Why is Russia's development winding like a pendulum? This is mainly restricted by Russian culture and national character.
Historically, Russian culture has been impacted by both eastern and western cultures. As Berdyaev, a famous Russian philosopher and thinker, brilliantly pointed out: "Russia is not a purely European nation, nor is it a purely Asian nation. Russia is an inseparable part of the world, a huge east and west, which combines two worlds. In the Russian spirit, the East and the West are always wrestling with each other. "
The development of Russian nationality and culture is later than that of western European countries and eastern countries. Therefore, before Gullas formed its own national culture, it was attacked by both western culture and eastern culture, and planted the seeds of dual cultural development. In 982 AD, Russia had written language and its culture was still in its infancy. At that time, Vladimir, the Grand Duke of Kiev, designated the Orthodox Church centered on Constantinople as the state religion, and injected the genes of western Christian culture into Russian culture. From the end of 17 to the beginning of 18, the reform of Peter I initiated the Europeanization process of Russia. Later, Catherine II carried out "enlightened autocracy" and Alexander I carried out limited free reform of serfdom. At the same time, under the background of the gradual development of the Russian Enlightenment, aristocratic liberal intellectuals, aristocratic bourgeois December revolutionaries and civilian intellectuals have shouted and even shed blood against feudal serfdom. Western culture is gradually integrated into Russian technology, administration, science, education, ideology, culture, art and lifestyle, which has a profound impact on the development of Russian society. However, before the middle of19th century, the development of Russian capitalist economy was always bound by feudal serfdom, so western culture lacked a broad social foundation and its operation was limited to the upper class.
Another soil for the development of Russian culture is the oriental culture accumulated by the long-term implementation of the oriental political system. Russia has a vast territory, a cold and harsh climate, and objectively needs a strong centralized state to govern. Secondly, following the patriarchal clan system, the peasant village community system also provided an economic foundation for the centralized and autocratic system in the East. /kloc-In the 3rd century, King Khan of the Tatar of Mongolia conquered the Russian country which was in a state of civil war and division, and ruled Russia with the absolute authority of the monarch, which made the Russian Grand Duke gain a demonstration of autocratic rule and imitated and developed into a centralized system in the later national development. Russian centralization of authority has been similar to the political system in the East, which laid a political foundation for the czar's serfdom. During the centuries-long czar serfdom ruled Russian society, "centralization" and "autocracy" accumulated into the "roots" of Russian cultural development. Berdyaev brilliantly pointed out that "Russian-style ideology is always centralized".
Another feature of Russian culture is the lack of rational spirit. In Russia, until the 1960s of 19, the czar's autocratic system based on feudal agricultural production mode was implemented. The simple and repetitive feudal agricultural production mode, the closed life of the farmers in the village community, the low culture, the absolute rule of the patriarchal village community system and the autocratic rule of the tsar over the farmers made the spirit of rational exploration weak, and generations followed suit. two
So, how does Russian culture affect the historical development of Russian society?
The concepts, consciousness and thoughts accumulated in Russia's long history have nourished Russia's national character. First of all, the duality of Russian culture, in the Russian national spirit, is externalized as the contradiction between the integration and collision of eastern and western values. Secondly, the Russian nation lacks rational spirit, which makes its thinking "easy to go to extremes" and "Russians are extremists".
Another feature of Russian national character is development. Born in the Eurasian Plain, Ross forced the Russians to drive away the invaders in self-defense and firmly defended his place of residence. At the same time, because the Gulos live in the endless plains, they lack the protection of mountains and rivers and barriers, just like their homes without walls, they are often entangled in insecurity. Therefore, finding a safe border through expansion constitutes the original motive of Russia's external expansion. In addition, as a landlocked country, Russia's economic development is seriously restricted by backward and inconvenient land transportation. Opening the sea to promote the development of foreign trade has become the economic motivation of Russia's foreign expansion. Finally, the thought of "salvation", which boasts that Moscow is the third Roman-Christian center since the15th century, and the related "Great Russianism" have always been the ideological and theoretical basis for the Russian czar to expand his territory and aspire to play a special role in the world.
The Russian nation's consciousness of "national salvation mission" and great power, as well as its backward economic and social development compared with the west, are plagued by three pairs of contradictions in its economic and political development.
Marx pointed out that Russian rulers have "the purpose of never changing and never ignoring-Russian world hegemony". The first contradiction encountered by Russia in its development is that its feudal serfdom mode of production lags behind the capitalist mode of production, and its expansion goal is often fettered by the lack of national strength. /kloc-At the end of 0/7, Peter the Great failed in his two expeditions to Crimea, which made the Russian rulers deeply feel this contradiction. Especially with the deepening of expansion, Russia has a direct conflict with the capitalist powers that seek raw materials and commodity markets through external expansion. When feudal serfdom confronted the capitalist mode of production, this contradiction was pushed to the extreme.
In order to solve this contradiction, a second pair of contradictions arises: opening the door to western culture in order to enhance national strength is always restricted by the eastern political system. Russian scholars point out that since Peter, the reform in Russian history has always been accompanied by the anti-reform of the upper class.
Russia is restricted by dual cultural factors, which leads to the third pair of contradictions in its development: closing the door of westernization and shutting itself out of western civilization will widen the gap with the advanced West, and will be more severely challenged by the latter, forcing Russia to reopen the door of westernization. In order to safeguard the rights and privileges of aristocratic landlords, the czar government had to adopt bourgeois reforms in management, justice and education, so as to adapt Russia's autocratic system to the needs of capitalist development.
In a word, the above three pairs of contradictions are tantamount to restricting the internal logic of Russian historical development. The extreme personality of the Russian nation makes people often choose a social system that is completely opposite to the current social system during the period of social upheaval: at the beginning of the 20th century, people chose socialism, and at the end of the 20th century, they completely abandoned socialism and went to capitalism, pushing the pendulum development of Russia to the extreme. The pendulum of Russia's development reflects the response of Russia's unique national personality to the temptation, challenge and extrusion of external civilization, and reflects Russia's arduous and tortuous exploration of its own development path.