Occidentology: Towards russian sovereign science

[الزمزوم]

18.09.2024
Aleksandr Dugin
Introduction


Occidentology is a new concept that must be taken into account in the current situation of escalation of the conflict between Russia and NATO countries due to the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, especially now that the conflict has moved from a political one to gradually and irreversibly turning into a clash of civilizations. Russia's political leaders have declared the country to be an independent “civilization-state” [1] or “Russian World” [2]. Such statements have important consequences for the whole of Russian humanities and education, as it establishes a new paradigm for the historical self-awareness of Russian society, as well as for our understanding of Western civilization and other non-Western peoples and cultures


Presidential Decree No. 809 “On Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Moral and Spiritual Values” unambiguously states that our orientation should be directed towards the code of the Russian worldview, which is the foundation of our “traditional values” [3]. In fact, it constitutes the fundamental semantic framework of the new state and public worldview of Russia, the need for which directly follows from the growing confrontation with the West in the broadest sense of a clash between different civilizations


This orientation of Russia towards tradition and strengthening of identity is developed and continued in the Presidential Decree of Russia No. 314 “On Approval of the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Sphere of Historical Education”, which directly states that “Russia is a great country with a long history, a state-civilization that united the Russian peoples and many other peoples of Eurasia into a single cultural and historical community and made an enormous contribution to the development of the world… The self-awareness of Russian society is based on traditional spiritual, moral, cultural and historical values ​​that have been formed and developed throughout the history of Russia, the preservation and protection of which is a prerequisite for the harmonious development of the country and its multinational people, being an integral component of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation” (Section II, 5) [4]


In other words, the recognition that Russia is a state-civilization and the promotion of a state policy affirming our knowledge of history and the protection of traditional values ​​as the foundations of the state make it necessary to reconsider the attitude that we have had towards Western civilization and culture in recent decades and perhaps centuries.


The Particular Russian Path: The Pros and Cons


All of the above brings us back to the discussion that took place in the 19th century between Slavophiles and Westernists and later among Russian Eurasians who continued the criticisms of the Slavophiles. The Slavophiles maintained that Russia was not an Eastern Slavic civilization, but a particular historical and cultural type of Byzantine-Orthodox civilization [5]. The Eurasianists later complemented these ideas by emphasizing the positive contributions made by other Eurasian peoples to the richness and identity of this Russian civilization. Concepts such as “Russia-Eurasia”, “world-state” or “continent-state” are synonymous with terms such as “civilization-state” or “Russian World”


These ideas were rejected by Russian Westernists, whether liberal or social-democratic, who insisted that Russia was part of Western European civilization and was not a separate, independent civilization. Therefore, Russia’s task was to copy all the advances of the West in matters such as politics, culture, science, society, economy and technology. Russian Westernists were supporters of the Enlightenment and the science of the New Times, accepted the theory of linear progress and agreed that the stages of development followed by the West were universal, as well as the fact that Western values ​​should be learned and accepted by all peoples and societies. Such ideas excluded any question about Russia’s identity and, on the contrary, depicted it as a backward and peripheral society subject to modernization and Westernization
At the same time, Russian Westernists, who were already divided between social democrats and liberals in the 19th century, had different ideas about the future of Russia. The former believed that the future was the creation of a socialist society, while the latter advocated the triumph of a capitalist society. However, both shared an unshakable belief in the universality of the path followed by Western Europe and therefore viewed traditional values ​​and the original identity of Russia as an obstacle to the development of our country


During the Soviet era, our society was dominated by Marxist ideology, inherited from the social democratic and communist version of Westernism. However, the fierce confrontation with the capitalist world and the conditions imposed against us during the Cold War, which began in 1947, led to the Soviet ideology accepting certain elements of the civilizational approach advocated by the Slavophiles and Eurasianists, although these ideas were never officially recognized. The Eurasianists themselves objectively observed this transformation of Marxism in Soviet Russia, where there was a gradual return – especially during Stalin’s rule – to imperial geopolitics and, in part, to traditional values. But the state ideology never recognized the importance of this civilizational approach and the Soviet leaders continued to insist on the international (and indeed Western-universalist) nature of socialism and communism, refusing to recognize the Russian aspect of “Soviet civilization.” However, the USSR developed a scientific system critical of bourgeois society that allowed it to establish a certain distance from the ideological codes of Western civilization in its liberal version, which dominated in the United States and Europe after the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. But at the same time, Russia’s historical trajectory was understood exclusively in class terms, which distorted the study of Russian history beyond recognition, reducing it to an unviable Western scheme. Even so, Soviet social sciences maintained a certain distance from the ideology of liberalism that dominated in the West, although they shared the postulates of progress, the Enlightenment and sympathized with the New Times, recognizing the historical necessity of capitalism and the bourgeois system, but only as prerequisites for proletarian revolutions and the construction of socialism


However, this distancing was completely abolished with the collapse of the USSR and the rejection of Soviet ideology. But this time it was the paradigm spread by Western liberalism that triumphed in the social sciences, and it is precisely this ideology that has been maintained in this field within the Russian Federation to this day. Much of this was due to the very push given to it by the state during the 1990s, when the thesis that Russia was part of Western civilization – but not in its socialist, but in its liberal-capitalist version – became a dogma. If during the perestroika era the theory of convergence was promoted, according to which the Soviet leaders hoped that rapprochement with the West and the bourgeois world would lead to the fusion of socialism with capitalism and the elimination of zones of influence, thus eliminating the risks of direct confrontation, then after 1991, with the complete rejection of socialism, the Russian Federation accepted the principles of bourgeois democracy and market economy. It was then that a direct transition to liberalism in the social sciences began, and Western epistemes began to be copied in all spheres of the humanities: philosophy, history, economics, psychology, etc. Some humanities – such as sociology, political science, cultural studies, etc. – were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s strictly following Western canons


Thus, both directly (under liberal Westernism) and indirectly (under the Communists) social sciences in Russia over the past 100 years have been constantly dominated by Western ideas about Russian society, state, and culture. Both projects saw the goal of Russia catching up (the liberals) or surpassing (the Communists) the West by uncritically accepting Western attitudes, principles, codes, and epistemes. On the other hand, while the Communists were critical of the “bourgeois sciences,” the liberals fully embraced them




The Problem of Transitology


In the 1990s, Russian Westernists adopted the paradigm of “transitology.” According to this perspective, Russia has a single goal: to get rid of the remaining remnants of past eras (both the Soviet world and the monarchical-Orthodox structures) and to dissolve into a global civilization whose center would be the contemporary West. Russian humanists who advocated transitology were to help this transition take place in every possible way, criticizing all tendencies that deviated from this goal and actively contributing to the modernization (Westernization) of the social sciences


Western theories, concepts, criteria, values, methodologies and practices were taken as our model both in content and form (hence the acceptance of the Bologna system, the imposition of the USE in schools, projects and the competency-based approach in education). The metrics of science were completely reorganized to fit Western standards, and the degree of “scientificity” was measured by whether works, research, texts, educational programs, scientific articles and monographs conformed to modern Western standards and citation indexes. In other words, only what corresponded to the paradigm of transitology, i.e., the introduction of liberal paradigms, was considered and recognized as “scientific,” while any form of anti-liberal slogan was criticized. This remains the basis of the evaluation system in the field of humanities


The Trap of Western-Centric Universalism


This approach, which has been dominant for the past 33 years (although we could extend this timeline to a century, taking into account Soviet internationalism and the covert Westernism that existed before), is totally unacceptable in the current conditions of the Special Military Operation and the direct clash between two distinct civilizations such as Russia and the modern ultra-liberal and globalist West. In the speech delivered by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on September 30, 2022, when he signed the agreement on the incorporation of the regions of the RPN, LPL, Zaporozhye and Kherson into Russia, he called Western society “satanic” [5]: “The dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of Western countries themselves. They defiantly promote the complete denial of man, the subversion of faith and traditional values, as well as the suppression of freedom, which have gradually acquired the characteristics of a religion, of open Satanism <...>. For them, our thought and philosophy is a direct threat, that is why they attack our philosophers. Our culture and art are a danger to them, that is why they try to ban them. Our development and prosperity are also a threat to them: competition is increasing. They do not need Russia, but we do. I want to remind you that the claims to world domination in the past have been crushed more than once by the courage and steadfastness of our people. Russia will always be Russia” [6]


Moreover, at a meeting of the Valdai Club in October 2022, the President of the Russian Federation said: “It is no coincidence that the West claims that its culture and worldview are universal. If they do not say so directly – although they often say so directly too – then they do so indirectly, behaving in a certain way and insisting that by their way of life and political system it must be followed by all peoples that make up the international community unconditionally” [7]


The shift in Russian consciousness towards seeing itself as a distinctive state-civilization and its refusal to accept Western culture and worldview as universal principles brings us back to the Slavophil-Eurasian paradigm, which was rejected a century ago, and to the idea that Western civilization is only one of the possible paths for development. Russia must seek its own path based on traditional values, the meanings and foundations of its history, where the axis of all this is the Russian people together with the brotherly peoples of Russia-Eurasia, who have created a unique spirit. It is precisely here that we can speak of Occidentalology


Definition of Occidentalology


It is quite obvious that the civilizing turn that Russian policy has taken cannot be achieved as long as the universality of Western civilization is defended and the foundations and principles of that civilization are tolerated uncritically. Consequently, it is necessary to radically reconsider the attitude we have towards the West in general and, above all, towards its paradigms in the field of social sciences. We can no longer accept them as an article of faith without first making a careful and critical study of them, and even less without correlating them with our traditional values ​​and the imperatives of our historical enlightenment. Western civilization is not only not universal, but in its present state it is destructive and toxic, to the point of being considered “satanic.” Hence the need for Occidentalology and the clarification of its meaning


Occidentalology is a paradigm that studies Western culture and humanities, rejecting the claims of Western science and culture to be universal, the ultimate truth, and also the normative criteria developed by this paradigm that the West actively tries to impose on the rest of humanity as if it were a free choice


In part, this attitude resembles that of the Soviet social sciences towards bourgeois disciplines and theories, which should only be studied and taught after being subjected to deep criticism. The basis of this criticism was Soviet Marxism, which had its own criteria, methods and principles. But unlike the Soviet model of criticism, Occidentalology makes much more radical claims against the West, refusing to recognize not only Western civilization in its liberal-capitalist version, but also rejecting the anti-Christian principles on which the New Times were built, as well as the attitudes and dogmas of Western European Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) in its early stages of development. Russia as a civilization has a completely different foundation and principle of development that can only be correctly understood and described in the context of the paradigm of the Russian world and paying attention to our traditional values


Ethnocentrism as a phenomenon


Westernology begins with the general observation that ethnocentrism is a natural occurrence in any society [8]. This is a principle accepted by anthropology and sociology and means that any group and collective, in accordance with the natural attitude of any society, always considers itself the center of the world [9]. Therefore, the claim of “universality” of the being and qualities of a given society, as well as its norms and principles (including ********, culture, religion, cuisine, clothing, rituals, domestic practices, etc.) is inherent both in small archaic tribes and in large Empires


The Greeks considered all the nations around them as “barbarians” and considered themselves “the center of creation.” The same idea is found in the Jews of the Old Testament as the basis of their religion and, in part, of Christianity. The Jews are the “chosen people” and other nations (“goyim”) are hardly considered human [10]. The Chinese Empire considered itself the center of the world, hence the name of China: Zhإچngguأ³ (ن¸*ه›½), “Center State” [11]. The ancient Sumero-Akkadian powers of Mesopotamia also had similar ideas, as did the world domination of the Achaemenids and later the rulers of Sassanian Iran. The idea of ​​Eternal Rome, and later of Moscow as the Third Rome, have similar origins. The same applies to small nations, each of which is convinced of the superiority of its own culture compared to any other neighboring tribe


Ethnocentrism requires no justification, as it reflects a natural desire to order the surrounding world, to give it a stable orientation and structure, to measure it by establishing basic oppositions such as “us/them”; “culture (understood as our culture, the culture of our society)/nature” (earth/sky), etc


Western culture is no exception. Like all other cultures, it is built on an ethnocentric attitude. At the same time, it is a refined and hypercritical culture in many of its aspects, noting and identifying the ethnocentrism that exists in the rest of societies and civilizations. However, Western culture is completely incapable of soberly recognizing that it also has “universal” pretensions that closely resemble this phenomenon. According to Western civilization, the ambition of any society to place itself at the center of the universe is a “naive illusion,” while, on the contrary, it is an irrefutable “scientific truth” that the West is the center of everything. That is, Western ethnocentrism is “scientific” and all other manifestations of it are nothing more than “myths,” often dangerous, that need to be “unmasked


The beginning of Western ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism has taken different forms at different stages of Western history. In archaic times it was a natural characteristic of Western European tribes and peoples, reflected in pagan beliefs and cultures. Since in religion God (or gods, in polytheism) are the centre of everything, it is natural that the sacred ancestors of European peoples were also considered gods. This was characteristic of the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Celts, Germans and other peoples such as the Slavs, Scythians, Iranians, etc


In classical Greece, ethnocentrism was raised to a higher level by philosophy, art and culture, acquiring a “rational” justification. From the time of Alexander the Great in the Hellenistic period, this process was complemented by the idea of ​​a universal kingdom that the Greeks took from the Achaemenids. This imperial-cultural synthesis was then inherited by the Romans, especially after the proclamation of Augustus. Christianity placed the Church at the centre of everything, inheriting the ideas of Jewish ethnocentrism (assumed from now on by the New Israel, the Christians), and later – after Constantine the Great – by the universalist ambitions of Hellenistic culture that spoke of the doctrine of the Empire and of the Katechon, the sacred King


It should be noted that until the division of the Christian world into the West (Catholicism) and the East (Orthodoxy), this ethnocentrism was unified and identical for all the peoples of the Mediterranean. In reality, all of this was known as the ecumene-خ؟ل¼°خ؛خ؟د…خ¼خ*خ½خ·, with Christian civilisation being the centre of the universe. This can be seen in the Byzantine geographical work of Cosmas Indicopleustes, written in the 6th century, where we find the ancient idea that ordinary people only inhabit the central (Mediterranean) areas of the world and that as one moves towards the margins of the ecumene, people take on an increasingly exotic appearance, gradually losing their human features. Ecumenical ethnocentrism is also a form of ethnocentrism


Russian ethnocentrism and bipolar ecumenism


It should be noted that to a certain extent – ​​and specifically until the final split of the Churches after the Great Schism of 1054 – the structure of ethnocentrism of Mediterranean civilization was common both to the West and to the barely emerging East Slavic civilization. But the decisive factor in all this was the adherence of the Russians to the Eastern Church, Orthodoxy and Byzantinism. And when this once unified ethnocentrism split into two poles – the Western and the Eastern – ancient Russia became un*****ocally identified with the Christian East


The roots of Russian ethnocentrism are in Byzantium and Constantinople, while the Western version of ecumenism and, consequently, its religious-political-cultural ethnocentrism are to be found in Western Europe where, after the usurpation of the Empire by Charlemagne, the two powers that shaped the Christian world, the spiritual (Rome, the Papacy) and the imperial (the successive Germanic emperors ranging from the Carolingians, through the Ottonians and Hohenstaufen, to the Habsburgs), were unified. Byzantium and the Orthodox East were considered by the West as its periphery, that is, an area inhabited by “schismatics” and “heretics” and, therefore, not fully Christian, and not even human beings (like the wonderful semi-humans of the peripheries of the world that were described by Herodotus or Pliny the Elder)


It is precisely here that Western civilization as we know it is born, at the moment when the split of Mediterranean ecumenical ethnocentrism occurs, and it is from here that we can begin to speak of Occidentalology. The earlier Christian ecumenism of East and West was a cultural continuum: both Constantinople (the New Rome) and Rome itself were the centre of the world and the Eastern Fathers were not opposed to the Westerners. Common to both were also the earlier ethnocentric ideas: the universal Mesopotamian kingdoms, the religious anthropology of the Old Testament and Hellenistic universalism. Later, however, we can speak of the formation of two Christian civilizations, each of which insists from then on that it alone is the centre of everything


From here we can speak of a bipolar ecumene, which, from the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1202-1204 and the establishment of the Latin Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, to the fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, led to the first pole becoming stronger, while the second became increasingly weaker over time


The historical turning point came when the Kingdom of Moscow took on the mission of becoming the centre of the Eastern Christian ecumene and the guardian of the tradition of Byzantine ethnocentrism. However, it was not until the moment when these two ecumene faced each other in a battle on a planetary scale – the Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire, then the Cold War and now the Special Military Operation – that this confrontation reached its zenith


****morphosis of the ethnocentrism of Western civilization
From the coronation of Ivan the Terrible, that is, from the moment when Russia adopted the ethnocentric version of Eastern Byzantine Christianity, to the confrontation between Russia and the West on a planetary scale, we must bear in mind that Western ethnocentrism went through several very important transformations


While at first the Western ecumene was a representative of a Greco-Roman Christian culture that had its own characteristics (Catholicism proper), the European Renaissance and Reformation significantly changed its structures and paradigms, profoundly influencing European self-awareness. Western Europe considered itself the centre of the world and humanity even in the Catholic Middle Ages, but new ideas – Renaissance humanism, Protestant individualism, rationalist philosophy and scientific materialism of the New Times – transformed Western European culture into something completely different. The West still considered itself the centre of the world, but now this premise was based on other principles. The ethnocentric “arguments” and their claims to universality were science, political secularism, claims to rationality and the fact that man, and not God, was at the centre of creation. Naturally, “man” was understood as the Western European man of the New Times. All other concepts and theories of humanism, secularism, civil society, democracy, etc., were based on him. The traditional medieval estates were relegated to the periphery and the bourgeoisie came to dominate everything


At the same time, the Europe of the New Times began a process of colonisation, asserting its ethnocentrism on a planetary scale and imposing its “superiority” on all other peoples of the Earth. The enslavement of entire peoples and the conquest of continents and entire civilisations was carried out under the banners of “progress” and “development”. The more developed societies had, in the opinion of the West, every reason to subjugate the less developed ones. This is how Western racism arose, perfectly reflected in the works of the British imperialist R. Kipling, who cynically called colonialism “the white man’s burden”


Rationalism, scientific inventions and technological discoveries, combined with the values ​​of the Enlightenment and the doctrine of progress, became the new content of European ethnocentrism in the colonial period. The West continued to place itself at the centre of the universe, but now under a completely different guise and justifying its universalism by means of different concepts


At the same time, the traditional version of Byzantine ecumenism continued to prevail in Russia. Orthodoxy became the defining principle of our identity and with it the heritage of that Christian civilisation that was a continuum with Mediterranean culture, which was once the common paradigm that linked us with the countries of Western Europe. From a certain point on, the West entered the New Age and took on new forms of ethnocentrism, while Russia remained, in general, faithful to the original civilizational core of the Christian ecumene, which the West gradually abandoned or modified until it became unrecognizable and even contrary to itself. Modern Europe replaced God with man; Faith and Revelation with reason and experiment; tradition with innovation; spirit with matter; eternity with time; permanence or decay (as expressed in scriptures and sacred traditions) with progress and development. Thus, Western culture found itself in opposition not only to Orthodoxy, to a certain extent embodied by Russia, which had inherited Greco-Roman civilization from Byzantium, but also against its own foundations. Hence the myths of the “dark Middle Ages” and the uncritical glorification of the New Age or Modernity


It was because of this that the traditionalism and conservatism of Russian society and politics appeared in the eyes of the West not only as a phenomenon attributable to “schismatics,” but also as the embodiment of backwardness, barbarism, and a dangerous threat to progress and development. If Russia had not had the means to defend itself from the West, it would have fallen victim, like other traditional societies, to aggressive colonization. But Russia resisted, not only militarily, but also culturally, remaining faithful to its Orthodox-Byzantine identity


In this way, another crucial element was added to the confrontation between the two ecumenical ethnocentrisms during the 18th century. The West embodied New Times and Modernity as a universal model, while Russia was rather on the defensive, maintaining the belief that only its path was truly universal and salvific, and this path consisted of loyalty to Orthodoxy and the traditional way of life, in particular, the sacred monarchy and class hierarchy, which generally remained important in Russia until the Revolution of 1917. The West embodied Modernity and Russia embodied tradition, the West represented secular materialism and Russia represented sacredness and spirit


Early versions of Occidentalology


From the moment when the West as a civilization fully assumed the paradigm of Modernity, the relationship between the West and Russia as distinct civilizations changed qualitatively. From then on, Occidentalism, especially since Peter the Great, became a principle of a part of the Russian elites, who gradually adopted the position that the Russian Empire is also a European power and is therefore destined to follow the same path as the countries of the West. The idea of ​​Moscow as the Third Rome was gradually erased (especially after the Russian ecclesiastical schism that pitted the defenders of the old and ancient piety, the Old Believers, against the reformers, with the former being pushed to the periphery) at the same time as the process of modernization/westernization of Russian society began. However, even though Russia began to succumb to the Western episteme during the 18th century, it continued to defend its political and military sovereignty, thus allowing the old Russian way of life to persist by inertia in many areas of life


In the 19th century, the Slavophiles clearly recognized this paradox and it is here that Occidentalology, which had not yet received that name, was born. The Slavophiles clearly formulated the principles of Russia's constant and unchanging identity as the heir of the Eastern Christian ecumene, including its ethnocentric position in the world, and exposed the arbitrariness of the claims to universalism of Western European civilization in the form of Modernity. Danilevsky formulated the doctrine of historical-cultural types according to which European civilization was in decline (in contrast, Orthodox civilization remained faithful to its Christian roots) and the Slavs – especially the Russians –, on the contrary, were entering an era of prosperity and revival of their civilizational core, preparing to fulfill its mission. According to this perspective, the entire history of Western Europe, or of the Romano-Germanic world (Danilevsky), is revealed as a local phenomenon that is incapable of claiming the totality of history for itself. What the West says about “truth,” “usefulness,” “development,” “progress,” “good,” “freedom,” “democracy,” etc., must be placed in a specific historical and geographical, i.e. “ethnic,” context and by no means taken as unconditionally certain and axiomatic. Western ethnocentrism is normal, but the underlying problem is that it has overstepped its normal boundaries and is therefore now aggressive, deceitful, petty, and sometimes insane, incapable of self-reflection and critical attitude toward itself


The Slavophiles and later the Eurasians laid the foundations of Occidentalology, which was centered on traditional Russian values. The West can and should be studied [13], but not as the ultimate truth, but as a particular civilization alongside other non-Western civilizations. And in the case of Russian science and public sphere it is necessary to strictly separate what can be fruitful and acceptable for Russia from what is toxic and destructive. The Slavophiles were greatly influenced by German Romanticism and German classical philosophy (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), which inspired a whole host of conservative Russian thinkers [14]


Another version of Occidentalology was developed by leftist currents in Russia, above all, the populists (narodniks), who rejected capitalism. The populists, like some Slavophiles (for example, I. S. Aksakov), believed that the core of Russian culture was the peasant community living according to its ancient laws and customs and representing the pinnacle of harmonious, spiritual existence and making sense of the world [15]. They considered serfdom to be nothing more than a consequence of Westernism, but its abolition should not lead to the development of capitalist relations or the proletarianization of peasants, but to the revival of the popular spirit and traditional values: social, labor and ecclesiastical. According to them, the negative aspects of the Russian Empire were attributable precisely to Westernization and to Western ideas – at that time predominantly bourgeois and liberal – which should be rejected. Thus, on the left there was also a criticism of Western civilization, which can be recovered by Occidentalology


A special case was Russian Marxism, which fully shared the Western European ethnocentrism of the New Times and accepted the inevitability and even the progressive character of capitalism and internationalism, but still subjected this capitalism to radical criticism. In the Soviet period these ideas became dogmas, which eventually led to the collapse of the USSR under the influence of the deceptive promises of convergence with the West. In more sensible periods of Soviet history, ideological class hatred of capitalists was largely fueled by the spirit of populism and Slavophilia. Russian National Bolsheviks tried to give importance to the Russian element and disambiguate this problem, but they did not receive sufficient support from the Soviet elites


Western Ethnocentrism in Postmodernity


Now that we have made a general genealogy of Western ethnocentrism up to the paradigm of Modernity, we can extend our analysis to the present era. Postmodernity is a twofold phenomenon. On the one hand, it harshly criticizes the ethnocentrism of Western European civilization, both in antiquity and today, insisting on rejecting it and rehabilitating extravagant and eccentric ideas, often irrational. But, on the other hand, it does not question its own “liberating pathos” and, recovering its old colonialist and racist spirit, does not hesitate to impose its Western canon, now postmodern, on all societies in the world. Although it criticizes the West and its civilization, postmodernity continues to be its natural extension and its defense of globalization only amplifies Western ethnocentrism. Postmodernity does not limit itself to borrowing from Modernity its intolerance towards Tradition, but exacerbates it even more, turning it into an aggressive parody and pure Satanism. The criterion of “development” and “democracy” is now to embrace the attitudes and values ​​of postmodern globalism. Only that which is based on gender ideology, the recognition of the rights of minorities of all kinds, the rejection of any identity, even individual identity, and transitology, which, however, is understood as the transition from modernity to postmodernity, is considered “scientific”


The West opposed its version of universalism to Russian civilization as early as the Catholic Middle Ages. Later, the opposition of these civilizations was transformed into the struggle of modernity against tradition, that is, against the residual late Russian Middle Ages that lasted almost until the beginning of the 20th century. In the Soviet period, the conflict of civilizations took on an ideological and class tone: proletarian socialist society (Russia and its allies) against the bourgeois-capitalist West


In the 20th century, Russia faced both the direct manifestation of Western racism in its war against Nazi Germany, as the self-proclaimed bearers of the “white man’s burden” waged a campaign against the “Slavic untermenschen”


And finally, in our day, the postmodern West, which claims the universality of its civilizational model, is confronted with Russia’s will to defend and assert its sovereignty. First Russia asserted the sovereignty of a nation-state against Western civilization (period from 2000-2022) and now against the civilization-state. All this may give the misleading impression that we are talking about Russia's exacerbated and situational reaction to the West's behavior towards it (NATO's expansion to the East, the desire to make the post-Soviet states independent of Russia, the failure to comply with foreign policy agreements, etc.), which is multiplied by the outright rejection of the much more traditional Russian society (except among Western liberals) towards the postmodern attitudes of Western culture. But if we put all this in a much longer historical perspective, we will see that this is not an accident, but a pattern. Russian civilization is now beginning to clearly understand itself and its own foundations. And a direct clash with the West, which at any moment could lead to an apocalyptic scenario marked by nuclear war, only adds special drama to this process of awakening of Russian civilization. Russia is not only rejecting the openly toxic and perverted postmodernism, but is returning to its roots and reaffirming its identity and, if you like, its ethnocentrism, in which Russia is the center of Orthodox (and therefore Christian and universal) ecumenism


Conclusion


Thus, taking into account the above considerations, we can form a first idea of ​​what Occidentalology is. It is a discipline of study of the West that considers it a separate and independent civilization that has common roots with Russian civilization. Then the West became its opponent by dominating the Christian ecumene and later developed an anti-Christian and anti-traditional paradigm known as Modernity, with which it now confronts Russia, attacking it directly and indirectly (Napoleon, the Crimean War, World War I, the Great Patriotic War, the Cold War), currently this confrontation takes a postmodern and planetary form (globalism, NWO), now that the West obsessively claims universalism and absolutism of its attitudes, values, philosophies and worldviews


Obviously, at each stage of the history of the West in relation to Russian history there has been a variation in the content of Occidentology. From the initial unity within the framework of the Christian Middle Ages (where Russia was initially present indirectly, personified by the Byzantine civilization), to the total and absolute opposition in the era of Western postmodernity. Once these boundary conditions are established, it is easy to construct a structure of intermediate stages, as antagonism increases relentlessly and the influence of the West becomes ever more destructive
Russia, opposing the West at all times, has not created a framework for studying the principles of its civilization as clear and strong as the West. Rather, this process has manifested itself in waves. Periods of rapprochement with the West, usually catastrophic, have been followed by moments of returning to our roots


An important conclusion follows from this: now that we have entered a phase of acute and extremely intense confrontation with the West (in a state of hot and direct war due to the Special Military Operation in Ukraine) social sciences, as well as culture, education, socio-political projects and efforts must embrace the identity of Russia as a sovereign civilization, which means that any borrowing (philosophy, theory, school, concept, term) taken from Western philosophy or human sciences should be done only if one thoroughly knows the semantic exegesis of the culture and sciences of Western civilization. This is the main task of Occidentalology: to strip the concepts, dogmas and rules of Western culture and science (from postmodernism to the religious disputes of the Middle Ages and the Reformation, through New Times and the beginnings of the Enlightenment) of their claim to universality and to correlate any thesis, any system, any methodology with the foundations of Russian civilization and the Russian world


It is difficult to understand the magnitude of the tasks facing Occidentalology. We are talking about a complete and deep epistemological decolonization of Russian consciousness and its liberation from the centuries-old influence of toxic ideas that have fascinated Russian thought and subjugated it to alienated systems and worldviews


But the enormity of this task should not cause us discouragement. We have many generations of great ancestors: saints, ascetics, orators, anchorites, monks, tsars, military leaders, heroes, workers, writers, poets, composers, artists, actors and thinkers who for centuries were bearers of the Russian spirit and guarded the deep codes of our Russian civilization. It only remains for us to systematize their heritage, give it new forms and new life