Europe and Mankind—English translation

Translator’s notes

Europe and Mankind is an interesting essay written by Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (1890–1938), who happens to be a first cousin thrice removed. He was primarily a linguist, but occasionally wrote on historical and sociological topics.

I merely stumbled upon this essay and found it extremely relevant to today’s world. However, there doesn’t appear to be an English translation available. I figured, I might as well translate it, and at the same time better understand the ideas of Nikolay Sergeyevich and others like him.

This is an interpretive translation. My emphasis is on getting across Nikolai Sergeyevich’s ideas as clearly as possible in standard modern English without distorting them. If you are a scholar interested in closely analyzing the exact words and terms used, you should look at the Russian original.

The original text contained section headings like “Preface”, “Part 1”, etc. Section titles (e.g. “Part 1: Chauvinism and Cosmopolitanism”), as well as summaries, notes, and highlights are added by me. Since this is my personal website, I want to share my thoughts and interactions with the text.

Preface

It is not without hesitation that I offer this work to the world. The thoughts expressed here had coalesced in my mind some 10 years ago. Since then, I’ve discussed these topics with many different people, wishing either to test myself or to convince the other person. Many of these conversations and discussions turned out to be rather beneficial to me, since they forced me to flesh out and deepen my ideas and arguments. But they did not change my core ideas. Of course I could not possibly limit myself to casual conversations. In order to verify whether the theses that I’m defending are actually correct, I had to open these ideas up to a broader discussion, i.e. publish them. This I have still not done. And I haven’t done this because, over many conversations (especially early on), I got the impression that most of the people I came across simply did not understand what I was trying to say. They didn’t get it, not because I wasn’t expressing myself clearly, but because the majority of educated Europeans find these ideas inherently unacceptable, as if they go against some unshakeable psychological foundation that is the basis of European thought. People saw me as a purveyor of paradoxes, trying too hard to be original with my arguments. Needless to say, under those circumstances, I found debating neither meaningful nor beneficial, since a debate can only be productive when both sides understand each other and speak the same language. And because, at the time, I encountered nothing but misunderstanding, I did not consider it timely to make my thoughts public. I waited for a more opportune moment.

My decision to go to print is largely due to the fact that I am encountering more and more people who understand me; moreover, I am beginning to find people who agree with my core ideas. It turns out that many people have, completely independently, arrived at the same conclusions as I have. There seemed to have been a shift in the thinking of many educated people. The Great War and, in particular, the ensuing “peace” (which I am still forced to put in quotes), have challenged people’s faith in “civilized society” and have opened the eyes of many. We Russians are, of course, in a special situation. We have witnessed the sudden collapse of what we had called Russian culture. Many of us were shocked by the incredible speed and lack of difficulty with which it all happened, and many have pondered the causes of this phenomenon.

Perhaps this pamphlet may help some of my compatriots to clear up their own thoughts on the matter. Some of my positions could have been amply illustrated with examples from Russian history. This might have made my writing more lively and engrossing, but such digressions would have made the bigger picture less clear. In offering the reader these relatively new ideas, my main concern is to present these ideas clearly and in a logical progression. Furthermore, my thoughts apply not only to Russians, but to all other peoples which have in one form or another taken up European culture without actually having Romance or Germanic heritage. When I release this booklet to the world in the Russian language, I do so only because charity begins at home, and above all I’d like for my thoughts to be received and understood by my fellow countrymen.

In offering my thoughts to the reader’s attention, I would like to remind him of a choice he must personally make for himself. One of the following must be true: either the ideas that I am defending are false, and stand to be disproven logically; or these ideas are true, and we must draw practical conclusions from them.

Accepting the truth of the theses in this pamphlet obligates one to do further work. Having accepted these theses, one must develop and concretize them in order to apply them to real life, and to use this point of view to revisit many of the questions that present themselves throughout life. Many people these days are “reevaluating their values” in one way or another. For readers who do accept the theses I am defending, the last theses will serve to indicate the direction in which their “reevaluation” should go. There is no doubt that the work that proceeds from accepting these ideas, be it theoretical or practical, must be a collective effort. An individual can choose to abandon some idea or join a well-known cause, but it is the collective that must develop an entire system based on these thoughts, and put that system into practice. I invite anyone who shares my convictions to participate in this collective work. Thanks to a few serendipitous encounters, I am convinced that these people do exist. All they have to do is to join forces in an earnest, concerted effort. And if my pamphlet can serve as the catalyst to unite these people, I would consider my goal accomplished.

On the other hand, there are moral obligations that befall those who reject my theses as false. If the theses that I defend are truly false, then they are toxic and must be opposed. But since (dare I say) they are grounded in logic, then their refutation must be no less logical. They must be logically refuted in order to prevent those who have tasted these ideas from being misled. The author himself would forever toss aside these unpleasant, disconcerting thoughts that have haunted him for over a decade without looking back, if only someone would prove to him that they are logically false.

Part I: Chauvinism and Cosmopolitanism

Introduction

There is a fairly large variety of positions that Europeans hold regarding the question of nationalism, but they are all on a spectrum between two extremes: chauvinism on one side, and cosmopolitanism on the other. All nationalism is basically a combination of elements of chauvinism or cosmopolitanism, a way of reconciling these two opposed notions.¹

There is no doubt that this is how Europeans see chauvinism and cosmopolitanism—as two fundamentally, intrinsically opposite points of view.

However, we cannot accept this premise. The moment we take a closer look at chauvinism and at cosmopolitanism, we notice that there is no inherent distinction between the two. We see that the two are no more than two levels, two differing manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon.

The Chauvinist takes a priori the position that the best nation in the world happen to be his nation. His nation’s culture is better and more complete than all other cultures. His nation has the exclusive right to lead and dominate other nations, who must submit— and become assimilated, accepting the dominant faith, language and culture. Everything that stands in the way of his great nation’s final triumph must be swept away with force. This is how the Chauvinist thinks and, accordingly, acts.

The Cosmopolite rejects any distinction between nationalities. If such distinctions do exist, they must be annihilated. Civilized human society must be united and have a single culture. Uncivilized nations must accept this culture and join it, entering the family of civilized nations, so that together they may walk the one path of world progress. Civilization is the ultimate good, in the name of which we must sacrifice our national particularities.

When formulated this way, chauvinism and cosmopolitanism really do seem strikingly different. In the former, supremacy is claimed by the culture of a single ethno-anthropological group, while in the latter—by the culture of a post-national humanity.

But let’s take a look at what European cosmopolites include in their definition of “civilization” and “civilized society”. By “civilization” they mean to say the culture that was produced by the Germanic and Romance peoples of Europe. And “civilized nations" refers, first and foremost, to those same Germanic and Romance nations, and only then to nations that have accepted European culture.

And so we see that the culture that Cosmopolites believe should reign supreme, abolishing all other cultures, is the culture of the same specific ethno-anthropological group whose dominance the Chauvinist dreams of. There is no fundamental difference here. In fact, the national, ethno-anthropological and linguistic unity of every European nation is only relative. Each of these nations is a combination of different, smaller ethnic groups that have their own dialectical, cultural and anthropological features, but are related to each other by ties of kinship and common history that have created a stock of common cultural assets.

Thus, the Chauvinist, bestowing upon his nation the crown of creation and deeming them the sole bearers of all possible perfection, is in fact the champion of a whole group of ethnic units. Moreover, the Chauvinist wants other nations to merge with his nation, losing their national likeness.

When looking at other nations that have already done this, forfeiting their national identity and taking on the language, faith and culture of his nation, the Chauvinist will treat them as his own people. He will praise the others’ contributions to his nation’s culture—but, of course, only if this other nation has truly taken on a disposition that is sympathetic towards him, having completely abandoned their previous national mentality. To the nation that assimilated with the dominant nation, the Chauvinists always take a somewhat suspicious attitude, especially if the assimilation happened not long ago. But no Chauvinist fundamentally rejects the newly assimilated—we know, in fact, that among the European Chauvinists there are many people whose surnames and anthropological characteristics clearly show that, by origin, they do not belong to the people whose domination they so vehemently preach.

Now let us consider the European Cosmopolite. We see that, in essence, he is the same as the Chauvinist. The “civilization”, the culture that he considers to be the highest, to which all other cultures should bow down, also represents a known stock of cultural assets common to a group of ancestrally and historically related nations. Just as the Chauvinist ignores the particular characteristics of the individual ethnic groups making up his own nation, the Cosmopolite does away with the peculiarities of individual Romano-Germanic¹ nations and takes only those things that they share in common. The Cosmopolite also recognizes the cultural value of the activities of non-Romano-Germanic nations who fully embraced Romano-Germanic civilization, who discarded everything that contradicted the spirit of the dominant civilization, and exchanged their national likeness for one that is pan-Romano-Germanic. This is exactly like the Chauvinist, who recognizes as “his own” those aliens and foreigners who managed to fully assimilate with the dominant nation! Even the hostility experienced by Cosmopolites towards Chauvinists—and in general to those who distinguish the cultures of individual Romano-Germanic nations—even this hostility has a parallel in the Chauvinist worldview. Namely, the Chauvinists are always hostile to any attempts at separatism by the various parts of their own nation. They try to erase and obscure all regional particularities that could disrupt their nation’s unity.

Therefore, as it turns out, there is complete parallelism between the Chauvinist and the Cosmopolite. It is essentially the same treatment of the ethno-anthropological group to which the person happens to belong. The only difference is that the Chauvinist takes a narrower ethnic group than the Cosmopolite. And in doing so, the Chauvinist nonetheless takes a group that is not entirely homogeneous—while the Cosmopolite, in turn, still ends up choosing a particular group.

Thus the difference is only in scale, not in principle.

Cosmopolitanism is Romano-Germanic chauvinism

When evaluating European cosmopolitanism, we must remember that terms like “mankind”, “human civilization”, etc. are highly nebulous terms that act as cover for very specific ethnographic concepts. The culture of Europe is not the culture of mankind. It is a product of the history of a particular ethnic grouping. Germanic and Celtic tribes, having been subjected to various degrees of Roman cultural influence, and having strongly intermixed amongst themselves, created a well-known, common way of life from elements of their own national culture and Roman culture. As a result of shared ethnographic and geographical conditions, for a long time they lived a shared existence, with a common history and way of life. Their constant communication with each other made their shared elements so numerous that they always unconsciously harbored a sense of Romano-Germanic unity. With time, like so many other peoples, they developed a thirst for studying the sources of their culture. The discovery of monuments to Roman and Greek culture brought to the surface the concept of a transnational world civilization, a concept that is very natural to the Greco-Roman world. We know that this concept was based, once again, on ethnic and geographical factors. In Rome, the “entire world” meant, of course, simply orbis terrarum—that is, the peoples inhabiting or gravitating toward the Mediterranean basin who developed a set of shared cultural assets as a result of constant contact, and who were finally unified by the homogenizing influences of Greek and Roman colonization and Roman military dominance. In any case, the cosmopolitan ideas of antiquity became the foundation of the European education. Falling upon the fertile soil of unconscious Romano-Germanic unity, these ideas generated the theoretical foundations for so-called European “cosmopolitanism”, more accurately described as simply pan-Romano-Germanic chauvinism.

These are the real-life historical foundations of European cosmopolitan theories. The psychological foundation of cosmopolitanism is the same as that of chauvinism. It’s a sort of unconscious prejudice, a certain mentality that is best called egocentrism.¹ A person with a markedly egocentric personality unconsciously considers himself the center of the universe, of all creation; the best, the most perfect of all beings. When looking at two other beings, the being that is closer and more like him is better, while the one that is more distant is worse. Therefore, if this person belongs to any natural groups, he would consider those groups to be superior. His family, his socio-economic group, his nation, his tribe, and his race are better than all the others. Likewise, the species to which he belongs—the human species—is superior to all other mammals; mammals themselves are superior to all other vertebrates, and vertebrates in turn are superior to plants; and the organic world is superior to the inorganic world. In one way or another, nobody is free from this kind of thinking. Even science has not yet fully freed itself from this, and any scientific conquest towards liberation from egocentric prejudices comes with great difficulty.

There are many people whose entire worldview is permeated with egocentrism. Very few manage to escape it completely. But in its extreme manifestation it’s easily noticeable; its ridiculousness is apparent, and so it often elicits criticism, protest and ridicule. If a person is convinced that they are smarter and better than everyone else, and that they have everything going for them, they are usually mocked by those around them. And if that person is also aggressive, then they receive a well-deserved slap in the face. If a family is naively convinced that its members are all brilliant, beautiful geniuses, then they are laughed at by their acquaintances, who make amusing jokes about them. Such acute manifestations of egocentrism are rare, and they are typically met with resistance. It’s a different story when the egocentrism spreads to a broader group of people. Usually, at that point, there is also resistance, but breaking this kind of egocentrism is more difficult. More often than not, two egocentrically-minded groups fight it out and the winner is able to maintain their convictions. This takes place, for example, during class warfare or social struggle. The bourgeoisie that overthrows the aristocracy is just as convinced of its supremacy over all other classes as was the aristocracy. The proletariat that fights against the bourgeoisie also considers itself the salt of the earth, the best out of all the social classes.²

But the egocentrism there is fairly obvious, and people with a clearer head, those with a “broader view”, are usually able to rise above such prejudices. When it comes to ethnic groups, these same prejudices are harder to get rid of. In this regard, people’s sensitivity in understanding the nature of egocentric prejudices is far from evenly distributed. Many Prussian pan-Germanists harshly criticize fellow Prussians who hold the Prussian nation above all other Germans; they consider such “drunkard’s patriotism” laughable and narrow-minded. Yet, at the same time, the pan-Germanists have no doubt whatsoever that the German tribe as a whole is humanity’s crowning achievement – they’re not able to reach the level of Romano-Germanic cosmopolitanism. The Prussian Cosmopolite, meanwhile, resents his pan-Germanist compatriot, branding him a narrow-minded chauvinist. Yet the Cosmopolite fails to notice that he is very much a chauvinist himself, only a Romano-Germanic one, rather than a pan-German one. So it’s just a matter of the scope of one’s sensitivity; one person’s egocentric chauvinist feelings are slightly stronger, the other’s are slightly weaker. Either way, the sensitivity of Europeans to such questions is quite relative. We don’t find very many people who rise beyond so-called cosmopolitanism, i.e. Romano-Germanic chauvinism. Do we know of any Europeans who would be willing to recognize the cultures of so-called “savages”² as equal in worth to the Romano-Germanic culture? I don’t think they exist.³

Everyone should reject both chauvinism and cosmopolitanism

From the above it is quite clear how a conscientious Romano-German should treat chauvinism and cosmopolitanism. He must acknowledge that one and the other are both based on an egocentric mentality. He must acknowledge that such a way of thinking is not logically sound, and thus cannot serve as a basis for any theories. Moreover, it should not be difficult for him to understand that egocentrism is inherently anti-cultural and antisocial, and interferes with cohabitation in the broad sense of the word, i.e. the free interaction of all beings. It should be clear to everyone that any kind of egocentrism can be justified only through force, and, as written above, it only goes to the winner. That’s why Europeans do not go further than their Romano-Germanic chauvinism—any nation can be conquered by force, but the whole Romano-Germanic tribe in its entirety is so physically strong that it cannot be physically subdued by anyone.

But the moment all this reaches the conscience of our hypothetical sensitive and conscientious Romano-German, a conflict occurs in his soul. His whole spiritual culture, his entire worldview is based on the belief that the unconscious spiritual life, and all prejudices based upon it, must give way to the conclusions of reason and logic; that any theories can be constructed only on a logical, scientific basis. His entire sense of right and wrong is based on the rejection of any principles that hinder the free interaction of people. All of his ethics reject the resolution of differences by brute force. But suddenly it turns out that cosmopolitanism is founded on egocentrism! Cosmopolitanism, the pinnacle of Romano-Germanic civilization, is grounded in principles that fundamentally contradict all of this civilization’s primary mantras. The universal religion of cosmopolitanism, it turns out, is founded on anti-cultural egocentrism. The situation is tragic, but there is only one way out. The conscientious Romano-German must forever reject both chauvinism and so-called cosmopolitanism, and hence, the entire spectrum of views on the “national question” that lies in between.

But what position should non-Romano-Germans take in relation to European chauvinism, as representatives of those peoples who never participated in the creation of so-called “European civilization”?

Egocentrism deserves condemnation, not only from the standpoint of only European Romano-Germanic culture, but from the standpoint of all cultures, for it is a starting point that is antisocial and that destroys all cultural communication between people. Therefore, if among non-Romano-Germanic peoples there are chauvinists preaching that theirs is the chosen people, and that all others should submit to their culture, such chauvinists should be fought by their fellow countrymen. But what if individuals from a non-Romano-Germanic nation appear, who preach not for the dominance of their own nation, but for the dominance of some other, foreign nation, offering their own countrymen to assimilate into this “world nation”? After all, there would be no egocentrism in such preaching—on the contrary, this would be highly allocentric. As a result, it is impossible to condemn this kind of preaching in the same way that we condemn chauvinism.

But, on the other hand, isn’t the message of the sermon more important than the personal identity of the preacher? If the domination of Nation A over Nation B were being preached by a member of Nation A, that would be chauvinism, a manifestation of egocentric thought. Such preaching should be met with resistance by Nation A as well as by Nation B. But would the whole thing really change if the voice of the preacher from Nation A were joined by someone from Nation B? Of course not – chauvinism is chauvinism. The main actor in this hypothetical situation is, of course, the representative of Nation A. His mouth articulates his will to subjugate, which is the true meaning of chauvinistic theories. Indeed, the representative of Nation B may even have a louder voice, but is less significant in essence. Person B merely believed Person A’s argument, took faith in the strength of Nation A, let Nation A take him over—or maybe was just financially bought. Person A stands up for himself, while Person B stands for someone else: B’s lips move, but it is essentially A who is speaking. Therefore we are always right to consider such preaching to be the very same chauvinism in disguise.

The hypnotic power of cosmopolitanism

All this reasoning, in general, is rather pointless. These are not things that are worth proving logically at length. It is clear to everyone how they would treat their fellow tribe member if that member began to preach that their people should renounce their native faith, language and culture, and try to assimilate with a neighboring people, say, People X. Everyone would definitely see that person as a madman, or as someone duped by People X, having lost all national pride—or, finally, as an emissary of People X, sent to spread propaganda for some appropriate compensation. In any case, behind this gentleman’s back, everyone would, of course, suspect him of being a chauvinist from People X, consciously or unconsciously controlled by their words. Our attitude toward such preaching would not depend at all on whether it came from a compatriot or a foreigner: we would always see it as emanating from the people whose dominance was being preached. There is no doubt that our attitude toward such preaching would be strongly negative. No normal people in the world, especially a people organized into a state, could voluntarily allow the destruction of their national character in the name of assimilation, even with a “superior” nation. To chauvinistic harassment by foreigners, any self-respecting nation would answer as Leonidas of Sparta did: “Come and take them.” They would defend their national existence with weapons in hand, even in the face of inevitable defeat.

This all seems obvious, yet there are many facts out in the world that contradict all of this. European cosmopolitanism, which, as we have seen above, is nothing more than Romano-Germanic chauvinism, is spreading among non-Romano-Germanic nations quite rapidly and with very little difficulty. Among the Slavs, Arabs, Turks, Indians, Chinese and Japanese, there are already very many of these cosmopolites. Many of them adhere to the ideology even more strictly than their European counterparts, in terms of rejecting national characteristics, in their contempt for any non-Romano-Germanic cultures, and so on.

What explains this contradiction? Why has pan-Romano-Germanic chauvinism been so indisputably successful among the Slavs, when even the slightest hint of Germanophilic propaganda would ring a Slav’s alarm bells? Why are Russian intellectuals vehemently repulsed by the idea that they might be a tool in the hands of German junker nationalists, while at the same time being totally comfortable with subordinating themselves to Romano-Germanic chauvinists?

The answer lies, of course, in the hypnotic power of words.

As stated above, the Romano-Germans were always so naively confident that they were the only people who could brand themselves as “humanity”, brand their culture as “human civilization”, and finally, brand their chauvinism as “cosmopolitanism”. With this terminology they were able to obscure the ethno-specific meaning of these concepts. In doing so, these concepts were made palatable to members of other ethnic groups. When Romano-Germans give foreign nations the more universal products of their material culture (military and transport technology), they also smuggle in ideas that are presented as “universal”, diligently covering up the ethno-specific nature of these ideas.

So the spread of so-called³ European cosmopolitanism among non-Romano-Germanic nations is purely a misunderstanding. Those who succumbed to the propaganda of Romano-Germanic chauvinists were misled by words like “mankind”, “humanity”, “universal”, “civilization”, “world progress”, and so on. All these words were understood literally, whereas in reality they concealed very specific and rather narrow ethnographic concepts.

Questions for cosmopolitanists

Non-Romano-Germanic “intellectuals” who were fooled by the Romano-Germans must understand their mistake. They must understand that the culture that they were presented under the guise of human civilization is, in fact, the culture of only a certain ethnic group – the Germanic and Romance peoples. Naturally, this insight would significantly change their attitude toward the culture of their own nation, forcing them to reconsider whether they’re doing the right thing by trying to impose a foreign culture and eradicate the features of their nation’s indigenous identity in the name of some “universal” (in fact, Romano-Germanic, i.e. foreign) ideals. They can answer this question only after a mature and logical examination of the Romano-Germans' claims to the title of “civilized humanity”. The decision to adopt Romano-Germanic culture or not should only be made after answering a whole series of questions, namely:

1. Is it possible to objectively prove that the Romano-Germanic culture is superior to all other cultures that exist or have ever existed on Earth?
2. Is it possible for one nation to fully adopt a culture that was developed by another nation, while at the same time maintaining anthropological separation between the two nations?
3. Is inclusion into European culture (since such inclusion is possible) a good or bad thing?

These issues must be raised and, in one way or another, resolved by anyone who is aware of the essence of European cosmopolitanism as Romano-Germanic chauvinism. And only with an affirmative answer to all of these questions can global Europeanization be recognized as necessary and desirable. If any answer is negative, this Europeanization must be rejected and new questions should be raised:

4. Is global Europeanization inevitable?
5. How do we deal with its negative consequences?

In the following discussion, we will try to answer all of the questions that we’ve just asked. But in order for the answers to be correct and, most importantly, fruitful, we must invite the reader to temporarily, completely abandon egocentric prejudices, the idols of “human civilization”, and in general the thought process that is typical to Romano-Germanic science. This abandonment is not an easy thing, for the prejudices in question are deeply rooted in the consciousness of every “educated” European person. But we must abandon these things in order to remain objective.

Part II: Romano-Germanic Culture Is Not Superior

Any “evolutionary ladder” of cultures is illogical

We already pointed out above that Romano-Germanic cultural supremacism is based on an egocentric mentality. As we know, in Europe, this concept of the utmost perfection of European civilization is given a scientific-seeming foundation, but this foundation’s validity is just an illusion. The problem is that the understanding of evolution as it exists in European ethnic studies, anthropology and cultural history is itself permeated by egocentrism. The “evolutionary ladder”, “levels of development”—these concepts are all deeply egocentric. At their core lies the assumption that the development of the human species has followed, and continues to follow, the path of so-called world progress. This path is imagined to be a known, straight line. Mankind has been travelling along this straight line, but individual peoples have stopped at various points, as if walking in place; meanwhile, other peoples have managed to move along a bit further, stomping around at the next point, an so on. As a result, when we take a look at the bigger picture of mankind’s current existence, we can see the whole evolutionary process⁴—at each step of the way that mankind has travelled, there remains today some stagnant nation, stuck and walking in place. Thus the current human condition, taken as a whole, represents a sort of rolled-out, chopped-up film of evolution, and the differences between the cultures of various peoples represent different phases of overall human evolution, or different stages along the path of world progress.

If we suppose that this view of the relationship between evolution and reality is correct, we must admit that we are incapable of reconstructing the whole evolutionary picture. Indeed, in order to figure out which culture represents which evolutionary phase, we need to know exactly where lies the beginning, and where lies the end of this straight line of world progress. Only then can we determine what distance separates a given culture from the endpoints the aforementioned ladder of progress and, from there, determine that culture’s evolutionary rank. But we cannot determine the endpoints of evolution without first reconstructing the whole evolutionary picture. This results in a catch-22:⁵ we can’t create the whole evolutionary picture without knowing its endpoints, but to determine its endpoints, we need to create the whole picture. Clearly, the only way to escape this catch-22 is to unscientifically, irrationally claim that one particular culture or another is an evolutionary endpoint. We cannot arrive at such a claim scientifically or objectively since, in this framework, a single culture by itself cannot contain any information on where it is along the evolutionary line. Objectively, the only thing we see is traits of greater or lesser similarity between various cultures. We can group the world’s cultures based on these traits, so that more similar cultures are closer together, while more distinct cultures are put farther apart. We cannot do anything beyond this while remaining objective. Even if we managed to create a continuous chain of cultures based on similarity, we would still not be in a position to objectively determine where the ends of this chain would be.

Let’s clear up this idea with an example. Imagine seven squares, each of which is colored with one color of the rainbow. We line these squares up by color and list them, left to right: green, cyan, blue, violet, red, orange, yellow. Now jumble these squares and ask a volunteer who hasn’t seen the original sequence to line them up, so that every color is between two similar colors. Since our volunteer doesn’t know how the squares were initially set up, it’s clear that if they were to arrange them in the exact same order as above, they would have done so purely by chance. Moreover, the probability of them doing so is 1 in 14.

A scientist who attempts to arrange the present-day human nations and cultures according to an evolutionary sequence finds himself in the exact same position as our rainbow-arranging volunteer. Even if he places each culture between the two cultures that are most similar, he will still never know where to start—just as in our rainbow example, the volunteer doesn’t know to start with the green square, and to place the cyan square to the right of it, rather than to the left. The only difference is that there are far more than seven cultures, and thus there will be far more than 14 possible arrangements. So the probability of finding the “correct” sequence is far smaller.

So if the understanding of evolution that currently prevails in European science is correct, then it is impossible to reconstruct the picture of human cultural evolution. And yet, Europeans assert that they have determined what the general course of this evolution looks like. What is the explanation here? Has there truly been a miracle, have European scientists really received from some mysterious source a supernatural revelation, allowing them to identify the endpoints of an evolutionary sequence?

The “scientific” view of human evolution is egocentric

If we look closely at the result of European scholars' work in creating their framework of human evolution, it immediately becomes clear that the source of this supernatural revelation was simply their own egocentric mentality. It was this mindset that showed Romano-Germanic scientists, ethnologists and cultural historians where to look for the beginning and end of human development. Instead of remaining objective and, upon seeing the logical dead end, attempting to find the source of this dead end and the incorrectness of the overall understanding of evolution, instead of attempting to fruitfully rectify this understanding, Europeans simply took the pinnacle of human evolution to be themselves and their culture. Naively convinced that they have found one end of the evolutionary sequence, they quickly built out the rest of the sequence. It never occurred to any of them that acceptance of Romano-Germanic culture as the pinnacle of evolution is purely arbitrary, and is a grotesque case of petitio principii. Their egocentric mindset turned out to be so rigid that nobody doubted the correctness of this position, and it was accepted by everyone without discussion, as if it were self-evident.

As a result, we get the “ladder of human evolution”. The Romano-Germanic peoples, and those that have wholly embraced their culture, stand at the top. One step below are the “cultured ancient peoples”, i.e. those peoples whose culture is most closely related to that of the Europeans. Then there are the cultured peoples of Asia: their literacy, good governance and some other cultural features allow one to find some similarities to the Romano-Germanics. The “ancient American cultures” (Mexico, Peru) are viewed in a similar way; these cultures resemble the Romano-Germanics even less, and are therefore placed somewhat lower on the ladder. Nonetheless, all of the abovementioned peoples have enough cultural traits in common with the Romano-Germanics that they are bestowed the flattering title of “cultured”. Below them are the “savages”. These are the representatives of mankind that have the least similarity to modern Romano-Germanics.

According to this evolutionary ladder, the Romano-Germanics and their culture really do represent the height of human achievement. Of course—the Romano-Germanic cultural historians humbly add—with enough time, mankind will travel even farther, and it’s possible that the inhabitants of Mars are already culturally superior to us, but here on Earth, we Europeans are superior and above everyone else. But this evolutionary ladder cannot possess any objective evidentiary value. It isn’t that Romano-Germanics see themselves as the “pinnacle of creation” because objective science has set up the aforementioned ladder; on the contrary, European scientists place the Romano-Germanics at the top of this ladder because they were convinced a priori of their superiority. The egocentric mentality played a decisive role here. Objectively speaking, this entire ladder consists of a classification of peoples and cultures according to their lesser or greater similarity to modern Romano-Germanics. It is the judgmental aspect, transforming this classification into a ladder with rungs of perfection, that lacks objectivity, and is introduced via a subjective egocentric mentality. Therefore the classification of peoples and cultures that is accepted in European science cannot objectively prove the supremacy of Romano-Germanic civilization over the cultures of other peoples. Even if something is self-evidently good, it does not follow that it’s the best in the world.

Trivial arguments for Romano-Germanic superiority

Let us look at the evidence that is brought up in favor of the overall supremacy of the Romano-Germanic civilization that stands atop the “evolutionary ladder”, as opposed to the “savage” cultures that sit at the “lowest level of development”. Amazingly, all this evidence is based on either the petitio principii of egocentric prejudice, or on the optical illusions that result from this mentality. There is no objective, scientific evidence whatsoever.

Military superiority

The most basic and widespread evidence consists of the fact that Europeans, it is said, are winning against the savages; that every time savages go into battle against Europeans, the battle ends in “white” victory and the “savages’” destruction. The vulgarity and naivety of such an argument must be evident to any objectively-minded person. It clearly demonstrates the extent to which the veneration of brute force, which featured nontrivially in the national character of those tribes that would create European civilization, is alive and well to this day in the consciousness of every descendant of the ancient Gauls and Germanics. The Gaulish “Vae victis!” and Germanic vandalism, systematized and deepened by Roman military traditions, are displayed here in all their glory, albeit masked in a semblance of objective science. Meanwhile, this argument comes up even among the most enlightened European “humanists”. Deconstructing the failure of its logic is, of course, not worth trying. Nonetheless, Europeans do attempt to mold it into a scientific force, giving it a foundation in the form of a theory of “fighting for survival” or “adapting to the environment”, but in the end they cannot sustain this historical viewpoint. They are constantly forced to admit that victory often falls in the hands of peoples “less cultured” than their vanquished adversaries. History is full of examples of nomads defeating sedentary peoples, even though nomadic peoples differ in their way of life from modern Romano-Germans sufficiently to place them below any settled nation. All of the “great cultures of Antiquity”, as they are called in European learning, were destroyed precisely by “barbarians”. And even though the excuse is frequently given that these cultures, at the time of their destruction, had already fallen into a so-called state of decay, there is a wide range of examples where this cannot be conclusively demonstrated. Thus, since European learning cannot claim the position that the victorious peoples are always culturally superior to the vanquished peoples, they cannot make any positive conclusions from the fact that Europeans have militarily defeated the savages.

Self-evidence

There is another argument that is no less popular, but even less coherent. It consists of the idea that “savages” are incapable of perceiving certain European concepts, and are therefore considered to be an “inferior race”. The egocentric mentality here is especially strong. Europeans completely forget that if “savages” are incapable of perceiving some of the ideas of European civilization, then Europeans are likewise equally incapable of comprehending ideas from the savages’ culture.

There is an oft-repeated story about a Papuan who was taken to England, educated in school and even taken to university. Soon, however, he felt a longing for his homeland, fled to Papua, and threw off his European clothes to live like the “savage” he was before he was taken to England—not a trace was left of any European cultural concepts. And yet, people seem to completely forget the numerous stories of Europeans who decided to “simplify their lives,” settling among “savages”, but who returned to Europe and to all the trappings of a European lifestyle after realizing they were unable to keep up the charade. They point out that embracing European civilization is so difficult for the “savages” that many of them, after attempting to “become civilized”, went insane and became alcoholics.

However, in those rather rare cases when a European did earnestly attempt to assimilate into the culture of some wild tribe—embracing not just the superficial, physical lifestyle of the tribe, but its religion and beliefs as well—the majority of these “weirdos” met the same fate. It is sufficient to mention the talented French painter Paul Gauguin, who tried to become a real Tahitian, and paid for his attempt first with insanity, and then alcoholism, dying ingloriously after a drunken brawl. Clearly it is not the case that “savages” are less developed than Europeans, but rather, that the development of Europeans and savages goes in different directions, and that Europeans and “savages” differ to the fullest extent in their lifestyles and in the ways of thinking that they generate. Full assimilation into such a foreign mode of being is impossible for both sides, precisely because the mindset and culture of “savages” has almost nothing in common with the mindset and culture of Europeans. But since this lack of possibility remains commutative, making it just as difficult for a European to become a savage as it is for a “savage” to become a European, one cannot draw any conclusions about who is “higher” and who is “lower” in “development”.

Psychological arguments for superiority

"Savages" are not childish

We’ve taken apart some arguments in favor of the superiority of Europeans over “savages”. Although they may sometimes appear in scientific literature, the “arguments” presented so far have consisted of layman’s reasoning, naive and superficial. The scientific literature is dominated by other arguments, which appear far more serious and solid. However, upon more careful examination, these quasi-scientific arguments turn out also to be based on egocentric prejudices. In science, we find that the mentality of savages is often likened to the mentality of children. The comparison is practically self evident, for if observed directly, savages really do seem to Europeans like adult children. From there they conclude that the savages have “stopped developing” and therefore are lower than the proper adult Europeans. Here the European scientists once again demonstrate a lack of objectivity. They completely ignore the fact that the “adult child” impression when Europeans meet “savages” is mutual, i.e. the savages also regard the Europeans as adult children. From a psychological standpoint, this is a very interesting fact, and we must look for its explanation within the very essence of what Europeans mean by the word “savage”. We stated earlier that the word “savage” is used by European scientists to designate those peoples whose culture and mentality differ the most from modern Romano-Germans. This is where we may find the answer to the aforementioned psychological quandary. We have to bear in mind the following propositions:

1. Every person’s psyche consists of innate and acquired elements.

2. Among innate psychological traits, we must distinguish between traits belonging to the individual, to his family, his tribe, his race; as well as traits common to humans, mammals, and then animals in general.

3. Acquired traits depend on the environment in which the given individual lives, and on the traditions of the individual’s family and social group, and on the culture of his nation.

4. In very early childhood, the entire psyche consists exclusively of innate traits; as time passes, those traits are increasingly joined by traits that are acquired. Moreover, as a consequence of trait acquisition, some innate traits may be softened or may disappear entirely.

5. When considering any person’s mentality, we only have direct access and understanding of those traits that we have in common with that person.

From these propositions it follows that when two people meet each other, if they belong to exactly identical environments and upbringings within the exact same cultural traditions, they both understand virtually all of each other’s psychological traits. This is because they have almost all of their traits in common, except for a few innate ones. But when two people meet each other and come from two completely different cultures that look nothing alike, then each person will only see and understand a few of the other’s innate traits, without understanding (or perhaps even noticing) the acquired ones, since in this domain the two individuals have nothing in common. As the observer’s culture becomes more and more different from that of the observed, the observer will be able to understand fewer and fewer of the other’s acquired psychological traits; the mentality of the other will appear to the observer to consist entirely of traits that are innate. However, a psyche that is dominated by innate traits over acquired ones always gives the impression of being rudimentary. We can imagine any psyche as a fraction where the numerator is the sum total of acquired traits, while the denominator is the sum total of innate traits that are accessible to us. The smaller this fraction (i.e. the greater the ratio of the denominator to the numerator), the more rudimentary this psyche will appear. From the above propositions, the third and fifth indicate that this fraction will be smaller if the culture and society of the observer is more different from those of the observed.

Since “savages” are, in other words, those peoples whose culture and way of life differ the most from modern Europeans, it is clear that their psyche would appear to Europeans as exceptionally rudimentary. But from everything we have stated above, it is also clear that such an impression would have to be mutual. The conception of “savages” as “adult children” is based on an optical illusion. In savages, we only perceive the innate traits, since they are the only ones we have in common (proposition 5). The acquired traits are entirely alien and incomprehensible to us, since they are based on the savage’s cultural traditions (proposition 3), which are entirely different from ours. But a mentality where innate traits predominate while acquired traits are nearly absent is the mentality of a child (proposition 4). This is why we conceive of the “savage” as childlike.

There is another circumstance that plays into this conception. If we were to compare the mentalities of two children, a little “savage” and a little European, we would find that from a psychological standpoint the children are closer to one another than their fathers are. They do not yet have the acquired traits that are to appear later, but they have many common elements as part of the universal human, mammal and animal psyches; the differences attributable to racial, tribal, family and individual psyches are not so great. Over time, some of this shared supply of innate traits will be displaced or modified by acquired traits, while other innate traits will remain unaffected. But what traits are acquired will differ between the two subjects. The savage will lose trait A, but traits B and C will be preserved; the European will lose trait B, while traits A and C are preserved. Furthermore, the savage will acquire a beneficial trait D, while the European will acquire a beneficial trait E. When the adult European meets the adult savage and observes him, he will find in the savage’s psyche traits B, C and D. Of these traits, D will turn out to be completely strange and incomprehensible for the European, because this part of the savage’s psyche, an acquired trait, stands in connection with the savage’s culture, which has nothing in common with that of Europe. Trait C is held in common by the adult savage and the adult European, and therefore it is quite understandable to the latter person. As for trait B, it is not in the psyche of the adult European, but this European remembers that he had this trait in early childhood, and can observe it now in the psyche of the children of his nation. Thus, the psyche of the savage should inevitably appear to the European as a mixture of elementary features of adult psychology and of childlike traits. Needless to say, the European’s psyche would appear in the same way to the savage, for the same reasons.

"Savages" are not like animals

The optical illusion that we just talked about is also the cause of another phenomenon, namely, the similarities that Europeans find between the psychology of savages and the psychologies of animals. We stated above that, psychologically, there is little difference between a savage child and a European child. If we take these two kids and add a young animal, then we would have no choice but to acknowledge that these three creatures have some things in common—mammal-wide traits or animal-wide traits. There may not be very many of these traits, but nonetheless they exist. Let us suppose they are called X, Y and Z. Later in life, the little European develops and loses trait X. Meanwhile, the savage loses Y, while the animal preserves all X, Y and Z. But those animal traits that are preserved by these creatures are, of course, preserved in a slighly different form compared to how they were displayed in childhood, for an adult animal’s psychological traits always differ in known ways from the psychological traits of the young animals from which they developed. Therefore, traits X, Y and Z take on the adult forms X', Y' and Z', which means the European adult shows Y' and Z' while the adult savage shows X' and Z'. When the adult European observes the adult savage, he sees in him, among other things, trait X'. How does he perceive this trait? It is absent in his own psyche. In the European’s tribe, the children have it in a different form, namely X. But in the psyche of mature animals the European can directly see X'. Naturally, he determines that this is an “animal” trait, and by virtue of the savage having this trait, he will consider the savage to be the closest human to an animal level of development. All of this, of course, applies to the savage, who sees trait Y' in the European and makes an analogous conclusion based on the absence of this trait in him, and the presence of it in animals.

Extension to all cultures

Thus, the idea of the simplicity of the savage’s psyche, of its similarity to the psyche of a child or an animal, is based on an optical illusion. Even outside the context of savages—i.e. nations that are maximally culturally different from modern Romano-Germans—this illusion remains powerful, applying to all nations with non-Romano-Germanic culture. The difference is only in the degree of illusion. When observing a member of a “foreign” culture, we will understand only those acquired psychological traits that we have in common, which is to say, those that are connected to cultural elements we hold in common. Traits that are acquired but based on elements of his culture without a parallel in ours will remain incomprehensible to us. As for innate psychological traits, almost all of them will appear understandable to us, and some of them will appear childish. We will understand the innate psychological traits of this observed nation almost entirely, but will only grasp those acquired traits that are similar to our culture, so we will always incorrectly judge the ratio of innate to acquired traits, with a bias toward seeing more innate traits. Moreover, this bias will be stronger when a foreign culture differs more strongly from ours. Naturally, therefore, the mentality of a nation with a culture that differs from ours will always seem more elementary than our own mentality.⁶

Notice, by the way, that such an evaluation of another’s mentality can be seen not only between two nations, but also between different social groups of one nation, if the social differences within this nation are very strong and if the upper classes have adopted a foreign culture. Many Russian intellectuals, doctors, officers and nurses, when speaking to the “common folk”, say that they are “adult children”. On the other hand, the “common folk”, based on their fairy tales, see in the “baroness” a well-known eccentricity and naive, juvenile psychological traits.

The “historical argument”

Despite the fact that the European conception of the “savage” psyche is based on an illusion, this conception still play a prominent role in all the quasi-scientific contructions of European ethnology, anthropology and history of culture. Of all the ways this has affected the methodology of the aforementioned fields, the most significant has been that it allowed Romano-Germanic scholars to put a diverse set of the Earth’s peoples into a group called “savage”, “uncultured” or “primitive”.⁷ We already mentioned that these terms encompass nations whose culture is maximally different from that of Romano-Germans. This is the only characteristic these nations have in common. This characteristic is purely subjective, and is defined negatively. But as soon as it created the optical illusion that gave rise to the Europeans' one-dimensional characterization of all these nations' mentalities, the Europeans took it as an objective and positive indicator. They united all the nations whose culture differed most from Romano-Germans under the label “primitive”. European scholars refuse to reckon with the fact that this groups together nations that are nothing alike (for example, Eskimos and Kaffirs⁸), since distinctions between various “primitive peoples” are based on characteristics of cultures equally far from Romano-Germanic culture, all equally alien and incomprehensible to a European. Thus they are neglected by scientists, who consider the characteristics secondary or insignificant. And this group—this concept of “primitive peoples” that is founded, in essence, on subjective and negative perceptions—is treated uncritically by European science as a real and homogeneous quantity. Such is the power of the egocentric mindset in European evolutionary science.

This illusion, and the associated habit of qualifying nations based on their degree of similarity to Romano-Germanic culture, is the basis for another argument in favor of the superiority of Romano-Germanic civilization over all other cultures of the world. This argument, which can be called the “historical” argument, is considered in Europe to be the strongest—and it is one that cultural historians are especially eager to cite. In essence, it says that the ancestors of modern Europeans were originally also savages, and therefore, modern savages can be tought of as still existing at a stage of development that Europeans have long since passed. This argument is supported by archeological findings and ancient historians' descriptions demonstrating that the lifestyle of modern Romano-Germans' ancestors was marked by the same features as that of present-day savages.

The illusory nature of this argument becomes apparent as soon as we remember that the concept of “savage” or “primitive” nations is itself artificial, since it unifies extremely diverse tribes from across the globe based on just one characteristic, their utmost dissimilarity to modern Romano-Germans.

Just like any culture, European culture has been constantly changing as has arrived at its present form only gradually, as the result of a long evolution. In each historical era, this culture was different in some way. Of course, in eras closer to modernity, the culture of Europeans' ancestors was closer to its present form, compared to more distant eras. In the most distant of eras, the culture of the nations of Europe differed the most from the modern civilization—it was then that the culture of Europeans' ancestors was maximally different from the modern culture. But all cultures that are maximally different from modern European civilization are invariably placed by European scholars into the general category of “primitive cultures”. So, of course the culture of the distant ancestors of modern Romano-Germans must fall into that same category. No positive conclusions can be made from this. Since the term “primitive culture” is defined negatively, the mere fact that the epithet “primitive” is applied by European scholars to the most ancient of Romano-Germanic ancestors as well as to modern Eskimos and Kaffirs says nothing about how these cultures are similar to each other, only that they are dissimilar to modern European civilization.

Why "savages" always regress or stagnate

In this case, the distance \(AC=AB\) . In other words, it would turn out that this “savage” culture in a previous historical era different maximally from modern European culture. And since all cultures maximally different from European civilization are tossed by European science into big “primitive” pile, the European scholar in this case would not see any progress. He would instead recognize immobility, stagnation, no matter how great the path from C to B representing the trajectory taken by the “savage” culture during this historical epoch.

The second case: C lies within the circle. In this case the distance \(AC<AB\) . In other words, the savage’s culture went farther and farther from the point representing modern European culture. It is clear that the European scholar, considering his civilization the pinnacle of earthly perfection, could call this movement only a “regression”, “fall” or “ensavagement”.

Finally, the third case: C is outside the circle. Here the distance \(AC>AB\) , i.e. greater than the maximum distance from the culture of modern Romano-Germans. But values above the maximum are not perceptible to the human mind and are not accessible to the senses. The worldview of the European, standing at point A of our diagram, is limited by the circumference of our circle, and everything beyond the limits of the circle is no longer distinguishable. Therefore the European must project point C onto the circle to create C', which leads to the first case—the appearance of stagnation.

Just as how he treats the savages, the European evaluates the histories of other nations whose culture is closer or farther from modern Romano-Germanic culture. Strictly speaking, real “progress” is seen only in the history of Romano-Germans themselves, since it naturally features a constant, gradual approach towards the modern condition of Romano-Germanic culture, which is arbitrarily declared the peak of perfection. As for the histories of non-Romano-Germanic nations, if a history does not end in the adoption of European culture, then all its recent stages—those closest to the present day—would have to be viewed by European scholars as stagnation or decline. If a non-Romano-Germanic nation gives up its national culture and begins blindly copying Europeans, only then do Romano-Germanic scholars delightfully remark that this nation has “joined the path of human progress”.

And thus the “historical argument”, the strongest and more convincing in the eyes of Europeans, turns out to prove just as little as all the other arguments in favor of the superiority of Romano-Germans over savages.

The knowledge argument

They tell us, “Compare the contents of the mind of a cultured European with that of some Bushman, Botocudo or Vedda—is the superiority of the former over the latter not apparent?” But we maintain that the superiority here is only subjective. As soon as we allow ourselves to investigate the matter in good faith without prejudice, the self-evidence disappears. A savage, a good savage hunter-gatherer who has all the qualities that are valued in his tribe (since only such a savage can be compared to a real cultured European), possesses in his mind a huge reserve of all sorts of knowledge and information. He has perfectly studied the life of the environment that surrounds him, and knows all the animals' habits, such subtleties of their lives as would escape the keen eye of the most attentive European naturalist. All this knowledge is kept in the savage’s mind in a manner that is not at all disorganized. It is systematized—albeit not by the same set of criteria that a European scientist would use, but by another set, more convenient for the practical purposes of hunting. Aside from this practical and scientific knowledge, the savage’s mind contains an often very complex mythology of his tribe, its moral code, its rules of etiquette (which can be quite complex), and finally, a more or less significant repository of his nation’s oral literature. A savage’s head is bursting with material, despite the fact that its contents differ from that of a European’s head. And because of this difference in the substance of the intellectual life of a savage and a European, their mental contents should be considered incomparable and incommensurable, which is why the question of the superiority of one over the other should be considered unanswerable.

They point out that European culture is in many ways more complex than a given savage culture. However, this kind relationship between the two cultures is not observed when considering every aspect. Cultured Europeans are proud of the refinement of their manners, the finesse of their courtesy. But there is no doubt that the rules of etiquette and conventions of communal living in many savage cultures are much more complex and elaborate than those of Europeans, not to mention that all members of the “savage” tribe obey this code of etiquette without exception, while the Europeans' etiquette is the domain of only the uppermost classes. In taking care of their appearance, “savages” often show much more complexity than many Europeans: remember the sophisticated tattoo techniques of Australians and Polynesians or the most complicated hairstyles of African beauties. Even if we attribute all these complications to some amount of impractical oddity, there are in the life of many savages some undoubtedly practical institutions that are much more complex than the corresponding European ones. Take, for example, attitudes towards sexual life, family and marriage law. How rudimentary is the solution to this issue in the Romano-Germanic civilization, where the monogamous family exists officially, protected by law, while unbridled sexual freedom flourishes alongside it, which society and the state in theory condemn but in practice allow. Compare this with the elaborate institution of group marriage in Australia, where sexual activity is strictly regulated and, in the absence of individual marriage, measures are nevertheless in place both to provide for children and to prevent incest.

In general, it is hard to say much about the degree to which a culture has reached perfection. Evolution tends just as often towards simplicity as it does towards complexity. Levels of complexity, therefore, can in no way serve as a measure of progress. Europeans are well aware of this, and only apply this measure when it is convenient for their own purposes of self-glorification. In cases when another culture—for instance, a given savage culture—is in some form more complex than the European one, Europeans not only reject complexity as a measure of progress, but even on the contrary declare that, in this case, complexity is a sign of “primitiveness”. This is how European science interprets all the aforementioned examples: the complex etiquette of savages, their care for complex body decorations, even the intricate Australian system of group marriage—all this turns out to be a manifestation of a low degree of culture. Notice that Europeans here cannot refer to their beloved “historical argument”, dismantled above: in the prehistory of the Gauls and the Germans (and even the Romans themselves) there was never a moment when all the aforementioned, ostensibly primitive, sides of “savage” life would have been manifested. Some ancestors of Romano-Germans had no conception of careful body decorations, tattoos or fantastically complicated hairstyles, they neglected politeness and “manners” much more than modern Germans and Americans, and the family was structured in the same way from time immemorial. There are a number of other cases where Europeans do not consider the historical argument, where its logical application would not favour of European civilization. Much of what in modern Europe is considered to be the cutting edge of civilization or the peak of yet-to-be-achieved progress is found in savages, but is then declared a sign of extreme primitiveness. Futuristic images painted by Europeans are considered a sign of high refinement of aesthetic taste, but totally similar works by “savages” are just naive attempts, the first awakenings of primitive art. Socialism, communism, anarchism—these are all “shining ideals of the highest progress to come” only when they are preached by a modern European. When these “ideals” are realized in the life of savages, they are immediately designated as a manifestation of primitive savagery.

There is no objective proof of the superiority of Europeans over savages, and there never will be, because when comparing different cultures, Europeans know only one measure: what is like us is better, and more perfect, than anything that is not like us.

But if this is the case, if Europeans are not more perfect than savages, then the evolutionary ladder, which we talked about at the beginning of this chapter, should collapse. If the ladder’s top rung is not higher than the bottom rung, then clearly it is also not any of the other rungs. Where we used to have a ladder, we now have a horizontal plane. Instead of the principle of ordering nations and cultures by levels of perfection, we have a new principle of equality and qualitative incommensurability of all cultures and nations of the globe. The idea of appraising cultures should be forever banished from ethnology and cultural history, as well as from all evolutionary sciences in general, because appraisal is always based on egocentrism. There is no “higher” or “lower”. There is only “similar” and “dissimilar”. Declaring those who are similar to us to be higher and those who are different to be lower is arbitrary, unscientific, naive, and finally, just plain stupid. Only by completely overcoming this deep-rooted egocentric prejudice and driving its consequences out of the very methods and conclusions that have so far been built on it, will European evolutionary sciences—in particular ethnology, anthropology and cultural history—become real scientific disciplines. Until then, they are at best a means of tricking people and justifying, in the eyes of Romano-Germans and their henchmen, imperialist colonial policies and vandalistic exploitation⁹ by the “great powers” of Europe and America.

And so, to the first of the above questions—“Is it possible to objectively prove that the Romano-Germanic culture is superior to all other cultures that exist or have ever existed on Earth?"—we must answer, no.

Part III: Full Assimilation Is Impossible

Now we will try to answer the question, “Is it possible for one nation to fully assimilate into a culture created by another nation?” By “fully assimilate” we mean, of course, to adopt the culture of a foreign nation in such a way that the assimilated nation sees this culture as theirs, and the culture continues to develop within the assimilated nation in total lockstep with its development within the nation from which it was borrowed, such that both the creators of the culture and the borrowers merge into a single cultural whole.

Gabriel Tarde’s theory of cultural invention

To answer a question asked in this form, we must, of course, know the laws of the life and development of cultures. By the way, European science knows almost nothing in this area, since it is located on the same false path as the all the European evolutionary sciences, thanks to the abovementioned egocentric prejudices. The field of sociology still has not been able to develop objective scientific methods, much less any credible conclusions, and remains on par with alchemy. Some correct opinions on the method sociology should use and some truthful views on the real nature of the mechanics–or dynamics–of social phenomena can be found scattered among individual European sociologists, who, nonetheless, fail to hold true to their own methodological principles and invariably fall into an egocentrism-based generalization about the development of “mankind”. This passion for hasty generalizations, which are always wrong since they are based on false notions of “humanity”, “progress”, “primitiveness”, etc., is a passion that exists in all sociologists and makes it especially difficult to make use of their findings.

The Frenchman Gabriel Tarde, who unfortunately was relatively little known and wrongly evaluated in Europe, was the greatest European sociologist of the last century. He was perhaps closer to the truth than others in his general views on the nature of social processes and on the methods of sociology. But even this erudite scholar was ruined by a passion for generalization and a desire to immediately paint a picture of the entire evolution of “mankind” after defining some elements of social life. Moreover, imbued as all Europeans are with egocentric prejudices, he is unable to stand at a vantage point where cultures are equivalent and qualitatively incomparable. He is unable to conceive of “mankind” as anything other than a coherent whole, whose different parts located at different steps of an evolutionary ladder. And finally, he is unable to break with the idea of “universal” or “world progress”. Thus, although we stick to Tarde’s sociological teachings at a number of important points, we nevertheless have to make some very significant amendments to his theory. But this is the sociological system we will use to try to answer the question posed above.

The life and developent of any culture consists of the continuous emergence of new cultural assets. By “cultural assets” we mean any worthwhile human creations that become the common heritage of the creator’s compariots. These can be legal norms, works of art, institutions, technical devices, scientific principles or philosophical propositions – since all of these things meet certain physical or spiritual needs, or have been adopted by all or some of the people to satisfy such needs. In general, we will call the emergence of a new cultural asset an “invention”. Each invention is a combination of two or more already existing cultural assets or their various elements, although an invention cannot be cleanly divided into its components, and is always greater than the sum of its parts, having the added value of the combination itself, as well as an imprint of the personality of its creator. Once it has emerged, an invention spreads among others by imitation, as Tarde calls it. This term must be understood in the broadest sense, starting from the reproduction of the cultural asset itself (or the reproduction of the method, using this property, of satisfying a given need), all the way to “sympathetic imitation”, i.e. submission to an established norm, adoption of some proposition assumed to be the truth, or admiration for the merit of a work.

During the imitation process, one innovation may conflict and enter into opposition with another innovation; or with a previously recognized cultural asset, in which case a struggle for primacy (Tarde’s duel logique), resulting in one value displacing the other. Only by overcoming all these obstacles and spreading through imitation to the whole of society does an invention become a fact of social life, a cultural element. The culture at any given moment comprises the sum of all inventions that have gotten recognition from the current and previous generations of a people. The life and development of a culture, therefore, can essentially be reduced to two basic processes: invention and propagation. A third process, not required but almost unavoidable, is the duel logique (“logical duel” or struggle for recognition). It is not difficult to see that the two main processes have something else in common: since every invention is inspired by previous inventions or, rather, existing cultural assets, it can be thought of as a combined imitation or, in Tarde’s words, a collision in the individual consciousness of two or more imitative waves (ondes imitatives). The only difference is that in invention there is no struggle (duel logique), in the narrow sense of the word, between the two colliding values. One value does not displace the other. On the contrary, they are synthesized and united into a single whole. Propagation, on the other hand, does not create a new value, but merely eliminates one of the opposing sides. Therefore, invention and propagation can be seen as two sides of the same process, namely imitation. This is what distinguishes Tarde’s teachings – he accepts only one element of social life, the mental process of imitation, always taking place in the individual brain but at the same time establishing a connection between the single individual and other people and belonging, therefore, not to individual psychology, but to interpsychology or collective mentality.

Now we will try to imagine the conditions that are necessary for the continuous emergence of inventions, or in other words, the development of culture. Fundamentally, this requires that a given cultural consciousness already have a full stock of cultural assets that have been created and have passed through the struggle stage. This is necessary first of all because, as stated above, any new invention is always composed of elements of already existing cultural assets, according to the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit ( “nothing comes from nothing”). In addition, while aiming to satisfy a known need, any new invention at the same time generates new needs or modifies old ones, making it necessary to look for new ways to satisfy these new needs. All of this increases the necessity of a close connection between new inventions and the already existing common stock of cultural assets. This common stock of cultural assets – in other words, a cultural inventory – must be transmitted through tradition in order to successfully continue developing. Each young generation must assimilate, by imitating elders, the culture that the previous generation grew up in and had received, in turn, from its predecessors. For each generation, the culture it gets through tradition is the starting point for further inventions. This is a prerequisite condition for continuous and organic cultural development. Finally, in addition to tradition, the most important role in the development of culture is played by inheritance (a factor underappreciated by Tarde).¹⁰ Inheritance complements tradition, and it is the means by which the tastes, predispositions and temperaments of those who created cultural assets in the past are transmitted from generation to generation, which contributes to the organic nature of cultural development as a whole.

The process of propogation of inventions, another equally essential part of the development of culture, generally requires the same conditions as those for the emergence of inventions themselves. The existence of a common stock of cultural assets is necessary because it is the stock that determines the needs that an invention must satisfy, and yet an invention can only come into being if the need that brought it into being is present, and that need must be present in exactly the same way in both the inventor and larger society. Furthermore, the key to successful propagation lies, in large part, in the readiness of the consciousness of society to accept it, and such a readiness implies that the elements from which the invention is composed already live in the consciousness of society. We know, however, that the elements of each new invention are drawn from the same common stock of values. Therefore, this common stock, shared amongst inventors and imitators, is a necessary condition for the spread of the invention. But the presence of this same stock of cultural assets in and of itself is not sufficient. It is important that all these values and their elements in the consciousness of society and in the consciousness of the inventor be approximately the same, and that their interactions in both minds be the same. This can only be achieved through tradition. Finally, for a given discovery to be accepted by everyone or the majority, the tastes, predispositions and temperament of the inventor must not contradict the psychological order of that society – and this requires common inherited traits.

Why full assimilation is impossible

After these preliminary considerations from the field of general sociology, we can proceed to try to resolve the question of whether it’s possible for a whole nation to become fully assimilated into a different culture. Let’s take two nations, call them A and B, each with their own culture (since we cannot have a nation without a culture, in the above sense of the word). Suppose these two cultures are different. Now let us assume that Nation A borrows the culture of Nation B. We now ask: can this borrowed culture, when grounded in A, develop in the same direction, in the same spirit and at the same pace as when it is grounded in B? We know that this would require borrowers A to have the same common stock of cultural assets, the same tradition, and the same heredity as B. However, none of these conditions is possible. Even if nation A immediately borrows all the inventory of culture from B, the total stock of cultural assets of both nations will not be identical, since A will initially still have its old cultural inventory (which B does not have). This remnant of the former indigenous culture will remain alive for some time after the borrowing, at least in the memory of Nation A, no matter how diligently the former culture is eradicated. Finally, heredity cannot be borrowed without the anthropological mixing of A and B. But even if such a mixing were to occur, the mixed descendants will have a different heredity than either A or B did before them. Therefore, from the start of the borrowing and onward, the living conditions of Culture B grounded in Nation A will be entirely different from those of Nation B.

The first steps of a culture transferred to new ground prove fatal for its further development. The most decisive factor is surely the absence of an organic tradition. Culture B has a whole series of elements that Nation B perceive and assimilate from childhood. In Nation A, all these elements would be assimilated at a mature age. In Nation B, the natural agent of tradition is the family. In Nation A, the family cannot pass on the traditions of the newly adopted culture during the initial transition. That tradition would have to be inculcated through school or through more or less artificial institutions - the army, industry, etc. But even as the young generations receive the traditions of the new, borrowed culture via these institutions, they still retain the traditions of the old indigenous culture, which they received from their family, and which the family authority continues to reinforce even as time goes on.

Of course, these young generations combine both traditions and end up creating some mixture, using concepts from both cultures. This mixture is created in each person’s own consciousness, though certainly influenced by the imitation of those around them. In general, everyone has their own mixture, which varies depending on each person’s life story – nation with similar circumstances will not have significantly different mixtures. In any case, when the young generation in question moves from the role of receivers to transmitters of tradition, instead of passing on the pure traditions of Culture B, they will transmit a mixture of A and B. The next generation will receive a more-or-less pure version of Culture B from school and other sources, while family and social interaction with older nation will transmit the aforementioned mix of A and B. This produces a new mixture which is then passed on to the next generation, and so on.

Thus, the culture of Nation A will always remain a mixture of cultures A and B, with the older generation having a slightly stronger element of Culture A than the younger one at any given point in time. The family will remain closer to Culture A compared to other collective institutions. However, over time, some elements of Culture A will permeate into the tradition that is passed down to younger generations in school – so even this tradition will become mixed. As a result, the entire culture of Nation A will be based on a mixed tradition from the two original cultures. Hence, we would still not reach a point where Nation A and Nation B are completely culturally identical.

As we stated above, every invention is made up of elements of already existing cultural assets. The total sum of possible inventions at any given moment, therefore, depends on the total sum of cultural assets that a nation has access to. And since the stock of available cultural assets of Poeple A and Nation B will never be identical, the spaces of possible cultural inventions for Nation A and Nation B will never be the same. In other words, the direction of cultural development for Nation B, who created the culture, and for Nation A, who borrowed it, will be different. This is not even accounting for differences in taste, predisposition and temperament due to differences in heredity. And finally, this is all made more complicated by differences in geography and anthropological type (phenotype; for example, as is the case with style of dress).

So we have to admit that fully assimilating an entire nation into a culture created by another nation is an impossible task.

Hellenization and Romanization

History by no means contradicts this conclusion. Every instance of full-scale assimilation into a foreign culture, examined more closely, reveals that this assimilation is either only surface-level, or that is was made possible by the complete anthropological mixing of the culture-creating nation with the borrowing nation. Many point to Hellenism and Romanization as examples of the foreign cultures being assimilated. However, these examples are somewhat unfortunate.

Hellenized countries were known for having a mixture of Ancient Greek and indigenous cultures. Elements of Greek culture, including the Greek language, served only as the glue that united all these mixed cultures together. We also know that elements of foreign culture penetrated into Greece itself, resulting in the Greek nation receiving a mixed culture. There was no “Nation B” who created culture and “Nation A” who borrowed it. Instead, there were nations A, B, C, etc. who borrowed certain cultural elements from one another, entering into a vibrant cultural exchange that was fully mutual.

As for Romanization, we should distinguish two phases. The Romanization of the Italian Peninsula cannot be seen as the introduction of an alien culture, because the culture of Rome in the Republican era was not very different from that of other urban communities in Italy. One culture dominated the whole peninsula, with slight peculiarities in certain localities. Romanization was essentially limited to the spread of the Latin language, which replaced all the other Italian dialects, most of which were closely related to the Roman dialect.

The Romanization of more remote Roman provinces such as in Gaul, Spain, Britain, etc. took on a somewhat different character. The indigenous culture there was very different from the Roman one. First of all, Romanization in those regions took place very gradually. Initially, the Romans restricted themselves to building roads and setting up military settlements consisting exclusively of Italians, only later recruiting soldiers from the local population. Later, Roman government institutions and Roman Law began to be introduced in these areas. In terms of religion, only the imperial cult was made obligatory. The other Roman cults were not imposed, but rather brought in by Roman soldiers, coexisting peacefully with indigenous religious practices. In terms of material culture such as clothing, homes and implements, the “barbarians” in the provinces retained their identity for a long time, the differences smoothed out very gradually by lively trade relations with other provinces and with Rome. The culture of the Romanized provices was always mixed.

And second, the supposedly Roman culture itself, which in one form or another was being implanted in all these provinces during the time of the Empire, was itself a rather motley mixture of heterogeneous elements from the most diverse cultures of the Greco-Roman world. The end result of Romanization was not the incorporation of different nations into a culture created by one nation, but rather an eclecticism, a synthesis of several cultures. Local indigenous cultures still continued to exist and develop among the masses of the nation, as we can see from the late Roman era, when these popular cultures surfaced, freed from the levelling influence of the capital, giving rise to the cultures of the nations of the Middle Ages.

Conclusion

These examples show that we should not conflate cultural mixing with assimilation to a foreign culture. As a general rule, we should say that in the absence of anthropological mixing, only cultural mixing is possible. Inversely, assimilation is only possible if there is anthropological mixing. This is how we get, for example, the assimilation of Manchus into Chinese culture, the Hyksos into Egyptian culture, the Varangians and Bolgars into Slavic culture, etc., as well as the assimilation of Prussians, Polabians and Lusatians (Sorbs) into German culture (the latter is not yet complete).

And so we can address the second question we posed above. Is it possible for a whole nation to become fully assimilated into the culture of another nation, without the two nations anthropologically mixing? The answer is no.

Part IV: Europeanization Is a Bad Thing

The third question is: Is assimilation into European culture (insofar as it is possible) a good or a bad thing?

Nations mixed with Romano-Germanics

This question requires narrowing a few things down in relation to how we answered the previous questions. We’ve established that, first of all, Romano-Germanic culture is objectively no higher or more perfect than any other culture; and that, second, full assimilation into a culture created by another nation is only possible if there is anthropological mixing.

From this, it seems to follow that our third question only concerns nations that have anthropologically mixed with Romano-Germanic nations. But upon closer consideration, it turns out that in relation to such nations, our question is completely pointless. Because as soon as they start anthropologically mixing, the nation in question cease to be fully non-Romano-Germanic. The Romano-Germanic culture becomes to some extent native to them, as native as the culture of the nation who mixed with the Romano-Germans. The individual must choose between these two equally native cultures. We know that Romano-Germanic culture is no better than any other, but nor is it any worse than the others. So, for the nation in question, in general, it makes no difference whether to accept it or not. True, having accepted European culture, that nation will still be different from pure Romano-Germans in their heredity. But their heredity will not fully correspond to their culture no matter which one they choose, since they have Romano-Germanic blood as well. Thus, with regard to nations who have anthropologically mixed with Romano-Germans, the question of the desirability or undesirability of Europeanization loses all relevance and meaning.

Europeanization makes cultural work more difficult

As for any other nation, anthropologically unmixed with Romano-Germans, it’s clear from the above that such a nation cannot be fully Europeanized, i.e. fully join the Romano-Germanic culture.¹¹

However, we also know that, despite this impossibility, many such nations still strive with all their might for such inclusion, trying to become Europeanized. These are the nations to which our question applies: we must inquire into the consequences that flow from this desire for Europeanization, and determine whether these consequences are beneficial or desirable from the point of view of the nation in question.

We proved above that it is impossible for an entire nation to be fully assimilatd into a culture created by another nation. In doing so, we tried to give a general idea of what it looks like when a notional Nation A borrow the culture of Nation B, and how that culture develops in Nation A. Now, let us substitute Romano-Germanic nation for Nation B, and non-Romano-Germanic nation for Nation A. Let’s also note some particular features that will result from this arrangement.

The most significant particularities are introduced by the Romano-Germanic trait that we call egocentrism. The Romano-Germanic person considers himself and all that is like him to be the highest, and all that differs from him to be the lowest. In the cultural sphere he recognizes as valuable only that which constitutes an element of his own contemporary culture or can constitute an element of it; everything else in the eyes of the Romano-Germanic has no value or is judged by the degree to which it is close, similar to corresponding elements of his own culture. A Europeanized nation, or one aspiring to Europeanization, becomes inculcated with this trait of the Romano-Germanic psyche. But this nation, being unconscious of the egocentric true nature of the trait, does not put itself at the center - instead, it evaluates everything, including itself, its culture, from the point of view of a Romano-German. This is the peculiarity of the particular case of Europeanization, as compared to the general case of Nation A borrowing culture from Nation B.

We said above that the culture of Nation A will always represent some mixture of elements of that nation’s old indigenous culture (denote these elements as a) and cultural elements borrowed from Nation B (denote them as b), while nation B itself will have a culture consisting only of homogeneous elements b. From this, the first proposition follows: that the culture of Nation A (in our case, a Europeanized non-Romano-Germanic nation) contains more cultural assets than the culture of Nation B (a Romano-Germanic nation). But we know that the total sum of cultural assets determines the total sum of possible cultural inventions: it means that the number of possible inventions of a Europeanized nation is greater than that of a Romano-Germanic nation. On the face of it, this state of affairs seems advantageous for the Europeanized nation. But, in fact, it is not. Indeed, we must account for the fact that the number of possible inventions is far from equal to the number of inventions actually made. Most cultural inventions are doomed to perish in a mutual struggle amongst themselves or against the old cultural assets with which they come into conflict, and this struggle for general acceptance (duel logique, in Tarde’s terminology) will be fiercer and longer, the greater the total number of possible inventions.

So, as it turns out, the Europeanized nation’s cultural work finds itself in much less favorable conditions than that of the natural Romano-Germanic nations. The former has to search in different directions, to spend energy on harmonizing elements of two heterogeneous cultures - a harmonization which is mostly fruitless. The Europeanized nation has to search for suitable elements from the combined heap of values of two cultures. The natural Romano-German, meanwhile, follows a reliable, well-worn path, without scattering, focusing his energy only on harmonizing elements of a single culture – elements that are quite homogenous and painted in one common tone of his native, indigenous character.

In addition to all this, we have the logical consequences of Europeanization in particular, compared to the general case of cultural borrowing as stated earlier. Since a Europeanized nation’s culture consists of values a (purely indigenous) and b (borrowed from Romano-Germans), and any cultural invention is composed of elements of already existing values, then the inventions made by a Europeanized nation will theoretically belong to one of three types: a+a, a+b, or b+b.

From the Romano-Germanic point of view, a+a inventions are completely devoid of value, since they have no Romano-Germanic elements. Of a+b inventions, Romano-Germanic nation would view a large part of them as a degradation of European culture, because such inventions contain an element a in addition to the b, which distances them from the corresponding modern Romano-Germanic cultural element. Finally, of the b+b inventions, Romano-Germanic nation will only accept those that bear the imprint of the tastes, predispositions and temperaments peculiar to the Romano-Germanic heredity. And since the Europeanized nation have a different heredity, clearly a considerable proportion of their b+b inventions will not meet this requirement and will prove unacceptable to Romano-Germans.

So not only is the cultural work of Europeanized nation extremely complicated and full of obstacles compared to that of natural Romano-Germanics, it is also thankless. A good half of it, from the point of view of a true European, should be regarded as unproductive and impractical. And since the Europeanized nation borrows Romano-Germanic cultural standards, they have to reject their own cultural inventions that would not gain recognition in Europe. Their cultural work becomes, to a great extent, a Sisyphean endeavor.

It’s not hard to understand what this all inevitably leads to. For the reasons described above, a Europeanized nation manages to create only a small number of cultural assets that are acceptable to other nations of European culture. The natural Romano-Germanic nations, on the other hand, in the same period of time will create a great number of such values. These values will enter into the common stock of Romano-Germanic culture, and thus acquire an undeniable authority; Europeanized nations will have no choice but to accept them. Thus, a Europeanized nation will always receive more from the outside than they give; their cultural imports will always exceed their exports. This alone puts them in a dependent position in relation to naturally Romano-Germanic nations.

We should also note that this trade deficit, along with the difference between the inherited mentality of a Europeanized nation compared to that of Romano-Germanic nations, can make it extremely difficult for the Europeanized nation to adopt and disseminate new cultural inventions. Generally speaking, naturally Romano-Germanic nations only adopt those inventions which bear the imprint of the shared Romano-Germanic indigenous mentality, which is transmitted by heredity and tradition. Everything that goes against this mentality can be simply rejected, branded with the epithet of “barbarism”. The Europeanized nations are in a different position: they must be guided not by their own, but by someone else’s traditional mentality. They must accept, without blinking, everything that the original Romano-Germanic nations create and consider valuable, even if it contradicts their indigenous mentality and fits poorly in their consciousness. This, of course, makes it difficult for Europeanized nations to adopt and disseminate imported cultural inventions – and as stated earlier, these inventions will always outnumber their own homegrown cultural inventions. Needless to say, such constant difficulties with adopting inventions is highly detrimental to the cultural economy of the Europeanized nation, who already have to spend a lot of labor on the low-productivity work of harmonizing two heterogeneous cultures ("a+b inventions”) and developing the remains of their own indigenous culture ("a+a inventions").

Other drawbacks of Europeanization

All these obstacles to cultural work are but a small part of the disadvantage of the Europeanized nations' position. One of the gravest consequences of Europeanization is the destruction of cultural unity, the dismemberment of the Europenized nation’s cultural body. We have seen above that in borrowing a foreign culture, each generation develops its own mixture, its own canon of synthesizing elements of the indigenous and foreign cultures. Thus, in a nation which has borrowed an alien culture, each generation lives in its own particular culture, and the difference between “fathers and sons” here will always be stronger than in a nation with a homogeneous culture.

But even beyond this, very rarely do we see an entire nation being Europeanized at once, with all parts of a nation adopting Romano-Germanic culture in lockstep. This can only happen if the nation in question is very small and poorly differentiated. For the most part, Europeanization comes from the top down, i.e. first from the social top, the aristocracy, the urban population, the well-known professions, and then gradually spreads to the rest of the nation. The process of this spreading proceeds, of course, rather slowly, and during that time a number of generations are able to replace each other.

Speaking of tradition, we pointed out that the work of several generations is necessary to adopt a foreign culture, since the borrowed cultural element will prevail more strongly within each generation’s own synthesis, depending on how much work has been done to reconcile the two heterogeneous cultures. It’s easy to see how at any given moment there are parts of a Europeanized nation that look more Romano-Germanic, having undergone Europeanization at an earlier time. And thus, at any given moment, different parts of the Europeanized nation – classes, estates, professions – are at different stages of assimilation into Romano-Germanic culture, with different combinations, in different proportions, of indigenous and foreign cultural elements. All these classes are not parts of one national whole, but separate cultural units, as if they were separate nations with their own cultures and traditions, their own habits, concepts and languages. Social, material and professional differences among Europeanized nation are much stronger than among natural Romano-Germans, precisely because all these differences are accompanied by ethnographic and cultural differences.

The negative consequences of this phenomenon are reflected in every aspect of the life of a Europeanized nation. The dismemberment of the nation aggravates the class struggle and makes it difficult to move from one class of society to another. This separation of the parts of a Europeanized nation further hinders the spread of all kinds of innovations and inventions, and prevents all parts of the nation from cooperating in cultural work. In short, conditions are created which inevitably weaken the Europeanized nations and put them at a severe disadvantage compared to naturally Romano-Germanic nation.

The social life and cultural development of a Europeanized nation is thus bogged down with difficulties that are completely unfamiliar to natural Romano-Germans. The result is a lack of productivity, producing little and at a slow pace, with great difficulty. In the adoption of cultural inventions, and in the process of their dissemination, this nation shows the same slowness. Therefore, such nation, from a European point of view, can always be considered “backward”. And because their culture, always being a mixture of Romano-Germanic and indigenous, forever differs from the pure Romano-Germanic culture of a given era, real Europeans will always consider them to be lower than the natural Romano-Germans. But the Europeanized nation is forced to look at itself in exactly the same way. In accepting European culture, they accept European cultural standards as well. The Europeanized person cannot help noticing his low cultural productivity, that his cultural export is very underdeveloped, that his spread of innovations is very slow and difficult, and that a large part of his national body has little or no involvement in the Romano-Germanic culture which he considers “superior”.

By comparing itself with the natural Romano-Germans, the Europeanized nation becomes conscious of their superiority over itself. This self-consciousness, together with constantly lamentig their stagnation and backwardness, gradually leads to the the nation losing self-respect. This nation assesses its own history from the point of view of a natural European, where everything contrary to European culture is considered evil, conservative and backwards. The highest point in their history is the moment when the decisive turn to Europe took place. From then on, everything taken from Europe is considered progress, while any deviation from European norms is reationary. Gradually, the nation are taught to despise everything that is their own, homegrown, traditional. If we add to all this the above-mentioned dismemberment of the national body – the weakening of social ties between the individual parts of the body due to their lack of a common culture, a common cultural language – it becomes clear that the patriotism of Europeanized nations is always extremely poorly developed. Patriotism and national pride in such a nation are the concern of individual units, and national self-determination is mostly confined to the ambitions of rulers and leading political circles.

This lack of self-confidence, of course, is again a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence. In personal experience, we see all the time how personalities that lacking confidence, feeling little self-worth and accustomed to self-abasement, tend to be indecisive and lacking in perseverance, allowing others to walk all over them. In the end, they fall under the complete power of more determined and self-assured, though often much less gifted individuals. In exactly the same way, in the life of nations, nations with little patriotism, with an undeveloped sense of national pride, are always defeated by nations with strong patriotism or national conceit. All of the above are reasons why the Europeanized nations for the most part occupy, in relation to the original Romano-Germanic nations, a dependent, subordinate position.

All these negative consequences depend on the mere fact of Europeanization: the degree of Europeanization is irrelevant. We know that with each generation the elements of the old “aboriginal” culture recede more and more into the background, so that over time the nation striving for Europeanization must eventually become fully Europeanized, i.e. get a culture consisting exclusively of elements of Romano-Germanic origin. This process is extremely lengthy, all the more so because it proceeds very unevenly in different segments, different social groups of the Europeanized nation. But even if this process is fully completed, the Europeanized nation will always have unrooted predispositions of national mentality, transmitted by heredity. And since these predispositions differ from the innate Romano-Germanic mentality, they will still hinder the fruitful creative work of this nation, in addition to getting in the way of them successfully and rapidly adopting new cultural assets created by natural Romano-Germans. Thus, even if the maximum degree of Europeanization is achieved, this nation, already delayed in its “development” thanks to a long and difficult process of gradual cultural leveling and eradication of the indigenous culture, will still not be on an equal footing with the Romano-Germans and will continue to “lag behind”. The very fact that this nation set out on the ruinous path of compulsory cultural exchange and communication with the Romano-Germans dooms that nation to be forever “backward” as soon as they start Europeanization.

Existential threat

But we cannot accept this. Nations who do not counteract their “backwardness” will very quickly become victims of some Romano-Germanic nation, neighboring or distant. A backward member of the “family of civilized nations” will be deprived first of economic and then of political independence. A Romano-Germanic nation will shamelessly exploit it, sucking out all the juices and turning it into “ethnographic material”.¹² But whoever wishes to fight against the law of perpetual backwardness will face an equally sad fate. In order to shield itself from foreign danger, the “backward” Europeanized nation have to keep up with the Romano-Germans, at least in terms of their military and industrial technology. But since the Europeanized nations are not able to produce at the same rate as the natural Romano-Germans, for the reasons mentioned above, they have to limit themselves mainly to borrowing and imitating the discoveries of others. Their technological backwardness will, of course, persist. But aside from a certain chronic lag, their technology level will be approximately same as that of the Romano-Germans, their limiting factor rather being low industrial productivity.

In other areas of life, the need to reach the level of the Romano-Germanics is usually felt less strongly and constantly. Only from time to time does the difference in levels, the backwardness in these areas, begin to be felt very keenly. But the sporadic nature of such feelings is where their evil lies - the consequences of these sporadic feelings of backwardness can be addressed only through equally sporadic historical leaps.

Unable to keep pace with the Romano-Germans and gradually falling behind them, the Europeanized nation occasionally tries to catch up with them by making long leaps. These leaps disrupt the entire course of historical development. In a brief period, the nation has to go the way that the Romano-Germans went gradually and over a longer period of time. They need to skip over several historical steps and create overnight, ex abrupto, what the Romano-Germanic nation gained through a series of continuous historical changes.

The consequences of this kind of “evolution through leaps” are truly terrible. Each leap is inevitably followed by a period of apparent (from the European point of view) stagnation, during which it’s necessary to put the culture in order, realigning the results of a leap in a particular area with the rest of the culture. And during this period of “stagnation”, the nation, understandably, falls even further behind. The histories of Europeanized nations consists of constantly alternating between short periods of rapid “progress” and relatively long periods of “stagnation”. By breaking the unity and gradual continuity of historial development, historical leaps destroy tradition, which is already poorly developed in Europeanized nations. Meanwhile, uninterrupted tradition is one of the prerequisites for normal evolution. For all these reasons, it is absolutely clear that leaps and bounds, giving a temporary illusion of reaching the “European level of civilization”, cannot lead a nation forward in the true sense of the word. Evolution through leaps squanders its national strength, already overworked by the very fact of Europeanization itself. A man who tries to keep pace with a faster-moving companion and resorts to the technique of periodic sprints will, in the end, inevitably become exhausted and collapse. So too will a Europeanized nation, having embarked on this kind of evolutionary path, inevitably perish, aimlessly squandering their national strength. And all this without self-confidence, without even a reinforcing sense of national unity, long ago destroyed by the mere fact of Europeanization.

Conclusion

Therefore, the consequences of Europeanization are so severe and terrible that Europeanization has to be considered not a good, but an evil. Note, however, that we have deliberately left out certain negative aspects of Europeanization that Europeans themselves often regretfully concede: vices and habits that are harmful to health, special diseases brought in by European “culture spreaders”, militarism, and industry devoid of aesthetics. All this “baggage of civilization,” complained about by sentimental European philanthropists and aesthetes, is not intrinsic to Romano-Germanic culture. Vices and bad habits exist in every culture and are often borrowed by one nation from another, regardless of their role in the culture as a whole. In particular, many such habits were borrowed by Europeans themselves from tribes they consider inferior and uncultured, e.g. smoking tobacco was adopted by Europeans from the North American “savages”. As for militarism and capitalism, Europeans always promise to correct themselves in these shortcomings, characterizing them only as historical phases. Thus, all these negative aspects of European civilization can be considered debatable, which is why decided not to discuss them. We have spoken only of those consequences which derive from the very essence of Europeanization and which concern the very nature of Europeanized nations' social life and culture.

In the end, we had to answer all three questions posed above in the negative.

Part V: Global Europeanization Is Inevitable

But if European civilization is no higher than any other civilization, if full assimilation into a foreign culture is impossible, and if striving for full Europeanization promises all non-Romano-Germanic nations a most miserable and tragic fate, then it’s obvious that these nations must fight against Europeanization with all their might. And here is where the terrible question arises: what if this struggle is impossible, and if global Europeanization¹³ is an inevitable law of the world?

On the face of it, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case. When Europeans encounter a non-Romano-Germanic nation, they bring their goods and guns. If the nation offers no resistance, the Europeans will conquer them, make them their colony and Europeanize them by force. If the nation intend to resist, then in order to be able to fight the Europeans, they have to acquire cannons and all the improvements of European technology. But this requires, on the one hand, factories and industrial plants, and on the other hand, the study of European applied sciences. But factories are inconceivable without the European socio-political way of life, and the applied sciences can’t exist without the “pure” sciences. Thus, in order to fight against Europe, the nation in question have to adopt, step by step, all of modern Romano-Germanic civilization to Europeanize themselves voluntarily. So, in both cases, Europeanization seems inevitable.

Everything we just said suggests that Europeanization is the inevitable consequence of military technology and factory production of goods. But military technology is a consequence of militarism, and factory production is a consequence of capitalism. Militarism and capitalism are not eternal. They have arisen historically and, as European socialists predict, must soon perish, giving way to a new socialist order. It would seem that the opponents of global Europeanization should dream of the establishment of a socialist order in Europe.

However, this is nothing more than a contradiction. Socialists, more than all Europeans, insist on internationalism and militant cosmopolitanism, whose true nature we revealed at the start of this work. And this is no accident. Socialism is possible only with global Europeanization, with the leveling of all the world’s nationalities and the subjection of all of them under one culture and one common way of life. If the socialist order were to be established in Europe, the European socialist states would first of all have to establish the same order all over the world by fire and sword, and then ensure that no nation betrays this world order. Otherwise, if there is any corner of the globe untouched by socialism, that “corner” would immediately become a breeding ground for capitalism. But in order to stand on guard for the socialist order, the Europeans would have to maintain their level of military technology and remain armed to the teeth. If part of mankind is armed to such a degree, it will always threaten the independence of other parts of humanity which, despite all assurances, would surely not feel comfortable having such heavily armed neighbors. As a result, a state of armed peace would spread to all the nations of the globe.¹⁴

Moreover, the Romano-Germanic nations have long been accustomed to using objects and products made outside Europe for their material culture and for their daily needs, so international trade, especially its “colonial” aspect, will certainly continue under a socialist order. This trade would, of course, have special characteristics that reflect the particularities of a socialist economy. The main category of exports from the Romano-Germanic countries would continue to be manufactured goods. Thus, the two driving factors of Europeanization existing at present, military technology and factory production, would remain in place under a socialist system. These would only be joined by new drivers in the form of the demand for a common socialist way of life in all countries, a demand which is inevitable, since a socialist state can only trade with socialist states.

As for the negative consequences of Europeanization mentioned above, they will remain under a socialist order just as they would under a capitalist order. Moreover, under a socialist order these consequences would be even worse. Its demand for social and political uniformity across all nations – without which, socialism is unimaginable – would further force the Europeanized nation to strive towards the natural Romano-Germanics. It would seem that one of the negative consequences of Europeanization listed above would cease to exist, namely the cultural dismemberment of the national body – since a socialist society is not divided into classes and estates. Of course, this absence of estates and classes will always remain theoretical. In reality, division of labor will inevitably lead to social grouping by occupation. And among Europeanized nations, this grouping will always be stronger than among natural Romano-Germans for the reasons mentioned above. Let’s note, by the way, that the need to keep the same general level of “civilization” in all nations under a socialist world order would force Romano-Germans to “spur on” the “backward” nations and help them “catch up”. And since prejudices between nations would have disappeared by then, having submitted to a triumphant cosmopolitanism, the Europeanized states within a socialist world order would obviously end up having pure Romano-Germanic individuals (or those who more fully embraced Romano-Germanic culture) sitting at the top as instructors and, to some extent, as rulers. At the end of the day, in the “family of socialist nations,” the Romano-Germans would retain the privileged position of aristocrats, while the other “backward nations” would gradually fall into the position of their slaves.

Thus, the socio-political system of the Romano-Germanic states plays no role in whether or not Europeanization and its negative conequences are inevitable. The inevitability remains, regardless of whether the order of the Romano-Germanic states is capitalist or socialist. The inevitability depends not on militarism and capitalism, but on the insatiable greed inherent in the very nature of the international predators, the Romano-Germans, and on the egocentrism that permeates their whole notorious “civilization”.

Part VI: Fighting Europeanization

How can we fight this nightmare of the inevitability of global Europeanization? At first glance, it would seem that it’s only possible to fight it through a popular uprising against the Romano-Germans. If humanity – not the “humanity” the Romano-Germans like to talk about, but the real humanity, consisting in its majority of Slavs, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Negroes and other tribes,¹⁵ who all, regardless of skin color, groan under the heavy yoke of the Romano-Germans and squander their national strength to extract raw materials for European factories – if all these nation united in a common struggle against the Romano-Germanic oppressors, you would think sooner or later they would be able to throw off the hated yoke and wipe these predators and their culture from the face of the earth. But can such a rebellion be organized, is it not a pipe dream? The more closely we look at this plan, the clearer it becomes that it is impossible to carry out, and that if this is the only way to fight against global Europeanization, then the fight is simply impossible.

The case, however, is not so hopeless. We said above that one of the main conditions that makes global Europeanization inevitable is the egocentrism that permeates the whole Romano-Germanic culture. It is, of course, impossible to hope that Romano-Germans themselves will correct this fatal flaw in their culture. But the Europeanized non-Romano-German nations, when they adopt European culture, may well purify it from egocentrism. If they succeed in this, then borrowing certain elements of Romano-Germanic culture will not have the negative consequences we mentioned above, and will only enrich those nations' culture. In fact, if these nations are free of the prejudices that make them see all elements of European culture as superior and perfect, then when confronted with it they will have no reason to borrow all of it – they will have no reason to eradicate their indigenous culture in favor of European culture. They will have no reason to view themselves as representatives of the human species who fell behind or stopped developing. Looking at Romano-Germanic culture as just one possible culture, they will take from it only those elements that they understand and find convenient, and in the future will freely modify these elements in accordance with their national tastes and needs, regardless of how these changes will be assessed by Romano-Germanics from their egocentric point of view.

Such a turn of events, in itself, is quite easy to imagine and quite possible, no doubt. Sure, it’s easy to cite historical examples against it. Indeed, history has taught us that no Europeanized nation has yet been able to maintain this sober viewpoint in relation to Romano-Germanic culture. Many nations, in borrowing European culture, originally intended to take only the essentials. But farther along in their development, they all gradually succumbed to the hypnotism of Romano-Germanic egocentrism. Forgetting their original intentions, they began to borrow everything indiscriminately, setting up for themselves the ideal of full accession to European civilization. When Peter the Great started his work, he wanted to borrow from the “Germans” only their military and naval technology. But gradually, he got carried away with the process of borrowing and adopted a lot of unnecessary elements not directly related to his main goal. Nonetheless, he always remained aware of the fact that sooner or later Russia would have to turn its back on Europe and continue to develop its culture freely, without having to constantly “keep up with the West”. But he died without having prepared any worthy successors. Russia spent the entire 18th century ignominiously, superficially, poorly imitating Europe. By the end of the 18th century, Russian society had become saturated with Romano-Germanic prejudices, and the entire 19th and early 20th centuries were spent striving for the complete Europeanization of all aspects of Russian life, wherein Russia adopted the very same “evolution through leaps” that we spoke of above. We are about to witness the same story repeat itself in Japan, which initially wanted to borrow only military and naval technology from the Romano-Germans, but gradually in its imitative aspiration has gone much further, now reaching a point where a significant part of their “educated” classes has adopted Romano-Germanic ways of thinking. True, Europeanization in Japan has so far been tempered by a healthy instinct of national pride and adherence to historical traditions - but who knows how long the Japanese will maintain that position.¹⁶

And yet, even if we recognize that the solution we propose lacks a historical precedent thus far, that doesn’t mean the solution itself is impossible. The reality is that the true nature of European cosmopolitanism and other European theories based on egocentric prejudice has so far remained unexposed. Unaware of all the unreasonableness of the egocentric mentality of Romano-Germans, the intelligentsia of Europeanized nations – that is, the part of those nations which most fully perceives the spiritual culture of Romano-Germans – has so far been unable to fight the consequences of this facet of European culture. It has trustingly followed Romano-Germanic ideologues, unaware of the pitfalls ahead. The whole picture must change radically, as soon as this intelligentsia becomes conscious of the issue and begin to approach European civilization with objective criticism.

Europeanized intellectuals need a paradigm shift

• that they were being deceived;

• that European culture is not something absolute, nor is it the culture of all mankind, but merely the creation of a limited and defined ethnic or ethnographic group of nations with a common history;

• that European culture is necessary only to that particular group of nations who created it;

• that it is in no way more perfect or “superior” to any other culture created by any other ethnic group, since there are no “higher” or “lower” cultures or nations, only cultures and nations more or less similar to one another;

• that, therefore, the adoption of Romano-Germanic culture by a nation who did not participate in its creation is not an absolute good and has no absolute moral force;

• that full, organic adoption of Romano-Germanic culture (or any alien culture in general), an adoption which allows continuing to create in the spirit of that culture and to keep up with the nations who created it, is possible only through anthropological mixing with Romano-Germans or even absorption by them;

• that without such mixing, only a proxy of full cultural assimilation is possible, where the “statics” of a culture are adopted, but not the “dynamics” – i.e. a nation who assimilate the current state of European culture seem unable to develop it further and must keep borrowing from Romano-Germans;

• that under such conditions this nation is forced to completely abandon independent cultural creativity, to live reflecting the light of Europe, to become an ape, constantly imitating the Romano-Germans;

• That, as a result, this nation will always “lag behind” the Romano-Germans, i.e., will adopt and reproduce the various stages of their cultural development with a certain delay and will find itself, in relation to the natural Europeans, in a disadvantageous, subordinate position, materially and spiritually dependent on them;

• That Europeanization is therefore an unqualified evil for every non-Romano-German nation;

• That this evil can, and therefore must, be fought with all one’s might. One has to become conscious of all these things not in an external way, but internally; not just to become conscious of, but to feel, live through and suffer these things. The truth must appear in all its nakedness, unadorned, without any remains of the great deception¹⁷ from which it must be purified. It must become clear and obvious that any kind of compromise is impossible: The impossibility of any kind of compromise must become clear and obvious: to fight is to fight.

All this presupposes, as we said above, a complete transformation, a revolution in the thinking of the non-Romano-German intelligentsias. The main essence of this revolution is the awareness of the relativity of what previously seemed absolute: the benefits of European “civilization”. This must be carried out with relentless radicalism. To do this is difficult, extremely difficult, but at the same time absolutely necessary.

A revolution in the minds of non-Romano-Germanic intellectuals will inevitably prove fatal for the cause of global Europeanization. After all, up to now, it is precisely these intellectuals who have been the agents of Europeanization, who, believing in cosmopolitanism and the “benefits of civilization”, and lamenting the “backwardness” and “stagnation” of their nation, have tried to introduce these nation to European culture, forcibly destroying all the centuries-old foundations of their own, indigenous culture. Intellectuals of Europeanized nations went even further in this direction, engaging in attracting not only their own nation, but also their neighbors to European culture. They were thus the principal agents of the Romano-Germans. If they were to now understand and deeply realize that Europeanization is an unconditional evil, and that cosmopolitanism is a brazen deception, they will stop helping the Romano-Germans; the triumphal march of “civilization” will have to stop. The Romano-Germans alone, without the support of already Europeanized nations, will not be able to continue the work of spiritually enslaving all the world’s nations. After all, having realized their mistake, the intellectuals of the already Europeanized nations will not only stop helping the Romano-Germans, but will try to hinder them by revealing to other nations the true nature of the “benefits of civilization”.

In this great and difficult work of freeing the nations of the world from the hypnosis of “the benefits of civilization” and from spiritual slavery, the intellectuals of all non-Romano-Germanic nations that already took or intend to take the path of Europeanization must act together as one. We must not lose sight of the heart of the problem for even a moment. We must not be sidetracked by personal nationalism or such partial solutions as Pan-Slavism and all other kinds of Pan-isms. These particularities only obscure the heart of the matter. We must always and firmly remember that the opposition of Slavs to Germans, or of Turanians to Aryans, does not provide a true solution to the problem; that there is only one true opposition: Romano-Germans, and all the other nations of the world. Europe, and Mankind.