housing policy and housing in different countries ah ATP are different. Israel, Japan, Singapore, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Australia and New Zealand have achieved the greatest success. Most of the population in these countries lives in cities. But in many countries people live in shacks (Afghanistan, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.). Until recently (under colonial dependence), the level of health care was very low. In a number of countries, for example, India, China and Nepal, traditionally developed ethnoscience. In most countries, traditional medicine retains its position in the present period. Developed countries are implementing special health care systems and have achieved impressive results: in Japan average duration the life of men is 75 years, women - 81 years.
Many countries are developing education infrastructure. However, in most countries in Western and South Asia, education is poorly developed, as a result of which the predominant part of the independent population is illiterate. The underdevelopment of the education system is manifested in an acute shortage of qualified personnel for industry and other branches of the national economy. Therefore, these countries train their students all over the world.
According to the level of education in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia, there are three groups of countries, which include:
1) Korea, Japan and China;
2) Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia;
3) Vietnam and New Zealand.
The first group is distinguished by the fact that for a millennium it has been dominated by Chinese culture; the countries of the second group (with the exception of Thailand) were colonies of European countries; the third group inherited British culture. Japan has the most advanced system and has the highest literacy rate in the world. Thus, in 1988, 94.3% of graduates of incomplete secondary schools continued their education in a complete secondary school, and 37.2% of graduates of a complete secondary school entered universities. Japanese educational institutions work closely with educational institutions USA and Asia Pacific. In most Australian states, school attendance is required for children aged 6 to 15. And although 75% of Australian schools are public, parents have some responsibility for providing schools with equipment. Most private schools belong to church organizations (usually Catholic), education in them is paid, separate for boys and girls, but the training is more solid. Aboriginal children tend to receive much less training than "white" Australian children.
There are 18 universities in the country. The largest of them is Sydney, founded in 1850. There are almost no illiterates in Australia, since school attendance is compulsory.
Topic 4. States of Western Europe and the East in the Middle Ages
Periodization of the history of the Middle Ages. Characteristics of the early Middle Ages in Western Europe in the VI-IX centuries: the decline of agriculture, crafts, trade and exchange; predominance of subsistence farming. The formation of feudal relations. Allodium. Benefice. Feud (flax). The classes of feudal society. Fall of the Roman Empire. Change of forms of statehood. barbarian kingdoms. State of the Franks. Merovingians and Carolingians. The birth of the German world and the beginning of its independent historical movement.
The beginning of the formation of the foundations of nation-states in Western Europe. The problem of secular and ecclesiastical power in European political and spiritual life. Education and culture in the life of medieval Europe.
early feudal states. feudal division. Class structure of medieval society. Vassal system. Immunity. Royal power in the era of feudal fragmentation. interfeudal relations. medieval cities. Trade. Guild organization of craft. Development of commodity-money relations in Europe. The formation of the bourgeoisie is the basis for the centralization of European states. The struggle of royal power with large feudal lords. Social support of royal power. Estate-representative monarchy.
2. Features of the formation of the Byzantine Empire. Political system and culture
Geographical position and ethnic composition of Byzantium. Byzantium is the junction of East and West. Byzantium and the heritage of ancient culture. The role of the state in Byzantine civilization. The corporate nature of the social system. The relationship between society and government. Byzantine Christianity - Orthodoxy. Byzantine culture. The crisis of Byzantine civilization and the fall of Byzantium.
The Formation of Religious Self-Consciousness in Western Europe
Christianity. Medieval picture of the world. The Catholic Church and Heresies in the Middle Ages. Crusades and their role in the development of ethnic and religious identity in Western Europe, European Orthodoxy and the Muslim East. Crusades. The social composition of the crusaders. The results and significance of the Crusades. Christianity as the spiritual basis of European civilization. Features of the organization of the Catholic Church. Separation of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. The struggle between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The rise of the papacy in the XII-XIII centuries.
Periodization of the history of the medieval East. Eastern civilizations. Eastern Civilizations in the Middle Ages. Features of Eastern civilizations: Collectivist, charismatic nature of social relations. Predominantly class-corporate nature of the social hierarchy. The vertical nature of public relations. Weak development of private property. Statism. Traditional, static.
Muslim civilization. Islam as its spiritual basis. The rise of Islam and the unification of the Arabs. The civilizational significance of Arab culture. Sunnism and Shiism. Activity and traditionalism of Muslim civilization.
State and communal-caste system of India. India under the rule of Muslim rulers. Arrival of Europeans in India.
Confucian civilization. bureaucratic monarchies. The superiority of medieval Chinese culture over European. Japan Birth of the state (III-ser. VII centuries).
The materials are based on textbooks:
1. World history: Textbook for universities / Ed. –G.B. Polyak, A.N. Markova. - M .: Culture and sport, UNITI, 1997.
2. Samygin P.S. From 17 Story/ P.S. Samygin and others - Ed. 7th. - Rostov n / a: "Phoenix", 2007.
The formation of a feudal society and the problem of forming the foundations of national states in Western Europe
general characteristics Western European Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
Classical Middle Ages
Late Middle Ages
Term "middle Ages" was first used by Italian humanists in the 15th century. to refer to the period between classical antiquity and their time. In Russian historiography, the lower boundary of the Middle Ages is also traditionally considered to be the 5th century. AD - the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the upper one - in the 17th century, when a bourgeois revolution took place in England.
The period of the Middle Ages is extremely important for Western European civilization: the processes and events of that time still often determine the nature of the political, economic, and cultural development of the countries of Western Europe. So, it was during this period that the religious community of Europe was formed and a new trend in Christianity emerged, which was most conducive to the formation of bourgeois relations, Protestantism, an urban culture is taking shape, which largely determined the modern mass Western European culture; the first parliaments arise and the principle of separation of powers is put into practice; foundations are being laid modern science and education systems; the ground is being prepared for the industrial revolution and the transition to an industrial society.
Three stages can be distinguished in the development of Western European medieval society:
Early Middle Ages (V-X centuries) - the process of folding the main structures characteristic of the Middle Ages is underway;
Classical Middle Ages (XI-XV centuries) - the time of maximum development of medieval feudal institutions;
Late Middle Ages (XV-XVII centuries) - a new capitalist society begins to form. This division is largely arbitrary, although generally accepted; depending on the stage, the main characteristics of Western European society change. Before considering the features of each stage, we highlight the most important features inherent in the entire period of the Middle Ages.
Features of the development of the countries of the East in the Middle Ages
Features of the development of the countries of the East in the Middle Ages
Arab Caliphate
India (7th–18th centuries)
Rajput period (7th-12th centuries). As shown in Chapter 2, in the IV-VI centuries. AD The powerful Gupta empire developed on the territory of modern India. The Gupta era, perceived as the golden age of India, was replaced in the 7th-12th centuries. period of feudal fragmentation. At this stage, however, the isolation of the regions of the country and the decline of culture did not occur due to the development of port trade. Came from Central Asia the conquering tribes of the Huns-Ephthalites settled in the north-west of the country, and the Gujarats who appeared with them settled in Punjab, Sindh, Rajputana and Malwa. As a result of the merging of alien peoples with the local population, a compact ethnic community of Rajputs arose, which in the 8th century. began expansion from Rajputana into the rich regions of the Ganges valley and Central India. The Gurjara-Pratihara clan, which formed a state in Malwa, was the most famous. It was here that the most striking type of feudal relations with a developed hierarchy and vassal psychology developed.
In the VI-VII centuries. in India, a system of stable political centers is emerging, fighting with each other under the banner of different dynasties - Northern India, Bengal, Deccan and the Far South. Canvas of political events of the VIII-X centuries. began the struggle for Doab (between the Jumna and the Ganges). In the tenth century the leading powers of the country fell into decay, divided into independent principalities. The political fragmentation of the country turned out to be especially tragic for Northern India, which suffered in the 11th century. regular military raids Mahmud Ghaznevid(998-1030), the ruler of a vast empire that included the territories of the modern states of Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, as well as Punjab and Sindh.
The socio-economic development of India during the Rajput era was characterized by the growth of feudal estates. The richest among the feudal lords, along with the rulers, were the Hindu temples and monasteries. If initially only uncultivated lands complained to them and with the indispensable consent of the community that owned them, then from the 8th century. more and more often, not only lands are transferred, but also villages, the inhabitants of which were obliged to bear a natural service in favor of the recipient. However, at this time the Indian community was still relatively independent, large in size and self-governing. A full-fledged community member hereditarily owned his field, although trade operations with land were certainly controlled by the community administration.
City life, frozen after the 6th century, began to revive only towards the end of the Rajput period. The old port centers developed faster. New cities arose near the castles of the feudal lords, where artisans settled, serving the needs of the court and the landowner's troops. The development of urban life was facilitated by the increased exchange between cities and the emergence of groupings of artisans according to castes. Just as in Western Europe, in the Indian city the development of handicrafts and trade was accompanied by the struggle of citizens against the feudal lords, who imposed new taxes on artisans and merchants. Moreover, the value of the tax was the higher, the lower was the class position of the castes to which the artisans and merchants belonged.
At the stage of feudal fragmentation, Hinduism finally took over Buddhism, defeating it with the power of its amorphousness, which perfectly corresponded to the political system of the era.
The era of the Muslim conquest of India. Delhi Sultanate (XIII - early XVI centuries) In the XIII century. in the north of India, a large Muslim state, the Delhi Sultanate, is established, and the dominance of Muslim commanders from the Central Asian Turks is finally taking shape. Sunni Islam becomes the state religion, and Persian becomes the official language. Accompanied by bloody strife, the dynasties of Gulyams, Khiljis, and Tughlakids were successively replaced in Delhi. The troops of the sultans made aggressive campaigns in Central and South India, and the conquered rulers were forced to recognize themselves as vassals of Delhi and pay an annual tribute to the sultan.
The turning point in the history of the Delhi Sultanate was the invasion of Northern India in 1398 by the troops of the Central Asian ruler Timur(another name is Tamerlane, 1336-1405). The Sultan fled to Gujarat. An epidemic and famine began in the country. Abandoned by the conqueror as governor of the Punjab, Khizr Khan Sayyid captured Delhi in 1441 and founded a new Sayyid dynasty. Representatives of this and the Lodi dynasty that followed it already ruled as governors of the Timurids. One of the last Lodi, Ibrahim, in an effort to exalt his power, entered into an uncompromising struggle with the feudal nobility and Afghan military leaders. Ibrahim's opponents appealed to the ruler of Kabul, the Timurid Babur, with a request to save them from the tyranny of the Sultan. In 1526, Babur defeated Ibrahim at the Battle of Panipat, thus initiating Mughal Empire, existed for nearly 200 years.
The system of economic relations undergoes some, although not radical, changes in the Muslim era. The state land fund is growing significantly due to the possessions of the conquered Indian feudal families. Its main part was distributed in a conditional service award - iqta (small plots) and mukta (large "feedings"). Iqtadars and muktadars collected taxes from the granted villages in favor of the treasury, part of which went to the support of the family of the holder, who supplied the warrior to the state army. Mosques, owners of property for charitable purposes, keepers of the tombs of sheikhs, poets, officials and merchants were private landowners who managed the estate without state intervention. The rural community survived as a convenient fiscal unit, however, the payment of the poll tax (jizia) fell on the peasants, who mostly professed Hinduism, as a heavy burden.
By the XIV century. historians attribute a new wave of urbanization to India. Cities became centers of crafts and trade. Domestic trade was mainly focused on the needs of the capital's court. The leading import item was the importation of horses (the basis of the Delhi army is cavalry), which were not bred in India due to the lack of pastures. Archaeologists find treasures of Delhi coins in Persia, Central Asia and on the Volga.
During the reign of the Delhi Sultanate, Europeans began to penetrate India. In 1498, under Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese first reached Calikat on the Malabar coast of western India. As a result of subsequent military expeditions - Cabral (1500), Vasco de Gama (1502), d "Albuquerque (1510-1511) - the Portuguese captured the Bijapur island of Goa, which became the backbone of their possessions in the East. The Portuguese monopoly on maritime trade undermined India's trade ties with countries of the East, isolated the interior regions of the country and retarded their development.In addition, wars and the destruction of the population of Malabar led.Gujarat was also weakened.Only the Vijayanagar empire remained in the XIV-XVI centuries powerful and even more centralized than the former states of the south.Its head was considered a maharaja, but all the fullness of real power belonged to the state council, the chief minister, to whom the governors of the provinces were directly subordinate. State lands were distributed in a conditional military award - amara. A significant part of the villages were in the possession of Brahmin collectives - sabkhs. lands of one village, and community members increasingly began to turn into into disadvantaged sharecroppers. In the cities, the authorities began to pay the collection of duties at the mercy of the feudal lords, which strengthened their undivided rule here.
With the establishment of the power of the Delhi Sultanate, in which Islam was a forcefully implanted religion, India was drawn into the cultural orbit of the Muslim world. However, despite the fierce struggle of the Hindus and Muslims, long cohabitation led to the mutual penetration of ideas and customs.
India in the era of the Mughal Empire (XVI-XVIII centuries)1 The final stage of the medieval history of India was the rise in its north at the beginning of the 16th century. new powerful Muslim Mughal Empire, which in the XVII century. managed to subjugate a significant part of South India. Timurid was the founder of the state Babur(1483-1530). The power of the Mughals in India was strengthened during the years of rule Akbar(1452-1605), who moved the capital to the city of Agra on the Jamne River, conquered Gujarat and Bengal, and with them access to the sea. True, the Mughals had to come to terms with the rule of the Portuguese here.
In the Mughal era, India enters a stage of developed feudal relations, the flowering of which went hand in hand with the strengthening of the central power of the state. The importance of the main financial department of the empire (sofa), which is obliged to monitor the use of all suitable lands, has increased. The share of the state was declared a third of the harvest. In the central regions of the country, under Akbar, the peasants were transferred to a cash tax, which forced them to be included in market relations in advance. The state land fund (khalisa) received all the conquered territories. Jagirs were distributed from it - conditional military awards, which continued to be considered state property. Jagirdars usually owned several tens of thousands of hectares of land and were obliged to support military detachments on these incomes - the backbone of the imperial army. Akbar's attempt to liquidate the jagir system in 1574 ended in failure. Also in the state there was private land ownership of feudal zamindars from among the conquered princes who paid tribute, and small private estates of Sufi sheikhs and Muslim theologians, inherited and free from taxes - suyurgal or mulk.
Crafts flourished during this period, especially the production of fabrics, which were valued throughout the East, and in the region of the southern seas, Indian textiles acted as a kind of universal equivalent of trade. The process of merging the upper merchant stratum with the ruling class begins. Money people could become jagirdars, and the latter could become owners of caravanserais and merchant ships. Merchant castes are formed, playing the role of companies. Surat, the main port of the country in the 16th century, becomes the place where a layer of comprador merchants (that is, those associated with foreigners) is born.
In the 17th century the importance of the economic center passes to Bengal. Here, in Dhaka and Patna, the production of fine fabrics, saltpeter and tobacco is developing. Shipbuilding continues to flourish in Gujarat. In the south, a new large textile center Madras is emerging. Thus, in India XVI-XVII centuries. the emergence of capitalist relations is already observed, but the socio-economic structure of the Mughal Empire, based on state ownership of land, did not contribute to their rapid growth.
In the Mughal era, religious disputes are activated, on the basis of which broad popular movements are born, the religious policy of the state undergoes major turns. So, in the XV century. in Gujarat, among the Muslim cities of trade and handicraft circles, the Mahdist movement was born. In the XVI century. the fanatical adherence of the ruler to orthodox Sunni Islam turned into disenfranchisement for the Hindus and the persecution of Shia Muslims. In the 17th century oppression of the Shiites, the destruction of all Hindu temples and the use of their stones for the construction of mosques Aurangzeb(1618-1707) caused a popular uprising, an anti-Mughal movement.
So, medieval India personifies the synthesis of a wide variety of socio-political foundations, religious traditions. ethnic cultures. Having melted all this many beginnings within itself, by the end of the era, it appeared before the astonished Europeans as a country of fabulous splendor, attracting wealth, exoticism, and secrets. Inside it, however, began processes similar to European ones, inherent in the New Age. The internal market was formed, developed international connections deepened social conflicts. But for India, a typical Asian power, the despotic state was a strong deterrent to capitalization. With its weakening, the country becomes an easy prey for European colonialists, whose activities interrupted the natural course of the country's historical development for many years.
China (III - XVII centuries)
The era of fragmentation (III-VI centuries). With the fall of the Han Empire at the turn of II-III centuries. In China, there is a change of eras: the ancient period of the country's history ends and the Middle Ages begins. The first stage of early feudalism went down in history as the time three kingdoms(220-280). Three states formed on the territory of the country (Wei in the north, Shu in the central part and Wu in the south), the power in which was close to a military dictatorship.
But already at the end of the III century. political stability in China is again being lost, and it becomes an easy prey for the nomadic tribes that poured in here, mainly settling in the northwestern regions of the country. From that moment on, for two and a half centuries, China was divided into northern and southern parts, which affected its subsequent development. The strengthening of centralized power occurs in the 20s of the 5th century. in the south after the founding of the Southern Song empire here and in the 30s of the 5th century. - in the north, where it intensifies Northern Wei Empire which the desire to restore a unified Chinese statehood was expressed more strongly. In 581, a coup d'etat took place in the north: the commander Yang Jian removed the emperor from power and changed the name of the Sui state. In 589, he brought the southern state under his control and, for the first time after a 400-year period of fragmentation, restored the political unity of the country.
Political changes in China III-VI centuries. are closely associated with dramatic shifts in ethnic development. Although foreigners penetrated before, but it was in the 4th century. becomes a time of mass invasions, comparable with the Great Migration of Peoples in Europe. The Xiongnu, Sanpi, Qiang, Jie, Di tribes that came from the central regions of Asia settled not only on the northern and western outskirts, but also on the Central Plain, mixing with the indigenous Chinese population. In the south, the processes of assimilation of the non-Chinese population (Yue, Miao, Li, Yi, Man and Yao) were faster and less dramatic, leaving significant areas uncolonized. This was reflected in the mutual isolation of the parties, and two main dialects of the Chinese language developed in the language. The northerners called the inhabitants of the middle state, that is, the Chinese, only themselves, and the southerners called people Wu.
The period of political fragmentation was accompanied by a noticeable naturalization of economic life, the decline of cities and a reduction in monetary circulation. Grain and silk began to act as a measure of value. An allotment system of land use (zhan tian) was introduced, which affected the type of organization of society and the way it was managed. Its essence consisted in assigning to each worker, assigned to the estate of personally free commoners, the rights to receive a plot of land of a certain size and establish fixed taxes from it.
The allotment system was opposed by the process of growth of private land plots of the so-called "strong houses" ("da jia"), which was accompanied by the ruin and enslavement of the peasantry. The introduction of the state allotment system, the struggle of power against the expansion of large private land ownership lasted throughout the medieval history of China and affected the design of the unique agrarian and social system of the country.
The process of official differentiation proceeded on the basis of the decomposition and degeneration of the community. This found expression in the formal unification of peasant farms into five-yard and twenty-five-yard houses, which were encouraged by the authorities for the purpose of tax benefits. All the inferior strata in the state were collectively referred to as the "vile people" (jianzhen) and were opposed to the "good people" (liangmin). A striking manifestation of social shifts was the increasing role of the aristocracy. Nobility was determined by belonging to the old clans. Generosity was fixed in the lists of noble families, the first general register of which was compiled in the 3rd century. Another distinctive feature of public life III-VI centuries. there was an increase in personal relationships. The principle of the personal duty of the younger to the elder has taken a leading place among moral values.
Imperial period (end VI-XIII centuries ) During this period, the imperial order was revived in China, the political unification of the country took place, the nature of the supreme power changed, the centralization of management intensified, and the role of the bureaucratic apparatus increased. During the years of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the classical Chinese type of imperial administration took shape. There were revolts of military governors in the country, a peasant war of 874-883, a long struggle with the Tibetans, Uighurs and Tanguts in the north of the country, a military confrontation with the southern Chinese state of Nanzhao. All this led to the agony of the Tang regime.
In the middle of the X century. out of chaos, the state of the Later Zhou was born, which became the new core of the political unification of the country. The reunification of the lands was completed in 960 by the founder of the Song Dynasty Zhao Kuanyin with the capital Kaifeng. In the same century, political map northeast China, a state appears Liao. In 1038, the Western Xia Tangut Empire was proclaimed on the northwestern borders of the Song Empire. From the middle of the XI century. between Song, Liao and Xia, an approximate balance of power is maintained, which at the beginning of the 12th century. was violated with the emergence of a new rapidly growing state of the Jurchens (one of the branches of the Tungus tribes), formed in Manchuria and proclaimed itself in 1115 the Jin Empire. It soon conquered the state of Liao, captured the capital of the Song along with the emperor. However, the brother of the captured emperor managed to create the Southern Song Empire with its capital in Lin'an (Hanzhou), which extended its influence to the southern regions of the country.
Thus, on the eve of the Mongol invasion, China was again split into two parts, the northern one, which included the Jin empire, and the southern territory of the Southern Song empire.
The process of ethnic consolidation of the Chinese, which began in the 7th century, already at the beginning of the 13th century. leads to the formation of the Chinese people. Ethnic self-consciousness manifests itself in the singling out of the Chinese state, which opposes foreign countries, in the spread of the universal self-name "Han Ren" (Han people). The population of the country in the X-XIII centuries. was 80-100 million people.
In the Tang and Song empires, administrative systems perfect for their time were being formed, which were copied by other states. Since 963, all military formations of the country began to report directly to the emperor, and local military officials were appointed from among the civil servants of the capital. This strengthened the power of the emperor. The bureaucracy grew to 25,000. The highest government institution was the Department of Departments, which headed the six leading executive bodies of the country: Chinov, Taxes, Rituals, Military, Judicial and Public Works. Along with them, the Imperial Secretariat and the Imperial Chancellery were established. The power of the head of state, officially called the Son of Heaven and the emperor, was hereditary and legally unlimited.
The economy of China in the 7th-12th centuries. based on agricultural production. The allotment system, which reached its apogee in the 6th-8th centuries, by the end of the 10th century. disappeared. In Sung China, the land use system already included a state land fund with imperial estates, large and medium-sized private landholdings, small-peasant land ownership, and estates of state land holders. The order of taxation can be called total. The main one was a two-time land tax in kind, amounting to 20% of the harvest, supplemented by a trade tax and working off. Household registers were compiled every three years to account for taxpayers.
The unification of the country led to a gradual increase in the role of cities. If in the eighth century there were 25 of them with a population of about 500 thousand people, then in the X-XII centuries, during the period of urbanization, the urban population began to account for 10% total strength countries.
Urbanization was closely linked to the growth of handicraft production. Such areas of state-owned craft as silk weaving, ceramic production, woodworking, papermaking and dyeing received special development in the cities. A form of private craft, the rise of which was held back by the powerful competition of state-owned production and the imperial power's comprehensive control over the urban economy, was the family workshop. Trade and craft organizations, as well as shops, were the main part of the urban craft. The technique of the craft was gradually improved, its organization changed, large workshops appeared, equipped with machine tools and using hired labor.
The development of trade was facilitated by the introduction at the end of the 6th century. standards of measures and weights and the issuance of a copper coin of a fixed weight. Tax revenues from trade have become a tangible item of government revenue. The increase in metal mining allowed the Song government to issue the largest amount of specie in the history of the Chinese Middle Ages. The intensification of foreign trade fell on the 7th-8th centuries. The center of maritime trade was the port of Guangzhou, linking China with Korea, Japan, and coastal India. Overland trade went along the Great Silk Road through the territory of Central Asia, along which caravanserais were built.
In the Chinese medieval society of the pre-Mongol era, the demarcation went along the line of aristocrats and non-aristocrats, the service class and commoners, free and dependent. The peak of the influence of aristocratic clans falls on the 7th-8th centuries. The first genealogical list of 637 recorded 293 surnames and 1654 families. But by the beginning of the XI century. the power of the aristocracy is weakening and the process of merging it with the bureaucratic bureaucracy begins.
The "golden age" of officialdom was the time of the Song. The service pyramid consisted of 9 ranks and 30 degrees, and belonging to it opened the way to enrichment. The main channel for penetration into the environment of officials was state examinations, which contributed to the expansion of the social base of service people.
About 60% of the population were peasants who legally retained their rights to land, but in fact did not have the opportunity to freely dispose of it, leave it uncultivated or abandon it. From the 9th century there was a process of disappearance of personally deprived estates (jianzhen): state serfs (guanhu), state artisans (gun) and musicians (yue), private and dependent landless workers (butsui). A special stratum of society was made up of members of Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, numbering in the 20s of the 11th century. 400 thousand people.
Cities in which the lumpen layer appears become centers of anti-government uprisings. The largest movement against the arbitrariness of the authorities was the uprising led by Fang La in the southeastern region of China in 1120-1122. On the territory of the Jin Empire until its fall in the XIII century. the national liberation detachments of the "red jackets" and the "black banner" operated.
There were three religious doctrines in medieval China: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. In the Tang era, the government encouraged Taoism: in 666, the sanctity of the author of an ancient Chinese treatise, the canonical work of Taoism, was officially recognized Lao Tzu(IV-III centuries BC), in the first half of the VIII century. Taoist academy established. At the same time, the persecution of Buddhism intensified and neo-Confucianism was established, which claimed to be the only ideology that substantiated the social hierarchy and correlated it with the concept of personal duty.
So, by the beginning of the XIII century. in Chinese society, many features and institutions are becoming complete and fixed, which subsequently will undergo only partial changes. Political, economic and social systems are approaching classical patterns, changes in ideology lead to the promotion of neo-Confucianism.
China in the era of Mongol rule. Yuan Empire (1271-1367) The Mongol conquest of China lasted almost 70 years. In 1215 he was taken. Beijing, and in 1280 China was completely dominated by the Mongols. With the accession to the throne of the Khan Khubilai(1215-1294) the headquarters of the Great Khan was transferred to Beijing. Along with it, Karakorum and Shandong were considered equal capitals. In 1271, all the possessions of the great khan were declared the Yuan empire according to the Chinese model. Mongol domination in the main part of China lasted a little over a century and is noted by Chinese sources as the most difficult time for the country.
Despite the military power, the Yuan empire was not distinguished by internal strength, it was shaken by civil strife, as well as the resistance of the local Chinese population, the uprising of the secret Buddhist society "White Lotus".
characteristic feature social structure was the division of the country into four categories unequal in rights. The Chinese of the north and the inhabitants of the south of the country were considered, respectively, the people of the third and fourth grade after the Mongols themselves and immigrants from the Islamic countries of western and central Asia. Thus, the ethnic situation of the era was characterized not only by national oppression by the Mongols, but also by the legalized opposition of northern and southern Chinese.
The dominance of the Yuan Empire rested on the power of the army. Each city contained a garrison of at least 1000 people, and in Beijing there was a khan's guard of 12 thousand people. Tibet and Koryo (Korea) were in vassal dependence on the Yuan palace. Attempts to invade Japan, Burma, Vietnam and Java, undertaken in the 70-80s of the XIII century, did not bring success to the Mongols. For the first time, Yuan China was visited by merchants and missionaries from Europe, who left notes about their travels: Marco Polo (circa 1254-1324), Arnold from Cologne and others.
Mongolian rulers, interested in receiving income from the conquered lands, from the second half of the XII century. more and more began to adopt traditional Chinese methods of exploiting the population. Initially, the system of taxation was streamlined and centralized. Tax collection was out of hand local authorities, a general census was conducted, tax registers were compiled, poll and land grain taxes and a household tax levied on silk and silver were introduced.
The current laws determined the system of land relations, within the framework of which private lands, state lands, public lands and specific allotments were allocated. A steady trend in agriculture since the beginning of the XIV century. there is an increase in private land holdings and the expansion lease relations. The surplus of the enslaved population and prisoners of war made it possible to widely use their labor on state lands and on the lands of soldiers in military settlements. Along with slaves, state lands were cultivated by state tenants. As never before, temple land ownership spread widely, replenished both by state donations and by purchases and direct seizure of fields. Such lands were considered eternal possession and were cultivated by the brethren and tenants.
Urban life began to revive only towards the end of the 13th century. In the register lists of 1279, there were about 420 thousand craftsmen. Following the example of the Chinese, the Mongols established the monopoly right of the treasury to dispose of salt, iron, metal, tea, wine and vinegar, and established a trade tax in the amount of one-thirtieth of the value of the goods. In connection with the inflation of paper money at the end of the XIII century. natural exchange began to dominate in trade, the role of precious metals usury flourished.
From the middle of the XIII century. becomes the official religion of the Mongolian court lamaism - Tibetan variety of Buddhism. A characteristic feature of the period was the emergence of secret religious sects. The former leading position of Confucianism was not restored, although the opening in 1287 of the Academy of the Sons of the Fatherland, the forge of the highest Confucian cadres, testified to the acceptance by Khan Khubilai of the imperial Confucian doctrine.
Ming China (1368-1644). Ming China was born and died in the crucible of the great peasant wars, the events of which were orchestrated invisibly by secret religious societies like the White Lotus. In this era, the Mongol domination was finally abolished and the foundations of economic and political systems were laid that corresponded to traditional Chinese ideas about ideal statehood. The peak of the power of the Ming Empire fell on the first third of the 15th century, but by the end of the century, negative phenomena began to grow. The entire second half of the dynastic cycle (XVI - first half of the XVII centuries) was characterized by a protracted crisis, which by the end of the era acquired a general and comprehensive character. The crisis, which began with changes in the economy and social structure, manifested itself most visibly in the field of domestic policy.
First Emperor of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang(1328-1398) began to pursue a far-sighted agrarian and financial policy. He increased the share of peasant households in the land wedge, strengthened control over the distribution of state lands, stimulated military settlements under the treasury, resettled peasants on empty lands, introduced a fixed taxation, and provided benefits to poor households. His son Zhu Di toughened the police functions of power: a special department was established, subordinate only to the emperor - Brocade robes, denunciation was encouraged. In the XV century. there were two more punitive-detective institutions.
The central foreign policy task of the Minsk state in the XIV-XV centuries. was to prevent the possibility of a new Mongol attack. There were no military clashes. And although peace was concluded with Mongolia in 1488, the raids continued even in the 16th century. From the invasion of the country of troops T
Foreign Asia is a region that leads the world not only in terms of area, but also in terms of population. Moreover, he has been holding this championship for more than one millennium. The countries of foreign Asia, despite their many differences, have a number of common features. They will be discussed in this article.
General characteristics of the countries of foreign Asia
Foreign Asia is the cradle of many civilizations and the birthplace of agriculture. The first cities in the world were built here and a number of great scientific discoveries were made.
All countries of foreign Asia (48 in total) cover an area of 32 million square kilometers. Large states predominate among them. There are also giant countries, the area of each of which exceeds 3 million km 2 (India, China).
Most of the states in this region are classified by experts as developing countries. Only four countries out of 48 can be called economically developed. This is Japan South Korea, Singapore and Israel.
There are 13 monarchies on the political map of overseas Asia (with half of them located in the Middle East). The rest of the countries in the region are republics.
According to the peculiarities of the geographical location, all countries of foreign Asia are divided into:
- island (Japan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, etc.);
- seaside (India, South Korea, Israel, etc.);
- inland (Nepal, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, etc.).
It is obvious that countries from the last group are experiencing great difficulties in terms of bringing their goods to world markets.
Regions and countries of foreign Asia
Geographers divide overseas Asia into five sub-regions:
- Southwest Asia - includes all countries on the territory of the Arabian Peninsula, the republics of Transcaucasia, Turkey, Cyprus, Iran and Afghanistan (20 states in total);
- South Asia - includes 7 states, the largest of which are India and Pakistan;
- Southeast Asia - these are 11 states, ten of which are developing (all except Singapore);
- East Asia - includes only five powers (China, Mongolia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea);
- Central Asia consists of five post-Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan).
How do the countries of foreign Asia border? The map below will help you navigate this issue.
Population and natural resources
This region, due to its tectonic structure, is very diverse. Thus, India and China can boast of significant reserves of coal, iron, and, however, black gold is the main wealth here. The largest oil fields are concentrated in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait.
As for the conditions for the development of agriculture, in this respect some states were more fortunate, others much less so. Many of the countries of South and Southeast Asia are excellent. But states such as Syria or Mongolia are practically a continuous lifeless desert, where only certain branches of animal husbandry can be developed.
According to various estimates, from 3.5 to 3.8 billion people live within the region. That's more than half of the world's population. Almost all countries of Foreign Asia are distinguished by high birth rates (the so-called second type of reproduction). Many states of the region are now experiencing what entails food and other problems.
The ethnic structure of the population in this region is also very complex. At least a thousand different nationalities live here, the most numerous of which are the Chinese, Japanese and Bengalis. In terms of linguistic diversity, this region also has no equal on the entire planet.
Most of the population of foreign Asia (about 66%) lives in rural areas. Nevertheless, the pace and nature of urbanization processes in this region are so great that the situation has already begun to be called an "urban explosion".
Foreign Asia: features of the economy
What is the role of the modern countries of the region in the global economy? All states of foreign Asia can be collected in several groups. There are so-called ones (Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and others), which in a short period of time were able to rebuild their national economy and achieve certain success in development. A separate group in the region is the oil-producing countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, etc.), whose economy is completely based on this natural wealth.
None of these categories include Japan (the most developed country in Asia), China and India. All other states remain underdeveloped, in some of them there is no industry at all.
Conclusion
Foreign Asia is the largest historical and geographical region of the planet, within which more than one civilization was born. Today there are 48 independent states here. They differ in size, population, state structure, but they also have several common features.
Most of the states of foreign Asia are developing countries with a rather backward economy. Only four of them can be attributed to economically developed powers.
In my own way geographic location and by ethnic composition, Russia combines Europe and Asia. Some historians see Russia as part of Europe, although they note that in comparison with it, it is developing more slowly. Others argue that Russia has its own original path of development and its own civilization. The entire history of Russia is a continuous process of expanding territories. Huge spaces gave Russia great economic and trade advantages, but they were also associated with difficulties in the development of civilization - after all, the territory needed to be developed and protected, and this always required large resources and time. In matters of choosing a religion, mix with Christianity Ancient Russia received from Byzantium the idea of monarchical power, which quickly entered the political consciousness. The autocratic power was supported by a church group. This was especially evident during the time of Ivan the Terrible. He adhered to the principle that the whole country for him is his property and he is the sovereign master there. In the behavior and actions of Ivan the Terrible, there is a clear tendency to oriental despotism. In opposition to the tsar, the new nobility puts forward the idea that the tsar should rule with his advisors and the Duma and all the people. This is already a bias towards Europe. It was from that time that Russian political thought began to develop, in its ideals close to Western theory. A feature of Russian society was the community. It also existed in Western Europe in the era of feudalism. However, the Western community is more dynamic than the Russian one. Ancient Russia gave a variant of the non-synthetic and already slow development of feudalism. Like some Western European countries, East Slavs went over to feudalism directly from the primitive communal system. The history of medieval Russia shows that during this period, social processes nevertheless took place along a path closer to Western European than to Eastern, although not as brightly as in Europe. Choosing the Christian path of development and assimilation of the religious and moral values accumulated by Byzantium allowed Russia to immediately determine its position in the Christian world. Differences in religion were so serious that Europe was perceived as the center of "Latinism". Therefore, interest in the fruits of Western civilization manifested itself very slowly. Thus, at the very time when Europe had already parted with the medieval system of values and approved the ideals of humanism and rationalism, Russia received ideas of a mystical-ascetic direction from Byzantium. Questions of orientation in politics, economics and culture irrevocably turned towards the West only during the reign of Peter1 and subsequent ones.
14. Europe: transition to the New Age. Consequences of the great geographical discoveries.
Even today, historians continue to argue when the Middle Ages were replaced by the New Age in Europe. For many historians, the English bourgeois revolution is considered the boundary, during which the old political system and opened the way for the development of capitalist relations. Others believe that the decline of the Middle Ages began much earlier - as early as the 15th century. It is no coincidence that this era is called the era of the great breakthrough. In the XV century. Cardinal changes cover all areas of Western civilization. The pace of life has also changed: patriarchal Europe, with its slow lifestyle, was receding into the past. This era of hysteria is unanimously called the transitional stage to the New Age, or the early stage of the New Age. Even then the foundations of today's Western civilizations were laid. XV century was a turning point in Europe's relations with other countries. The prosperity of trade made it necessary to search for sources of precious metals and stones. Merchants and travelers were attracted by stories about the treasures of the East. The Portuguese were the first to search for the treasures of the East, and a little later, the Spaniards. Expeditions went along the coast of Africa and finally in 1456. the Portuguese reached the coast of Cape Verde, and in 1486. The Spaniards circled the African continent rounding the Cape of Good Hope. As a result of swimming in the open ocean, the Portuguese discovered the Azores and the island of Madeira. Geographic discoveries followed one after another. In 1498 Vasco da Gamma brought his ships to the shores of India. In 1492 H. Columbus, in search of a way to India, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and discovered America. Since the 16th century, Europeans have penetrated into China and Japan, about which they generally had only a vague idea. Since 1510, the conquest and conquest of America (Conquista) begins. Ferdinand Magellan in his round-the-world trip (1519-1522) confirmed that the earth has the shape of a ball. In the 17th century Australia was discovered by the British. The era of the great geographical discoveries created the basis for the formation of a global civilization. But not only positive results characterize this period. Faced with other civilizations, Europeans were guided by the principles: "God, glory and gold." Many ancient civilizations in the process of colonization (until the middle of the 17th century) simply perished (Mayans, Aztecs, Incas). Since 1501 Portugal, England, Holland and France revived the slave trade. China and Japan, not wanting to associate themselves with Europe, simply closed their countries to visit Europeans. For Europe itself, the unfolding expansion also had its consequences. Trade centers shifted: the Mediterranean began to lose its former importance. The influx of gold caused a price revolution. Financial and banking business became more complicated. New markets spurred the development of industry and trade, which eventually led to the formation of capitalist relations.
15. The Russian state in the XVI century. Chosen council and oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible: two options for the centralization of the country.
In the 16th century, the territory of Russia expanded almost twice as compared to the 15th century. The main directions in the field of foreign policy were: in the west, access to Baltic Sea , in the east and southeast, the struggle with the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, as well as the development of Siberia. In the south - the protection of the borders from the raids of the Crimean Khan. The total population was approaching 7 million people. The bulk of the population was concentrated in the Novgorod-Pskov land and the central part of the country. The country was ruled by Grand Duke Ivan IV Vasilyevich, who ascended the throne in December 1533, and on 01/16/1547 assumed the royal title. According to the state structure, the Russian state was considered a feudal-feudal monarchy. Around the young tsar Ivan Vasilyevich (the Terrible), a small circle of persons close to him was formed. This circle later received the name "Chosen Rada" according to the Polish analogue and model. Not being formally a state institution, the Elected Rada was the de facto government of the country for 13 years, consistently implementing a policy of major reforms. According to their content, they proclaimed the strengthening of the foundations of the Russian state in the interests of a close-knit service nobility. An important stage in the evolution of the state-political development of Russia was created in Moscow in 1549. the first class-representative legislative institute - the Zemsky Sobor. It consisted of the Boyar Duma, the "Consecrated Cathedral" from among the highest hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and representatives of various strata of farmers (landlords). In line with the centralization of the state, the Elected Rada adopts in 1550 a new code of laws - the Code of Laws, which was amended and supplemented to strengthen the central government. He also streamlined the articles on the rules for the transition of peasants and allowed the conversion of serfs into peasants. In order to strengthen the armed forces, the Chosen Rada in 1550. began to implement a military reform, as a result of which the archery army was formed and the "Code of Service" - the first military charter - was adopted. May 1551. The elected Rada carried out a church reform. For this, in January - May 1551. the Cathedral of the Russian Church, called Stoglav, gathered according to the number of chapters in the collection, which consolidated the unification of the all-Russian pantheon of saints, a single cult of rituals, and canons - the rules for church painting. In 1552 government reform was carried out. As a result of the reform, an order system was created - a system of "orders" of the central bodies of State Power. The Elected Rada itself existed until 1560. and ended due to disagreements in the choice of the main direction of foreign policy. The leaders of the Chosen Rada were supporters of the fight against the Crimean Khan, and Tsar Ivan insisted on moving to the Baltic. In addition, the leaders were glad to be supporters of gradual reforms in solving the problems of the political course and development of Russia. The king was a supporter of the rapid strengthening of his autocracy through terror. 03.12.1564 Ivan IV unexpectedly leaves Moscow with a group of supporters and after a while sends two letters. In one, he names the traitors, in the other he promises not to touch the civilian population. The tsar divided the whole state into two parts - the zemshchina and the oprichnina, into which he included the most important economic regions, trading cities, fishing areas, etc. A special noble army was formed from the noble landowners who settled on the lands indicated in the oprichnina. The content of the troops was collected from the zemstvo part of the state. From guardsmen only one thing was required - complete submission and devotion to the king. In return, the guardsmen received the right to unlimited arbitrariness, extortion and enrichment. In fact, it was a punitive mechanism designed to strengthen the autocratic power of the king. In an effort to destroy the separatism of the boyar nobility, Ivan IV does not stop at any cruelty. Klin, Torzhok, Tver, Novgorod were defeated. Massive repressions unfolded in Moscow. The oprichnina was put to an end by the defeat of Moscow by Khan Dovlat-Girey in 1571, when the oprichnina army did not resist him. The city was not taken, but was completely burned. Oprichnina was abolished in 1572. after which the lands were united again. The very mention of the word oprichnina was forbidden. The result of the oprichnina was the deterioration of the political and economic situation of the country.
16. Russia at the turn of the XVI - XVII centuries. Time of Troubles: causes, essence, consequences.
The general characteristic of the period - a complex set of internal and external contradictions shook Russia at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. The result of the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the field of domestic and foreign policy was the strengthening of tsarist power and the Russian centralized state itself. It acquired wide international prestige and had a powerful bureaucratic and military apparatus. The enslavement of peasants continued, which led to the fact that it was in the 16th century that a system of serfdom took shape in Russia. The situation was aggravated by a terrible famine, which in 1601-1603. hit Russia. People were dying by the tens of thousands. Robbers roamed the forests and roads. As a result of dissatisfaction with the government in 1603. there was an uprising led by Khlopko. Although they managed to cope with the uprising, the authority of the king fell sharply. Added to the internal contradictions international issues, which were the result of strengthening the enemies of Russia - the Commonwealth (Poland), Turkey and Sweden, who sought to expand their territories at the expense of Russia. The Time of Troubles (or Troubles), a term denoting the events that took place in Russia at the end of the XVI - early XVII centuries This is the time of the crisis of statehood in Russia, which is also interpreted by a number of historians as Civil War. Accompanied by popular uprisings and riots; boards of impostors (False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II), Polish and Swedish interventions, the destruction of state power and the ruin of the country. The term was introduced by Russian historians at the end of the 17th century. Causes of the Time of Troubles: 1. Severe systemic crisis of the Moscow state, largely associated with the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Contradictory domestic and foreign policies have led to the destruction of many economic structures. Weakened key institutions and led to loss of life. 2. Important western lands. 3. Sharply aggravated social conflicts within the Muscovite state, which engulfed all societies (the royal power and the boyar aristocracy, boyars and nobles, feudal lords and peasantry, church and secular feudal lords, tribal aristocracy and serving aristocracy, etc.) 4. Intervention of foreign states (Poland, Sweden, England, etc. regarding land issues, territories, etc.) 5. Dynastic crisis: - 1584. After the death of Ivan the Terrible, the son Fedor took the throne. - 1591. Under mysterious circumstances, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, Dmitry, died in Uglich. - 1598. Fedor dies. Stages and essence: Stage 1. 1598-1605. The key figure is Boris Godunov. He, by decision of the Zemsky Sobor, was elected to the royal throne in 1598. He was known as a cruel politician, was a guardsman, had an extraordinary mind. With his active participation, in 1598 a patriarchate was established in Moscow. He dramatically changed the nature of the domestic and foreign policy of the state (the development of the southern outskirts, the development of Siberia, the return of western lands, a truce with Poland). Consequently, there is a rise in the economy and an aggravation of the political struggle. In 1601-1603 crop failure, famine and food riots begin. During this period, the first False Dmitry appeared on the territory of Poland, received the support of the Polish gentry and entered the Russian land in 1604. In April 1605 Godunov died unexpectedly. In June, False Dmitry 1 entered Moscow. After 11 months, in 1606, he was killed as a result of a conspiracy. Stage 2. 1606-1610. This stage is associated with Vasily Shuisky - the first "boyar tsar". He ascended the throne immediately after the death of False Dmitry 1 by decision of the Red Square, giving a cross-kissing record of a good attitude towards the boyars. On the throne, he faced many problems (the uprising of Bolotnikov, False Dmitry 2, Polish troops, hunger). Shuisky managed to solve only part of the problems. In 1610, the Polish troops defeated Shuisky’s detachments and he was overthrown from the throne and the regime of the seven boyars was established, the boyars wanted to invite the Polish prince Vladislav to the throne with a guarantee of the inviolability of the faith and the boyars, and also that he himself changed faith. This was protested by the church, and there was no answer from Poland. Stage 3. 1611-1613. Patriarch Hermogenes in 1611 initiated the creation of a Zemstvo militia near Ryazan. In March it laid siege to Moscow and failed because of internal disagreements. The second was created in autumn, in Novgorod. It was headed by K. Minin and D. Pozharsky. The money collected was insufficient to maintain the militia, but not small either. The militias called themselves free people, at the head was the Zemstvo Council and temporary orders. On October 26, 1612, the militia managed to take the Moscow Kremlin. By decision of the boyar duma, it was dissolved. Effects: 1. The total death toll is equal to one third of the population. 2. Economic catastrophe, the financial system was destroyed, transport communications, vast territories were withdrawn from agriculture. turnover. 3. Territorial losses (Chernigov land, Smolensk land, Novgorod-Severskaya land, Baltic territories). 4. Weakening of domestic merchants and entrepreneurs and strengthening of foreign merchants. 5. Emergence of a new royal dynasty On February 7, 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov. The first representatives of the dynasty (M.F. Romanov - 1613-1645, A.M. Romanov - 1645-1676, F.A. Romanov - 1676-1682). They had to solve 3 main problems - the restoration of the unity of the territories, the restoration of the state mechanism and the economy.
17. Europe and the World in the 18th Century: Early Bourgeois States and Enlightened Absolutism. The French Revolution. War of Independence in the British Colonies of North America.
At the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, the formation of an industrial civilization began in Europe and the world, which stands on fundamentally different foundations than the previous traditional civilization. The destruction of the foundations of traditional civilization is called modernization. In this sense, the 18th century was a transitional era that prepared Western Europe for the transition to the industrial era. The modernization process is a rather complex and lengthy process, covering all aspects of society. It includes: urbanization (growth of cities); industrialization (constant increase in machine production in industry); democratization of political structures (the foundations of civil society and the rule of law are being laid); secularization (liberation of spiritual and social life from the influence of man). During this period, the attitude of man to power becomes fundamentally new. She seemed to have lost divine sanction, she began to be perceived rationally, she is judged by the results of the activities of those who were given the reins of government. The mass consciousness is also becoming different. Thanks to the sciences, the abyss separating the ordinary citizen from the scientific elite narrows. The process of entry of a country into capitalism depended on how fast the modernization went. Capitalism and modernization drew a clear line in the 18th century. between West and East. During this period, the superiority of Western countries over Russia was finally determined. England, Holland, France, have reached the level of advanced countries, where favorable conditions have developed for success in the development of capitalism and modernization. Another center of capitalism and modernization was formed in the North American English colonies. In these colonies, capitalism had great opportunities almost from the very beginning. The first British settlements in North America appeared at the beginning of the 17th century, but their numbers grew rapidly. The American Revolution, which eliminated the weak sprouts of feudalism in the colonies and broke with the dictatorship of the mother country, opened at the end of the 18th century. a way to rapidly build up modernization capacity. The new state had a good basis for the development of capitalism. This was facilitated by democratic traditions brought by the colonists, advanced farming methods, and the rapid development of industry. In Russia, the process of development of capitalism and modernization was largely determined by the policy pursued by tsarist absolutism. The complex of reforms of Peter I dealt a crushing blow to traditionalism in Russia, and this period became the basis for the emergence of capitalism and the modernization of the country. But the reforms were carried out by truly barbaric methods. Struggling with traditionalism, Russian absolutism strengthened its basis - the serfdom of the peasants. This gave rise to controversy. The development of industry was due to the increase in the labor of serfs. Russia's lagging behind the United States and other Western European countries was primarily due to the fact that there were no difficulties with the development of capitalist relations in the form of feudal remnants such as serfdom in Russia. The time of "enlightened absolutism" in Europe is usually called a few decades before the French Revolution of 1789. This era in Western Europe is characterized by a belief in the omnipotence of the human mind. The 18th century is not accidentally called the Age of Enlightenment. Scientific knowledge, previously the property of a narrow circle of scientists, came out into the wide world and filled the secular salons of Paris and London. At this time, the most progressive and educated writers, artists, philosophers criticized everything that oppressed a person, limited his abilities. They entered into a struggle with all feudal remnants. thinkers of the 18th century. Distinguished by a great faith in the inexhaustible strength and capabilities of man, an understanding of the need to educate the broad masses of the people. Among the great people of the Enlightenment, the names stand out: Voltaire, Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Adam Smith (philosophers and scientists), Daniel Defoe, Beaumorche, Schiller and Goethe (writers), Bach, Mozart (musicians). Fight for US Independence. English king and parliament in the middle of the 18th century. introduced many taxes and prohibitions in the English colonies. Taxes had to be paid for the purchase of the smallest commodity, even newspapers. This gave rise to many disgruntled colonists. A boycott of imported British goods is introduced. This led to the closure of the Boston port. In 1774 In Philadelphia, the 1st Continental Congress is held, which determined the policy of the colonists towards England. The armed struggle began on April 10, 1775. when the British troops moved to Boston with the task of capturing the rebels. The first clashes between volunteers and troops took place there. Thus began the American War of Independence. The creation of a regular army was entrusted to the planter George Washington. 04/04/1776 Declaration of Independence and Separation from England. The creation of an independent state - the United States - was proclaimed. The leaders of the revolution were the bourgeoisie and the planters, the driving force was the masses. Military operations unfolded mainly in the north. Despite the difficulties, the turning point in the war came in October 1777. when the English army was surrounded and capitulated. The war ended with the signing of a peace treaty in 1783, according to which England recognized the independence of the United States and the expansion of its territories westward to the Mississippi River. The Great French occurred on 07/14/1789. Its beginning was laid by the storming of the Bastille, a gloomy fortress-prison. The garrison was offered to capitulate, but the troops responded with gun salvos. King Louis 16th recognized the legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly. Power passed into the hands of the City Council (commune of Paris). After winning in Paris revolutionary movement spread throughout France. Within 2-3 weeks everywhere the royal administration was shifted. However, with the fall of absolutism did not become calmer. Peasants started uprisings, refused to perform their duties, burned castles and robbed food warehouses. Because of the pogroms and the unstable situation in early October, famine began in Paris. Crowd of 6-7 thousand people. mostly women moved to Versailles where the king was. The situation was saved by the king's promise to rectify the situation. At the beginning of 1791. The Legislative Assembly adopts the first Constitution in the history of France. The revolution ended as a result of the coup d'état that took place on November 9, 1799. and brought Bonaparte (Napoleon) to power. The result of the revolution was the destruction of the old order (the feudal system and absolutism were destroyed, power passed to the bourgeoisie, the beginnings of the formation of a legal state and society were laid). The revolution was a turning point in the history of the world. The ideas that she carried influenced the course of events not only in Europe, but also in the world.
18. Russia at the end of the 17th - the first quarter of the 18th century. in. Peter's transformations. Discussions about Peter I.
In the history of the Russian state, the period usually referred to as the Petrine era occupies a special place. In this short period of time, covering the last years of the 17th - the first quarter of the 18th century, transformations took place that were comprehensive in nature, affected all spheres of the life of the state and had a huge impact on the development of the political, economic and cultural life countries. They were prepared by the previous development of the state and especially significant changes that took place in the second half of the 17th century. It was at the end of the 17th century that a new period of Russian history began. It was a time of transition, characterized primarily by the gradual formation of a new social cognition, a time when the economic and cultural lagging behind of the Russian state from the advanced countries of Western Europe became obvious. During this period, attempts were made to state system Russia from autocracy with the Boyar Duma to a bureaucratic-noble (or class-representative) monarchy. Attempts were made to reorganize the army and create a navy. A system of central institutions began to develop - orders, departments responsible for one or another direction in the government of the country. Localism was abolished, which meant a certain deviation from the principle of generosity, which determined the position of a person during his appointment. Was created, headed by the king himself, the Secret Order, which concentrated control over all important state affairs. Having ascended the throne, after a long struggle between various boyar groups, Peter I correctly understood and assessed the prevailing conditions, and realized the urgent tasks of his time. His political program was mainly developed abroad, where Peter was part of the "Great Embassy" in 1697. Its ultimate goal was the creation of a regular police state based on universal service to him, the state was understood as the "common good". The tsar himself considered himself the first servant of the fatherland, who had to teach his subjects by his own example. The unconventional behavior of Peter, on the one hand, destroyed the image of the sovereign as a sacred figure that had been developing for centuries, and on the other hand, it provoked a protest from a part of society (primarily among the Old Believers, whom Peter cruelly persecuted), who saw their enemy in the king, i.e. enemy of the old ways. He supervised the construction of the fleet and the creation of a regular army. He directed his reforms to the solution of the following, in his opinion, the main issues: - Measures regarding estates; - measures regarding management; - military device; - measures for the development of the economy; - Measures regarding church administration; Under Peter, a new type of regular army was created, with a unified system of recruitment, weapons and uniforms. Since 1705 recruitment was introduced in the country. First, from 20 households they began to take one soldier for lifelong service, and then they took from a certain number of male souls. New military regulations were introduced, officer schools were opened. In order to strengthen local power in 1708. The country was divided into 8 provinces, headed by governors who were in charge of the troops and affairs of the subordinate territory. The voivodship administration was replaced by a provincial system of government. In 1711, Peter, instead of the Boyar Duma, founded the Governing Senate, which had the functions of the main body of executive, judicial and legislative power. It included 9 dignitaries closest to Peter. The Senate was instructed to develop new laws, monitor the country's finances, and control the activities of administrative bodies. The work of the senators was entrusted to the Prosecutor General. In 1714, the "Decree on Single Inheritance" was issued, which equalized the rights of the owners of estates and estates. The decree marked the merger of the two estates into a single class. This was important for the formation of the Russian nobility as a full-fledged single estate. Since 1717, the creation of collegiums began - the central bodies of the sectoral administration of the country. There were 12 collegiums, and each collegium was in charge of a strictly defined branch of government (Admiralty - the affairs of the fleet, Foreign Affairs - foreign relations, Chamber Collegium - tax collection, etc.) The collegiums were created instead of the cumbersome system of orders, whose functions for governing the country were confused and often intertwined. New authorities - executive, financial, judicial and control - were also created in the localities. In 1720, the General Regulations were issued - detailed instructions for organizing the work of new institutions. Of paramount importance for the social sphere was the tax reform, which began in 1718. In Russia, a poll tax was introduced from males, for which regular censuses of the population (“audits of souls”) were carried out. In the course of the reform, the social category of serfs was eliminated and the social status of some other categories of the population was clarified. With approval in January 1721. "Spiritual Regulations", a spiritual board (Holy Governing Synod) was created from 12 church hierarchs. The leadership was carried out by the Chief Prosecutor. In 1722, Peter signed the Table of Ranks, which determined the order of organization of military and civil service and was in effect until 1917. The Table of Ranks divided the service into civil, military and court. The new law defined 14 classes (ranks) of officials. For the first time in the history of the country, not the origin, but the personal qualities of a person were recognized as the main principle of official division. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences was founded (opened in 1725) and a civil charter was adopted. Speaking about Peter's reforms, almost all historians agree that the transformations of the first quarter of the 18th century. were progressive. The most important result of Peter's reforms was to overcome the crisis of traditionalism by modernizing the country. Russia became a full-fledged participant in international relations, conducting an active foreign policy. Significantly increased the authority of Russia in the world, and Peter himself became for many a model of the sovereign-reformer. Under Peter, the foundations of Russian national culture were laid. Success in the service of the nobles, Peter made dependent on education. By a special decree of the tsar, assemblies were introduced, representing a new form of communication between people for Russia. Of particular importance was the construction of stone St. Petersburg, in which foreign architects took part and which was carried out according to the plan developed by the tsar. The tsar also created a system of administration and administrative-territorial division of the country, which was preserved for a long time. At the same time, the negative factor of the ongoing reforms was that violence was the instrument of reforms. The reforms were carried out by cruel methods, by extreme strain of material and human forces (poll tax), which led to uprisings (Streletskoye 1698, Astrakhan 1705-1706, Bulavinskoye 1707-1709). Not only did Peter's reforms fail to rid the country of the previously established system of social relations embodied in serfdom, but, on the contrary, conserved and strengthened its institutions. This was the main contradiction of Peter's reforms, and as a consequence of this - the prerequisites for a future new crisis.
STEREOSCOPE
Political development of the states of Central Asia in the light of the geography and history of the region
Sergey Panarin
Central Asia is the largest bloc in the post-Soviet space after Russia. It occupies a linking position between Western and eastern parts Eurasia and intermediate - between the developed North and the developing South. It is also one of the richest regions in the world in terms of mineral resources. The spatial position and resource wealth make Central Asia an important theater of the world political game. The states of the region can play a leading role in it. It has something of the role of the heroine, besieged by fans. After all, only their choice between orientation to the North or to the South can significantly affect the balance of power in world politics. In addition, with both northern and southern orientations, there remains a choice within a choice: with the United States or with Russia? Turkey or Iran? Of no less importance is the domestic political choice between democracy and authoritarianism.
It is not surprising that quite a lot of texts have already accumulated on the internal political development of the Central Asian countries, their foreign policy preferences1. The advantages of these works include consideration of the political development of Central Asia in a broad geopolitical context, a detailed analysis of political forces, and monitoring of changes. The shortcomings are the insufficient attention of the authors to the geography and history of the region.
Perhaps in other places where a political culture has been established that has overcome the influence of landscape and custom, there is no need to make long journeys in space and time. But when dealing with Central Asia, the primary task is to explore the dependence of social structure on spatial, political creativity - on cultural creativity. Otherwise, experts' calculations
Sergei Alekseevich Panarin, Head of the Department of the CIS countries, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
will be erroneous, the expectations of politicians will be too high. The article is an attempt to approach the solution of this problem. In its first section, the dominant model of the political development of the region is revealed, in the second, it is shown how it is specifically embodied in political life different countries, and in the third and fourth sections, the geographical and historical prerequisites for its approval are traced.
Several concepts will play a key role in the article, so it is necessary to determine in advance what content the author puts into them. The states of Central Asia are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan) and Turkmenistan (Turkmenistan). The term political development indicates the process of deployment, streamlining and changing relations about power on a national scale and interstate relations - on a regional or world scale. In the conditions of Central Asia, directly life-supporting resources are land and water in rural areas, the commodity stock of food consumption and utilities (water, lighting, heating, transport) in cities. The spatial structure is understood as a set of positions (positions) occupied in space by significant territorial units within the region and throughout the region. Political culture - as another totality, a totality of ideas prevailing in society about power, about the ways of its approval and functioning; these beliefs, in turn, are determined both by people's current political practices and by their historical heritage. Finally, the concept historical heritage covers the values and social institutions that were formed in the past, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly influencing the behavior of people in the present.
Model of political development
In Western political thought, assertions that the modern state is in crisis are becoming more and more insistent. It is emphasized that within the limits of one single society and the world community as a whole, the state has strong rivals. These are transnational corporations international organizations, crime syndicates, formal and informal structures for ensuring local interests, etc. In many ways, these statements are true. However, the state still remains the leading subject of political development. Why? First, by its very essence - as an organization of public authority with sovereignty, it acts
cabbage soup in a certain territory and subjugating the entire population of this territory3. Secondly, because the state forms a stable external framework for the action of all collective political forces, including those autonomous from the state and oppositional authorities. And thirdly, due to the fact that the state, despite the formation of large collective regional entities such as a united Europe, still acts as the main subject of relations of cooperation or rivalry in the international arena. Therefore, the wording is justified: what kind of state - such a model of the political development of society.
1. General remarks: main structural elements of the model
The development model is an abstract logical construction. It is liberated from everything that is intermediate and unsettled, residual and nascent, introduced and inorganic, which often occurs in real political development. The model is constructed as a set of three basic organizational forms into which various types or types of power relations are molded. At the same time, in the model, each form is assigned a strictly defined function, not complicated, as it actually happens in reality, by other functions4.
The first form is a form of government, the organization of higher institutions of power. The main forms of government known from history are as follows: despotism, monarchy (class-representative, absolute and constitutional) and republic (parliamentary and presidential).
The second form is the state structure, the organization of relations between the highest and other authorities. According to the device, states are unitary and federal; the latter, in turn, are divided according to the main principle of the formation of subjects of the federation. Usually used, separately or together, the principle of territorial autonomy and the principle of national autonomy. Three variants of national autonomy are known: national-state, national-administrative and national-cultural.
Finally, the third form is the political regime. It is determined by the nature of the relationship between the state and society. These relations are expressed in two ways: in the ways of sanctioning power and in the degree of its control over society and / or in the degree of society's control over power.
If the right to power is derived directly from the relationship of its bearers with society, we have a secular regime. His special occasion
It is an aristocratic regime in which the right to participate in power is inherited by birth. Theoretically, meritocracy (the right to power arising from special personal virtues) and ochlocracy (the right of “quantity”, or the power of the crowd) are also possible. However, neither one nor the other has ever existed in its pure form, but was only one of the additional characteristics of political regimes, determined by a different criterion. If the right to power is derived from the special relationship of its holders not with society, but with a higher divine power, or is based on the possession of some higher truth, then we are dealing with regimes that cannot at all be considered or cannot be considered fully secular. In the first case - with a theocratic regime, in the second - with an ideocratic one.
When power is directly responsible to the whole society and is divided into separate branches with strictly defined prerogatives, then it is justified to speak of democracy. In democratic states, the law is subordinate to the law, the law itself is guided by the principle of justice. Natural human rights are recognized as inalienable and priority in relation to the rights established by the norms of positive law. A liberal approach dominates in law: a person is allowed everything that is not prohibited by law, while the state, on the contrary, is prohibited everything that is not permitted by law. The private life of a person is protected from state interference, the relationship between a person and a person and a citizen and the state is strictly mediated by law. Accordingly, the opportunities for active self-expression of the individual, for self-organization and autonomous existence and interaction of communities of different rank and status, with different functions and principles of formation, are the greatest.
When power is not responsible to society and is not divided into branches, or such division is carried out in a purely formal way, then there are signs of an authoritarian political regime. It can function as a regime of personal (dictatorial) or group (oligarchic) power. Of course, such a regime also does not hang in an airless space, but relies on a certain part of society. But he does it in a specific way: finds (or "grows") social groups, if necessary, mobilized for his support. A special case of authoritarianism is the Bonapartist regime. Under him, the preservation of the power of the ruler, who often possesses charisma, is achieved through continuous opportunistic balancing between different social groups and political forces, and the favorite form of self-legitimation is the demagogic appeal to the “will of the people”, expressed in a referendum (the so-called plebiscite management)5.
Under an authoritarian regime, law is subordinate to law. At the same time, at best, a statist approach dominates, when everything that is not permitted by law is prohibited to a person, while everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted to the state. In the worst case, power in general is completely arbitrary: it may or may not rely on positive law, it may or may not take into account the natural rights of man and the historical rights of communities. The most important thing is that it is guided only by the principle of political expediency, so that any of its own laws at any moment may turn out to be a fiction that does not limit its actions in any way. In the arsenal of means used by the authoritarian regime for self-affirmation, there are necessarily political repressions. At the same time, on the one hand, he constantly experiences difficulties in solving the problem of his own legitimacy and therefore, as a rule, is concerned with the construction of beautiful constitutional facades, on the other hand, he uses force only to suppress open resistance. As soon as the opposition falls silent, repression stops. Of course, even at the stage of “calm” and quasi-legitimate existence of an authoritarian regime, neither individuals nor groups (including groups that support the regime) have sufficient (or even none) freedom for self-activity, self-organization and self-expression. Privacy is not protected or protected poorly. However, the state does not seek to put it under comprehensive control and is unable to do so, although it tries to keep every subject in its field of vision. For the general style of power and life under authoritarianism leads to the fact that the relations "patron - client" become of great importance in society. They certainly make it easier for the authorities to mobilize the masses politically, but they also soften its oppression and reduce the managerial effectiveness of the apparatus.
Another type of political regime is a totalitarian regime6. It has almost all the features of an authoritarian regime, but is still different from the latter. There are three main differences. Firstly, the totalitarian regime relies not on the whole of society and not on some of its structural parts, but on the "mass" - on atomized individuals who are not united by stable social ties. In a structurally decaying society, he uses the masses to come to power; in a structured society, he creates it himself after coming to power in order to prolong his dominance. Secondly, violence in the form of systematic terror is constantly carried out by the totalitarian regime, regardless of the presence or absence of opposition. In essence, terror is a routine way of controlling subjects. Third, a totalitarian regime is necessarily more or less ideocratic. official ideology,
imposed by him on society, on the one hand, claims to be scientific and therefore expels God or gives him a modest place, on the other hand, has all the signs of divine revelation, since it can never be fully comprehended by the uninitiated in the mysteries of teaching. The totalitarian regime makes titanic efforts to reach every subject through ideological indoctrination, so that the loyalty created by fear is reinforced by the pseudo-logic of pseudo-beliefs. Thanks to this, he is much more successful in solving the problem of his own legitimacy than his authoritarian counterpart.
So, taken together, all three forms of power relations - the form of government, the state structure and the political regime - form one or another model of political development, embodied in the state. But there is another difference that typologically separates even states with absolutely identical forms. This difference lies in the explicitly or implicitly assumed source of sovereignty. Slightly rough, we can say that in modern world as such, the will of the people is universally recognized. But the concept of "people" is used in both a broad and a narrow sense. If all citizens of a given state are meant, without distinction in their racial, ethnic and confessional affiliation, then the concept of “people” is used broadly: all people living on this earth. A state that considers the will of the "people of the common soil" as the source of its sovereignty is a national state. If, however, only people of the titular nationality are meant, then “people” is understood narrowly: people who “first” occupied this land and distinguish themselves from its later inhabitants by a biological connection with their ancestors and with each other. The state, which considers the will of “people of common blood” as the source of its sovereignty, is an ethnic state.
Each of the forms we have analyzed is reflected in the constitutions of states. But there is one subtlety here: the norms of constitutional law that determine the form of government and state structure, insofar as they relate to political institutions proper, are unconditionally establishing (imperative) norms. The norms that determine the regime are mainly orienting norms. If the constitution states that the form of government is republican, then it will necessarily contain provisions on the institutions of the parliament and the president. At the same time, the constitution may provide for the dissolution of parliament and the removal of the president, but both institutions are in no way limited in their very existence. On the contrary, if freedoms of speech, assembly and political association are proclaimed in the constitution, then the very use of these freedoms is not obligatory for citizens. Citizens can, but
should not at all openly declare everything they think at rallies and in the newspapers or create opposition political parties. And besides, all political freedoms are subject to restriction within the limits established by the same constitution.
As a consequence, the determination of the form of government and state structure can be made with certainty on the basis of an analysis of the text of the constitution. It is more difficult with the political regime: in order to reveal its true nature, it is also necessary to analyze its current political practice. Of course, the first two forms can be perverted and emasculated. The USSR was formally considered a federal state, but in reality it was much closer to a unitary state. However, this example says something else. In the entire Soviet history, there was no case of the liquidation of a union republic (with the exception of the return of the former autonomous status of the Karelian-Finnish SSR, hastily created by Stalin in the hope of joining Finland). That is, for any arbitrary violations and perversions of the constitution, the articles that establish the form of government and the state structure mark a limit that political practice cannot overcome without resorting to a change in the constitution. On the contrary, neither the Constitution of the Weimar Republic, safely preserved by the Nazis, nor the best Soviet Constitution in the world of 1936 in any way prevented Hitler and Stalin in their dictatorial practice from completely neglecting constitutionally enshrined political freedoms.
What model of political development are we facing in Central Asia? The method of answering this question follows from what has been said above: first, you need to analyze the constitutional norms, and then see how they are observed in practice. In fact, the specificity of the region is such that even through the analysis of constitutions, it is possible to draw conclusions with great certainty not only about the form of government and state structure, but also about the nature of regimes.
Why is this possible? Because there are some historically tested ways of evaluating constitutions. They make it possible to identify, at a minimum, potential lines of divergence between the ideal and real image of a particular political regime. First, it is very important to establish what type of fundamental law we are dealing with and how this type relates to public legal consciousness. In relation to legal consciousness, two types of constitutions are known: declaring and instructing. Declaring
constitutions make do with the fact that they show what kind of state it is supposed to create. To do this, it is enough to briefly outline the principles of social organization acceptable from the point of view of the legislator and list all the basic constitutional norms for ensuring it. In instructive constitutions, the legislator also explains the meaning of the adopted principles, introduces and develops in detail those norms of direct action, with the help of which these principles can only be implemented. The first type is sufficient in a society where the majority of members have grown to an adequate understanding of the constitution, where many of the legal norms present in the constitution have already largely become daily guidelines in social practice. The second type is necessary where the constitution is far ahead of the real sense of justice of the people. For when a declaring constitution is adopted by a society with an inadequate level of legal consciousness, the basic law will not become a law of direct action. Both the authorities and ordinary citizens will not feel bound by him, they will easily step over his provisions7.
Another indicator of the potential for political development embodied in the text of the main law is the way it is correlated with subsequent legislation. If the norms that form a system of checks and balances and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens are given directly in the constitution itself, this means that the principle of its direct action has certain chances to be implemented in practice. If the constitution constantly refers to future lawmaking, then even with the best intentions of the executive branch, a whole bunch of constitutional norms will not receive real significance. In fact, the principle of revealing the content of constitutional norms through future laws is actively used just so that the executive power is not constrained in its arbitrariness.
Finally, when a constitution is directly oriented towards democratic development, its articles, showing how each branch of government should be formed and function in relation to other branches, become of key importance. The degree of real concentration of power by any of its branches depends very much on the content of these articles. Excessive strengthening of one branch, the executive branch, is contrary to the basic principle of democracy. This means that if there are articles in the constitution that ensure such an imbalance, a formally democratic regime is already or can easily become authoritarian.
In this regard, the articles that distribute power, by definition, cannot be purely declaring. After all, the less they are instructive, the more opportunities the executive branch has to infringe on legislative and judicial power. However, such a method
Ensuring the benefits of the executive branch also contains a certain amount of risk: situations are possible when it can suddenly turn against just the incompleteness and ambiguity of the articles regulating the relationship of authorities. This danger can be neglected only by the authorities, who are confident that the political situation will not get out of their control either now or in the foreseeable future.
Where the dominance of the state over society does not appear with such certainty, another method of concentration of power is used. The constitution develops procedures for the formation of branches of government and the termination of their powers, implicitly guaranteeing the supremacy of the executive branch. Moreover, this is done for almost all cases of political life. But since politicians judge future situations based on the present (either personally experienced or known from the experience of other countries), the relevant articles of the constitution are transformed from a universal norm of permanent action into a norm of a private and temporary law, tailored to the political tasks of current politicians.
Most clearly, the true nature of the regime emerges when referring to the provisions governing the formation of the judiciary, the scope of its powers, and the procedures for their termination. And this is quite understandable. In the relationship between the legislative and executive authorities, an element of rivalry was initially laid down. The judiciary, by definition, stands above the fray. In addition, it is she who is called upon to systematically monitor the observance of fundamental rights and freedoms by the executive bodies, since the parliament addresses these issues only in a general form or in special cases. Therefore, the executive branch acquires complete freedom of hands not when it manages to get a toy representative body, but when it breaks through in the constitution the procedure for the formation of courts of different competence, which makes the judiciary completely dependent on it.
So, we have identified different types of constitution. The differences between them are established using three evaluation criteria: in relation to legal consciousness, constitutions declaring and instructing are possible, in relation to subsequent legislation - constitutions of direct or delayed action, in relation to the branches of power - constitutions that ensure a balance of powers or
not providing it. Based on these criteria, the analysis of the
<_» 8 ____________________________
of the existing constitutions of the Central Asian states8 shows that
that they contain some legal prerequisites that are not conducive to the formation of democratic political regimes. How exactly this is expressed, I will show in the next section; for now, I will note that the analysis of political practice in general forces us to come to the conclusion: in Central Asia, the trend
I deliberately use the word "trend" because the dominance of this model in its entirety can only be spoken about in relation to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Decreasing potential for democratic political development remains in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan does not fully fit into the model for other reasons - the real unitarity of the state is far from being achieved here, and the prospect of the state losing its secular character is still not ruled out. But the prevalence of this model in the region as a whole is beyond doubt.
No less pronounced is the tendency to build an ethnic state in the shell of a quasi-national one. Whatever is written on this score in the constitutions, in fact, in all five states, power belongs to the titular elite. Demonstrative Russian ministers and Korean mayors do not change the overall picture at all.
As a social group with special functions, people in power are divided into political leaders and administrative apparatus. The latter, in turn, consists of general administrators and industry specialists. The scope of competence, and hence the scope of power, for these three divisions differ significantly. Political leaders have the most power, followed by general administrators, and industry specialists last. The influence of the first, crowning the pyramid of power, covers the whole society in all its activity manifestations. Such is the influence of presidents in presidential republics, prime ministers in parliamentary republics, top leaders of ideological and law enforcement agencies here and there. The influence of the latter extends either to a set of activities at the level of the whole society (for example, the influence of vice-premiers in the post-Soviet states), or to the entire life of individual territorial segments of society (for example, the influence of governors or mayors). The maximum that is available to third parties is the influence on certain types of people's activities (leaders of various ranks in sectoral ministries and departments). So, the positions of narrow specialists and executives fall to the share of minorities, while the titular elites reserve the powers of political leaders and make up the vast majority of general administrators. And in general, the point is not who is more in the apparatus - titular or non-titular - but who has more real power. In Central Asia, it is the people of the titular nationality who make decisions on the formation of a political course, the distribution of power and strategically important resources. They also form the top of the power
departments - national security committees, ministries of internal affairs, prosecutor's offices. And this is enough: if the trinity of guardians of the law is titular, then the power is the same9.
The "indigenization" of power entails far-reaching social and cultural consequences. Minorities feel unprotected, the titular elite is eager to maintain a monopoly on power. But in order to hold on and gain a foothold, it must melt a single nation out of a multi-ethnic and multicultural population - an "indivisible spiritual whole"10 - and do it at an accelerated pace. She cannot wait until ethnic boundaries blur naturally and culturally everyone, as in Makar Nagulnov's dreams, becomes "uniformly swarthy." A variant of the historically unhurried form-
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The formation of a single nation in the European manner does not work in Central Asia: not those times, not those conditions. Indeed, the unity of many European nations was created by coercion as much as by gradual organic merging.
The titular elite must impose the language that they officially speak (although in reality they often do not speak) and the culture that they officially share (although they often know only its most common symbols) as a national language and national culture. What does it matter that this language and this culture are now in many respects inferior to the Russian language and culture? This only raises the price that minorities will have to pay in the first place, but does not make the task unsolvable. At one time, the Czechs managed to displace the German language and make Czech the language of statehood and culture. In Central Asia, in all five states, a course has already been taken to ensure that over time the national education system functions only in the titular language, so that the idioms and authorities of only the titular culture are used as basic ones. Russian language and culture will be forced out; Russian-speaking minorities, if they want to stay, will be forced to become bilingual and accept partial cultural assimilation. Even cultural autonomy is unlikely to be granted to them: firstly, because it is contrary to the nature of authoritarian power; secondly, just because they are representatives of a very strong culture.
The model of political development dominating in Central Asia is currently represented by three modifications. Differences in modifications are expressed in constitutional law, as well as in political practice and leadership style.
1. First modification: Kyrgyz Republic - Kazakhstan
This is an authoritarian model with some elements of democracy. The constitutions of both countries can be recognized, if not unconditionally instructive, then, in any case, approaching this variety of constitutional texts. In particular, this applies to the constitution of Kyrgyzstan. Compared with other constitutions, it creates the most favorable legal conditions for the formation of a democratic political regime. However, there is a bias in it in favor of the executive, more precisely, presidential power (Article 46, paragraphs 5.5, 5.6, 6.2, 6.3, 6.5). In the Constitution of Kazakhstan, the dominance of the president over the legislative and control over the judiciary are provided much more reliably (Articles 44-47, 50, 53-55, 58, 71, 73, 82), although implicitly, so to speak, in a roundabout way, in compliance with external propriety. Thus, the formation of the Supreme Court of the country seems to be the prerogative of the Senate, but the Senate itself is formed in such a way that it simply cannot be disloyal to the president. Therefore, the Supreme Court, and with it the entire judicial system, is in the hands of the President. In addition, the constitution of Kazakhstan, to an even greater extent than the constitution of Russia, is written for a specific president and a specific political situation (see, for example, articles 91-97), which means that it has a strong flaw - conjuncture12.
Both countries established a presidential republic with significant and ever-expanding powers of the head of state. The regimes of the two presidents generally fall under the category of "enlightened" Bonapartism. Akayev is leading on this basis, and Nazarbayev is leading in terms of the frequency of using political methods, in which the authoritarian essence of Bonapartism is revealed. However, it should be borne in mind that in calling these regimes Bonapartist, I do not mean complete coincidence with the classical French model. Rather, the implication is that both Akayev and Nazarbayev prefer to find effective ways to neutralize remaining elements of democracy, rather than blatantly trample on them or eliminate them altogether. These methods themselves, as is also very typical for the political practice of Bonapartism, are disguised as a free expression of will - either of the entire people (referendums), or of its elected representatives (initiative of the Kazakh parliament with the postponement of presidential elections). Another distinguishing feature of the Bonapartist regime - the constant balancing between different political and social forces - has acquired significant specificity in these two Central Asian states. It lies in the fact that one has to take into account not only the multinational composition of the population, but also the unsurpassed cultural duality.
ism of society. Whether they want it or not, both presidents are forced to speak two languages, use the idioms of two cultures. This, on the one hand, does not allow them to abandon the residual democracy, on the other hand, it really helps to achieve their political goals with the help of references to the need to maintain international peace. Finally, a striking feature of Kazakhstan, apparently, should be considered the fact that here the president has already basically passed the stage of social balancing. Now he relies on the “artificial caste” that he himself raised, for which the preservation of his regime is a matter of daily bread. 13 This caste is a symbiosis of capitalizing officials and bureaucratizing entrepreneurs. They are entirely dependent on strong presidential power and therefore completely obedient to it.
What else distinguishes the states of the first modification? First of all, the initial relative independence of the legislative and judicial authorities, which they subsequently lost. Further, although it is low in terms of influence on political development, it is still the highest level of party development in the region. The activities of the opposition and human rights organizations are allowed, direct persecution of opponents of the regime is carried out “on the occasion” and by relatively mild methods. There is a semi-free press in the capitals, which, however, has lately been subjected to more and more "cutting down of the language"14. Criticism of the regime (but not of the president's personality) is possible, but either ignored or stopped. Persistent - but not yet very successful - attempts are being made to create unifying ideologies with an emphasis on the supremacy of the idea of national statehood.
Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic are also characterized by the greatest openness in Central Asia and, by international standards, the highest level of openness to the outside world. Both countries are pursuing an active foreign policy with a predominant focus on the United States, Western Europe, China, and the Asia-Pacific countries. Relations with Russia occupy the most important place in foreign policy, but there is a clear desire for them to lose their dominant significance. Nevertheless, the states of the first modification retain the highest potential of partnership with Russia in the region. In relations with neighbors in the region, attempts to establish cooperation are combined with competition for resources, and in the case of Kazakhstan, for leadership.
In the economic field, a course has been chosen for integration into the world economy, for the creation of a preferential regime for foreign capital, for the priority development of private entrepreneurship and export raw materials industries. In Kazakhstan, the national capital is formed almost exclusively "from above", on a clan-bureaucratic basis. In Kyrgyzstan, there seem to be several
more favorable conditions for the development of small and medium businesses. However, the declared economic policies and the actual trends of change are very different in both countries. One of the main reasons is that both states are the most "loose" in the region: in them, the executive branch does not manage to effectively solve tasks other than protective ones. Even the punitive organs are weak.
2. Second modification: Uzbekistan - Tajikistan
Although it is represented by two states in the region, the description (due to the peculiarities of the situation in Tajikistan) is given on the example of one Uzbekistan. Here we see a very rigid authoritarian model with purely decorative elements of democracy, a presidential republic with very large powers of the head of state and, in fact, direct presidential rule combined with a constitutionally carried out, but absolutely formal separation of powers.
The Constitution of Uzbekistan is not instructive and therefore, in principle, cannot ensure the direct operation of the fundamental laws. Even as a declaring constitution, it is addressed to a greater extent not to its own population, but to world public opinion. In other words, it solves, first of all, not internal political, but foreign policy tasks: it serves as a formal evidence of the compliance of the constitutional structure of the new state with internationally recognized norms of constitutional law, the adoption of which opens the door to the world community. At the same time, some of the most important constitutional norms are not spelled out in it at all. For example, there are no provisions establishing the procedure for holding a referendum (in Art. 9), registration of public associations (in Art. 56), presidential elections (in Art. 90), organization and activities of the Cabinet of Ministers (in Art. 98) and the Constitutional Court (in Art. 109). In all these cases, a concise wording appears: "determined by law." I have already noted the possibilities for the concentration of power created by such an innocent-looking reference. It is not surprising that the legislative and judicial powers did not and do not have here even an illusory independence from the executive.
The political pluralism that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s is long gone. Today, the weak party-political structure has been nationalized, the press is completely controlled, and open opposition and human rights activities are absolutely impossible. Only strictly dosed and "loyal" criticism of the lower echelons of executive power is allowed. The repressive organs of the state have received such hypertrophied development that, on this basis, the regime no longer resembles an authoritarian, but total
container. The nationalist ideology of Uzbek greatness is being intensively implanted. Its symbols, along with the poet-humanist Navoi and the ruler-scientist Ulugbek, are the religious figures of medieval Maverannahr and the merciless conqueror Timur. Islam is incorporated into it in moderate doses to seize the initiative from local fundamentalists.
With formal openness to the outside world, any attempts by visiting journalists and scientists to obtain independent information about the real processes in the country are thwarted. However, after the explosions in Tashkent it is difficult to talk even about formal openness. First of all, the border and customs regime with neighboring states was sharply tightened, so that these borders are increasingly beginning to resemble the Soviet border at the castle. Foreign policy is active and directed not so much towards the culturally related Muslim states, but towards those countries that are perceived as potential investors and counterbalances to the residual influence of Russia. Uzbekistan is distancing itself from Russia and the CIS more and more, the latest evidence is the withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty. In parallel, Uzbekistan, until recently, quite frankly claimed the role of the sole leader in Central Asia.
Karimov's economic policy was dominated by a course towards a combination of export-oriented development in extractive industries with import-substituting development in manufacturing, diversification of agricultural production and achievement of grain self-sufficiency. The statist model of modernization was chosen, the main subject of economic activity is the state. The presence of a strong vertical of executive power facilitates the implementation of this course. The reverse side is the excessive regulation of economic relations, the slow formation of an entrepreneurial stratum of a non-traditional type and a severe restriction on the low level of income and consumption of the majority of the population.
3. Third modification: Turkmenistan
Here we are dealing with a very peculiar modification of the authoritarian model: in its appearance, not even totalitarianism (although its experience is also not neglected), but Eastern despotism is becoming more and more distinct. The separation of the legislative and executive powers has not been carried out even at the constitutional level. More precisely, it is blurred due to the fact that a certain higher pseudo-representative body, the Halk maslahaty, is placed above both. According to the Constitution, it combines the functions
both branches of government and expresses the highest will of the people. But it is completed and works in such a way that it serves as a purely decorative deliberative body under the president (Art. 48-53). In addition, the Constitution of Turkmenistan provides for strict and rather frank control of the president over the judiciary (Articles 57, 67, 102).
Formally, the country is a presidential republic. But its head has truly unlimited powers. The regime of Turkmenbashi bizarrely combines the features of both strict and patriarchal rule, more and more reminiscent of the rule of a traditional eastern monarch, who, however, uses some modern technologies of power. So, on the one hand, a comprehensive and all-pervading police control over the population has been established, on the other hand, various populist gestures are being made in the field of its social protection. The party structure is completely undeveloped, the press is semi-official and frankly reptilian. Any criticism of the authorities is ruled out, the opposition is crushed and expelled, the few surviving human rights activists are systematically intimidated and periodically harassed.
An ideology of ethno-national unity is being developed - using references to the glorious Parthian past. At the same time, loyalty to the idea of the nation is identified with the personal devotion of each citizen of the country to the president. There are obvious attempts to instill in the heads of subjects the traditional idea of the world-arranging function of despotic power. To do this, the cult of the “father of the nation” is quite purposefully planted, the urban landscape is filled with visible symbols of his greatness, provided by his wise rule of prosperity. In the latter case, either consciously or unconsciously, the experience of propagandistic symbolization of space, borrowed from various autocrats, such as Stalin and Kim Il Sung, is used. Islam is brought in for the same purposes as in Uzbekistan, and just as cautiously.
After the introduction of the visa regime with the CIS countries, Turkmenistan is closed from the outside world even more than Uzbekistan. Foreign policy is distinguished by an average level of activity and is carried out formally in accordance with the doctrine of neutrality, in reality - according to the principle of protective self-isolation or equidistance from the main world centers and selective, always pragmatic and cautious, rapprochement with second-rank states in world politics and economy. Turkmenistan has long been the most passive participant in the events held within the framework of the CIS. On the other hand, its bilateral relations with Russia in some areas look even more preferable than relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The economy has staked on the country's entry into the world market as a major energy supplier. But the weakness of the administrative apparatus, which is very much corroded by corruption and local ties, negates the objective advantages that the country had at the start of independent development. The example of Turkmenistan clearly shows that isolationism, fed by narrow ideas about the self-sufficiency of the newly-minted "second Kuwaitis", leads to cultural decline and social stagnation of the bulk of the population.
The role of geography
Certain geographic prerequisites for strengthening the authoritarian trend in the political development of the region are already contained in its spatial structure. With even greater force, the authoritarian potential of the natural environment is manifested in the impact that acute resource imbalances that have formed in the region have on the political life of Central Asia. True, in the first, and especially in the second cases, it would be incorrect to talk about the pure influence of the geographical factor: it became possible due to historical changes that stretched over decades and centuries.
1. Spatial structure
If we evaluate the spatial structure of each Central Asian state separately, it turns out that it is vulnerable for all. In their quirkiness, the borders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in their Fergana section have no analogues on the map of the modern world. They can only be compared with the outlines of European states from the time of Charles the Bold. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have more compact, less indented territories. But they have another problem: they are actually devoid of a spatial core15. Both the central part of Kazakhstan and the inner space of Turkmenistan are territories unsuitable for life. The vast majority of residents, cities and businesses and almost all cultivated land are concentrated in them around the perimeter. Their space is, as it were, torn apart by the forces of economic, ethnic and cultural attraction that are outside the national territory. Any external threat immediately turns out to be a threat to the main vital centers. However, the presence of core space in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is also doubtful. Their ter-
The territories are made up of valleys framed by difficult-to-pass ridges 3, 4, and often 5,000 meters above sea level. And the life of the inhabitants of each valley was closed within its boundaries for such a long time that significant local cultural differences arose and became fixed between the regions, sharp drops in the levels of socio-economic development of the lower and more open and more elevated and closed regions.
Obviously, the weak economic and political integration of the Central Asian states is largely due to the peculiarities of the spatial structure of each of them. Against the background of these features and taking into account the multi-ethnic composition of the population, the positions of the unitarians look much more preferable than the positions of the federalists. And the idea of strong local self-government can hardly arouse the favorable attention of the central government, which is constantly afraid that it may lose control over one or another part of the state territory. On the other hand, the temptation to seal structural gaps by purely administrative methods is strong. Kazakhstan has already taken this path, where in 1997, internal regions were attached to several outlying regions as counterweights to their possible outward drift. The attempt to create a consolidating core - albeit one shifted to the north of the geographic center - largely explains the transfer of the capital from Almaty to Astana. All this suggests that the rulers are inclined to look for the first remedy against the disintegration of new states in one-time volitional decisions. Space, as it were, pushes us to overcome its initial looseness on the paths of authoritarian concentration of power.
The internal weaknesses of the spatial structure of a particular state and region can be partly compensated by their position in a larger space. In this regard, let us first look at how the states are located. The entire northern half of Central Asia is occupied by Kazakhstan. The southern half is cut from the northwest to the southeast by the long body of Uzbekistan. Other states are squeezed between regional giants and the external environment of the region. They are objectively placed in geopolitical dependence on the Kazakh "crown", the Uzbek "trunk" and non-regional neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan.
Regional leaders have their own positional problems. Kazakhstan directly borders Central Asia's most powerful neighbors, Russia and China. Willy-nilly, he is open to the impulses of economic and political influences coming from them. At the same time, both Russia and China have access to the ocean. If there are good relations with at least one of these countries, Kazakhstan can
get a stable access to the world export-import and information flows. Of course, all countries recognize the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs; but not a single country is indifferent to whether its neighbor is close to it in terms of its political structure and regime or not. All this affects the political regime in Kazakhstan, somewhat restrains the authoritarian aspirations of Nazarbayev. On the contrary, Uzbekistan is hidden in the thickness of the region. Moreover, it is the only state in the world (except for the tiny Liechtenstein) that has no access to the sea and is surrounded on all sides by states that also lack such access. Thanks to this, it is both better protected from extra-regional influences and highly vulnerable in its ties with the outside world. But both of them only play into the hands of the authoritarian political tendency.
As for the entire region, its continentality has long become a commonplace. In itself, it is not bad and not good - it all depends on historical circumstances. In the past, Central Asia justified its name not only by its geographical location, but also by its place in the world trade system. André Gunder Frank even suggested that the peoples of the region played a central role in world history for a long time. But if that was the case, then by the 17th century Central Asia had lost this place, and its inhabitants - this role. The replacement of horse-drawn transport by water deprived the region of its former exceptionally advantageous position, exacerbated its positional vulnerability as an inland region deprived of waterways that would lead to the main ocean communications.
The political shifts of the last decade have played the same cruel joke on Central Asia as the shift in trade routes during the Age of Discovery. Previously, it was part of a state washed by navigable seas. This eased the burden of deep continentality, almost always fraught with closeness and stagnation. As soon as she returned to the position of a separate region, the burden became heavier again. Hopes that it will be removed by countries and corporations interested in the resources of the region are exaggerated. Supporters of the reconstruction of the "Great Silk Road", ardent in speeches, cool in deeds. They do not forget that Central Asia is open in the north and northwest, and where more, where less closed in the south and southeast, and that the well-developed, most economical communications are directed only towards Russia. It is also important that in relation to its Central Asian neighbors, Russia acts in two capacities at once. First, as a still more or less integral economic and political space that links the region with the rest of the world. Secondly, as a set of large, relatively highly developed economic and geographical regions, with each of
which links of economic cooperation can be established. Thanks to this, most of the transport arteries going from Russia to Central Asia can be mutually beneficially used along their entire length by all participants in world trade. Other neighbors of Central Asia do not have such advantages. Their space, adjacent to the Central Asian one, is poorly used. Or, due to its economic specialization and level of development, it is not capable of serving as a growth pole for the Central Asian economy. Highways of the northern and northwestern directions are multifunctional. The railways being designed and put into operation, connecting the region with China (Dostyk - Urumqi) and Iran (Tedzhen - Mashhad), perform a political rather than an economic function. They remind Russia that there are other, not only through its territory, outlets to the ocean17.
But the point is not only that it is through Russia that the region is most accessible to the world market. And not in the expected opposition of Russia to attempts to deprive it of this advantage. The implementation of projects for bringing Central Asia to terminals on the coasts of the Mediterranean, Pacific and Indian Oceans may entail such significant changes in the position of the current subjects of control over world economic resources that each such entity is forced to act with great caution. Yes, and this is an expensive enterprise - overcoming continentality. So for now, Central Asia is a potentially important reserve of world politics and economics, but not their front line. It will become equal in its real importance to other regions of the world only after the possibilities of mobilizing resources belonging to more successfully located parts of the world space are exhausted. That's when the West will deal with the problems of human rights and unconstitutional political practices in Central Asia much more seriously than it does now.
Usually, speaking about the development potential of Central Asia, they emphasize the richness of the region's mineral resources and their inaccessibility for potential consumers due to the underdevelopment of transport communications. It seems that the leaders of the Central Asian states see the main problem in delivering valuable raw materials to where they are in demand. If we succeed in solving this problem, the states of the region will be integrated into the world economy. And if they still manage to diversify the directions of marketing of mineral raw materials as much as possible, then the extractive industries will certainly turn into a reliable source of savings necessary for the development of manufacturing industries and general economic growth18. Well, with the advent of prosperity, there will come a time for democracy.
Leaving aside the contentious question of whether the blinkers of authoritarianism help or hinder economic growth and social modernization. Let us dwell on something else - how justified are the optimistic forecasts of those who count on the rapid development of Central Asian resources and the rapid social return from them. These policies seem to take a simplistic approach to resources and space. They underestimate the strength of the connection of minerals with other natural resources. They also lose sight of the fact that the range and degree of development of the region's natural resources are directly dependent on the structure and state of non-natural resources - social and historically created material ones. And they largely ignore the culturally determined activity preferences of the population.
Theoretically, subject to political stability in the region and its connection to the main world communications, the development of the mineral resources of Central Asia is possible by attracting external sources of financing, importing technologies and highly skilled labor. It is understood that Central Asia can repeat the model of the Arabian oil monarchies in its development. But despite some typological similarity of the initial situations in the two regions, there are also very strong differences between them19. The big question is to what extent these differences can be smoothed out due to external influence. The principle of reliance on extra-regional agents for the development of mineral resources implies disproportionate and enclave development. However, the likelihood of achieving even such a result is doubtful. For those who adhere to this principle actually ignore the spatial characteristics of Central Asian resources.
Resources do not exist in a vacuum, but in space. When planning an economic strategy, it is always better to keep in mind not resources in general, much less any particular type of resources, but namely spatial resources20. Minerals lie in the ground; but the surface of the earth is not something neutral in relation to its depths. Oil and gas, iron ore and lead-zinc deposits, precious metals and bauxite are not self-significant wealth. Their significance is mediated by space, moreover, in two ways.
On the one hand, the characteristics of the space determine the amount of costs for the exploitation of resources, the economic feasibility of their development in a given place and at a given time. In this place - because in the physical space surrounding the field, there may be insurmountable obstacles to its development. At this time - because in the historical space they can still
there will be no local social contractors ready to participate in those methods of appropriation of the region's mineral resources proposed by external agents, with the help of which natural obstacles would be overcome. Or because existing technologies generally do not allow the use of hard-to-reach resources.
On the other hand, raw materials and indeed all resources in general have not so much absolute as relative value. Rich is not the territory, the bowels of which are “stuffed” with elements of the periodic table, but the one “which is saturated with contrasts, borders, contact lines that generate flows and exchanges”21. Moreover, the relative value of resources is revealed not at one, but at several levels at once. If a state is taken as a unit, then it is necessary to imagine how a particular resource on its territory correlates not only with its own space, but also with the space of the region of which this state is a part, as well as with the space of other regions.
But that's not all. The direction of resource flows and exchanges is determined not only by the natural resource content of the contacting territories. No less important is their historical and cultural content: economic specialization, cultural and social traditions, the type of reproductive behavior of the population derived from them, political structure, etc. In some cases, these characteristics of territories complement each other in similarity or, conversely, in difference; in others, they do not fit together in any way or are so close that they do not give rise to incentives for exchange. Like highway projects, resource development plans based solely on supply, demand, and possible investment ignore the inherent attraction or repulsion of adjacent spatial units. As if any previous attraction or repulsion could be overcome by simple political and financial decisions! Therefore, plans and projects of this kind are not realistic enough and sooner or later must disappoint their recent fans.
2. Resource imbalances
Only taken together, in their mutual ratio, resources and space form a real resource base of a state or region. And in order to assess the development constraints inherent in the unity of resources and space, it is imperative to establish how this base is balanced. It is necessary to know to what extent resources can complement each other, to what extent the development of one is stimulated
the presence of others, the nature of their placement in the national or regional space, positional features and historical gravity of various blocks of space.
In the light of all these remarks, one has to admit that a common feature of the states of the region is a sharp structural imbalance in their resource base. True, in each state it is expressed in its own way. In Kazakhstan, rich in various raw materials, having a vast territory with a low population density, dissected by full-flowing rivers of the Ob basin, there is, it would seem, a good balance of resources. But it's not. Kazakhstan is experiencing an acute shortage of capital resources needed to "take" natural resources. Yes, and these riches are located mainly in low-water areas with an undeveloped physical infrastructure and a harsh climate. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with an abundance of water and hydropower resources, do not have significant reserves of other energy sources and lands suitable for development. In terms of the variety of available resources, the position of Uzbekistan could be considered the best if it were not for the absolute shortage of water and land resources and the threatening growth of agrarian overpopulation. As for Turkmenistan, it is almost the champion of Central Asia in terms of the lack of water sources independent of external control. And also - by a sharp gap between the level of wealth of oil and gas reserves and the level of readiness of the Turkmens themselves to develop them.
Three features are inherent in the resource base of all states in the region: 1) an absolute deficit of investment capital, formed on the basis of domestic savings; 2) an excess of unskilled labor resources formed by the titular population; 3) an acute shortage of directly life-supporting resources in most of the region. In addition, the resources of the Central Asian states weakly complement each other: what one has a lot of (low-skilled labor resources) has a lot of others; what one lacks (capitals and directly life-supporting resources) is lacking for all. And some complementarity of mineral resources is depreciated by the fact that in order to launch them into inter-country economic exchange, you must first solve the same problem of internal accumulations and water reserves.
What are the socio-political consequences of an imbalance in the region's resource base? The most burning issue for Central Asia is the issue of access for its poorly urbanized titular population to directly life-supporting resources, that is, to work on the land. After all, it covers the lion's share of the personal food consumption of residents
rural areas and a significant part of the food consumption fund of the townspeople is formed. The extent to which rural residents have access to land (whether in the form of arable land or pastures) and the water necessary for its irrigation directly affects the strength of village pressure on urban labor markets and on the social infrastructure of cities. The eternal relevance of this issue for the region is determined by the stubborn preservation here of traditional institutions of social guarantees and social control, the configuration of political unions at the micro level, interethnic relations and attitudes towards power, and relations between states. Any government in the region is strong as long as it manages to maintain, albeit at a low level, the access of the rural population to land and water, the urban population to the food market, more or less rewarding occupations and public services. And while it carries out at least a symbolic redistribution of the social product in favor of the poor and the needy.
But resource imbalances, by their very nature, cannot be overcome in the short term, in the near future. And the point here is not so much in the limited nature of certain natural resources. Their ratio with labor has never been ideal in the region. However, despite all the acute resource crises that affected certain parts of Central Asia for some time, on the scale of the entire region and in a long historical retrospective up to the 20th century, the balance between land, water and labor was still maintained - albeit approximate, fluctuating and unsustainable. . It was achieved in two ways: positive - due to the colonization of new territories, and negative - due to the physical reduction of part of the population in the old-developed areas during wars and hunger strikes and the flow of the surviving part to the areas of new development.
By the middle of the 20th century, the regulation of the balance in a negative way had completely ceased. But even earlier, as the commodity economy developed, working for the Russian market, there was an urgent need for capital resources. Their shortage was covered by the involvement in the economic circulation of more and more natural resources and by attracting an increasing mass of living labor. There was a powerful incentive to increase the number of workers. For the time being, this extensive mobilization of resources did not affect their ratio. However, after all the possibilities of economic development of the region's space were exhausted by the end of the Soviet era (that is, its agricultural colonization was completed), the population explosion that gained momentum dramatically changed the ratio between natural and labor resources. The pressure of the latter on the former became destructive. And after the collapse of the USSR and the appearance of allied
republics of independent states, even that insufficient correction of the imbalance of natural and labor resources through the infusion of capital resources from outside, which was nevertheless carried out by Moscow, became impossible.
Now, in the context of the crisis of transition that has engulfed the entire post-Soviet space, the disruptive potential of resource imbalances is not only decreasing, but intensifying. In essence, the authorities are faced with the need to extinguish the threats lurking in this potential through the priority solution of protective tasks. It needs to quickly suppress spontaneous outbursts of social discontent among the population, to prevent its politicization, and hence the activity of the opposition, and to create at least the appearance of the consent of society and the cohesion of the elites. The simplest ways to solve these problems have long been known in the region. This is the state's strict control over society, the creation of an extensive repressive apparatus, the support of communal collectivist traditions, the values of obedience and stability, and the rejection of political pluralism. It turns out that resource imbalances are tangible obstacles to democratic development. And they also help to establish authoritarianism.
The role of historical heritage
The entire history of Central Asia can be divided into two large periods. During the first, the region was included in the circle of cultures and states of the East. During the second, he stayed in the sphere of Russian statehood, was influenced by Russian and Soviet culture. The second period inherited much from the first. But he also created abrupt breaks in the continuity.
1. Heritage of the Eastern period
“I start with everyday life, with those manifestations of it that command us without our knowledge: with habits, more precisely, with established patterns of behavior, with those innumerable movements of human nature that bloom and bear fruit regardless of the decisions of the name ... These movements - the motives of actions, patterns and methods of actions and reactions - much more often than we believe, go back to the beginnings of human history. Ancient, but still alive, this centuries-old past merges into the present, just as the Amazon spews its muddy stream of waters into the Atlantic Ocean.
In these words of Fernand Braudel, the invisible influence of the cultural creation of ancestors buried by time on the deeds of their descendants is perfectly conveyed. In the social psychology of people, very powerful multi-temporal layers of value motivations of behavior have been deposited. There are no such clear boundaries between them as there are between building horizons in ancient settlements. It is enough for the conditions of life to change in such a way that the behavioral reactions and orientations of people, developed by hoary antiquity, begin to play the role of defenders of ethnic identity or religious beliefs or the social status of a person, as the most antediluvian archaism is reborn, reveals a remarkable mobilizing force and subjugates society, it would seem quite modern.
Central Asia was one of those regions of the East where the transition from an appropriating to a producing economy took place for the first time. The collective memory of the first farmers and pastoralists provoked in them a vague understanding of the originality of culture. They had to feel a sense of being isolated, opposed to nature and the former world of hunters and gatherers. This prompted them to put a strong emphasis on the justification and development of culturally protective ideas and rituals and their strong consolidation. Primary culture could only survive by solidifying in ideals and social practice the differences brought into life by the "Neolithic Revolution". What could not be realized otherwise than in a normative, sanctified form. Thus, the attitude to the immutability of life, which protected the newfound culture, took the first place.
As the economic specialization of the various regions of Central Asia took shape, new arguments emerged in favor of the values of stability. The region was the boundary between the worlds of farmers and nomads. In the world of farmers, the cultural tradition has become written and therefore authoritative for the entire region. It was also assimilated by nomads; however, the payment of farmers for joining the northern neighbors to it was very high.
In terms of the frequency of nomadic movements that fell to its lot, Central Asia surpasses any other region of the Old World. And almost every movement was accompanied by battles, the displacement of the vanquished from pastures and the conversion of part of arable land into pastures, the capture of cities and the burning of villages, theft of livestock and people, the plunder and destruction of material values, the destruction and decline of irrigation facilities. Those were real shocks. And shocks not only for the vanquished, but also for the winners. After all, they had to "digest" the temptations of urban comfort and oasis wealth, without losing their military, which ensured victory.
natural identity. In such circumstances, the authority of immovable immutability rose even higher.
A special role in the formation of the heritage of the era of cultural genesis was played by its final stage. Then Zoroastrianism spread in Central Asia, the region fell into the sphere of cultural and political influence of the ancient Persian monarchy. Thus, the construction of the upper floors of the local society was completed - the floor of ethics and the floor of religion _______<_» _ _ 23
ozno-political practice23.
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Zoroastrianism gave a systemic character to an already strong attitude towards self-perpetuation of culture in a normative form. That was saving conservatism. Thanks to him, during the settling of the next nomadic wave, the valuable primary elements of an agrarian civilization and the behavioral reactions associated with them, even the most elementary and ordinary ones, were not destroyed, but assimilated by the nomads. But the same Zoroastrianism even more stifled the initially weak inclination of this culture to create within itself the prerequisites for decisive changes in the structure of productive forces supporting it. The mere sacralization of fertility by him24 made the emergence of labor-saving technologies extremely difficult. Relatively rapid upsurges in productive forces and brilliant upsurges in creative thought have taken place more than once in the history of Central Asia. But at the same time, after the completion of the “Neolithic Revolution”, neither in the economy nor in culture were there any new upheavals or mutations comparable in scope to it.
The Achaemenid state lasted only two hundred years. But it was the first world empire to invade the life of the population of Central Asia. Then there were many such empires; and they either took her as a model, or could not erase the political and ideological standards she left behind. It had a profound impact on the destinies of the peoples of the region. Their spontaneous cultural creativity was introduced by her into the mainstream of the regulating state policy. And that is why it reached the souls of the subjects, because in the main it did not contradict their naturally formed worldview.
This was the source code of the local culture. And the subsequent historical development did not cancel it. Of course, there have been significant changes in certain areas; but at the same time, much of what was laid down in the era of cultural genesis, not only did not weaken, but, on the contrary, was additionally consolidated and strengthened.
The Eastern period bequeathed to Central Asia several main lines of its historical development. The first of them, economic and economic, was expressed in the sustainable reproduction of economic and cultural types (CCT), ideally suited to the natural environment. Three main HCT coexisted in the region: 1) mixed, in equal
least based on irrigated agriculture and cattle breeding, including mobile; 2) agricultural, with a clearly defined predominance of plant growing over livestock and irrigated agriculture over rainfed; 3) cattle breeding, in which agriculture played a purely auxiliary role in relation to the nomadic livestock economy25. There was no strict specialization of districts in HCT. But still, Maverannahr was predominantly an agricultural zone, the steppe was a cattle-breeding zone, while the complex HKT was most often found in the space between the Caspian and Aral Seas. At the same time, farms with different specializations complemented each other, exchanged products and often entered into cooperation. Thanks to this, the economic self-sufficiency of the region was achieved and, despite the frequent military clashes between the steppe and the oases, their very coexistence was possible. Each individual farm also tried to avoid a clear specialization and introduced into its practice some elements of management that were not typical for the HKT to which it could be attributed in terms of its main products. In the oases, they necessarily grew alfalfa and bred meat and dairy breeds of cattle, and the steppe nomads practiced one-time or regular crops of grain. Thus, the economic stability of small-scale agricultural production and the balance of food consumption were achieved.
The second trend is visible in the demographic area - in the undulating dynamics of the population. Most often, rises/falls in the number of inhabitants occurred at the micro level, in a particular area. They were caused by wars, strife, crop failures, loss of livestock. Of particular importance were local changes in the landscape26. If the population changed in the same way in several areas at once, then the amplitude of demographic fluctuations was clearly visible already at the mesolevel. Sometimes these larger shifts were explained by large-scale ecological catastrophes27. But much more often the cumulative effect of just small changes affected. Under their influence, the conditions for the reproduction of the population in the whole region worsened, and people left for other places, with not yet exhausted resources and a higher level of political stability. In one part of the region, the population went down, in the other - up. Well, at the macro level, its ebbs and flows depended on whether the entire region was in a phase of greater or lesser aridity of the climate, whether it experienced a period of peace or a period of wars, and whether the balance between the population and the ability of the natural environment was at this level and ways of its development by a person to withstand increasing anthropogenic loads.
Another stable line can be traced in the changes in the ethnic structure of the region. Two ethno-cultural worlds constantly coexisted in it: one in the south, the other in the north. In ancient times, these were pre-Aryan (presumably Dravidian) and Aryan tribes, in the Middle Ages and modern times - Iranian and Turkic peoples. At the same time, the general rule was the movement of the nomadic population from the north, from the steppe, to the south, the gradual settling in oases and the linguistic assimilation of the local population by the newcomers while assimilating its culture.
It is worth talking about the social line of development in more detail. Whatever changes take place in Central Asia, in the eastern period of the history of the region, multiple different-level divisions of society stubbornly persisted28. As a consequence, the social and political loyalties of people have been fragmented from generation to generation between several sources of power and authority. One such source was a local-cultural community - a certain part of the people, due to the historical circumstances of its existence, did not lose consciousness of its specialness from the rest of the "Turks", "Tajiks" or "Muslims". These sub-ethnic units sometimes lined up in a whole hierarchy. For example, Tajiks have at least five levels of local cultural self-identification29.
The population united in other, smaller groups. Their inner life was regulated by three types of relationships. I would call them relations of kinship, order and succession. Relations of kinship regulated interpersonal relations, including those concerning property, within the primary human association. In real life, it was a large undivided family or group of families, and in the ideal representation it was thought of as a chain of the dead and the living, dating back to one ancestor and owning one family property - land, craft or herd. A classic example of a community governed mainly by kinship relations is the Tajik avlod. Relations of order permeated associations of people who traced their origin to different ancestors, but lived and/or roamed together. Typical examples here are mahalla among farmers and in cities and the so-called extended community among nomads. Through these institutions, the link between the power that belonged to the elders in the clans and the external power of the state was carried out. Succession relations ensured the intergenerational transmission of socially significant information. Of course, it also took place within the family and community. But in order to strengthen the normative nature of what was transmitted with the help of a special behavioral practice isolated from the routine of everyday life, there was a special institution of men's associations (gaps, gastaks)30.
Finally, the entire population of Central Asia was divided into two large estates - "noble" and "common people". The nobles included people who were considered descendants of the Prophet, famous Sufi sheikhs, great rulers of the past, as well as serving nobility in the oases and tribal aristocracy (white bone) in the nomadic zone. Theoretically, any noble could count on signs of respect and gifts from a commoner. The family, practically included in the number of nobles, usually had its own circle of clients, who were obligated by custom to maintain asymmetrical relations of mutual assistance and mutual support with it. This circle was clearly outlined, thanks to which the threat of conflict between estates and local cultural social ties was removed.
Eastern despotism dominated the political life of the region. The monarchy with the transfer of the throne according to the dynastic principle was perceived as the only possible model of statehood. True, by the time the Russian troops arrived, a more or less centralized despotic state existed only in agricultural areas. The inhabitants of the steppe, who more than once supplied the ruling dynasties to the farmers, made do with a military potestary organization, which was noticeably inferior to despotism in terms of the degree of control over the individual and the group31. Nevertheless, even in nomadic areas, despotism was the ideal that local sultans and khans aspired to. Curiously, only those who were considered Genghisides, a descendant of the creator of the greatest despotism, could make the very claim to sole primacy32. It is also worth noting that despotic power - whether it was really heavy or, in essence, ephemeral - as a rule, did not encroach on the internal life of social communities, provided that they regularly paid taxes and carried out the duties established by custom.
In both agricultural and pastoral areas, any ideas about ethnic interests and their provision with power tools, if they appeared, were only in their infancy. Their assertion was hampered by the dynastic principle of inheritance of power, a long tradition of dominance in office work and literature of cultural languages common to the region (at different times - Greek, Arabic, Persian) and the almost inevitable multi-ethnicity of all states that arose in Central Asia in the eastern period of its history. For the borders of these states were established not along the contours of ethnic areas, but in such a way that the largest cities, irrigation systems and trade routes fell under the control of one ruler.
Ideology and political culture. Central Asia has long been in the zone of distribution of religions with a high moral and ethical
sky charge and with a developed ideal of the world order. From the point of view of the formation of local political culture, Zoroastrianism and Islam were of the greatest importance. The significance of Zoroastrianism has already been mentioned above. However, it is worth emphasizing once again: he deeply introduced into the local cultural tradition the ideal of a wise sole ruler - the guarantor of the prosperity of the lands he ruled, and the ancient setting of the primary agricultural culture to self-perpetuate in a normative form. As for Islam, it, firstly, contributed to the consolidation of the attitude to power as a divine institution, and secondly, it actually regulated everyday life, introducing into it universal political and legal concepts. At the same time, throughout the entire “eastern” period of Central Asian history, the despotic state itself exerted the strongest influence on ideology and political culture. True, in the steppe, again, this was more the influence of a model than of everyday political practice, so here it was weaker than in villages and cities.
In general, it turned out that both high ideology and the mundane life experience of many generations taught people to give unconditional priority to social stability, even the immobility of society, highly exalted the values of work, peace, collectivism, obedience, family, large families, respect for elders. They also jointly introduced into each individual consciousness the idea of asymmetric dependence as the norm of relations between power and subjects. For the ruler, the value of the commoner was expressed
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ancient formula: "worker - father - subject - believer". The commoner's own values were lined up according to a different, mirror-like first formula: "faith - humility - fertility - work." It is unlikely that all this could help the formation of an independent personality and free political choice; on the other hand, it favored the strengthening of group solidarity, a conformist attitude to power and a status hierarchy in society.
Particular attention should be paid to the period of the XVI-XVIII centuries. In these centuries, the position of Central Asia in the system of interregional commodity and cultural flows that permeated the space of the Old World changed dramatically. Before the Great Geographical Discoveries, the restrictions imposed on the cultural development of Central Asia by its positional weaknesses were at least partially overcome thanks to the influx of ideas and things that traveled along with merchant caravans. After the change in the main lines of world trade, the previously hidden negative aspects of the continentality of the region emerged with great force. They definitely began to reinforce his cultural conservatism.
Of similar significance was the imposition of a new positional vulnerability of the region on a stable line of changes in the composition of its population. The latest Turkic nomads came to the oases when the economic prerequisites for creating a large regional empire, drawing its strength from control over transcontinental trade, were already disappearing. The Uzbek or Kazakh empire, comparable in terms of territory and scale of wealth accumulation with the state of the Samanids or the empire of Timur, did not take shape. Weak khanates and pre-state associations were formed, constantly at enmity with each other. Under such conditions, the introduction of Uzbeks and Kazakhs to the oasis culture proceeded more slowly than with previous nomadic waves. The strip of devastating feudal wars and strife stretched out for two and a half centuries. Central Asia became a backward province of the Muslim world, which itself was in deep decline. The protective and, in this sense, functional, healthy conservatism of culture has been replaced by its rigid immobility.
2. Russian-Soviet legacy
Economy. The integrated and nomadic pastoral economy was greatly compressed in terms of space. Extractive industries and grain farming established themselves on part of their former territory. In the oases, the latter, in turn, was sacrificed to cotton growing. The age-old complementarity of local HCTs was thus undermined from two sides at once: both because of the declining pastoral animal husbandry, and because crop production was clearly oriented towards going beyond the region. Economic differences previously held the region together. Now they have become a factor in the isolation of its large economic and geographical regions. Central Asia also lost its economic self-sufficiency and became a source of raw materials for non-regional industrial centers.
Demography. The Russian government put an end to the strife. The region has experienced a steady population growth. Large human losses caused by the civil war and collectivization were made up for by immigrants from the European part of the USSR. In the future, the success of health care, the increase in the educational, and with it the hygienic level of the titular population contributed to a rapid drop in mortality. External migration and high natural increase combined to give a real jump in population. From 1917 to 1989, in the region as a whole, it increased by 5-6 times, and in
in some areas, for example, in the Leninabad region, the increase was 10-fold33.
ethnic structure. In the first half of the 20th century, the proportion of the Slavic population rapidly increased in the region. The deportation of Germans, mountain peoples, and Crimean Tatars to the region further complicated the ethnic picture. It seemed that just as the Turks pushed and assimilated the Iranian-speaking population, so the Turks were being replaced by "Europeans". However, after the war, this trend was reversed. There was a consolidation of some of the small indigenous ethnic groups who spoke close dialects around their kindred peoples, officially recognized as titular. The exiles and deportees returned to their former places of residence. Since the 1970s, the departure of “Europeans” from Central Asia has constantly exceeded their entry into it. However, the outstripping rates of natural growth of the titular population were of the greatest importance.
In the transformation of the social structure of the region, the successes of the colonial and Soviet authorities were the least impressive. Yes, a national working class and intelligentsia have emerged. Even before the revolution, slavery was put an end to; after it, crushing blows were dealt to the steppe aristocracy, the clergy, and commercial and usurious capital. However, quarterly and village communities, zhuzes among the Kazakhs, tribes among the Kirghiz and Turkmens, local cultural groups among the Tajiks and Uzbeks - all this was not affected by the authorities in the era of governors-general and survived with some losses in the era of the first secretaries. Moreover, over time, the traditional social organization recovered from the damage it had suffered. Its survival and revival was the strongest response to the Russian-Soviet challenge: it helped to preserve the ethno-cultural identity of the titular peoples. Already after the collapse of the USSR, it largely replaced the collapsed state system of social security. But gaining new strength, it acquired new, previously uncharacteristic functions. Thus, it began to be successfully used by factions of the modern political elite fighting for power34.
political device. Here, an absolute novelty was the administrative reorganization of the region on the principle of national statehood. And although the Soviet republics were decorative formations, a national political elite and intelligentsia grew up behind their facades. The first wanted to gain undivided power within the borders of their republic, the second was preparing an ideological justification for this. True, the understanding of the economic weakness of the region, as well as the commitment to the values of stability and obedience, prompted both the elite and the intelligentsia to
refrain from claiming complete independence. Another way seemed more preferable: while maintaining the formal supremacy of the union center and budget allocations in favor of the republics, the mastery of dominant positions in politics and culture at the regional level35. But the idea of the supremacy of the national-political form of historical action was shared by both the elite and the intelligentsia.
Ideology and political culture. In these areas, the results of the Russian-Soviet period were perhaps the most controversial. On the one hand, Central Asia has become a region of almost continuous functional literacy, which has created favorable conditions for expanding the political horizons of the population. On the other hand, due to the strictest political censorship, which limited the volume and content of available information, these prerequisites were far from being fully realized. In addition, due to the translation of writing from Arabic script into Cyrillic and due to the fact that the Russian language became the language of office work, science and technology, there was a break with their own “high” cultural tradition of the Central Asian peoples and the tradition of the peoples of the East close to them in culture. An atheistic worldview was spreading, but the reverse side of this process was not so much the displacement of Islam as its transformation into a set of rituals that mechanically confirm status and identity. The official secular ideology, Marxism-Leninism, was generally assimilated only to the extent that its postulates resonated with traditional notions of what should be. In its own way, it confirmed the high importance of the values of obedience and collectivism and, on the contrary, placed additional obstacles to the formation of an independent, independently thinking personality. And with such components as the orientation towards the re-creation of the world and man and for the sake of this violence over the natural course of life, it actually prepared the ground for nationalist ideology and ethnocratic politics36. The political practice of the Soviet state acted in the same direction, especially in the first decades of Soviet power. At the same time, such features of this practice as strict political censorship, excessive personification of power in the figure of the leader, a high degree of ritualization of political action, the closedness of the decision-making process, etc., actually reinforced, rather than undermined, the own traditions of Central Asian political culture.
In general, by the end of the Russian-Soviet period, the Eastern heritage had not been eradicated in many areas of public life. Another thing is that it was pressed down, strongly, sometimes beyond recognition, distorted - and therefore gave a frail painful
growth. To be convinced of this, it is enough to look again - only from a different angle - at the already considered main lines of development of the region.
Then we will see that the traditional economic line has not disappeared at all. Just in Soviet times, the economic activity of the population was distributed over two floors. The upper floor was occupied by a planned socialist economy, the lower one - by a private farm of farmers and cattle breeders. The first was in a privileged position, receiving the best and most of the regional resources plus capital investment from the center. The second lost a significant share of local resources and could only count on the share of external injections into the region's economy that flowed into it through the channels of the shadow economy. All branches of the planned economy were extremely resource-intensive. But the pressure on the resources of small-scale family production increased many times: its natural base was constantly narrowed due to withdrawals in favor of the modern sector, which could not provide employment for rural youth. The result was stagnant agrarian overpopulation and the maximum exacerbation of the problem of access to directly life-supporting resources in the entire history of the region. The transfer of cattle breeding to the worst pastures, the spread of extensive grain farming to unprotected soils, the excessive use of fertilizers, insecticides and defoliants on cotton plantations, and the drying up of the Aral Sea have created a real threat to the natural foundations of population reproduction.
And what happened in terms of demographics? The ancient attitude to having many children was not only preserved in the Russian-Soviet period. In fact, the best social conditions for its implementation were created. Rapid population growth was not entirely new to the region. But never before has it taken on such proportions, because sooner or later various spontaneous mechanisms for regulating the size of the population come into play. By the end of the Soviet period, they did not work. The population explosion has led to a manifold increase in human pressure on the environment, new workers - on the labor market and traditional areas of employment, to the accumulation of hidden and open unemployment. Since it coincided in time with the undermining of the natural base of the reproduction of the population, and was not and could not be compensated by adequate social investments, the level of public health fell dramatically. On the whole, and in the demographic area, the heritage of traditions overlapped so much with the heritage of innovations that access to directly life-supporting resources narrowed painfully.
Let us return to the ethnic line of development. The duality of the ethnic structure remained. But the place of the Turkic-Tajik dualism was taken by
"European-Asian". With the apparent continuity of dualism, its content has changed radically. Until the 18th century, culturally and civilizationally close ethnic groups lived in the region. In the following centuries, its cultural integrity was violated. Under the "old" dualism, the coexistence of cultures was more or less peaceful, while under the "new" - it was secretly conflict. For despite the relatively wide scale of Russification, the indigenous population as a whole retained their language and culture. At the same time, the newly arrived "European" population entered into only limited and superficial cultural contacts with the "Asians". This was greatly facilitated by the distribution of the two branches of the population to different levels of the economy, and on the top floor - also to different industries. Two cultural worlds were formed, and as soon as their relative balance was disturbed by the demographic explosion among the indigenous population, the "Asian" world began to crowd out the "European" one. A latent inter-ethnic tension was created in the region, which was immediately manifested by “perestroika” and independence.
Let's go further. Social line: what's here? Undoubtedly, during the years of Soviet power, the indigenous population of Central Asia made significant progress along the path of consolidation into a nation. But at the same time, the shortage of resources, which was created or aggravated in the same years, stimulated the preservation or even the revival of vertical social ties, since close involvement in their network gave certain chances for access to resources. The more difficult access became, the more highly valued clientele relationships with superior patrons. On the contrary, horizontal ties of solidarity developed poorly, the Soviet authorities, in fact, did not welcome them. Here, in search of a decent survival and social recognition, people limited themselves mainly to the familiar little world of association inherited by birth - the circle of fellow countrymen and relatives, their local cultural community, their clan.
After gaining independence, the influence of traditional social ties on the political processes in the region became especially noticeable. They impede the formation of a self-responsible person-citizen, nourish corruption, nepotism, parochialism. Ethnic minorities not covered by them with modernized activity motivations find themselves in the grip of informal discrimination almost automatically, so to speak, without malicious intent. The ruling elites are being torn apart by behind-the-scenes (or even open) factional struggles. The process of forming a titular nation (especially an ethnically mixed political nation) is slowing down, if not completely blocked.
Whichever line of development one takes, almost everywhere one finds that what was bequeathed by the Eastern period has survived and has begun to revive, or, more precisely, to come out from under the veil to the surface37. But this revival is taking place under the sign of the living Russian-Soviet heritage, next to it, in a bizarre interweaving with it: with a worsened ratio of resources, with a different economic structure than before, with an unprecedented information permeability of the region, as well as in changed foreign policy conditions. Therefore, what is reborn under the guise of tradition does not so much deny the results of colonial and Soviet modernization as it responds to its challenges. And it itself introduces a powerful destabilizing charge into the life of Central Asian societies.
Central Asia can be called "a country of almost victorious authoritarianism." The success of the authoritarian model was to a very large extent determined by the geography and history of the region. At the same time, even the elite - not to mention ordinary people - were hardly fully aware that their decisions and actions were largely determined by the pressure of the spatial structure, resource imbalances, and the upper and lower layers of the historical heritage. Political calculations, as they should, were based on the principle of how to retain and strengthen power. There were also sublime motives: the hearts of leaders and ideologists were warmed by pictures of the future greatness of their beloved homeland. The technology of power and the methods of its legitimation were partly borrowed from the world, and even more - from the Soviet managerial and ideological experience. But one has only to compare the attitude of the Russian
and, say, the Kazakh elite to the press to see: for all their similarities, these people approach the world around them in many ways.
Where the former buy the “fourth power” or neutralize it by simply ignoring it, the latter try to intimidate and “shorten” the media. And this happens primarily because, unlike Russia (at least urban Russia), in Central Asia the word is still perceived as it was perceived in the time of Zarathushtra, Khoja Ahmad Yassawi and Bokhauddin Naqshband. No matter how special Eurasia Russia imagines itself to be, even in the sense of such identification it stands with one foot in Europe and more and more believes not in words, but in numbers. In both Russia and Central Asia, words largely remain “a field of pseudo-activity, on which pseudo-structures are erected and where pseudo-realities exist”38. But if in Russia behind this lies either a new cynical calculation or an old flight from reality.
In fact, in Central Asia, the background of any attitude to the word remains the ancient testament of reverence for it as a powerful tool of culture. Here they still remember the times when "the sun was stopped with a word, the city was destroyed with a word."
However, it is not so important, spontaneously or in an organized manner, the political course of the Central Asian rulers acquired compliance with the conditions set for the new states by their physical and historical-cultural space. It is important that this correspondence, more clearly expressed in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and more vaguely in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, is quite firmly established. And from this we must certainly proceed, reflecting on the political prospects of the region.
Independence went to the Central Asian republics without active efforts on their part. With the exception of Tajikistan, a new elite of “fighters for independence” has not been formed here, competing with the old one, as nowhere else in the former USSR, there was a significant succession of power and control. However, in itself such a circumstance, generally historically accidental, would not have played a significant role in the smooth transformation of the authoritarian power of the first secretaries controlled by Moscow into the uncontrolled authoritarian power of the first presidents, if it had not resonated with the ancient framing attitude towards stability. In the same way, the low level of activity of the entire population within the framework of modern political structures is not only a consequence of the natural depoliticization of people who have become disillusioned with the promises of the national authorities and are exhausted by the hard struggle for physical survival. Equally important should be given to such characteristic features of political life as the increased importance of institutions of social guarantees and clientel relations in the regulation of political behavior and the predominance of vertical ethnopolitical mobilization over horizontally spreading ties between ethnic groups.
<_> <_> " і" <_> <_>some social solidarity. Both are based on a double
age-old memory. This is a memory that the waters and/or lands on which human life depends are few and only certain norms of behavior open access to these limited benefits. And that the main norm that opens access is the basic element of the traditional political culture of the region - obedience to the authorities.
The memory of the past, embedded in the mind, in the subcortex, is also effective because none of the current politically significant characteristics of Central Asian society can be "tied" to the heritage of only one period of its history. Even the tendency to build a nation state on a mono-ethnic basis owes its origin to more than one Soviet peri-
ode. In the craving for an ethnocratic state, there is also a long-standing idea of the unconditional superiority of the community “by blood” over all other types of community. Former obligatory loyalty to the clan is transferred to the ethnonation. But it receives authoritative sanction both in the Soviet national-state “delimitation” of the region, and in the exaltation of the national liberation struggle characteristic of the USSR, and in the political theory of nationalism, which became well known in Central Asia again in Soviet times (albeit in the form of its critics).
At the same time, I by no means want to assert that the current political development of the region will continue to be determined by its geography and history. Let's start with the fact that space not only oppresses, but also encourages the search for a way out. To survive, the states of Central Asia must be open to the outside world. This truth is well learned by their leaders. And Turkmenbashi builds five-star hotels not only for the sake of prestige, but also for foreign businessmen to live in them. The openness of the states of the region is rigidly conditioned by their dependence on the export of raw materials and the import of capital and technology. But the larger it is, the less likely the preservation of authoritarianism for many years.
Legacy is also not an eternal curse. The intermediate results of the current political creativity of the peoples of the region can further transform some of its elements, neutralize or plunge others into long-term historical oblivion. In other words, the "premise" of the authoritarian model does not guarantee its effectiveness, irreversibility and longevity. She can be left. But in order for this to happen, a gradual departure of the population from the habit of state guardianship is necessary, the growing pressure of society on the government and, in the end, direct opposition to it in cases where it comes into conflict with major social interests.
So far, in Central Asia, this key condition for breaking with the authoritarian model has not been sufficiently expressed. Even the "European" population, brought up in the spirit of Soviet state paternalism, demonstrates an extremely low level of political activity. Its constant outflow all the more strengthens the features of local societies that favor the transformation of “soft” authoritarianism into hard power for the sake of power. But even in the heritage of the Eastern period there is a lot of things that gradually undermine authoritarian power. For example, the Naqshbandi tradition of Central Asian Islam, blaming the tyrant ruler, the ruler of the unrighteous39, thus opens up a certain freedom of self-determination in relation to power for the believers. The same fragmentation of the social structure of the region
in some cases it helps authoritarianism, in others it hinders the transformation of power structures into a self-sufficient force. The Soviet period, along with elements that seemed to be specially designed to justify the suppression of society by the state, left alive the values of justice, equality, the humanistic attitude of man to man.
Together, all this either directly or indirectly casts doubt on the legitimacy of authoritarian power. And the lack of legitimacy felt by the people's consciousness is the rust that corrodes the strongest power from within. And it is not at all necessary that the collapse of such an eroded power will occur due to organized political resistance to it, or broad resistance, which is called popular. The experience of authoritarian regimes in the developing countries of the East shows that the transition from hard to soft authoritarianism, from despotism to guided democracy, from soft authoritarianism and guided democracy to regimes that, for all their imperfections and birthmarks, can move along the path of genuine democratization, can be carried out along in different ways. In some cases, the impetus for the transition is given by mass social indignation, in others - by a local but strong protest of one, the most conscious social group of the population, in others, rather growing apathy and discontent of the masses and a deepening split of the elites on the basis of their pragmatic preferences in choosing the most effective way to avoid collapse crisis. In short, there are many options. It is important, however, that the variant usually wins, at least to some extent ascending to the own traditions of the political culture of a given society. And these traditions, as I tried to show, are rarely unambiguous, one-linear.
No power - the most cruel, the most totalitarian, the most confident in itself, in its strength and its right to plow life - is not capable of completely mastering life, completely subordinating it to its political project. She always yields in something, always allows and gives something, even taking away at the same time tenfold. And as a result, she herself fixes in the memory of the people some indispensable condition for her legitimacy, stepping over which, she dooms herself either to a long decay or to a swift collapse. It is important to recognize this condition, this last limit of legitimacy, "you can't cross it." And in this regard, it is symptomatic that although there were many despots in the history of pre-Russian Central Asia, not one of them systematically encroached on the autonomy of communities and families. The Soviet government tried to put an end to this autonomy, in many respects mutilated the conditions for its reproduction - and yet retreated. It remains to understand where the limit of unfreedom lies
current presidents. And I am deeply convinced that they are also not free and even more not free in their actions than their historical predecessors, no matter how self-powered, unlimited rulers they may seem to themselves.
Tradition is dual not only in the results of its impact on life, but also in its immanent qualities. It is a combination of rigidity and plasticity. On the surface, it appears extremely restrictive. In fact, it is quite responsive to creative action and, in any case, is not an absolutely insurmountable obstacle for the subjects of political will. It cannot be broken through the knee - then its resistance to change increases unusually, scrapping in one area turns into a seal in another. By the way, the history of Russia speaks well about this. But one cannot rely too much on the fact that the plastic part of the tradition will itself soften its hard part. In all its manifestations and properties, tradition develops in an organic way and in this sense is similar to nature, which has a snake under every flower. This is what we must constantly remember and, relying on tradition or struggling with it, always be guided by the rule according to which politics is the art of the possible.
NOTES
1 It is impossible to list everything here, I will only name typical examples of a purely political approach to the region: Olcott M. B. Central Asia’s New States: Independence, Foreign Policy and Regional Security. Wahington, 1996; Post-Soviet Central Asia. Losses and gains. M., 1998; Kazakhstan: realities and prospects of independent development. M., 1995; Uzbekistan: acquiring a new look. T. 1-2. M., 1998.
2 See for example: A Call To Action. Summary of Our Global Neighborhood, the report of the Commission on Global Governance. Geneva, 1995; CreveldM. The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge, 1999.
3 Mushinsky V.O. Fundamentals of jurisprudence. M., 1994. S. 193.
5 For a characterization of modern Bonapartist regimes, which largely retains its strength, see: The Evolution of Eastern Societies: A Synthesis of the Traditional and the Modern. M., 1984. S. 382-395.
6 In describing the totalitarian regime, I draw on the classic work of Hannah Arendt. See: Arendt HIStoki totalitarianism. M., 1996. Part III.
7 The connection between the differences between the two types of constitutions and the differences in the levels of legal consciousness is well shown in the work: Proposals for the Constitution of Kazakhstan with comments. [Almaty, 1996]. pp. 19-20.
8 For their texts, see: New constitutions of the CIS and Baltic countries. Collection of documents. Ed. 2nd. M., 1998. S. 227-308, 424-496.
9 Thus, in Kazakhstan, as of April 1, 1994, Kazakhs, who then made up less than 40% of the working-age population, accounted for 53% of prosecutors and 60% of senior investigators. The corresponding figures for Russians were 32% and 27%, for Germans less than 2% and 3%. See: State Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan on statistics and analysis. The results of a one-time accounting of persons of German nationality employed in managerial positions and the number of Germans studying in higher and secondary specialized institutions, carried out in areas of their compact residence (as of April 1, 1994). Almaty, 1994. S. 7.
10 Parekh Bhikhu. Ethnocentricity of the nationalist discourse // Nations and Nationalism, 1995. Vol. 1. No. 16. P. 35.
11 I share the opinion of E. Gellner that the nation-state is unthinkable without a significant unification of culture, and that, with rare exceptions, is carried out on the basis of one language (Gellner E. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford, 1983. P. 29-38).
13 Marx K. The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte // Marx K. and Engels F. Works. T. 8.S. 212.
14 How this is done, see: Media in the CIS: Twilight of Freedom? Almaty, 1998.
15 Masanov N. National-state construction in Kazakhstan: analysis and forecast // Bulletin of Eurasia, 1995. No. 1. P. 124-127.
16 Frank A G. The Centrality of Central Asia. Amsterdam, 1992. P. 52.
17 For more details on the problem of communications, see: Azovsky IP Central Asian republics in search of a solution to the transport problem. M., 1999.
18 See, for example: Nazarbaev N.A. Kazakhstan-2030. Message of the President of the country to the people of Kazakhstan // Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, 1997, October 11.
19 A comparison of the two regions was made in: Yakovlev A, Panarin S. The Contradiction of Reforms in Arabia and Turkestan // Naumkin V., Panarin S. (eds). State, Religion and Society in Central Asia: A Post-Soviet Critique. Reading, 1993. P. 57-87.
21 Rodoman B. B. Geography Lessons... C. 39.
22 Braudel F. Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore and London, 1977, pp. 6-7.
23 The conclusions of P. Briand served as the initial premises of my reasoning. See: Briant P. Rois, tributs et paysan. Etudes sur les formations tributaires du Moyen-Orient ancien. Paris, 1982. P. 432-489.
24 Clearly expressed in the "Vendidad", the 21st book of the "Avesta" See: Reader on the history of the ancient East. M., 1980. Part 2. C. 68-70.
25 Polyakov S.P. Modern Central Asian village: traditional forms of ownership in the quasi-industrial system // Peasantry and industrial civilization. M., 1993. C. 177-181.
26 So, in the III millennium BC. the farmers of the Geoksyursky oasis were forced to leave their homes due to the fact that the migration of the delta channels of the river. Tejen deprived them of water for irrigating fields (Lisitsyna G.N. Formation and development of irrigated agriculture in South Turkmenistan. M., 1978. P. 52).
27 Due to the drying up of Uzboy, a whole region became depopulated (Alibekov L.A. The strip of life. Between mountains and deserts. M., 1991. P. 62-65).
28 Cf: Vishnevsky A. Central Asia: incomplete modernization // Bulletin of Eurasia, 1996. No. 2 (3). pp. 142-146.
29 Chvyr L. Central Asia’s Tajiks: Self-Identification and Ethnic Identity // Naumkin V., Panarin S. State, Religion... P. 245-261.
30 See: Bushkov V.I. Tajik avlod millennia later... // Vostok, 1991. No. 5. P. 72-81; Polyakov S. P. Traditionalism in modern Central Asian society. M.,
1989; Rakhimov R. R. Social hierarchy in the traditional “male houses” among the Tajiks // Ethnographic aspects of the traditional military organization of the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia. M., 1990. Issue. 1. S. 89-130 and other works.
31 For its specific forms in Central Asia, see: Masanov N. Nomadic civilization of the Kazakhs. Almaty - Moscow, 1995. S. 155-160.
32 See: Yudin V.P. Hordes: white, blue, gray, gold... // Utemish-haji. Genghis name. Alma-Ata, 1992. S. 19-20. Erofeeva I. Khan Abulkhair: commander, ruler and politician. Almaty, 1999. S. 26-30.
33 Bushkov V. The Population of Northern Tajikistan between 1870 and 1990 // Naumkin V., Panarin S. State, Religion... P. 219-244.
34 For example, in Tajikistan in the early 1990s, male associations played the role of grassroots cells of the Islamic Renaissance Party. See: Bushkov V.I., Mikulsky D.V. "Tajik revolution" and civil war (1989-1994). M., 1995. S. 52-54.
35 OlcottM. B. Central Asia's New States... P. 9-10.
36 On the genetic connection of the post-Soviet nationalist ideology with the communist one, see: Panarin S. Nationalisms in the CIS: ideological origins // Svobodnaya thought, 1994. No. 5. P. 30-37.
37 For details see: Panarin S. A The Ethnohistorical Dynamics of Muslim Societies within Russia and the CIS // Mesbahi M. (ed.). Central Asia and the Caucasus after the Soviet Union: Domestic and International Dynamics. Gainesville e. a., 1994. P. 17-33.
38 The Egyptian sociologist Hassan Hanafi said these words about his compatriots, but they apply to the inhabitants of the USSR as well. Cit. Quoted from: Vasiliev A. M. Egypt and the Egyptians. M., 1986.S. 243.
39 Mukhammedkhozhdaev A. Ideology of Nakshbandism. Dushanbe, 1991. S. 132, 204-215.
