NEW – September 30, 2022
The problem statement
Those who went to school and university during the Soviet era remember that all socio-historical processes were then usually explained from the standpoint of political economy, as well as through the prism of the class struggle that “drives progress”. This approach was called Marxism-Leninism.
Since the Marxist-Leninist paradigm was discarded by Russian social studies during the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1991-1993, the paradigm of geopolitics has become fashionable. There was even an Academy of Geopolitical Problems headed by retired General L. Ivashov.
These two main approaches have not brought much success to either Russian or world social studies. The collapse of the USSR was largely due to the wretchedness and inertia of the political economic way of thinking, which hindered the process of an adequate understanding of reality. The country’s leadership, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, reached an ideological impasse because it was unable to overcome Marxist dogmas (the “very grey cardinal” of the Communist Party, M. A. Suslov, remained a symbol of orthodox Marxism in the memory of generations).
But also geopolitics, a newfangled doctrine with a touch of occultism, rather abstract and theoretical, especially promoted by the most educated muddle-head in Russia, the philosopher A. G. Dugin, did not really contribute to understanding the historical processes of our time. Because, in particular, it put at the forefront, again, the political and economic interests of countries, but only dictated by their geographical position. And it tried to explain the features of the political modus vivendi of this or that country, based on its location on the world map. All this is quite true and even banal, but it does not allow revealing the deep motives and roots of international politics.
In great fashion today (however, it has never gone out of fashion) is also a conspiracy approach-arguments about the “secret wars of the dark forces”, about the powers of the world behind the scenes, Masonic conspiracies, etc. But this is a separate topic of conversation, which should not be developed here. I will only say that for every conspiracy there is, as a rule, a counter-plot, and the side that stands closer to life and relies on a better known reality wins. Example: the KGB was no less capable than the CIA, but it lost out because of its dogmatic Marxist blindness and poor understanding of history and life. In particular (in many respects) because it did not pay due attention to the development of the national question – that is, ethnic policy.
The main reason for the lack of success of political economy and geopolitics as the main methods of understanding political reality is the lack of a clear understanding of who is really the subject of history, driving its development. From the point of view of the author of these lines, such subjects are ethnic groups, which, being born, gaining maturity and strength, decomposing and dying, enter into interaction with other ethnic groups and thus create the world history, which then cools down in textbooks. The whole sum of ethnic perturbations and interactions is precisely what the term “ethnopolitics”means. From this point of view, for example, the notorious geopolitics is nothing more than the projection of ethnopolitics on a geographical map.
This essay is intended to demonstrate the ethno-political background of some internationally significant trends, processes and events in order to convince the reader of the need to apply an ethno-political approach to the analysis and forecast of public life. This is especially important for those who are burdened with the responsibilities of high-ranking diplomats and military strategists. Since it is in these areas of activity that theoretical errors are particularly expensive for everyone.
Ethnopolitics is now at the forefront of current history. This topic is new to our political science, and yet we cannot do without it. And here’s why.
International relations not least of all means: interethnic. But this is often forgotten, meaning by this term relations between states, or rather – between governments (for example: under the loud name of the United Nations, in fact, the organisation of states is hidden). Meanwhile, the science of ethnopolitics tells us about the relations that arise precisely in the interactions of ethnic groups, taking into account all the features of national characters and the history of interethnic relations, often burdened by wars, invasions, annexations, ethnic and genocide, etc. Sometimes, from time to time, the understanding of the priority of ethnicity in international affairs breaks through in the speeches of analysts, who, for example, often talk about “Anglo-Saxons” as a subject of world politics. However, this understanding, which is certainly correct, is too private and, alas, does not apply in general to the theory of diplomacy and wars. But in vain, because it is the study of ethnopolitics that provides the right key to understanding both the past and the present.
Here are some examples.
Polish storyline
The history of Russian-Polish relations allows us to talk about more than a thousand years of fierce military clashes, during which ancient Kiev and Moscow were captured by the Poles, and Warsaw and Krakow by the Russians. The first Russo-Polish war was fought under Vladimir the Holy, and under his son Svyatopolk, Kiev was taken and ravaged by the Poles. We can also recall that the invasion of the Poles during the Time of Troubles cost the Russians the loss of from a third to half of the population of Moscow Rus, and the Polish yoke in Ukraine and Belarus was heavy and bloody. For their part, Poles remember the partitions of Poland, Warsaw drowned in Suvorov’s blood, or the Katyn tragedy. It is no wonder that Pushkin’s question of who will prevail – “the arrogant lach or the faithful ross” – has acquired new urgency in our days. After all, the historical experience of ethnic groups, which largely forms the “image of the enemy”, cannot be archived, it cannot be brushed aside.
Moreover, the irrepressible activity of the Poles in today’s international arena, their sharply increased passion, their claim to European leadership, their military and geopolitical ambitions – all this has a very real ethno-political background. The fact is that Poles in general were magically lucky in the 20th century: after some trials, fate presented them with incredibly generous gifts, as a result of which they consistently increased their power, passion and influence.
Firstly, the Poles regained their lost statehood during the First World War (in 1919). Secondly, after the Second World War, Poland grew up with huge territories of Pomerania, Silesia, and two-thirds of East Prussia. Until the end of the war, the Poles did not even dare to dream about these lands – for example, Pomerania and East Prussia were never part of Poland as such, since they were the territory of the Polabian Slavs, not the Poles. And thirdly, we should note such a great advantage as the transformation of Poland into a purely mono-national state, into an ethnocracy. Before the war, there lived, along with the Poles, two major, very influential nationalities-Germans (mainly in Silesia and the Hanseatic cities of Gdansk-Danzig, Szczecin-Stettin and Toruń-Thorn) and Jews, whose number exceeded three million. But all the Germans were evicted to Germany immediately after the war, and the Jews partly left for the USSR before or during the partition of Poland, partly were destroyed by the Germans, and the rest left for Israel, secretly encouraged to do so by the Gomułka government. Today in Poland, instead of three million, there are only less than 10,000 Jews. As a result, Poland became almost the most mono-national state in the world, having got rid of the most significant diasporas – German and Jewish – during the war and post-war reconstruction. What the Poles were unable to do when they were part of Tsarist Russia and even in Marshal Pilsudski’s independent Poland, they successfully accomplished in their own free Polish People’s Republic. If in 1921 Poles made up about 69% of the population, then according to the 2002 census – already 96.74%. The benefits of this transformation are huge and inexhaustible.
And now the multiplied Poles have found a new, much more extensive and strong state, in which they are and feel complete masters and a very consolidated nation. They have a common faith, a common culture, a common language, a common enemy (primarily Russia, Russians) and a developed national identity. They have safely taken their state into their own hands and are now behaving like a true master in their home. For example, they introduced a ban on abortions, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the birth rate, and therefore passionarity after that. And they put an unbreakable cordon on the way of coloured migrants, which will also contribute to the solidity and consolidation of the nation. Exemplary and far-sighted behaviour, it must be admitted, ensures the coming upswing. One can only envy and applaud!
What is surprising is that the Poles began to behave aggressively and pushy, declaring new claims to leadership in Europe, then to colossal reparations from Germany, or even to the territories of Ukraine and Belarus that were once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, on April 14, 2015, the non-governmental organisation “Restytucja Kresów”, that is, “Eastern Outskirts of Poland”, was established in Poland. According to Polish media, “Restytucja Kresów” has collected more than 1,000 packages of documents “for applying to the court for the return of property that ended up on the territory of Ukraine after World War II”. Currently, there are about 150,000 potential heirs of Western Ukrainian property in Poland, and the amount of claims of Polish heirs against Ukraine, which can be brought in almost all cities and territories of Western Ukraine, can amount to $5 billion. It is possible that the Poles will be able, if not to regain all of Western Ukraine, then to tear off a significant part of it (Volyn and the Lvov region). Let me remind you that the dreams of Poles in this direction have always extended. In January 1939, at negotiations with I. Ribbentrop in Berlin, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, J. Beck, said this: “Poland lays claim to Soviet Ukraine and access to the Black Sea”. Through his mouth, Poland dreamed of borders “from sea to sea”, which were to arise after the joint military operations of the Poles and the Nazis against Russia. It failed then, so why not try today, when Poland has become so loud and strong?
It should be noted that it was precisely the ethno-political and ethno-demographic circumstances that made the new Poland strong, passionate and dangerous – first of all for us, for Russians, with whom the Poles have centuries-old scores to settle. This obliges our military strategists and diplomats to pay close attention to Poland and take far-sighted preventive measures against its present and future aggression, which is beyond doubt.
This example perfectly shows the dependence of so-called geopolitics on the most real factor of world history – the ethno-political one.
Before moving on to other examples, I would like to share a hypothesis that emerged during many years of studying the patterns of ethnic politics.
The fact is that at one time an original-thinking Russian scientist – historian Lev Gumilyov – discovered the phenomenon of passionarity, which today has become a well-established concept in scientific discourse. It is constantly used by both historians and social scientists/political scientists, not to mention publicists. It is no longer necessary to explain it to everyone and interpret it as a term – this concept is so firmly “registered” in public consciousness, it has become commonplace.
However, Gumilyov, having made this truly brilliant discovery, failed to give it a congenial explanation. In search of the root causes that, in his opinion, explain the emergence and growth of passionarity of ethnic groups, “passion tremors”, he turned to any factors – from cosmic (solar and other radiation) to geological (nuclear decay and corresponding radiation in the depths of the Earth) – but not to those that actually provide the phenomenon of passionarity in reality.
In the opinion of the author of these lines, the answer lies in demography, which alone by its growth generates in ethnic groups a sense of indomitable, boundless vital force, growing tribal power. That’s what turns out to be a rise, or even an explosion of passionarity.
Of course, individual passionate people can appear even in a society gripped by apathy and the syndrome of survival or dying (“obscuration phase”, according to Gumilyov). However, the people as a whole cannot be passionate if they are on the wave of depopulation. Conversely, a nation that is on the rise either in terms of the birth rate of children, or in terms of the reunification of two or more sub-ethnoses of the same ethnic group (Mongols and Jurchens under Genghis Khan, Russians and Ukrainians under Aleksey Romanov, etc.) cannot but experience a rise in passionarity. The ethno-demographic balance, the fluctuations in demographic pressure – that’s just what explains the whole gamut of ethnic relationships, that’s what determines the winners and losers in the historical arena. The passionarity of peoples – a derivative of the demographic rise – plays a huge role in achieving these victories, it must be taken into account.
I think that excessive theorising is not necessary here. After all, “history is a practical philosophy that teaches us by example” (Lord Bolingbroke). So let’s turn to historical examples, including those from modern times, to make sure that the above is true.
Ukrainian storyline
The current Russo-Ukrainian war is no less striking example of the priority of the ethno-political and ethno-demographic factor than modern Poland (I will use this expression instead of the vaguely flirtatious Special Military Operation). The war that I, as an ethnopolitologist, confidently predicted back in the mid-1990s, when no one wanted to believe me (“this can’t happen, because it can never happen”) and everyone called me a madman and a Ukro-phobe.
The fact is that in the mid-1990s, statistics were already unambiguously positive: on the territory of Ukraine, the regions of Western Ukraine are relatively passionate (total birth rate = 1.7), and the regions of the Southeast are relatively non-passionate (1.2). This meant that the Banderist ideology, distilled by the Ukrainian diaspora of the United States and Canada and nurtured by it on the territory of Galicia, would rise and prevail throughout the country. A country that is doomed to total “banderisation” and, consequently, to turn into Anti-Russia by all criteria and parameters.
In addition, it was clear to me that in Ukraine we are witnessing the process of ethnogenesis – the formation of a new people, a new nation, and already in its third and final phase (according to Miroslav Hroch). This is accompanied by: 1) the consolidation of the Ukrainian ethnonation, 2) the construction of the Ukrainian national state, and 3) the creation of the Ukrainian political nation (in which other ethnic groups acquire Ukrainian patriotism, Ukrainian loyalty, and identify themselves as Ukrainians in the civil and political aspect).
For the first time in history, Ukrainians have found their own statehood, which they never had before. And in order to internally and psychologically justify their right to it, they are forced to build their new ethnic identity through the rejection of all Russian, all Russia-wide roots. They are doomed to etch out the Russian trace in all the main attributes of ethnicity – in language, culture and faith. It is vital for them to designate all Russianness, the entire Russian world, as their eternal enemy, because otherwise Ukrainians will not be able to assert and confirm their own identity – ethnic separateness, uniqueness, “self”. And then their ethnic statehood, ethnocracy (“Ukraine is for Ukrainians”), will crumble in its idea, like a house of cards and will not stand up to the test of historical truth.
Based on these two considerations, I understood that the ideology of “Ukrainism” is doomed to develop in an upward direction, also covering all the traditionally pro-Russian regions of Ukraine, subordinating them to its ideological influence. That is, inevitably, increasing from year to year, there will be the total Banderisation of the whole of Ukraine. This is exactly what happened, especially after 2014.
The problem is that ethnogenesis, which has developed to the final third stage, cannot be reversed. Things have gone too far for that. It is only possible to set boundaries for this process on the ground, to stop its expansion into more and more new territories. But this requires the division of Ukraine with the separation of the pro-Russian and pro-Russian-minded regions of the Left Bank and Novorossiya. This never belonged to Ukraine under the tsars, were historically Russian territory, and always advocated close ties with Russia and for Russian as a second state language.
That is why I have been saying and writing since the mid-1990s (when I fully realised this imperative) that the problem of Russian-Ukrainian relations has no other solution than the division of Ukraine. And this is possible only through war, since the Ukrainians will not part with these important regions voluntarily.
Unfortunately, in those years when such a division would have cost us little, including human costs, my voice was not heard. And in the quarter of a century that has passed since then, very significant changes have taken place in Ukraine, which greatly complicated the above-mentioned decision.
Firstly, the Russian population of the country has decreased in percentage terms: if according to the last Soviet census of 1989 22% were Russians, then according to the 2010 census – only 11%, twice (!) less. Secondly, in addition to the physical de-Rusification of Ukraine, there was a mental one, and at an accelerated pace according to the methods of real ethnocide. Thirdly, the Banderist propaganda machine has been working with monstrous intensity since 1991, leading more than two generations of Ukrainians through the natural academy of Russophobia, brainwashing them. (Just one example: a textbook on school history for the 5th grade counted four (!) Russo-Ukrainian wars, on its cover horse-back Cossacks chopped with sabers Moscow’s foot archers. And even Russian-born children studied in Ukrainian schools according to these textbooks, did exams on them.) For 30 years, Ukrainians have nurtured a rampant, irrational hatred of everything Russian – and they have succeeded very well. As a result, the same “political nation” of Ukrainians was rapidly formed that gave rise to the creator of the “Azov” battalion – a Russian guy from the Russian city of Kharkov, similar to his father and mother.
As a result of these ethno-political circumstances, public support for Russia, which was extremely high on the territory of the Left Bank and Novorossiya in the 1990s (I worked in 1997-1999 as head of the Department of Ukraine and Crimea, and then as Deputy Director for Science of the Institute of CIS Countries and recorded all this with my own observations), has also declined extremely today. This, in particular, was reflected in the catastrophic miscalculation of our diplomacy in Ukraine, where small officials of big business, like Chernomyrdin and Zurabov, sat in the chairs of ambassadors and consuls. They habitually thought that they would tie Ukraine to Russia through economic interest, through energy carriers, other resources, finances, etc. They habitually ignored the rights and interests of the Russian population. And they completely missed both the Russian movement in Ukraine and the ever-accelerating pernicious Banderisation of the country. These ignoramuses did not understand at all what was happening in this country, which was rapidly turning into Anti-Russia…
This is an emphatic example of the complete and shameful bankruptcy of the political-economic approach in the face of non-mastery of the ethno-political approach. For ethno-political problems are not, in principle, solved by political and economic methods. But those of our “diplomats” who were entrusted with Russian-Ukrainian relations did not know this, did not understand it, and did not want to understand it. As a result, we have what we have.
Unfortunately, today in Russian-Ukrainian relations we see a situation in which the ethno-political approach is either just as deplorably absent, or, even worse, it is present in a distorted, incorrect, anti-scientific form. I’ll explain what you’re talking about.
The defeat suffered by Russian and allied forces in the Kharkov region in early September, when in a matter of days we easily lost cities that we had spent months of hard fighting to capture, made me wonder: do we understand who we are fighting against and what we are fighting for? And are we fighting an enemy we don’t understand, and as we should, if we understood?
I think we don’t understand it, and we didn’t understand it from the very beginning. More precisely, since the publication of the ill-fated article by President Vladimir Putin “About the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, which, according to my information, was mainly written by his adviser Vladimir Medinsky. This, in turn, broadcast a widely spread false concept in our society, supported even by such serious experts as Egor Kholmogorov and Igor Shishkin, and largely shared by the entire Russian society.
According to this absolutely false and even heretical concept, from the standpoint of the science of ethnopolitics, “Russians and Ukrainians are one people, a single whole “(I quote Putin); and “the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between parts of, in fact, one historical and spiritual space” is the result of only “purposeful work of those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity”, and not the natural-historical process, as it really is. And that supposedly Ukraine is Russia, although somewhat different, is not so. It’s simply that Ukrainians as a people and Ukraine as a country have fallen into a kind of temporary fog, because they have fallen under the influence of frenzied, purposeful nationalist propaganda. Inspired by the Anglo-Saxons and waged by the Ukronazi thugs paid for by them – the last of Banderists followers, Hitler’s lackeys, who from time immemorial have hated everything Russian and dreamed of wiping the Russian world off the face of the earth. Allegedly, the zombified Ukrainians turned into mankurts, forgot about our Russian-wide roots, rejected their Russian-wide identity and betrayed our Slavic brotherhood and unity, our glorious past.
This is the rigid, crusty attitude of people who live in the past and happily accept wishful thinking. As long as the leadership of our country adheres to such views, we will not see either victory in the war or a solution to the Russian-Ukrainian problem as a whole. Because these beautiful-minded arguments, which are pleasing to the heart of a Russian person in Russia (but by no means a Ukrainian in Ukraine), completely ignore the fundamental, deep and irreversible ethno-political changes that have taken place with former Malorossiya-Ukrainians, who today in their vast majority have become Bandera-Ukrainians.
In the information war, the winner is the party that relies on objective reality and is closer to life. Such a reality in Ukraine is the irreversibly untwisted process of Ukrainian ethnogenesis, the formation of a new people – Ukrainian, a new nation – Ukrainian. Therefore, the propaganda of Banderists, which develops the idea of Ukrainism, has ground under its feet and is directed to the future, it is attractive to the masses of Ukrainians. In Ukrainian nationalism today there is drive, energy. What can it be replaced with, what can it be counter-balanced with? The idea of “friendship of peoples” is not comparable in terms of energy and fascination.
We do not have the right to live by our past beliefs and our “wishlist”, but we must accept reality as it is if we want to win. You can’t keep repeating what has long been known. What was there was gone. At a time when life has already gone far ahead, and many realities have changed dramatically. It is necessary to realise and deeply assimilate, first of all, the following.
First of all. In our time, Ukrainians are already a new separate people, hatched from the broken egg of the former Russian-wide community. A people whose self-consciousness and existence are possible only on the basis of the elimination and anathematisation of the Russian principle, rejection of everything Russian-wide. Ukrainians will never and for no reason recognise us as brothers in blood and culture, and will never return to the Russian-wide fold. You can’t cram them in, just as you can’t cram the caviar they’ve swept back into the salmon.
Ukraine will never again be a friendly state to Russia. It can only be either big and strong, or small and weak, but in any case, it is an anti-Russian country. Our interest, of course, is to weaken and reduce it as much as possible. And to do this, it’s necessary to radically change our attitude towards Ukrainians.
Hatred of the enemy is if not the main thing, then in any case a prerequisite for victory. The hatred of Ukrainians towards us today is simply off the scale. The proof is the bitterness with which they fight, the intransigence that is felt even in prisoners, in saboteurs on the “liberated” territories. But how can we hate them if we are “one people”? Hate someone – yourself? Shoot yourself? This attitude demotivates and demobilises our soldiers and officers.
Instead, the entire leadership of the country and the army, starting with the commander-in-chief, should repeat the daily mantra: Banderists are not a brother to the Russian, but a deadly and implacable enemy, death to them! This is the only way to win.
Secondly. It should be understood that the Ukrainian people are now in the last phase of ethnogenesis. It has gained its sovereignty and is completing the construction of a national state-ethnocracy, while transforming from a people into a nation – a metamorphosis akin to the transformation of a chrysalis into a butterfly. For the first time in their entire history and prehistory, which began twice (the second time at the end of the 18th century, when the Ukrainian language also appeared), Ukrainians gained their statehood. Ideally, every ethnic group strives for this, but not everyone reaches the goal, and sometimes loses what they have achieved, as, for example, the Scots. This desire is natural and irresistible. Therefore, for Ukrainians, this war is a patriotic one, and it will not be easy to cope with them. But it is necessary, because for us this war is also a domestic one; we need to understand this, we need to talk about it.
It should be emphasised that such a metamorphosis was experienced not only by Ukrainians from the former peoples of the USSR: the same thing happened, for example, with Kazakhs and Azerbaijanis. Such peoples did not exist even a hundred years ago – but now they do, and it is impossible to dissuade them from this. The responsibility for these changes lies entirely with the Marxist Bolsheviks, with their blind, criminally short-sighted approach to the national question. And the reason for this is that the political-economic approach to life professed by Marxists is perpendicular to the ethno-political approach, radically contradicts it. Therefore, they do not have, have not had and will never have the right key to the national theme. Theorists of Marxist leaven should not be allowed to solve ethnopolitical problems at gunpoint: they guarantee failure and embarrassment, if nothing worse. This is exactly what we see in the example of Ukraine, because in Soviet universities, including the KGB Higher School, political economy was studied diligently, and ethnopolitics was not taught at all. The lack of ethnopolitical education and knowledge severely affected the course of events of the so-called Special Military Operation.
Do Ukrainians – a new people that has developed over the past two hundred years or so – have the right to their own state? Yes, absolutely. This, by the way, was very clearly and correctly stated by President Vladimir Putin in that very article:
“Everything is changing. This includes countries and societies. And of course, a part of one nation in the course of its development – due to a number of reasons, historical circumstances – can at some point feel, realise itself as a separate nation. What to relate to this?
There can only be one answer: sincerely!
Do you want to create your own state? You are welcome! But under what conditions?
Let me remind you here of the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of the new Russia, the first mayor of St. Petersburg A. Sobchak. As a highly professional lawyer, he believed that any decision should be legitimate, and therefore in 1992 expressed the following opinion: the founding republics of the Union, after they themselves annulled the 1922 Treaty, should return to the borders in which they joined the Union. However, all other territorial acquisitions are a subject for discussion and negotiations, because the basis has been annulled.
In other words, leave with what you came with. This logic is hard to argue with. I will only add that the Bolsheviks, as I have already noted, began the arbitrary redrawing of borders even before the creation of the Union, and all manipulations with territories were carried out voluntarily, ignoring the opinion of people.”
Putin’s words are accurate and oblige us all and him to do a lot. The idea expressed in them contradicts the main message of the article about the supposedly united people. Because in these few but weighty words of the president, the very foundation of the current state of Ukraine is destroyed, in full accordance with historical truth and justice. Yes, we recognise the legitimacy and natural justification of the Ukrainian ethnogenesis, since it has gone so far. Yes, Ukrainians have the right to consider themselves a separate nation, and they also have the right to their own national state. But we put the question of the borders of this state squarely, understanding their current illegality, injustice and unnatural nature.
I agree with this 100%. Because what is said is dictated by the laws of ethnopolitics. This is how everything should be understood, approved, and it is from this understanding that we should proceed in our actions! This is the kind of President Putin I voted for.
But what is the conclusion? There is only one. The division of Ukraine is an inevitability, an imperative that cannot be circumvented. One doesn’t have to shout about it, but one has to do it. I believe that Putin understands this too. I believe that he will not succumb to the terrible pressure that is being exerted on him from various sides, including from some close associates. And it will go all the way. The Ukrainian (Banderist) state must be dismantled and divided.
Carthage must be destroyed!
Asian-African storyline
At the end of the topic of the ethno-political approach as the main one, the basic one for any, especially military, analyst – a few words about the world situation. I have to resort to autocitising.
Today, there are several zones on the world map that are characterised by purely political turbulence and instability. These are, first of all, the Middle East (the Arabian Peninsula plus North Africa) and Central Asia, Afghanistan, and some regions of Central Africa. In explaining this fact, political scientists usually resort to whatever arguments they want, but they always avoid looking at the root of the problem. And it, meanwhile, lies on the surface. One has only to look at some statistics to discover the basic fact: in these zones there is a very high demographic pressure, which is constantly growing.
A particularly striking example of demographic growth is the Middle East and North Africa, just those territories where the “Arab Spring” broke out, smoothly turning into extermination wars. Of course, we cannot discount the provocative role of the United States, which launched the war in Iraq and inspired the coup in Libya and the massacre in Syria. But they only played the role of a detonator, put, so to speak, a match to the fire, which was formed without their participation, by the aforementioned countries themselves. Judge for yourself.
Take for example the four countries that were seething with blood in the spring of 2013. In Egypt, the average annual population growth is 1.3 million people, currently the density in the Nile Valley (the rest is desert) has reached 1,700 people/km2. During the years of Mubarak’s rule, the number of Egyptians has almost doubled. In Tunisia, from 1997 to 2010, the population grew from 9.218 to 10.6 million (a figure that seems small due to the huge labor emigration, but there is an abundance of young people). Libya’s population has quadrupled since 1961, from 1.4 million to 5.7 million. Yemen has an annual growth rate of 3.8 %, one of the highest in the world! In just ten years from 1986 to 1996, the population there grew from 9.27 to 16 million people, and today they are already 30.5 million.
Finally, in Syria, there are 2.85 children per woman, which is slightly less than in Yemen (3.1), but significantly higher than the global average (2.42). Other countries in the region are not far behind. Today, there are 2.55 children per woman in Morocco, 2.45 in Tunisia, about the same number in Libya and Mauritania, 3.5 in Iran, and even higher birth rates in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, because this is encouraged by the government.
And here is what is happening from this point of view in Afghanistan. The civil war there began in 1978, when the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan came to power in the so-called April Revolution. Since then, the war has continued continuously, sometimes with the participation of foreign military personnel (the USSR, NATO, the United States), or even without it, and the end is not yet in sight. The country has lost many people in 43 years of incessant carnage. Accurate statistics are almost nonexistent, but only for the period from 1980 to 1987, according to USAID, 875,000 people died, and according to Gallup research – 1,200,000 people. The number of refugees was already estimated at 6.2 million in 1990. And in the future, the loss figures only grew. But for all that, if the first census of Afghanistan in 1979 counted 15,540,000 people in the country, today (July 2021) there are already 37,466,414 people – a more than two-fold increase during the endless war. At the same time, since 2019 alone, the population has already increased by at least 5,240,000. The annual increase is estimated at 2.6%, the birth rate is 45.5 per 1000 (5th place in the world), the total birth rate is 6.5 births per woman (4th place in the world).
Impressive, isn’t it? It’s phenomenal! War is going on, people are dying en masse, like flies, and the population is growing, as God grant us, Russians!
The population of all Islamic countries continues to grow. It should also be borne in mind that Turkey is also covered by a similar process: according to the Turkish Institute of Statistics, the population increased by 1 million people in 2019 (in general, the country’s population, which was 77,695,904 people in 2013, was already 83,154,997 people in 2019), and this increase is about a million per year – held since 1975-1980. The total birth rate is quite high – 2.07. The influx of immigrants from Syria, ethnically, confessionally and civilisationally close to the Turks, contributes to the overall picture. The territory of Turkey is relatively small, so the population density (and with it the demographic pressure) is very high: 108.9 people/km2. It is very important to note that the number of Turkish youth is huge: people under the age of 15 make up 26.6% of the population. The national composition of Turkey is quite diverse, with ethnic Turks making up only a quarter of the population. But: Article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines all citizens of the country as Turks, and Turkish is the only official language. This is the political nation of this unitary country.
A similar situation has developed in Africa among states with a black population, marked by bloody excesses, civil conflicts, etc. For example, in the Central African Republic over 30 years (1985-2015), the population doubled; in Rwanda over 40 years (1972-2012) – tripled; in Somalia over 20 years (1990-2010) – approximately 1.5-fold, and by 2100, according to forecasts, will grow to 200 million people; well, in Ethiopia by that time there will already be 400 million (there is an annual increase of 3.2%, an average of 10,600 children are born per day). It is not difficult to predict that similar excesses will unfold sooner or later in Niger (6.91 children per 1 woman), Congo (5.7), Uganda (5.45), Benin (5.47), Mali (5.63), Mozambique (4.89), Guinea-Bissau (4.72), Nigeria (4.67), Sudan (4.66), Zambia (4.63), Tanzania (4.45), Ethiopia (4.07), etc.
The whole secret of the Middle East socio-political explosion, the new Arab and Turkish passion, the bloody wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Rwanda, etc. – lies in these figures, what can I say! This is a typical dialectical leap, the transition from quantity to quality. What exactly is it? This is clear to everyone, even a novice biologist, and after all, people, let me remind you, are, first of all, biological beings who fully obey the laws of Nature common to all living things.
So, what happens in any biological population, from locusts and lemmings to humans, when its density exceeds a certain critical value, a certain “limit of permissible concentration”? When all individuals begin to feel their skin: something we have become too much in this territory?
The answer is known, it is unchanged in millions of years. When the population size exceeds reasonable permissible limits, becomes excessively excessive, Nature always includes the following three regulatory mechanisms:: 1) war, 2) migration and 3) epidemic/pandemic (and in the animal world epizootic). Three mechanisms – no more, no less.
This is a simple but absolute law of biology. Today we witness the full rampage of all three of these mechanisms, which have powerfully untwisted their flywheels. Both the pandemic and the explosive uncontrolled migration of colored masses that have multiplied beyond measure, and the continuous wars that cover the relevant regions – all this is obvious and does not require special optics to appear as evidence.
On the example of the above-mentioned countries of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, which are burning with bloody fires, we see the effect of this law once again. (By the way, revolutions and civil wars among the rapidly multiplying peoples of Latin America – in the 20th century, its population quadrupled!) The situation there resembles the well-known fairy tale about a magic pot that kept cooking porridge, and it gradually overflowed the kitchen, then the house, the street, the city… Only in relation to the rapidly multiplying human “porridge” there is no one to shout: “Pot! Don’t cook any more!” – and no one will listen.
As long as the population of all these countries is growing, as long as they have someone to fight, someone to put in the furnace of war, they will inevitably do it and the war of all against all will not stop. And this is also, perhaps (if we keep in mind the fate of the entire anthroposphere) – the best option for natural regulation of the problem of overpopulation. Because both of the other options don’t really work, they don’t fulfill their purpose. Exactly.
Migration, given the limited territory of the planet Earth, is only a palliative, a temporary remedy that does not solve the problem of overpopulation in principle. We can see that the developed countries of the West, Europe and America experiencing depopulation of indigenous autochthonous peoples have the opposite situation: there, in the 20th century, in some countries earlier, in others later, a demographic vacuum appeared everywhere, attracting and dragging in the excess population of the Earth from other countries. The difference in demographic pressure is too great, the balance is not in favour of white Caucasians, and the process that is disastrous for them has acquired the status of uncontrolled, unstoppable. Human coloured “porridge” is pouring out of the “pots” of Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, filling Europe, spilling over its borders and creating a threat not only to the existence of the white race, but to the whole world as a whole.
Until recently, some 70 years ago, Europeans, using their leadership in the scientific, technical and military spheres, could have put up physical barriers to these masses. But they did exactly the opposite, for in the wake of post-war anti-fascism, which became psychotic, they opened their gates wide to uninvited guests, especially fearing accusations of racism. If the Europeans immediately put up a barrier to coloured migration, closing the demographic explosion of coloured peoples within the natural boundaries of their historical area of residence, then mutual armed extermination in this area would take on a homeric scale. And Europe, observing from the outside and regulating the process as much as possible (for example, regularly arming all participants in the conflict), would be able to preserve its identity. But mass migration to the West has softened local conditions, reduced the intensity of mutual destruction in the South and East of the planet. However, the population that remains there and continues to grow is quite enough to make these regions feverish and “bloodletting” does not stop, even if not to the extent to solve the problem.
Well, the third population regulator – the pandemic, as we have already understood from the example of the coronavirus, mows down everyone in a row, without analysing skin colour, which means it can also not serve as a regulator of the birth rate of people of colour, which threatens the whole world. It is possible that some secret laboratories (both in the West and in the East) are working on creating deadly infections with selective and targeted racial and ethnic effects, but we have not yet seen anything successful in this regard.
Thus, of all the three natural mechanisms of regulating the ethno-demographic balance – war, migration, and pandemic – the first of these does not yet have a serious competitor. In this light, the dependence of current political turbulence and instability on population growth is quite obvious. For all this means that it is at least premature and naive to expect a reduction in the intensity of armed confrontations in the East and South.
Conclusion
So, when discussing international relations, it is necessary to look in media res – at the very heart of things: at the essence of ethnic history, ethnic interactions. This means, in turn, that the political-economic, geopolitical and conspiracy approaches, although they have the right to exist, should not come to the fore, giving way to the ethno-political approach. This is especially important in situations fraught with war, as we see in the example of Ukraine, where theoretical omissions caused by ignoring or misreading ethnic and political circumstances turn into military failures and losses.
These problems are not the only consequence of the ethno-demographic factor. Its role in the history of mankind is seen far, many times and in various ways. We have just gone over a number of convincing examples in this regard, although we could cite hundreds of others. Some of this is collected for those interested in my article “Ethnodemographic balance – a decisive factor in the history of the world”, quoted above.
Without knowing, without understanding the basics of the science of ethnopolitics, without applying an ethnopolitical approach to solving complex problems of diplomacy and war, one cannot hope for a positive result of one’s efforts. There is no doubt about it.
That is why I decided to write the article “Ethnopolitical approach – an urgent need in modern international politics and political science”.
Aleksandr Sevastyanov
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