Базовый цивилизационный конфликт на англ. яз

"Basic Civilizational conflict" and "Barrier civilizations" in historical retrospect (I.Khuzin)

"The whole world is a theater, and the people in it are actors" (W. Shakespeare)

Introduction

One of the topics of study in the modern school curriculum of social studies is the global problems of mankind, in particular, the conflict of the "rich North" and the "poor South" is considered in sufficient detail, bearing in mind, first of all, the relations of the countries of Western Europe and the countries of Africa and South Asia. The problem of "West-East" relations does not seem to exist. Meanwhile, as the aggression of NATO countries and their satellites against many Muslim countries in the 1990s and 2000s and the international events surrounding Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine 2022-__ show, such a problem exists, and its reduction only to contradictions between Russia and the "collective West" will be quite superficial. History and historiography will help in assessing this problem, the study of which will lead any unbiased researcher to the opinion that the West-Russia conflict is one of the consequences of the West-East conflict, and not its essence, since the chronological framework of the latter is limited not to a millennium or even a thousand and a half years, but at least four millennia. Moreover, with all due respect to China, India and their near neighbors, these countries nevertheless spent most of the known "written" history on its periphery and were involved in the West-East conflict only "occasionally." Therefore, we can safely say that the participants in this conflict were separate conditionally Western European nations and the nations of the Middle East and neighboring regions. At the same time, the conflict under study had a significant, and often decisive influence on the choice of ways of human development, which is why it can be called a "basic civilizational conflict".

The most prominent and "above" layer of this conflict is the conflict between Islam and Western Christianity (primarily european Catholicism). Eastern Christianity (first of all, Orthodoxy) is considered quite neutral in relation to Islam (and in some cases they are even close, in particular, many "traditional" moral values coincide). For example, the twelfth-century Orthodox Emperor of Byzantium, Manuel the First Komnenos, recognized that Christians and Muslims, despite existing differences, still believe in the same God, which for the dense Early Middle Ages was an outstanding example of an attempt to call for peaceful coexistence of two different religious systems. Although the Orthodox bishops of that time did not agree with Manuel the First, many highly educated Byzantines supported the position of their emperor on this issue, and not the churchmen who were entrenched in their dogmas. There are many similar examples from prominent Muslim figures. For example, the famous commander of the same twelfth century, Salah ad-Din, considered almost the main opponent of the Crusaders, guaranteed the privileges and inviolability of Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, which he captured, and retained the local Church of the Resurrection for Christians, which, in the context of the incessant "crusades" of Catholics against Muslims, also required him to rise above the usual mental level of the average person of that dark time (for comparison: after the Catholics captured Constantinople in 1204, they looted all the Orthodox churches there, some of them were closed, and the rest were converted into Catholic churches). Today, the modern Russian concept of traditional values, officially enshrined in the Decree of the President of Russia dated 09/11/2022 No. 809, recognizes Christianity (Orthodoxy) and Islam, along with Buddhism and Judaism, as an integral part of the Russian historical and spiritual heritage, what also is one of the evidences of Russia's historical connection with Ancient Athens and Constantinople, which were also intersections of various civilizations, although elements of harsh xenophobia were often found in these ancient cities.

      As many Russian and Muslim historians have recognized and recognize, the medieval crusades of Catholics against Muslims initially became the basis of the religious layer of the conflict under study (see, for example, Nechaev S.Yu. "World History on fingers". Before these Catholic campaigns, despite separate wars, Eastern Christians and Muslims got along quite well with each other, demonstrating a high level of religious tolerance. /The information of the Byzantines and Catholics that the Turks in the 11th century, unlike the Arabs, were not tolerant, is not credible, because: a) the Byzantines had to encourage the Catholics to help them in the fight against the Turks; b) the Catholics had to justify their atrocities during their campaigns; c) there was no mass exodus of Christians from the lands occupied by the Turks; Armenians, Greeks, Jews and other peoples continued to live in the regions occupied by the Turks. The same Byzantines who write about individual cases of Turkish bullying of church hierarchs, thereby indirectly confirm that in fact Christian church services continued in the territories occupied by the Turks. In addition, information about these bullies has not been verified - it is not known for sure whether they were, who participated in them, their causes, etc.; d) Byzantine military leaders and even emperors themselves periodically entered into alliances with individual Turkish rulers, which would not have happened in the case of their fierce confrontation on religious grounds; e) until the 19th century, with the exception of certain excesses, there were no cases of mass persecution of Christians by Turks/. In contrast Catholics during the crusades often massacred the Muslim population of entire cities. For example, only after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Catholics massacred more than 10000 of its inhabitants - Muslims and Jews). It only seems that the "old history" has "sunk into the centuries", and for modern times it does not matter: historians constantly study and "revive" it for the population, creating part of the ideological "background" for many wars, including modern ones. (A wonderful example of this in history is the notorious campaigns of Alexander the Great against the Persians. Being a Macedonian barbarian himself, that is, not being a Greek, Alexander the Great, 150 years after the end of the Greco-Persian wars, suddenly declared that he wanted to punish the "unreasonable" Persians for their attack a century and a half ago. While "taking revenge on the Persians", he himself occupied Greece, destroyed a number of Greek cities (among them are Thebes, Halicarnassus and others), killed tens of thousands of Greeks and enslaved tens of thousands of them. Moreover, during the attack of the Persians in the early 5th century BC, Macedonia was an ally of Persia, that is, logically speaking, the Macedonians themselves should have been punished for that Persian invasion. In total, Alexander the Great, along with his father Philip 2. killed the Greeks many times more than the Persians. Probably due to his bloodshed, he is considered a "great hero", but with a consistent religious and ideological approach, he can only be considered such for Western countries and their satellites, since, as is known, he was bisexual, and homosexuals and bisexuals cannot be considered "heroes" in countries that proclaim their commitment to traditional values not in the Western sense).

Pope Urban II was the first to lay the long "historical and ideological" outline of the confrontation between Muslims and Western Christians, who called on Catholics at the Council of Clermont in 1095 to go to the Middle East in order to expel "an unfit breed of people from the borders of the Christian world," to which he referred Muslim Turks and Arabs (1).

Later, the ideological work of Urban II was continued for the most part by Western historians, creating from Islam an image of a destructive barbaric force opposing the "highly civilized" Western world. For example, the famous English historian and memoirist Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), whose main work "The History of the Decline and Destruction of the Roman Empire" is still considered in Europe one of the most authoritative works on European history of the ancient and early Medieval period, mentioning the battle of the Franks and Arabs at Poitiers in 732, wrote in the preamble of chapter 52 of the specified books: "In my research, I will talk about the events that saved our ancestors in Britain and our neighbors in Gaul from the secular and religious yoke of the Koran, about what protected the greatness of Rome and postponed the slavery of Constantinople, it gave strength to Christians to defend themselves and sowed seeds of discord and corruption among their enemies" (2). He further suggests: "It could be that the teachings of the Koran would now be taught in Oxford schools, and its preachers would demonstrate to circumcised Englishmen the sanctity and truth of the teachings of Mohammed. The Christians were saved from this disaster by the genius and luck of Charles (Martell)."

The American historian William Watson in 1993, noting the importance of Charles Martell's victory over the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, quotes the French historian Francois Guizot: "It was a battle between East and West, South and North, Asia and Europe, the Bible and the Koran; and now we can say in a general retrospect of events, people and centuries that the fate of world civilization depended on its outcome" (3). William Watson himself, in the conclusion of his article, actually joins the opinion of Francois Guizot: "It can be argued with a high degree of confidence that if the Arabs (led by Abd al-Rahman) had won at Tours-Poitiers in 732, the subsequent history of the West would have proceeded in a significantly different direction" (4).

/Pope Pius XII's 1957 encyclical "FideiDonum" regarded the spread of Islam in Africa as a "threat to the Church," and the four-volume "History of Catholic Missions" of the same time considered the growing activity of Islam as a disaster comparable only to communism/.

Thus, despite their supposed "tolerance", modern Western historians and political scientists actually continue to contrast "civilized" Europeans and "barbarians"-Muslims, who, if they won back in the 8th century, could allegedly change European history in a completely terrible way.

Naturally, such an approach to the interpretation of not only these, but also many other historical events, clearly or not clearly has an impact on the formation of a negative attitude of Europeans towards Muslims. Therefore, it is not surprising that it, together with a number of other factors (differences in mentality, attitudes towards women's rights, terrorist acts against civilians outside the zone of military conflict by radical extremists claiming to be adherents of Islam, etc.) leads to the appearance of various unpleasant moments for Muslims in Europe (5).

Thus, in France the wearing of hijabs and the public performance of Muslim rituals were banned (6), in Sweden Muslims are deprived of their children under the pretext that Muslim immigrants are disadvantaged (EuroNews admits that in 2020 alone more than 9000 children were removed from Muslim families in Sweden (7)), in Poland due to the highest in Europe level of Islamophobia, they try in various ways to squeeze Muslim immigrants out of the country or force them to settle in isolated locations, a kind of ghetto, thanks to which Poland manages to maintain the lowest percentage of the Muslim population among European countries (8), a fence was built in Hungary to prevent Muslim immigrants from crossing the border (9), in Scandinavian countries and in Denmark cases are frequent the public burning of the Koran, the holy book of Muslims, etc. Currently, the only Western European country that is more or less tolerant of Muslim immigrants is Germany, but, as they say, the exception confirms the rule.

But the West-East conflict did not arise with the formation of the Muslim religion fifteen hundred years ago. Muslim culture primarily spread to the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Middle East as a whole, that is, in the region that is the cradle of human civilization; it spread among peoples who were descendants of the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Phoenicians and other ancient peoples of this region (not by chance, the "core" of the "Muslim area" generally coincides in its borders with the Persian Achaemenid empire of the 5th century BC. Moreover, given that Carthage, which controlled most of North Africa, was created by the Phoenicians, then North Africa also should be considered the historical area of Eastern civilization). Muslims, in fact, are the descendants and heirs of all these ancient Eastern peoples, and the confrontation with the "Western" peoples they "inherited" from their ancestors.

This conflict is connected not only with the love of power and greed of the "elites" of different nations, but also with the difference in mentality and culture of different groups of peoples. The religious meaning of such a division is conveyed by the Old Testament legend about God destroying the tower of Babel and dividing people by languages so that it would be difficult for them to negotiate with each other so that they no longer dare to build anything in an attempt to reach the divine heavens. It is clear that the authors of this legend tried to convey to people in the "Aesopian language" the idea that any of their associations would be destroyed if their size or other parameters violated the divine principle of dividing people in such a way that certain sprouts of hostility always remained between them. Why it is necessary to maintain this enmity, which generates constant conflicts and wars, is a question that different people will answer in different ways. Attempts by individual theologians to prove that in fact the will of God is aimed at uniting people on the basis of love, equality and brotherhood are meaningless, since they contradict the entire history of mankind, both in the past and in the present, despite even some progress in this direction.

In the conditions of the existence of two hostile "main" civilizations, it was necessary to create additional mechanisms that would not allow these two civilizations to destroy each other. One of these "natural" mechanisms is a "barrier" civilization, the main purpose of which is to counteract the excessive strengthening of one or another major (western or eastern) civilization and mitigate the blows of these civilizations against each other to a degree that is not critical.

In cases where a "barrier civilization" does not cope well with its main task or a civilization of this kind disappears from the human community for a while, there is a sharp reduction in the "historical area" of existence of one of the main civilizations due to an increase in the corresponding area of a rival civilization, generating an imbalance in the influence of these civilizations unacceptable for the fate of all mankind.



The typology of the nations of antiquity and the Early Middle Ages according to their temperament in relation to the "basic civilizational conflict"

If we simplify and completely transform the typology of nations proposed by the outstanding Soviet historian-ethnographer Lev Gumilev for the purposes of this article, then we can identify 4 main groups of nations that prevailed in antiquity and in the early Middle Ages: mountainous, lowland-forest, steppe, desert-river.

The mountain nations (in ancient times they were the Dorian Greeks, Latins, Germans, Illyrians, Macedonians and others) only recently (several millennia ago) moved from the mountains to other areas, and partially continue to reside in the mountains at the present time. For mountain peoples individual courage and valor are considered the highest value, regardless of where they manifest themselves - in battle or in robbery. Therefore, in early times, one-on-one or pair-on-pair fights were a characteristic form of fun for them (some modern sports have inherited this formula).

Latins and Germans, for example, were characterized by a desire to introduce discipline and order (Ordnung), a focus on the effectiveness of actions in all spheres of life (and often by borrowing knowledge and technology from other peoples and adapting them by improving them to their needs (10)), expansion by both military means and "soft power" (when certain regions were taken under control by introducing their agents into the ruling elites or spreading an ideology that promotes their power).

Therefore, they had a bizarre combination of the principles of force and legality. Among these peoples, a significant part of them were choleric people - fast, impetuous, impulsive, prone to sudden changes of mood, emotional outbursts. All the most famous conquerors came from the mountain peoples: Alexander the Great- from the Balkan Mountains, Julius Caesar- from the Appennines, Charlemagne (like all other Germans) by ancestry - from the Scandinavian Mountains, Genghis Khan was born at the junction of the Khentiyn-Nuru and Ikh-Khentei ranges, Tamerlane - at the Zarafshan range, Napoleon came from the mountains of Corsica, Hitler from the Alps, Stalin from the Caucasus. Perhaps the mountain air and the view of powerful mountains and swift mountain rivers made themselves felt. The rulers of these peoples had a tendency to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It was the representatives of these peoples who made up and make up the majority of the political elite of Western European civilization. In the late Middle Ages and modern times, this elite began to be partially diluted by representatives of peoples from other civilizations, which led to the emergence of Protestantism and the democratic movement of modern times (see below).

The main line of behavior of the majority of representatives of Western European civilization, first of all, their "elite", is determined by Dostoevsky's "formula": "who am I - a trembling creature or do I have the right (to kill)?". All wars involving the countries of Western European civilization always lead to monstrous human casualties in the hundreds of thousands and millions. Even in the ancient and Middle Ages, when the number of people was still relatively small, they managed to carry out the genocide of other peoples with "high rates" (Alexander the Great - hundreds of thousands of victims, Caesar - a million victims in Gaul alone, the number of victims at the hands of Catholics in the Albigensian war of the early 13th century - more than a million, the number of victims from the hands of Catholics during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648 - several million, etc.) (11).

Lowland-forest nations (in ancient times these were the Achaean Greeks or Ionians, Celts, Slavs, Finns and others) preferred wooded, flat and sparsely populated areas. Therefore, 3-4 millennia ago, the Celts occupied vast expanses of wooded plains in western and central Europe, when they were still sparsely populated. The Slavs moved westward until they came across territories inhabited by Germans and inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The Russians, when the choice was given to themselves, and not to their German-Scandinavian rulers, moved mainly to the northeast and east, which were extremely sparsely populated due to the severity of the climate. The Finno-Ugric peoples inhabited the vast sparsely populated plains to the east of the Russians.

These nations also valued individual valor, but, first of all, when it benefited the community, respectively, success in collective actions was more appreciated. Therefore, in early times, one of the most common amusements for them was fist fights "wall to wall". In military affairs, these peoples were lucky mainly when they managed to assemble and train sufficiently large military units. It is no coincidence that these peoples began to crowd the Latins and Germans only when, according to Napoleon, "large battalions" began to gain importance, and the principle of legality began to crowd the principle of force.

Among these peoples the justice of the cause was considered to be of greater value. The words of Alexander Nevsky, with which he addressed the Novgorod army before the Battle of Nevsky, are characteristic: "God is not in power, but in Truth" (the difference between Western civilization, focused on violence, and Slavic peoples, for whom justice of the cause is more important). But since justice for each person has its own personal dimension, the love of freedom of these peoples was combined with a sufficient degree of anarchism, which eventually led, in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, to the fall of their statehood or to the seizure of power in their state formations by representatives of the mountain peoples (Achaean Ancient Athens was initially submitted to the Spartans- Dorians of Balkan origin, then to the Macedonians-Balkans, and later to the Romans-Appennines; the Celts fell under the rule of the Romans and Germans, the Western Slavs - mainly under the rule of the Germans, the Eastern Slavs - under the rule of the Scandinavian Germans). At the same time, when these peoples have the opportunity to express their spirit, in those places where they have managed to maintain a fairly dense stratum of the population, the processes of radicalization of free thought occur. It is no coincidence that Protestantism of the 16th and 17th centuries was successful in England (where, despite the fact that most of the population began to recognize themselves as Anglo-Saxons, in fact, due to a small percentage of Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Norman conquerors, they retained mainly Celto-British origin), the Netherlands, Northern Germany and France (where a significant part of the population was of Gallo-Celtic origin, despite the fact that formally the inhabitants here began to call themselves representatives of other peoples). It was in these regions that democratic trends made themselves felt in the first place. The Eastern Slavs were able to prove themselves much later, but in a more radical way, claiming that they would be able to build a communist society - a collectivist society, where justice would be the main value, however, their initiative failed, first of all, because initially they themselves did not stand at the head of the government of the emerging state of a new type.

Among the lowland forest peoples, phlegmatic people prevailed - people who were stable and constant in moods and aspirations, slow and difficult to switch from one activity to another. No wonder, Russians have a popular saying that they "harness slowly, but they drive fast." Perhaps the calmness and tranquility of the forests and the slowness of the flow of lowland rivers had their influence. These peoples, as a rule, formed "barrier civilizations".

Steppe peoples occupied an intermediate position between mountain and lowland-forest peoples, so their love of freedom could be combined or interspersed with cruelty and authoritarianism. Sanguine people prevailed among the steppe peoples - mobile, lively people, easily experiencing failures, striving for a change of impressions. They are productive at work when they are interested in it. Depending on the circumstances, these peoples acted independently or in alliance with any other peoples.

Desert-river nations (they were based on the peoples of the Afrasian macrofamily: Semites, Hamites and others) lived mainly in places where, on the one hand, deserts occupy significant areas, and, on the other hand, there are relatively large rivers (Nile, Euphrates and Tigris) and the seas are close (Mediterranean, Red, Indian). On the one hand, a fairly warm climate made it possible to save on clothes and housing, on the other hand, complex irrigation works were constantly required in these regions, requiring the unification of the labor of huge groups of people. It is possible that these factors contributed to the formation of a religious and mystical worldview among these peoples. It was among the representatives of these peoples that the largest religious and ideological teachings originated: Zoroastrianism (until the Middle Ages it prevailed among the Persians-heirs of the culture of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians), Mithraism (originated in Persia, but was popular among Roman legionnaires), Judaism, Christianity, Islam, communism (the Jewish ancestors of K. Marx, although they left the Middle East a long time ago, but they passed their mentality on to their descendants) and others.

Melancholics prevailed among these peoples - reserved, but impressionable people, prone to constant experience of even minor events. It was these peoples who formed the very first human civilizations - in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and were the basis of a civilization opposed to Western European. This explains the negative attitude of the majority of Western Europeans not only towards Muslims, but also towards Jews (who are also part of Eastern civilization by origin), and even to the point of striving for the complete destruction of the latter in the Middle Ages and in modern times (the example of the Nazi regime in Germany is indicative).

As a rule, among these peoples, the law was "the one" who held a higher position in the hierarchy, the "written" laws were "written" for the common people, and not for the hierarchs. Thus, the concept of justice and legality in the modern Western European sense was practically absent among these peoples (justice and legality should first of all correspond to the canons of their religions, and not to the rules established by people and their state bodies and the ideas accepted in individual human communities).

Accordingly, for representatives of the desert-river peoples, the most important thing was whether their actions corresponded to divine prescriptions and their religious canons. By this factor, some of their theologians explained why in conflicts involving their peoples, even in the most brutal cases, the victims did not exceed several tens of thousands, and in conflicts involving Western Europeans, the victims number in the millions. From their point of view, there is also an explanation for the genocide of Armenians and Greeks by the Turks at the beginning of the 20th century: this genocide was led by the Young Turks, who sought to establish a German-style "democracy" in Turkey at that time, which means they largely abandoned the traditional norms of Islam, and it was this refusal that was the main reason for that mass murder: According to the Young Turks, the Greeks and Armenians allegedly prevented the establishment of a Western-style "democracy" in Turkey. And the scope of that murder, theologians note, was characteristic of Western European "standards", but not of the character of Muslim peoples.

It should be borne in mind that, as Lev Gumilev noted in his writings on ethnogenesis, almost all modern nations are complex in their ethnic origin, that is, sometimes not even a few, but dozens of nations participated in their ethnogenesis. Accordingly, it is often difficult to determine which character of the "original" nation was manifested in one case or another, not only at the present time, but also earlier. For example, the Germans from Scandinavia, as well as the Celts, Slavs, Jews, Turks and many other "original" nations participated in the formation of the modern German nation. The mentality of which "original" nation will prevail in a particular German will be difficult to establish, probably, even the most venerable ethnographers and psychologists. Nevertheless, the events of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (open or hidden large-scale aggression by NATO-countries and their satellites against the majority of Muslim countries in Asia and Africa) clearly demonstrated that the West-East conflict continues, despite the "mixing of  nations" that has occurred.

It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that different nations and civilizations have different degrees of tolerance towards other cultures. Thus, representatives of Western civilization, although they loved and love to flaunt their ostentatious tolerance, but in essence they were and continue to be open or hidden xenophobes. For example, the ancient Romans almost completely destroyed the Carthaginians, expelled the Jews from their country, first subjected Christians to total persecution, and then their opponents, millions of "barbarians"-"subhumans" were enslaved. Already in the 20th century, "civilized" Europeans engaged in the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and prepared a miserable fate for the Eastern Slavs and others, in their opinion, "subhumans". Recent examples include the American genocide of the Vietnamese during the US war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans and their allies genocide of the Iraqis during the invasion of NATO countries and their satellites, including Ukraine, into Iraq in the 2000s, the genocide of the Palestinians by the Western proxy force in the Middle East - Israel. In the 21st century, the Ukrainian government, striving to become "fully European", diligently expels from all spheres of communication the Russian language, which is native to a significant number of residents of Ukraine. Despite the admission of a significant number of Muslim immigrants, Western European countries impose various kinds of explicit and implicit restrictions on them.

Barrier civilizations, by virtue of their purpose, on the contrary, had to be tolerant of other peoples in deeds, not in words, therefore, in history there were cases when they incorporated entire nations belonging to other civilizations into themselves, making them their integral part. For example, although the Byzantine Empire was considered Greek, even many of its imperial dynasties were of Armenian origin, and some of the ancestors of the Armenians - the Hurrians - as it is known, most of their history belonged to the Eastern civilization.



An overview of individual manifestations of the "basic civilizational conflict" and the role of "barrier civilizations" in them

In some cases, due to the gradual mixing of various ethnic groups or their subordination to other ethnic groups, the role of certain state entities or nationalities could change, and they could be included in civilizational conclaves other than before.

The first known example of this is the Hittite people: initially, when in the 20th and 18th centuries BC they broke into Asia Minor and began to "master" it, they were an aggressive people of Indo-European origin, who subjugated the local peoples of the Hutts, Hurrians, Luwians and others. In 1595 BC the Hittites even captured Babylon for a short time, undermining the power of the Amorite dynasty there. They were a kind of harbinger of the emergence of the so-called "Western" civilization in the future. In the 13th century BC, the Hittites successfully went through a series of clashes with the Egyptian state. During this period of time, the Hurrian states of Kitsuwatna and Mitanni can be regarded as "barrier states", which in the west tried to restrain the pressure of the Hittites, in the south - the Egyptians, and in the east - the Kassites and Assyrians. But after these buffer states submitted to the Hittites, the Hittite kingdom itself /in which have gained influence not only the Hittites, but also the Hurrians (considered one of the ancestral ethnic groups of modern Armenians), the Luwians and other peoples previously dependent on the Hittites/ began to play the role of a "barrier state", which was clearly manifested during the invasion of the so-called "peoples of the sea" (the next carriers of the future "Western" civilization) in Asia Minor in the late 13th and early 12th centuries BC. The Hittite kingdom perished under the onslaught of these Western "civilizers", but managed to weaken them, thanks to which Egypt was saved, whose troops were already able to repel the newly-appeared conquerors, preserving the independence of this state. It is symbolic that during the rebirth of the Hittite kingdom from the "hearth of Western civilization" into a barrier state, its coat of arms became a double-headed eagle, which was later used by two other barrier states: the Byzantine and Russian Empires.

In the first half of the first millennium BC new centers of civilization began to emerge in Europe: Etruscan-Roman - on the Apennine Peninsula, Dorian-Greek- on the Peloponnesian Peninsula and Achaean-Greek - in the central part of Greece. During the same period of time such formidable military forces as the New Assyrian and New Babylonian kingdoms, Media and the Persian empire alternately arose in the Middle East. Urartu and Phrygia/Lydia played the role of barrier states at that time. When the Persian empire absorbed them, the Athenian and Boeotian democracies began to play the role of a barrier civilization between it and the Western European civilization in the person of Sparta (in the 6th-4th centuries BC). Despite the admiration for the feat of 300 Spartans, it is obvious that the main resistance to the Persian advance into Europe was provided by the Athenians, and not by the few Spartan auxiliary detachments, and it was against Athens that the Persians struck their most terrible blow. In turn, when the "vector" of expansion became the opposite, and Sparta was already trying to invade Asia Minor, the path was blocked by the same Athens, which headed the Delian Union in the 5th century BC. While the Spartans were "floundering" in the war with the Athenians, the Persians could safely go about their business in their country. In the 1st half of the 4th century BC, the Boeotian Union, led by Thebes, took over the baton of deterring the Spartans. Only when the new center of Western European civilization, represented now by Macedonia, was able to subdue the rebellious Thebes and Athens, the European "civilizers" led by Alexander the Great were able to deal with the Persian Achaemenid power. This was the first known case when the fall of a barrier civilization almost destroyed one of the main civilizations (the Eastern one). She was saved only by the fact that Alexander the Great died in a timely manner after returning from his continuous conquests, which led to the collapse of the empire he hastily put together.

The collapse of the Persian empire and the struggle between the diadochs of Alexander the Great changed the geopolitical situation. Rome strengthened in the West, becoming the new (after Sparta and Macedonia) center of Western European civilization. The new center of Eastern civilization was the Parthian Kingdom (about 250 BC). During the 3-2 centuries BC the role of barrier civilization was mainly performed by the Seleucid state that arose in Asia Minor. Carthage, although for quite a long time it diverted a significant part of Rome's military resources, should not be recognized as a barrier civilization, but, as the heir to the Phoenician traditions, as part of Eastern civilization.

During the 2nd century BC the Seleucid army suffered a number of defeats from the Roman army. What remained of the Seleucid state in 83 BC was captured by the Armenian king Tigran II. If he had understood the true meaning of the Seleucid state, maybe he wouldn't have done it? In any case, after his destruction of the remnants of the Seleucid state, the role of a buffer state between Rome and Parthia had to be fulfilled by his own state (with interruptions until 387), which, of course, did not contribute to the prosperity of its population (since, as they say, the "reds" (Romans) come - the "reds" plunder, "whites" (Parthians) come - "whites" rob). The fall of the Seleucid barrier empire and the seizure by Western civilization of a significant part of the historical area of Eastern civilization in the Middle East as a result had a number of negative consequences: in addition to the constant devastating wars in this region, it is enough to name at least the fact that one of the results of this event was that such a significant people as the Jews lost the homeland of their ancestors for more than a millennium and a half, and to this day remains the most dispersed people in the world. This highlights the harm of not having a strong barrier civilization.

For almost five centuries, Rome and Parthia (250 BC- 227 AD) fought on approximately equal terms, alternately defeating each other, but at the same time maintaining the border between them almost unchanged.

After the Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire, that replaced Parthia, finally absorbed Armenia, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire began to play the role of a barrier civilization, which for almost a millennium played the role of a "damping pad" between the nations of the West and the East. Therefore, based on the main purpose of this empire, Constantinople should be called not the second Rome, but the second Athens (12). In the west the Byzantine Empire took on the blows of the German, Avar, Slavic and Bulgarian nations in turn, not letting them go further east, and in the east it took turns taking on the blows of the Sassanid Empire, the Arabs and the Turks, not letting them go west. Despite the fact that North Africa again moved away from Western civilization to the Eastern civilizations, in general, the Byzantine Empire coped with its role as a barrier civilization, and until the end of the 11th century, Western and eastern civilizations developed independently in their areas, almost without interfering with each other and creating original cultures with separate elements of interpenetration.

Due to the greed of the Crusaders and the desire of Venice to get rid of its main trading competitor, in 1204, during the 4th Crusade, the Western "knights" captured Constantinople, eliminating the Byzantine Empire. Despite the fact that in 1261 the restoration of the Byzantine Empire was formally proclaimed, it was no longer the same empire as before, neither in spirit nor in power. The dubious feat of the Crusaders to capture and plunder Constantinople in 1204 played a bad role for Western civilization in the long run: due to the fact that after that Byzantium could no longer properly perform the function of a barrier civilization, gradually most of southern Europe came under the rule of the Turks, i.e. under the control of Eastern civilization, which significantly violated the balance of two civilizations. This fact once again highlights the importance of barrier civilizations.

However, since the end of the 10th century, the role of a new barrier civilization saving the destinies of mankind began to gradually shift to Russia, which in the west restrained the pressure of the Germans and Poles, not letting them go east to strike at the states of eastern civilization, and in the east restrained the pressure of the Pechenegs, Polovtsians and other nomadic tribes, not letting them go west to a blow to the states of Western civilization. Although Russia was not on the main line of contact between Western and eastern civilizations, it damped their blows on the "side" line, and also diverted some of the military resources of both civilizations. This role of Russia was especially evident in the middle of the 13th century, when, on the one hand, it repelled the attacks of the crusaders on the Novgorod land, not letting them pass further to the east, and, on the other hand, absorbed a significant part of the offensive energy of the Mongols, although letting them pass to the west, but weakening them to such an extent that they had to roll back to Eastern Europe and Asia.

        Later the Russian state initially threw the remnants of the Golden Horde outside Europe, returning to their "starting positions", and then began to gradually undermine the Ottoman Empire, by the end of the 19th century almost completely displacing it outside Europe, that is, returning the Turks to the historical area of eastern civilization. Thus, although for several centuries, Russia has nevertheless coped with its role as a barrier to the aggressive expansion of eastern civilization against Western civilization.

It should be noted that this process was not mechanical: as already noted, barrier civilizations, by virtue of their purpose, had to be super-tolerant to other nations. The Russian state was not exception, incorporated many nations belonging to other civilizations, making them its part and creating conditions for them sometimes even more favorable than for peoples considered "titular" (for example, Muslims in Russia during the period of feudalism remained personally free, and most of the Orthodox Slavs were serfs).

In the west the Russian state had to solve an equally difficult task of returning of Western civilization to the borders of its historical area. Here Lithuania and Poland were the outpost of an aggressive and ultra-bloodthirsty Roman Catholic civilization, which then united into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Despite the fact that the rulers of Rus-Russia were mainly Scandinavians (Rurikovich) and Germans (Holstein Romanov dynasty), by the end of the 18th century this task was solved. Thus, at this turn, Russia was able to cope with its historical mission and limited the possibilities of Western civilization for its aggression against Eastern civilization, having withstood powerful blows from the empire of Napoleon (1812) and from the Western coalition during the Crimean War (1853-1856) in the 19th century. / It is this role of Russia, that allowed the decrepit Ottoman Empire to prolong its agony until the beginning of the 20th century (since Western European politicians were again primarily concerned with the struggle against the barrier Russian civilization, and they decided to "leave the Eastern civilization as weakened for later")/.

At the next stage in Russia's history a larger task was ahead: to contribute to the liberation of the countries of Asia and Africa from colonial dependence on Western Europe, thereby eliminating a significant imbalance in the forces of Western and Eastern civilizations. To do this, Russia had to go through an accelerated but extremely painful transformation from a predominantly agrarian country to an influential superpower based on a strong anti-colonial communist ideology in the 1st half of the 20th century. Despite the enormous sacrifices, Russia managed to repel in the West the super-powerful attack of the European coalition led by the German Third Reich, what later gave rise to a chain of liberation from the colonial dependence of the Middle Eastern states. In the east Russia defeated the main forces of the Japanese land army and provided substantial assistance to the People's Liberation Army of China and the Communist Party of China, what helped restore the full independence of such a huge country as China. In addition, both material and ideological assistance from Russia in the development of national liberation movements in south and southeast Asia helped the countries of Indo-China and India gain independence (if the USSR had not taken an active position in the international arena, it is possible that these countries would still be colonies of Great Britain and France).

The joint work of Russia and the Eastern European socialist countries within the framework of the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as their practical assistance to national liberation movements, led to the solution of such a seemingly unsolvable task as the liberation of African countries from colonial dependence. Moreover, thanks primarily to Russia's efforts, the apartheid regime in South Africa was eliminated.

It seemed that by the end of the 1980s Russia had fulfilled its historical mission, generally restored the balance of various civilizations and could focus entirely on solving exclusively its internal problems. For twenty years, she almost completely dropped out of the international process. This fact led Western civilizers to the idea that they could address the "eastern" issue, which, it seemed to them, was the historical mission of the "collective West" (naturally, under the "sauce" of exporting democracy). France sent its troops to Mali, the US special services organized "popular revolutions" in Tunisia and Libya, the president of  Egypt Mohammed Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood) was overthrown (the Egyptian military, who organized the coup, had no choice: if they had not overthrown President Morsi, the US and British special services could have implemented in Egypt the Libyan or Syrian scenario, which would have led to huge casualties and destruction in Egypt), Western intelligence agencies provoked a civil war in Yemen and Syria, Western countries imposed suffocating sanctions on Iran, the invasion of NATO countries and their satellites (including Ukraine) in Iraq led to the almost complete destruction of major cities such as Mosul and Fallujah and the deaths of 3 million Iraqi civilians (according to Turkey, which is itself a NATO member), the NATO invasion of Afghanistan led to a paralysis of the development of this country for 20 years, etc.

Thus, Russia's self-exclusion from fulfilling its historical mission as a barrier civilization has led to very deplorable consequences for Eastern civilization. It should also be borne in mind that Russia has an-other important task of a global nature: it is the keeper of the "storehouse" of natural resources of Siberia and the North of Eurasia. Due to the small population of Russia, it is unlikely that it will engage in predatory consumption of these resources, so there is a chance that the withdrawal of these resources will be carried out in a relatively sparing mode. But what would happen if these resources fell into the hands of the United States, Japan, or Western European countries? Even if we assume that they would have conducted a "competent" development of these natural resources, their very possession would have led to a radical imbalance of international forces in favor of the "collective West", which, due to its natural aggressiveness and tendency to conflict with millions of victims, would eventually most likely lead to the death of the entire human civilization.

If we apply the concept outlined in this article to the analysis of the causes of the recent events (2022-__) in Ukraine, it follows that although it seems outwardly that the actions and miscalculations of politicians of countries directly or indirectly involved in the conflict led to the war, but in reality their actions themselves are predetermined by the fact that due to the sharp imbalance of forces that has arisen in the last 30 years in favor of Western civilization (currently there is a global dominance of the "collective West") has activated a natural defense mechanism in the form of a "barrier civilization", which, in the bloody way that we are witnessing, will try to restore the balance of forces of the "main" civilizations. History demonstrates that if the current attempt in this direction would be unsuccessful, then the efforts of an unknown force regulating the entire Cosmos will only increase. Who created such regulators? The answer will be given by those who know who created man, what is the meaning of his being, why he is mortal, etc.

       /Figuratively, the barrier civilization can be compared to the diaphragm in the human body, which separates the chest and abdominal organs. If the diaphragm does not cope with its main function, then the abdominal organs may rise dysfunctionally and crowd the chest organs. The reverse process is also possible, when the organs of the chest descend dysfunctionally and crowd the organs of the abdominal cavity. Both of these cases indicate a disease of the body of varying severity. Since Eastern civilization has constantly generated various religious and mystical teachings (including Judaism, Christianity and Islam), its members can be compared with the heart and lungs of humanity, while Western civilization has always been very pragmatic, aimed at consuming everything possible (both material, spiritual and other values), and even religious teachings have always been used by her for utilitarian purposes: to control people, their subordination, etc., therefore, her members can be compared to the organs of the abdominal cavity. Nevertheless, just as the human body needs both the organs of the chest, and the organs of the abdominal cavity, and the diaphragm, just as humanity needs eastern, Western, and barrier civilizations/.


Footnotes:
  1. Speech by Pope Urban II at the Clermont Cathedral. [electronic resource]. URL: https://cyberpedia.su/8xec64.html
  2. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. - Chapter 52. [ electronic resource]. URL: https://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/chap52.htm
  3. The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited By William Watson. [electronic resource]. URL:   4. The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited By William Watson. [electronic resource]. URL:   5. Albania and Kosovo are not counted because they are Muslim regions of Europe.
  6. URL:   7. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgB7edEuyTw
  8. URL: https://ru.zahn-info-portal.de/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Poland
  9. URL: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2748801
  10. As one medieval author noted, the Romans were only talented students of previous eras. For example, the Roman comitia is a revised version of the national assembly of the Athenians, the imperial system of government of Rome borrowed a lot from Ptolemaic Egypt, and through it from the Persian Achaemenid Empire, writing came to the Romans through the Greeks from the Phoenicians, philosophy and literature - from the Greeks, Egyptians and Sumerians, architecture and sculpture - through the Greeks from the Sumerians, the Egyptians and Persians, the construction of roads and the establishment of postal stations - through the Hellenistic states from the Persians, the phalanx of Roman legions - from the Macedonians and Greeks, etc.
  11. http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Albigensian
  12. Based on a similar task that the Russian state later faced, Moscow should be called the "third Athens" and not the "third Rome". London should be called the "second Rome", and Washington should be called the "third Rome".