood. Then, however, being in California and turning in the opposite direction, one should call what is commonly called Western Europe the Far East.

So, the West is placed at the center of the universe due to the success of its progress. But what about progress? we're talking about? As A. Toynbee noted, progress is most indisputable in military equipment. And indeed, its self-evidence here is truly amazing - just compare the effect of the Hiroshima bomb, the bombing of Dresden or Baghdad with the bloodiest massacres of the distant past. Of course, behind the development of military technologies, which have always been at the forefront of progress, is the development of the technological system as a whole, in other words, the ability of human societies to transform natural environment in your own interests. Although such progress is not admirable from a green perspective, it is at least obvious, and it has indeed radically changed the external conditions of human existence in the last two centuries. But if we judge progress not from an exclusively technological point of view, but from an economic and sociological one, through indicators of per capita GDP or the human development index, then, although progress in this area is a completely visible reality, there is no reason to talk about its progressive and continuous movement over a long historical time. Russian sociologist P. Sorokin once calculated that if during the earthly life of Jesus Christ 1 denarius had been given in interest at a modest 2%, which would adequately correspond to very moderate economic growth, then in order to pay off the creditor in the 20th century, the debtor there wouldn't be enough money even if he had everything the globe, and that one would be made of pure gold, from which it follows with stunning mathematical clarity that economic growth has inevitably been interrupted throughout history by catastrophic declines and prolonged stagnation.

And yet, if progress is measured by the criteria given here, to which more human ones can be added - such as life expectancy, level of education, then the priority of Western civilization will appear indisputable, but not from the point of view of a historian dealing with centuries, since the vanguard role of Europe and America in technology, economics and comfort goes back only to early XIX century - only after the opium war, glorious in the annals of British history, the victory of which, forcing China to massive purchases of colonial Indian opium, was achieved by Britain thanks to its advantage in military technology, China lost its primacy in GDP British Empire, which, in turn, ceded it to the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. But this primacy has every chance of being lost already in the current century, with the rapid growth of economic power Far East. However, it remains an even bigger question whether people have become happier as a result of economic progress, at least in the exclusively hedonistic sense of the word. The answer cannot be demonstrated statistically. In the language of science it does not and cannot exist, but philosophy, art, and in particular literature and cinema, which are more relevant here, give either ambivalent or, rather, negative answers, in any case, the latter are more common among thinkers and artists than optimistic ones , triumphalist and progressivist.

But the essence of the matter is that man is a spiritual being, destined for eternal life, and therefore the hedonistic aspect of human existence cannot be of decisive importance in reasoning of an axiological nature, including regarding progress. And therefore, the most important topic in comparisons of civilizations is the religious side of the matter, which is most directly related to the eternity of human existence. Since there can be neither agreement nor even a fruitful discussion between adherents of different religions about the priority of one religion or another, then, from a scientistic point of view, consideration of the problem of man and the history of human societies and the entire human race sub specie aeternitatis, in the aspect of absolute values, is inadequate , and any agreements on this score can only be of a conventional nature and, strictly speaking, lie outside science in the proper sense of the word.

However, the historian of human society, and not of its particular manifestations, such as steel production or bank credit, cannot ignore what constitutes the core of human existence, so that historical science is deprived of the opportunity to fit into the Procrustean bed of pure science, which, however, always was aware of both history and other humanities and that should not confuse a Christian historian who has good reason to place the history of Christian civilization at the center of world history, which, of course, when viewed from within other cultures risks being regarded as an unfounded claim and bias. But an attempt to circumvent such bias cannot be successful. A non-religious view of the world and history of an atheist or agnostic does not at all guarantee unattainable neutrality or objectivity, and is perceived by bearers of any religious consciousness as narrowly partisan and tendentious, moreover, dictated by naive pride - a vain attempt to remove oneself from the flow of history and climb onto an imaginary, imaginary the peak, higher than Everest, from where you can see everything that happened and is happening under the sun. At one time, Soviet ideologists argued that for this it is only necessary, if you have an education, to retain the circle of concepts of a factory worker or, if you come from a different background, to assimilate a proletarian worldview. There is reason to believe that they exaggerated the usefulness of working-class origins or the imitation of proletarian tastes for the historian.

Archpriest Georgy Florovsky once wrote: “There is no and cannot be an impartial history. Evolutionary historians have no less biased opinions than believers in Divine Revelation—it’s just a different kind of bias. Ernest Renan and Julius Wellhausen are no less biased than Ricciotti and Fr. Lagrange... and Reitzenstein and Fraser are much more than the House of Odo Casel and the House of Gregory Dix. They just have different preferences. It is only too well known that for the sake of critical prejudices, historians sometimes distort and pervert the truth much more than out of obedience to tradition.”

Meanwhile, a Christian historian has a significant advantage. Mark Bloch, not being a Christian, stated in his “Apology of History”: “Christianity is the religion of historians. Other religious systems based their beliefs and rituals on mythologies that are almost beyond the reach of human time. For Christians, their sacred books are historical books, and their liturgies commemorate—along with episodes from the earthly life of God—events from the history of the Church and the saints.” Behind this judgment are at least two ideas: Christian faith is not only faith in the eternal, ahistorical existence of the Trinitarian God, but it is also faith in the reality of events that took place in history, faith in the historical facts of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion of the Savior “at Pontius Pilate,” in the words of the creed, and the Resurrection. Another idea, going back to St. Augustine, is that the events of the Sacred History of the New Testament constituted the main node and central point of world history; they filled history with meaning and gave it a guideline.

Christian civilization constitutes a particularly significant fragment of human history because it is more closely connected with the history of the Church than others. At first glance, with this approach, Eurocentrism, expelled through the doors, returns through the window. But, firstly, this is still not the Eurocentrism that has degraded into “Westernism” - a stigma successfully invented by a philosopher of the 20th century - if only because the history of the Christian Church, as already said, did not begin in Europe, and The most important event in world history took place not in Europe, but in Asian Jerusalem. And secondly, the semantic importance of events European history in this idea of ​​world history is connected not with its military, political or economic dominance, not with the progressive development of science and technology, but with the evolution of its spiritual state. And finally, the most important objection to the certification of such a concept as continuing the tradition of imperialist Eurocentrism lies in its confessionally motivated axiological emphasis on a historically Eastern Christian, and in essence an authentically Christian civilization, which underwent a mutation in its western area at the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia, from which eventually grew modern West, rushing into the abyss of post-Christianity. In addition, over the centuries, the Christian East, in its relations with its closest neighbors, was more often a victim of expansion from both the West and the East than an aggressor.

All of the unsuccessful attempts to give Russia such a blood transfusion, which would have eliminated its qualitative difference from the West, that left a mark in history and yet essentially failed, stemmed from an underestimation of the civilizational significance of the church break that took place in 1054, and, paradoxical as it may seem, at first glance, the significance of the pogrom of Constantinople committed a century and a half later by the crusaders. These events took place outside of Russia, but even then it entered the orbit of the Byzantine world, and its fate became a constitutive part of its spiritual heritage. Out of the desire to overcome the technical lag of Russia from the West, the reasons for which are predominantly exogenous in nature and are mainly associated with the well-known sacrificial role of the shield of Western Europe, which it, like Byzantium before it, performed out of geographical necessity, and not with its spiritual design, reformers on the throne and revolutionaries in the underground came to the conclusion that the Russian train should be moved to other rails - to those used in the West. To simplify the plot, let's say this: in order to teach the Russians to build ships, there was in fact no need to force service people to shave their beards, or their spouses and daughters to wear a neckline, contrary to what the great reformer himself thought then. Although different role models have been chosen since then, they have been borrowed from the same reservoir. For Russian emperors from Peter to Nicholas I inclusive, the monarchical regimes of Sweden, Prussia or pre-revolutionary France served as role models; Alexander II sought to reform the subject country with an eye to the experiences of liberalization of European monarchies undertaken after the French Revolution. The English parliament captured the hearts of opposition liberals, more radical elements were inspired by the Jacobin guillotine, and then, already in the 20th century, in the vastness of the former Russian Empire, renamed to Soviet Union, and beyond, they tried in vain to implement the utopia read in the books of Western teachers, the spiritual roots of which are in the ancient chiliastic heresy. Finally, when the utopia collapsed, the vision of the leaders thrown to the surface of the waters by the catastrophe and their dumbfounded admirers was darkened by the sight of the dazzling shine of the foil in which the “hail shining on the top of the mountain” was packaged, which he actually climbed for reasons that have nothing to do with now The post-Christian political correctness imposed by him on the whole world in relation to evil and corruption is, rather, on the contrary: thanks to the roots of severe puritanical and sectarian intolerance towards all kinds of, let’s say, moral deviations.

Although ultimately all the experiments of deep transformation of Russia failed, colliding with its spiritual core that was not amenable to planned mutation, they left wounds on it in the form of alien institutions and groundless attitudes and desires of “Russian Europeans” of different orientations. At one time, the last two Russian emperors, Alexander III and Saint Nicholas II, tried to reverse the trend, but it was too late: the disease turned out to be severe and fatal for the empire built by Peter I.

In any case, understanding the place of Russia and the West in the coordinate system of world civilizations requires immersion in the historical context and its sober, conscientious, judicious analysis. The roots of the present are always in the past. The roots of the recent past go into ancient layers of historical soil. Knowing the past, and most importantly, understanding it, is a useful thing. Such knowledge helps to do right choice, it is better to see the boundary between realized plans and unrealistic projects, between enterprises that bring immediate success, but are fraught with failure in the future, and those that are built not on sand, but on a solid foundation, on a cornerstone.