The critical consciousness of the intelligentsia under certain conditions can lead not to development, but to the regress of the community, to the decline of the whole state.
A significant compromise between the power elite and the informal opposition in the person of intellectuals is impossible, inasmuch the imperious elite never voluntarily will make serious concessions and never voluntarily will concede the power. However, if on average the level of the highest consciousness at her representatives is not too low, and the criticism from oppositional intellectuals is effective, implicating involving the broad masses of the population in the protest movement, then the imperious elite can be inclined to reforms as it, for example, was being occurred the last hundred years in Europe.
Otherwise, instead of smooth reforms the case may end with the complete replacement of the imperious elite, the overthrow of the state system, and even to the changing economic relations, as it has been happened in Russia in 1917.
But Lavrov was wrong about the mandatory progress at such replacement of formations. This is confirmed by the same experience of Russia, which after 1917 received the era of wars, genocide of own population, brutal dictatorship, and in the end – the collapse of the state.
Nevertheless, Peter Lavrov has guessed the external expression of one of the sides of the hidden antagonistic forces acting in the public consciousness, namely: the dominant highest consciousness, which come to the peak in the opposition-minded, educated and honest people of intellectual labor – the dominant highest consciousness in these people counteracts the lowest consciousness predominating in the governing structures of communities (imperious elite) in which people of mental labor do not differ in honesty, self-respect, altruism, nobility, and they at best simple are forced to sail in the stream of hypocrisy, acquisitiveness, covetousness, deception and corporative interests.
As for the rest of the population, it is basically a soil for representatives of both intellectual layers from which they themselves grew hereditarily, accidentally, or thanks to certain skills, qualities, lifted them above the average level, and this soil they can spoil or improve, inasmuch population are usually passive for the most part because of the employment by monotonous labor for survival and pro-feeding or falling into the category of lumpen, for whom everything became indifferent; obdurate traditions; religious delusions; predispositions to negative impact of active promotion of the information bluffs, which dupe it; lack of due education level, that does not allow it to use in large quantities social elevators and to set before itself the high purposes: similar sad and gloomy life does not promote transformation of all mass of people into bright, creative, vigorous and communicable individuals. Only several percent of such persons is allocated out of all of population.
The faceless masses of the people are gaining the development in the person of their representatives in power and in the informal intellectual opposition to the power. Informal intellectuals, pursuing mainly goals diametrically opposed to the goals of representatives of the imperious elite, are compelled to appeal to the people, proving own rightness and anti-people character of the elite-oppressor, and representatives of the power in its turn has to justify itself and stigmatize of the rotten dreamers-nonconformists, able only to speak, but not to operate and rule.
Thereby the people masses are being involved willy-nilly by energy of relatively few persons these into forward, and this motion can be evolutionary in case of the consent of the elite and the informal opposition to certain compromises in the interests of the working masses, but it can jump abruptly into a different direction if there is no such consent, which is reflected in the popular consciousness as an injustice, being transformed into more or less successful attempt of the removal of the ruling elite from power in the event of suitable conditions.
Nevertheless, the masses, in addition to being the basis for development, have their own trend, since they also have self-consciousness, though lower level in comparison with intellectuals. Therefore, the masses can independently, as it is happened repeatedly in China, and more often – in alliance with the informal intellectual opposition stratum, to promote the community's exit from the stagnant state into the development zone.
Follows from the arguments given above, that the factors described above, which authors-idealists consider to be the driving forces of the development of society, are one-sided and limited – they mostly lack the spirit of contradiction, which indicates that they are all products of the dynamics of human activity, but – not by internal basis of the development of society, i.e. – not by the true hidden source, the cause or driving force of the development of society.
A brief analysis of the factors that, according to their authors, are the driving forces of social development, shows their one-sidedness and external character, i.e. secondary nature of these factors with respect to the true driving force of the development of society, which we will try to reveal in the next lines.
2. Dynamics of local human communities in L. N. Gumilev's reflection
In the same context, it is worth turning to the life cycle of local human communities.
This cycle, calling it ethnogenesis, that is, the emergence, development and extinction of individual unified communities, tried to analyze and explain L. N. Gumilev with the help of introducing a new concept "passionarity".
Official science in the person of its representatives such as Yanov A. L, Klein L. S and many others rejected the passionary theory of the ethnogenesis of Gumilev because of its inconsistency with recognized criteria of scientific research, such as, for example, objectivity and verifiability.
On the one hand, it's hard not to agree with this, but on the other hand, not everything that does not meet the criteria of scientific research is pure fantasy, because the field of science is rather limited, and beyond it we may find a lot of interesting and unquestionable in the form of concrete facts and phenomena, which science cannot explain.
It is from this ultraboundary field of cognition that we criticize the concept of L. N. Gumilev, but not only, and we note both its negative and positive features, and try to give a slightly different explanation of the life cycle of local human communities in its basis, which Gumilev gives the name ethnoses, while official science as nations or peoples.
Each local community of people is a temporary, changing integrity, different from neighboring or more distant communities, because people in them are differently connected, that is, their connections, in particular, the organizational hierarchy, interests, values, customs, history of development, the main language communication, the territory of accommodation, religious views necessarily do not converge at least on several specified parameters.
Exact definition to these communities (ethnoses, peoples, nations), without having noted their essence with evidence, it is impossible to give – therefore it at anybody did not turn out – until as there will be clear a basis of development of these human formations, and this basis in any materialistic or idealistic theories is not looked through.
What is offered in this regard by L. N. Gumilev?
His concept, to be brief, boils down to the following.
1. Gumilev put forward the following mechanism of emergence, existence and disappearance of holistic communities, calling them ethnoses: "… the relative duration of different phases of ethnogenesis can be very different, the phase of historical formation is short; the process is very intensive. The phase of historical existence at most of ethnoses is longer previous because in this period forms a complex uniqueness of the ethnos, comes to an end its expansion and conditions for formation of superethnic cultural formations are created. The phase of historical decline can vary especially strongly on the duration, so how it depends as from intensity of internal processes of decomposition of ethnos, and from its historical destiny determined by extent of development of the material basis which is saved up for the previous period, physiographic conditions of an area, and a condition of adjacent ethnoses. At last, the phase of historical relicts already entirely depends on historical and geographical features of this territory [14, p. 55].
2. Dynamics of ethnogenesis is explained by Gumilev as the presence in each person of the fluctuations of some energy which undertakes from the biosphere of Earth and transformed by the person into work. Gumilev called this ability the passionarity: "An indispensable condition of emergence and the course of process of ethnogenesis up to its attenuation, after which the ethnos turns into a relict, is its passionarity, i.e. ability to purposeful overtension. We can explain it so far, having only accepted a hypothesis, i. e. the judgment which is generalizing noted facts, but not excluding a possibility of emergence of other, more graceful explanations: the passionarity is an organic ability of an organism to absorb energy of the external environment and to give it in the form of labour. In humans, this ability fluctuates so strongly that sometimes its impulses break the instinct of self-preservation, both individual and species, as a result of which some people, in our terminology – passionaries, commit and cannot fail to do the acts that lead to a change in their environment. This change concerns equally the environment and the relations in human communities, that is ethnoses. Therefore, the passionarity has the energetical nature, refracting through the mental features stimulating hyperactivity of carriers of this sign creating and destroying landscapes, peoples and cultures" [15, p. 50].
3. The push to increase the passionarity Gumilev sees in the external factor (bursts of cosmic radiation). The fact that the pushes have cosmic origin apparently results from the fact that Gumilev could not explain by earthly reasons the linear form and huge extent on the surface of the Earth of these pushes [16]. "One and the same push can create several foci of increased passionarity (and as a consequence – several super-ethnoses). So, the push VI touched Arabia, the valley of the Indus, Southern Tibet, North China and Middle Japan. "The same push can create several centers of the increased passionarity (and as a result – several superethnoses). So, push VI reserve Arabia, valley of Indus, Southern Tibet, Northern China and Central Japan. And in all these countries arose ethnoses-peers, but each of them had original stereotypes and cultures" [17, p. 14-17].
The logic of development of a civilization, according to Gumilev, consists in series of ethnoses, i.e. in replacement of the perished ethnoses by emerging ones, and the term of life of each ethnos is 1200-1500 years old.
Presented by Gumilev mechanism of emergence, existence and disappearance of holistic communities (ethnoses) – ethnogenesis, as it is evident at once, has in itself no strong basis, it is rather a set of the facts fastened with quite superficial considerations of the author.
But at first we will look at critical remarks of colleagues-scientists to address Gumilev's concept which concern a basis of ethnos, life cycle of ethnos, influence on this cycle of external factors, structure of life cycle of ethnos.
L.S. Klein points out that the basis of the ethnos, according to Gumilev, constituting the "geobiochemical energy of living substance" cannot be correlated with any kind of energy known to natural science [18, p. 228-246].
Shnirelman V. A. and Panarin S. A. state the absence of transparent, distinct and consistent definition of ethnos [19, p. 5-37].
M.I. Artamonov believes that Gumilev underestimates a role of social, cultural, religious and other non-biological factors in ethnogenesis, exaggerating a natural factor and equating ethnos and population [20, p. 75-77].
Yu.K. Efremov notes numerous mistakes of Gumilev at his definition of communication of ethnogenesis with landscapes [21, p. 77-80].
L.S. Klein sees no reason for subdivision the life cycle of the ethnos into four phases and for accommodate of this cycle into the interval of 1200-1500 years [18, p. 237-238].
A.L. Yanov believes that Gumilev equates events of ethnic and political history [22, p. 110-111].
L.S. Klein believes that the "passionaries" of Gumilev are identical to a sort of mutants who have acquired an increased ability to absorb the energy of the biosphere, and, accordingly, to stimulate the development of the ethnos [18, p. 238]. From the point of view of psychology, "passionaries" in Gumilev's representation are people who have a psychotype with a pronounced manic tonus.
L.C. Klein, L. A. Yanov, V. A. Shnirelman and S. A. Panarin also skeptical about the impact of the bursts of cosmic radiation as a push to the increase of passionarity [18, p. 238-239].
For its part, to this criticism we can add the following.
L.N. Gumilev is looking for the foundation of his concept of ethnogenesis in external factors, such as cosmic ray bursts, landscapes, historical and geographical features of a given territory, the state of adjacent ethnoses, etc., whereas external factors can really only manifest, being the opposing party, action on development both the person, and his communities of internal, hidden forces, strengthening or weakening this action, though, of course, out of the environment can be no question about development of something.
These forces or force Gumilev also did not discover. The only internal property that Gumilev discovers in a person is the presence in him of an oscillation of some energy of incomprehensible origin and properties that determines the absence or presence of passionarity: this unknown and unverifiable energy incomprehensibly how is being taken from the Earth's biosphere and is transformed by the person into work. Moreover, the fact of obtaining additional energy passes beyond the consciousness of a person. This conclusion seems completely unserious. Therefore, it turns out: it is not known what "destroys, – according to Gumilev, – the instinct of self-preservation."
Gumilev's view on the fixed time of the life cycle (existence) of the ethnos in the interval 1200-1500 years is also an erroneous view. It's not even about how many thousands of years it can exist – everything in our world of course – essence of the problem is completely different.
It is impossible to consider such complex and changeable formations – the holistic communities, – as a matter of fact. similar to the life of a living being – with its fixed cycle from birth to the period of blossoming with the subsequent sunset: ups and downs, a stable existence in the intermittent development of each community can be many for thousands of years, and we have many similar examples, unlike the rather labored examples given by Gumilev.
In the last section we will dwell on this problem in more detail.
It seems that all this criticism completely destroys the concept of Gumilev, reducing it to an amateurish craft for the needs of a semi-educated public.
Nevertheless, Gumilev was the only person from the entire scholarly community who tried to solve the problem quite original, which nobody has managed to solve so far.
Be that as it may, the questions assigned by him, have posed scientists and historians at a dead end, since they themselves were incapable of suggesting something new, except for the factors mentioned above, which they considered the driving forces of social development absolutely groundless, although within the framework of the materialist approach to the problem, Gumilev was is doomed to failure, inasmuch the materialists relying on approaches of natural sciences to an explanation of world processes, are forced to operate only with natural phenomena, and this circumstance does not allow them to be engaged in those phenomena that cannot be attributed to purely natural, which, for example, is human consciousness, the source of origin of which science is still not able to determine. Science is also incapable of understanding the essence of consciousness, although, definitely, it is consciousness that controls the human body, and not vice versa.