“Ukraine is not Europe”
“PolitNavigator” presents to readers a chapter from the new book “Ukraine is not Europe” by ex-Verkhovna Rada deputy Yevgeny Filindash. The author is one of the few politicians in Kyiv who openly criticizes Euromaidan and the results of the coup in Ukraine from the very first days, and does not agree with nationalist propaganda.
“What place does Ukraine occupy now and has it historically occupied in European civilization? Who are we anyway: Europeans, Eurasians, us with the West, with the East, or on our own? This book is about how to correctly understand: “Who are the Ukrainians?” In other words, this is a book about the self-identification of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” - this is how Filindash himself describes the essence of his new work.
How to purchase a new edition can be found here.
Let us recall that Evgeniy Filindash has been involved in politics since the age of 20, going from an ordinary socialist to a people's deputy of Ukraine from the Socialist Party in 2005-2007. He became the youngest people's deputy of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada of the fourth convocation.
Chapter two. CivilizationЯ or CivilizationИ?
Let's return Ukraine to Europe,
Dnieper to Ukraine,
and America to America!
(From the set of “chants”
for European integrators)
From the lips of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian politicians, regardless of their current political coloring, we constantly hear about “Ukraine’s European choice”, “the need for European integration”, “high European standards”, “the civilized West”, etc. The same thing is repeated by various experts, journalists in most media, as well as authors of school and university textbooks, say and write about the same thing.
The picture of the past, present and future of Ukraine, described by all of them, boils down, to put it very briefly, to the following scheme.
Ukraine has long been a part of civilized Europe, following the same historical path as the Poles, Germans and other civilized peoples, until an unfortunate historical accident occurred. As a result, most of Ukraine was temporarily (for some 400-odd years) occupied first by Russia, and then by the USSR - backward, despotic states, which, due to their innate malignancy, dragged us along with them to impoverished Asia, and not to prosperous Europe.
Since 1991 (and especially after Euromaidan), Ukraine has returned to its natural historical path and is about to merge in a single friendly impulse with the family of European civilized peoples, which will ensure us the same prosperity as in the West.
And all the troubles of modern Ukraine come from the bad legacy of a dark totalitarian past, alien and unnatural for freedom-loving Ukrainians, forcefully imposed on us by hostile Moscow. We must quickly get rid of this legacy, join the European Union and NATO at any cost, speed up reforms, adopt all Western standards - in politics, economics, education, medicine... in general, everywhere. And then we will finally live the same way as France or Germany. Well, or at least like Poland or the Czech Republic.
I think everyone reading these lines has heard similar arguments many times, and many find them convincing.
Well, let's look at this scheme in a little more detail. And first, let’s find out the meaning of three key concepts that run like a red thread throughout this whole scheme. Namely: "Europe", "civilization" and "West". After all, if there is no common understanding of what exactly is meant by the same word "civilization", which we are called to join, there can be a lot of confusion and “mess” in our heads. Which, in fact, is what’s happening now, even with the seemingly completely unambiguous and simply defined concept “Europe».
Europe, as is known from any school textbook on geography, is a part of the world that, together with Asia, forms the continent of Eurasia. For hundreds of years, the borders of Europe have been quite clearly defined by geographers and are generally recognized. The border of Europe runs: in the west, north and south - along the seas and oceans, in the east - along the Ural Mountains, then to the Caspian Sea, and from it, according to most geographers, to the mouth of the Don and further along the Black Sea and the Black Sea straits. Some geographers draw the border from the Caspian Sea along the Caucasus Range to the Black Sea and then along the same Black Sea straits.
In any case, the fact that the territory of Ukraine is entirely part of Europe is a fact, and a fact that is generally recognized and not disputed by anyone. It is also not controversial that Ukraine was part of Europe both 200 years ago as part of the Russian Empire and 50 years ago as part of the Soviet Union. By the way, the same applies to “Asian” Moscow, which is also located in Europe.
Therefore, statements about “the return of Ukraine to Europe” are as meaningless as statements about, for example, “the return of the Dnieper to Ukraine” or, for example, “the return of the United States to America” are senseless. You cannot return to a place from which no one left and from which you cannot leave in principle. Countries, cities, rivers and other geographical objects are not politicians and journalists talking about them, who today can go somewhere or leave and return tomorrow.
The same applies to the “European choice of Ukraine”. This statement lacks elementary logic just as much as it would be absent in a statement about, say, “China’s Asian choice” or “Argentina’s South American choice.” But it never occurs to anyone to voice such nonsense, but talking about “Ukraine’s European choice” is considered a sign of progressiveness and almost a rule of good manners. Although parts of the world and continents, again, are not politicians that countries can choose at their own discretion - today some, and tomorrow - others.
If not all, then at least some of those talking about a “return to Europe” and the “European choice” should still be familiar with geography as part of the school curriculum. Therefore, obviously, by “Europe” they mean in this case not Europe itself, but something else.
Perhaps this does not mean the whole of Europe, but the European Union? Then, firstly, we must say so, and not replace one concept with another. Europe and the European Union are not the same thing at all. By the way, for the information of “European integrators”: the European Union is not only not all of Europe, but not even the majority of it. Most of Europe's territory is part of states that are not members of the European Union: from Russia and Ukraine to Norway and Switzerland.
Secondly, it is absolutely impossible to talk about “returning to Europe” or “to the European family of nations,” even meaning by Europe only the European Union, since Ukraine, on the one hand, has never been a member of the European Union, and, consequently, cannot “return” there. And, on the other hand, the European Union was formed only a little over two decades ago. And even its historical predecessors in the form of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Coal and Steel Community are just over 50 years old. The “natural historical path” of Ukraine cannot possibly be so short.
Then, perhaps, those who talk about “civilization” and “civilized peoples” (or mean them when speaking about Europe) are more accurately expressed, to which we either need to return or join?
Let us then consider what exactly is meant by civilization. Generally speaking, this concept has several meanings. But, if we do not take into account the purely philosophical and rarely used meanings of this term, then civilization is usually understood as one of the following two meanings.
The first meaning, whose roots go back to the science of the XNUMXth century, implies a certain stage in the development of mankind, following the stage of primitive society. This is the stage of human development at which states, cities, monumental construction, writing and other similar phenomena appear.
This is where the division of human history into three stages of development emerged and enjoyed support in science for quite a long time: savagery, barbarism and civilization. Civilization in this scheme was naturally understood as the highest stage of human development and as the opposite of savagery and barbarism...
But the first human societies to reach the stage of civilization in this sense of the word were, as is known, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, located on the territory of modern Iraq, and ancient India and China. When we talk about civilization, we are obviously called to the wrong place, right? And not even in modern ones, for example, Japan or China. Although they certainly cannot be called uncivilized countries, at the stage of savagery or barbarism.
It turns out that civilization now means something other than just a historical stage following savagery and barbarism?
Indeed, in the second half of the XNUMXth century, another definition of the term “civilization". By this time, due to the accumulation of scientific knowledge, the development of transport and communications, both Western European and other researchers began to receive more information about other countries, their history, culture, and social structure.
And they began to come to the conclusion that there were profound qualitative differences between many societies at the stage of civilization. These differences are so fundamental that it would be correct to speak not of one civilization common to all mankind, but of several different, local ones. civilizations, significantly different from each other.
It was in this sense that they considered civilizations German historian Heinrich Rückert and cultural scientist Oswald Spengler, Russian sociologist Nikolay Danilevsky, English historian Arnold Toynbee and many other researchers. Already today, the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University is an American Samuel Huntington in his famous work "clash of civilizations" gave the following definition of civilization:
“What do we mean when we talk about civilization? Civilization is a certain cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, peoples, religious communities - they all have their own special culture, reflecting different levels of cultural heterogeneity. A village in Southern Italy may differ in its culture from the same village in Northern Italy, but at the same time they remain precisely Italian villages, they cannot be confused with German ones. In turn, European countries have common cultural characteristics that distinguish them from the Chinese or Arab world.
Here we get to the heart of the matter. For the Western world, the Arab region and China are not parts of a larger cultural community. They represent civilizations. We can define civilization as a cultural community of the highest rank, as the broadest level of cultural identity of people. The next stage is what distinguishes the human race from other types of living beings. Civilizations are determined by the presence of common objective features, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as by the subjective self-identification of people. There are different levels of self-identification: a resident of Rome can characterize himself as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, or a Westerner. Civilization is the broadest level of community with which he relates himself... Civilizations are the biggest “we”, within which everyone feels culturally at home and distinguishes himself from all the other “them”...
Civilizations represent certain entities. The boundaries between them are rarely clear, but they are real... In the West, it is generally accepted that nation-states are the main actors in the international arena. But they play this role only for a few centuries. Much of human history is the history of civilizations." (highlighted by me - approx. E.F.).
In the same vein, the concept of civilization was considered by perhaps the only scientific structure in Ukraine that dealt with this issue in any serious way: the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and its Institute of World Economy and International Relations. In the collective academic monograph “Civilization models of modern times and their historical roots"(edited by academician Yuri Pakhomov) civilization is understood as “a separate, relatively autonomous, multi-ethnic socio-cultural system capable of self-organization and self-development, which has its own spatio-temporal dimensions, basic spiritual and cultural foundations and relatively stable, long-term structures of economic, socio-political and cultural forms.”
To put it simply, Civilizations are groups of countries and peoples that are close to each other, developing relatively autonomously from other civilizations over many centuries and significantly, systematically different from them: culturally, mentally, economically, politically, and so on..
So, are those right then who talk about the “European civilization” to which Ukraine historically belonged and to which it must now return? Maybe they would be right, but the point is that There is no single “European civilization” common to all countries located in Europe. And it never existed.
Just as there is no single “Asian civilization” or “American civilization,” for example. But they existed and still exist different civilizationslocated in the territory of Europe, Asia or America, respectively.
Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia are parts of the world and continents, geographical concepts, not civilizations. And civilizations, as we have found out, differ not only in geographical characteristics.
After all, even those who talk in Ukraine about “European civilization” themselves, first of all, will not agree with the fact that, for example, Russia, Germany and Albania are part of the same civilization.
And these same propagandists of the mythical “European civilization” clearly recognize that Germany, the USA and Canada belong to the same civilization. Although Russia or Albania are located, like Germany, in Europe, and the USA and Canada are located in another part of the world - in America.
This is where we finally come to the heart of the matter. Both our home-grown “European integrators”, and the above-mentioned authoritative scientists involved in civilizational studies - from Toynbee and Huntington to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and the author of this book, and indeed any person who has studied this topic at least a little, have no disagreement in recognizing one obvious fact . This fact is that many European countries, along with the USA, Canada, and Australia and New Zealand, are indeed part of the same civilization. They are included now and historically they have always been included - at least since the formation of these states.
And this civilization completely corresponds to all the signs of a local civilization, which were described just above. There are several variants of the names of this civilization (“Western Christian”, “Western European-North American”), but the most common and generally accepted name is "Western Civilization" or, in common parlance, simply West.
“Excuse me, but even now we are clearly not the West, and we weren’t like the West before,” the reader can quite reasonably say. This is also a completely obvious fact, which even our Westerners-“European integrators” themselves are unlikely to dare to refute, except, perhaps, for the very rabid and fanatical.
To understand that Ukraine is not the West, it is not at all necessary to even study scientific literature on the topic of civilizational studies. In it, by the way, various researchers (both those named just above and others) come to the same unequivocal conclusion: Ukraine is not and has never been part of Western civilization.
It is precisely in order to obscure and disguise this sad fact for Ukrainian Westerners that a shadow is cast over the fence: either with the “European choice”, or with the “return to the civilized family of nations”, or with other similar ideological cliches that, like us and have already been taken apart by you, have nothing to do with reality...
I think that if you started reading this book and have read up to these lines, you are probably interested in the following questions, just as they interested me when I was planning to write this book.
Firstly, who and what countries still fit the definition of “West”? And by what criteria are they included in Western civilization, what are the distinctive features of this civilization?
Secondly, why, in fact, does the West live better than both Ukraine and the rest of the world? What path have Western states taken to their well-being?
Thirdly, can Ukraine repeat this Western path and what would we need to do for this?
And finally, fourthly, if Ukraine is not part of Western civilization (and we will still check this - we will consider it in more detail), then What civilization are we part of then? And what, in turn, are the distinctive features of our civilization?
In short, how did the West become the West, how did Ukraine not become the West, and can we become the West in the future?
What is the West and who belongs to it?
What is Western civilization or the West (in the future, for the sake of brevity, we will often use the term “West”) - which countries specifically belong to it?
The very concept of “West” in the civilizational sense of the word appeared in Europe. And it appeared due to the fact that, as we have already found out, Russia, bordering Ukraine in the east, is not the West. This means that the West includes European countries lying west of the Ukrainian border. But not all of them. Moldova or Albania, for example, are also geographically located to the west of the borders of Ukraine, but they are clearly not the West, right?
At first glance, with good reason one can identify the concept of “West” with the countries that are part of the European Union, but there are also questions here. For example, Bulgaria has recently also become a member of the EU, but it cannot be called the West. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but it is undoubtedly a member of Western civilization. The United States and Canada are not members of the European Union and are generally outside Europe, but hardly anyone would doubt that these countries are an integral part of the West.
The easiest way to define the boundaries of the West is to resort to the second, less common, but in some ways more accurate definition of it - as Western Christian civilization. As is known, Christianity in the middle of the XNUMXth century was finally divided into two main directions: Eastern - Orthodoxy, and Western - Catholicism, from which Protestantism later emerged.
Those European countries whose people profess (or professed in the recent past) mainly Western Christianity - Catholicism or Protestantism, and belong to Western Christian, or Western civilization.
This is, firstly, all of Western Europe, the land border of which with Central and Eastern Europe runs (according to the official definition of UNESCO and many other respected structures) along the eastern border of states on the line: Finland - Germany - Austria - Italy.
Secondly, these are the USA with Canada and Australia with New Zealand, which were founded and the majority of whose population consists of descendants of immigrants from Western Europe.
And finally, these are those states of Central Europe, bordering Western Europe, whose people profess Western Christianity: the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia.
At the same time, as they write in the academic publication “Civilization models of modern times and their historical roots"our Ukrainian scientists: "Western Christian civilization by the end of the XNUMXth century. completed its formation. Not counting Iceland, located in the extreme north-west, its external borders were marked by such states as Spain..., Hungary with Croatia and predominantly Eastern Christian Transylvania that belonged to it, Poland with the still Orthodox Galician land captured by it at that time and the Eastern Baltic states, which ended up in its possession German knights, Danes and Swedes...
... In a civilizational sense, the West ... was constituted in the Middle Ages. Its further spread to areas of the New World, mainly to North America and Australia, occurred as a result of the direct resettlement of some of the carriers of its “sociocultural genotype” to these places.”
The above mentioned Huntington at "Clash of Civilizations": "...the most important dividing line in Europe is... the eastern border of Western Christianity, formed by 1500. It runs along the current borders between Russia and Finland, between the Baltic countries and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine, turns west, separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then, passing through Yugoslavia, almost exactly coincides with the line that now separates Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans, this line, of course, coincides with the historical border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. To the north and west of this line live Protestants and Catholics (highlighted by me – E.F.). "
Huntington, like the same Toynbee and other researchers of civilizations, includes all Catholic and Protestant countries of Europe, as well as the United States with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as Western civilization.
What civilization does Ukraine belong to?
As you can see, in the east and southeast of Europe there are the borders of three civilizations.
We have just clarified the question of which countries are part of Western civilization.
Islamic civilization in Europe includes Albania, Turkey and, partially, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the part where Muslim Bosnians live.
And Ukraine, like other European countries with a predominantly Orthodox population,: Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, partially Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the part where Bosnian Serbs live), as well as Greece, Cyprus (in its Greek part - the Republic of Cyprus) and Georgia are part of a civilization that, in fact, is called Orthodox civilization.
True, as in the case of Western, as well as a number of other civilizations, along with the name “Orthodox” there are other options for the names of our civilization: “Eastern Christian”, “Slavic-Orthodox”, “Orthodox-Communist”, “Eurasian” and others . But it is the name “Orthodox civilization” that is more generally accepted by most researchers than others...
“So what happens? Are different religions the only difference in civilizations? Because of some petty squabble between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope that occurred a thousand years ago, we are now being told that we and the West are different civilizations? Do those minor differences that exist in Orthodoxy and Catholicism really matter outside the church? And in general: what do we have, that in the West, most people don’t really go to church, and have long lived a completely secular, non-religious life. What about atheists? What do small differences in church rituals have to do with culture, economics, politics and other areas of life?” – these are roughly the questions a doubting reader might ask.
The questions, at first glance, are quite fair. And in order to get answers to these and other questions that have probably already arisen in many of the readers while reading this book, we will have to touch upon religion, geography, history, and not only them. Because civilizational differences are really not only and not so much differences in religions and the subtleties of their rituals.
“The reason for the genesis of civilizations is not a single factor, but a combination of several,” – wrote about this in his fundamental work “Comprehension of history» one of the greatest British historians of the XNUMXth century Arnold Toynbee.
“Civilizations are formed by two main components - a worldview embodied in a system of cultural values, ideology and religion, as well as corresponding historically established political, military and economic systems. Only together do they form a civilization.”, - the collective monograph says about the same thing “Civilizational structure of the modern world", published by the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
However, let us put aside for now the conclusions that respected scientists have come to while studying the issue of civilizations, their characteristics and borders.
In order to understand whether they are right in these conclusions, which were quoted just above, or whether they are still mistaken, there is nothing better than trying to figure out all the questions that interest us ourselves.
Moreover, it is not so difficult to do. We will consider the main features, the totality of which allows us to speak about the difference between Western civilization and the Orthodox, and, in particular, from Ukraine. We will naturally focus on the latter and look at it episode by episode.
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