Global history is a form of modernization of historical education. World History Concepts New Global History

GLOBAL HISTORY is a branch of historical science that emerged at the end of the 20th century as a response to the challenge of the globalization process, due to dissatisfaction with the traditional “general history” and the desire to overcome the limited practice of national-state history. Global history presupposes universality in form, globality in scale and scientificity in methods (D. Christian). Since the second half of the 20th century, the Eurocentric model of “general history” has been increasingly criticized by historians who have been looking for answers to the challenges of the time, including those related to the process of decolonization, but have not found them either in the Marxist concept of history or in the theory of modernization, which is Eurocentric in its essence. "Post-colonial history" became anti-Eurocentric, which did not allow studying the history of the whole world even at the level at which the criticized traditional "general history" did. Therefore, from the end of the 20th century, historians began to raise questions about a new model of "universal history", about a "new world history", "new interethnic history", "new global history" and "transnational history". Since the beginning of the 21st century, researchers have been arguing about the definitions and delimitation of the subject areas of new stories that meet the principles of "universal history" (C.A. Bayly, S. Beckert, M. Connelly, I. Hofmeyr, W. Kozol, P. Seed): if for “new interethnic history” offers a research field of the history of migration processes, for “transnational history” they single out the problems of large-scale sociocultural processes, in which not only many peoples of the world, but also different continents and parts of the world were involved (for example, European colonization of the 15th-20th centuries) , then global history is associated with the history of globalization processes that begin in the late Middle Ages or earlier modern times. In the situation of post-postmodernity (the beginning of the 21st century), the search for an actual co-existential whole of humanity has begun, attempts are being made to study the historical connections between changing spaces, communities and loci; the world is comprehended in the unity of its diversity on the basis of comparative approaches, the need to construct both global and global subjects of historical action is realized. Global history involves the study of local processes from a global point of view, finding their common features, but at the same time highlighting what distinguishes them from others - uniquely local. The problem of studying a multitude of multilevel cultural contacts as components of the process of the emergence of a global cultural network is posed (O. K. Fait). Global history is seen as more than a mere sum of private histories, so many historians pin their hopes on the supposed ability of global history to offer an effective alternative to traditional historiography's "heroic national narratives". It should be emphasized that global history is not aimed at the knowledge of some general principles or the meaning of history, but at a description of events and a comparative analysis of processes.

Representatives of global history, who are aware that globalization is not identical to the process of convergence, not to mention homogenization, but includes many options for adaptation and assimilation to influences external to the local societies studied, recognize the interpretation of the interaction between the local and the universal (L P. Repin). Thus, global history is associated with a movement towards an interconnected world, towards a practice of studying world culture, which is characterized by active interaction between local and national cultures, a continuous flow of cultural influences in all directions. A well-known periodical on global history is the Journal of Global History (published since 2006).

O. V. Kim, S. I. Malovichko

The definition of the concept is cited from the ed.: Theory and Methodology of Historical Science. Terminological dictionary. Rep. ed. A.O. Chubaryan. [M.], 2014, p. 79-81.

Literature:

Ionov I. N. New global history and post-colonial discourse // History and Modernity. 2009. No. 2. S. 33-60; Repina L.P. Historical science at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: social theories and research practice. M., 2011; AHR Conversation: On Transnational History: Participants: C. A. Bayly, S. Beckert, M. Connelly, I. Hofmeyr, W. Kozol, P. Seed // The American Historical Review. 2006 Vol. 111. No. 5. P. 1441-1464; Global History: Interactions between the Universal and Local. Basingstoke, 2006; Fait O. K. Global History, Cultural Encounters and Images // Between National Histories and Global History. Heisingfors, 1997; Mazlish B. The New Global History. N.Y., 2006.

Semenov Yu.I. Production and Society // Social Philosophy. Course of lectures: Textbook / Ed. I.A. Gobozov. - M.: Publisher Savin S.A., 2003. - S. 147-160.

1. Two basic understandings of world history: unitary-stage and plural-cyclic

History is a process. Most historians, specialists in the philosophy of history, and sociologists now agree with this. But they interpret this process far from the same way. For some, history is a progressive, ascending development, i.e. progress, for others - just development. There are people even more cautious: for them history is only change. The latter do not always understand history as a process. For some of them, it is a chaotic heap of various kinds of unrelated accidents.

But if we consider history as progress, or even just development, the question inevitably arises: what is developing in this case, what is the substratum of the historical process, its subject. The lower, primary subjects of history are specific individual societies - sociohistorical organisms; higher, secondary - systems of sociohistorical organisms and, finally, the highest, tertiary subject of history is the totality of existing and existing sociohistorical organisms - human society as a whole.

Accordingly, there are processes of the history of individual sociohistorical organisms (communities, tribes, countries), processes of the history of systems of sociohistorical organisms (historical regions), and, finally, the process of world, or world, history.

Along with the point of view outlined above, according to which not only individual sociohistorical organisms and their systems of various kinds really exist, but also human society as a whole, and, accordingly, the processes of development of individual sociohistorical organisms and their systems, taken together, form one single process of world history , there is also the exact opposite. If the first understanding could be called Unitarian (from Lat. unitas- unity), then the second - pluralistic (from lat. pluralis- multiple).

The essence of the pluralistic understanding of history lies in the fact that humanity is divided into several completely autonomous social formations, each of which has its own, absolutely independent history. Each of these historical formations arises, develops, and sooner or later inevitably perishes. The dead social units are being replaced by new ones that complete exactly the same cycle of development.

The history of mankind is thus completely fragmented not only in space but also in time. There are many historical formations and, accordingly, many stories. The entire history of mankind is an endless repetition of a multitude of identical processes, a collection of many cycles. Therefore, such an approach to history with good reason can be called not just pluralistic, but plural-cyclic. Historical pluralism inevitably includes cyclism.

Distinguishing the stages of world history necessarily presupposes a combination of the unitarian understanding of history with a view of it as a process not just of change, but of development, moreover, progressive development, i.e. progress. Such an approach to world history can be called a unitary-stage approach.

2. The emergence and development of unitary-stage concepts of world history.

Of the two main approaches to history considered above, the unitary-stage approach arose first. It is presented in an extremely abstract form in the writings of the medieval thinker Joachim of Florence (1130-1202). In modern times, it has taken on more concrete forms.

The division of the history of mankind into periods of savagery, barbarism and civilization, which finally took shape in the work of the outstanding representative of the Scottish enlightenment A. Ferguson (1723-1816) "An Experience in the History of Civil Society" (1767), was at the same time a stage typology of sociohistorical organisms. Three types of sociors were singled out: savage, barbarian and civilized, of which each subsequent type is considered as higher than the previous one.

Almost simultaneously, the economists J. Turgot (1727-1781) and A. Smith (1723-1790) developed a somewhat different, but also stage-specific, typology of sociohistorical organisms: hunting-gathering, pastoral, agricultural, and commercial and industrial societies.

Born in the Renaissance and finally established by the beginning of the XVIII century. the subdivision of the history of civilized mankind into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the New Age formed the basis of yet another stage-by-stage typology of sociohistorical organisms. A. Saint-Simon (1765-1825) associated each of the above eras with a certain type of society: ancient with a society based on slavery, medieval - with a feudal society dominated by serfdom, modern times with an industrial society dominated by a hired labor. According to A. Saint-Simon, it was the change of these three types of society that underlay the change of three epochs of world history.

The next step in the development of the unitary-stage approach to history is associated with the names of K. Marx (1818-1883) and F. Engels (1820-1895). The most important component of what they created in the middle of the XIX century. materialistic understanding of history (historical materialism) is the theory of socio-economic formations, which has already been discussed earlier. According to K. Marx, five main modes of production have changed in the history of mankind, and thus five socio-economic formations: primitive communal (primitive communist), Asian, ancient (slave-owning), feudal and capitalist ..

The scheme for the development of a change in socio-economic formations, created by K. Marx, was generally accepted by the majority of supporters of Marxism. The only controversial point in it was the Asian mode of production and, accordingly, the Asian socio-economic formation.

3. The emergence and development of plural-cyclical concepts of history.

For the first time, such an understanding of history was set forth in the work of the founder of racist historiosophy, the Frenchman J.A. de Gobineau (1816-1882) "Essay on the inequality of human races" (1853-1855), then in the "Textbook of world history in an organic presentation" (1857) by the German historian G. Rückert (1823-1875), and finally acquired its classic appearance in the work of the Russian thinker N.Ya. Danilevsky (1822-1885) "Russia and Europe" (1869).

In the XX century. this line was continued in The Decline of Europe (1918) by the German thinker O. Spengler (1880-1936), Comprehension of History (1934-1961) by A.J. Toynbee (1889-1975) and the works of their numerous epigones (F. Bagby, K. Quigley, L.N. Gumilyov and others). Proponents of this approach used different terms to designate the historical units they singled out: "cultural-historical individuals", "cultural-historical types", "cultures", "societies", "civilizations". Most often, the last word was used, which is why this approach in our country was called civilizational.

4. Modern Western unitary-stage concepts.

Although there are proponents of a pluralistic-cyclical approach in

West and now (S.P. Huntington), but in general, he has long lost his former popularity there. From 50-60 years. 20th century in the West, the revival of unitary-stage concepts began in ethnology (L. White, J. Steward, E. Service, M. Fried, M. Sahlins, etc.) and sociology (G. Lensky, O.D. Duncan, J. Matras , T. Parsons and others). Almost all early theories of modernization (W.W. Rostow, S. Eisenstadt, S. Black) had a unitary-stage character. The most famous modern unitary-stage concepts include the theory of industrial society (J. Fourastier, R. Aron), and then the theory of post-industrial (super-industrial, technotronic, information, service, etc.) society (D. Bell, A. Touraine, O. Toffler, I. Illich, I. Masuda and others). All these concepts are stage typologies of sociohistorical organisms. In the orthodox concepts of post-industrial society, there are three types of society, such as agrarian, industrial and post-industrial, which at the same time represent successively changing stages of human development.

5. Another understanding of history: "anti-historicism" (historical agnosticism).

Recently, in the West, another general view of history, different from both the unitary-stage and the plural-cyclic view, has become more and more widespread. Its essence is extremely clearly expressed in the works of the British philosopher K. Popper (1902-1994) "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945) and "The Poverty of Historicism" (1957). In them, the author attacks what he calls historicism.

With this word, he denotes the view that there is a process of historical development subordinated to the action of certain forces independent of man. If these forces are not supernatural, but natural, then historicism presupposes the existence of certain objective laws that determine the course of the historical process. In any of its versions, historicism presupposes, if not absolute, then still some kind of predetermination of the historical process, the passage of certain stages of development by society, and thereby the opportunity for the thinker and scientist to foresee and predict the course of history. There is theistic, spiritualistic, naturalistic, economic, etc. historicism.

K. Popper builds his entire refutation of "historicism" on the basis of "methodological nominalism" or, which is essentially the same thing, phenomenalism. He recognizes the existence of only the individual, only phenomena. He rejects the objective being of the general. It follows from this that social life is just a simple aggregate of a huge number of the most diverse actions of people. History is simply a "sequence of events." There is no reason to talk about the movement of society as a whole. The economist F.A. von Hayek (1899-1992) in his essay “Destructive presumption. Mistakes of socialism" (1988). Similar ideas are now defended in the works of R. Nisbet, C. Tilly, R. Boudon, as well as postmodernists.

6. Global-stage interpretation of the unitary-stage understanding of history.

But there is another possible answer. In this case, socio-economic formations act, first of all, as stages in the development of human society as a whole. They can also be stages in the development of individual sociohistorical organisms. But this is absolutely not necessary. A change of formations on the scale of humanity as a whole can occur without changing them as stages in the development of sociohistorical organisms. Some formations can be embodied in some sociohistorical organisms and their systems, while others can be embodied in others. Such an interpretation of the unitary-formation, and thus the unitary-stage approach to history in general, can be called a global-formation, and more broadly, a global-stage understanding of history.

And such an understanding of the changing stages of world history is not entirely new. We find the first global-stage concept of world history in the book of the outstanding French jurist J. Bodin (1530-1596) "Method of easy knowledge of history" (1566). In the future, the global stage approach was developed by many thinkers: the French L. Leroy (1510-1577), the English J. Hakewill (1578-1649) and W. Temple (1628-1699), the German I.G. Herder (1744-1803) and received its fairly complete embodiment in the scheme of world history created by the great German philosopher G. Hegel (1770-1831) in 1820-1831. and set forth in his Philosophy of History (1837, 1840).

In all these works, the most important idea was the historical relay race - the transition of the leading role from one "peoples", i.e. sociohistorical organisms or their systems to others, and thus the shifting of the center of world-historical development. All these concepts were rather abstract in nature and therefore, apparently, did not attract the attention of historians.

After working through the text, complete the following tasks:

• 1) Present the content of the text of the article in the form of a logical diagram.
• 2) Define the key terms used in the text.
• 3) Using Yu. Semenov's article and your knowledge on the topic, outline the positive and negative aspects of the unitary-stage and plural-cyclic interpretations of world history.
• 4) Express your point of view on the problem.

Why is there a need for the development of global history - in contrast to the history of the local, the history of individual countries, regions, civilizations, and, finally, in contrast to the history of the world or universal, which, it would seem, embraces everything? What is the specificity of global history in comparison with the above stories? These naturally arising questions are closely interrelated and need to be elucidated in the first place.

Let's start with local histories - the histories of individual places, cities (for example, the history of Moscow or London), individual states (for example, the history of Russia or France), individual regions (for example, the history of Southeast Asia or Central Europe), individual civilizations (for example, history of Ancient Greece or Western Europe) and even a whole group of civilizations (for example, the history of the East). Despite their vastly different scope, all of these histories share some common limitations stemming from their locality. Firstly, this is a spatial-geographical limitation: here the history of a certain limited territory of the earth's surface is considered, and then just a separate point of it, Secondly, this is a temporal limitation: the history of a city, state, one of the civilizations or their group in terms of its time duration incommensurably less than not only the history of mankind as a whole, but also the history of the civilized world. This country or civilization either arose much later than the first civilizations (such are not only all modern states and civilizations, but also the ancient Greek or Roman civilizations that seem “ancient” to us), or they ceased to exist long ago and, therefore, are also very limited in time (Ancient Egypt or the most ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia).

But it's not just the limitations themselves. The problem is that the history of any city, any country or civilization cannot be understood without its connection with the histories of other cities, other countries and civilizations that influence each other and are interdependent. Thus, the history of Russia cannot be understood without knowing the history of Western Europe, the Arab Caliphate. Golden Horde, Ottoman Empire, Iran, China, India, etc. The same is the case with time span: the history of the United States cannot be understood without knowing the history of Western Europe, the history of Western Europe cannot be comprehended without taking into account the history of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, which, in turn, without knowing the history of ancient Persia, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia etc. The fact that the history of the United States is often studied without knowledge of the history of Western Europe and without any connection with it, and the history of Ancient Greece - without knowledge of the history of Persia, Ancient Egypt, etc., speaks only of the quality of such a "study" and nothing more. History is a fabric from which we try to pull out separate threads, not realizing that all the threads are interconnected and closely intertwined, that the very “pulling out” of the thread inevitably leads to its deformations and breaks. This is how history is taught in schools and universities. Is it any wonder that such a story is often incomprehensible, boring and gives little to a person, not only spiritually, but even in practical terms? Indeed, too often such history teaches only that it teaches us nothing.

Excessively narrow specialization in historical science often leads to the fact that the very meaning of the study of history is lost. The endless accumulation of individual historical facts becomes an end in itself; At the same time, lengthy disputes are being waged over individual facts and facts, over the clarification of individual dates and places where certain events took place. Clarification is necessary, but it is completely insufficient and often not essential for a general interpretation of historical processes. Moreover, it in no way saves from raids on history by individual representatives of the natural sciences, who have a pronounced anti-historical thinking and who, under the guise of "clarification", seek to destroy history as such. In this regard, the statement of the modern Australian historian D. Christian, who tried to justify the need for a Universal History, remains fair: “Alas, historians are so absorbed in the study of details that they began to neglect a large-scale vision of the past. Indeed, many historians, believing that in the end the facts will speak for themselves (as soon as a sufficient number of them are accumulated), deliberately refuse to generalize and forget that any facts speak only with the “voice” of the researcher. The result of such a one-sided approach is a discipline that carries a large amount of information, but with a fragmented, narrow vision of its research field. Not surprisingly, it is becoming more and more difficult to explain to those we teach and those for whom we write why they need to study history at all” [Christian, 2001, p. 137 - 138].

It would seem that world history is devoid of these shortcomings, because it covers and connects (or tries to cover) all countries and civilizations, all epochs and periods, starting with the emergence of man himself. But, alas, the existing world history does this completely unsatisfactorily. As a matter of fact, world history is, first of all, a simple sum of the histories of individual states, regions and civilizations, and therefore, as a rule, there are no real connections between such individual histories or they are very incomplete. Yes, at the beginning or at the end of some sections of existing monographs and textbooks on world history, brief introductory paragraphs are given, written either from the point of view of the theory of socio-economic formations, or in the spirit of a civilizational approach, or in some other way. But these “generalizing” paragraphs give almost nothing and save almost nothing, they exist on their own, and the chapters on individual countries or individual regions exist on their own. Attempts to “rewrite” the history of individual countries in the spirit of, for example, formation theory often lead to a distortion of history: for example, uprisings and revolutions come to the fore completely unjustifiably, and the “exploited” continuously suffer from unbearable exploitation. However, attempts to rewrite world history in the spirit of "Eurocentrism" or "Sinocentrism", "West-centrism" or "East-centrism" in the end distort history no less.

The fundamental shortcoming of the existing world history is that it does not in any way reflect the real, actual unity of human history, the closest interconnection of all its branches and subdivisions. A unified history is artificially divided, for the sake of “the convenience of study” (what convenience this is, can be judged by the characteristic fact that not a single historian knows world history, because it is impossible to know it in principle), divided into separate, isolated from each other histories. And then from these separate stories, like from bricks, they want to put together a single living history. But it turns out not a living organism, but only a corpse or a skeleton. The natural human desire is to see and feel the connection of times, the connection of epochs and civilizations; but instead of helping in this endeavor, narrow specialists - historians argue that such connections are not known to historical science. And indeed, narrow specialists "burrow" into the smallest details of individual historical events to such an extent that, in principle, they cease to see the historical development as a whole, denying its unity and integrity. However, the "connection of times" irreversibly disintegrated in the minds of narrow, one-sided specialists, and not in real continuous history, in which the present follows from the past, and the future from the present. In fact, the dissection of a single living history into separate, isolated, closed in their uniqueness "events" and "facts" fails. Of course, it is extremely difficult for our limited knowledge to grasp the unity of history. Things have come to the point where the obvious unity of human history has to be proved. The prominent German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who dealt with this problem, pointed out the following obvious premises:

“This unity finds its support in the isolation of our planet, which, as space and soil, is one and accessible to our domination, then in the certainty of the chronology of a single time, even if it is abstract, finally, in the common origin of people who belong to the same genus and through this biological fact show us the commonality of their roots ... The essential basis of unity is that people meet in the same spirit of the universal ability of understanding. People find each other in an all-encompassing spirit that does not fully open itself to anyone, but absorbs everyone. With the greatest obviousness, unity finds its expression in faith in one God" [Yaspers, 1994, p. 207].

The modern American historian J. Bentley, speaking about the role of intercultural and intercivilizational interactions for the periodization of global history, notes: “From remote times to the present day, intercultural interactions have had important political, social, economic and cultural consequences for all participating peoples. Thus, it becomes clear that the processes of intercultural interaction could be of some importance for the tasks of recognizing historical periods from a global point of view ... Researchers are increasingly aware that history is a product of interactions involving all the peoples of the world. By focusing attention on the processes of intercultural interaction, historians could more easily recognize patterns of continuity and change that reflect the experience of many peoples, instead of imposing on everyone a periodization derived from the experience of a few privileged peoples" [Bentley, 2001, p. 172 - 173].

Global history directly proceeds from the unity of the historical process, which is due to the fact that this process takes place on the Earth with its certain natural conditions and, in a certain sense, is a continuation of the development of a single biosphere. Global history is a single but diverse history. It is neither a simple sum of the histories of individual ethnic groups, peoples, nations, nor the abstract common that is in all these histories. Rather, global history is a close interweaving, the interaction of various, divergent, differentiated lines, threads of the development of the human race, just as a fabric is an interweaving of individual threads, but is something fundamentally new in comparison with their mechanical aggregate.

Global history does not measure all peoples, states, civilizations by one or more standards, does not proceed from the fact that a society existing in one country is the future or past for a society existing in another country or another region, as numerous theories of “single progress for all”, varieties of which are the theory of industrial and post-industrial society, the theory of stages of growth, Soviet Marxism-Leninism, etc. Unlike these still widespread and inevitably ideologized theories, global history considers the complex, diverse, contradictory unity of various societies, states, civilizations as a living whole, not amenable to ranking, lining up in ranks according to the degree of “development” and “progressiveness”. For development in one direction is inevitably accompanied by degradation in another, progress is inextricably linked with regression, and the acquisition of one leads to the loss of the other. Sadly, "in history there are also peculiar "laws of conservation": the acquisition of a new one is bought at the cost of losing the former. This is connected with the infinite variety of life forms, the variety of cultures that the history of mankind demonstrates, and it is possible that it is precisely such a variety, considered as a whole , only capable of restoring the integrity of a person.

Another important prerequisite for the formation of the field of historical knowledge in question is the permanently inherent in the history of mankind throughout its entire duration of globality. The very formation of humanity, which, according to modern theories, most likely took place in one particular region, presupposes the initial unity and interaction in the human history of globality and locality: humanity that arose in one region, i.e. locally, it turned out to be able to populate the entire planet, to turn into a global community. R. Lubbers pointed out in this regard that the first homo sapience in their way of life were nomads who traveled considerable distances, which made the presence of man on Earth global; in later epochs, Indian tribes moved from Mongolia to North America, and the story of Jesus went around the world at the beginning of our era. The most interesting thing is that, although the development of the planet by man took place gradually, already in very ancient epochs, the global processes of historical changes covered vast territories that made up the then world of man, his Ecumene. Such a global process was, for example, the Neolithic revolution, the territorial boundaries of which cannot be precisely defined. The oldest civilizations known to us have a lot in common, and they arose in about the same era (4th-3rd millennium BC). If we take into account that the history of a modern type of man is at least 40-50 thousand years old, such a close in time formation of ancient civilizations can hardly be considered accidental; Rather, it is a consequence of global natural, primarily climatic, processes, in particular, the climatic optimum of the Holocene, when, for example, a warm, humid climate prevailed on the Central China Plain, and its flora and fauna corresponded to the flora and fauna of the subtropics and tropics [Kulpin, 1999, p. . 256].

Global changes and shifts associated with the impact of natural or socio-historical factors are present 1 and in later eras. Among these shifts, which had not only local but also global significance, we can mention, for example, the events and achievements of K. Jaspers' "axial time", the great: migration of peoples at the beginning of a new era. Great geographical discoveries of the XV - XVI centuries, the formation of trade and colonial empires in the XVII - XVIII centuries, modern globalization associated with the spread of new information technologies and means of communication. These and other shifts of global significance will be discussed below. At the same time, the strengthening of globality in world history is not a monotonous process; history becomes either more global or more local and differentiated. However, despite the fact that in history there is a characteristic and very significant alternation of periods of relative strengthening and relative weakening of globality, globality itself is an integral side, a necessary aspect of human history, present from its very beginning. And this is a prerequisite for the formation of global history as a field of historical and philosophical knowledge.

Global history makes it possible to overcome the limitations of "Eurocentrism" and "West-centrism" (as well as "Russian-centrism" or "East-centrism" in the interpretation of the past and the present). This limitation is very dangerous because, for example, it presents the modern "American-centric" model of globalization, with all its disproportions and ugly one-sidedness, as the only possible one. Western historical science, as well as other social sciences in the West, have worked hard to absolutize the real, but by no means exclusive features of the development of Europe and the West. Rightly criticizing this absolutization, the Canadian historian A.G. Frank, in particular, notes: “After all, the Europeans simply turned their history into a “myth”, but in fact it developed with the great support of other countries. Nothing has ever been easy for Europe, and if it was, then the least important role here was played by its notorious “exclusivity”. And of course, Europe did not "create the world around itself" at all. Rather, on the contrary, it joined the world economy, which was dominated by Asia, and the Europeans long sought to reach its level of development, and then "climbed onto the shoulders" of the Asian economy. That is why even such Europeans as Leibniz, Voltaire, Quesny and Adam Smith considered Asia to be the center of the world economy and civilization" [Frank, 2002, p. 192-193]. Only a truly global vision of historical development is capable of recreating an adequate and holistic picture of the past future, thereby protecting us from nationalism, chauvinism, narcissism, which have more than once led peoples and civilization to catastrophes.

So, the need for global history stems primarily from the need to overcome the spatial, temporal, and other (for example, schematic-ideological) limitations inherent in all local histories and largely characteristic of world history. At the same time, of course, global history does not deny or ignore all local histories, but is based on them and integrates the divided areas of historical knowledge. Globality is an important and integral side of historical development, which is most obvious in the modern era, but which existed in other forms before, right down to the very beginnings of human history. What is important, however, is not so much the conclusions themselves, which are obvious to an unprejudiced, open mind, as their heuristic significance; what is essential is what is new that can be seen, based on the ideas and methods of global history, what is overlooked or ignored by existing histories. One of the most important phenomena for global history, about which. historians, as a rule, do not speak or speak only in passing, is the synchronization of historical events and processes, their consistency in time and space.

The problem of synchronization of processes and events is one of the key ones for global history. Synchronization - temporal order, coherence of processes and events localized in different places - is of fundamental importance for understanding global processes, since this synchronization manifests the unity inherent in historical development, and since it sets the very structure of global history. Synchronization means the presence of various (explicit or implicit) connections and interactions between different, including very distant parts of the world. In addition, the synchronization of events and processes at different points in space is a necessary condition for the emergence of waves of changes in society or Megasociety; Strictly speaking, any wave is a coordinated movement or change in certain parameters of the medium at its different points. Therefore, the analysis of various manifestations of synchronization in history plays an important role in identifying the mechanisms of globalization and global historical development. Let us consider some observations on the synchronization of the processes of social development, which belong to major thinkers and scientists who approached its analysis from different positions and points of view. Such consideration, among other things, will help to reveal the different sides of the complex phenomenon of synchronization.

Many authors, including professional historians who study certain periods and areas of history, have written about individual manifestations of the synchronization of historical events, phenomena and processes. Thus, the prominent English historian H. Trevor-Roper in his article “The General Crisis of the 17th Century” pointed to a number of synchronous revolutions of the 17th century, including the English Revolution (1642–1649), the Fronde in France (1648–1653), the so-called "palace coup" in the Netherlands, the uprisings in Castile and Andalusia (1640), the uprising in Portugal, which led to the separation of Portugal from Spain (1640), the Masaniello uprising in Naples (1647). Trevor-Roper saw the cause of the “general revolution” of the 17th century in the crisis of relations between society and the state, which arose as a result of an exorbitant increase in the cost of maintaining an ever-expanding bureaucracy and increased centralization. Below, in Chapter 4, we will try to show that the reasons given by Trevor-Roper are limited, since some important crises, uprisings and revolutions that were taking place at the same time in other regions, for example in China, remained outside his field of vision. However, the synchronization of events and processes associated with the crisis of the former centralized monarchies, Trevor-Roper noticed accurately. Russian historian L.P. Repnina, somewhat expanding the time frame of the synchronized processes noted by Trevor-Roper, wrote in this regard: “A century from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century. can rightfully be called the century of social and political cataclysms. Coups, rebellions, uprisings, revolutions shook one European country after another, and many at the same time. Some of them - the revolution in England, the Fronde in France, the uprisings in Portugal, Catalonia, Naples, the coup d'état in the Netherlands - are called "synchronous revolutions of the 17th century" ... "Synchronous revolutions of the 17th century" became one of the central problems of world historiography later, at that stage when there was a radical turn in the approach to the traditional topics of political history, expressed in the formation of a holistic view of the phenomena of historical reality, in the awareness of the underlying causes and long-term prerequisites for historical events" [Repnina, 1994, p. 282 - 283].

Some authors of synchronistic tables widely used by historians also sometimes drew attention to the amazing synchronism of many processes and events that took place in completely different states, regions, civilizations: the very process of compiling these tables suggests synchronization as an important side of history. Thus, the author of the tables “History of two millennia in dates” A. Ovsyannikov noted: “The possibility of such synchronization can provide a lot of material for comparisons, insight into the essence of the events experienced. When we look at history as a set of world processes, the historical logic is clearer to us. For example, the bloody events during the reign of Ivan IV took place in the same era as the Bartholomew night in France, and the Russian tsar dealt with his closest relatives in the same way as his British contemporary Henry VIII. And there are many such analogies, it is enough just to make comparisons” [Ovsyannikov, 1996, p. 7]. Here attention is drawn to an important and very profound thought about the penetration through synchronization into the essence of the events under consideration, about understanding the logic of history with its help. Unfortunately, the author does not develop this idea, but confines himself to a single example and pointing to many similar analogies in world history.

At the same time, only a few, the most prominent historians and philosophers, not only pointed to the obvious manifestations of synchronization in world history, but also tried to understand its meaning and significance. Among them are two very different Russian thinkers of the 19th century, Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov and Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky, who developed fundamentally different, in many ways opposite approaches to understanding man and history. Both of them drew attention to the important role of synchronization in the development of society. This fact alone seems to point to the importance of synchronization in history, as it shows how opposite approaches lead to the same phenomenon. Vladimir Solovyov, precisely in polemics with the views of N.Ya. Danilevsky wrote the following: “All these parts (of the human race. - 5.77.) At the present time, despite the enmity of national, religious and class, live one common life due to that factual irremovable connection, which is expressed, firstly, in shanii their about each other, which was not in antiquity and in the Middle Ages; secondly, in the continuous relations of political, scientific, commercial, and, finally, in that involuntary economic interaction, due to which some industrial crisis in the United States is immediately reflected in Manchester and Calcutta, in Moscow and Egypt" [Soloviev, 1988, p. . 410-411].

In this passage, Solovyov names three factors, or rather, three manifestations of a single connection that leads to the synchronization of historical development: 1) knowledge of different countries and civilizations about each other; 2) continuous political, cultural and other relations between them; and 3) economic interaction within the framework of a single world market. The first factor, according to Solovyov, is much stronger in the modern era than in antiquity and the Middle Ages, although, we add, it has always acted in a weakened form, throughout human history. The second factor had a noticeable impact in all eras, although the forms of cultural and political contacts could change. As for the third factor, it has also always acted, albeit in a more limited form, through many interconnected local and regional markets. In fact, Solovyov's analysis retains its significance to this day, despite the increasing complexity of economic and political life, the sharp increase in the exchange of information, and so on.

But this is not enough. The concept of total unity, developed by Vladimir Solovyov, directly focuses on the search for additional, including "weak" ties and interactions, which ultimately lead to a holistic, synchronized development. The fact is that a researcher who is trying to penetrate the secrets of such highly complex evolving systems as man, society, the biosphere, the Cosmos, is most accessible to direct “strong” interactions of the elements and structures of these systems, described, as a rule, in terms of cause-and-effect relationships. “Weak” mediated interactions most often remain hidden from the gaze of the researcher, despite the fact that they play a huge, sometimes decisive role in maintaining the dynamic integrity of the system. As a result, the understanding of the genesis and development of complex organic systems remains incomplete, formal, slipping over the surface of phenomena. The principle of unity, the enormous heuristic significance of which was understood by Vl. Solovyov is called upon to fill this fundamental incompleteness of directly observed connections, including through the search for interactions between spatially separated processes, events, phenomena that, at first glance, seem separate, isolated from each other. Below we will give examples of such interactions that characterize the links between spatially separated processes.

Unlike Vl. Solovyov, who developed the great and still unappreciated philosophy of unity, N.Ya. Danilevsky, proceeded from the existence of fundamental differences between the "cultural-historical types" characteristic of the development of mankind, and thus called into question the very existence of a single human history. Nevertheless, being a great and original thinker, he could not ignore the important role of synchronization in history. In his book Russia and Europe, he wrote the following: “The synchronicity of many historical events leads to exactly the same conclusions, a synchronism without which these events in themselves would lose most of their significance. Let's take the most famous example. The discovery of printing, the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, and the discovery of America, which happened almost simultaneously, brought such importance in their cumulative influence that it was considered sufficient to distinguish between the great sections of the life of mankind ... But it is their totality, their impact that gives these events the most significant share of strength and significance. each other, which increased the influence of each of them on the development of education, on the expansion of the activities of the European peoples in an uncountable number of times ... Of course, each of these three events, which marked the beginning of a new turn in the life of Europe, can be found a very satisfactory explanation. But how to explain their modernity, which, in fact, is the main condition for their educational strength? Where lies that common root, whose consequences would not only be the invention of printing, the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America, but which would also contain that measure of impetus imparted to the historical movement, as a result of which phenomena belonging to such different categories would reach their realization in the same historical moment?.. Where is the force that brought the Altai savages to the shores of the Bosporus just at the very time when the inquisitiveness of German inventors found the secret of matching movable letters, and when the rivalry between Spain and Portugal in maritime enterprises delivered a favorable reception bold thought of a Genoese sailor? The reasons for the synchronistic connection of such diverse events cannot, of course, be hoped to be found closer than in the very plane of the world-powerful Providence, according to which the historical life of mankind develops” [Danilevsky, 1995, p. 262 - 263].

We note that Danilevsky is rightly not satisfied with the usual attempts in such cases to explain the numerous phenomena of "synchronism" by a random coincidence of circumstances; in his opinion, it is necessary to look for the much deeper roots of the "synchronistic connection". Moreover, Danilevsky points to "synchronicity" as an important principle that operates both in nature and in history. Unfortunately, this important, fundamental idea of ​​Danilevsky, in contrast to his theory of "cultural-historical" types, was left without attention. It was misunderstood and ignored by both his followers and his opponents; thus, the important question of the causes and significance of the synchronization of events for the realization of world-historical shifts remained unanswered. In fact, his important observation about the mutual influence of more or less simultaneous events, which greatly enhances the influence of each of them, was actually ignored.

Already in the 20th century, two major European thinkers, the French historian F. Braudel and the German philosopher K. Jaspers, drew attention to the fundamental importance of the synchronization of various events and processes for historical development as a whole. Braudel not only pointed to the synchronization of economic, political and social processes taking place in different parts of the globe, but also tried to identify the structures and mechanisms underlying this synchronization. In his book Time of Peace. Material civilization, economy and capitalism. XV-XVIII centuries.» he stated the amazing consistency of price fluctuations for certain goods that existed in a given era in various, including very remote, corners of the world: predominantly vibrating surfaces, price structures” [Brodel, 1992, p. 79]. Braudel's hypothesis essentially means that the world market system and the world community as a whole, at every moment of its existence and development, are an active environment in which waves of changes in prices, needs, living standards, etc., as well as waves of technological, social , political and cultural shifts, changes. This active medium can also be viewed as a single network of vast extent (the current Internet is only one of the later manifestations of this much more ancient network). Such a hypothesis seems to be very fruitful, capable of explaining the amazing synchronization and coherence of processes and events in various parts of the world (for all their multidirectionality and inclusion in a different historical, sociocultural context). In this regard, the entire global history seems to be nothing more than a manifestation of interconnectedness, mutual influence and synchronization of processes taking place in different parts of the world.

In his other work, The Dynamics of Capitalism, Braudel emphasized the importance of synchronizing the development of societies with different cultures and social systems to the very emergence and existence of capitalism and the European world-economy: “In short, the European world-economy in 1650 is a combination in which the most various societies - from the already capitalist in Holland to serf and slave-owning societies, standing on the lowest rung of the ladder of social progress. This simultaneity, synchronicity poses seemingly solved problems. Indeed, the very existence of capitalism depends on this natural stratification of the world: the outer zones nourish the intermediate ones, and especially the central one. And what is the center, if not the pinnacle, if not the capitalist superstructure of the whole structure?.. This proposition explains the course of history differently than the usual sequential scheme: slavery, feudalism, capitalism. It prioritizes simultaneity, synchronicity - categories with too bright specificity for their action to remain without consequences ”[Braudel F. Dynamics of Capitalism. Smolensk, 1993, p. 97–98]. Here Braudel reveals and emphasizes the role of heterogeneity and at the same time structuredness, orderliness of that active environment in which waves of historical changes propagate. The world appears to be one, but extremely diverse, complexly organized; all its parts receive impulses coming from the "center" or "periphery", but they perceive in their own way, without erasing or reducing their differences. This picture is characteristic of the entire world history throughout its entire length.

A striking example of the analysis of synchronization in history is the concept of "axial time" by K. Jaspers. It is obvious that the very concept of "axial time" in the form in which it was formulated by Jaspers implies the presence of synchronicity of many historical events related to different peoples and different civilizations. Jaspers notes the most important and similar in meaning and significance events and processes in the spiritual sphere, almost simultaneously taking place in China, India, Iran, Palestine, Greece. Assessing the significance of these shifts, Jaspers wrote: “In this era, the main categories by which we think to this day were developed, the foundations of world religions were laid, and today they determine the life of people. A transition to universality was taking place in all directions” [Yaspers, 1994, p. 33].

Considering various hypotheses that try to explain this amazing synchronicity, the simultaneity of shifts in different civilizational centers, Jaspers states that none of them individually can be considered satisfactory. Half a century after the publication of Jaspers' work, it can be assumed that only a number of more or less interrelated factors, among which, apparently, an important role was played by the spread of iron tools and the technological revolution associated with it, climate change (cooling of the "Iron Age" ), movements of "barbarian" peoples on the periphery - can shed light on the mystery of the "axial time". However, the mystery of the synchronicity of important shifts of “axial time” remains complex and confusing, if we do not take into account the operation of the principle of synchronization that works in history: “No one can fully understand what happened here, how the axis of world history arose. We have to outline the contours of this turning period, consider its diverse aspects, interpret its meaning in order to at least see it at this stage as an ever-deepening mystery” [Yaspers, 1994, p. 48]. It should be emphasized that even after the "axial time" the processes of political, social and cultural development in China, India, the Middle East and the Mediterranean proceed surprisingly synchronously: almost simultaneously, large powerful empires are created from many relatively small states through conquests, in China - an empire Qin Shi-Huangdi and then the Han Empire, in India - the Mauryan state, then the Kushan Empire and, finally, the Gupta state, in the Mediterranean - the Hellenistic states, and then the Roman state. In II-V centuries. already a new era, all these empires are almost simultaneously destroyed (the fall of the younger Han dynasty in China and the formation of the states of Wei, Shu and Wu in the 3rd century AD, the weakening and beginning of the collapse of the Kushan Empire in the 3rd century AD, the fall of the Parthian powers in the 3rd century AD, the crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, the collapse of the Gupta state in India at the end of the 5th century AD) . This period (III-VII centuries AD), the period of the crisis of former cultures, civilizations, empires and the emergence of a new world order, became, like the "axial time" of the VIII-III centuries. BC, the era of yet another rise in religion, philosophy and other areas of human culture that swept Western Europe, the Middle East, China and India. True, this rise was not as powerful as during the "axial time", but nevertheless it gave the world a whole galaxy of Christian philosophers and theologians - the great figures of Christian culture, the prophet Mohammed, the figures of Taoist culture in China, the founder of Manichaeism Mani, great poets India and China. All this also indicates that the phenomena of synchronization in history do take place, especially in critical epochs of social development.

The idea of ​​synchronization of the most diverse processes occurring in the human psyche, in the surrounding world, in the evolution of nature and society, was considered from different angles by such prominent researchers working in various fields of science as P. Teilhard de Chardin, K.G. Jung, S. Grof. Thus, the analysis of the phenomenon of synchronicity is contained in the work of S. Grof “Holotropic Knowledge”, which criticizes the limitations of the Newtonian-Cartesian ideas about the world that have prevailed so far: “Newtonian-Cartesian science describes the Universe as an infinitely complex system of mechanical events that are strictly deterministic, that is, governed by the principle of cause and effect. Each process in this world has its own special causes and in turn gives rise to causes for the accomplishment of other events. Despite the uncomfortable paradox of identifying the original cause from all other causes, this understanding of reality continues to be the main creed of mainstream scientists. Western science has become so successful in thinking in terms of causality that it has become difficult even to imagine processes that would not obey the dictates of cause and effect, except of course for the beginning of the universe itself.

Because of this deep-rooted belief in causality as a certain law of nature, Jung hesitated for many years to publish his observations of events, which in no way fit this mold. He delayed publishing his work on the subject until he and others had collected literally hundreds of convincing examples of synchronicities, giving him absolute confidence that the observations he described were valid. In his famous work Synchronicity: The Non-Causal Connecting Principle (Synchronicity: An Asasia! Connexus § Pnclss), Jung expressed his view that causality is not an absolute law of nature, but rather a statistical phenomenon. Moreover, he emphasized that there are many examples where this "law" is not applicable" [Grof, 1996, p. 193].

K.G. himself Jung, in his own way analyzing the origin of synchronization (synchronicity), came, in particular, to the following conclusions: “I understand very well that synchronicity is an extremely abstract and “unrepresentable” quantity. It endows the moving body with a certain psychoid property which, like space, time and causality, is the criterion of its behavior. We must completely abandon the idea that the psyche is somehow related to the brain, and instead recall the "meaningful" and "intelligent" behavior of lower organisms that do not have a brain. Here we are much closer to the primary factor, which, as I said above, has nothing to do with the activity of the brain ... It is not necessary to think about the originally established harmony of Leibniz or something similar, which should have been absolute and would have manifested itself in universal correspondence and attraction of the type of "semantic coincidence" of time points located at the same degree of latitude (according to Schopenhauer). The principle of synchronicity has properties that can help resolve the body-soul problem. First of all, this principle is, in fact, an uncausal order, or rather a "meaningful order", which can shed light on psychophysical parallelism. "Absolute knowledge", which is the characteristic feature of the synchronistic phenomenon, knowledge that cannot be acquired through the senses, confirms the correctness of the hypothesis of the existence of a self-existent meaning, or even expresses its existence. Such a form of existence can only be transcendental, since, as knowledge of future or spatially distant events shows, it is located in psychically relative space and time, that is, in an unimaginable space-time continuum" [Jung, 1997, p. 291–292]. Thus, according to Jung, the concept of synchronicity requires a revision of the overall picture of the world, including the relationship of mental and physical, space and time, cause and effect.

The absolutization of the role of cause-and-effect relationships, with which K.G. Jung and S. Grof, is also an obstacle to understanding the wave-like processes in nature and society. The existence of waves in the development of complex systems is not the result of the action of one cause, one factor, it appears, rather, as a surprisingly coordinated "response" of many elements of the system to certain changes, and often as a chain of surprising, but natural coincidences. In this regard, the principle of synchronization, as well as the cyclic-wave approach as a whole, is closer to the concepts of modern quantum physics than classical Newtonian-Cartesian science. In this regard, it becomes clear why Grof focuses on Jung's non-random interest in new ideas in physics and his personal relationships with some of the greatest physicists of the 20th century who were able to accept his ideas about synchronicity as a phenomenon that goes beyond the usual ideas about cause and effect relationships. : “Jung himself was fully aware of the fact that the concept of synchronicity is incompatible with conventional science, and followed with great interest the revolutionary new worldview that developed from the achievements of modern physics. He maintained a friendship with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, and they exchanged useful ideas with each other. Similarly, in Jung's personal relationship with Albert Einstein, the latter inspired him to insist on the concept of synchronicity, since it was fully compatible with the new thinking in physics" [Grof, 1996, p. 193].

Appeal to synchronization as one of the important principles of the evolution of the biosphere and noosphere was also inherent in such a prominent scientist, thinker, philosopher as P. Teilhard de Chardin. In his famous book The Phenomenon of Man, he more or less explicitly used the principle of synchronization to explain the process of evolution at its various stages - from geochemical evolution to the evolution of man and society. This is especially true for critical periods during which jumps occur and fundamentally new evolutionary forms appear. So, when describing the "Neolithic revolution", which Teilhard de Chardin rightly considered as "the most critical and majestic of all periods of the past - the period of the emergence of civilization" [Teilhard de Chardin, 1987, p. 164], the scientist listed a number of processes and phenomena that could push humanity to the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding, on the basis of which the first civilizations arose. But at the same time, not a single factor explains the large-scale upheaval that occurred in the Neolithic era and which meant the formation of sociality as we know it. Therefore, the following statement by Teilhard de Chardin, which essentially coincides with the description of synchronization, looks far from accidental and justified: “As if in this decisive period of socialization, as in the moment of reflection, a bunch of relatively independent factors mysteriously merged to support and accelerate the progress of hominization” [Teilhard de Chardin, 1987, p. 165].

Moreover, Teilhard de Chardin’s description of the “Neolithic Revolution” is somewhat reminiscent of the description of the “axial time” by K. Jaspers, and there are reasons for this - the “Neolithic Revolution” affected different areas and regions of the world, in its course a variety of forms were discovered social and spiritual life:

“Socially, in the field of property, morality, marriage, one might say, everything has been tried ... At the same time, in the more stable and densely populated environment of the first agricultural settlements, the taste for research and the need for it flare up. A wonderful period of searches and inventions, when in all its brilliance, in the incomparable freshness of a new undertaking, in a conscious form, the eternal trial gropings of life are clearly manifested. Everything that could be tried was tried in this amazing era” [Teilhard de Chardin, 1987, p. 165]. All this suggests that the “axial time”, about which K. Jaspers wrote, despite all its uniqueness, was still not the only one in the history of mankind and that synchronization is present to some extent at all stages of social development.

Modern researchers identify natural and cosmic factors that have a powerful synchronizing effect not only on the earth's biosphere, but also on the development of human society, human history. Among these factors there are climatic, hydrological, heliobiological and other influences and changes that have a noticeable synchronizing effect on historical processes. All these factors, especially climate change, have a profound impact on territories and regions separated by thousands and even tens of thousands of kilometers. So, among the cold snaps close to us, the cooling of the “Iron Age” in the first millennium BC is especially distinguished. and the so-called "Little Ice Age" in Europe and Asia in the 16th - 17th centuries. It was during these periods that the epochs of global historical changes occurred, which will be discussed further. There is reason to believe that such a coincidence is by no means accidental, since climatic and other global natural changes affect various aspects of the life of many civilizations.

Natural changes are usually considered as exogenous (external) factors in relation to the development of society, its worldview, value system, economic and political system. This is not entirely fair, since man is not only a social and spiritual being, but also a natural one. Socionatural history - a new discipline at the intersection of the natural and human sciences - shows that there are diverse and multifaceted connections and interactions between the development of society and natural changes [Kulpin, 1992]. These interactions are especially pronounced during periods of so-called socio-ecological crises, i.e. periods when abrupt changes occur simultaneously in the life of nature and in the life of a given society. Important examples of socio-ecological crises are the Neolithic revolution, which led to colossal changes in the life of mankind, the crisis of the middle of the 1st millennium BC. in China and the Mediterranean [Kulpin, 1996], the first (XVI-XVII centuries) and the second (from the middle of the XIX century) social and environmental crises in Russia [Kulpin, Pantin, 1993; Pantin, 2001] and others. All these crises led to huge changes in the development of the respective societies; and, despite their heaviness and depth, they had not only negative, but also positive significance, stimulating the development of new, more complex institutions, technologies, forms of thinking and communication between people. It is no coincidence that many of the socio-ecological crises are simultaneously important milestones in global history, periods of high synchronization of historical events and processes in different societies.

So, in the most general form, the phenomenon of synchronization can be defined as the coordination and ordering in time of various spatially separated events, processes and phenomena, including those that, at first glance, are in no way connected with each other and belong to completely different systems. This does not mean that the processes and phenomena under consideration are not connected “materially” with each other at all; it only means that the connections involved in synchronization are not obvious and ambiguous, or are not known at all. When studying such complex evolving systems as the biosphere, the human psyche, human society, the researcher is faced with the coordinated and ordered behavior of a huge variety of subsystems and various kinds of structures, both existing inside the evolving system and outside it, as it were. This is explained by the fact that in the case of an evolving system, its boundaries are very conditional, mobile and can include a distant "periphery", i.e. everything that is available to any extent for the interaction of the system and its environment. As a rule, direct, “strong” interactions of elements and structures of an evolving system with the environment are available for study, which are often described as causal relationships; "weak" mediated interactions are often hidden from the eye of the researcher. The principle of synchronization as the principle of cognition of complex evolving systems is intended to make up for this incompleteness of the observed interactions. It is especially important for understanding the connections between spatially separated processes, events and phenomena that are not connected to each other by simple chains of cause-and-effect relationships and are considered by separate areas of science in isolation from each other. Let's take a few examples to illustrate what has been said.

First of all, the notions of isolation, complete internal self-sufficiency and isolation of individual civilizations, which were largely shared by O. Spengler and partly by A.J. Toynbee, from the point of view of the synchronization principle, are neither real nor true. Even if there are no such material ties and contacts between separate civilizations that exist at the same time, such as exchange, trade, raids, conquests, etc., there are some general impulses for cultural, economic, political development that are perceived by various contemporary civilizations, although and differently. This is what is called the spirit of the era, the spirit of the times, or, in a more general case, the information field. We have already spoken about the "axial time", which is characterized by an amazing parallelism in the cultural and social development of such different civilizations as Indian, Chinese, ancient Greek. But the “axial time” is not an exception in this sense, the same is true for other eras, regardless of whether the relationship between these ethnic groups and civilizations has been established. Of course, different civilizations and ethnic groups develop in different ways and at different speeds, but the principle of synchronization stimulates the search for the most unexpected contacts, correlations and forms of mutual influence, and the consequences of these contacts and this influence can be quite unexpected.

However, situations are also possible when there are practically no contacts between civilizations, but they simultaneously have to respond to the same impulses, “challenges” from nature or neighboring peoples. In history, most often these are natural, especially climatic changes. E.S. Kulpin showed how the same climatic changes (cooling of the "Iron Age" of the middle of the 1st millennium BC - it is also "axial time" according to Jaspers!) led to different changes within the ancient Greek and Far Eastern (Chinese) civilizations, which determined the division world to the "West" and "East" [Kulpin, 1996]. Thus, the synchronization of events and processes taking place in different countries and civilizations does not necessarily lead to the rapprochement of these countries and civilizations; often, on the contrary, it contributes to their separation, the growth of differences between them, which is why the illusion of their completely “isolated” development arises. Synchronization is subjected not so much to similar as to different objects that differ from each other.

Another important example is the influence of cosmic processes and phenomena on the earth's biosphere, on the life of an individual, and on the historical development of social systems. Most narrow specialists are skeptical about the very possibility of the influence of cosmic phenomena on these processes, since such an influence, as a rule, is closer to "weak" than to "strong" interactions, and it is not easy to detect. However, the works of the Russian scientist A.L. Chizhevsky, which show the relationship between solar activity and various processes on Earth, including fertility, the spread of epidemics, and social upheavals [Chizhevsky, 1976]. At present, there is a huge number of works in which the correlation of many biological and social processes with cosmic and helio-geophysical factors is noted (see, for example, numerous works of international Pushchino symposiums “Correlation of biological and physico-chemical processes with cosmic and helio-geophysical factors ").

So, the phenomenon of synchronization of various processes and events, which is not described by simple cause-and-effect relationships, is quite common in nature and society. Synchronization is a necessary prerequisite for the wave-like development of natural and social systems in the world around us, and the principle of synchronization is a prerequisite for the knowledge of these wave-like processes by human thinking. Synchronization of many events and phenomena provides such an interaction of local processes and movements in space that does not extinguish, but enhances them, resulting in a fairly noticeable wave of changes. The synchronization principle makes it possible to consider a complex evolving socio-historical system not within its visible boundaries, but “above the barriers” separating different systems, and thus makes it possible to see the spread of waves of change much further than using the usual principle of cause and effect relationships. In addition, the principle of synchronization allows you to see the interaction and mutual influence of cycles or waves that, at first glance, are not related to each other, for example, the mutual influence of the wave-like processes of development of different civilizations or the influence of solar activity cycles, other cosmic cycles on the cycles and waves of social life . Finally, the principle of synchronization of various processes and phenomena directly points to the inevitability of critical, critical periods in the development of a social system, when its contradictions and conflicts "simultaneously" become aggravated and, under the threat of the collapse of the system, require its transition to a new level.

The observed synchronization of historical events, phenomena and processes is a prerequisite for structuring, i.e. determining the structure of global history. Here, the structuring of history is understood not simply as one or another periodization of it, but, first of all, the identification of key, central historical processes and their corresponding periods, which deeply influenced the entire subsequent course of history, led to a sequence of choices that predetermined the development of mankind in a certain direction. In fact, we are talking here about the search for a kind of "core" or "axis" of world history, which form its structure. At the same time, neither individual events (for example, the Great French Revolution or the Revolution of 1917 in Russia), nor relatively short periods of “great” wars (for example, the First or Second World War), nor even in itself the emergence of great world religions (for example, Buddhism or Christianity). The thing is that the central link, or rather, the central links of global history, should cover not one region and not one civilization, but the majority (in the limit - all) regions and civilizations. In addition, such central or "axial" epochs should determine the subsequent development not for decades or even centuries, but for millennia. Obviously, neither great revolutions nor great wars are capable of exerting such a powerful and lasting impact.

Without highlighting a kind of "central", "axial" processes and epochs that have a truly long-term impact, it is impossible to structure global history and, thus, it is impossible to understand it as a single and integral process. Global history, if it is truly unified, cannot flow evenly, it must have periods of "thickening" and "rarefaction", ebbs and flows that form the center (or centers), which are characteristic of any system and any structure. Of course, for ordinary history, divided by countries and periods, such a problem practically does not exist, although any historian studying a particular country and era inevitably looks for central events that structure both the historical era itself and knowledge about it. As for global history, the problem of finding a central epoch or central epochs is fundamentally important for it and in many respects a key one. It is far from accidental that all thinkers who understood history as a global process tried to find its structure, starting from this or that era, these or those events and processes. Thus, Christian theologians and philosophers considered the emergence of Christianity as such a central event, Islamic theologians - the emergence of Islam, K. Marx and theorists of the world-system approach - the emergence of capitalism and the world market in the 16th century. As will be seen later, they were not entirely wrong; it would be more correct to say that they were only partly right.

Why is history structured? It is needed not only to streamline the powerful flow of historical events, not only to assess the relative significance and meaning of certain historical events, processes, phenomena, not only to clarify the general, end-to-end logic of global historical development. Even more significant is the fact that the structuring of history makes it possible to understand from a more general position the nature and meaning of the era in which we live, and even partially foresee (of course, only in the most general terms) the direction of future development. But even more important, apparently, is that a part of the Divine (or, what is the same, Cosmic) plan of history, its unity and sequence, is revealed to us in this way. And although we are largely unable to comprehend the meaning and purpose of history, we can only repeat the well-known words of A. Einstein, applicable not only to the comprehension of nature, but also to the comprehension of history: "God is cunning, but not malicious."

K. Jaspers was one of the first who clearly and in an expanded form posed the problem of structuring world history (once again, not periodization, but structuring) was K. Jaspers. In his work "The Origins of History and Its Purpose", he formulated the concept of axial time and described in general terms the structuring of world history by this axial time. Yaspers characterized the axial time as follows: “The axis of world history, if it exists at all, can only be discovered empirically, as a fact that is significant for all people, including Christians. This axis should be sought where the prerequisites arose that allowed a person to become what he is, where such a formation of human existence took place with amazing fruitfulness, which, regardless of a certain religious content, could become so convincing - if not by its empirical irrefutability, then in in any case, some empirical basis for the West, for Asia, for all people in general - that thereby for all peoples a common framework for understanding their historical significance would be found. This axis of world history should be attributed, apparently, to the time around 500 BC, to that spiritual process that took place between 800 and 200 years. BC. Then came the most dramatic turn in history. A man of the type that has survived to this day appeared. We will briefly call this time axial time” [Yaspers, 1994, p. 32].

Among the main events and processes characteristic of the axial time, Jaspers attributed the following: “At this time, many extraordinary things happen. At that time Confucius and Lao Tzu lived in China, all directions of Chinese philosophy arose, Mo Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Le Tzu and countless others thought. In India, the Upanishads arose, the Buddha lived; in philosophy - in India, as in China - all the possibilities of philosophical comprehension of reality were considered, up to skepticism, to materialism, sophistry and nihilism; in Iran, Zarathustra taught about a world where there is a struggle between good and evil; prophets spoke in Palestine - Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah; in Greece it is the time of Homer, the philosophy of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, the tragedians, Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything associated with these names emerged almost simultaneously over several centuries in China, India and the West, independently of each other. The new that emerged in this era in the three cultures mentioned is that a person is aware of being as a whole, of himself and his boundaries. Before him opens the horror of the world and his own helplessness. Standing over the abyss, he raises radical questions, demands liberation and salvation. Realizing his boundaries, he sets himself the highest goals, cognizes absoluteness in the depths of self-consciousness and in the clarity of the transcendent world ... In this era, the main categories that we think to this day were developed, the foundations of world religions were laid, and today they determine the life of people. A transition to universality was taking place in all directions” [Yaspers, 1994, p. 32 - 33].

The above description of the most important events and processes of the axial time is far from complete; it will be substantially supplemented in the second chapter of this book. Here, for us, the most significant justification by Jaspers is the need for structuring world history by axial time. Here is what he writes in this regard: “If we consider it (the thesis of axial time. - V.P.) true, then it turns out that axial time, as it were, sheds light on the entire history of mankind, and in such a way that something emerges similar to the structure of world history. Let's try to outline this structure: 1. Axial time marks the disappearance of the great cultures of antiquity, which existed for millennia. It dissolves them, absorbs them into itself, leaves them to perish - regardless of whether the people of an ancient culture or other peoples are the bearers of the new. Everything that existed before the axial time, even if it was majestic, like Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian or Chinese culture, is perceived as something dormant, unawakened. Ancient cultures continue to exist only in those of their elements that entered the axial time, perceived by a new beginning ... 2. By what happened then, what was created and thought out at that time, humanity lives up to this day. In their every impulse, people, remembering, turn to the axial time, are ignited by the ideas of that era. Since then, it has been generally accepted that the recollection and revival of the possibilities of the axial time - the Renaissance - leads to a spiritual upsurge. The return to this beginning is a relentless phenomenon in China, India and the West. 3.1 Initially, axial time is spatially limited, but historically it becomes all-encompassing... People outside the three spheres that make up axial time either stayed away or came into contact with any of these three centers of spiritual radiation. In the latter case, they went down in history. Thus, in the West, the Germanic and Slavic peoples were drawn into the orbit of the axial time, in the East, the Japanese, Malays and Siamese ... 4. Between the three spheres that are discussed here, it is possible - if they touch - deep mutual understanding. When they meet, they realize that each of them is talking about the same thing. Despite their remoteness, they are striking in their similarity ...

All this can be summarized as follows: the axial time, taken as the starting point, determines the questions and the scope applied to all previous and subsequent development. The great cultures of antiquity that preceded it are losing their specificity. The peoples who were their carriers become indistinguishable for us as they adjoin the movement of the axial time. Prehistoric peoples remain prehistoric until such time as they are dissolved in the historical development that comes from the axial time; otherwise they die out. Axial time assimilates everything else. If we start from it, then world history acquires a structure and unity capable of being preserved in time, and, in any case, preserved to this day” [Jaspers, 1994, p. 37-39].

And further: “Axial time serves as an enzyme that binds humanity within the framework of a single world history. Axial time serves as a scale that allows us to clearly see the historical significance of individual peoples for humanity as a whole" [Yaspers, 1994, p. 76]. Jaspers also explains why such truly grandiose turns in the history of individual civilizations as the emergence of Christianity or Islam cannot be the axis of world history: “Meanwhile, the Christian faith is only one faith, and not the faith of all mankind. Its disadvantage is that such an understanding of world history seems convincing only to a believing Christian. Moreover, even in the West, a Christian does not associate his empirical understanding of history with this faith. The dogma of faith is not for him the thesis of an empirical interpretation of the actual historical process. And for a Christian, sacred history is separated in its semantic meaning from secular history. And a believing Christian could analyze the Christian tradition itself, like any other empirical object" [Jaspers, 1994, p. 32].

Of course, the emergence of Christianity was of great importance not only for Western European or Byzantine (and later Russian) civilizations. The emergence of Christianity indirectly influenced the emergence of Islam. It is no coincidence that it was the Christian (at least outwardly) West that became the center of world development from the 15th-16th centuries. But Jaspers, apparently, is right in the sense that it would be wrong to consider the emergence of Christianity as the axis of all world history; rather, it should be considered a node and a kind of epicenter of history, to which some important lines coming from the axial time converge, for example, the tradition of the Jewish prophets, the ancient Greek philosophical tradition, and some others. Such an approach does not detract from the world-historical significance of the emergence of Christianity, it only places the accents in a different way and shows that without the axial time, Christianity would not have been perceived in the form we know.

It should be noted that not all historians and philosophers of history accept the concept of the axial time of K. Jaspers. At the same time, there were no serious and deeply reasoned objections to this concept. Perhaps the most radical opponent of the concept of axial time was a prominent Russian scientist L.N. Gumilev. However, his objections to the idea of ​​axial time are mainly emotional in nature and in many ways do not stand up to criticism. To avoid possible misunderstandings, we emphasize that this fact in itself does not in any way reduce the scale of L.N. Gumilyov. Regarding the idea of ​​the axial time of K. Jaspers, Gumilyov writes the following: “As we have already noted, K. Jaspers noticed the coincidence of the akmatic phases of the ethnogenesis of different passionary impulses. Since these are by no means the initial, initial phases, they are always striking on superficial observation. Hence the conclusions of Jaspers, although logical, but leading to error ... In the akmatic phase, the reflection of a restless person, indignant at an established way of life, is inevitably uniform. Therefore, there is an element of similarity in Socrates, Zoroaster, Buddha (Shakya Muni) and Confucius: they all sought to streamline the living, ebullient reality by introducing one or another rational principle” [Gumilyov, 2001, p. 552].

It is noteworthy that Jaspers is talking about one thing, and Gumilyov is talking about something completely different. The coincidence of "akmatic phases" in the development of various ethnic groups happened both before and after the axial time, but for some reason it did not lead to those major shifts and global consequences that Jaspers points out. "Restless persons" have always been and will always be, but for some reason it was in the era of axial time that they managed to make a global historical turning point, which led to the emergence of a person of this type, which has survived to this day. It is obvious that the point here is not only in the "restless persons" with their reflection, but in much more powerful historical factors that affected the lives of not only individuals, but also the development of entire civilizations, allowed the breakthroughs of the axial time to gain a foothold and become irreversible. In his criticism of Jaspers, Gumilyov seeks to show that the shifts and achievements of the axial time were soon lost: “So the Confucian schools perished during the offensive of the iron detachments of the Qin Shi Huangdi veterans (3rd century BC). So the Mahayanist Buddhists burned in the fires set on fire by the Brahmin Kumarilla, who explained to the brave Rajputs that God created the world and endowed it with an immortal soul - atman (VIII century). So the Jewish shrines of the fiery Yahweh were destroyed (VII century BC). So Zarathushtra was slaughtered by the Turanians in the Balkh they took (c. VI century BC) ... But the worst of all was the execution of Socrates, who died from the Athenian sycophants ”[Gumilyov, 2001, p. 552 - 553].

It is unclear here not only why “the execution of Socrates was the worst of all,” who, according to legend, drank a cup of poison himself, not wanting to give up his convictions, but, first of all, why Gumilyov ignores the fact that the ideas of all those listed by him (and not listed too) of the great prophets and thinkers of the axial time survived their physical death for a long time and firmly entered the fabric of world culture. Thus, Confucianism, with short breaks for thousands of years, was the dominant philosophy that played the role of religion, not only in China, but also in a number of countries in Southeast Asia; It still plays a huge role in the development of China today. Moreover, many now say that if the "spirit of Protestantism" in the XVI-XIX centuries. contributed to the development of capitalism in Western Europe and North America, then at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. the "spirit of Confucianism" contributes to the accelerated development of Southeast Asia, which has become the "motor" of world economic development. Buddhism has become a world religion and continues to be one, despite the bonfires in which Mahayana Buddhists were burned. The same applies to the shrines of Judaism, which, being destroyed physically, were not destroyed spiritually, and to the teachings of Zarathushtra, and to the philosophy of Socrates. As for the “iron detachments of Qin Shi Huangdi veterans”, “brave Rajputs”, “Turanians” and “Athenian sycophants”, there are not so many of them left. Surprisingly, Gumilyov does not pay attention to such inconsistencies. Perhaps this circumstance is explained not by rational, but by purely emotional motives, which involuntarily break through in the following statement by Gumilyov: “I don’t like the concept of K. Jaspers. I want to think differently!” [Gumilyov, 2001, p. 554].

You may not like Jaspers' concept, but that doesn't make it any less important. Modern researchers point to some important factors that shed additional light on the phenomenon of axial time. In particular, E.S. Kulpin rightly emphasized the coincidence of the axial time era with the period of cooling in Europe and Asia - the so-called "cooling of the Iron Age" in the middle of the 1st millennium BC: China of the times of "Spring and Autumn" and "warring states", being in many respects identical to those that took place in the river civilizations of Eurasia, at the same time differed significantly from them. The cooling here stimulated the growth of the human body's needs for calories, while the productivity of the diversified economy, which developed in more favorable climatic conditions, decreased ... The "compression" of the vegetative period due to the cooling required the introduction of new plant varieties - more early-ripening, and aridization - more drought-resistant . There was a need to change the technique and technology of farming, the need for greater plowing - the expansion of cultivated lands of the enclosing landscapes, in a different ratio of farming and animal husbandry on farms. The reduction in the volume of the social product, the decrease in the share of surplus and, possibly, the underproduction of the necessary caused social tension, questioned the former social organization of society, the system of distribution and redistribution of vital goods and its ideological justification” [Kulpin, 1996, p. 129 - 130].

Returning to the idea of ​​K. Jaspers about structuring world history on the basis of axial time, it should be recognized as very deep, revealing the integrity of the historical process and the logic of its deployment. At the same time, the structuring of the entire world history by only one axial time seems clearly insufficient and incomplete. In addition to the axial time discovered by Jaspers, there must be other epochs of "condensation" of historical development; even if less significant than the axial time. Unfortunately, the work on the structuring of global history, begun by Jaspers, in the future almost did not receive its continuation - since everything came down to disputes about whether axial time exists as a historical phenomenon. In the following chapters of this book, we will try to outline the structure of global history, starting from axial time, but not limited to it alone. Such structuring is based on cycles of differentiation and integration that can be traced in global history and set its structure. As a result of such structuring, many important regularities and connections are revealed, which were either not paid attention at all or paid insufficient attention before.

There are many indirect indications in the scientific literature that there are waves of global historical development lasting about half a thousand years, and the beginning and end of each of these waves correspond to important historical changes and turning points. Russian researcher A. Neklessa, for example, noted: “History has an internal rhythm. Moreover, its long waves sometimes surprisingly accurately coincide with the boundaries of millenniums or their significant parts (halves), which have their own cartography of historical space and time. The first such milestone in the history of the new civilization, marking the end of the Pax Romana era. belongs to the 5th-6th centuries. - the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the Great Migration of Nations. The previous fin de millenium and the beginning of the second millennium is also a very difficult milestone in the history of civilization... The earthly circle of the Carolingian empire, which collapsed shortly before the turn of the millennium, was subsequently partially replaced by the more local universalism of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. At the beginning of the second millennium, the Byzantine Empire, which seems to have reached the peak of its power by this moment (the “golden age” of the Macedonian dynasty), is faced with a new and, as the future showed, a deadly threat - the Seljuk Turks, embarking on the path of loss of earthly power, Balkanization and descent into historical oblivion... The middle of the second millennium is also a significant milestone in the history of civilization. This is the time of the birth of the modern world, i.e. The world of Modernity, the formation of a new social, political, economic, cultural semantics of the world order. At that time, a change of milestones took place, a new, humanistically oriented world was established, where a fallen person becomes the “measure of all things” ... At the same time, it was the time of the collapse of the remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire (1453) and the emergence on the stage of the history of another satellite of Western European civilization - the New World (1492 )” [Neklesa, 2001, p. 129 - 130]. When discussing the problems of periodization of World History, P. Stern comes to the need to single out periods lasting about a thousand years (500 BC - 500 AD and 500 - 1500 AD): “Between 500 . BC. and 500 AD the first period of world history was fully formed as opposed to the period of the formation and expansion of civilization. During this period, belief systems became more developed and their expression in culture more varied, and in some cases, such as India and the Mediterranean, a monotheistic trend developed. As trading activity expanded, structures of dominance and dependence were established in the Mediterranean, and even more so in the Indian Ocean. Based on commerce, the cultural influence of India was particularly strong, although the penetration of the Egyptian-Mediterranean influence into the Upper Nile region and the Greco-Roman influence into Western Europe should also be noted.

Then came the millennium, which proved to be a particular challenge in the teaching of world history and gained particular brilliance thanks to the scheme of multifactorial periodization. It is possible to link this period 500-1500 years. AD with the previous period, considering in a single material the formative evolution of the traditions of great civilizations and the associated flourishing of an agrarian society ... The period stretching from the VI to the XIV or XV centuries, marked both at the beginning and at the end by prolonged Central Asian and pedagogical meaning” [Stern, 2001, p. 165–166]. In fact, the thousand-year periods of world history that P. Stern singles out are a kind of cycles of historical development, consisting of two waves lasting approximately 500 years each.

Even historians who believe that the East developed in a fundamentally different way from the West are forced to admit that the turning points for the development of the countries of the East generally coincide with the turning points in the development of Europe, i.e. that in fact there are periods (waves) of global history. So, L.S. Vasiliev, who in every possible way emphasizes the inapplicability of the concepts and terms describing the development of Europe for the countries of the East, nevertheless notes that a turning point epoch lasting about a thousand years in the development of the Middle East and China corresponds to the period between the 4th century BC and BC. BC. and 7th c. AD: “So, for example, for the Middle East region, the birthplace of human civilization, so richly represented in antiquity by important historical events, long periods of intensive development, great powers (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia), a period of radical internal transformation clearly falls between the 4th c. BC. (Alexander's campaigns), followed by a strong cultural and structural impact from the ancient world (Hellenization, Romanization and Christianization) and the 7th century. AD, marked by the rigid seal of Islam. During this millennium, a lot has changed dramatically in the Middle East ... Turning to China and the entire Far East, we will find a completely different logical line: at the turn of the 3rd - 2nd centuries. BC. the ancient Chinese society, having gone through a structural transformation and having acquired a single officially sanctioned ideological doctrine, in the spirit of which the main social institutions were reformed and the way of life and mentality of the population was oriented, became in many ways different, just as the state became different, taking the form of a powerful empire. True, this empire in the first centuries of its existence experienced severe blows of the crisis, and then even fell apart for several centuries, and it was at that time that the states neighboring China (Korea, Vietnam, Japan) were formed, borrowing a lot from it and having been time is essentially part of Chinese civilization (we are talking about the III - IV centuries AD - D. / 7.). Taking into account the mentioned events and processes, we can again stretch the logical line between antiquity and the Middle Ages in this region of the East for almost a millennium (III century BC - VI century AD, when the empire was recreated) “[Vasiliev, 1993, p. 248, 249 - 250]. Meanwhile, the boundaries of this critical era and another critical period within it in the III - IV centuries. AD, as will be shown below, exactly correspond to the boundaries of the global waves of integration and differentiation. Thus, it turns out that for all the originality of the development of different regions of the world, this development itself is synchronized and is described by large-scale millennial cycles consisting of two waves, each of which lasts about 500 years.

J. Modelski, using the example of the development of cities in the Ancient World, showed the "pulsating", undulating nature of this process in the period 4000 - 1000 years. BC. He singled out the alternation of two phases: the phase of centralization, when the central zones of the world-system are formed, and the phase of decentralization, when the periphery becomes dominant. As a result, according to this model, there is a constant change of places in the "center - periphery" system. In the alternation of phases of "centralization" and "decentralization" in world history, noted by Modelski, important mechanisms for the development of globalization are manifested. At the same time, since J. Modelski analyzed only the period before the 1st millennium BC, the universal nature of the alternation of the phases of "centralization" and "decentralization" in global history remained unnoticed and unclear.

In addition, the terms "centralization" and "decentralization" themselves do not seem quite accurate to describe the wave-like processes of globalization development. More adequate, as already mentioned in the introduction, are the concepts of “waves of integration” and “waves of differentiation”, since integration includes not only centralization, but also a general increase in the unity and coherence of the international system (in particular, the formation of stable world empires and “universal States”), and differentiation implies not only decentralization, but also the emergence of new “peripheral” centers for the development of the international system. In other words, centralization is only one of the sides, one of the mechanisms of integration processes, and decentralization is one of the sides, one of the manifestations of differentiation processes. One of the central concepts in this work is the concept of a global cycle of differentiation - integration, which consists of a wave of differentiation lasting about 500 years and a wave of integration replacing it, also lasting about 500 - 600 years. We are talking about waves, since changes (in this case, associated with the processes of differentiation or integration of social systems) spread in space, synchronizing and ordering in time. The duration of these waves, as will be shown below, is established empirically, although their correlation ~ with the above observations and periodization schemes of other authors (1000-year periods of world history) is not accidental and confirms the existence of globalization cycles consisting of two waves with a duration of approximately 500 years.

In this paper, we will confine ourselves to describing and analyzing the three cycles closest to us in time, despite the fact that the available historical data indicate the presence of earlier cycles of differentiation-integration, the duration of each of which is also about a thousand years. In other words, the alternation of waves of differentiation - integration, apparently, extends to a very significant historical period that began with the emergence of ancient civilizations known to us, but the subject of this work is the last three cycles, covering the period from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Until now. The first such cycle consists of a wave of differentiation, which lasted about five centuries (from the beginning of the 8th century BC to approximately the end of the 4th century BC) and a wave of integration, which also lasted about five centuries (from the beginning of the 3rd century to the end of the 4th century BC). AD until about the end of the 2nd century AD); the total duration of this cycle is thus about a thousand years. The second such cycle consists of a wave of differentiation that lasted about five centuries (from the beginning of the 3rd century AD to the end of the 7th century AD) and a wave of integration that lasted about six centuries (from the beginning of the 8th century to the end of the 13th century). .); the total duration of this second cycle is about one thousand one hundred years. Finally, the third cycle consists of a wave of differentiation that lasted about five centuries (from the beginning of the 14th century to the end of the 18th century) and a wave of integration, which has not yet ended and in the midst of which we now live (from the beginning of the 19th century). A full description of these waves and the rationale for the given dates will be given below. It is important to emphasize that the cycles identified in this way generally correspond to the three most important periods of world history. The first cycle (VIII century BC - II century AD) basically corresponds to the Antique period, and the turn of the IV - III centuries. BC, separating the two waves of this cycle, separates the heyday of ancient Greece from the era of the Hellenistic states and the dominance of Rome. The second cycle (3rd century AD - XIII century AD) generally corresponds to the period of the decline of Rome and the Middle Ages, and the turn of the 7th - 8th centuries. AD, separating the two waves of this cycle, separates the era of the Early Middle Ages from the era of the Mature and Late Middle Ages. The third cycle (from the XIV century) corresponds to the Renaissance and the New Age, and the turn of the XVII - XIX centuries. separates the pre-industrial and industrial eras. It is even more interesting that the middle of each wave (for the first cycle it is the 5th century BC and the 1st century BC. - XVI and the turn of the XX - XXI centuries. ) almost exactly coincides either with the middle of the next millennium, or with the change of millennia, which are emphasized as turning points by the historians cited at the beginning of this chapter. The middle of each wave, representing its peak, apotheosis, is always marked, as will be shown below, by a high concentration of important turning points.

It is essential that the prerequisites for the existence of global cycles of differentiation - integration can also be found, for example, in the dynamics of such an important indicator as the change in the population of the Earth. According to the data given, for example, in the works of McEvedy and Jones [McEvedy, Jones, 1978, p. 342; Kapitsa, 1996, p. 64], a significant slowdown in growth or even a decrease in the world population took place in the epochs of about 900 - 700 years. BC, about 200 - 500 years. AD and about 1300 - 1400 years. It is easy to see that these epochs coincide with the transition from one global cycle of differentiation-integration to another. At the same time, the beginning of the next wave of differentiation is associated with a slowdown in population growth, while the waves of integration correspond to its stable rapid growth. Here we do not discuss the question to what extent the beginning of a new global cycle is caused by a slowdown in world population growth, we only note that the reasons for this slowdown can be different - from the demographic processes in the Roman and Han empires at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. before the plague in Europe and Asia in 1300-1400. And yet, noticeable changes in the dynamics of the population of the Earth generally correlate well with the change in global cycles of differentiation - integration.

There is another important correlation - between global climate change and the considered cycles of differentiation - integration. The fact is that the well-known long-term cooling of the last three millennia occurred in the periods of the middle of the 1st millennium BC, the middle of the 1st millennium AD. and the middle of the II millennium AD; at the turn of the millennium, on the contrary, noticeable warming occurred (see, for example: (Klimenko, 1997: 165, 169)). The decrease in the average annual temperature in the Northern Hemisphere in the 1st millennium BC. was called the “cooling of the Iron Age”, and the same decrease in the average annual temperature in the middle of the 2nd millennium AD. called the Little Ice Age. When comparing these global climatic cycles with cycles of differentiation - integration, it is found that global cooling falls approximately in the middle of the corresponding waves of differentiation, and global warmings - in the middle of the corresponding waves of integration. It seems that the presence of such a correlation should not lead to the conclusion that cooling is the direct cause of the onset of a new cycle, and the change of the wave of differentiation to the wave of integration is directly caused by warming. Of course, prolonged cold snaps significantly affect the economic life of man and society, causing crisis phenomena and stimulating the search for a new mode of production, new forms of economic, social and political organization. However, the fact that prolonged cooling each time occurs not at the beginning, but at the middle of the wave of differentiation, indicates that the factors of transition to a new cycle of global development are primarily socio-historical, and not purely natural. In this regard, it can be assumed that global climate change every time contributes to the development and spread of shifts that have already begun in society, i.e. make these shifts truly global rather than purely local. At the same time, prolonged cooling contributes to the further intensification of the already begun search for new technologies and new forms of socio-political organization, and prolonged warming contributes to the temporary stabilization of the established forms of economy within the emerging world empires. Thus, both demographic and climatic factors most likely play a significant, but not exclusive, role in the formation of global cycles of differentiation and integration.

Why are the cycles of differentiation-integration not only related to globalization, but also represent nothing more than major turns of its development? A full answer to this question will be given after an analysis of the empirical material in this and the next chapter; here we confine ourselves to pointing out that, as a result of each of these cycles, the international economic and political system becomes larger, more general, and more internally connected. Indeed, as a result of the first such cycle (the wave of differentiation of the 8th - 4th centuries BC, the wave of integration of the 3rd century BC - II century AD), not only the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but partly China and India. As a result of the second cycle (III - XIII centuries AD), North-Western Europe, Russia (Russia), Central Asia were also included in the emerging international system; the apotheosis of this cycle was the formation in the XIII century. the vast Mongol Empire, which not only included Central Asia, China, Russia, Transcaucasia, but also maintained close trade and political ties with the city-states of Italy, and through them with all of Western Europe. Finally, during the third cycle (since the 14th century), the formation of the international economic and political system went far beyond the borders of Eurasia, including the New World, Africa, Australia and embracing the whole world. However, the internal connectivity of this system is still far from the limit; in fact, only since the end of the 20th century. it begins to acquire internal coherence - technological, informational, economic and political. Moreover, most of Africa, a significant part of the post-Soviet space and some other regions still actually “fall out” from this system. Therefore, the prospects for the long-term development of globalization still exist, and the modern era (the beginning of the 21st century) is by no means its finale. However, the development of globalization itself, as follows from global history, is non-linear; therefore, after a certain period of time, the emergence of new structural aspects of globalization is quite possible.

As an illustration of the manifestation of waves of differentiation and waves of integration in the dynamics of state-political formations, let us consider purely approximate data on the change in the number of known state formations in periods spaced approximately 500 years apart and coinciding with the middle of the corresponding waves of differentiation and integration: about 500 BC. BC, around the beginning of our era (“O” AD), around 500 AD, around 1000, around 1500 and around 2000. At the same time, pre-state (tribal etc.) formations are not taken into account here, since the peoples in which the tribal organization dominates are at the pre-civilizational stage of development, and their role in the development of globalization is significantly different from that of peoples who have reached civilization. This approach gives a picture of a wave-like change in the number of state-political formations and unions. So, around 500 BC. (the peak of the wave of differentiation), the number of state formations in the ancient world, due to the predominance of the polis organization in the Mediterranean, was at least 150–200. This is evidenced by at least the fact that Aristotle and his students compiled reviews of the political system of 158 states, mainly ancient Greek policies [World History, 1956, p. 90]. It should also not be forgotten that in this era (the middle of the 1st millennium BC) the number of independent states and principalities in China reached several dozen, the same applies to India in the era under consideration.

By the beginning of our era (the peak of the wave of integration), the number of states dropped sharply, primarily due to the absorption of most of them by the Roman power in the Mediterranean, the Han Empire in China, the Kushan Empire in Central Asia and India. As a result, the number of state formations in the then civilized world did not exceed 50 - 60. A new turning point occurred in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. (about 500 AD, the peak of the wave of differentiation) as a result of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the formation of many "barbarian kingdoms" on its territory, as well as the collapse of the Gupta power in India and the formation of many small independent states in its place [ World History, 1957, p. 63, 75 - 78]. Number of state formations after 500 AD increased several times and amounted to at least 100 - 120. By 900-1000. AD the number of state entities again significantly decreased, amounting to no more than 50-60 due to the formation of the Arab Caliphate (despite 1 of its disintegration into separate emirates and sultanates, they were all part of the Abbasid Caliphate and were largely connected by close economic, cultural and political relations) , the expansion of Byzantium, the existence of the Tang Empire and the Song Empire that succeeded it in China, as well as the dominance of Franco. tion in Western Europe, the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" in Central Europe and Kievan Rus in Eastern Europe. By 1500, the number of states in the then civilized world increased again and amounted to at least 100-120 state formations (only in Italy there were several dozen city-states). Finally, in the midst of a new wave of integration that began in the 19th century, the real, not the nominal! the number of state socio-political formations again decreased. Already in 1900, 13 empires (Japanese, Chinese, Russian, British, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Ottoman, Belgian) controlled the vast majority of the territory and population of the Earth [Lipets, 2002, p. II]. Despite the fact that now, in the early 2000s, the number of states formally reaches about 200, the real number of state-political entities is much less: Considering that in many cases such regional unions as the European Union act as subjects of political and economic relations union (EU), NAFTA, MERCOSUR, ASEAN, groups of states that have concluded various agreements within the CIS, etc. that China and India are strong state formations and major powers, then the number of real subjects of international economic and political relations in the modern world will decrease to 50 - 60. So, despite the relativity and conventionality of such quantitative estimates, they to some extent allow us to illustrate presence of global waves of differentiation and integration.

A very important question is why the waves of globalization are not only waves of integration (which is obvious), but also waves of differentiation, which include the dominance of decentralization processes, the collapse of former centralized empires, and the formation of polycentricity? The fact is that the expansion of the international intercivilizational system, the expansion of the Oikumene, as historical analysis shows, basically coincides with the waves (epochs) of differentiation. Indeed, the era of the "axial time" (VIII-III centuries BC), coinciding with the wave of differentiation of the first cycle, for the first time included in the Ocumene not only almost the entire Mediterranean, but also Iran, China, India. In the era of differentiation of the second cycle (III-VII centuries AD), thanks to the Great Migration of Peoples, many peoples of Asia and Europe (including Germanic and Slavic tribes) were included in the emerging international inter-civilizational system. In the era of differentiation of the third cycle (XIV - XVIII centuries), North and South America, Australia, Tropical and South Africa began to be included in this system for the first time. In essence, the epochs of differentiation create the basis for the involvement of new peoples and regions in the international system of economic, political and cultural ties and thus for the "expansion of the world", for the development of global processes. Thus, the geographical and ethnic expansion of the emerging international system takes place mainly in the era of differentiation. and the increase in its internal coherence - mainly in the era of integration. Speaking about the cycles of differentiation - integration, consisting of waves of differentiation (about 500 years) and waves of integration (about 500-600 years), which are approximately equal in duration, it should be borne in mind that, of course, we are talking about the dominant in this era (wave) processes. The wave of differentiation also includes integration processes, but the processes of division of the world community into separate states and civilizations still dominate, leading to the growth of political, economic, and cultural diversity. In the same way, the wave of integration also includes the processes of differentiation, but the processes of political, economic, cultural integration predominate, the processes of universalization and the spread of various innovations that relatively easily overcome various borders and barriers. Such a division in time of dominating mutually complementary tendencies has rather deep foundations and no less profound meaning, which will be considered below. Here we dwell briefly on the hypothesis, which will be discussed and tested on the actual material | the next chapters.

The essence of this hypothesis is as follows. The alternation of extended historical waves of differentiation and integration is associated with the periodic emergence of a new mode of production that dominates in a given global historical cycle, as well as new forms of social political organization associated with this mode of production. In each cycle of differentiation-integration, there is the emergence, development, spread and exhaustion of a certain mode of production and the socio-political forms associated with it: during the wave of differentiation, not a new mode of production and new forms of socio-political organization are born and develop initially on a local scale, but in the course of the next wave of integration, this method and these forms get the maximum (essentially global) distribution up to their exhaustion and degradation. (Looking ahead, we note that for the first global cycle considered below, this mode of production is the ancient method, for the second cycle - the feudal-serf (state-serf) and for the third cycle - the capitalist mode of production). At the same time, we note right away that the question of “primary” or “secondary” forms of economic, social and political life is not here: we are talking about their correspondence to each other, and not about one-sided determination. In the course of the historical epoch (wave) of differentiation, a new mode of production arises and forms along with the corresponding social and political organization, which at the end of this epoch gradually begins to supplant the former mode(s) of production and the former forms of social and political organization. The main point of the hypothesis under discussion is that a new mode of production and new forms of sociality can arise only in a situation of crisis associated with the disintegration of former forms, and in a situation of political polycentrism generated by the differentiation of former integrated political associations - global empires or universal states. In other words, for the emergence of something new, diversity is always necessary, which arises in the era of differentiation.

At the same time, having arisen and formed, a new mode of production and new forms of socio-political organization tend to expand, expand and spread. For such a spread, the most effective is the integration of various political and economic formations, ethnic groups and civilizations, accompanied by cultural and social integration. Such integration, as a rule, is achieved through the formation of several large "super-empires" or "universal states", within and between which there is a rapid spread of the mode of production formed during the previous era of differentiation and the corresponding structures of political and social organization. It is the spread of these new economic, political, social forms that is the "hidden spring" of the formation and growth of great empires and universal states. However, as the possibilities for the development of these forms are exhausted within the great empires, a deep social and economic crisis begins, which eventually leads to their fall under blows from outside and from within. Such a brief scheme must be tested against empirical historical material, which is done in the following chapters. Of course, the limited volume of this work does not allow us to present all the arguments and facts that testify in favor of the considered scheme. However, the material presented below appears to be generally in favor of it.

In the last third of the 20th century, world history did not figure in the list of "new scientific" (equipped with advanced social theories) historical subdisciplines and was still hidden in the shadow of universalist concepts developed in the philosophy of history and macrosociology. World history was based on the ideas of universality, linearity, cyclicality, stages, progress, etc. (Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Herbert Wells, Pitirim Sorokin, Filmer Northrop, Karl Jaspers, Alfred Kroeber, Erich Voegelin and others). In the last decades of the 20th century, macrosociological concepts were also actively used, offering various models for the transition from a traditional society to a modern one. Although since the late 1960s there has been, relatively speaking, a “new scientific” world history, very few historians, among them William McNeill and Leften Stavrianos, have written world history in a really different way.

At the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, “general history” in its significant part is undergoing a radical transformation. Within its boundaries, against the backdrop of a lingering tradition, new - more noticeable - directions have established themselves, which are the result of critical and postmodernist revolutions in philosophy (postcolonial criticism, first of all) and are based on a number of concepts and approaches developed during the anthropological, linguistic and cultural turns. .

This is, firstly, a global and transnational history, offering ways to construct a universal non-Eurocentric world. Secondly, world history, which arose in the course of rethinking the comparative history of civilizations, as a result of which the processes of interaction between world systems and local civilizations became the focus of study. Thirdly, international history, which studies the history of the formation and development of various international communities. With the necessary reservations, here we can include the methodologically retooled history of empires and the history of nations.

The victorious march of world history in all its forms is not only an undoubted reaction to the powerful social order presented by various social groups, including representatives of the “postcolonial world” itself (from nations and ethnic groups to carriers of modern and postmodern ideologies), but also the result of cognitive processes that awaken research interest. This makes us take a closer look at what “historical globalism” really is, how theoretical it is, and what is the methodological novelty of the “spatial turn” in historiography.

One of the main functions of geographical space in historical research is that it serves as a way to frame the subject of history, that is, to outline the boundaries of social interactions in past social reality and thereby transform into historical space. At the same time, the historian can proceed from his vision of space, can talk about the space constructed by the participants in social interaction, or can study the very process of constructing spatial formations in a particular period of the past.

In all cases when the territory allocated by the historian was not realized as a single one in the social reality that is the subject of his research, we are dealing with a historical space given "from the outside", that is, constructed observing regardless of the perceptions of historical actors.

A radical rethinking of the historical space was carried out in his epoch-making works by Fernand Braudel, who proposed to consider historical areas as integral formations, whose life was determined by a single geo-demographic environment, regardless of the boundaries of political formations. This marked the beginning of a vast history of extra-state space.

Somewhat later, researchers discovered another resource and focused on studying what people thought about their own and other people's space, how they saw certain geographic areas, how they constructed territorial integrity and what meanings they endowed with. Such studies of historical space include works on the history of the formation of geohistorical (geopolitical) constructs, such as, for example, "India", "Eastern Europe", "Balkans", "Caucasus", "Wild West", etc. Interpretation is connected with the formation of the symbolic universe of the culture system: the mystical components of tradition, the signs of the "small motherland", the design of the habitat and the basic foundations of national identity. Works on cultural anthropology, in which the category of “space” is analyzed, and studies of the history of “mental maps” with such popular concepts at the turn of the century as “borderland”, “border”, “contact zone”, “ middleness", "orientalism" (and other "isms" formed by analogy).

With regard to today's historical science, we are talking about a new stage of analytical reflection, the main task of which is to create a fundamentally different global (transnational) space, segmented, dispersed, and most importantly - not (Euro) centered.

In studies that today, although with great reservations, but still can be combined under the heading "world history", there is a radical re-historicization of the images of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the provincialization of "Europe", the destruction of such generalized concepts as "the third world" , "periphery", "West" or "East". The categories "Eurasia", "Latin America", "Pacific Region", "Atlantic World" (but not in the Brodelian sense) begin to prevail over the concepts associated with "Greenwich Mean Time" and "Western World". At the same time, a large number of separate historical and territorial objects appear, the existence of which in the past and present of mankind is “discovered” or rediscovered. The subject of study is aspects of the past that are relevant to the modern world, but new to historians: migrations, the phenomena of multilingualism and multiculturalism, various transcultural processes, “the world in fragments”. Along the way, the deconstruction of the former compendium of national myths is also being carried out.

Using the expression of M.V. Tlostanova, who characterized globalization as a “global exodus of the third world into the first”, we note that a similar “exodus” is traced both in social thought and in historical works oriented towards global studies.

In itself, global studies, the discipline under which world, global, transnational and other history are located, is an interdisciplinary direction. At the same time, the labels “global”, “world”, “interethnic” history, as well as their analytical baggage, are sometimes opposed to each other, sometimes perceived in tandem. The term "global history" is more popular among philosophers and sociologists, "while most historians prefer the concepts of "general" or "world" history.

The ideological, and in many ways ideological, basis of the most notable new trends in world history is “postcolonial criticism”. I note, however, that post-colonial criticism, which proposed a radical reconstruction of the image of world history, including the destruction of the boundaries between general history, Oriental studies and ethnography, is not such an innovation. It is also from the last century. Its recognized gurus (social philosopher, one of the theorists and ideological inspirers of the New Left movement, Franz Fanon, philosopher Leopoldo Cea, literary critic and theorist Edward V. Said) created their seminal works in middle 1900s. In the 2000s, books were written about them.

And most importantly, there remains an important question formulated by I.N. Ionov: "What is globalization - a reality or an ideologeme, what is global studies or post-colonial criticism - a scientific direction or a form of manipulation of public consciousness?" .

In this section you can get acquainted with the materials of our conferences

Regional scientific and methodological conference for students, graduate students, young scientists (Dneprodzerzhinsk, February 20-21, 2013)

IV International Scientific and Practical Conference of Young Scientists and Students (Dnepropetrovsk, March 15-16, 2013)

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All-Ukrainian scientific and practical conference "Scientific and methodological approaches to teaching management disciplines in the context of labor market requirements" (Dnepropetrovsk, April 11-12, 2013)

VI All-Ukrainian scientific and methodological conference "Eastern Slavs: history, language, culture, translation" (Dneprodzerzhinsk, April 17-18, 2013)

All-Ukrainian scientific and practical conference "Actual problems of teaching foreign languages ​​for professional communication" (Dnepropetrovsk, June 7-8, 2013)

GLOBAL HISTORY

A. V. Krynskaya, L. I. Krynskaya

Experts express different opinions when interpreting global processes, from the point of view of their origin, development and understanding.

Some authors consider the emergence of global studies as a process that began in the late 60s - early 1970s of the XX century, when for the first time, almost simultaneously in different countries, they first started talking about global threats to all mankind.

This period of time is characterized by the emergence of the need to move along with the differentiation of scientific knowledge to the integration of theoretical and practical knowledge aimed at studying new phenomena, which were distinguished by their scale, integrity and complex system of relationships both within the global problems themselves and in their connection with economic, social, political spheres.

Some experts use the term "global history" in relation to the last period of the existence of our civilization, but the duration of these phases is different for different authors.

Various criteria for classifying stages, phases, periods of global history are used. Classifications are usually based on the Scaligerian version of history.

New approaches, a fundamentally different vision of old problems, can change or correct established ideas and open up opportunities for solving old and new problems.

A.N. Chumakov, Doctor of Philology, believes that global studies initially began to take shape as a fundamentally new scientific direction, where integration processes came to the fore, and as a sphere of social practice covering international politics, economics and even ideology. He views globalization as a timeless process that links the past, present and future. Considering that from the point of view of the dynamics of development, the commonly used approach to presenting historical processes as a change in the states of society: savagery - barbarism - civilization is not suitable, suggesting that the process of globalization be considered from the point of view of the scale of events, changes in worldview, understanding?

E.A. Azroyants, Doctor of Economics, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, believes that it is impossible to study the problems of globalization without knowing its subject and the limit of the process, and history allows us to imagine the completeness and scale of the process, its dynamic integrity.

Global history is a manifestation of the interconnectedness, mutual influence, synchronization and coherence of processes and events in various parts of the world (for all their multidirectionality and inclusion in a different historical, sociocultural context).

The study of world civilizations as major stages in the development of mankind as a single planetary system was carried out by many scientists: Francois Guizot, A.L. Metlinsky, G.T. Boklya, N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. Sorokin and others.

Researchers often use differentiation-integration cycles as the basis for structuring historical events.

J.Modelsky, using the example of the development of cities in the Ancient World, showed the "pulsating", undulating nature of historical processes. He singled out the alternation of two phases of centralization, when the central zones of the world-system are formed, and phases of decentralization, when the periphery becomes dominant. There is a constant change of places in the "center - periphery" system, which are important mechanisms for the development of globalization.

E.A. Azroyants conducts an interesting analysis and notes that the "history of global relations" begins with the first contacts of neighbors (kinds, tribes, ethnic groups), proceeding in various forms of war and peace, exchange, migration of peoples. “History is a product (trace) of human efforts, a manifested (actualized) part of the process of self-organization of the Megasociety as an organism, reflecting the compromises found in the eternal overcoming of its two principles: external (environment) and internal (inner world of a person). That is why it is impossible to separate the "physics" of the external world from the "metaphysics" of the inner world of man.

In the historical process, two "roads" leading to order should be distinguished. The first is when the historical space becomes structurally more complex and acquires a new quality (the path of development). The second is the simplification of the structure and the loss of a certain quality (the path of degradation).

Many researchers associate the waves of historical global cycles of differentiation and integration with changes in the population of our world, climate, solar activity cycles, Earth precession cycles, and other factors.

E.A. Azroyants concludes that solar activity, or rather its cyclical fluctuations, is a kind of core for synchronizing the entire historical process. To rise to a new qualitative level, the cycle must be completed. This is necessary but not sufficient. Since the end of the cycle is associated with the chaotization of the structure and its disintegration, and there are different “roads” in this bifurcation band, much, in particular, depends on the correct human choice. The destructive development option allows the destruction of the process at any stage and phase of the cycle.

From the above analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn: there is no consensus on the concept of global processes and global history. The history of human development can be represented as a series of cycles, phases of differentiation and integration of processes, there is no consensus on the number and duration of cycles, a number of authors distribute these cycles evenly, and some consider contracting cycles.

We adhere to the opinion expressed in a number of works, for example. These works prove that the Scaligerian version of history imperceptibly "fabricated" a thousand-year chronological shift, evidence of this is given. She shifted the date of Jesus' birth from the 11th century to the 1st century. All events from the 10th to the 13th century have been decomposed and stretched out by falsifying historians for several thousand years.

G.V. Nosovskiy and A.T. Fomenko in their book outlined the results of many years of scientific research, which was carried out under the guidance of Academician A.T. Fomenko by a group of mathematicians of Moscow State University. The authors talk about a new scientific direction - the reconstruction of the historical chronology of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages.

The version of the chronology of antiquity accepted today was formed in the XIV-XVI centuries and was completed in general terms by well-known medieval historians-chronologists I. Scaliger (1540-1609) and D. Petavius ​​(1583-1652). However, this version, according to the authors, is erroneous.

The new concept of chronology is based on the analysis of historical sources using the methods of modern mathematics and extensive computer calculations. Three main chronological shifts have been discovered, the transfer of many astronomical phenomena.

This fact is confirmed by many researchers. In addition, Sharashov V.E. not only confirms the chronological shift, but also provides an explanation for these processes. We are talking about phenomena that took place in our world, called "remation", i.e. stop in the development of the world, its "freezing". An analysis of the disappearance of previous civilizations shows that the reasons were not only natural, cosmic cataclysms, for example, a meteorite fall, but apparently the reason is the choice of the development path, i.e. the reason is in the failure to fulfill, in the failure to solve the tasks set before humanity.

In our opinion, there are certain laws that determine the frequency of checking the implementation of the human development program and the cycles of these checks, which are carried out by the Earth according to the established algorithm.

We fully agree with the opinion of E.A. Azroyants, who pays attention to the bifurcation states in which there is a change in goals and development programs. Each historical cycle is characterized by its "core" (ideal goal, program) and technical shell ("civilizational muscles"). From our point of view, the work of programs is subject to general laws that apply to the whole variety of systems, including social, economic, the only difference is that a person, as a co-creator, can also create and structure programs himself. Another question is whether they contradict the higher programs, what goals he sets and how he implements them, whether they are aimed at creation or destruction.

Our world is software. And in accordance with this, as E.A. Azroyants and others, the program has a beginning and an end. We live in the period of the end of the macrocycle program of 12 million years and the end of the microprogram of 12 thousand years. Moreover, the program of 12 thousand years was corrected several times, for example, the World Flood, and stopped. The last stable time period is 1100 years. According to the existing chronology, these are:

1st period - 900 -1100 years.

2nd period - 1200 - 1800

3rd period 1900 - 2000

Now we are living in a transitional period, which can be considered, as many authors believe, a period of bifurcation or chaos, or they use the term "system imbalance", which can be divided into phases: 1988-2000; 2000-2003; 2003-2012.

It is impossible to understand the current stage of development of the world community if you do not know the history of the development of mankind, the goals of its development, the meaning of human existence.

The further fate of our civilization depends on whether humanity will be able to change the worldview, set the right goals, develop and implement creative programs for further development.

Literature:

1. Azroyants E.A. Inhalations and exhalations of history // Materials of the permanent interdisciplinary seminar of the Club of Scientists "Global World". - M .: "Publishing House" NEW VEK ". Institute of Microeconomics, 2002. - Issue. 10. - 90 p.

2. Nosovsky G.V., Fomenko A.T. Russia and Rome. Do we understand the history of Europe and Asia correctly? [In 5 books]. - M .: LLC "Publishing house Olimp": LLC "Publishing house AST", 2002. - 539, p.

3. Pantin V.I. Cycles and waves of global history. Globalization in the historical dimension. - M., 2003. - 276 p.

4. Sharashov V.E., Lias. Knights with a raised visor. - O .: Autograph, 2004. - 588 p.