HOW MUCH WESTERN ARE EUROPEANS?

Pope Paul II

The Key to future is in the East

Ключ будущего - Восток

La chiave del futuro è l' Oriente

La clef de l'avenir, c'est l' Orient

Die Schluessel  der Zukunft ist im Osten

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hope  we  have  succeeded in showing, as we purported to do, that, all over their history, Europeans and Russians have been very similar, and have influenced each other in a decisive way. We would like to add that this consideration is applicable also for the present days.In this regard, the similarity is still more evident, at least for what the exterior side of each country’s life. Reading the newspapers of a certain number of European countries, including Russia, or watching at their  television programmes,  you find the same themes, the same habits, the same fashions, the same trends. It is true that this is happening all over the world because of globalisation. However, if you consider the United States, the Arabic countries or other Asiatic countries, like, for example, Kazakhstan or Iran, you will perceive much more differences. For instance, you find, in newspapers, a lot of cultural articles, and, in the television programs, information tends to be more formal, the debates are very sophisticated.

Most observers find that the most important difference is political in character.

Paradoxically, in the precise moment when they would have had an outstanding occasion to enhance their identities, feeling “just Europeans”, the peoples of West Europe have started to consider themselves as “Westerners”(what they did not do before).

But are West Europeans real Westerners? Do they share the fundamentalistic expectation of a providential New World Order? Are they really so individualist, so effectiveness-motivated, as they like to describe themselves? Do not have, also they, some, or many, “Eastern” weaknesses, like the “vice” of nostalgia, like a certain inclination to communitarism and to romanticism?

Is not Europe somewhere in the middle, between East and West?

Pope John Paul II, in recovering the old idea of Ivanov-Razumnik, that Europe must breath with its two lungs, hinted precisely to the fact that Europe possedes huge cultural resources that link it to the West, but that these resources have been less and less exploited over the years, because of the growing and growing hegemony of Europe's most Western parts (England and French), and, latwer on, eve, of America.

As we have seen in all preceding posts, links of Europe with the East are the heritages of ancient civilisations (Danube Civilisation, Peoples of Kurgan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolic Civilisations, Persians,Israel, Ellenism, Peoples of the Steppes, Constantinople, Islam, Sarmatism, the Third Rome,  Marxism, Russian Culture, a.s.o).

The contributions of most of these civilisations to the European, and even, to the Western, ones, are underestimated. Danube Civilisation, Kurgans, Anatolic civilisations, Sarmatism, are even ignored. Persians, Peoples of the Steppes, Constantinople, Islam and Russia are criticized as barbaric and tyrannic, the messages of Egypt, Israel, Ellenism, are misinterpreted. Even the positive contributions of Germany, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia are minimuised, whilst the ones of  America, England and France are overestimated.

Yet, the ethnic basis of all Europeans comes from the steppes, ancient cultures and Christendom come from the Middle East, Christian and Jewish philosophies are practically ellenistic philosophies re-worked by Islam, Eastern Europe occupies more than a half of Europe.

In present times, the tentative to "westernise" the world seems less realistic than in the past. China, India and South America, thanks to their growing economic strength, are re-opening a genuine research about the great non-western cultures. Islam is heading towards being the most numerous world religion. All are laying the basements for asking to be heard at world level  about the decisions on the future of humankind.

America itself studies attentively these developments, and many Americans are studying how to accomodate with a leading role of China.

If Europe wants to escape its present decline, it must participate in this worldwide effort to reconsider world cultures. Its pretension that its model is applicable worldwide is partially motivated by the consistence of federalism with multiculturalism. However, it is not sufficient even now for giving a voice to Europe in world affairs.

As Martin Jacques puts it, Europe risks to be cut out of world decision for its

incapacity to understand other cultures. The late Ramon Panikkar pretended that, in order to establish a true dialogue with the other cultures of the world, the West must undertake a "cultural desarmement". Present days West Europeans are far from knowing whence to start for understanding Islam, China and India.

This is paradoxical, because they have all the opportunity to know foreign cultures, which are present in their cities. We say more. They should be obliged to study certain basic elements of their own culture, such the Persian Origin of the idea of "progress", the Islamic origin of Christian theologies, the role of Central and Eastern Europe in the history of European Constitutionalism, the role of  monarchic and soviet russia in shaping basic ideas of European Federalism, such as the "Concert of European States" and  Regional Federalism.

Studying the elements of East which are in Europe, and even in Western Europe, constitutes the first step for understanding that Western culture is not the only culture. Only after this step, Europeans will be ready to understand China and India, and discuss with them on an even footing.

Therefore, the dialogue between Western and Eastern Europe is so important. Where, by Eastern Europe, we intend, in first instance, Russia, but, immediately afterwards, Euroislam nd Turkey, Eastern Churches, Judaism, all Slavic, Ugro-Finnic,Baltic, Kartvelian and Illyric nations, a.s.o.. 

Нас - тьмы, и тьмы, и тьмы (WE are MYRIADS, MYRIADS)

Scythian Art

Scythians: Underestimated Civilisation.

Скифы:  недооцениваемая цивилизация

Gli Sciti: una civiltà misconosciuta
Les Scythes: une civilisation sus-évaluée

Die Skythen: eine unterschaetzte Zivilisation

 

The “Russian” melting pot described in the former paragraph has always fascinated intellectuals. First of all, it has been the inspiring motive of the Spring Festival of Diaghilev, on the music of Stravinsky, subtitled as “Dances of Heathen Russia”. This ballet constitutes a milestone in the history of European ballets, and the most famous presentation of Pre-Slavonic Russia, which also “presented”, so to say, Russia to Paris, opening up the knowledge, by European public, of the current Russian cultural movements.

Another famous topic on ancient Russia in European culture  is the image of the Scythians, a people, likely of Iranian origin, which inhabited Russia at the times of Greeks and Romans. Scythians are referred to by all Greek and Roman authors. Already at that time, Scythia disoriented geographers, because it did not fit well inside the “classical” tripartition of Continents: Europe / Asia / Africa”. Therefore, they started to subdivide it in two parts: “Scythia before Imaus” and “Scythia beyond Imaus”, which corresponded, roughly speaking, to European Russia and to Siberia respectively . and traveled from Crimea to Kiev and Novgorod.

Herodotus conveys to us a very positive picture of Scythians, notwithstanding their renown as a wild people, living in the inhospitable steppes of the North. In his “Histories”, he describes with many details the Scythians’ homeland, history and civilisation. Under a general point of view, Herodotus is strongly sympathetic to Scythians, since they, albeit being a wild nomadic population of Persian origin, were very similar, culturally, to Greeks, because of their warlike spirit ant their love for liberty. The German baron and revolutionary Anacharsis Cloots chose his nickname from a character of Herodotus’ stories,the one of  a Scythian prince which had reneged his fatherland in order to choose the Athenian citizenship, and for this reason was sentenced to death (what ironically happened also to Cloots during the French Revolution, because Robespierre denied that “a German Baron may not be a French Revolutionary”).

Similarly to Greeks, Scythians lived on the borderland of the huge Persian Empire, and even shared, with Persian, some ethnic characteristics, such as linguistic ones. According to somebody, they came even from Persia. They bore even the risk, at a certain time, to be subdued by Persians. In fact, at the same time when, during the Persian Wars, Ionia, the North of Greece and the Greek coasts of the Black Sea were part of the Persian Empire, also the South-Western part of Scythia, including Moldova and the Southern parts of Ukraine, constituted Persian Provinces. According to Herodotus, Scythians tried even to invade Persia (like what the Greek Alexander the Great would have done a few centuries later).

During the Romantic and Post-Romantic Periods, a strong interest for Scythians and for the connected peoples arose in Russia’s cultural circles.

Also Ivanov-Razumnik and Blok would have baptized their cultural movement: “Skify” (the “Scythians”).

Recent Chinese researches are showing that Scythians had a higher cultural impact than the one we are used to attribute to them. According to those researches, Scythian civilization, stretching from Berlin up to Syberia, Manchuria and Shaansi, was characterize by a very tight unitarian character, and had given rise to highly sophisticated settlements. As an example, the Chinese and Xin Jiang settlements, present since the 10 Century BCE, showed examples of a civilization very similar to the Mycenean and to the ancient Greek, even anticipating them by some centuries.

The city of CheShi, near Turfan, which existed already in the 10^th Century BCE, shows striking similarities with Myceanean acropolis. It was the center of the long lastingh wars between the Han Dynasty and the Hun at the times of the Roman Empire (“the Seven CheShi Wars”).

THE GREAT MOTHER

The Mother Goddess

Russia as the common Mother of all Europeans 
Россия как общая Мать всех европейцев 
La Russie, Mère commune de tous les Européens.
La Russia:madre comune degli Europei
Russland, gemeinsame Mutter aller Europaeer. 

 We will try to show that the first, and fundamental, link existing between Russia and the whole of Europe is the fact that almost all of Europe’s present-days inhabitants (probably with the sole excepition of the Basques), have an origin stemming from “the Kurgans” (hence, from present days Russia).

This does not imply just an historical or  linguistic  heritage, but also several traditional commonalities (such as archaic Indo-European institutions, referred to by Benveniste and Dumézil,  as well as traditional connections between peoples and territories, such as the ones of Greeks with Odessa, of Poles with the Back see, of Swedes with the Baltic Coasts, of Eastern Jews with the “Pale of Settlement”, a.s.o.).

The image which is most commonly associated to Russia is the one of a “Mat’” (“Mother”): “Mat’ Rossija” (“Mother Russia”), “Mat’ Rodina” (“Motherland”).

“Mat’ Rodina” is shown in the highest monument in the World, called “Rodina Mat’ zovet” (“Motherland Calls ”). It represents a gigantic Mother Goddess raising a long sword over the battlefield of Volgograd (Stalingrad). It is the plastic transfiguration of a famous political poster of the Red Army, containing the same phrase: “Rodina Mat’ zovet”. Such poster was diffused in Soviet Russia in 1941 during the German invasion, for prompting volunteering into the Red Army and urging partisans to resist occupation. The statue itself was created for celebrating the Soviet victory over the German invaders, in the precise point where the decisive battle took place. This statue is deliberately similar to the Statue of Liberty of New York, but much higher. The sculpture at the moment of creation became the highest in the world.

The reference to Russia as to a “Mother” is not casual. Russia is a huge territory, stretching from Europe to America, and including one half of Asia, where the legendary original fatherlands of most peoples of the world are located: Aryans, but also Turks, Ugro-Finns, Cartvelians, but, probably, also North American Indians and Chinese. Especially, the territory of Russia is the most likely cradle of most of the peoples of Europe, both Aryans and not.

From another point of view, the cult of the Mother Goddess is one of the oldest in the world, and many elements hint at the fact that also ancient Slavs were worshippers of the Goddess. The cult devoted to the Mother Goddess by the most ancient peoples of Eastern Europe has been thoroughly studied by the Lithuanian scholar Marija Gimbutas. The Moscow Linguistic School has studied the unbelievable melting pot subsisting in the territories of Russia and, still more, of the former Soviet Union, during prehistoric times, when the most ancient languages materialized.

In particular, the studies of Illich Svitych have shown that most of the languages presently existing in the world derive from a very ancient, common language, called Nostratic, from which Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Turk, Hugro-Finnic, Kartvelian and (probably) Dravidic derive.

Russia, the largest country of the World (“Strana ogramnaya”) and as “Euro-Asiatic Space” (“Evraziatijskoe Prostranstvo”) constitutes, so to say, the “Mother Land” of all Europeans.