The Roots of Russophobia and the Battle for the Soul of History

Russia’s clash with the West reveals a struggle over culture, history, and destiny.

Ilya Glazunov, Prince Igor (1962)

Naif Al Bidh explores the roots of Russophobia in Western thought, shedding further light on the connection between the rejection of philosophy of history and the denial of Russia’s existence, concluding that history has returned, and thus it is crucial that we revive philosophy of history and materialize the possible futures it presents.

The concept of Russian culture as a unique entity, distinct from the West, is an idea that is currently resisted on multiple fronts: the historiographical, sociopolitical, and geopolitical. If Russia is truly a unique cultural entity — civilization or civilizational bloc — and its destiny is being denied today, this will have profound implications of existential relevance not only to Russia but to the different worlds that border the Russian realm. History, when seen through a lens that acknowledges the right of every culture to exist, as cultures in their own right, manifesting their own unconscious ideas into conscious existence, sharing their unique truths and forms, almost as gifts to the world, is an imperative when considering the turbulent and volatile geopolitical realities we are living through today. The turbulence in itself, in the regions surrounding the Russian world at least, is a reflection of a culture that has been denied its existence for centuries, whether through internal events that has tied Russia’s destiny with that of Western Europe, such as Tsar Peter’s reign, or through successive Tartar invasions, or even Byzantine intellectual-spiritual subjugation. Further, the Marxist inversion of the Russian soul following the Bolshevik Revolution, and the current NATO intrusions on Russian sovereignty, are additional examples of internal and external threats to Russia’s cultural development. The current Russian reaction, whether through presenting an alternative model to Western universalism, as a global order, pushing for BRICS and a multipolar order that acknowledges the existence of every global cultural bloc, as cultures in their own right, or pushing back NATO through the Russian military operation, all reflect a healthy cultural immune system. That being said, as Nikolai Berdyaev argued, a survey of Russian history makes it clear that it “is one of the most poignantly painful of histories”, and I would add, after considering the developments during the second half of the 20^th century (the Cold War and post-Cold War eras) and the 21^st century, what Berdyaev described is almost a perennial trait across Russia’s past, present, and perhaps its future as well. At this point, it is almost clear to many that the world is witnessing a shift in the global political order, one that will reshape the realities of many cultural blocs. The Russian world is at the forefront of such transformations — the clash between Russia and the West can therefore be described as one of world-historical significance.

Many in the West are failing to come to terms with such realities, and possible futures, where Russia as a culture transforms through aligning with its purpose and destiny across history, just as how the West once took its own unique trajectory, and fulfilled its destiny in world history. This resistance to the uniqueness of Russia is an idea that is directly related to Western universalism, which could be viewed as an intrinsic trait of Western culture, or a primary notion in the paradigms that had come to dominate its intellectual and political circles since the Enlightenment. This trait is directly connected to the expansive and transformative nature of Western culture across history. The Enlightenment philosophies, as unconscious ideas in Western culture, were materialized consciously in Western culture across the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and found direct expression in Western foreign policy and sociopolitical dynamics. In other words, the Western world has been significantly shaped by the Enlightenment since its inception to a degree that is usually overlooked nowadays. Immanuel Kant’s notion of perpetual peace, as presented in his philosophy of history, was materialized consciously with the rise of the Western global order in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. As pleasant as Kant’s philosophy of history sounds to some, it is a philosophy of history, and the future, that neglects the existence of non-Western cultural entities. The problem with Kant was his insistence on connecting morality to philosophy of history through a universalist approach to cultures, that is, to view humanity as a “totality” united socially as a universorum. Thus, he rejected an approach to history that viewed humanity through a relativist lens, as different cultures and nations that function in social isolation — singulorum. The problem with assuming humanity and its different cultures as a totality becomes clear when questioning whose specific view of “humankind” is being spoken of here exactly? Kant’s second disastrous conclusion, which is also directly related to his infusion of morality into history, is to enforce a rigid linear scheme unto history. This Kantian universalist linear notion of history leaves out any culture or nation that does not fit the scheme, or attempts to subsume them under the scheme hegemonically. A problem that persisted with Georg Wilhelm Hegel’s philosophy of history, and appeared in a more radical form in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1837). The problem with Kantian philosophy of history is that the linear conception of history and the moral philosophy tied to it are both purely Western forms intrinsically connected to Western culture. Yet, these ideas have become embedded in the Western collective psyche since the Enlightenment, and have shaped its historiography, philosophy of history, and subsequently, its foreign policy. It is important to note that this was not the only paradigm emergent from that specific period of Western history, but other antithetical ideas emerged with the Romanticist movement, and what would eventually be called the “Counter-Enlightenment”. This paradigm produced another philosophy of history that is almost in exact contradiction to the Enlightenment approach to history, adopting a relativist approach to cultures and history as a whole, as embodied by the works of Johann Gottfried Herder. Although the Counter-Enlightenment paradigm had not found proper political expression in Western culture due to its suppression by the Enlightenment paradigm, it could be viewed as a precursor to Western philosophical movements that have had a significant effect on the culture as a whole. Herder’s work finds continuity in the works of Oswald Spengler, who likewise adopted a philosophy of history that viewed cultures in isolation and through a relativist lens. The Counter-Enlightenment, although ultimately suppressed and rejected by Western academic institutions, provided a view of Russian culture that is quite unique. Like the Slavophiles, Herder and Spengler both viewed Russia as a distinct culture, separate from both the West and East. Their approach was based on a humble approach to history that emphasized the cyclicality of time alongside its directionality, as opposed to the linear model adopted by Kant and the Enlightenment thinkers, which naturally leads to a form of cultural hubris. One could only imagine what the West would have looked like if the Counter-Enlightenment had found expression instead of the Enlightenment. One thing is for sure, it would not have had a head-on collision with Russian culture.

Ilya Glazunov, Eternal Russia (1988)

When tracing the development of Enlightenment ideas across the history of Western thought, we arrive at Isaiah Berlin’s adaptation, and weaponization, of some of Kant’s ideas in order to attack Russian culture as a whole in the name of liberalism. This vehement critique of Russian culture was delivered by Berlin in a series of lectures titled “The Russian Obsession with History and Historicism”, which, in my judgement, reveal not only the state of Western philosophy of history in the 20^th century, one that ultimately begins to ontologically reject history and the past as a whole, but also the projection of its own disorders on other healthy cultures that do not suffer from the same form of collective dissonance against the past. Ironically, while sowing the seeds of Russophobia in Western intellectual institutions, Berlin gave one of these lectures at the University of Sussex in 1967, which is unsurprisingly dubbed the “wokest” campus in the UK today. I myself had completed one of my postgraduate degrees there in 2019, and it is almost paradoxical that I have directed my writings towards refuting Berlin’s critique of philosophy of history and Russian culture the past years without realizing that I had been studying at the library holding the original recordings of Berlin’s lectures. Berlin, almost reflecting the profound state of enforced amnesia in Western culture following the Second World War, argued that works of philosophy of history, such as that of Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Herder, Vico, the Bible, and other speculative models of history, should not be taken seriously, nor literally, and rather, they should be viewed as products of a pseudo-discipline. By history, or historicism, Berlin means the belief in history as a past-present-future continuum, that is to say, the belief that history has a meaning, and that humans or cultures have a destiny within history. In other words, history or historicism in this context is synonymous with speculative philosophy of history. Berlin viewed this as a flawed concept, his historical picture is devoid of a philosophy of history, and therefore, he viewed history as lacking any sort of meaning, and that the past, present, and future do not necessarily exist in the historicist sense, as Hegel or Spengler argued, and therefore cannot even be connected. The units acting within history, cultures, civilizations, or humans, therefore do not necessarily have a metaphysically relevant destiny, since neither the units themselves can be said to exist through an empirical lens, nor the metaphysical world giving birth to these Volkgeister (national spirits), cultural organisms, or civilizations. It is a bleak view clearly, and one that he attempted to force unto the rest of Western culture, and I would argue, he had done so successfully. Western culture as a whole was already heading towards this negation of the past — history — and this is perhaps perfectly reflected in the rise of postmodern philosophy of historiography and history. The topic Berlin explored is definitely an important one, and I would also add, it is a crucial topic to address today considering the recent developments. The main problem with Berlin is the way he approached this topic, and the conclusions he produced concerning these sensitive topics. The Russians, to Berlin, had an intrinsic obsession with their purpose in history, and even if it is not explicitly expressed, it is reflected implicitly, or sometimes unknowingly. To Berlin, this obsession is a dangerous one primarily because the belief in specific philosophies of history, and the visions they present of the future, could actually have political and social implications. This to Berlin is not a reflection of the power of philosophies of history, but rather they are seen as self-fulfilled prophecies. What shocked Berlin, is how multiple philosophies of history have materialized in Russia’s political reality as a result of Russian people, and thinkers, taking such ideas seriously. Yet this is where a cognitive bias is apparent within Berlin’s argument. Since his own rejection of metaphysics is in itself a metaphysical presupposition, a contrasting world-view — Weltanschauung — which affirms metaphysics can view the materialization of these philosophies of history as actual fulfilment of prophecy, philosophy, or speculative futures. Thus, while Berlin described these events as “self-fulfilling prophecies”, I argue that these philosophies of history came true simply because they are true! This false dichotomy is revealed further when Berlin attempted to argue, in a rather Western-centric manner, that the West is past the belief in history and historicism, and that because they view philosophies of history as “books written by various thinkers, conversations in intellectual salons; it did not really make a difference to what might be called the central thought or even action of these countries”. The West, to Berlin, is immune to these ideas because it overcame these ideas, that is, because they are more developed in their experience with history. Berlin’s argument reflects the same form of Kantian universalism previously discussed, which inevitably leads to a form of hierarchy between cultures. Berlin argued this openly when he described the Russians as a “latecomer to the great Western feast. They develop late as a world power, only in the early nineteenth century”. Russia is indeed a historically “young” nation or culture. That said, it is not late to the “Western feast” as Berlin had asserted, since history does not belong to a specific culture or nation, but is in itself the driving force of nations and cultures. This is what is previously described as the Western tendency to claim everything abstract or concrete, even history as an ontological entity itself. Additionally, Berlin’s lectures also shed further light on the divergent clashing philosophies of history across Russian history, all characterized by an obsession over questions concerning the pattern and directionality of history, and what that meant for Russia as a whole. From the monarchists, to the Marxist, Slavophiles, and even pro-Western thinkers, all these currents were exhibiting the same passion for historicism. Indeed, each of these different elements of Russian culture possessed an inherent philosophy of history, which was materialized into existence at one point in Russian history. But an approach to these questions that accepts philosophy of history as a field in its own right provides us a with a truly different lens. What Berlin feared was actually true: the Russian people had a strong belief in history as an ontological entity, and it was not a flawed trait, as he had argued, but a positive indicator of a culture with a future of world-historical significance. The curiosity that Russians had, and perhaps still have, for the questions of meaning, pattern, directionality, and destiny in history, reveal a young culture that is newly awakened from the dream-heavy state every high-culture finds itself in upon its emergence onto the stage of world-history. The Slavophile philosophy of history with its emphasis on the uniqueness of Russia as a civilization and culture, which Berlin caricatured, is a reflection of a unifying grand narrative and history-picture that accompanies all newly born cultures that possess what Spengler called the “super-personal unity and fulness” of a culture at its earliest spring stages. The different approaches to this obsession with historicism, embodied in Russia by the Western-looking Russian, on one hand, and the Slavophile, on the other, is what Spengler called the “two faces of Russia”, and what Berdyaev described as the innate polarity the Russian soul suffers from as a result of its attempt to reconcile the dialectic clash between East and West. This polarity is embodied in the concept of “double belief” in Russia — the coexistence of Orthodoxy alongside an implicit folk paganism. Any Western philosophy that presupposes a form of cultural universalism cannot comprehend the truth about Russia, and thus, the complexities of Russian culture and the diverging sociopolitical currents that shaped Russian history will be oversimplified and reduced into insignificance, as Berlin’s lectures demonstrated. Thus, while Berlin viewed the Slavophile-Western divide in Russian thinkers as a trivial matter, Berdyaev viewed it as a perfect reflection of the polarity in Russian culture and the inconsistencies it could lead to. These inconsistencies are a perennial theme in Russian culture, according to Berdyaev, and it is a direct result of the Russian soul’s existence between the “two streams of world history — East and West”. As Spengler said, false Western-centric geographic assumptions distort history when assuming a continent of Europe or Africa without taking into consideration the complex cultural dynamics taking place in these regions, and the organic boundaries that are shaped by eternal ecological reasons rather than mere political demarcations. Rather than these false geographic constructs, geographic directions are of significance to history, life, and culture. The East-West binary, Spengler argued, “are notions that contain real history”. Concerning this, Berdyaev said:

The Russian people is not purely European and it is not purely Asiatic. Russia is a complete section of the world — a colossal East-West. It unites two worlds, and within the Russian soul, two principles are always engaged in strife — the Eastern and Western.

Thus, it becomes clear that there are two paradigms clashing here when discussing history and the nature of cultures: one that denies the existence of history and the past, and the possibility of the existence of cultures as ontological entities. This is the paradigm that finds its origins in the Enlightenment and has produced the dominant episteme that characterized Western thought across the 20^th century. Another paradigm, manifested itself in specific segments of Western culture, the conservative and the German-speaking realms primarily, since the historicist tradition in itself is intrinsically connected to the German nation and ethos. This specific paradigm affirms history and the past, and allows for the existence of cultures as ontological entities, which finds its origins with the works of the Counter-Enlightenment, with Herder’s philosophy of history, and the Goethean sciences rather than the Newtonian sciences. In Russia, this specific relativist paradigm has also clearly manifested in the works of the Slavophiles, hence Berlin’s concept of the “Russian obsession with history and historicism”. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn argued that paradigms are neither static nor linear and rather go through cycles across history. Thus, what is considered a “normal science” of one specific time period is eventually replaced by a new paradigm which would eventually be considered the “normal science” of a future age. The shift from one paradigm to another is what Kuhn termed a “paradigm shift”, or what we commonly call “scientific revolutions”. These shifts are also accompanied by changes in world-views, and I would also add, changes in the humanities, which would also necessitate a change in one’s view of history and thus philosophy of history. What makes the dominant modern Western liberal paradigms unique is their strict rejection of metaphysics and history. They deny that history exists, and eventually adopted a positivist world-view that is purely scientific and empirical. This is seen clearly with Berlin and Western academic culture as a whole during the 20^th century. Yet, what my research on the history and nature of philosophy of history made me realize is the fact that philosophy of history, like art and religion, is a basic human concern. Therefore, as long as you have humans, you will continue to have people and cultures philosophizing about the meaning, pattern and directionality of history, albeit in different forms. This can at times be done explicitly, but at times, oddly, it is done implicitly. The peculiarity of the dominant Western paradigms, in my judgement, is their claim of denying history and the past, and rejection of philosophy of history, that is, the rejection that there is any meaning or pattern or telos in history, while secretly being believers in progress and linear history. While their precursor Kant made explicit claims on the progressive notion of history, they possess these ideas implicitly and secretly. A linear notion of history is problematic since it almost automatically assumes the supremacy of Western cultural forms, values, and norms. When history is viewed as one of linear development, fundamentally connected to a liberal Western moral framework, as Kant did, any culture that does not fit the scheme or model is instantly viewed not only as a threat and impediment to “progress”, but as inferior culturally. Thus, the culture that does not fit the linear scheme is also denied membership into world-history. This is what Berlin and others had attempted to do with their treatment of Russia. Yet, through a Spenglerian lens, a linear view of history, and the form of cultural universalism and hubris seen exhibited by Western culture during the 20^th century is in itself an indicator of a culture that has not only arrived at the apex of its cultural development, but also approaching its imminent decline. This why the Western liberal thinker Francis Fukuyama had eventually proclaimed the “end of history” during the post-Cold War period. Yet clearly, history has not ended, but has merely paused, and transitioned in a limbo phase of history. The “pause of history”, as I call it, which was accompanied by further rejection of the past in the Western field of philosophy of historiography, is a result of a collective state of slumber — a Pax Americana-induced amnesia. As we approach the junction of world-history once more, the geopolitical, cultural, and economic vicissitudes we are currently witnessing globally shatter Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. History has clearly returned, which necessitates a return to philosophy of history. This “return of history” has occurred alongside the re-emergence of thinkers who were rejected and their works buried by the dominant liberal Western paradigms. This revival is a result of geopolitical, sociopolitical, and historical anomalies that the West is currently facing. Many are simply not able to make sense of the current developments when viewing the world through the linear Kantian view of history. This is precisely why we are witnessing a revival of the works of Spengler, Julius Evola, and other thinkers associated with the once rejected cultural relativist paradigms of the West. The questions that Berlin argued were unthinkable in the West, and were common in Russian society, are now crucial questions in Western society following the recent existential developments. Questions such as:

Where are we on the ladder of civilization? Have we reached stage seventeen, or are we still at stage nine? Which step are we on, in order to calculate what step is appropriate?

Furthermore, questions that Russian Slavophiles once asked:

What is to be our fate? Where are we going? Are we going to be destroyed by Western nations? Are we forever going to lag behind them or, on the contrary, are we going to overtake them? Are we going to be as good as them? Or even better? Have we a special duty towards them? Have they a duty towards us? Are we the messianic nation that is going to save them or, on the contrary, are we the home of darkness and barbarism, never to be saved from the dreadful yoke of this ghastly government?

Ilya Glazunov, Mystery of the 20th Century (1999)

We have now found expression in the collective psyche of Russians, with conscious expressions at the international, geopolitical, and domestic level through the Russian state, or their manifestation in the works of Alexander Dugin in his attempt to construct a unique “Russian philosophy”. These questions have also clearly found unconscious expression in the Russian artistic forms. In cinema, Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark does not only explore these questions in depth across the endless halls of the Hermitage Museum, but also reveals a unique approach to cinema as the film was shot in one endless take, which in my judgement is a perfect reflection of the Russian soul. This unique Russian feeling Spengler described as an “endless flat plain”, and was further explored by Berdyaev. Concerning this, he said:

There is that in the Russian soul which corresponds to the immensity, the vagueness, the infinitude of the Russian land, spiritual geography corresponds with physical. In the Russian soul there is a sort of immensity, a vagueness, a predilection for the infinite, such as is suggested by the great plain of Russia.

This “vastness and immensity”, to Berdyaev, is also a reason why the Russian culture has found it difficult to express these ideas in an “orderly shape” or form, and achieving mastery over these ideas as the West had done with their own ideas. Yet, with the gift of hindsight we can now confidently say that Russia does not innately suffer from a “weak sense of form”, as Berdyaev had previously argued, but rather, the culture in question was too young to express these forms properly. As historical time progresses, these forms are materializing in front of our very eyes. The “immensity, vagueness, the infinitude of the Russian land” could be felt in the artistic expressions of Ilya Glazunov. Glazunov’s monumental historical paintings, akin to murals, express these ideas perfectly in their sheer size, the multitude of characters, and historical expansiveness. Take the work titled Eternal Russia (1988). In one painting is squeezed in the whole of Russian history: the pagan past, the Imperial period, the Soviet present, while projecting the painting into the future almost predicting the post-Soviet future. In other works, such as The Contributions of the People of the USSR to World Culture and Civilization (1980) and Mystery of the 20^th Century (1999), a similar history-picture was applied, one that affirms a past-present-future continuum. These Russian artistic forms were also previously seen in the works of Alphonse Mucha, specifically his most notable work The Slav Epic series, consisting of 20 enormous paintings depicting the Slavic past, and likewise, projected into the future with the final painting titled Apotheosis of the Slavs (1926), where the author left no defined location. As for the time period, Mucha wrote “Future”. If one were to view cultures as ontological entities, as Spengler and the Slavophiles did, then each culture is imbued with a specific world-feeling, or what Spengler called a prime-symbol. This specific symbol permeates throughout the whole culture and shapes its respective forms. To Spengler, the history-picture of a culture is directly shaped by its prime-symbol, as well as its scientific, artistic, and political forms. The unique historical instinct of Russia, its own sense of historicity and view of the past, is reflected perfectly in the works of Mucha and Glazunov. It is one that finds an intrinsic connection between the past, present, and future, one that aligns almost perfectly with Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser’s argument of a new structure of consciousness that could potentially shape the next coming centuries if it is allowed expression and free development. In Gebser’s metahistorical theory presented in The Ever-Present Origin (1949), the author argued that the integral structure of consciousness has emerged at the time period between the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The integral is primarily characterized by its reconsideration of the notion of time, one that infuses time and history, as an indivisible continuum, into human consciousness, as opposed to the analytical notion of time as “measurable relationships” which leads to a perversion of the notion of time, which was characteristic of our old, and now dying, perspectival structure of consciousness. The new structure of consciousness views time as an immeasurable quality, rather than a measurable quantity, which the older structures of consciousness are still attempting to impose upon the rest of the world. This unique notion of time is illustrated perfectly in Berdyaev’s Meaning of History (1936), where the author argued that we have a habit of dividing the past, present, and future, and subsequently endowing the last with a more concrete reality than the first. To Berdyaev, if we consider the “eternal present”, the future is not “richer in reality than the past”, and thus, the future and past both merge into one — the past does not exist except in our memory of it, the future has not materialized, and nor can we be certain that it will. The eschatological dimension of the Russian historical instinct is clear in Berdyaev’s argument. Concerning the uncertainty of the future, Berdyaev said:

In a sense it may even be argued that the past is more real than the future, that those who have departed from us are more real than those who have not yet been born.

What surprises many is the odd similarity between the works of the Slavophiles and the German existentialists, the overlap between Spengler and Danilevsky’s philosophies of history, the similarities between the philosophies of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. The link between these two separate movements is understood properly only if one were to deploy an argument for the possibility of a new emerging structure of consciousness — a new axial age. Thus, Russia, the Slavic Orthodox world, as a culture in its own right, can also only be understood through such a lens, one that affirms history and time as an indivisible continuum and the existence of cultures as separate ontological entities. Paradigms are an underrated force today. As mentioned earlier, each paradigm is presupposed by a specific world-view, and thus, it is almost impossible to convince an individual, culture, or nation, embedded into a specific paradigm, to reject it since their world-view as a whole subsequently becomes jeopardized. In other words, what Berlin ridiculed in Russia — the belief that history has a telos, an aim, a direction, a path — is an inherent belief in some individuals and nations, fundamentally connected to their own world-view. These specific views on history are also not neutral in practical matters. Rather, I argue, they are deployed and weaponized to project and materialize a specific view and vision. What we are witnessing today globally, as Alexander Dugin has argued, is the deployment of different eschatological narratives at the geopolitical front. A clash of civilizations almost always necessitates a clash of eschatologies, and I would add, a clash of philosophies of history. What I am attempting to argue is the following: a nation or culture’s belief in its own specific unconscious visions can propel these visions into the future, where they materialize practically into conscious structures and realities. Although it might seem that individuals like Berlin do not have a specific vision when they refute all philosophies of history, a closer look into their works reveals the opposite. Today, as history returns, and we find ourselves at the junction of world-history once more, it is almost a historical imperative that we understand such visions espoused by the likes of Berlin, and their implications on humanity as a whole.

Ilya Glazunov, The Contribution of the People of the USSR to World Culture and Civilization (1980)

Berlin’s primary critique of speculative philosophy of history is presented in Historical Inevitability (1955), where he provides a list of the primary limitations and flaws of this approach, such as its innate determinism, predictive elements, and metaphysical assumptions. Like Karl Popper, another fierce critic of philosophy of history, Berlin ultimately concludes that even history as a discipline is flawed, and in a Comtean manner argued that it should be scientificized, and transformed, into a social science. This, according to Berlin and Popper, would ultimately open up endless possibilities, with the potential discovery of a social physics, which in turn would naturally lead to the possibility of social engineering. Thus, to Berlin and Popper, philosophy of history is dangerous because it is based on metaphysical assumptions, and the humanities as a whole should eventually be subsumed under a scientific mold. What makes Popper and Berlin’s ideas dangerous are their moral, geopolitical, and sociopolitical implications. These are thinkers who have crucially shaped the dominant Western paradigms during the 20^th century — and their ideas are thus the embodiment of the episteme that directs domestic and foreign policy in Western states. As Dugin has previously argued, it is no surprise that George Soros named his foundation the “Open Society”. It is simply giving credit to the philosophical foundations that inspired its activities, namely, Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). As mentioned previously, ideas are not neutral, but should be seen as unconscious forces that could potentially find practical expressions in politics and societies. Popper explicitly discussed the need for “piecemeal social engineering” in his writings, alongside his rejection of the existence of organic ontological entities, such as “cultures”, “civilizations”, “peoples”, “nations”, and the existence of a “soul” and “spirit” of a culture or other metaphysical concepts connected to these ideas. Popper was a clear embodiment of the materialistic reductionist scientific thinking that had shaped the hypermodern reality we find ourselves in today. Thus, to Popper, and perhaps Berlin as well, the human soul is a flawed notion based on metaphysical assumptions, and should also be rejected, alongside their rejection of cultures as a whole, and any form of collective consciousness. Humans, in their philosophical world-view, are reduced to mere cogs in a late capitalist system run by a dominant minority, who are detached from the daily realities of the average Western individual and Western society at large, now turned into a formless mass. The current dominant liberal Western paradigm, and its own view on history, is clearly alarming and problematic, and its continued spread and consolidation is ushering in a transhumanist dystopian post-modern reality, one that is not only incompatible with culture and the organic, but one that also rejects the human and the soul. The practical applications of such ideas can today be seen with George Soros’ Open Society Foundation which is clearly materializing the conscious structures of such anti-human and anti-metaphysical ideas. If this trans-, post-, humanist future is not resisted with an alternative and antithetical view of the future, whether from the West itself, or the rest of the non-Western cultures, it will actualize itself into conscious existence with ease. A rejection of metaphysics is in itself a metaphysical presumption, and likewise, a rejection of philosophy of history does not necessarily imply that one does not possess an explicit view on history, its directionality, and patterns. Again, it is a paradigmatic issue. If we are to view Popper and Berlin’s views on history as a unique historical paradigm, rather than a reflection of absolute truth as they argue, it becomes clear that their own implicit philosophy of history is essentially the exact antithesis of the philosophies of history they reject. Aviezer Tucker’s recent taxonomy of philosophies of history as different ideologies gives a better look at what this liberal implicit philosophy of history looks like. If Spenglerians and Slavophiles believe history is inevitable, possessing deterministic views on history, the liberal view is that of historical evitability. If individual agency is insignificant in relation to large impersonal forces such as higher cultures, civilizations, or nations in the traditional Spenglerian and Slavophile view, the liberal view in contrast affirms the individual and rejects these larger forces. History spirals regressively and progressively in the works of Spengler and the Slavophiles, since the mortal nature of cultures makes the idea of infinite progress almost impossible. Whereas the liberal, in a rather hubristic manner, views history’s direction as a progressive one. The individual is almost apotheosized and deified; the cult of science makes him view the future, and history, as frontiers that could be conquered. Thus, the traditional view, of Spengler and the Slavophiles, emphasizes the repetitiveness of history and its cyclicality in the face of larger macrocosmic forces, while the liberals view their own existence as being unique, at the apex of history and time. The conquest of these macrocosmic forces that have led to the demise of past human cultures is not seen as an impossible feat to the likes of Berlin and Popper. We are currently at the crossroads where these two specific visions — views on history — clash. The result of this clash is of existential relevance to humanity as a whole.

There is a clear connection between the roots of Russiaphobia in the West and the rejection of philosophy of history as a whole, a point that many cultural realms should acknowledge today, primarily, the Russian, Western, and Islamic worlds, who in my judgement have experienced the most catastrophic implications from such ideas. When tracing the roots of this “Russian obsession with history” in Russian Thinkers (1978), Berlin discovered the link between the German romanticists and innate Russian historicism. What becomes apparent is that Berlin did not only reject the right of Russians to view history as possessing meaning, directionality, and value, but also all other human cultures, and primarily projected his hatred for such ideas to the German world and the West as a whole. Now, Berlin’s contribution here is of value to anyone who would want to discover the mark German romanticism and historicism left on Russian thought. If anything, Berlin provides one of the only rare explorations of this crucial intellectual and cultural exchange between the West and Russia. That being said, Berlin does not explore such topics from a politically and philosophically detached position, but rather imposed his own rejection of speculative philosophies of history when exploring such topics. Although his contributions impressively reveal how historicism as a world-view permeated Russian society to a degree that it shaped the whole political spectrum. Indeed, one could argue that the Russian obsession with history created an environment where one could easily propose a vision of a specific philosophy of history, and in turn, if the sociopolitical landscape affirms this specific vision, it could materialize across the Russian culture. It could be argued that the Russian Civil War was a clash of various philosophies of history, and that the victor, Marxism, replaced the Slavophile vision at the first quarter of the 20^th century. Whether one believes that history possesses a telos or not does not matter here, for a person who rejects such notions, like Berlin, can view this as a result of an Oedipus effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a Kantian manner. While a person who affirms history will view the Marxist projection of its own vision of history in Russia as a materialization of that specific vision in the political, social, and economic dimensions of Russian culture, as Lenin did. Moreover, if the person witnessing this was a Spenglerian, he would view this as a fulfilment of an inverted Western vision, in a culture where these materialist artificial ideas do not belong — Marxism as a cultural pseudomorphosis. What makes Berlin’s approach to these topics problematic is his hegemonic projection of his own hatred of history when discussing these matters, and how he assumed that his rejection of directionality, meaning, and cultures is a proven fact. In other words, to Berlin, anyone who believed in the works of Hegel, Herder, Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Spengler, and even Kant, were deluded, lost, and too idealistic. Rather than viewing these thinkers as metaphysical maps to navigate the social and political complexities one faces, they are to be rejected in exchange for short-term social and political goals of pure material value. To believe in Herder’s vision of the future, where the Slavic world gives birth to a new organic culture extending mankind’s history to new possible horizons, was to believe in fantasies. Instead, Berlin provides an ugly and depressing alternative, based primarily on “necessary connections of a scientific kind, or of logical or mathematical reasoning”, deployed in the political front through liberal reforms, with the ultimate goal of fulfilling Comte’s dream of a social physics as the only acceptable discipline to comprehend social and political phenomena. Thus, to view human history, and life, as “the artistic creation of cosmic divinity, and of the world as the progressive revelation of a work of art” is anathematized by the likes of Berlin and Popper. The irony, however, lies in the fact that when such materialist and soulless ideas, as espoused by Comte, Berlin, and Popper, found political expression in the Russian world, it had given birth to the most destructive and nihilistic period of modern Russia history — the Marxist era. The materialist view of history, the Marxist material dialectics, as a philosophy of history is compatible with the spirit of positivism. What the likes of Herder and Hegel had done metaphysically, Marx and Comte had done purely scientifically. While Hegelian dialectics asserted that the whole of world affairs is a manifestation and reflection of spirit, Marxist dialectics is an inverted adaptation of Hegel’s, and thus, all spirit was a manifestation of matter. Marx thus removed the metaphysical and mysterious notion of national spirits as units of analysis, and replaced them with more logical and tangible units — economic forces. With the projection of this Marxist view of history on Russian society, the Russian spirit was suppressed, since such a vision has no place for national or cultural spirits, and any expression of this specific spirit was reduced to material purposes. Hence, as Berdyaev argued, Russian communism had distorted Russian messianic ideas, leading to the expression of its sacred ideas, such as the notion of the Third Rome, in non-religious and anti-religious forms as seen with the rise of the Third International. As much as Marx attempted to construct a purely materialistic and scientific philosophy of history, he ultimately failed in doing so, since it is essentially not a pure scientific treatment of history, as Popper and Berlin had argued, and simply an inversion of Hegel’s metaphysical view of history. Indeed, Marx’s view still possessed a telos, a pattern, and a direction, which an inversion of Hegel’s philosophy of history alone could not eliminate. Rather, one would need to construct a view of history that is based on a paradigm completely antithetical to the former, and not simply an inversion of it. The proper application of a Popperian or Comtean view of history, based on a materialistic reductionist anti-metaphysical paradigm, through the application of “piecemeal social engineering”, if done successfully, would shut off a culture from history ontologically and eliminate any sense of historicity. The result is the immersion of the culture or society into an eternal phase of “historylessness”, an amnesic slumber, which ultimately constricts any form of spiritual expression, and exhausts the creative forces of the culture as a whole. The natural phase of historylessness in past human civilizations would gradually corrupt the foundations of the culture from within and pave the way for collapse, which would usually occur either through natural or social forces, as Arnold Toynbee had argued. However, in a hypermodern reality, this propels the culture into an “anti-cultural” phase, where these very forces of historylessness, as manifestations of death, find expression in material forces with a telos of its own. The result is the exponential growth of anti-cultural material forces creating a purely material mode of technological organization devoid of any human element — Hyper-Zivilisation. Modernity as an anticultural force emerged from the West, and thus, such dystopian futures have taken hold of the collective psyche in the West — realities where Popper’s “piecemeal social engineering” replaces organic human dynamics. The Popperian view of history is today espoused and weaponized by the globalists, who aim to project it not only within the West, but the world as a whole. The Russian world only battled an inverted Hegelian philosophy of history — Marxism — and naturally developed an immune system response to rid itself of the effects of such false expressions on its own land. The West, like any organic human culture, is also naturally developing a reaction against such anticultural forces. Popper and Berlin, and other representatives of the materialist scientific paradigm, had managed to anathematize philosophy of history in Western thought, eradicating the field and burying the different visions presented by Western philosophers of history. Despite disagreements across the political spectrum, different academic institutions, and philosophical schools, there seems to be a consensus on philosophy of history, namely, that it is a field that lacks intellectual respectability. Leaving Western society almost in shock when faced with the reality of the return of history, and all of a sudden, philosophy of history is relevant once more. While some specific thinkers in the West, the very same thinkers who have once argued against philosophy of history, are arguing to recover philosophy of history from the dustbin of history. An argument that still clearly suffers from the same paradigmatic limitations that have led to the rejection of philosophy of history and history in the West, viewing philosophy of history and history as mere disciplines and nothing more. I argue that, as history returns, it is an imperative that all peoples revive their ontological connection to history, to reaffirm the historicity of life, and to locate the speculative philosophies of history that possess a future compatible with their own respective spirit, ethos, and destiny. For the Western man to explore Spengler, Quigley, Gebser, Toynbee, Herder, Hegel, and other Western philosophers of history, comparing their different visions, and futures, ultimately deciding which of these visions align with the unique destiny of the West. The Russian, to read through the philosophies of history of Slavophiles, Russian cosmists, and Eastern-oriented Russians, and express one of these futures practically. For the rest of world, to realign their respective cultures with their unique history pictures, and their unique futures, and manifest them into existence in a manner that is in harmony with their souls. Though these ideas might seem too far-fetched to some, one must simply ask why these specific ideas are feared by their fiercest critics. The answer is quite simple: because they fear the futures projected by these ideas, whether one views them as self-fulfilling prophecies or the fulfilment of a metaphysical destiny of a culture.