Report at the international scientific conference "Eurasian Union", organized by the commonwealth "Srpsko-Russian bridge", Bijelina, Republika Srpska …
The Institute of Russian Civilization, which I represent, since the All-Slavic Congress in Prague in 1998, has been developing issues of Slavic civilization and Slavic unity. In this direction, we have prepared a number of monographs and publications, in particular, published the works of the great Slavic scientists V. I. Lamansky, A. S. Budilovich, A. F. Rittich, O. F. Miller, as well as, of course, the works of Slavophiles …
The works of Slavic thinkers Y. Krizhanich, I. Dobrovsky, J. Kollar, P. Shafarik, L. Shtur are being prepared for publication.
Studying and preparing for publication the works of these great Russian thinkers, we should note that the main ideas in them are the ideas of Slavic unity and the creation of a Slavic union in the form of unification around Russia. Russia, in their opinion, is essentially a Eurasian Union, which includes, in addition to Slavic peoples, peoples of other ethnic groups. Already in the 19th century, Slavic thinkers warned us about the danger of the erosion of the Slavic core of Russia as a result of the excessive expansion of the Eurasian Union. The Slavic scientists supporting the Eurasian Union believed that, firstly, it should be based on the civilizational foundations of the Slavic-Russian civilization, and secondly, in this union there should be a defining demographic Slavic dominant (Slavs - at least 3/4 of the population of the union).
The scientists I named believed that all Slavic peoples were united by belonging to the ancient Slavic civilization, that all Slavs were a single Slavic people. Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the Slavic tribes were part of a single ethnic whole, the emerging Slavic civilization. Subsequently, as a result of historical cataclysms, our unity was destroyed, a single people fell apart and each part went its own way. Nevertheless, the spiritual roots of the Slavic peoples stem from this ancient Slavic unity, creating a deep genetic and mystical connection between them, which cannot be broken by any of our enemies. A tree grew from the roots of the ancient Slavic civilization, each branch of which stretched in its own direction.
The development of the Slavic civilization was carried out in an incessant struggle with the civilization of the German-Roman (Western)
In the Slavic civilization, communal principles prevailed over personal, the spiritual over the material.
In the West, individualism and rationalism reigned, the material prevailed over the spiritual.
In relation to other peoples, conquest prevailed in the West. Whereas the world-power role of the Slavic tribe was not conquest, but the economic and cultural development of the country and the peoples inhabiting it.
The peoples of the Slavic civilization had a difficult historical task - to be a bastion on the path of the forces of world evil. But the greatest burden in solving this historical task fell on Russia - the greatest Eurasian union, the basis of which was the Slavs.
The Slavic peoples have been assigned a special service by God, which constitutes the meaning of the Slavic civilization in all its manifestations. The history of the Slavic peoples is the history of their vocation to this service, the history of the struggle of the Slavs against the forces of world evil, Slavophobia and racism. The Slavic peoples have a special path. Their worldwide task is to free humanity from the one-sided and false development that history received under the influence of the West.
Slavic peoples have played the main human role in the fight against all manifestations of genocide and aggression. It was the Slavs who made a series of grandiose victories that changed the situation in the world in favor of good, taking a decisive part in the destruction of criminal state associations - the Khazar Kaganate, the Teutonic Order, the Golden Horde, the Ottoman Empire and the Empire of Napoleon, Hitler's Third Reich. And until now, the Slavic peoples are a deterrent for all modern world aggressors and, above all, the United States.
Both the Slavic and the German-Roman worlds each developed on the basis of their own civilizational values. Both the Slavic and German-Romanesque worlds relied on their own principles of uniting peoples into state and interstate unions.
German-Roman Western civilization formed its alliances based on violence, conquest and brutal exploitation of the annexed territories. Over the past millennium, the Germans have made several attempts to destroy the Slavic population of the "eastern territories". The Polabian and Pomor Slavs, as well as the Prussian tribe, were almost completely exterminated by the Germans. The genocide was carried out in the spirit of the Spanish conquistadors with total murders of everyone, including women and children, and the burning of entire families alive.
The defeat of the Teutonic Order of St. Alexander Nevsky stopped the German onslaught on the Slavic lands for 700 years until the Second World War, when the Germans tried to make another attempt to destroy the Slavic peoples. The massacres of Russians (including Belarusians and Little Russians), Poles, Serbs, Czechs showed everyone that, as in the times of the Teutonic Order, in the twentieth century, it is important for the German world to free "living space" from the Slavs. In the war with the German invaders, about 40 million Slavs died. This was the main tragic outcome of the Second World War, the most terrible tragedy in world history.
The great Eurasian Union, Russia, was built on a completely different basis. For more than a thousand-year history of Russia, it has included over 100 large and small peoples, different in language, culture, and peculiarities of life. No other country in the world has known such an intensive nation-building.
To understand the main principle of the nation-building of Russia, to understand why it has grown into a great power, has managed to unite and rally many peoples and tribes around itself, one should first of all turn to the words of St. blgv. book Alexander Nevsky: "God is not in power, but in truth." These words, which have become a popular proverb, spiritually penetrate the entire Russian history, imparting a positive tone to national and state building.
“Russia,” wrote the great Russian thinker IA Ilyin, “is not an accidental heap of territories and tribes or an artificial well-coordinated“mechanism”of“regions”, but a living, historically grown and culturally justified organism that is not subject to arbitrary dismemberment. This organism is a geographical unity, the parts of which are linked by mutual economic understanding; this organism is a spiritual, linguistic and cultural unity that historically linked the Russian people with their national younger brothers by spiritual mutual nourishment; it is a state and strategic unity that has shown to the world its will and its ability to defend itself; he is a real bulwark of European-Asian, and therefore universal peace and balance”.
The greatness of Russia lay in the fact that it never relied on violence (this, of course, did not mean a complete rejection of its use). All peoples who were part of the Russian state were given rights equal to those of the Russian people, and at the same time, many of their ancient rights were preserved. The Russian state did not destroy the ruling hierarchy of small peoples, but, as a rule, included it in its ruling class. Moreover, the Russian state exempted representatives of some peoples from the duties of paying taxes and recruiting.
The Russian state was built not on violence, but on the spiritual principles of the Russian people, the greatness of which was consciously and unconsciously understood by many small peoples. The great Russian culture spiritually subordinated to itself, forcing to serve not for fear, but for conscience.
“Russian people have always enjoyed the natural freedom of their space, the freedom of stateless life and resettlement, and the non-gradualness of their internal individualization; he always "wondered" at other peoples, got along good-naturedly with them and hated only invading oppressors; he valued freedom of spirit above formal legal freedom - and if other peoples and foreigners did not bother him, did not interfere with his life, he would not take up arms and would not seek power over them”(IA Ilyin).
The fundamental difference between the Russian state and all pre-existing empires: Roman, Byzantine, British, German - was that it did not exploit the non-Russian peoples that were part of it, and, moreover, provided them with significant help and support, creating equal economic conditions of existence. If in relation to all the empires listed above, it can be said that the center and the imperial people lived in them by plunder and exploitation of the outskirts and colonies, constantly getting rich at their expense, then in Russia many outskirts lived at the expense of the center and the generosity of the Russian people, having equal access to all the riches of the Russian state and practically free of charge receiving military protection from an external enemy.
It is unlikely that such states as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova would exist on the geographical map today if Russia had not saved them from the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in due time, or such geographical territories, which today act as states, such as Estonia and Latvia., if the Russian nation did not stop the German movement, which subjugated everything and physically destroyed the indigenous peoples, as was done with the inhabitants of the same Baltic states - the Prussians.
Possessing a high sense of national dignity, Russians never considered themselves superior to other peoples, tolerantly and with understanding treated the manifestation of national feelings of other peoples.
“Orthodox tolerance, like Russian tolerance, happens, perhaps, simply as a result of great optimism: the truth will take its toll anyway - and why rush it with untruth? The future still belongs to friendship and love - why rush them with anger and hatred? We are still stronger than others - why cultivate envy? After all, our strength is the strength of our father, who creates and preserves, and not the strength of a robber who plunders and rapes. The whole meaning of the life of the Russian people, the entire "Silent Light" of Orthodoxy would perish if we, at least once, for the only time in our history, would take the path of Germany and say to ourselves and the world: we are the highest race … "Quite differently to other peoples include representatives of Western civilization. “A European brought up by Rome despises other peoples in his mind and wants to rule over them” (IA Ilyin).
The Russian state saved many peoples from destruction, providing them with equal rights and opportunities for development with the Russian people, which until 1917 were realized without any significant restrictions. The Russian center pursued a policy of harmonizing relations between individual peoples, completely rejecting the typically imperial policy of “divide and rule”, which was meaningless in relation to peoples who had equal rights with the Russians.
By virtue of all that has been said, the name "empire" is inapplicable to the Russian state. The one who uses it sees only some formal signs (the unification of peoples under one center), but does not understand the essence of the matter (the absence of exploitation by the center of the peoples of the periphery). The peoples who have fallen away from it have yet to experience the entire catastrophic nature of existence outside the Russian state, for which an example is today's events in Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
The difference in the approach to the state building of Russia and the states of the future Western civilization (which was then in an embryonic state) is evident in the relationship between the Slavs and the Germans.
In the XI century. the Slavs lived in the very center of Europe: from Kiel to Magdeburg and Halle, beyond the Elbe, in the "Bohemian forest", in Carinthia, Croatian and the Balkans. As IA Ilyin notes, "the Germans systematically conquered them, cut out their upper classes and, having" beheaded "them in this way, subjected them to denationalization." The Germans applied this solution of the national question through denationalization and extermination to other peoples as well.
The annexation of new lands to Russia took place, as a rule, peacefully and bloodlessly. The main argument here was not weapons and terror, but the realization by the peoples of the newly annexed lands of the advantages of being a part of Russia as a powerful factor of state order, assistance and protection from external encroachments. Karelia and part of the Baltic States became part of the Russian land in the 9th-10th centuries, and from the 15th century. there is a massive settlement of these lands by Russian peasants. The Komi lands entered the Russian state in the XI-XV centuries.
The death of the robber state of the Kazan Khanate predetermined the transition to the hands of Russia of the lands of the Bashkirs, Mari, Tatars, Udmurts, Chuvashes.
The annexation of Siberia began after the victorious campaigns of Ermak and ended by the end of the 17th century. “Russia,” wrote Lord J. Curzon, “undoubtedly possesses a remarkable gift for seeking the loyalty and even friendship of those whom it has subjugated. Russian fraternizes in the full sense of the word. He is completely free from that deliberate kind of superiority and grim arrogance, which more ignites malice than cruelty itself."
In its imperial might, Russia united - in the past. She must be tolerant and not exclusive in the future - proceeding precisely from her entire spiritual past. True Russia is a country of mercy, not hatred (B. K. Zaitsev).
The "Tale of Bygone Years" provides a fairly clear picture of the distribution of the Slavs in Europe and the emergence of individual Slavic peoples [1]. The most significant part of the Slavs settled on the territory of the future Russian empire and initially became the unifying center of the Slavic world.
From Vladimir Monomakh to Nicholas II, the Russian government strove to include Slavic peoples, related to them in language, culture and faith, into the sphere of their state interests.
The idea of the "Romeian kingdom" - Moscow - the Third Rome permeates the Slavic-Russian power since the 15th century. Philotheus, the ideologist of the Russian kingdom, does not at all identify the "Romeian kingdom" with real states - Byzantium (Second Rome) or Ancient Rome (First Rome). In his view, this kingdom of the Lord God is an ideal kingdom, which is called "Romeian" only because it was in Rome that the first unification of the Christian religion with state power took place. Unlike real states, the "Romeian kingdom" is indestructible. Real states are subject to destruction. Ancient Rome and Byzantium were only carriers of the image of an ideal kingdom. After they collapsed, the image of the "Romeian kingdom" passed to the Muscovite kingdom. Thus, the Russian Slavic state appears in the work of Philotheus not as the heir to the actually existing and perished states of Byzantium and Ancient Rome, but also as a new bearer of the ideal of the Orthodox Christian state. In other words, Philotheus saw the predestination of the Russian Slavic state to be not an Empire, but Holy Russia, the focus of not material, but spiritual - the embodiment not of gross material strength, but of spiritual strength [2].
By declaring that two Romes had fallen, the third was standing, and the fourth would never be, Philotheus expressed not his confidence in the invincibility of the Russian state, but the idea that if it fell, as Ancient Rome and Byzantium fell, another bearer the image of the "Romeian kingdom" will not appear on earth. Russia is the last earthly bearer of the ideal of the Orthodox Christian state. If Russia dies, the "Romei kingdom" will not die with it - ideals are immortal. Therefore, the ideal of the Orthodox state will continue to live, but there will be no one to strive for it on earth [3].
As V. I. Lamansky noted, “the idea of transferring the Christian kingdom from the Greeks to the Russians, the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, was by no means an empty proud fiction of the so-called Moscow arrogance and exclusivity. It was a gigantic cultural and political task, a world-historical feat, mentally entrusted by millions of co-religionists and contemporaries to the great Russian people and its sovereign leaders. The fact that Moscow was able to understand the greatness of this idea speaks best of all against its inertia and national exclusiveness. Only great, world-historical peoples are able to respond to world tasks, perceive universal ideas and devote themselves to their implementation. This great idea was bequeathed to Moscow and the new period of Russian history. She was fully accepted by Peter the Great. And at the beginning, and in the middle, and at the end of the reign, Peter energetically supported and spread the ties of Russia with all of the same faith and West Slavic peoples and lands. Since the time of the emperor Manuel Comnenus, there was no tsar in the East more energetic and courageous in this respect, just as in the national movements of the Slavs after the Hussites, no one else, except Peter, spoke out so openly in the sense of the most resolute Pan-Slavism. The active mind of Peter often turned to the thought of Constantinople in Russian hands. His general transformative plans were connected with this thought."
Subsequently, these ideas were continued in the Constantine project of Catherine II and, one way or another, were implied in the Russian-Turkish wars of the 19th century.
Russian Pan-Slavism was a natural foreign policy attitude of the Russian tsars, an attitude that was just as naturally based on Slavic reciprocity - the striving of all Slavic peoples for rapprochement with Russia.
In the end of the XVI century. Croat Mavro Orbini (sc. 1614) prepared the book "Slavic Kingdom" (1601), in which he promoted the idea of the unity of the Slavic peoples, the natural center of which could be Russia. He explored the locations of the Slavs throughout Eurasia. Orbini noted that the German sources called the lands of the Baltic Slavs, cheers, and lutichs Slavia.
Another Croat, Yuri Krizhanich (1618-1683), called on all Slavic peoples to unity, wrote in mid. XVII century: “The head of all single-tribal peoples is the Russian people, and the Russian name is because all the Slovenes came out of the Russian land, moved into the power of the Roman Empire, founded three states and were nicknamed: Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats; others from the same Russian land moved west and founded the Lyash and Moravian or Czech states. Those who fought with the Greeks or Romans were called Slovins, and therefore this name among the Greeks became better known than the Russian name, and from the Greeks our chroniclers also imagined that our people originated from the Slovins, as if Russians, Poles, and Czechs descended from them. This is not true, the Russian people have lived in their homeland from time immemorial, and the rest, who left Russia, appeared as guests in the countries where they are still staying. Therefore, when we want to call ourselves a common name, we should not call ourselves a new Slavic name, but an old and root Russian name. Not the Russian industry is the fruit of the Slovenian, but the Slovenian, Czech, Lyash industry - offshoots of the Russian language. Most of all, the language with which we write books cannot truly be called Slovenian, but must be called Russian or the ancient book language. This bookish language is more similar to the current national Russian language than to any other Slavic language”.
Russia's victories in the Russian-Turkish wars of the 17th-19th centuries served as a powerful factor in the awakening of the Slavic peoples and their desire for Slavic unity. The Slavic peoples, led by Russia, destroyed the former power of the Ottoman Empire and thereby created the conditions for the unification of the Slavs.
In the 30s-40s of the XIX century. in Croatia and Slavonia there is a political and cultural movement to unite the southern Slavs "Great Illyria". The Illyrians considered themselves the descendants of a single Slavic people and became the founders of the Pan-Slavic movement in this part of the Slavs.
The most powerful Pan-Slavic movement is developing in the center of Eastern Europe - the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I. Dobrovsky, P. Shafarik, J. Kollar, L. Shtur and many other great Slavic figures speak of the special civilizational path of the Slavs, calling on the Slavs to unite with Russia, and oppose the Germanization of the Slavic peoples. Jan Kollar introduced a new concept "Slavic reciprocity" and the term "Pan-Slavism", covering and relating to all Slavs.
In the book "Slavism and the World of the Future" Ludevit Stuhr (1851) concludes that for the Slavs the only possible and most natural way of conquering a place in world history corresponding to their strengths and abilities is to join Russia. "In order for Russia to increase by the accession of the Slavs to it, for the Slavs to finally acquire life and reality, it must arrange itself in such a way as the spirit of the Slavs, true modern education and its world position require." The future all-Slavic state, Stuhr believed, should be an autocratic monarchy ruled by one Supreme Leader, but brought into harmony with the popular institutions inherent in the Slavic character: broad autonomy of individual regions and popular representation of elected zemstvo people. “It is time, in the highest degree, time for Russia to realize its vocation and take up the Slavic idea: for a long delay can … have bad consequences … Only Russia - Russia alone can be the center of Slavic reciprocity and an instrument of the identity and integrity of all Slavs from foreigners, but Russia is enlightened, free from national prejudices; Russia - conscious of the legitimacy of tribal diversity in unity, firmly confident in its high calling and without fear, with equal love, grants the right of free development to all the features of the Slavic world; Russia, which prefers the vital spirit of the unity of peoples to the deadening letter of their forcible temporary cohesion."
The same thoughts about the vital necessity for the Slavs to join Russia were expressed by the great South Slavic figures - Serb V. Karadzic, Montenegrin P. Njegos.
The idea of uniting all Slavs around Russia as part of a common Slavic union has long existed among the Serbs. Russians, they said, made up three quarters of all Slavs. It is around them that all Slavic peoples should be consolidated. The ideal is the creation of the All-Slavic monarchy, in which each Slavic people is autonomous. For a long time, the Serbs used to say, "We and the Russians are 300 million."
AF Rittich was one of the main ideologists of Slavic unity and Pan-Slavism at the end of the 19th century. And his book "Slavic World", published in Warsaw in 1885, he wrote: "The great Slavic tribe should unite, but unite not on a federal basis (because the federation does not correspond to the character of the Slavs), but in the form of joining Russia." The mass of Slavs, according to Rittich, “has long been looking to the east, from where the sun of their best hopes for the future rises. Here, under the canopy of unity and autocracy (God's power, God holds, anointed) disputes disappeared, and the ancient Slavs-Disputes became Russian; here the dominant faith is Orthodoxy, which is so close to all Slavs according to their first teachers, St. Cyril and Methodius; here the language developed into full and powerful speech; here, on a vast space, morals, customs, weight, measure, reckoning of time and everything that the greatest state lives with, everything has become one, everything has merged into one mighty chord, to the sounds of which Europe hears with bewilderment and fear. " "Yes, only Russia, both in its history and in its modern political position, can unite in its bosom the torn Slavic world."
The dissonance in the Slavic world was the position of Poland. This is a Slavic state in the 15th - 17th centuries. was one of the leading powers in Europe. The historian NI Bukharin believes that then it fell to her lot to unite the Slavic world and create a counterbalance to the Ottoman Empire. According to the author, Lithuania, unlike Poland, before the union in the Union of Lublin in 1569, had a chance to unite the Orthodox-Slavic world and fulfill the mission that the Russian Empire later partially fulfilled.
It was the gentry political elite, as the bearer of the Sarmatian idea of being chosen and the "Catholic" dogmatic-repressive, totalitarian intolerance, not only thwarted this unifying project, but also subsequently predetermined the collapse of their statehood [4].
The Polish ruling class is the gentry, believing that the gentry has special ethnic roots - Sarmatian, and not Slavic, like the "claps" and "cattle" (as they called the Little Russians and Belarusians). The Polish gentry declared themselves "keepers of the mythical Sarmatian virtues." Polish messianism has reached incredible proportions. Rzeczpospolita was presented as a kind of ideal space - state ("golden freedom", confessional (Catholicism), national (chosen people). This is a fortress designed to defend against pagans, that is, Tatars and Turks, against schismatics, that is, Muscovites and Ukrainians and Zaporizhzhya Cossacks [5] The position of the Polish elite greatly harmed Slavic unity.
However, Pan-Slavist sentiments were strong among the Slavic peoples until 1917. Before the First World War, the Slavs were very worried about the growing threat of pan-Germanism. In Russia, the Slavic peoples saw the only force capable of resisting the German threat. Much was said about this in the speeches of the deputies at the 1908 Slavic Congress in Prague.
The collapse of the Russian Empire postponed the solution of issues of Slavic unity for decades. At the same time, on the destructive impulses of the Bolshevik revolution, a new trend of thought arose, which tried to bring an ideological basis for the catastrophic deformations committed by the Bolsheviks, and to find in them some higher regularity for the unification of peoples. This is how the movement of "Eurasians" arose, the founders of which were P. N. Savitsky, N. S. Trubetskoy, P. P. Suvchinsky, G. V. Vernadsky and others.
For the Eurasians, Russia is a continent, a territorial concept, a connection on a formal geopolitical basis. The spiritual meaning of Russian civilization, Holy Russia, its values are completely emasculated, being replaced by arguments about the mutual benefit of the union of peoples, about some mystical laws of the continents of Europe and Asia, about the combination of Asian and European principles. This doctrine mixes the incompatible elements of different closed civilizations, trying to create from them some kind of average civilization, which should suit everyone.
Supporters of Eurasianism actually dissolved Russian spiritual culture in a kind of "single Eurasian space." The high potential of Orthodox spirituality was equated by the Eurasians with the religious beliefs of other peoples inhabiting Russia. In Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism, widespread in Eurasia, they mistakenly saw a number of common features, especially moral and ethical. Orthodoxy in their philosophy generally acts as a "symphonic" form of religiosity, characterized by "the striving for total unity and the synthesis of everything spiritually healthy."However, in practice, such a view led to the belittling of the importance of Orthodoxy in the face of other religions, to the emergence of rapprochement with other religions, unacceptable for the Russian faith.
The spiritual core of Russia - the Russian people and its culture - were considered by the Eurasians on a par with the local cultures of other peoples. As in the case of Orthodoxy, this approach led to the belittling of the significance of Russian culture in the face of other cultures and thereby stimulated the destruction of the spiritual core of Russia and its final death.
The heroic struggle of the Russian people under the leadership of the Orthodox Church against the Tatar-Mongol yoke was presented by the Eurasians in a perverted form, and the cruel Tatar yoke as a blessing for Russia. The country, which for centuries held back an aggressive onslaught from both the West and the East, was viewed by the Eurasians as part of the military mechanism of the Tatar-Mongols in their battle with the West. The Eurasians represented Muscovite Rus as the western vanguard of the Tatar-Mongol empire, opposing the aggressive onslaught of the European army. Moreover, they directly stated that the Russians were “saved” from physical extermination and cultural assimilation of the West only thanks to their inclusion in the Mongol ulus. Galician Rus, Volhynia, Chernigov and other principalities, which refused from the alliance with the Horde, became victims of Catholic Europe, which declared a crusade against the Russians and Tatars. In line with this concept, the Eurasians made the false conclusion that the Russian Empire is the political successor to the Mongol Empire. In this regard, the fall of the Golden Horde was, in their opinion, only a change in the dynasty in Eurasia and the transfer of its capital from Sarai to Moscow. The Eurasians completely ignored the great merit of the Russian people who saved the West from the Tatar-Mongol yoke. The decisive role of the Orthodox Church, which rallied the Russian people against the interventionists, was completely ruled out. In the opinion of the Eurasians, Russia owes the development of its statehood to the Mongol administration and the Khan Baskaks.
Supporters of the Eurasian doctrine viewed the Bolshevik regime as an objective continuation of the trend towards "Eurasian unity", forgetting that the Bolsheviks deliberately broke the Slavic core of Russia, establishing arbitrary borders between the parts of a single whole, which destroyed a single state in 1991.. Like the Orthodox Bolsheviks, Eurasians they were looking for in Russia, first of all, a formal state principle, not realizing that it in itself is a consequence of the deeper laws of national life. Eurasianism disorients the Russian social movement, narrows its program down to the requirements of building a formal state union of disparate parts, creating the illusion that it can be carried out outside other principles of Russian life or even outside of these began to rely on Europeanism and Islam. Today, Eurasianism, in its spiritual essence, is a modern modification of liberal cosmopolitanism and Bolshevik internationalism, a new shell of mondialist thinking [6].
The urgent need for the unification of the Slavs arose at the beginning of the Second World War. Like the First World War, this war, according to Stalin's exact definition, took place on Slavic backs. In July 1941, an anti-fascist Slavic rally took place in Pittsburgh. In August 1941, the All-Slavic Committee was created in Moscow. In April 1942, the American Slavic Congress arose in the United States, uniting 15 million US citizens of Slavic origin.
The All-Slavic Committee established close contacts with foreign Slavic organizations - the American Slavic Congress, the Canadian All-Slavic Association in Montreal, the All-Slavic Committee in London, and after the liberation of the Slavic countries from the German invaders and their satellites - with the national Slavic committees created in them, the core of which were members of the VSK …Slavic congresses and rallies were held not only in Moscow, but also in Sofia, Belgrade, Warsaw, Prague, in the places of deployment of Slavic military units formed on the territory of the USSR, in other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. From July 1941 until the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Slavic theme did not leave newspaper pages and pages of magazines of the Soviet Union, sounded on the radio in many languages m Ira. During the war years, more than 900 books, brochures, articles and other materials on Slavic topics were published. The spread of knowledge about Slavic history and culture contributed to the growth of interest in the Slavic peoples in Western countries, the development of Slavic studies and the establishment of ties with foreign Slavic centers [7].
In 1945, on the initiative of Stalin, a course was taken to create the Commonwealth of Independent Slavic States, supported by the governments of all Slavic countries. The Slavic Council in Sofia in March 1945, especially the Belgrade Slavic Congress of 1946, showed that the victors of fascism are ready to unite in a Slavic union [8].
However, the unification into the Slavic Union did not take place both as a result of serious contradictions existing between the communist parties of the USSR and the Slavic states, and as a result of the subversive activities that Western countries waged against Slavic unity. US National Security Council Directive No. 20/1 of August 18, 1948, known as the Dulles Plan, was aimed at creating contradictions between the Slavic countries and at dismembering the USSR.
The entire policy of the West after the Second World War was aimed at destroying friendly and partnership ties between the Slavic countries. Billions of dollars were used by Western intelligence agencies to foment contradictions between the Slavic peoples, especially in the USSR and on the territory of Yugoslavia.
Since the late 1940s, the United States alone has spent about $ 100-150 billion on the Cold War against the Slavic world, inciting enmity and contradictions in it. [nine]
As a result of the events of the end of the twentieth century, the Slavic world became greatly weakened, fragmented into small states, for the most part unable to defend their independence. These states are becoming easy prey for world imperialist predators - the USA, NATO, the World Bank, transnational corporations.
Nevertheless, despite the significant damage caused to the unity of the Slavic countries, the Slavic movement continued to develop. In the early 1990s, the Slavic Council arose, in 1992 the Moscow Congress of Slavic Culture was founded, which contributed to the creation of the All-Slavic Council, which was the organizer of the All-Slavic Congress in Prague (1998). At this congress, the International Slavic Committee was created, which assumed the role of the leader of the Slavic movement. However, deprived of state support, this Committee is not able to solve the global tasks that it has entrusted to itself.
Through the state line, the Union State of Russia and Belarus was created - the core of Slavic integration. Strengthening and developing this alliance is the main task of the Slavic movement. Its main goal is to create a commonwealth of independent Slavic states - the All-Slavic Union. At the same time, it should be understood that, taking into account the historical path of Russia, which united more than a hundred peoples into a single state, it will not only be a common Slavic unifying core, but also a center of attraction for peoples that were previously part of the Russian Empire. The Eurasian Union, created in 2011, provides for the creation of a confederal union of states with a single political, economic, military, social and cultural space. However, such a Eurasian Union will be successful only if it is built on the civilizational foundations of the Slavic civilization and the Slavic dominance is strengthened in it. The union of states united by Russia on the basis of equality will become one of the foundations of a multipolar world and ensuring a balance of power with the United States, China and Western Europe.
There is a great danger in trying to create a Eurasian Union following the recipes of the "Eurasians" of the 1920s and their modern epigones. The Eurasian Union, which was proposed by the "Eurasians", is also unacceptable to Russia, since it squeezes it in the grip of the Western European and Turkic civilizations and destroys the Slavic core of the country.
[1] From the "Tale of Bygone Years": "the Slavs sat down along the Danube, where now the land is Hungarian and Bulgarian. And from these Slavs the Slavs dispersed throughout the land and were nicknamed by their names, where who sat, in what place. So, for example, some, having come, sat down on the river by the name of Morava and were nicknamed Morava, while others called themselves Czechs. And here are the same Slavs: White Croats, and Serbs, and Horutans. When the Volokhs attacked the Slavs on the Danube, and settled among them, and oppressed them, then these Slavs came and sat on the Vistula, and were nicknamed the Lyakhs, and from those Poles went the Poles, other Poles - Lutichi, some - Mazovians, others - Pomorians …
Likewise, these Slavs came and sat down the Dnieper and called themselves glades, and others - Drevlyans, because they sat in the forests, and others also sat between Pripyat and Dvina and called themselves Dregovichi, others sat down the Dvina and called themselves Polotsk along the river that flows into Dvina and is called Polota. Likewise, the Slavs, who sat near Lake Ilmenya, were nicknamed by their name - the Slavs, and built a city, and called it Novgorod. Others sat along the Desna, and along the Seven, and along the Sule and called themselves northerners. And so the Slavic people dispersed, and after his name and the letter was called "Slavic".
[2] Tomsinov V. A. History of Russian political and legal thought of the X-XVII centuries. M., 2003. S. 70.
[3] Ibid. S. 70-71.
[4] Bukharin NI Russian-Polish relations in the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries. // Questions of history 2007. No. 7. - P. 3.
[5] See: A. Panchenko, Peter I and the Slavic Idea // Russian Literature. 1988. No. 3. - S. 148-152.
[6] Great encyclopedia of the Russian people. Russian worldview / Ch. editor, compiler O. A. Platonov. M., Institute of Russian Civilization, 2003. S. 253-254.
[7] Kikeshev NI Slavic ideology. M., 2013.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Makarevich EF Secret agents. Dedicated to staff and non-staff members. M., 2007. S. 242.
