|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 4/01
Social Sciences
The Twentieth Century in the Sequence of Ages
Yuri Polyakov
*
The 20th century has marked the conclusion of a whole millennium.
Of course, the division of the historical process into centuries is conventional, the more so that this division is not accepted by the entire population of the Earth. Historical processes pay no heed to calendars and step freely over the borderlines of centuries; great events, also without asking permission of anybody, occur in any odd decade of any odd century. One century flows over smoothly into the next. But a hundred-year borders are so simple, graphic and vivid, especially in comparison with periodizations historians have been trying to establish in endless debates and without much success, that mankind has got used to this chronological division, and it has become traditional to sum up the results of a century.
The contemporaries of every specific century invariably believed that theirs was the most significant and outstanding century in comparison with all the preceding ones. Every century was marked by some notable events — scientific discoveries, disastrous epidemics which ruined the entire countries, rebellions which shook mighty states to their very foundations, devastating wars and fierce battles. But the century passed and concepts changed. This is quite natural. What seemed, at the time, enormous was belittled with the passage of time. Nonetheless, we the contemporaries of the century which has just ended, have every right to regard it as incomparable to any other, both in its scope of achievement and in the vast qualitative changes it brought about.
It is useful and interesting, and, for an historian, also necessary to try and delve to the roots of the difference between our century and the preceding ones, to trace the mankind’s path to today’s upsurges and falls. It is extremely hard to find a yardstick by which to measure the events and phenomena of our past. The imperative demand of historicism consists in being able, while assessing events from the point of view of modern knowledge, also to understand their significance in regard to concrete stages of history.
The entire history of mankind’s development can be likened to a staircase to which more and more steps are added. The person who has mounted the top step believes that he has reached the summit. But it then emerges that the staircase has not ended, and the step which appeared so recently to be the last one, had been left far below. But let us not forget that without it we would not have been able to ascend the following, higher steps.
We all know how unimaginably rich, multicolored and variegated life is. Clio accepts into her embrace all this amazing wealth. And each century that has passed consists of a vast multitude of events in all corners of all continents, an endless row of personages and their doings, immeasurable numbers of the most different collisions. But there have been events which at one time seemed outstanding, but which have left no trace in history. They may be likened to additional chairs in an auditorium. They were brought when there was a need for them, and they were taken away as soon as the need passed and were immediately forgotten.
The inexpressible variety of life and the correspondingly variegated history make it practically impossible to find an adequate reflection of it and to evaluate and compare centuries. Apparently, what we must use as the main historical criterion is development of productive forces, beginning with prehistoric man’s first tools and ending with that we later termed scientific and technological discoveries and breakthroughs.
Man learned to obtain fire and to use it. This feat of Prometheus has nothing to equal it, for thanks to it the humanoid became Man. He was helped to assert himself in this quality by the stone and the club, which he made a means of procuring food, as well as attacking and defending himself. Later man invented bow and arrows. When he learned to use the skins of animals he killed as clothing, he became able to move northwards from the warm climes - to lands with snow and frozen rivers in winter. Man thus rose above his "lesser brethren", domesticating and making serve himself such animals as the horse, the buffalo, and the sheep. The horse helped him to cover greater distances, the other domesticated animals provided him with milk and meat, safeguarded against the dire consequences of an unlucky hunt, provided him with clothing and footwear and made it possible for Man to expand his living area.
But these great feats are hidden from us by thick fog not of merely centuries but hundreds of centuries. As we approach the time when achievements can be related to centuries, we must be able to assess them not only as regards their greatness but also as regards their influence on man’s way of life. The illumination that visited Copernicus staggers imagination by the force of man’s reason. But 999 out of every 1000 people who lived in the 16th century had never heard of the heliocentric system and, awakening in the morning, continued to believe that the Sun goes up and down while rotating round the Earth.
The simple invention of the Montgolfier brothers allowed man, in 1783, to leave the earth’s surface for the first time and to get a bird’s eye view of it. Aeronautics on the basis of aerostats never became widespread. For decades balloons interested mainly sportsmen and futurologists of the time, rather than served as a means of transportation. To this day aerostats have remained an exotic phenomenon without having influenced people’s life in any serious manner.
As we come closer to the present day, the scientific and technological breakthroughs become more and more significant and, the main thing, invade man’s life more and more impetuously and change it more and more radically. Time rushed onwards, gathering pace.. It became compressed, as it were, and with growing acceleration too. Every century still encompassed a hundred years, but each year in it encompassed more events than a whole century had used to do. Centuries became "longer", more capacious, overstretched as it were. History gathered speed like an express train.
Domestication of wild animals, development of agricultural crops and of cattle-breeding, transfer from stone implements to metal ones — all this had a gigantic importance and changed the way of man’s life. But these processes took millennia to be accomplished, whereas in later days events similar in importance were packed into a time stretch of no more than a few years.
To use a vivid image, historical acceleration is a process that started as the barely noticeable movement of the snail, then gave place to the crawling of the tortoise, then to the slow stride of a walking person, then to the unhurried trotting of a horse, then to the tireless rolling of train and car, then to the visually imperceptible flight of a supersonic jet plane, and, finally, to the explosive rush of a space rockets.
While noting the mounting dynamism of advance movement, we must not forget about the bends and twists of the road. One of the main lessons of history is that advance never proceeds along a straight line: the past is full of falls, defeats, catastrophes and zigzags.
Ancient civilizations perished, sands buried flowering oases, irrigation canals that brought life-giving water to the fields dried up. Not to count ruthless wars, destructive invasions, catastrophic epidemics, bloody religious conflicts, displays of obscurantism, and dynastic collapses. In Europe, the splendid Greco-Roman civilization gave way to the grim Middle Ages. The dazzling greatness of ancient Egypt was dimmed, leaving behind, for the edification of the posterity, the incredibly grandiose pyramids and sphinxes.
The "acceleration" of time became particularly apparent in the 18th century, it acquired an all-embracing character in the 19th century and was spurred into impetuosity in the 20th century. The 20th century attained so much thanks to the starting speed set by the previous century; in the 19th century mankind made a running start, as it were, and in the 20th — a leap.
The industrial revolution, the appearance of new technologies and a speedy growth of industrial production in a number of European countries marked the 18th century. In the 19th century appeared locomotives and steamboats. The system of transport changed in principle, transforming the life of people and bringing countries and nations closer together. Edison’s phonograph perpetuated sound, photography stopped the fleeting moment, and the first cinema brought to life people and animals on the screen. The first electric bulbs flashed on.
The 19th century achieved a great deal in scientific research and development of production forces, but most achievements of this type were only "conceived" in the 19th century, while the "birth" occurred in the 20th century, and the "children" which were born in the early 20th century began to develop at an unheard-of pace.
When Daimler and Benz developed their first internal combustion car engine, people, in their wildest dreams, could not imagine what future awaited this mechanism. The beginnings of the telephone appeared in 1876, the first phonograph record was played also in 1876, Popov’s development of the radio refers to 1895, the discovery of X-rays — to 1895, radioactivity was first detected in 1898. Yes, many discoveries of momentous importance were made in the last quarter of the 19th century. It is almost as though the 19th century strained every muscle in an attempt to either prove its exclusiveness or to transfer the baton to the next century honourably.
Indeed, the 20th century rose to its full height as regards science and technology on the shoulders, as it were, of its predecessor. But it made such a mighty leap that the impression is as though all the previous centuries were concerned with was to prepare the upsurge of the 20th century. It really has no equal in the technological sense, particularly in making technological attainments part of our everyday life and giving this life a new quality.
I was born at the beginning of the 20s, and when I cast my mind over the changes that have taken place since that time, I marvel at being unable to keep track of them and to realize the full scope of things that happened before my very eyes. In the 20s, radio already existed, but had not yet become part of everyday life. My elder brother, who bought a crystal radio receiver, was mobbed by children from of our street begging to be allowed to put on the earphones if only for a minute. And they listened, entranced, to the beeping of the Morse and the barely audible voices and music.
In Tashkent, where I spent my childhood, the motorcars were still a rarity in the 20s. If a car stopped in front of a house, it was immediately surrounded by urchins, who stated respectfully at this contraption, which was no longer a miracle, but was out of reach for most people. On the other hand, nobody wondered at the sight of camels loaded with wares from Afghanistan or Eastern Bukhara, who marched across the city beside the trams looking indifferently and haughtily at all and sundry.
Man did not simply build a motorcar and has kept perfecting it ever since — he has carried out automobilization of the world, which changed his way of life much more drastically than the domestication of the dog, the horse and the buffalo. Automobilization gave a powerful impetus for the development of distant regions, it has changed the life rhythm of towns and villages, and the lifestyle of hundreds of millions of people.
The first flight of the Wright brothers lasted 59 seconds, and today airplanes drone uninterruptedly over the globe.
Gagarin’s flight in the second half of the century was the beginning of the space epic. Today nobody is surprised that men should spend months orbiting the Earth. Man landed on the Moon and took a look at our planet from an unimaginable distance. The first step on Neil Armstrong on the Moon surface ushered in the new era of space exploration.
I witnessed the appearance of television in the early 50s already as a mature man. Thanks to TV and radio, which have entered almost every home, man has left his room, his street and his town and has gone out into the wide world. Computers invaded man’s life tempestuously, taking up his work and leisure time, while the Internet made his communication with the world almost palpable.
Medicine now cures diseases that were considered lethal for centuries. Transplantation of the heart, to say nothing of other organs, has become a usual procedure. Medicine can turn a man into a woman and vice versa, though it is hard to understand why a person should desire this. Life expectancy has grown considerably.
The 20th century was not only marked by amazing strides in the development of science and new phenomenal technologies, new discoveries and achievements, by unprecedented growth of productive forces. Production has acquired a new character in principle, and has given almost all inhabitants of the planet a new quality of life.
When characterizing a century, historians have invariably mentioned rises and falls of great empires. Mankind’s past gives us numerous examples of the emergence and collapse of mighty states, which at one time encompassed dozens of tribes and peoples.
Here, too, the 20th century has no equal. It was marked by the ruin of not one but several empires, which had existed for several centuries. By the beginning of the century, there were quite a few such empires: the multinational states of Russia, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Emire, as well as European countries with vast colonies. Great Britain and France boasted that the sun never set down within the scope of their territories. Belgium, Holland and Portugal had vast possessions in Asia and Africa, which were many times larger than the home country both in territory and population. Italy, Spain and Germany also had colonies. In the east, Japan was gaining strength and had already grabbed Korea and Taiwan.
In the course of the 20th century these empires gradually crumbled up. Though the process proceeded in a zigzag fashion, it was inexorable. The first to collapse were the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Emprires, which begot a good dozen new states and enlarged the colonies of Great Britain and France.
In the Russian Empire. after the First World War and the Revolution of 1917, it was centrifugal forces which first became dominant. But, after losing a part of her territories (Polish provinces, Finland, and the Baltic states - altogether 800 thousand sq. km.), Russia managed to preserve itself as a multi-national state, uniting in a federative union the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and the republics of Central Asia. Centripetal tendencies took then the upper hand but towards the end of the century, the centrifugal forces became donimant again and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated.
By the middle of the century, the Japanese empire began to expand at a fast rate. Even Italy, as though suffering from an inferiority complex in regard to land possessions, seized Ethiopia and Albania. After the end of the Second World War, colonies began to "fall off" their mother tree. The second half of the 20th century was marked by the final disintegration of the colonial system.
In some places through bitter struggle (Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria), in others comparatively peacefully, but year by year new independent states appeared on the map of Asia and Africa. Sovereign republics also emerged on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The political map of the world changed out of all recognition.
Over centuries and millennia, the historical process was localized, even though common features were to be found in different regions. The great civilizations of antiquity — China, India, Central Asia, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Central America - either had no contacts at all or only very limited ones.
The geographical discoveries — this widespread term implying the spread of Europeans to the formerly unknown (to them) countries of Asia, Africa and America, were, of course, highly important for characterization of one or another century, and their consequences were vast indeed. Columbus’s discovery of America in the end of the 15th century, and, somewhat later, Vasco da Gama’s finding of a sea route to South-Eastern Asia, the discovery of Australia and the exploration of Central and South Africa brought about closer contacts between continents and countries.
However, our planet is not at all that big, and the opportunities for new great geographical discoveries have long been exhausted. So this criterion for comparing centuries in significance has long vanished. To make up for it, it was the 20th century, through begetting new means of informational communication, broadening economic contacts, creating a system of global political interaction (even though it is far from perfect yet) and girdling the planet with transport routes, put a final end to geographical dissociation and effected globalization of the historical process.
All parameters of the historical process — economics, politics and ecology — have lost their local character and acquired a global significance. Let us take a closer look at some aspects of this multi-channeled globalization.
One important fact is that all military conflicts have become inter-continental. The 20th century, for the first time in mankind’s history, witnessed world wars, which involved not merely a big region or a continent, but almost all states of the world, which put under arms unheard-of number of men and caused the death of dozens of millions of soldiers and peaceful populace. And then followed the "cold war", a semi-peaceful confrontation, which lasted all of a half a century.
The division of the world into two opposing camps, and, subsequently, the raising of one power to the forefront claiming the right to decide the destinies of the entire world — these are surely signs of globalization. In this situation, even apparently local conflicts implicated (obviously or not-so-obviously) strong forces of other powers, often situated at a distance of many thousand miles from the focus of the conflict. Such were the cases of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia, the wars between Arab states and Israel.
Other evidence of globalization is the establishment of political organizations that unite many countries of the world. The first such organization was the League of Nations, which was set up in 1919 and which existed factually until the beginning of the Second World War, though it was formally di…sbanded only in 1946. The United Nations Organization, which is broader in composition and enjoys a far greater prestige, was set up in 1945. It is called upon to draw closer together all countries and peoples by examining and deciding problems that develop between them, with account taken of the world situation and the global tendencies of development.
All historical stages were, as a rule, distinguished by mass migrations of the population. In ancient times, tribes moved to another locality because of exhaustion of natural resources or under the pressure of aggressive neighbors. But after growing out of the age of infancy, peoples continued to migrate for various reasons. The two recent millennia witnessed such a multitude of migrations of dozens and hundreds of thousands of people in Eurasia alone, that their mere enumeration would take dozens of pages.
In the 20th century, migrations acquired new forms and became global. Besides enforced deportations during of the Second World war (peoples of the Northern Caucasus) and after it (Germans from the western districts of Poland, East Prussia and Czechoslovakia) and also large emigration streams in the course of civil wars (from Russia, China, Vietnam and a number of African countries), people have been simply moving about in search of a better life.
If we add international tourism, which has acquired unprecedented proportions, we can state that the mobility of the planet’s population has grown tremendously.
As recently as the 19th century, the world development was determined, first and foremost, by the development of Europe. In the 20th century Eurocentrism has become an anachronism. Americocentrism, though it is gaining strength politically, cannot push the other continents into the historical background. Polycentrism, which reflects the globalization of the historical process, has the greatest prospects from the geopolitical point of view.
And, finally, very important for characterizing a century is the scope of social upheavals. The latter have always dogged mankind, reflecting the complexity and the multifaceted nature of its development. Social explosions occurred in nearly every century. The pages of history books are full of slave revolts, rebellions of peasants and the urban poor, civil wars between different clans and groups, elementary struggle of ambitious leaders for power, religious clashes, and, finally, revolutions.
In the scope of social upheavals the 20th century far outstripped all others. It was marked by mammoth explosions and cataclysms, which lasted practically throughout its length. These were the social revolutions in Russia and China (countries, one of which is the world’s biggest in territory, and the other — in population).
The revolutions in Russia and China, accompanied with violence and armed struggle, drew into their orbits hundreds of millions of people and had repercussions throughout the world. They were not simply a change of governments and persons in power, but attempts to destroy the old world and build a new one, attempts which lasted for dozens of years.
These revolutions which shook the world were not the result of a chance concatenation of circumstances or actions by small but aggressive groups, of charismatic and ambitious leaders. They were the outcome of contradictions, which had been coming to a head over decades. Revolutions flare up unexpectedly, but it takes them a long time to ripen. Human society is permeated with contradictions, like a thundercloud is permeated with lightning. These are contradictions between various classes and strata of population. Sometimes they are antagonistic and irreconcilable, sometimes, temporary and soluble, sometimes traditional with deep roots, sometimes flaring up spontaneously, as it were. They are rooted in inequality of property or class position, the desire of some to enrich themselves at the cost of others, to protect and amass privileges, and monopoly to power, on the one hand, and readiness of others to destroy these privileges and this monopoly.
Therefore social shocks are an inalienable part of the historical process. To say that revolutions disrupt the natural course of history is naïve. Of course, we would prefer the peoples to advance peacefully, ensuring progress in the evolutionary way and overcoming contradictions by agreement./ But real history has nothing in common with these idyllic pastorals.
Few would approve of revolts that do not end successfully and social upheavals accompanied by the ruin of the population’s economic life, violence, and bloodshed. But whether we call this kind of history natural or unnatural, mankind has had no other.
Let us recall that the 16th century saw a revolution in the Netherlands, the 17th — in England, the 18th — in France. The American revolution of the late 18th century was not purely national-liberation, but also social in nature. In the 19th century the most radical class battle of the time — the Commune of Paris - occurred.
Yes, history has been rife with revolutions. The formation, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, of socialist parties was a concrete expression of society’s desire to understand the ever-emerging contradictions and give them a scientific substantiation. In many countries of Europe the parties of the socialist trend acquired considerable importance and more than once finding themselves in power, attempted to find a way to creating a society of universal fairness and equality. At the same time, already in the early years of the 20th century, the socialist movement split into two parts: the radical communist wing and the moderate social-democratic wing. These two wings drew ever wider apart throughout the century and sometimes matters even reached the condition of open hostility.
The Communist parties led the revolutions in Russia and China. Generally, the revolutions of the 20th century were distinguished by the presence of an organized and organizing force. Communist parties also led the radical transformations carried through in Yugoslavia, Poland, Roumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Eastern part of Germany, Vietnam, Mongolia, Northern Korea and Cuba.
In the course of these revolutions and the subsequent stay by Communists in power, cardinal social transformations were carried through. The Soviet state, created by the Revolution of 1917, proved its strength in the hard confrontation against nazism.
But revolutions also had many negative aspects. They begot bloody civil wars, cruelty and violence on the part of all parties to the conflict. While eliminating one kind of social contradictions, they gave rise to others; while carrying our progressive transformations, they proved unable to consolidate them and create a society of social justice. The state concentrated the running of the economy in its hands, but proved unable to ensure its effective functioning and wise planning. In the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, Soviet economy lost out in the competition with developed Western countries, and this eventually caused disintegration of the system. In the conditions of absolute rule of the Communist party, with the people deprived of any chance to express their will, stagnation commenced in he leading bodies of the party, trade unions and the Young Communist League. As a rule, a long rule by one and the same party unavoidably causes degeneration of its leadership. Power by itself is corruptive.
The lessons of the 20th century in the social and political spheres are not simple and not straightforward. The general and obvious conclusion is that it is quite possible to destroy the old by a forcible overthrow, and this does not even require a long, historically speaking, stretch of time, though the destruction takes an extremely painful course. But creation of a new society is a much more complicated and time-consuming process. The experience of the USSR and the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe is a proof of failure of the attempts to build a socialist society initiated in these countries. The transition from capitalism to socialism proved impossible in the forms chosen. In the late 80s and early 90s of the 20th century the socialist regimes in these countries collapsed, and the movement "back to capitalism" started. But new difficulties and the appearance of new contradictions accompanied this new transition. This was particularly manifest in the formers republics of the disintegrated Soviet Union.
We are therefore authorized to say that the 20th century was the most significant in the scale of its doings and achievements and did most to change the life of man on the scope of the entire planet.
History is full of contradictions and paradoxes, but the 20th century was the most contradictory and paradoxical.
By achieving an unprecedented rise in society’s productive forces, has not mankind thereby prepared his own end? We paid too great a price for this rise. We have used the Earth’s natural wealth with frightening squandering, without giving a thought to the future. Yet this wealth is not inexhaustible: the time will soon come when we shall have used it up entirely. Forests, the planet’s lungs, provide us unstintingly with building materials, cellulose and paper, but the forest-covered area on earth has been shrinking like shagreen leather. Oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, the main source of life on earth, are being contaminated with radioactive waste, oil, and the refuse of industry and man’s everyday life. Man’s anthropogenic activities have already done harm, the consequences of which it is difficult to imagine. History has known the ruin of civilizations, but now mankind, for the first time, is approaching the threshold of a global ecological catastrophe.
Science has yielded results that mankind has every right to feel proud of and that further the well-being of the majority of the Earth’s population, which has, incidentally, already reached 6 billion. But this same science has also invented monstrous means for destroying all life on earth. Even peaceful nuclear devices have a vast destructive potential.
Suspended over the Earth, like the sword of Damocles, are ghosts of the atomic mushroom cloud of Hiroshima and the deadly whirlwind of Chernobyl. New progressive technologies created an economic basis for the arms race, which became particularly large-scale and expensive in the second half of the century. Incidentally, this exhausting arms race was one of the reasons of the weakening of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of the great powers have proved to have sufficient sense of self-preservation to refrain from a nuclear war. But they have not been able to keep control over the spread of nuclear weapons. They are now in the possession of several countries, which enhances the danger of mutual nuclear destruction many-fold.
If globalization of contacts is useful, globalization of conflicts is a terrible hazard.
Mankind has not shown enough sense and will-power to arrive at universal well-being (though the development of productive forces makes this quite feasible), true democratization and social peace. The antagonisms that existed earlier have altered but have not disappeared; contradictions between the rich and the poor, between the suppressors and the suppressed, between nationalities and confessions are alive to this day. As noted earlier, the 20th century exacerbated many of them and gave rise to new ones.
Even the slogan of the Great French Revolution: "Liberty, equality, fraternity!" has not been implemented in the intervening 200 years in the majority of countries.
The Pope John Paul the II in the encyclical "Centesimus Anno" released in 1991 reflected the contradictions and paradoxes of the 20th century. While criticizing Communism, the Pope refused to give unqualified support to capitalism either, which has not been able to put an end to injustice, devastation and poverty in many regions of the world.
On the other hand, peoples and states have been undeniably moving closer together. But the greater the political, economic and cultural integration, the more striking become the ethnic and religious conflicts — in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Africa and in the states on the post-Soviet territory.
Impressive scientific achievements still exist side by side with mass spread of anti-scientific beliefs, quackery and sorcery, while universal literacy, radio and television, which are within the reach of every person from his early years, — with a general low cultural level, loose morals and licentiousness among a considerable share of the young people. We have also to note, regretfully, the unprecedented level of drug addiction. An amazing wealth of food and a possibility for scientifically-based diets in some countries are offset by widespread starvation in others.
All centuries were marked by huge numbers of guiltless victims among peaceful population. Conquerors were ruthless with the residents of towns and villages they seized. Generally, people have exhibited uncanny ingenuity in torturing and killing their brethren.
In the matter of killing people for no sensible reason at all the 20th century outdid all the previous ones as well.
It would appear that in the 20th century mankind made considerable progress in humanizing the penitentiary system, doing away with corporal punishment, abolishing capital punishment in many countries and promoting the activities of the Red Cross and numerous international and regional organizations in defense of human rights.
Against this background, violence and cruelty towards peaceful populace appear all the more monstrous. Social, political, ethnic and inter-state conflicts carried away dozens of millions of lives. Hitlerite Germany evolved the so-called "racial theory" and, basing itself on it, set up special "death factories" with gas chambers and huge cremation ovens. In these hellish enterprises the Nazis killed more than 6 million people, mainly Jews. The establishments of Jewish ghettos and mass reprisals on occupied territories have no equal in the entire history of mankind. In the USSR, Stalin, in order to consolidate his dictatorship, set up a network of GULAG concentration camps and shot several hundred thousand men and women. Pol Pot in Cambodia and Suharto in Indonesia inflicted agonizing deaths on millions of real or potential opponents of their regimes, and something quite neutral to the latter.
The improvement of armaments, the appearance of rockets and aircraft capable of reaching the deep rear of the "enemy" and, finally, the use of atomic bombs caused huge losses in towns and villages situated far from the frontlines.
In the second half of the 20th century, terrorism, which had grown on religious, ethnic and sociopolitical soil, reached unprecedented scope. Assassinations of political leaders, religious figures and businessmen, seizing of hostages and subversive acts against airplanes, carrying from two to three hundred passengers, and against buses with inquisitive tourists became everyday phenomena.
Indeed, the paradoxes of the century that is coming to its end were numberless. Some are rooted in the hoary past, others are quite new.
Our century has given examples of strict organization, discipline, self-possession and purposefulness in states, societies and parties, something which, in one form or another, was also observed in previous centuries (recall religious orders and brotherhoods, and strict social organization in some states). At the same time there have been no less examples of anarchy, ochlocracy, uncontrolled situations, economic and political chaos.
The task formulated by Lenin — to raise the lowest of the low to historical creativity — came up against the proved propensity of the lower classes to be ready and willing to break down the old order, but, at the same time, to display inability to build something new. Enthusiasm, self-denial and sense of urgency were combined with petty egoism, the desire to distance oneself from society, a "farmstead mentality". In mental make-up, culture and beliefs, the same stable combination of old in the new and new in the old was observed.
The unprecedentedly widening informational scope has opened vast opportunities for raising the cultural level of the population, for acquainting people with cultural treasures and fostering a conscious attitude towards society and natural environment. Yet this did not happen. Radio, television and the press are often employed for dulling the minds of the rank-and-file listeners, watchers and readers, for ideological brain-washing and propaganda of violence and cruelty. While broadening the cultural scope of people, radio and television lower their intellectual level.
From the very beginning of the 20th century Russia was in the epicenter of major events and presented an instructive demonstration of the complexity and contradictory character of the global historical process.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 exercised a direct or indirect influence on the entire world. Never before had events in one country reverberate throughout the planet, were the source of such hopes and such disappointments and caused such polarization of society in other countries. The establishment of the Soviet state brought about a complete change in the situation in the world, a new relationship of forces and new forms of inter-state contacts, which had had no analogues in history.
The leadership of the USSR regarded Western democracies as potential enemies and was prepared to help any revolution anywhere. They regarded these revolutions as inevitable, and were ready to contibute to the collapse of the capitalist regimes. At the same time, Soviet leaders sought to avoid international isolation and maintained economic and diplomatic relations with other countries.
The Western leaders, for their part, saw in the existence of the Soviet state imminent danger and made various attempts to liquidate it, beginning with an open intervention in 1918-1920 and ending with efforts to direct German aggression to the East. However, contradictions between capitalist states themselves and the striving of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and militarist Japan for world domination forced the West to seek an alliance with the USSR. The victory in the war against Nazism demonstrated the role of the USSR in the world affairs.
In the second half of the century, there emerged a bloc of communist states, which stretched from South-East Asia to the center of Europe and the recognized leader of which was the Soviet Union. This promised a very real prospect of the establishment of pro-Communist regimes on all continents and was, naturally enough, opposed vigorously by the West. However it may be, never before had Russia wielded — and will probably never will — such influence on the world arena and in international life as it did in the 20th century.
The attempt of Russia and the other republics united within the USSR to build a socialist state resulted, for a number of objective and subjective reasons, in complete failure. However, the search for ways of rational reconstruction of society, which is felt as an urgent need by all, the accumulation of positive and negative experience, competition between different politico-socio-economic systems were conducive to the overall advance of mankind. The Revolution in Russia did not, of course, trigger off a world revolution, but it contributed largely to world evolution.
The cardinal turn-about to Western models which was carried out by Russia in the early 90s without taking account of the real state of affairs in the country, provoked yet another crisis.
The 20th century has ended still largely incomprehended. Its contemporaries recognize the grandiose achievements scored, but are unable to assess them or perceive their true essence.
Most probably, in the 21st century as well mankind will continue to stumble and to repeat former mistakes. But how much more costly will those mistakes be - that is the main question. People often say, proudly, too, that our present has taken a lot from the future. But haven’t we, perhaps, taken such a lot that we may have no future at all?
Have we done a great deal to prepare that future, in the same way as the 19th century has done a great deal in preparation of the 20th? Or has mankind exhausted its potential and is awaited by stagnation, a speedily approaching ecological catastrophe and moral degradation?
The coffers of the future have been opened a chink, but we do not yet know what is contained there and who will make use of all that wealth. Where is the guarantee that they will not prove to be a likeness of Pandora’s box? What has the 20th century sown — the grains of future rich crops, or dragon’s teeth? We now have a clearer idea of our ailments, but we continue to try and cure AIDS by drops against the ordinary cold. If mankind continues to ignore the problems of ecology, ecology will put an end to mankind.
We can certainly compare our age to the previous one, but not to the ones that are in store for us. We can only make surmises about our future. And, unfortunately, the lessons of the 20th century provide little ground for optimism.
Endnotes:
*: Yu. Polyakov, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor, Chairman of the Academy's Scholarly Board on historical demography and historical geography. This article was published in Russian in the journal Novaya i noveishaya istoria, No 5, 1999. Back.