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3 - Third Phase (Early Antiquity)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 02 December 2009
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- 26 August 1999, pp 21-36
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Summary
Since the exploited class is clearly shaped in contrast to the class of freemen (as yet undifferentiated), the system of governing the society becomes institutionalised, it receives a constant, generally recognised structure and an apparatus for coercion; in other words, it becomes a state. When, on the one hand, a clearly defined exploited class is formed, and on the other hand so too is the state apparatus, then the Second Phase of historical development is over, and the Third Phase begins – the Phase of Early Antiquity, the first stage of class society.
If we assume that a mode of production is dependent, first, on the character of property relations, and, secondly, on the type of the combination between the labour force and the means of production, then we must regard antiquity not as one mode of production (certainly not a slave-owning mode of production), but as two clearly distinguished phases. Conventionally, we will call these the Third Phase (the Early, or Communal Antiquity), and the Fourth Phase (the Late, or Imperial Antiquity).
The transitional stage between the Primitive Communal, or Second Phase and the Ancient Communal, or Third Phase begins with the creation of big economies. They are organised either for the maintenance of the cult of the main community deity, or for the chief with his entourage. Such a chief is in the Russian scholarly tradition termed ‘czar’, i.e. emperor (from Latin caesar); but their power was by means imperial, and they rather resemble the early medieval kings (kuningaz); this term is actually usual in the Western scholarly literature. One might also call them ‘princes’.
6 - Sixth Phase (the Stable Absolutist Post-Medieval Phase)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 02 December 2009
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- 26 August 1999, pp 144-192
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As soon as we pass to the Sixth Phase of the historical process, we encounter a terminological difficulty. There is no doubt that so-called ‘modern history’ (which in Europe lasted from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth) is a separate Phase of the historical process. However, the term ‘modern’ is, for several reasons, undesirable. Since a considerable part of humanity is already experiencing the Eighth Phase, how can we call the Sixth Phase ‘modern’? We certainly have to invent another term. Above, we regarded the societies traditionally termed ‘Primitive’ as belonging to the ‘Primitive’ and the ‘Primitive Communal’ Phases, and the societies traditionally treated as ‘Ancient’ we have subdivided into ‘Early Antiquity’ and ‘Imperial Antiquity’. In both cases we introduced to the names of the Phases with even numbers an additional defining feature, referring to the type of the societal organisation but not to the type of production itself, or, in Marxist terminology, not to the ‘basis’ but to the ‘superstructure’. Nevertheless, from the historical point of view, our classification was justifiable, because the system of societal organisation appears as a most important classificational feature.
I suppose that the same method may be applied to choosing terms for the Fifth and the Sixth Phases. We did not call the Fifth Phase ‘Early Medieval’ (in parallel with ‘Early Antiquity’) but simply ‘Medieval’. This corresponds to the European historiographic tradition according to which (at least as regards Europe) ‘Early Medieval’ means solely the period from the creation of the Germanic kingdoms to the end of the Crusades.
2 - Second Phase (Primitive Communal)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 13-20
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Summary
The prehistory of civilisation first began in the Near East, where in the mountains surrounding the Fertile Crescent were found wild cereals, and animals comparatively easy to domesticate: sheep, ancestors of domestic cattle, pigs and donkeys. Here also existed soils suitable for artificial sowing. The conditions were most favourable for the development of production with all the ensuing circumstances. On the American continent, the inhabitants of the more favourable regions had at their disposal such domesticable plants as Indian corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts and cocoa-beans, but their cultivation demanded technical developments; therefore, a level similar to that of Sumer or Pharaonic Egypt was reached by the local population about 4,000 years later – a minor time span compared to the entire history of mankind.
According to the formerly accepted Marxist theoretical periodisation, until the beginning of ‘class civilisation’ (i.e. mainly in the dry subtropical zone), the whole territory inhabited by mankind was dominated by a ‘primitive communal’ mode of production.
A mode of production, by definition, depends on the type of property relations, on the type of the combination of labour power with the means of production, on the forms of connection between the producers, the class structure of the society and the motives and goals of economic activity. In the case of ‘primitive communal’ society, we should of course drop the class structure of the society from the definition. But even with this correction, we actually cannot assign all the ‘pre-class’(or ‘pre-urban’) societies to one and the same mode of production.
5 - Fifth Phase (the Middle Ages)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 56-143
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Modern historical terminology and periodisation is usually (at least in this country) based on the experience of Europe alone: as to the Asiatic societies, the Marxists class them by ‘formations’ quite mechanically; certain forms are explained as ‘feudal’, although very often in these societies a feudal class in the European sense did not exist.
Actually, during this particular segment of the historical process it was Europe that differed considerably from the rest of the world, while the Asiatic ways of development were typical. The peculiarity of European development was partly conditioned by the tradition of ideas belonging to Imperial Antiquity; the breaking with the traditions of polis structures and ideology was an immensely slow process; moreover, the historical situation in which the crisis of Imperial Antiquity took place was very specific. The specificity of the situation was created, first, through the occupation of considerable territories which had already passed both the Chiefdom Phase, and the Early as well as the Imperial Antiquity, by Germanic and Slavic Late Primitive chiefdoms which at that time were going through a very mobile stage; and secondly, by devastating intrusions of nomadic hordes.
But before we examine the causes, the prerequisites, and the peculiarities of the next, Fifth, Phase of the historical process, as it developed among the agricultural and industrial population, it is advisable to dwell (very shortly) on the peculiar nomadic variety of the human race.
The division of labour between agriculturists and artisans, on the one hand, and the cattle-breeders on the other goes back to the Second (Primitive Communal) Phase.
Preface
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp xi-xii
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Throughout my life I have studied the socio-economic history of the Ancient World, and in recent years its social psychology as well. At last I arrived at a concept of how the historical process worked – at least in the period from Palaeolithic times to the end of Antiquity. It seemed to me that during this period the process consisted not of two phases as is assumed in Marxist historiography but of four regular stages of world-wide valence. The probable mechanism of change also seemed clear.
Then I asked myself whether this concept of the mechanism responsible for phase change could be applied to the later history of mankind. Although not an expert in the history of Middle Ages and the modern period, I tried nevertheless to trace an outline of the historical process during these phases, drawing on the work of a variety of authors. It appeared to me that the historical process after Antiquity could be subdivided into four more phases, each with its own mechanism of emergence and function …. The result was a short overview of the whole history of mankind, and of the laws governing it – not only economic and socio-economic laws but also socio-psychological ones.
For this overview of world history (perhaps too hastily conceived by me) I am solely responsible. A detailed account of my views as regards the first four phases can be found in my earlier published, less ambitious, work on more specific subjects. As regards the later phases, I have omitted all references in order not to make any of my colleagues answerable for my own, possibly faulty, conclusions.
Index
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 339-355
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Foreword by Geoffrey Hoskins
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp vii-x
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The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Marxist monopoly on intellectual life freed Russian social scientists and historians to deploy a broader range of theoretical approaches to the history of their own country and the world. When one couples this renewed freedom with the very distinctive personal experience of those who have lived through the Soviet experiment, the results are sometimes remarkable. The Paths of History is one of the most intriguing and innovative fruits of this intellectual and spiritual milieu.
Its author, Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff, was born on 12 January 1915 in Petrograd, the son of a bank employee. His father had enough experience of finance and banking to be sent as an employee to the Commercial Department of the Soviet embassy in Christiana (Oslo). Thus Igor received his primary education at a Norwegian school, and learned to speak Norwegian fluently, the first of the many languages which he displayed a remarkable ability and desire to learn in later life. (At the age of seventy-three he confessed to a colleague who was learning modern Greek: ‘I'm always jealous of someone who knows a language I don't!') His highly unusual linguistic range has enabled him to penetrate the mentality of many different cultures, and this undoubtedly underlies the wide sweep of human sympathy evident in The Paths of History. One of his acquisitions was English, which he knows so well that he has translated some of the works of Keats and Tennyson, and was able to prepare this translation of The Paths of History largely himself.
7 - Seventh Phase (Capitalist)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 193-323
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The diagnostic features of the Seventh Phase are as follows: transformation of the natural sciences into a productive force (invention of the steam engine, the railway, the steamship, later the internal combustion engine, electric light, the telegraph, the telephone, etc.; introduction of science into industrial production and agriculture); rapid growth of armaments throughout the period (improved rifle firearms, smokeless powder, long-range artillery, ironclad battleships, at first powered by steam and later by diesel; the invention of the aeroplane, the tank, chemical warfare); the juxtaposition of the bourgeoisie and the hired workers as the two main social classes; the coming into being of an intelligentsia; a tendency (although as yet not strongly felt) towards disintegration of the peasantry into the same two classes of entrepreneurs and hired workers; preservation, on the periphery of the society, of the former classes of the Sixth Phase; the growing importance of non-religious ideologies, both those accepting and vindicating the existing development of the historical progress (such as positivism), and those already alternative to them (such as Marxism); these ideologies grew and were strengthened at the same time as traditional religions were growing weaker; however, the latter did retain, in different degrees, their official status, and to a certain degree they were still determining factors in the formation of national character; creation of republican states, or of monarchies with the monarch's powers very limited by constitution; a complete parcelling, between the capitalist colonial powers, of the regions which had not yet reached the Seventh Phase; armed rivalry between the societies that had reached it; creation of colonial empires, or a struggle for their institution; wars on a vast scale with enormous destruction and loss of life.
Contents
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp v-vi
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Introduction
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 1-9
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Ahi quanto a dir qual'era e cosa dura Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte Che nel pensier rinnuova la paura.
DanteEvery science is cognition of a process or movement. A natural process usually has clear-cut phases of development, and may be oscillatory or variative, though delimited by certain physically conditioned constants and natural laws. Most processes do not develop in isolation but interact with others, thus causing apparent irregularities. One such process concerns the existence of the species Homo Sapiens. The task of a theoretically minded historian is to find out the common laws and regularities, as well as the causes and the phases of the process in question. We should also try to find the causes of deviations, and the origin of the particular forms of existence of the Homo resulting from the general laws.
The process of the history of mankind can best be likened to the flow of a river. It has a source; at the beginning it is no more than a brook, then come broader reaches; stagnant backwaters and off-shoots, rapids and waterfalls may occur. The flow of the river cannot be completely accidental but it is conditioned by many factors. These are not only the general laws of gravitation and molecular physics but also the particular qualities of its banks which differ in their chemical composition and geological structure; the configuration of its bends, which is conditioned by the soil and the environment; one current overlaps with other currents, and they carry different organic and non-organic admixtures.
1 - First Phase (Primitive)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 10-12
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For the earliest periods in the history of Homo sapiens only a technological periodisation is possible: the Palaeolithic period, the Mesolithic period (chiefly attested in the western part of the Eurasian continent), the Neolithic period. The actual life of the Late Palaeolithic man might have been observed in the instance of the aboriginal population of Australia; however, the very imperfect observations date mainly from the time when the societies of the Aboriginals had already been radically disrupted by the mass immigration to Australia from Europe from the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the most interesting pieces of evidence comes from a nearly illiterate Englishman, who was sentenced to transportation to Australia, fled from the colony and lived among the Aboriginals for decades, spending the end of his life in one of the towns of Eastern Australia. He told his story to a chance journalist. Scientific research, however, began only at the very end of the nineteenth century. It might seem that the Palaeolithic state of the Australian Aboriginals, at an epoch when Europe and America had reached the high level of capitalist development, might attest not only to social but even to biological backwardness. This is not the case. The epoch of the class development of mankind occupies no more than 1 or 2 per cent of the existence duration of the species Homo sapiens sapiens. Thus a technological lag of only 2 per cent – let us say a speed of 10.2 seconds instead of 10.0 in a 100 metre run – is sufficient to account for a technological retardation of this scale.
8 - Eighth Phase (Post-Capitalist)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 02 December 2009
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- 26 August 1999, pp 324-338
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Thus far we have seen that capitalism created several alternative ideologies, such as Communism and Nazism. However, Nazism was based on the idea of universal conquest and militarisation, which was beyond the powers of its adherents. Communism proved to be more stable, but its stability in itself was responsible for bureaucratic stagnation and hence, naturally, economic impoverishment. In Eastern Europe, there have been attempts to forestall its ruin by military force (Hungary, 1956; Czechoslovakia, 1968). The attempts to spread the Communist idea beyond the ‘country of victorious Socialism’, i.e. the USSR, led to costly but fruitless attempts to support totalitarian regimes in Africa (i.e. in former colonies), and in Latin America. They could not be anything but fruitless, because the African dictatorships that supposedly were seeking ‘a way of non-capitalist development’ were in actual fact representing not the Seventh but, at best, the Fifth Phase of the historical process. Hence the endless wars, the unstable frontiers of the dominated territories, and the lack of any guaranteed human rights.
The ‘Communist’ economic system and ideology had two centres which since 1961 have been rivals: the USSR and China.
Note, however, that both the above mentioned alternative ideologies emerging in the Seventh, Capitalist Phase, namely Communism and Nazism, were leading mankind into an impasse; they could not guide society into any new Phase. The way to the Eighth Phase was prepared by an ideology opposed to both: the doctrine of human rights, which now became a very strong socio-psychological incentive.
4 - Fourth Phase (Imperial Antiquity)
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- The Paths of History
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- 26 August 1999, pp 37-55
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The crisis of the societies of the Third Phase was induced by the fact that in each of these societies the growth of the surplus produce, began after civilisation's first brilliant success, to slow down and even come to a halt.
The productivity of labour had grown considerably during the Third Phase. This was connected with the introduction of irrigation in agriculture, but also with new achievements in the field of handicrafts: smelting of copper and later iron ore, elaboration of the technology of bronze, introduction of the plough, the potter's wheel, the weaver's loom, digging of irrigation canal systems, the invention of the first water-raising constructions. But later the productivity did not grow, and sometimes it slowed down. Thus, in Mesopotamian agriculture, because of the impoverishing and salinisation of the soil, which was the result of injudicious irrigation, the more valuable cultures (e.g. wheat) were ousted by the less valuable (e.g. barley). The growth of the ratio of exploitation has its natural limits: a certain improvement in hand-tools could not bring about any considerable growth in the output of manual labour.
Finally, the last reserve of the quantitative growth of the produce – natural population growth – was also being exhausted. During the Second (Primitive Communal) and the Third Phase (that of Early Antiquity), the growth of the population was considerable compared with the First (or Primitive proper) Phase, and we can observe an increase in inhabited places. But with the beginning of urbanisation we encounter the general law of all progress: one has to pay for it, and the cost begins finally to be higher than the benefit.
The Paths of History
- Igor M. Diakonoff
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- Published online:
- 02 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 August 1999
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This is a broad and ambitious study of the entire history of humanity which takes as its point of departure Marx's theory of social evolution. However, Professor Diakonoff's theory of world history differs from Marx's in a number of ways. Firstly he has expanded Marx's five stages of development to eight. Secondly he denies that social evolution necessarily implies progress and shows how 'each progress is simultaneously a regress', and thirdly he demonstrates that the transition from one stage to another is not necessarily marked by social conflict and that sometimes this is achieved peacefully and gracefully. As the book moves through these various stages, the reader is drawn into a remarkable and thought-provoking study of the process of the history of the human race which focuses on the wide range of factors (economic, social, military-technological, and socio-pyschological) which have influenced our development from palaeolithic times to the present day.
Frontmatter
- Igor M. Diakonoff, University of St Petersburg
- Foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
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- Book:
- The Paths of History
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- 02 December 2009
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- 26 August 1999, pp i-iv
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