Paradigm of the End

The final degree of generalization

Analyzing civilizations and their relations, confrontations, development, and interconnections is such a complex problem that results can be obtained which are not simply different, but totally opposite depending on the methodology and the level of research. Therefore, in order to obtain even the most approximate conclusions, it is necessary to apply a reduction which brings a number of criteria down to a single, simplified model. Marxism unambiguously prefers the economic approach, which becomes a substitute and the common denominator for all other disciplines. Liberalism, in essence, though less explicitly, does as well.

A qualitatively different method of reduction is offered by geopolitics which, although less known and less popular, is nonetheless no less effective or less illustrative in explaining the history of civilizations.

Various forms of an ethnic approach, including “racial theory” on the extreme end, offer another version of reductionism. Lastly, religions also offer their own reductionist model of the history of civilizations. These four models represent the most popular paths of generalization and although a number of other methods exist, they are unlikely to be rivaled by these in terms of degree of clarity or simplicity.

Since the concept of “civilization” remains extremely massive – perhaps one of the largest concepts that the historical consciousness of mankind is capable of generating – methods of reduction should be extremely approximate and leave aside nuances, details, and factors of moderate or minor significance. Civilizations are human conglomerates which possess extensive spacial, temporal, and cultural boundaries. Civilizations, by definition, should possess a considerable volume, i.e., they should last a long time, control significant geographical areas, and produce a special, expressive cultural and religious (and sometimes ideological) style.

At the beginning of the third millennium A.D, a summary of some of the results of the history of civilizations begs itself, as the significance of the date suggests the reaching of some kind of threshold or brink. Hence arises the desire to bring different trajectories of civilizational analysis into a single, universal paradigm. Of course, the degree of simplification, coarsening, and reduction here will be even greater than in the four above-mentioned reductionist models, but this is unlikely to be considered an insurmountable obstacle. Any generalization (successful or not, justified or not) will necessarily be faced with violent criticism from “narrow specialists” who have long since forgotten the original principles amidst a maelstrom of details, as well as from conscious (or unconscious) supporters of the generalization, who purely pragmatically use contradictions in the details in order to discredit the whole.

No matter what, the subject of the “end of history” (Francis Fukuyama), the “clash of civilizations” (Samuel Huntington), the “New World Order (George Bush), the “new paradigm” (New Age), “messianic times”, “end of utopia,” “artificial paradise,” or “apocalypse culture” (Adam Parfrey) is becoming more popular as we approach the end of the century, the border of the millennium. And all of these topics, to varying degrees, operate with complex reductionist models which are the results of consolidating more restricted methodologies of, first and foremost, the four listed above.

The Real Marxism

Marx’s doctrine was so popular in the 20th century that it is difficult to discuss it, especially in Russia where Marxism was proclaimed the official ideology for many decades. This question is just as painful and saturated with illusions and connotations for Western intellectuals, for whom polemics and discussions concerning Marx have been central to philosophical and cultural discourses. Marx influenced modern history like no other and it is difficult to name a thinker comparable to him in fame, popularity, or the circulation of books. Yet, the excessive exploitation of Marxism at one point yielded the reverse result – his ideas and doctrines turned out to be so universal that at one point they ceased to be remembered and Marxism was turned into a “dogma,” a gadget, an unintelligible stamp which came to be used and interpreted quite arbitrarily. The orthodox Marxists froze their reflections in this field and canonized the views of Marx even in those spheres where they were clearly refuted by the course of history itself (both economically and politically). Heretics and revisionists stretched Marxism a bit too much and incorporated into it theories which, strictly speaking, have no relevance in a Marxist context. We have been gradually faced with a paradoxical picture in which the most popular and famous modern thinker and his theories have turned out to be unclear, unknown, and impenetrable for the majority. In the end, the gordian knot of Marxism was simply liquidated by the recognition of its philosophy and its political economy as “mistaken.” And then came the wholesale rejection of this ideology. Excessive arrogance and dogmatization turned into equally excessive subversion and relativization. And the seemingly rapidly constructed building of Marxism was suddenly and totally destroyed. Moreover, the most zealous liquidators were precisely those forces responsible for the creation of an alienated, dogmatic cult of Marx. Be that as it may, Marx’s ideas now have practically no heirs, but they have not become any less profound or strikingly exact in resolving certain issues. Thus a situation arises in which Marxism, having completely lost its traditional supporters, can be adopted as a weapon by quite different forces that remained aloof from Marxism at the time that its ideas prevailed among intellectual and political excitement.

Such distance and absence of engagement in one or another Marxist camp at the previous stages of its intellectual history allows Marxism to be rediscovered again, and his message to be read in a way previously impossible. It is completely clear that a massive part of the cultural-historical views of Marx are hopelessly outdated, and many aspects of his doctrine should be rejected because of their inadequacy. However, it is more productive to impartially consider those aspects of his teaching which, on the contrary, are still completely relevant and can help understand the essential aspects of the paradigm of history in its economic and socio-political key. And there is no one equal to Marx here. It was Marx who formulated a capacious, reductionist model of economic history capable with amazing authenticity, clarity, and credibility of explaining essential processes and orientations. Therefore, it would be worth recalling the fundamentals of the Marxist understanding of the formula of history.

Marx’s approach to history is dialectical and presupposes the dynamic development of relations between the main subjects of historical events. Together with this, a fundamental dualism of these actors that determines the dialectic, forming its content and ethical basis for interpretation, clearly shines through his theory. The two subjects of Marx are defined as Labor and Capital. Marx considers Labor the creative impulse of existence, the central axis of life and movement, as some kind of positive, solar principle. Using Darwinist imagery, Marxism argues that “labor created man out of monkey.” The point is that the means of creation or production are the main existential vector which directs processes from the horizontal, inertial state into a vertical, willed state. Labor, according to Marx, is a positive start, a “light” principle. Unlike Biblical ethics, in which labor is understood as the result of the Fall and is a kind of curse upon Adam for transgressing the divine commandments (such an attitude towards lLabor is true for other religious traditions), Marx unequivocally asserts the sacred and wholly positive nature of Labor, its holiness, primacy, autonomy, and self-sufficiency. But in its primordial state, Labor, as the first impulse of development and the starting moment of history – like the Absolute Idea of Hegel – is not yet aware of itself and cannot realize the completeness of its inherently bright nature. Achieving this requires a long, complex process of dialectical movement through the labyrinth of history. However terrifying are the ordeals and feats of Labor, it will be able to reach its triumphant, victorious state, become conscious, happy, and free through a series of dialectical self-negations. According to Marx, all of history stretches from “primitive communism” – the original state in which Labor was free, but neither conscious nor universal – to simply communism, when, through the mazes of estrangement, it will return to the light of self-sufficiency, albeit in a total, universal, and finally conscious form. Man became man after he came upon labor. But he will become a man only when he will be able to recognize the absolute value of this means and liberate it, through communism, from all the impurities of the negative start.

What is the negative pole in Marxism? What opposes the bright nature of Labor? Marx calls this “exploitation” and the supreme and holistic form of this exploitation is supposed to be Capital. In Marxism, Capital is the name of the world’s evil, the dark beginning, the negative pole of history. A long period of “exploitation”, the alienation of Labor from its essence, and trials and tribulations of the sun in the labyrinths of darkness lay between “primitive communism” and the appearance of man and final communism. This, essentially, is the content of history.

Capital arises not immediately, but gradually manifests itself as the tools and mechanisms of exploiting the light of Labor by the dark forces of the usurpers are improved. The development of Labor contributes to the development of the means of exploitation. The complex dialectic of the continuous dynamics between the ratio of productive forces and the relations of production leads both poles of economic history along a spiral of development. Conflicting aims and the activities of workers and exploiters objectively contribute to the intensification of a single political-economic process. The productive forces are the internal structure of Labor and its organization. The relations of production are the model of interaction of this subordinate base structure with exploitation. The fruits of Labor are the fruits of abundance. Labor always produces more than is necessary to meet the immediate needs of workers. This is the essence of its positive, constructive, bright, solar beginning. Labor produces plus.

This plus, this surplus, is extracted by the dark pole, the parasite of history. Throughout all economic history, the relations of production boil down to the expropriation of substance from the bearers of plus by the bearers of minus. Improvements in the productive forces refine the paradigms of exploitation. But already from the very first steps of human history, it is possible to detect characteristic features of the two essences which collide with each other in full force only at the end of it. The primitive toiler is the germ of the industrial proletariat. The tribal head is the embryo of capital.

Long millennia of human history pass, and the two subjects of the global drama reach their purest state, finally realizing and summating all previous stages. From the slave-owning system through feudal relations capitalism emerges, and this is the most important and largely eschatological stage of Marxist doctrine. Here all of the complex social situation boils down to the clear duality of the proletariat as the class which embodies the result of historical and economic development of the elements of Labor, and the bourgeoisie which concentrates in itself the absolutized, most total, finished, and conscious pole of pure exploitation. The light pole completes its tragic path through the mazes of alienation, and the dark pole comes close to complete victory. Proletariat and Capital. Pure Labor is the proletariat without any kind of property (“except chains”) and Pure Capital transforms from that which is had to that which has, into the element of Pure Alienation or Absolute Exploitation.

Marx brings all other historical, philosophical, cultural, social, and scientific and technical problems into this political-economic scheme, considering them to be derivative and secondary to the underlying paradigm.

Further, Marx proclaims that the second industrial revolution, signifying capitalism’s achievement of its peak, is the turning point in world history. From this moment, both historical subjects – both Labor and Capital – become not simply toys in the hands of the objective logic of history, but self-conscious and self-sufficient subjects capable not only of complying with necessity, but also governing the most important historical processes, furnishing them, provoking them, designing them, and assuring their autonomous will. The point is not the individual or the group, but the class subject. The proletariat, becoming a class, becomes a historical personality, conscious Labor, and the heir of the plus in all stages of its development. Capital concentrates in itself the global minus, extraction, alienation, but merely in a free, volitional, personal state. Now it is capable of planning history and controlling it.

At this stage, Labor and Capital move on to the level of ideas or ideology, and henceforth exist not only in the objective fabric of reality, but also in the ideological space of thought. The arrival of these two personages in the sphere of thought finally lays bare the essential dualism in this field – there is the thought of Labor and there is the thought of Capital; there is the worldview of the plus and the worldview of the minus. Both of these worldview obtain the greatest possible independence and freedom so that the whole zone of consciousness is turned from a sphere of reflection into a sphere of creativity and design. The worldview of Labor (proletarian philosophy) here retains its creative character. It creates and manufactures a project. The outlook of Capital (bourgeois philosophy) remains essentially negative  – it does not usurp the inherent energy of mental labor, but reproduces the void, conceptualizes immobility, freezes life, and postulates reality while denying task.

The supreme and most complete formula of Capital is, according to Marx, English liberal political-economy, especially the theories of “free exchange” and the “universal market” of Adam Smith and his followers. But apart from its most distinct form, there exist a number of more nuanced, complex, and drawn out constructed worldviews which hide behind the pernicious, parasitic breath of Capital. Bourgeois philosophy henceforth becomes the most effective weapon of exploitation and its supreme form. But, in contrast to this, so does the doctrinal corpus of the working class emerge, whose fundamental contours are made clear by communist ideology. Marx viewed his own work in precisely this context. He sensed that his ideas formed the basis of “proletarian philosophy” and would become a critical tool of Labor in its eschatological, final battle against the eternal enemy.

Marx proclaimed a kind of “Gospel of Labor.” He argued that now, at the turning point of political-economic history, Labor, in becoming Pure Labor, should instantly become aware of itself and its history, completely take over the function of one of the two teleological poles of history, and identify the mechanism of exchange and alienation which lies at the heart of exploitation, expose the negative, vampiric, purely negative function of Capital (through clarifying the logic of of production and the expropriation of surplus value), and carry out the Proletarian Revolution which would cast Capital into the abyss of oblivion and tear up world evil by the roots. After a short phase of transitional formation (socialism), “paradise on earth” will come and Labor will be fully liberated from the dark beginning.

This, in the most general terms, is the meaning of the Marxist political-economic model. It should be recognized that it is so convincing and reliable that it is no wonder that the views of Marx possessed so many people in the 20th century, becoming a sort of religion for which unprecedented sacrifices were offered. How did the scenario of Marx realize itself in practice? What turned out to be inaccurate, and what was disproven? How should the content of the political-economic history of our century be assessed while remaining within the intended Marxist philosophy of history?

As we enter the third millennium, we can confirm that Capital beat Labor, managed to avoid the impending Revolution, dissolved the complete historical manifestation of Labor as a revolutionary subject, and prevented the perilous prospect of proletarian philosophy concentrating into a unified, full-fledged philosophical system. But, nevertheless, Labor, inspired by Marx, tried to give a “final and decisive fight” to its primordial enemy. Labor was defeated, but the fact of this great battle cannot be denied. It was the main content of the socio-political history of the 20th century fully in accordance with Marx, only with a different (bad) ending. Global evil won. Minus turned out to be stronger and more cunning than plus. The subjectivity of Capital proved its superiority over the subjectivity of Labor.

How did this happen in practice?

The first failure of Marxist orthodoxy occurred at the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This event was the key turning point of post-Marxist history. On the one hand, the uprising of the Bolshevik Marxists proved that the ideas of Marx were correct and confirmed by practice. The proletarian, communist workers party was able to make a revolution, overthrow the exploitative system, destroy the power of Capital and the bourgeois class, and build a socialist state proceeding from the basic provisions of Marx himself. Moreover, the predominant ideology of this state was declared to be Marxism. In other words, the Russian experience provided the first confirmation of the correctness and effectiveness of revolutionary Marxist doctrine. However, over the course of the Russian revolution one important circumstance was discovered: a successful proletarian revolution had not happened where and when Marx himself had predicted. The spatial, temporal error was not a quantitative, but a qualitative factor. Therefore, it was loaded with immense doctrinal value.

Marx believed that the final formation of the proletariat as a class and its formalization into a revolutionary party would occur in the most developed countries of the industrial West, i.e., exactly where bourgeois mechanisms had reached their most thorough development and the industrial proletariat was the social dominant of all productive forces. Moreover, Marx believed that proletarian revolutions would immediately trigger a chain reaction in the other states and societies. Marx was sure that socialist revolution could not occur in other spacial and temporal points, since both historical subjects – Labor and Capital – had in those places not yet reached the stage at which a full and adequate translation of the material into the ideal, the objective into the subjective, and the limited state of development into an adequate system were possible. The Russian experience demonstrated that socialist revolution was possible and could be successfully implemented in a country with underdeveloped capitalism far behind the mass-scale accomplishment of the second stage of the industrial revolution, in a country with a very small percentage of industrial proletarians. After the victory of the Bolsheviks, revolutionary processes did not spread to Europe, but stopped at the borders of the former Russian Empire. Labor had formed a political party and beat Capital in completely different conditions than those anticipated by Marx. In other words, the historical revolution in Russia corrected the theory of its founding father.

The meaning of this historical correction is perhaps most succinctly grasped by referring to the phenomenon of National-Bolshevism discussed by Mikhail Agursky [1]. The proletarian revolution in Russia proved that the victory of Labor over Capital was possible and realistic provided that, in this political-economic act, additional dimensions were involved, such as national messianism (highly developed among Russians and Eastern European Jews), mystical and chiliastic sectarian tendencies (of the people and the intelligentsia), and a Blanquist, conspiratorial, and Order-style political party (Leninism, and later Stalinism). In fact, an analogous although much less radical case ensured victory to different anti-capitalist forces – Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism – which in practice managed to implement quasi-socialist revolutions. In other words, Marxism turned out to be historically realizable in a heterodox, National-Bolshevik execution which differed from the strict concept of Marx himself. Marxism came true in reality, but only in combination with other factors and, concretely, where the political-economic doctrine of Marx was linked with cultural-religious tendencies quite far from the discourse of the author of Capital. In contrast to the success of the historical realization of Marxism in a National-Bolshevik form, at that moment in the bourgeois West, when capitalism had reached the limit of its development, i.e., was at the threshold of the third industrial revolution (this happened in the ’60’s-’70’s of the 20th century), the transition to socialism did not take place. If the heterodox version of Marxism turned out to be feasible, then the orthodox version was disproved by history. Capitalism in its most developed form managed to overcome the most dangerous moment of development, effectively dealt with the threat of proletarian uprising, and moved on to an even more developed level of domination at a time when the alternative, oppositional subject itself – the proletariat as a class as the eschatological, revolutionary party of Labor – was dissolved, dispersed, and evaporated in the complex system of the uncontested “society of the spectacle” (Guy Debord). In other words, post-industrial society, in becoming a reality, finally revealed that the literally understood prophecies of Marx were not realized in practice. This, in fact, is the reason for the deep crisis of contemporary European Marxism.

Today, we know about the sad end of the socialist state which liquidated itself as a result of purely internal processes that led the National-Bolshevik system to the edge of hell with the bourgeois Perestroika. And 40 years earlier, the other non-capitalist regimes of Europe – Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany – fell. Thus, Capital had beaten Labor in all of its ideological manifestations by the end of the 20th century including in the form of orthodox Marxism (represented by European Social-Democracy), the National-Bolshevik version of the Soviets and the approximately close and compromised variants of the so-called “Third Way” European regimes.

The victory of Capital over Labor above all shows the greater degree of consciousness of this pole of history which was capable of remaining faithful to its original purpose in the long-term and being ready to draw conclusions from studying the conceptual models of its historical enemies in order to master, in practice, as preventive measures, some of the methodologies and paradigms revealed by the revolutionary genius himself. After Marx, the camp of Labor, on the global political-economic scale, was divided into three disharmonious, conflicting ideological camps – Soviet socialism (National-Bolshevism), Western Social-Democracy and (with some reservations) fascism. The capitalist camp remained essentially unified and skillfully used the contradictions among the ideologies of Labor. Instead of a single proletarian revolutionary communist party, at the critical moment in history in the bourgeois West, there appeared pro-Soviet, radical Bolshevik organizations under the control of the Comintern, and this means geopolitically linked with Moscow as the capital of the Third International and carrying its will; indigenous social-democratic parties fighting against pro-Moscow forces for influence in proletarian circles; and, finally, the national-socialist movements projecting the National-Bolshevik experience of Moscow (but in a much milder version) onto their national context.

The strategy of Capital lay in consistently opposing the three varieties of the ideological expressions of the forces of Labor against each other so as to avoid any chance of their consolidation into a single, historical socio-political organism. To this end, social-democracy and Bolshevism were opposed to fascism, and fascism itself against social-democracy and bolshevism. The peak of this strategy was the “Popular Front” in France in the time of Leon Blum and the alliance between the USSR, England, and the US in the war against the Axis countries.

On the other hand, the Western social-democrats (as the bearers of non-National-Bolshevik Marxist orthodoxy) were actively drawn into political collaborationism with the bourgeois establishment through parliamentary representation, corrupted through cooperation with the system, and simultaneously turned against the “agents of Moscow” from the Bolshevik, Leninist parties (the line of Karl Kautsky to a a great degree is telling in this sense). And finally, a complete doctrinal formulation of National-Bolshevism in a conscious and consistent ideology within the framework of the Soviet state did not take place, in which the points and strict guidelines would have been set in approaching the legacy of Marx (what was to be accepted and what was to be rejected). Instead of such a correction, Soviet ideologists continued to insist that Leninism and orthodox Marxism were adequate, denied the most obvious and irrefutable, and therein lost the opportunity for a consistent and coherent, enlightening reflection.

Instead of a clear and unambiguous picture of the confrontation between Labor and Capital in the form of the Soviet socialist regime, on the one hand, and the capitalist countries of the West on the other, a partial mosaic arose in which the compromises (from a political-economic standpoint) of the fascist regimes and Western collaborationist social-democracy played an extremely negative role. These half-baked fascist and social-democratic components irreparably hindered the process of forming a united international proletarian communist party which could have considered the ideological and spiritual experience of the Russian Revolution. This is the external factor. The internal factor consisted of the refusal of the Soviet system itself to draw important ideological conclusions – including the necessary correction of the cultural-philosophical views of Marx – and refusing what, in turn, could have been a success in facilitating productive dialogue with fascism, especially in its extremely left versions. Finally, Western social-democracy itself, instead of a “popular front” and anti-fascist pact with radically bourgeois forces and regimes, could have found understanding with nationally-oriented socialists in the framework of united anti-bourgeois bloc.

Soviet Bolshevism, European Social-Democracy, and even fascism, as essentially anti-capitalist movements, should have been obliged to agree on a single ideological platform, somewhere halfway between an explicit revaluation of Marx by the orthodox and his obvious underestimation by the fascists. Such a hypothetic ideology, a kind of absolute, universal National Marxism could have taken into account other cultural-philosohpical, spiritual, and national points along with the brilliantly correct historical paradigm of Marx in order to form a meaningful, ideal National-Bolshevism, an effective social-economic platform in which the principle of Labor would be translated into the most perfect form. But, alas, this has only been discovered a posteriori now that it is possible to summarize and analyze the experience of such a great historical catastrophe. As a subject, Capital turned out to be not only stronger, but smarter than Labor. It did not allow the “specter of communism” to be fully realized in history, and doomed it to remain a mere ghost. This is a tragic ascertainment. But from the point of view of cognition and elaborating a succinct historical paradigm which allows us to clearly understand what point of history we are in at the current movement, the significance of this conclusion is difficult to overestimate.

The geopolitical paradigm of history

Geopolitical reduction is known significantly less than the economic model, but its cogency and clarity are nevertheless fully comparable to the paradigm of Labor vs. Capital. In geopolitics there also exists a teleological pair of conceptions which present themselves as the subjects of history, but in this case they are not seen from the point of economics, but rather in the context of political geography. There are two geopolitical subjects: Sea (thalassocracy) and land (tellurocracy). Their synonymous pair is West and East, in which East and West are considered not as mere geographical notions, but as civilizational blocs. The West, according to geopolitical doctrine, equals Sea. The East is tantamount to Land.

At the present moment, what interests us is a summary of history translated into geopolitical terms, the eschatological point which is so clearly observed at the level of economics. From that standpoint, Labor battled with Capital and lost. We live in a time of defeat, which the liberal economic school considers final (hence the theme “the end of history” of Fukuyama or the final “money order” of Jacques Attali). Is it possible to see some kind of analogy of this state of affairs in geopolitics?

Amazingly so, such an analogy not only exists, but is so obvious and evident that it leads us fully on towards some very interesting conclusions.

The dialectic of geopolitics is the struggle between Sea and Land. Sea, or the Sea civilization, embodies permanent mobility, “agitation,” and an absence of fixed centers. The only real boundaries of the Sea are the continental masses at its edges, i.e., something opposite to itself. Land, or the civilization of Land, on the contrary, embodies the principles of permanence, fixation, and “conservatism.” The boundaries of Land can be strict, clear, natural, and in different spaces on Land itself. And it is only Land civilization which provides the basis for sacred, legal, or ethically fixed systems of values. Land (East) is order. Sea (West) is dissolution. Land (East) is masculine. Sea (West) is female. Land (East) is tradition. Sea (West) is modernity. And so on.

These two subjects of geopolitical history hint towards the most comprehensive and discernible expression in moving from a multipolar, complex system to a global scheme of blocs. Land and Sea acquired planetary features only in the 20th century, and especially in its second half when the contours of the bipolar model were finally established. Sea found its final expression in the USA and NATO, while Land was incarnated in the conglomerate of socialism countries, the Warsaw Pact. A teleological division of the plane into two camps took place, each of which represented the purest form of this geopolitical, civilizational pair. The civilization of the Sea passed through history to the US and Atlanticism, although the path was not straightforward. Land civilization was incarnated in bulk form in the USSR. Atlantis and Eurasia were strategically integrated, and the latent geopolitical trends ingeniously recognized by Mackinder in terms of the historical logic of terrestrial spaces acquired impressive weight and supreme visibility in the “Cold War.”

But, at the point of geopolitical history’s culmination in the 20th century, a geopolitical pivot was witnessed which at one point clouded the transparent logic of the geopolitical model. The emergence of a separate strategic bloc – the Axis countries – in Europe in the ’20’s and ’30’s became the greatest obstacle that prevented the organic development of the Land civilization into a full-fledged geopolitical subject, and thus laid the foundations for eventual defeat.

The Axis countries attempted to assert their geopolitical independence and self-sufficiency. In doing so, they rejected all the facts and recommendations of [geopolitical] scholarly schools. European fascism was, from a geopolitical point of view, a barrier to the natural, Eurasianist expansion of the Soviets to the West, but it also refused to obediently implement a purely Atlanticist strategy. Such ambiguity seriously disturbed the bipolar map of the world and gave rise to intercontinental wars and conflicts which harshly prevented the Eurasian land continental subject from fully realizing itself and affirming its own coherent geopolitical strategy. European fascism generated geopolitical irresponsibility and the untenable illusion of common interests between Sea (West) and Land (East) in the form of some kind of third identity which, from the point of view of geopolitical doctrine, can not be anything but fictitious and does not have sufficient geopolitical, geographical, historical, or civilizational scale. Europe (fascist or not) has only two geopolitical perspectives: either being the western outpost of the East (as, for example, in the Orthodox Roman Empire before the schism) or acting as a strategic coastal area under the control of Sea and directed against the continental mass of Eurasia. The Axis countries’ strategy was neither the first nor the second. The defeat of Germany was already evident when a two-front war began. Such an unnatural adventure was not only knowingly suicidal for Germany (and for Europe at large), but also laid down a half-baked, unfinished geopolitical base for the entire Eurasian continent that, in the end, led to the death and collapse of the whole Land civilization. This latter comment is based on the brilliant analysis of Jean Thiriart of the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, which he concluded 20 years before this became a fact. Thiriart showed that, from a geopolitical point of view, the strategic space controlled by the socialist countries was unfinished and would not be able to withstand prolonged confrontation with the West. Thiriart considers the main reason of this to be the problem of a divided Europe, which gave all the strategic benefits to the overseas power at the expense of the USSR. Thiriart argued that, in order to solve this radical problem that Eurasia inherited from the suicidal policies of Hitler, it would be necessary to either conquer Western Europe and including its countries in the socialist camp or, on the contrary, insist on the withdrawal of strategic assets and troops of the USSR from Eastern Europe with the parallel dissolution of NATO and the removal of all US strategic bases. This would have led to the creation of a neutral space in Europe that would provide Moscow with the opportunity to fully focus on the southern direction and wage a decisively positional battle in Afghanistan and the Far East and Middle East.

But the civilization of Sea carefully studied the geopolitical theories of Mackinder and Mahan, not merely comparing them with its strategy but, understanding the severity of the threat posed by progressive Eurasian, continental integration under the aegis of the Soviets, made every possible effort in every way to prevent it. And once again, as in the case of the struggle between Labor and Capital, not only did objective historical forces act, but the active, direct intervention of the subjective factor was witnessed, i.e., the agents of Western influence did their utmost to prevent the implementation of a “continental bloc”, a Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo pact, the project of which had been put forth by the greatest German geopolitician, Karl Haushofer. Along with developing geopolitical research, Sea found a logical, effective, intellectual, and conceptual apparatus for acting in history not by mere inertia, but consciously.

In geopolitical terms, the end of the Soviet bloc and the collapse and disintegration of the USSR meant the victory of Sea over Land, thalassocracy over tellurocracy, and West over East. And again, as in the case of the Labor-Capital pair, we see in the history of the 20th century a teleological identification of two major, previously not fully manifested geopolitical subjects – only this time this is Sea and Land -, their planetary duel, and the final victory of Sea and the West.

If we compare the plot of economic reduction with the geopolitical model for explaining history, a distinct parallelism immediately catche the eyes which can be traced at all stages. There is the impression that the same trajectory repeats itself on different, parallel levels not directly related to each other. Therefore, the following identification suggests itself:

The fate of Labor = the fate of Land and the East. The fate of capital = the fate of Sea and the West. Labor is fixated, while capital is liquid. Labor is the creation of values and ascent [2] while Capital is exploitation, alienation, the fall of things.[3] Sea civilization is the civilization of Liberalism. Land civilization is the civilization of socialism. Eurasia, Land, East, Labor, and socialism are a synonymic group. Atlanticism, Sea, West, Capital, and Liberalism are also a synonymic grouping.

The comparison of political-economy and geopolitics offers an exceptionally systematic conceptual picture.

The “‘end of history,” in geopolitical terms, therefore means “the end of Land,” the “end of the East.” Does this not recall the Biblical symbolism of the “global flood?”

The war of nations

Yet another model of interpretation can be found in diverse ethnic theories which consider nations, sometimes races, and other times this or that people opposed to all the rest to be the fundamental subjects of history. Countless versions exist in this field. One of the most prominent theorists of an ethnic approach was the German Enlightenment figure, Gerder, whose ideas were developed by the German romanticists, partially borrowed by Hegel, and finally adopted by the representatives of the German “Conservative Revolution,” especially the prominent thinker, jurist, and philosopher Carl Schmitt. The racial approach was outlined in the writings of Count Gobineau and was then taken up by the German National Socialists. The same side of viewing history through the prism of one ethnos has been most clearly represented in Judaistic and Zionist circles on the basis of the specificities of the Judaistic religion. In addition, one can always find trends close to the idea of national exclusiveness during a rise of national feelings, but the difference is that these theories have nowhere else acquired such a pronounced religious content, been so stable and developed, and possessed such a long historical tradition as among the Jews.

There are several unusual, but extremely convincing ethnic theories which do not fit any of the above-mentioned categories. The “theory of passionarity and ethnogenesis”, for example, of the genius Russian scientist Lev Gumilev is one such. It also considers world history as a result of the interaction of ethni understood as organic, living beings from youth to old age and death. Although this theory is highly interesting and reveals many enigmatic civilizational patterns, it does not possess the degree of teleological reduction which interests us. Gumilev’s views do not claim to be a final generalization. Moreover, Gumilev was prone to consider eschatological views (explicit or disguised) as expressions of a “decadent” stage of an ethnos’ development, as chimeras which emerge upon approaching the threshold of the death of cultures and peoples with the decay and loss of passionarity. Accordingly, for him the statement of the question concerning the interpretation of the “end of history” would have been nothing more than an expression of deep decadence. For this reason, Gumilev must be put aside.

In the case of Gumilev, only the first criterion, the ethnos, can be taken, upon which all theories of the ethnos as an historical subject are based and divided into two parts – some of these theories have a teleological, eschatological dimension, and others not. What do we have in mind?

There exist such conceptions of history which see the reflection of the meaning of the entire historical process in the fate of this or that people (the variants being several peoples or a race) and, consequently, the ultimate triumph, rebirth, or, vise verse, defeat, humiliation, and disappearance of a nation are considered to be results of world history, the ultimate expression of its secret meaning. These ethnic theories of an eschatological orientation interest us most of all. Others might be just as extravagant or interesting, but insofar as they do not possess any teleological dimension, they do not add anything to the understanding of the problem under study. Russian, American, Jewish, Kurdish, and English nationalisms, as well as German racism obviously gravitate towards the eschatological posing of the question. Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Serbian, Armenian, or Italian nationalisms, although they might be no less vivid, intense, or dynamic, are obviously teleologically passive. The first group believes that the prioritized subject is the history of their given people and its vicissitudes which form the content of the global historical process, with the ultimate triumph of these peoples and the trampling of hostile nations putting an end to history. The second group does not have such a global scale and insists only on the pragmatic and less pretentious approval of national characteristics, culture, and statehood in the face of surrounding nations and cultures. Here is the important dividing line. A study of the second group of ethnic doctrines does not bring us closer to identifying historical paradigms, as they take too small of scale to begin with. The first group, on the contrary, meets our requirements, although here we should distinguish between “the globalism of wishes” and the “globalism of what is real.” Even a pure theoretical consideration of this ethnic interpretation of eschatology requires a particular ethnos to have a significant historical scale (in time and space). Otherwise, in the opposite case, the picture turns out to be ridiculous.

But, even in limiting the range of consideration to “teleological nationalism,” we still do not have a systematic picture. Insofar as the analogy between political-economy and geopolitics turned out to be whole and vivid, we will try – a bit artificially – to extend the same model to ethnic history. Only then can such an identification turn out to be explanatory, justified, or unjustified.

Geopolitics allows us to take the first step in this respect. Just as Sea = West, the “ethnos of the West” is the bearer of thalssocratic tendencies on an ethnic level. And just as our equation already has the formula Sea=Capital, then a (so far) hypothetical “ethnos of the West” becomes the third member of the identity – Sea = “ethnos of the West” = Capital. Constructing the opposite pole of Land = “ethnos of the East” = Labor is just as easy. Now what remains is relating the concepts of “ethnos of the West” and “ethnos of the East” to some kind of fixed historical realities and explaining the presence of corresponding eschatological doctrines.

It is here that the Russian Eurasianists (Trubetskoy, Savitsky, etc.) come to our aid. Following Danilevsky, they identified the “ethnos of the West” with the “Romano-Germanic” peoples, and the “ethnos of the East” with the “Eurasians,” at the pole of which stand the Russians as a unique synthesis of Slavic, Turkic, Ugric, German, and Iranian ethni. Of course, speaking of “Roman-Germans” as an ethnos is not entirely accurate, but there are nonetheless some common historical and civilizational features which are clearly present. The Romano-Germans are unified by geography, culture, and religion, as well as common technological development. The cradle of what might be called the “Romano-German civilization” is considered to be the Western Roman Empire and later the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations.” Ethnocultural unity is present, but does this authorize one to speak of a single eschatological concept which can be considered the fate of this ethnic group as a paradigm of history? If we look closely at the logic of the Romano-German world’s development, then we see that this world practically usurped and appropriated exclusively for itself the concept of “ecumene”,i.e., “universal,” which earlier characterized the aggregate of all parts of the Orthodox Empire. But after the split with Byzantium, the West reserved the concept of “ecumene” only for itself, reducing universal history to the history of the West and leaving out not only the non-Christian world, but also all of the Eastern Orthodox peoples and, moreover, the axis of genuine Christianity, Byzantium. Thus, the very center of authentic Christianity, the Orthodox East, fell outside of the Romano-German “Christian world.” Further, this concept of the “European ecumene” was inherited by the peoples of the West after the violation of its Catholic religious unity and after secularization. The Romano-German world identified its ethnic history with the history of humanity, and this in particular provided the ground for N.S. Trubetskoy to title his book Europe and Humanity, in which he convincingly showed that the the self-identification of the West with humanity turns real humanity, in the whole and normal sense of the word, into the West’s enemy. In such a perspective, the factual self-identification of Europe and Europeans as the ethnic subject of history begins to reveal that the positive (in the Romano-Germans’ consciousness) outcome of history would be tantamount to the final triumph of the West, its cultural and political “ecumene”, over all the other peoples on the planet. This in particular suggests that the Romano-German political, ethical, cultural, and economic norms developed over the course of its history should be universal and universally accepted, and that all resistance from indigenous peoples and cultures should be broken.

The conceptual eschatology of European nations passed through several phases of development. In the beginning, it had a Catholic-Scholastic expression parallel with the development of purely mystical doctrines such as the concept of the “Third Kingdom” of Joachim de Flora. The Romano-German world was supposed to complete the “evangelization” of barbarians and heretics (including Orthodox Christians!) to be followed by “paradise on earth” whose picture represents more or less analogously the universal domination of the Vatican, only raised to the level of absolute. In the 16th century, European eschatology found expression in the Reformation and later found its final formal in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant doctrine of the “lost tribes.” This doctrine considers the Anglo-Saxon peoples to be the ethnic descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel who, according to Biblical history, did not return from Babylonian captivity. Thus, the true Jews, the Israelites, the “chosen people,” are the Anglo-Saxons, the “golden grain” of the Romano-German world who are destined to establish supremacy over all other peoples of the earth in the end times. In this extreme doctrine formulated in the 17th century by the supporters of Oliver Cromwell, all of the logic of Europe’s ethnic history is condensed and concentrated, unequivocally confirming the ethnic and cultural universalism of the West’s claims to world dominance. Such is the clarification of the ethnic subject of the Romano-German world, which gradually and all the more distinctly became the Anglo-Saxons and Protestant fundamentalists of this eschatological orientation [4]. But the roots of this doctrine can be found in the Catholic Middle Ages in the Vatican. On this note, there is the brilliant analysis of Werner Sombart in his book The Quintessence of Capitalism.[5] The Anglo-Saxons, parallel to the crystallization of conceptions of ethnic selection, are the first to be included into the two fateful processes which lay at the heart of contemporary political-economy and geopolitics. England makes an industrial breakthrough, is the first of the European powers to enter the industrial revolution which rapidly led to the flourishing of capitalism, and simultaneously conquers the sea space of the planet, winning the geopolitical duel against the more archaic, “soil-based” and traditionalist Spanish. Carl Schmitt beautifully revealed the relationship between these two turning points in modern history.[6]

Little by little, another “daughter” state adopted the initiative of England. This was the USA, which was originally founded on the principles of “Protestant fundamentalism” and was conceived by its founders as a “space of utopia” and “promised land” in which history must end with the planetary triumph of the “10 lost tribes.” This idea is manifested in the American concept of Manifest Destiny which views the “American nation” as the ideal human community, the apotheosis of the history of the world’s peoples.

Having compared the abstract theory of the “ethnic exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxons” with historical practice, we see that the actual influence of England as the vanguard of the Romano-German world on Europe more broadly, and on the whole world and world history is, indeed, massive. In the second half of the 20th century, when the US became a de facto synonym for the “Western peoples” and a symbol of the eschatological reasoning of Anglo-Saxon nationalism, it is difficult to doubt the presence of such in Manifest Destiny. If, for example, the Masonic-Catholic nationalism of a Frenchman, despite its lofty myths of the “last kind” was only a relative and regional one, then the Anglo-Saxon conception of Protestant fundamentalism is confirmed not only by the striking successes of the “mistress of the seas,” but also by the existence of the gigantic, contemporary hyper-power which remains the only one of its kind in the world today.

Now let us turn to the “ethnos of the East”, to the Eurasians. Here attention should also be paid, first and foremost, to the peoples that have proven their historical significance. Naturally, there can be no doubt that the only ethnic community which was able to assert its national eschatology on a huge scale at the height of history was the Russian people. This was not always so, and in some periods of the history of the East, the Russians were little more than one of many peoples, alongside others, which widened or narrowed with varying success the borders of their cultural, political, and geographical presence.

Despite being the most ancient and superior traditional civilizations and despite their scale and spiritual importance, China and India have never raised their own eschatological concepts of nationalism, have not identify their ethnic history with the history of mankind, and thereby have not lent such a dramatic element to international relations or conflicts. In addition, neither the Chinese nor the Hindu traditions were characterized by “messianism” or claims of the universality of their religious and ethnic paradigms. This is the static, “permanent”, relatively “conservative” East incapable of and not willing to accept the challenge of the West. National theories in which the Chinese or Indians are expected to rule the world never existed in China and India. Only among the Iranians and Arabs did such national, racial theories of an eschatological orientation exist. The history of the previous centuries has shown that the real scale of this ethnic teleology – which was clearly expressed by the Islamic religious component – is too insufficient to consider it a serious contender to the counterpart of the “peoples of the West.” The function of the vanguard of “the ethnos of the East” has therefore been uniquely assigned to the Russians, who were able to develop a universal, messianic ideal on a scale comparable to the Anglo-Saxon ideal, and implement it in historical reality at large. The eschatological idea of the Orthodox Kingdom – “Moscow as the Third Rome” – was later transferred to secularized Petersburg Russia, and eventually to the USSR. Orthodoxy came from Byzantium through Holy Rus to the capital of the Third Rome. This is analogous to how the Anglo-Saxons proceeded from the ethnic concept of the “tribes of Israel” to the American melting-pot as an “artificial eschatological liberal paradise.” Russian messianism, originally based on the concept of the “open ethnos” became the formula of “Soviet patriotism” in the 20th century which gathered the peoples, ethni, and cultures of Eurasia under a massive, universal cultural and ethical project.

Yet another confirmation of this ethnic, dual teleology is the fact that American Protestants unanimously equate Russia with the “land of Gog,” i.e., the space from which the Antichrist will come. The doctrine of “Dispensationalism” unambiguously asserts that the final battle of history will unfold between the Christians of the Empire of Good (the USA) and the heretic dwellers of the Eurasian Empire of Evil (Russians and the peoples of the East united around them). This equating of Russia with the “land of Gog” become especially widespread in American Protestant circles in the middle of the last century. Similar views are also characteristic of many Protestant denominations in England and among Catholic Jesuits. The first foundations of the concept of “dispensionalism” was formulated by the Spanish, “Judaizing” Catholic priest (a Jesuit), Emmanuel La Concha who wrote under the pseudonym “Rabbi Ben Ezra.” The Scottish preacher of the Pentecostal sect, Martha McDonald, borrowed this dispensationalist theory from him, which subsequently became the cornerstone of the doctrine of the English fundamentalist preacher Derby, who founded the sect “Plymouth Brethren” or the “Brothers.” All of this Protestant (and sometimes Catholic) eschatology, extremely popular in the modern West, asserts that Western Christians and Jews have a common fate in the “End Times,” while Orthodox Christians and other non-Christian nations of Eurasia embody the “entourage of the Antichrist” who act against the forces of “Good”, bring much harm to the “righteous” but, in the end, “will be defeated and crushed on the territory of Israel, where they will find death.” The extent of belief in this theory and its prevalence among ordinary people in the US is constantly growing. The Bolshevik revolution, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the Cold War perfectly fit into this “prophetic” conception of the “dispensationalists” and strengthened their faith in their correctness.

Let us briefly consider two more varieties of ethnic teleology and formulate a conclusion which the attentive reader has most likely already done himself. That which we have revealed and which is easily verifiably in the history of ethnic dualism – the “ethnos of the West” (whose kernel is the Anglo-Saxons) and the “ethnos of the East” (whose kernel is the Russians) – ignores two famous ethnic doctrines which, as a rule, first come to mind whenever we discuss “eschatological nationalism.” We have in mind the “racism” of the German Nazis and the Zionist conceptions of the Jews. For what reasons have we left these realities on the side and prioritized the study of American and Russian-Soviet “nationalisms” which are not even as visible and radical as Nazism, which borders on barbarity, or the accentuated anthropological dualism of the Jews[7]?

We will answer this question a bit later, but now let us recall in a few words the point of these two variants of national eschatology.

German racism reduced all history to the racial opposition of the Aryans, or Indo-Europeans, to all the other nations and races considered “defective.” At the heart of this approach is the mythological concept of the “ancient Aryans”, the first cultured inhabitants of the earth and the magical race of the kings and heroes of the high Nord. This “Nordic race” was notable for all of its virtues and all cultural innovations are attributed to its authorship. Gradually, the white race descended to the South and mixed with the rough, animalistic, sensual, and wild ethni. Thus arose mixed cultural forms and contemporary ethnic groups. All that is good in modern civilization is the achievement of the whites. Everything that is bad is the product of mixing with the colored races and their influence. The Germans are the vanguard of the white race as they have maintained pure blood, cultural, and ethnic values. The Jews are the vanguard of the colored peoples, i.e., the main enemies of the white race who are plotting endless machinations against it.

This racial eschatology demands that the Germans lead the white race, begin to cleanse its blood, separate the colored peoples from the non-colored, and achieve world domination which would reproduce, at a new stage, the original dominance of Aryan kings. German racism is, of course, an extravagant, quite artificial, and purely modern doctrine, although it is based on some genuine ancient myths and religious teachings. In Germany itself, racism spread under the influence of occult circles associated with Theosophy to varying degrees.

Jewish messianism, on the other hand, is the archetype of all other variants of national eschatologies. The “Old Testament” exhaustively details it and it is deciphered in the Talmud and Kabbala. Jews are considered to be the chosen people par excellence, and the Jewish ethnicity acts as the main subject of world history. On the opposite end of the model are the “Gentiles,” “Goim,” “nations,” “pagans,” “heathens,” or “forces of the left side” (according to “Zohar”). In the esoteric interpretation of Kabbala, the “Goim” are not “people,” but “evil spirits in human form,” and therefore even theoretically they lack the prospect of salvation or spiritualization. But the Jews, despite being the chosen ones, often depart from the right path, go astray down the path of evil, and go along the roads of the “Goim” and their “false deities.” For this, Yaweh punishes his people by sending them to and scattering them among the “Goim,” who mistreat the Jews in every way, causing them pain and resentment. After the  destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D by Titus Flavius, the Jews were sent into the “fourth scattering” for their sins, which was to be the last. After centuries-long suffering, this dispersion ends in “catastrophe,” “Holocaust,”  and “Shoah,” followed by the return to the promised land, the restoration of the state of Israel, and from this point on the Jews are to rule the whole world.

Here we note a curious correlation between German racism and Jewish messianism, even though the examined symbols are polar opposites. German racists saw the Jews as the focal point of “racial evil,” and the Jews themselves, especially after the Second World War, recognized Nazism as, on the contrary, the embodiment of “Gentile evil.” It is no coincidence that the religious and historiosophical concept of the “Shoah” was applied to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The very creation of the state of Israel was the direct consequence of the fate of Hitler’s regime. In the eyes of the international community, the Jews obtained the moral right to their own state as a kind of compensation for the victims of Nazism.

German Nazism and Jewish messianism are very intense forms of ethnic eschatology which proved the reality of their importance and involvement in the course of world history by their large and significant scale. Yet, neither Hitler’s Nazism nor Zionism  embodied such distinctness, clarity, or historical visibility as the basic trends of the historical process as in the case of Americanism and Sovietism. The purely geographical layout is curious: racism was widespread in Europe and the state of Israel is located in the Middle East. It is as if they oppose each other vertically, while the Anglo-Saxon and Eurasian worlds oppose each other horizontally. If Hitler’s racism appealed to “Nordism,” then Jewry accentuated the “Southern” or “Mediterranean” orientation. Eurasianism clearly relates to the East, and Atlanticism to the West.

On this note, the historical scale of the horizontal pair of Anglo-Saxons and Russians is much more significant and of greater weight than the case of the vertical pair. Although the Nazis were able to achieve significant territorial gains, they were geopolitically doomed from the very start as their ethno-eschatological paradigm was insufficiently universal and comprehensive and their history did not form an independent spiritual pole (which differs from the case of Russia). Precisely the same, despite the enormous influence of the Jewish factor in world politics, is the case with the Jews who are nonetheless very far from their messianic ideal. The state of Israel is still negligible or purely instrumental in the context of larger geopolitics, in which genuinely serious meaning is only possessed by the blocs comparable to NATO or the former Warsaw Pact.

German racism (although historically eliminated) and Jewish messianism (which, on the contrary, was strengthened after the second half of the 20th century) should not be disregarded. But their importance should not be overestimated as we have a far more significant reality in the form of the USA and Russia.

In this regard, it is more constructive to undertake the following operation: we should break down the pair of Hitlerite racism and Zionism into two components. Just as in the terms of political-economy fascism was somewhat of a compromise between capitalism and socialism, and just as how in geopolitical terms the Axis countries were something intermediate between the clear Atlanticism of the West and the clear Eurasianism of the East, so in the terms of of ethnic eschatology is the confrontation between Nazism and Zionism little more than a veil covering the significantly more serious confrontation between the Anglo-Saxons (and their Manifest Destiny) and Russians. This means that both Nazism and Zionism can be understood as a combination of internally heterogenous factors gravitating to one of the two more fundamental ethnic poles. The first approximation of this idea was developed by the Eurasianist Bromberg, and its other version belongs to the famous writer Arthur Koestler.

Jewish messianism can be divided into two components. One of them is in solidarity with Anglo-Saxon messianism. This is the “Western component” in Jewry. The Dutch Jewish communities originally associated with the promotion of Protestant fundamentalism are representatives of such. This can be called “Jewish Atlanticism” or “right Jewry.” This sector identifies the eschatological expectations of the Jews with the victory of the Anglo-Saxon nation, the US, Liberalism, and capitalism.

The second component is “Jewish Eurasianism,” which Bromberg termed “Jewish Easternness.”[8] At a base level, this sector of Eastern European Jewry is in solidarity with Russian messianism and especially with its communist version. This partially explains the large-scale participation of Jews in the October Revolution and their vanguard role in the communist movement which acted as a cover for the realization of the planetary Russian messianic idea. Generally speaking, it was this “left Jewry” which represented a stable and large-scale reality that the Nazis identified with “communism” and “Jewry” in their propaganda, typologically associated with the Eurasian complex and solidarity with the Russian-Soviet eschatological ideal. “Jewish Eurasianists” often appealed to the astonishing historical formation of the “Khazar Khaganate” in which the Jewish religion was combined with a powerful, imperial military hierarchy based on the Turko-Aryan ethnic element. Besides the extremely negative appraisal of “Khazars” (which Lev Gumilev outlined), there exist other “revisionist” versions regarding the history of this form which, in its continentalist stylistics and sharp deviation from the ethnic particularism of traditional Judaism, strongly contrasts with other, especially Western, forms of Judaistic social organization. Thus, A. Koestler advanced the curious theory that Eastern European Jews are, in fact, the descendants of the ancient Khazars, and their otherness in relation to the Jewry of the West outweighs their racial difference. Here what is important is not how “scientific” such an idea is, but rather that this concept mythologically reflects deep, inter-Jewry dualism.

Now on to German racism. Here the picture is not so clear, and breaking down this phenomenon into two components is not so easy. First of all, this is because the Russophile and pro-Soviet line in Nazism and, more broadly, the German nationalist movement, almost always had an anti-racist orientation. This positive Ostorientirung was characteristic of many representatives of the German Conservative Revolution (Arthur Mueller van den Bruck, Friedrich Georg Junger, Oswald Spengler, and especially Ernst Nikisch), and associated Prussia with ideals of statehood rather than with racial motives. But certain varieties of racism can be related to Eurasianism. Such “Eurasian racism”, undoubtedly, was a position of the minority, marginal, and was not indicative [of the phenomenon as a whole]. A typical representative of this was the professor Herman Wirth who believed that the “Aryan,” “Nordic” element can be found in the majority of the earth’s nations, excluding Asians and Africans. Moreover, in this regard, Germans do not represent any kind of social exception, but instead are a mixed people in which both “Aryan” and “non-Aryan” elements are accounted for. Such an approach denied any allusion to “jingoism” or “xenophobia,” and for this reason Wirth and his associates very quickly became the opposition to Hitler’s regime. In addition, some representatives of this trend believed that the Hindus, Slavs, Persians, Tajiks, Afghans, Pakistanis, etc. are the “Aryans” of Asia and stand closer to the Nordic tradition than Europeans or Anglo-Saxons. Consequently, such racism acquired quite distinct “Eastern” features.

But the other, “Western” line was still the most widespread version of racism which insisted on the superiority of the white race (in the literal sense) and especially the Germans above all other peoples. The technological successes of whites and the advantages of their civilization were glorified in every way. Other peoples were demonized and exhibited by the caricature of the “undermensch.” In the most radical version, the “Aryans” were recognized only as Germans while Slavs or Frenchmen were treated as second-rate people. At this point, this was already not racism, but the ultimate form of German ethnic chauvinism. Such commonplace racism, in fact, was characteristic of Hitler personally and was fully in the spirit of solidarity with the ethnic eschatology of the Anglo-Saxons, although it presented a competing version founded on the specificity of German psychology and German history. It is telling that both varieties of this ethnic eschatology were founded on two branches of the once unified Germanic tribe (Anglo-Saxons were originally Germanic tribes) and on two varieties of Protestantism (German Lutheranism and the Anglicanism of England and the USA). However, German racism was significantly laced with pagan elements and appeals to pre-Christian mythology, barbarism, and hierarchy. In contrast to Anglo-Saxon “racism,” German racism was more archaic, extravagant, and wild, and this aesthetic contrast in style hid under itself a common historical and geopolitical orientation. The Anglophilia of Hitler is a widely known fact.

Thus, the pair of Nazism and Zionism turns out to be too insufficient in scale to be considered an axis of eschatological drama in its ethnic dimension. If it is an “axis,” then it is only a secondary, auxiliary, and additional one. It helps to explain many things, but it does not uncover the essence of the problem. In this perspective, it is possible to consider “Jewish Easternness” as one of the specific varieties of “Eurasianism” (or the “ethnos of the East”) in general terms agreeable with the universal formulation of the Russian-Soviet messianic ideal. It follows that this “Eurasianist” complex includes some (minority) forms of the “Eastern” racism of supporters of the “Aryan” value system.

On the opposing end, “Jewish Westernness” fits exclusively into the Anglo-Saxon ethno-eschatological project upon which the deep alliance of the Mondialist Iobby of Israel and the USA is actually based. The “10 lost tribes”, in the face of the Anglo-Saxons (and especially Americans), is combined with the two other branches in agreement with this eschatological expectation. The “Western” version of racism is adjoined to this signaling the supremacy of “white civilization” – the market, technological progress, liberalism, human rights – over the archaic “barbaric” and “underdeveloped” peoples of the East and the Third World.

Now we can clearly discern the same historical trajectory which already became clear to us from the previous section, but on the new, ethno-eschatological level.

History is a rivalry and battle between the two “macro-ethni” oriented towards the universalization of their spiritual and ethnic ideals up to the climactic moment of history. These are the “ethnos of the West” (the Romano-German world) and the “ethnos of the East” (the Eurasian world). These two formations gradually arrive at the large-scale, purified, and refined expression of their “manifest destinies.” The Manifest Destiny of the “ethnos of the west” is embodied in the concept of the “10 lost tribes” of Protestant fundamentalists which lies at the heart of the planetary dominance of the English and later makes up the foundation of American civilization that, in fact, is close to realizing sole control over the world. “Russian truth” ascended from the nation-state to the level of empire and was embodied in the Soviet bloc which rallied half of the world around itself. This duel formed the heart of the ethnic (or more precisely the macro-ethnic) history of the 20th century. European fascism became a significant obstacle in the way of the clear designation of roles and functions (once again!) by transforming the problem from a clear duality into a confusing and secondary complex of contradictions that undermined the natural logic of the great ethnic war and led to the conclusion of opposition alliances that shifted the center of gravity to an incorrect formulation of the question. Asserting what was in many aspects the artificial and insufficient antipode of “Germans-Aryans-Jews” at the center of ethnic eschatology rather than the real dualism between the “Romano-German,” and later Anglo-Saxon and then “American” camp on the one hand and the “Eurasian”, Russian-Soviet camp on the other, the Nazis veered the natural course of events off course, diverted attention towards a false goal, and asserted contradictions where they were not historically or eschatologically significant or central. Once again, the “Eurasian” camp was the one that suffered.

The Anglo-Saxon ideal and the “ethnos of the West” inflicted a crushing defeat upon the “ethnos of the East.” “Soviet” universalism yielded before the Anglo-Saxon one.

We shall therefore complement our formula by linking the political-economic and geopolitical models of history with yet another level:

Labor=Land (East) = Russian (Soviet, Eurasian) ethnos. Capital=Sea (West)=Romano-German (Anglo-Saxon, American) ethnos.

A duel between these two multidimensional poles has taken place over centuries and epochs, reaching a climax at the beginning of the third millennium A.D.

We must pay attention to the fact that European fascism, at almost every level, fulfilled an analogous function. On the economic level, it claimed to remove the contradictions between Labor and Capital, but it indirectly contributed to the victory of Capital. On a geopolitical level, it denied the fundamental reality of the confrontation between Land and Sea, instead claiming an independent geopolitical significance, but it did not cope with this task and suddenly disappeared, once again aiding the final victory of Sea over Land. And finally, on the level of ethnic eschatology, the Nazis’ racism diverted attention from the great confrontation between the Anglo-Saxons and Russians towards the false alternative between “Aryans” and “Jews” with the Great Russians falling (without any kind of justification) under the category of “colored subhumans.” In the end, it turned out to be in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, in the latter case on an ethnic level, it should be recognized that the second pole of this ethnic dualism (the Jews) also turned out to be mostly on the side of the “ethnos of the West,” and “Jewish Easternness” was significantly weakened and almost came to naught. Moreover, this decline coincided with the moment of the creation of the state of Israel for which the Eastern European Jews of a predominantly socialist orientation (“Jewish Eurasianists”) had originally fought. Therefore, Stalin hurried to recognize the legitimacy of this state, but almost immediately after its establishment it oriented towards the West and became a loyal champion of Anglo-Saxon policies, primarily those of the US, in the Middle East.

Clash of Religions

The final large-scale level of reducing history to a simple formula should be sought in the history of religions and inter-confessional problems. Since the general trajectory of the historical process which we outlined from the standpoint of the economic paradigm in the very beginning turned out to be applicable to the other breakdown levels, we can also safely search for its analogue in the religious sphere.

One of the poles – that of “Capital-West-Sea-Anglo-Saxons” – was built, as we saw, in the Western Roman Empire, the sources and starting point of all those tendencies which gradually crystallized at this pole. In a religious sense, the Western Roman Empire was linked with the Vatican and the Catholic version of Christianity. Consequently, it is fully logical to refer to Catholicism as the religious matrix of this pole.

The opposing “Eurasian” pole is directly connected with “Byzantinism” and Orthodoxy, as Russians are an Orthodox people, the authors of the first socialist revolution, as well as those who occupy the land of the continental heartland which, according to Mackinder, is the axis of all Land forces. To the same extent to which the contemporary Liberal West was secularized, generalized, modernized, and universalized as a result of Catholicism, so did the Soviet model represent a development, although secularized, generalized, and modernized to a certain extent, of the Orthodox Empire. Regarding the secondary nature of the rest of the world’s religions in the context of the eschatological drama, it is possible to carry out the same considerations which we applied when discussing ethnic eschatology. The eastern traditions are not too eschatologically inclined and they do not accentuate the theme of the “end of times” or the “final battle” at the center of their systems. It is not that they do not know about this reality, but rather they do not accord a central place to it comparable to the distinct and prioritized eschatologism of Christianity (or Judaism). This consideration explains the absence of eschatological forms of nationalism (about which we spoke above) in the East, as their ethnic and religious worldview are closely related and mutually define each other.

This scheme is quite intuitive and perfectly superimposes itself over the previous models. The only point requiring further clarification is the question of Protestantism.

The Reformation was a crucial point in the history of the West. It was not simply a multilevel phenomenon, but also involved two strictly opposite orientations which eventually gave rise to polarized forms. We cannot go into theological arguments here, but we can refer the reader to our detailed monograph on this subject [9]. We will only describe this schema.

Catholicism is a fragment of Orthodoxy. After all, at one point before the schism the West was Orthodox to the same extent as the East until this fragment was distorted and claimed priority and completeness. Catholicism is anti-Byzantinism, while Byanztinism is the full and authentic Christianity which includes not only simple dogmatic purity, but also fidelity to the socio-political and state doctrine of Christianity. Roughly approximating, it is possible to say that the Orthodox conception of the symphony of powers (vulgarly called “Caesar-papism”) involves an understanding of the eschatological meaning of not only the Christian Church, but also the Christian State and the Christian Empire. Hence the teleological and soteriological function of the Emperor based on the second Epistle of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians in which “maintaining” and “Katehon” are discussed. “The maintainer” equates the Orthodox exegetes (particularly Saint John Chrysostom) to the Orthodox emperor and the Orthodox empire.

The falling away of the Western Church was based on the rejection of the symphony of power and the rejection of simultaneously the socio-political and eschatological doctrine of Orthodoxy. It is eschatological because it links Orthodoxy and the existence of the politically independent Orthodox state, in which secular power (Basileus) and spiritual power (Patriarch) are strictly defined in correlation as derived from the principle of the symphony, to the presence of the “maintainer”, who prevents the “coming of the son of perdition” (the Antichrist). As a result, deviation from this symphonic, Byzantine paradigm means “apostasy,” or falling away. Catholicism originally, i.e., immediately upon splitting from the united Church, instead of the symphonic model took a different one in which the power of the Roman People is extended to those areas which in the symphonic scheme were strictly considered to be the jurisdiction of the Basileus. Catholicism violated the providential harmony between the secular and spiritual dominions and, according to Christian teachings, fell into heresy.

The spiritual crisis of Catholicism made itself felt with special force in the 16th century and the Reformation was the culmination of this process. However, it should be noted that even in the Middle Ages there existed in Europe tendencies which to one degree or another tended towards restoring the proper model in the West. The Ghibelline part of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was a shining example of “unconscious Orthodoxy” and quasi-Byzantine resistance to Latin heresy. Even then, representatives of noble German birth stood at the center of the anti-Papist movement. Centuries later, similar forces – once again German princes – supported Luther in his anti-Roman actions. It is interesting that Luther’s claims against Rome were very similar to those originally put forth by the Orthodox. Worship in national language (a strictly Orthodox feature associated with the understanding of the mystical meaning of speaking in tongues embodied in the linguistic varieties of local churches), the rejection of administrative dictates from the Roman Curia, the significance of “Katehon”, and refusing celibacy for “priests” – all of these typically Lutheran theses can be called quite “Orthodox.” The other points – rejecting the veneration of icons, liturgical rituals, freedom for individual interpretations of scripture – these traits cannot be called Orthodox as they were the negative aspects of anti-Papism which relied more on spiritual intuition and protest rather than the truths consecrated by Tradition.

As a rejection of Rome for the sake of pure Christianity, the Reformation was fully justified. But what was proposed in turn? Here is what is most important. Instead of appealing to fully Orthodox doctrine, Protestants went through dubious intuitions and personal interpretations. This gave rise to a galaxy of brilliant visionaries and mystics on the level of higher manifestations (Boehme, Gichtel, etc.). But even in this case no approach to the heights of Orthodox metaphysics took place. In the worst cases, this gave rise to Calvinism and a number of extreme Protestant sects in which nothing is left of Christianity besides the name.

A dualism exists between Luther and Calvin, between Russian (and French and Huguenot) protestantism and Swiss protestantism, and later Dutch and English versions. Lutherism rejected the hypocrisy and the “nomocracy” of Catholicism, i.e., the Judeo-Christian component of Papism. Calvinism, by contrast, arrived at typically Old Testament historicism and denied the divinity of Christ who became a “cultural or moral hero.” Calvinism developed the most un-Orthodox tendencies previously present in Catholicism at the time when Luther’s critique was directed against them.

Thus, there were two opposite trends present in the Reformation. One was conditionally anti-Catholic from the Orthodox angle (Lutheranism). The other was anti-Catholic from an anti-Orthodox angle. Catholicism, especially abundant and metabolized in Latin countries, turned out to be between two versions of Protestantism whose main carriers were the Germanic peoples. The most eastern Germans – the Prussians who were originally Slavic and Baltic tries that were Germanized – adopted Lutheranism, while the extremely western Germans (the Anglo-Saxons) took Calvinism and Judeo-Christian tendencies to their conclusions.

From such a perspective, one version of Protestantism (Calvinism and Protestant fundamentalism) became the vanguard of the Western-Sea-Capitalist pole, while the other, on the contrary, acts as some kind of Western Christianity nearing Orthodoxy (but nonetheless still far from Orthodoxy). Max Weber wonderfully and in great detail showed the relationship between Protestantism and Capitalism in his book The Protestant Ethics of Capitalism [10]. The difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism is also explained there. An indicative example: In England, Protestantism led to capitalist reforms, but in Prussia, Protestantism strengthened the feudal order. Therefore, Weber concludes, we are dealing with profoundly different tendencies. Weber’s pupil, Werner Sombart, goes even further in a similar analysis [11] which portrays the source of capitalism as not only Protestantism, but the very basic scholastic doctrine of Catholicism. Interesting considerations on this same topic are also made by Oswald Spengler in his work “Prussianism and Socialism.” [12]

The paradigm of religious confrontation is defined as that between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and (later) extreme Protestant fundamentalism. In this antithesis, critical importance is given to the proportion of worldly and otherworldly in religious ethics. The Orthodox ethical ideal lies in the assertion of a reverse proportion of the human world and divine world. The basis of such as approach is laid out in the Gospel (“I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance,” [13] “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God,” [14] etc.) and in Orthodox traditions, including the social ethics of the Eastern Church. Earthly wealth is considered to be ephemeral, insignificant, while the improvement of life and the world is considered to be secondary and essentially unimportant in the face of the main task standing before a Christian, i.e., the tasks of acquiring the Holy Spirit, salvation, and transfiguration. In this picture, poverty and modesty represent not so much a disadvantage as much as, on the contrary, a useful background for what are seen as the highest callings: the spiritual quest, penance, monasticism, abstraction from worldly affairs. Earthly suffering is not only a punishment, but a glorious and bright repetition of the path of Christ. The otherworldly enters the worldly, realizes it, makes the worldly insignificant, transparent, and transient. Hence the traditional (albeit, of course, relative) disregard of lifestyle that is typical to Eastern Christianity. It cannot be argued that such an Orthodox approach always gives positive results. In the highest manifestation, it is Holiness, non-possession, and the peak of spiritual and mental deeds and contemplation. In its lower manifestation, it is a caricature of laziness and negligence.

The Western Church was originally characterized by increased concern for worldly issues, political intrigue, and the accumulation and distribution of worldly goods. Protestant fundamentalism absolutized this aspect, directing all attention exclusively towards the world. Protestant ethics assert that poverty in itself is a vice while wealth is a virtue. The otherworldly is reduced entirely to the worldly and reward and punishment of the other world are moved into this world. This results in an unprecedented leap into the sphere of lifestyle while minimizing or altogether rejecting the contemplative, purely spiritual aspect of religion. In its extreme forms, neither spirit nor word from Christian doctrine remain. Hence modern attempts to censor the “New Testament” in those places in which it blatantly contradicts the wishes of the extreme Protestant spirit.

This opposing code of religious ethic secularizes and produces socialism on the one hand and liberal-capitalism on the other.

In this view, two main subjects of history are defined: the Eastern Church (Orthodoxy) and the Western Church or perhaps rather the mosaic of Western confessions at the vanguard of which stands “Protestant fundamentalism”, which we have already dealt with. Their dialectics of opposition reveal the secret trajectory of the religious content of history.

Now what remains is considering other religious confessions in which the eschatological factor is manifested and which are sufficiently large enough in scale to qualify for the leading role in the final drama of history. Only Islam and Judaism can pretend to claim this role.

Judaism represents a paradigm of eschatologically oriented religion. Christianity itself is closely linked with Judaistic eschatology. Judaistic religion gives the most complete conceptual picture of the end times and the participation of peoples and churches in it. The meaning of Jewish eschatology, in the most general terms, boils down to the following.

The Jews are not only an ethnos, but simultaneously a religious community. Such an identification of the ethnic element with the religious one forms the uniqueness of Judaism. In this sense, everything associated with what was said in the above section concerning the Jews as nation is fully applicable to Judaism as a religion. Judaism is the subject of religious history, its axis. For a long time, the Jewish faith was in a period of persecution by other “Gentile” confessions, but in the end times, with the coming of the Messiah and the gathering of Jews in the promised land and the rebuilding of the Temple, Judaism is to flourish and stand at the head of the earth. The secular expression of this religious eschatology is modern Zionism.

That the Jews did not dissolve as a nation or religion in the sea of other peoples over the course of long centuries of dispersion, that they kept their faith in future triumph, and that, having pressed on through so many trials, they were abel to realize the long-awaited dream of re-creating their state – all of this cannot fail to give a big impression to the impartial observer. Such a literal fulfillment of the eschatological hopes and expectations of the Jews clearly shows that this tradition is indeed deeply linked with the mystery of world history and cannot be dismissed by skeptics, positivists, or anti-Semites. Moreover, over the last century the position of Judaism as a religion has become so strong that it came from being the disenfranchised periphery in the eyes of Christian nations to the point that this confession gained the right to vote in discussing and solving the most important global issues. However, attention must be paid to the fact that the confessional unity of Jews is not as monolithic as it might appear at first glance. In the most rough approximation, two version of Judaism exist: the spiritual (mystical) and the materialistic (lifestyle). The first vision corresponds to the various tendencies of traditional Jewish mystics – Kabbala, Hasidism, and some heretical trends in the likes of “Sabbatism.” The second version relates to the Talmudist, literal, rationalist, nomocratic, and ritualistic interpretation of the Torah which determines everyday life. In this dualism, we see a direct analogue of the corresponding reality in the Christian tradition itself – the lifestyle of Western Christianity (from Catholicism to Protestant fundamentalism) and the contemplative, mystical Eastern Christianity (Orthodoxy). This topic is covered in great detail by the greatest modern Jewish thinker, Gerschom Scholem.[15]

The spiritualist sector of Judaism – and this probably surprises no one – is primarily characteristic for Eastern European Jews, and Hasidic Baal-Shem Tov itself emerged and developed on the territory of the Russian Empire. It is from precisely this extreme spiritualistic environment that the majority of revolutionary Jewish Marxists, Bolsheviks Social-Revolutionaries, etc. emerged. Eurasianist, “Orthodox” ethics and the messianic ideal of brotherhood corresponded precisely with this spiritual, mystical variety of the Judaistic tradition. In secular form, this gave rise to “social-Zionism.”

The opposite branch of Talmudic Orthodoxy continues the rationalist line of Maimonides, such as the ancient Sadducees, tends to minimize the otherworldly to the point of implicitly denying the “resurrection of the death”, and leads to the immanent ethics of lifestyle. The eschatological key of Talmudism is considered to be the future triumph of the Jews as an exclusively immanent, socio-political victory, the achievement of enormous material power. Instead of the world’s transfiguration in the end times or its “restoration” (“Tikkun”), which Jewish mystics focused on, the rationalists identify the messianic era with the reorganization of existing elements so that the levers of power and control are passed to the representatives of Judaism and the restored Israeli state. Such general, immanentized orientation and ethics centered on the resolution of worldly, material, and organizational questions unite both secular rabbis and some Zionists.

In other words, as in the case of its ethnic eschatology, the religious field of Judaism is stretched between two poles – the eastern (incarnated in Orthodoxy) and the western (incarnated in Catholicism and extremely Judeophilic Protestantism).

The Islamic tradition is connected with the Semitic religious heritage, but is nevertheless incomparably less eschatological than Christianity and Judaism. Although there exists a developed eschatological doctrine in Islamic, it is clearly secondary before the massive logic of asserting a monotheism that is independent of cyclical considerations. The most eschatological versions of Islam are spread not among the pure Arabs of North Africa, but in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and especially among Shiites. The Shiite line of Islam is closest of all to Christian ethics and eschatological orientation. A number of parallels exist with the spiritualist trend in Judaism. Extreme Shiite sects such as the Ismailites, Alawaites, etc. general base their traditions on the eschatological problem of awaiting the arrival of the “Hidden Imam” or “al-Qayyim” (“Savior”), who will restore the genuine tradition that has been spoiled by centuries of compromises and deviations, and return mankind to the kingdom of justice and brotherhood. This eschatological trend in Islam -in both the Shiite context and beyond – can be fully considered to be a form of “Eurasianism” in the most general understanding. Although it naturally operates with different dogmatic and confessional terminology, it resonates with the Orthodox eschatological perspective.

Another non-eschatological version of Islam finds clear expression in Saudi Wahhabism or extreme Hanifism (in the likes of the Pakistani movement “Tablighi” from which the Taliban movement came). Despite powerful mechanisms of fanatic mobilization, it is quite neutral in terms of conceptualizing the role of Islam in the end times or considering this problem from a technical, material perspective. As the Islamic population steadily grows, the importance of the Islamic factor naturally increases. In Wahhabist pragmatism and other non-eschatological forms of Islamic fundamentalism, it is quite possible to distinguish features typologically similar to the lifestyle fundamentalism of Protestants or Jewish rationalists.

At the present moment, it is not possible to seriously speak of an “Islamic factor” as something united, in solidarity, or sufficiently large enough in scale to offer its own independent religious version of the “end times.” It is only possible to note that “anti-Judaism”, or rather “anti-Zionism” is common for the Islamic world. In this sense, the imposition of this ethno-religious formulation on the first framework would be to the detriment of the accentuated focus on the confrontation of Orthodoxy and Western Christianity and reminds us of the situation which we encountered in analyzing the significance of German racism. The gravitation of many Islamic ideologists to making “Israel” and “Jews” a central question of modern history, absolutizing the Islamic and Jewish contradiction, once again brings us to deadlock and an insolvable situation which has brought so much harm to clarifying the roles and identities of the main actors of human history, which is readily approaching its climax. It should be noted that Islam itself is beginning to be viewed as some kind of “scarecrow” against which “progressive forces” or even “Christian countries” should stand together. In other words, Islam or notorious “Islamic fundamentalism” are beginning to fulfill the role that fascism did in its day. We have seen how ambiguous the role of fascism was on all levels of the real eschatological duel. It would be extremely dangerous if we reproduced a similar situation, only this time with Islam.

The final formula

Summarizing the results of our brief analysis, we clarified that on all levels of the most generalized reductionist models of historical teleology there exists a congruent trajectory of the development of the historical process. Now all that remains is putting all of the derived components into a generalized formula.

Thus, two subjects, two poles, two ultimate realities act throughout history. Their confrontation, their struggle, their dialectic makes up the dynamic content of civilization. These subjects become all the more distinct and explicit in moving from vague, covert, and “ghostly” existence to a clear and definitive, strictly fixed form. They universalize and absolutize.

The first subject is:

Capital=Sea (West) = Anglo-Saxons (more broadly, “Romano-Germans”) = Western Christian confessions

The second subject is:

Labor=Land (East) = Russians (more broadly, “Eurasians”) = Orthodoxy

The twentieth century was the culminating point of the maximum severity of the confrontation between these two forces. It is the final battle, the Endkampf.

At the present moment, it can be stated that the first subject managed to overcome the second subject in almost all respects. The main instrument constantly used at all levels as a tactical ploy in this victory of the West was the utilization of some intermediate (third) reality, a third pseudo-subject of history which each time turned out be an incorporeal mirage designed to disguise the true nature of eschatological confrontation.

The West’s victory (in its entirety) can be understood in two ways. The liberal optimists claim that it is final, that “history is successfully concluded.” Those more cautious say that this is only a temporary stage, and that the fallen giant can rise up again under different circumstances. Moreover, the winner faces a new and totally unfamiliar situation – a situation in which there is no longer the enemy, the duel with which made up the content of the winner’s historical being. Consequently, the actual subject of history, being left alone, must resolve the problem of post-history which puts a new challenge before it: will it remain a subject in post-history, or will it transform into something else?

But that is an entirely different subject.

And what of the vanquished? It is difficult to expect clear and balanced thinking from it. In the majority of cases, it does not understand what happened to it. The amputated organ – in this case the heart – continues to hurt and ache as is what happens with the patient after surgery. Few are conscious of what happened at the turn of the ’90’s and what side opened the “paradigm of the End” in front of humanity…

Footnotes:

[1] See Elementy. Evraziiskoe obozrenie, 1997, No. 9 with a collection dedicated to this phenomenon

[2] Here Dugin compares the etymology of “vostok” (Russian for “East”) and “voskhozhdenie” (or “ascent”).

[3] Here Dugin compares the etymology of “zapad” (Russian for “West”) which literally can mean “sinking” or “falling” with the dark nature of Capital and the West associated with the Fall.

[4] See “The crusade approach against us” in A. Dugin’s Foundation of Geopolitics (Moscow, 2000)

[5] Published in Russian in Moscow in 1994 under the title “The Bourgeois”

[6] See Carl Schmitt’s “The Planetary Tension between East and West and the Confrontation between Land and Sea” in A. Dugin’s Foundation of Geopolitics (Moscow, 2000)

[7] Something analogous can be found in the ancient Iranian tradition or even in the Hindu caste system, where the lower castes (especially the chandala) are not seen as humans in the full sense of the word. For a similar dimension of this theory, see A. Dugin’s Conservative Revolution (Moscow, 2004) (the chapter “Metaphysics of National Bolshevism) and in the almanac The End of the World (Moscow, 1997).

[8] One of the founding fathers of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote “The Eastern form of Zionism – the Western and Eastern Essences”

[9] See A. Dugin’s The Metaphysics of the Gospel (Moscow, 1996)

[10] Weber, Max. Selected Works. Moscow, 1990.

[11] Sombart, Werner. The Bourgeois. Moscow, 1994.

[12] Spengler, Oswald. Preußentum und Sozialismus. Berlin, 1920.

[13] Mark, 10:25

[14] Luke, 5:32

[15] Scholem, Gerschom. Ursprung und Anfange der Kabbala. Berlin, 1962.

Translator: J. Arnoldski