The existence of the slave-owning formation, i. e., a society whose economic activity was based on slavery and slave ownership, is an indisputable fact of mankind’s history. Historians have opened up to us various aspects of this formation: its economic organisation, social system, political forms, legal rules, systems of world outlook and the pattern and content of the culture associated with it. History also reveals the process of its birth, crystallisation, development and disintegration. By comparing this system with its predecessor and those that succeeded it, we can see the place of the slave-owning formation in mankind’s general development and thereby appreciate its significance from the philosophical and historical angles.
History tells us that it is not slavery as such which is the determining feature of the slave-owning formation. Slavery—the labour of some people for others combined with the personal, so to say, material possession of the toiler by the one who appropriated the product of his labour—is a phenomenon which existed in different historical conditions, not to speak of the different degrees of personal ownership of the slave by his master, different scale and level of the socio-economic importance of slave labour in the general production structure of the given society. The slave-owning formation is characterised not by slavery as such, but by the social system in which slave labour is the mode of production determining the economic basis of life at a given stage in a people’s history. Slavery in ancient Egypt, for example, characterises the very nature of the social system in Egypt of those days; on the other hand, slavery at the plantations of European settlers in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries was not the basis of the socio-economic (capitalist) system established at that time. Slavery was there merely a local specific feature which arose in the peculiar conditions of the capitalist economy in some of the newly developing distant territories, or colonies.
The countries in whose history scientists have found the slavery system are those of the Ancient East—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria and Persia; the states of Crete and Mycenae; ancient Creece and Italy; ancient India and ancient China. This enumeration shows that the slave-owning formation existed at the time which we have long been calling antiquity; that it is connected with the initial forms of state organisation in the history of society; that it arose among peoples who in those days were in the van of cultural-historical development and that it was a world system which held a dominating position. From this follows the conclusion that the rise of the slaveowning formation was not a historical accident but a historical regularity.
This, however, is the case only within the bounds of the worldwide historical process and not of processes in the history of an individual people or country. To put it differently, mankind as a whole in its general history passed through the stage of the slaveowning formation, and this stage was inevitable for it, but separate parts of mankind did not pass through it, and it was not historically necessary. In Africa and South America today, for example, there are peoples who still live in tribes, i. e., who are passing through some stage of the primitive-communal formation. This, however, does not mean that they must go on to the slave-owning formation, then to feudalism, etc. In present-day conditions of international contacts, when the life of each people is in one or another way intertwined with the life of other peoples, when the historical process as a whole is directed by nations who have advanced to the forefront of social development and civilisation, each people that has fallen behind on this general road and wishes to survive as a historical entity must strive and reach the highest stage of social development and civilisation of its time. This process naturally must differ in degree, intensity and duration.
The rise of the slave-owning formation among some people at the time when other peoples have already had the feudal system was possible only if the given people was fully isolated from the others. It was this isolation that made possible the existence of slavery states in Central and South America at a time when the great civilised peoples of Europe, Asia and North Africa were already in the stage of feudalism. And these slavery states disintegrated the moment they came in contact with Spain, a country which had long been feudal. In Japan the state was fully shaped in the 7th century. It was based on a feudal foundation, although slavery had existed previously and slave labour even held an important place in economic life. In the 7th century China, Avhich was at a high level of feudal development, held a leading place in East Asia. For the Japanese people connected with countries in this part of Asia by a certain community of historical life, it was simply impossible to go over then to slavery. It would have been a real historical anachronism for 9th-century Russia to create a state on a
slavery basis when the leading country in that part of Europe was feudal Byzantium.
In brief, in conditions of international community, backward peoples either lose an independent place in world historical life and even entirely disappear or they try to reach the advanced level attained within this community. In the preceding epochs this community was regional, but in our epoch it is world-wide. The backward states, as it were, are trying to “catch up” with the advanced ones. This is not a mechanical transfer of the social forms of the advanced states into the lagging ones. The creation of a state at once on a feudal, and not on a slave-owning, basis (by historical-sociological standards, acceleration of the social process) was a result either of the more intensive development of feudal elements, which to some extent originated in the preceding history of the given people, or of directing towards feudalism the development, of those elements of the slave-owning system which could be reconstructed along feudal lines. For example, feudal exploitation in Japan, which embarked on the feudal road in the 7th century, rested on the system of “three duties”: land tax, occupation tax and labour duty— the obligation to work a definite number of days annually on public projects. It is not difficult to see in these three duties modified phenomena characteristic of patriarchal-tribal relations, when the tribesmen gave to their elders and chiefs part of the produce of their fields and their occupations (chiefly hunting and weaving), and, when necessary, engaged in work in the common interest of the given tribal group.
Thus, a study of the slave-owning formation should be conducted only on the basis of the history of slavery states. These were the states of antiquity enumerated earlier. For history as such, it is equally important to study the slavery system, for example, in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece. But to establish the socio-historic content of the slave-owning formation, its place and role in the general historical process and to bring out its philosophical and historical meaning, we must study those ancient slave-owning states where the slavery system developed to the full and where we know the preceding and subsequent stages in the history of the people who created it.
In view of this, we should attach special importance and take as a model, as it were, the history of the slave-owning formation of peoples who underwent a fully developed epoch of the primitive-communal system, went over to a long and eventful epoch of the slavery system and then embarked on the road of feudalism; to put it diffierently, the history of peoples that lived the course of history iully and consecutively without bypassing any stages. These were the Greeks, Italians, Persians, Indians and Chinese. The peoples of the Ancient East created slave-owning states earlier than all others, but these states, except Persia, vanished in antiquity, and the history of the peoples that created them merged with the history
of other peoples. Naturally, what these ancient peoples had created did not vanish without trace. Ancient Hellas and, through it, ancient Rome were the heirs of a still older civilisation. But since that civilisation, together with the states which created it, itself had no continuation, the slave-owning formation is represented with the necessary completeness only in the history of these five peoples. That is why in the historical-philosophical aspect this formation should be studied by data from the history of these peoples.
A further limitation of the material, however, is possible. For a historical modelling of the slave-owning formation it is important to take strikingly expressed and eventful manifestations which arose and developed quite independently of each other. We regard as such cases the slave-owning formation in two areas of the Old World, geographically far removed from each other and not connected by any direct community: the slave-owning formation of China’s peoples and of the peoples of Greece and Italy. The slavery system in each of these areas undoubtedly had its distinctive features. For example, the scale and level of slave exploitation in China was lower than in Greece and Rome, but this difference did not alter the essence of the production relations themselves.
For any judgement of the slave-owning formation as a whole it is necessary to review its history. Such a review reveals first of all that this history is a movement and this movement has its own stages. There are three of them: the first is the period of emergence of the slavery system, the second is the time of its rooting and development and the third is the period when it reached its zenith and at the same time began to disintegrate. The historical characteristic of the first stage can be constructed on material from the history of China in the days of the Chou kingdom, which was a totality of many semi-patriarchal, semi-slave kingdoms of varying size (llth-8th centuries B.C.); the history of Greece—-the ancient Greek states of the “Homer epoch” (8th-6th centuries B.C.) and the history of Italy—the ancient states of the Apennine Peninsula (8th-6th centuries B.C.). A characteristic of the second stage can be based on material from the history of China in the lieh-kuo epoch— the slave-owning kingdoms of the so-called Ch’un-ch’iu—Chan-kuo period (7th-3rd centuries B.C.); Greece—the city-states epoch in the period of their florescence (6th-3rd centuries B.C.) and Italy— the later period of the Roman Republic (5th-2nd centuries B.C.). A characteristic of the third stage can be based on material from the history of two empires: the Han in the East (2nd century B.C.-3rd century A.D.) and the Roman in the West (1st century B.C.-5th century A.D.).
The first stage is the period of the emergence of the slavery system. It is marked by four processes. The first is the gradual but ever more stable conversion of slave labour, which until then existed at the level of domestic slavery, into a means of intensifying agriculture and partly handicraft production. This intensifica-
tion became necessary in view of the bigger requirements—quantitative, owing to the growing size of the family and clan, and qualitative, caused by higher material requirements. The second process is a development of production through the wider application of slave labour, the consequent appearance of the possibility of accumulating and appropriating the goods produced, which served as the basis for the rise of private property. The third process is the appearance of property differentiation within the community: some members, who inherited the performance of public duties, gained the opportunity to appropriate the goods produced, to seize slaves and then the land. The fourth process is the crystallisation within the community of the first classes, slaves and slave-owners, antithetical in their relation to production, and at the same time the emergence of antagonistic relations between the big owners of slaves and the land, on the one hand, and the small producers, on the other.
These processes developed in an atmosphere of contradiction between slave labour and the labour of the free small producers; between the latter and the big slave- and land-owners; between the latter and the tribal nobility of the communal-tribal epoch. The struggle caused by these contradictions and the disintegration of institutions of the tribal system and their conversion into administrative bodies, brought about the birth of the state as the stabiliser and regulator of relations between the antagonistic classes in the interests of the dominating class. The feature which indicates this situation is: in the history of China, the reforms carried out in the Ch’i kingdom (7th century B.C.) in the Lu, Ch’u and Cheng kingdoms (6th century B.C.); in the history of Greece, the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes (6th century B.C.); in the history of Italy, the reforms of Servius Tullius.
The second stage is the period when there throve the state form named polis (city-state) in Greece, civitas in Italy and kuo in China. These names in general designate one and the same thing: a state with one centre, a city dominating over the entire subjugated territory; moreover, such a city-state was an economic as well as a political entity. It is in this sense that the city-state was the basis of property on tbe scale it assumed at that time: this property included, first, the slaves and, second, the land. The prevailing form of owning slaves was private: the public ownership of slaves (state slaves) appeared at a later stage of the slave-owning formation and even then this form related to the non-productive categories of slaves—auxiliary personnel of state institutions.The form of property in land was dual—communal and private, with the latter being mediated by the former: to own land privately, one had to belong to the civic community, which was the polis in Greece, the civitas in Italy and the kuo in China.
It should be noted, however, that slave labour at that time by far did not have the importance in the economy it gained later. It
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is to this stage of antiquity that we can apply Marx’s well-known statement that “peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent handicrafts” was the economic foundation of “the classical communities at their best”, after the communal form of ownership had disappeared and “before slavery had seized on production in earnest”.1 This characteristic applies to Greece and Rome of the classical epoch, but it is also applicable to the second stage in the history of the slave-owning formation in China: here the epoch of lieh-kuo, or city-states (7th-3rd centuries B.C.) can rightfully be called classical.
The main factor making for the transition to the third stage— the epoch of large slave-owning empires—was the crisis of the city-state of the classical epoch. The developed productive forces, improved technology of production and its greater quantitative potentialities demanded a different scale of production itself and of its purpose, consumption. The closed spheres of the city-states, isolated politically and to a certain extent economically, did not offer the necessary prospects. An alternative arose: either to preserve isolation and consequently stagnation, and this also spelled degradation, or to abolish isolation, i. e., to emerge beyond the bounds of the city-state and, consequently, to gain the possibility of further development. It is the operation of this economic demand that probably explains the tendency to form broader economic and political communities which arose already at the end of the classical epoch, either in the form of alliances as the Achaean League, the first Athenian and Corinthian leagues in Greece of the 5th-4th centuries B.C., or in the form of federations like the federations of Italian city-states under the hegemony of Rome in 4th-century Italy, or in the form of absorption of some.states by other, stronger states, as was the case in China; there from the mid-4th to the mid-3rd century Han, Ch’i, Ch’in and Ch’u, four big city-states, arose in place of the many relatively small ones.
The end of this process of political and economic integration can be dated as follows. In one part of the Old World it was the formation of the so-called Hellenistic states in the 3rd century B.C., particularly such large ones as Egypt, Syria and Macedonia, which shared hegemony throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, and also the formation in the 3rd century B.C. of the Roman Republic not only as a large Italian state, but, after the Second Punic War, also as the state dominating throughout the Western Mediterranean area. In another part of the Old World, it was the formation at the end of the 3rd century B.C. in China of a single large empire, which at first was ruled for about two decades by emperors of the Ch’in dynasty and then by the Han dynasty. This empire gained hegemony over a huge area from the Baikal in the north
to the Tibetan plateau in the south, from the Pacific in the east to Western Turkistan in the west. In the 1st century B.C. the Roman Empire became just as huge in the other half of the Old World; it united under its power the entire Mediterranean region, both Eastern and Western (the latter with all the adjoining territories of Southern and Western Europe).
It was within the bounds of these large world empires that the slave-owning formation reached its apex. Its essence was the conversion of slave labour into the main factor in all production. Slave labour now played a part it did not have in the epoch of the city-states, in the second stage of this formation. Slave labour was employed on the widest scale in diverse branches of agriculture, thereby undermining the position of free small producers. This process was combined with the growth of large land ownership based on private property in the land. The consolidation of the Ch’in kingdom in China shows what importance the establishment of private property in this sphere had: the consolidation enabled this kingdom at the end of the 3rd century B.C. to unite the entire country under its rule. In the 4th century B.C. land transactions (sale and mortgaging) were allowed in the Ch’in kingdom and restrictions on the size of land holdings were abolished. This was a decisive blow at communal land ownership, which undermined its importance in the Ch’in economy.
The growth of slave-owning latifundia is a phenomenon characteristic of slave-owning empires, both in the East and the West. It was naturally accompanied by an increase in the number of slaves and this, in turn, led to wider use of slave labour in industrial production too. This was prompted by the bigger demand for industrial goods on the part of the numerous and culturally advancing population of cities which were steadily expanding in number and size. Another factor was the greatly increased exchange between areas which had been isolated, but now were united in one state — both in the Europo-Afro-Asian lands in the days of the Hellenistic states and later under the Roman Empire, and in the eastern and central parts of Asia subordinated to the Han Empire. This exchange in the first place assumed the form of trade. Industrial goods were the main object of trade transactions: at that time there was an international demand for them, within their regional bounds. By the way, in a later period of these empires an international demand arose beyond regional bounds: suffice it to recall the Silk Route from China to the Eastern domains of Rome.
Growing trade stimulated handicraft production; it also demanded an improvement of techniques and higher labour productivity.
The sum total of these conditions could arise only in a city and that is why the trading and industrial city became the main seat of civilisation. On the other hand, it wTas possible for agriculture to remain at a technical level not far advanced from the old standards: the necessary expansion of output was achieved mainly by
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increasing the labour force, the slaves. That is why civilisation of this later stage in the history of the slave-owning formation is above all urban civilisation. Of course, on a world historical scale the development in this stage was uneven. Urban civilisation of antiquity shone in all its splendour in the age-old centre of man’s cultural life—the East Mediterranean countries, which were converted in the age of empires into Rome’s Eastern provinces. Suffice it to recall that Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch, Athens and Rhodes were located in this area. Nothing resembling these urban centres of education and culture existed either in Italy, in the Western domains of Rome or in the Han Empire, this vast agricultural country. Rut there too, naturally, seats of urban civilisation of their own arose: in Italy, Syracuse in the earlier period and Rome in the later; in China, Ch’ang-an and Loyang. In the later period of these empires, cities which arose on the periphery, especially in the Western Roman provinces of Gaul and Spain, became seats of civilisation.
A number of developments marked the end of the third stage of the slave-owning formation in the two largest areas of world history. The first is the loss by slave labour of its former significance in its, so to say, “machine” form. This labour ceased to ensure the necessary development of the economy and even to maintain it at the level of the greater requirements. To raise productivity not only in the crafts, but also in agriculture, society needed not a living machine but an individual who could organise his work. In view of this, a cultured, intellectually developed stratum appeared among the slave population. It was not inferior to the ordinary workingmen among the free population, especially agricultural. Rut since the position of the slave did not change, the significance and role of slave labour in production came into glaring contradiction with the position of the slave in society. To equalise the slaves in the sphere of their labour activity with the free workingmen became a pressing economic necessity. Such was the first symptom of the socio-economic crisis in the slavery system.
The crisis was also evidenced hy an increase in property differentiation. It is characteristic that the existence of so-called proletarians in the Roman civic community, i. e., in the free population, was noted as early as in the Servius Tullius reforms. The “proletarians” were people who had nothing except their offspring. Thus, even at the beginning of the second stage in the history of the slavery system, pauperisation of certain sections of the free population became evident. As the slave-owning economy developed, the threat of pauperisation hung over a considerable part of the free working population engaged both in the crafts and agriculture, especially in the latter, because it was the small production of the free peasant that was undermined by the large-scale slave-owning estate, and even by the average slave-owning villa, this most wide
spread form of agricultural production. Since the free producers comprised the majority of the population, their economic position brought them into conflict with the socio-economic system as such, inasmuch as it did not ensure them even a minimum subsistence.
The economic crisis thus grew over into a social crisis, and ultimately led to the disintegration of the slavery system. The slaveowning formation—a socio-economic system which at one time created the conditions for the tremendous economic, social and cultural development of mankind—exhausted its possibilities and turned into the main obstacle to further progress. It had to be abolished, and it was abolished.
Some historians claim that the main force which overthrew the slavery system was the slaves. There is even the expression, “revolution of slaves”. That such assertions do not conform to reality is demonstrated by a review of the concrete historical process which led to the replacement of slavery by the feudal system. Outbursts of spontaneous struggle by slaves are, of course, an indisputable fact. At times these outbursts turned into regular rebellions as, for example, the movement of slaves led by Spartacus in Rome. But these rebellions could have a serious effect only if they merged with the struggle of the working population, i.e., with the struggle of the freemen. These free peasants and artisans, i.e., the bulk of the working population, whose economic existence was threatened, were the main force which put an end to the slavery system.
A comparison of what existed under slavery and what arose in the feudal system which replaced it brings out the essence of the tremendous reconstruction of all social life which occurred at that time. The loss by slave labour of its significance as the main economic force led to the disappearance of slaves as a class: ultimately the slaves merged with the mass of free small producers. The economic collapse of the old agricultural latifundia and industrial establishments based on slave labour enhanced the social significance of the labour of small producers, removed the threat of pauperisation which constantly hung over them and enabled them to extend their economic initiative. But the time of free labour had not yet arrived. Economic life of society could still develop only with the ruling class—the feudal lords—regulating the economic activity of the working population, primarily in its own interests. This regulation was exercised by methods of compulsion, and since it was still far from the time when such compulsion could be effected by economic means, it was done by coercion, whose instruments were the force of arms and the force of law. The small producers, the working people, were obligated to produce goods and hand over a part of the output to those who administrated the state; they were made to yield this part of the product by force.
Hence, it is not the movement of slaves that is a sign of collapse of the slave-owning formation and transition from slavery to feudalism, but the movement of the free producers in a slave-own-
ing country, a movement of resistance to the new oppression imposed upon them. Such a movement occurred in China at the junction between the slavery and feudal periods of its history. We refer to the Yellow Turban rebellion, which broke out at the end of the 2nd century A.D. Brutal suppression of this uprising by the Han Empire generals, particularly by one of them, Ts’ao Ts’ao, who was the actual supreme ruler, established new forms of exploitation. This implied new legal and political institutions called upon to support the new, feudal, economic order. In the history of Rome such movements were the uprisings in the 3rd century in different parts of the empire, especially in African provinces and in Gaul. The brutal suppression of these uprisings by the generals of the Roman empire, governed at that time by Diocletian, and this emperor’s subsequent “reforms”, i. e., the legal measures which changed the position of the peasants and were combined with a reconstruction of the political and military organisation, initiated the transition from slavery to feudalism in this area of the Old World.
Such was the historical process which developed in the slaveowning formation, as seen in the history of the two largest areas of the world, fully independent of each other.
What is the historical meaning of this formation? It is very great and very complicated.
The slave-owning formation reveals above all the process of the birth of a class society. The subsequent history of mankind up to recent decades was the history of a class society; even in our time this society, though it is no longer the only form of socio-economic organisation, continues to exist. This shows how great is the importance of the epoch during which class society originated.
The slave-owning formation demonstrates that the rise of classes is closely connected with the system of production and is associated with definite relations of production. The first classes, slaves and slave-owners, arose on the basis of exploitation, i. e., the use of the labour of some people by other people. In the slave-owning formation this use involved treatment of the workingman as a living tool. That is why the antagonistic nature of relations between the classes of the exploiters and the exploited in the slave-owning formation was displayed to the maximum, as it has never been displayed subsequently. In view of this, it is exceedingly important to know this initial point of all subsequent development.
The slave-owning formation also shows us how various social groups arose among the population. This is very distinctly reflected in the Chinese treatise Kuan-tzii, the material of which dates back to the 5th-4th centuries B.C.—to the time when the second stage of the slave-owning formation in China developed to the full. This treatise names four kinds of people: warriors and state officials, peasants, artisans and merchants. Since that time we meet such groups in all subsequent history of mankind.Their place in economic life, their relation to production and their position in the so-
cial system naturally changed. Some of these social groups turned intn Hasses All the more important is it to know the origin of the class structure in general and the social history of these groups.
The slave-owning formation reveals the process of shaping the state as"a political organisation, which arose on the basis of the emerging class structure of society and its concomitant—property differentiation and social inequality. Politically, this inequality was expressed in the division of society into rulers and ruled, lo rule, a political organisation—the state—was needed.
The slave-owning formation also elaborated the mam forms of state power. The Greek historian Polybius (210-122 B.C.) gave a striking and precise definition of these forms. On the basis of the historical experience of his people, Polybius established that three forms of rule exist: a kingdom, when one man is ruler; aristocracy, when a few rule; democracy, when many rule. But he was quick to point to the possibility of each of these three forms degenerating and arriving at self-negation. At first royal power was beneficial for the people, inasmuch as the king, the only one vested with power, was chosen by the people as the best and wisest of all. bubse-quenty it turned into monarchy, i. e., into a purely personal ru e which was fraught with arbitrary action and usually turned into a social evil. In that case the people, who at one time empowered one man to rule over all, overthrew the tyrant and, fearing to leave power in the hands of one man, delegated it to a few men, the best in their midst. This was the origin of aristocracy, the rule ol tiie best, the chosen. But aristocracy, too, subsequently turned into an oligarchy, into the rule of a handful who pursue their own ends, in this case the people overthrew them too and, fearing from past experience to leave power in the hands of a few, delegated it to many, to the entire people in principle. Polybius called this form of rule democracy. But here too there was danger: power m the hands of all led to ochlocracy, the rule of the mob, which identified its narrow interests with the interests of society and the state as a whole.
What came next? Do the people again return to rule by a king, and so on and so forth? Usually this place in Polybius’ History is treated as the concept of a cycle. It would be more correct, however, to consider that Polybius, speaking of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, as three specific forms of rule, held that they had been tested by history which demonstrated that each one was fraught with the danger of turning from a sensible into a harmful rule. Therefore society needs neither monarchy nor aristocracy nor democracy, but a form of rule that would combine the good features which each of these three forms had at the outset. Polybius saw such a synthesis in the organisation of state administration elaborated in the Roman Republic. He saw here one-man rule, personified by the consuls; the rule of the few, personified by the Senate; and the rule of the people, represented by the comitias, assemblies ol people.
thinker the historical cycle is displayed not in the forms of rule, but in its principles. It is the principles that recur.
The well-established categories of the “national” and “universally human” are also part of the universally significant heritage, dating from the epoch of the slave-owning formation. These concepts are rooted in ideas that originated in antiquity. The stage of the slave-owning formation associated with the city-state created the idea of the local human community on the scale of the given tribal group; during the period of alliances and federations the scale of this local community was widened, inasmuch as it represented a sum total of tribal groups. With the formation of empires the place of the tribal community was taken by an inter-ethnic community, which was even then perceived as a universal human community. It was then that the idea of mankind as a single great entity appeared. This idea was manifested in the concept of universe which received a fully real meaning. For the Greeks it was ofxovpsvv], for the Romans, orbis terrarum, and for the Chinese it was T'ien-hsia.
The idea of mankind which arose in this ancient epoch of human history is one of the most essential contributions by the people of that period to the history of the human race. Similarly essential was the idea of humanism, which also crystallised at that time. Humanism is above all the concept of man as the supreme value, as the bearer of all the basic principles of social life and as the maker of culture. This idea was most vividly expressed in the Greek myth about Prometheus, the titan who stole from Zeus the heavenly fire, the symbol of omnipotence.
This was the basis for settling the question of man’s role in the general process of being and, consequently, of his nature, a question of primary importance for man’s activity. The problem of man’s nature was solved in the ethical plane. Man was recognised to be the bearer of the highest ethical principle—good. In China Meng-tse (Mencius) understood this as a quality of human nature itself; he held that good is an innate quality of man. In Rome Cicero, summing up the Hellenistic ideas, asserted that moral law is dictated by human nature itself. In China, Hsiin-tzu thought that human nature as such was evil, but he also assumed that by his actions man could overcome this innate evil and arrive at good.
Historical reality confronted man with a no less difficult and acute question. The social system evolved during the slave-owning stage laid bare the inequality of people, even among the freemen. In view of this, the idea of inequality was carried over to human nature too. Inasmuch as human nature was treated in the ethical plane, inequality promoted the division of people into morally full-fledged and morally inferior. Confucius called the former chun-tzu (“masters”) and the latter hsiao-jen (“little people”). Cicero regarded the former as the chosen minority guided in its actions by lofty moral principles, and the latter as a mass in the grip of instincts.
Polybius thought that these three reciprocally controlled organs of administration were the new form of power which took the place of the old. Thereby he not only formulated the three forms of rule which became so customary for subsequent generations, not only revealed their positive and negative aspects, but also proclaimed the idea of their evolution, the transition from some, which did not justify themselves, to others.
A younger contemporary of Polybius, the Chinese historian Ssii-ma Ch’ien (145-86 B.C.), approached the problem of administration from an entirely different angle. He examined not the forms of administration but its principles. Like Polybius, he based himself on the historical experience of his people. The principle of “straightforwardness”, spiritual directness and simplicity, he claimed, was the basis oi administration in the Hsia kingdom which, in his opinion, was China’s first state. What happened? It turned out that this principle reduced the “little people”, i. e., the bulk of the population, to “savagery”, to a primitive condition. But the life of the people, the life of society demanded definite social rules and standards.
In view of this, the Yin kingdom, which replaced Hsia, accepted “reverence” as the principle of administration, an instinct inherent in human nature and determining man’s attitude first of all to his parents, and then to all kinds of “supreme forces”, to deities. This principle was to underlie social rules of general importance, binding on all. But what happened? For the “little people”, “reverence” turned into a “cult”. A cult, as shown by all history, is associated with ideas of deities, and deities are both “gods” and “demons”. It is characteristic that, to designate the concept of “cult”, Ssu-ma Ch’ien chose a hieroglyph which denotes “demon”, that is, an adverse deity. This signified that a cult of power is not merely a “superstition”, but opens the way to evil.
“Culture”, all kinds of rules of social life created by man, became the principle of administration in the Chou kingdom which replaced the Yin kingdom. In this way it was expected to eliminate the very possibility of a cult of power. What happened? “Culture”, the sum total of forms and rules of social life created by society, turned into something imposed on man from the outside, suppressing the natural traits and manifestations of his character. At the same time these rules began to hamper political power. The ruler of the Ch in Empire, which replaced the Chou kingdom, began to fight “culture” which impeded his autocratic regime: he employed a very simple means—execution of the principal makers of culture, the “learned men”, or the intellectuals. This policy led to the fall of the Ch’in emperor and his dynasty. Power in the empire passed to the Han dynasty, which again based its administration on the principle of “straightforwardness”. Thus, it is not Polybius, but Ssu-ma Ch’ien who is the father of the cycle theory in history. We should bear in mind, however, that in the concept of the Chinese
But the human mind could not stop at this point. People dwelling in the land “amidst the four seas”, that is, all mankind, were called brothers by Confucius. He defined the “human principle”, (jen) in each man as “love for people”.
That was the pinnacle of humanism reached by society in the slave-owning world during its heyday. When this society entered the phase of crisis, the humanist idea rose to a new level. It advanced because at the last stage of the slave-owning formation social inequality became especially acute in its most glaring form, in the form of division of people into full-fledged, human in the full sense of the word, and into inferior, into chattel which the slaves were.
It was this maximally sharp counterposing of some people to others that gave rise to the next stage of humanism—moreover, in a similarly sharp form, leaving no room for compromise; it was the idea of the full equivalence of all people as individuals, both slaves and freemen. The urgency of the thesis about the human equivalence of all, the desire to make it a categoric imperative, was dictated by the fact that this thesis was crystallised in categories of religious consciousness, which in those days possessed the force of an imperative. This was the case in two of the biggest religious systems which arose in the times of slavery: in Buddhism and Christianity.
The idea of the human equivalence of all people without any distinction—freemen or slaves—was incorporated above all in the concept of their equality by nature. In Christianity this concept was formulated in the proposition about the common origin of all people from God, and in Buddhism, in the idea of the moulding of man, of every human being, in the common stream of being.
The idea of the equivalence of people was also expressed in the aspect of human relations, i. e., in the socio-ethical plane. The proposition of the love for people was created in this plane and it was proclaimed with different degrees of intensity by Buddhism, Christianity and Confucianism.
Such was the greatest spiritual attainment of mankind in the epoch of slavery. It provided the ideological foundation for the rise of the slave-owning system and its ultimate fall.
The humanist concept of antiquity was of great importance for the entire subsequent activity of mankind, particularly after the idea of the human equivalence of all people engendered the idea of social equivalence of people, of their social equality. This latter idea became the spiritual corner-stone of all movements aimed at combating the various kinds, forms and degrees of exploitation of man by man. This struggle did not produce the results the people wanted. The idea of the human equality of all was later on cunningly transferred by the ruling classes, whose privileged position it threatened, from the practical, mundane sphere into the ideal, spiritual sphere. But even this did not rob it of its significance and power.
The basic foundations for the scientific cognition of both nature and human life were laid during the epoch of the slave-owning formation. The opposite nature of the two social classes in the epoch of slavery, which was of a maximally sharp character, combined with observations of the simplest phenomena in nature, led to the idea of opposites. In the I-ching, one of the oldest books of China, these opposites were designated as yang and yin. At first ^ these meant the lighted and unlighted side of a mountain, then light and darkness, and subsequently any pair of opposites: heat and cold, heaven and earth, male and female, and so on. An unbroken line which serves as a divide became the symbol of opposites among the Chinese. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, regarded as opposites light and darkness, rest and motion, right and left, male and female, etc. The odd and even numbers became symbols of opposites for him.
" The idea of opposites serves as a basis for the idea that everything is interconnected—the starting point of any dialectics. In China the idea of this connection was expressed in the Eight Trigrams of the I-ching, which establish the main elements of nature, the elements of being: heaven, lowland, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain, earth. The Eight Trigrams served as the basis for 64 Hexagrams, showing the combinations of the primary elements and their transmutation, i. e., giving a picture of the universal connection of nature’s phenomena. In Greek philosophy this idea was formulated by Heraclitus, who said that all things pass one into another: day into night, cold into heat, winter into summer, hunger into satiety. The same idea of universal connection was extended to the human world, to society. According to the I-ching philosophy, the world consists of “three forces”: heaven, earth and man. Helienic wisdom, as voiced by Cicero of Rome, proclaimed that the world is a common state of the gods and men. Thus, the concept which became the basis of all subsequent scientific knowledge was created at this ancient stage of human society.
Such was the first step towards cognising the external world. The second step was the idea that certain primary elements of nature exist. This step in a very distinct form was made by three ancient peoples: the Greeks, Indians and Chinese.
The four primary elements of Empedocles are well known. These were water, fire, earth and air. We find the same four primary elements in the natural philosophy of the Charvakas in India. In the Vedanta philosophy there are five primary elements: water, fire, earth, air and ether. There are also five of them in the Chinese Shu ching\ water, fire, wood, metal and earth.
The idea of the primary elements of material nature was combined with the idea of their cycle. According to Heraclitus, fire on extinguishing turns into water and through it into earth so that it might, igniting again, turn into earth and through it into water and, through water, again into its primary condition. The process
of “extinguishing” and “igniting” serves here as the motive force. The Indian Charvakas asserted that everything in the world was formed from various combinations of the four primary elements; moreover, death, which equally befalls people, animals and plants, reduces them to primary elements. The Chinese express the cycle in categories of “overpowering”. Each of the five primary elements passes into another as follows: water overpowers fire; fire, wood; wood, metal; metal, the earth; the earth, water, and so on. The concept of “overpowering” turns the transition of one prime element into another into a process that is not purely mechanical, but hears a definite content.
The third step in cognising the world was the idea of the tiniest particle of matter. Leucippus and Democritus called this particle “atom” and the Indians, “anu”.
We should not focus attention on the question, in what way man of that epoch conceived the opposites, the primary elements of material nature, the tiniest particles of matter and their transmutation? What is important is the idea, the concept that these categories exist. Knowing the subsequent history of scientific knowledge we will have no difficulty in realising that the greatest foundations of such knowledge were laid by man in the epoch of the slave-owning formation.
Another step of primary importance on the road of human knowledge was also made: the human mind turned not only to the content of knowledge, but also to the very process of knowledge. This is how logic as the doctrine of knowledge was created. It was developed by the Indians, Chinese and Greeks. The beginning was laid in India by Akshapada (2nd century A.D.), in China by Mo Ti (5th century B.C.) and in Greece by Aristotle (4th century B.C.).
Thus, antiquity, the epoch of the slave-owning formation, laid the foundations for the entire subsequent history of mankind, which it divided into classes, and determined the path mankind followed. It brought out with exceptional clarity and in bold relief the opposites, above all in the social sphere. It transpired that one of the opposites played a positive part, promoting mankind’s progress and social life, while the other hindered, impeded it. One was light, the other darkness; to put it differently, good and evil. These opposites were in a state of incessant struggle. But the way in which the conscience of the people of antiquity reacted to slavery—this darkest and most evil creation of antiquity, demonstrated that as early as then man was endowed with a force which fought this darkness. Mankind’s subsequent record has confirmed that this force has been preserved and acted at all stages of history.
1965
THE “MIDDLE AGES” IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE
The term “Middle Ages” first appeared in Europe in the 15th century. It was introduced hy scientists to designate a historical stage in the life of the European peoples between the “ancient world”, which came to an end in the 5th century with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the “new times”, as the 15th-century humanists regarded their epoch. This term in the same meaning was also used by philologists and historians in the 15th-l7th;centuries. They were followed by all subsequent historians in Europe, who finally accepted this term as part of the triad — Antiquity-Middle Ages-New Times. This is how a special branch, medieval history, appeared in historical science.
The origin of the concept and term “Middle Ages” is responsible for medieval history becoming the history of European countries and peoples. It dealt with the non-European peoples only to the extent to which they came in contact with the peoples of Europe. From medieval history we learn very little about the history of the peoples of India or the Chinese people in the period that corresponds to the Middle Ages in Europe; we learn absolutely nothing about the history of Japan. The Huns are mentioned only in connection with their invasion into the very heart of Europe; the history of Persia is linked with the history of Byzantium; the Arabs become dramatis personae in medieval history only after their conquests made the European peoples tangibly aware of their existence. The Mongols appear in history together with the detachments of Su-budai, who reached Hungary. No sooner had he withdrawn from there and the domination of the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe collapsed than the Mongols vanished from the pages of medieval history; the Turks entered it only in connection with the Crusades and the later period because they defeated Byzantium and themselves came to European soil. True, some general Histories of the Middle Ages, at least the best of them, give a brief outline of the preceding history of these non-European peoples, but this is usually limited to relevant historical information; no independent place
in the general history of the Middle Ages is held either by the history of the Huns or the Persians, Arabs, Mongols and Turks, not to speak of the peoples of India, China, Korea, Japan, Indo-China and Indonesia. All these peoples were regarded as belonging to another world, situated beyond the lands inhabited by the European peoples. This other world, according to an old tradition dating back to the days of European antiquity, was designated by a general term, “the East”.
This concept of the East led to the relegation of the history of the Asian and North African peoples to a special branch named “history of the East”. It includes the history of these peoples from the moment it becomes possible to reconstruct it. Consequently, it also includes the ancient history of these peoples, as much as we know of it.
A deeper study of the East resulted in the appearance, alongside the general “history of the East”, of separate parts and even separate branches, like the history of the Ancient East, the history of the Eastern Middle Ages and even the history of the New East. This, however, did not influence the general approach: historians of the European Middle Ages continue to speak simply of the history of the Middle Ages, without bothering to specify that they mean only the Middle Ages in Europe.
Perhaps, these historians are right? After all, the very concept “Middle Ages” historically arose in Europe; it was accepted and elaborated by European historical science as applied to the history of the European peoples. Historians of the East may sooner be asked whether they have a right to apply this term, which emerged in the historical science of the European peoples, to some stage in the history of the Eastern peoples. In our opinion, they have this right and, moreover, on the very same grounds on which the term is used by European scholars.
Let us draw attention to a well-known historical fact: the concept “Middle Ages” when it was introduced by the humanists designated not only a definite period, between the “ancient world” and the “new times”; this term also included a feature sharply differentiating the “Middle Ages” from “antiquity”. We know how this distinction was understood at the time: the West European humanists in the 15th-16th centuries regarded the Middle Ages as the period of deviation from culture, education and enlightenment, from the principles of social life characteristic of the ancient world— naturally, as the humanists understood them. They considered it a period in which the European peoples, as it were, had been plunged into darkness, from which they were extricated by “the Renaissance”, i. e., a return to what they thought was antiquity. It is this counterposing of the Middle Ages to the ancient world, on the one hand, and to the new times, on the other, as epochs differing in their historical content, that comprised the major element of the concept of “Middle Ages” for the humanists.
That was the case in Europe. Was there anything similar in the East?
The East is vast and the development of historical science in different countries proceeded in intricate and diverse ways. In Europe we can speak of the Middle Ages, having in view all of Europe, in any case, most important and culturally advanced countries of those days. It is much more difficult to speak in such general terms about the East, but still it is possible to do so in a number of cases. Let us turn to the Eastern country most distant from the Western world—to China of the T’ang Empire, this largest and most powerful state from the 7th to the 9th centuries not only in the East, but, perhaps, throughout the world.
In the second half of the 8th century a trend arose in the T’ang Empire, which became the most powerful current of social thought in subsequent years up to the Mongol invasion, i. e., up to the 13th century. This movement was represented by such noted cultural figures as Han Yu, Liu Tsung-yiian, Ouyang Hsiu and Su Tung-p’o, and it brought into being its own philosophy and aesthetics, its own literature and art, science and publicist works, which radically differed from earlier developments in these spheres. The motto of this movement was a return to “ancient education” (ku-wen).
What was antiquity (ku) for the exponents of this movement?
A direct answer to this question is given by the man who first advocated the return to ku-wen. That was Han Yu (768-824), a poet, publicist and philosopher. In one of his works, the treatise Advance in Learning (Chinhsueh chieh), he enumerates the writings which he considered to be ku-wen. These are major works of Chinese philosophers, historians and publicists, and poetry, from the earliest time to the end of the Han Empire, i. e., up to the 3rd century A.D.
This enumeration shows that Han Yii had a very definite idea of antiquity—above all, chronologically definite. Since he put up “ancient education” (ku-wen) in contrast to “contemporary education” (shih-wen), it is clear that the concept of new times existed for him. That was, naturally, the time closest to him, i. e., the second half of the 8th century and the first quarter of the 9th century. In the broader sense, for his contemporaries the new times were the T’ang Empire period, after the establishment of the T’ang dynasty in the early 7th century.
The existence of these two historical and chronological categories t>y itself shows that, alongside antiquity and new times, Han Yii and other like-minded people in his day and in the subsequent period definitely visualised an intermediate period between antiquity and the new times. This period was not named the “Middle Ages”, but the existence of a corresponding idea of this period is beyond doubt.
This concept was above all chronological and related to the period between the 3rd and 7th centuries. But the chronological con-
tent of the concept of the “Middle Ages” was by no means the main thing for the Chinese Renaissance thinkers: both Han Yu and others who held the same views regarded this intermediate period between antiquity and their time to be of a lower order as compared with antiquity. Had they thought otherwise, they would not have urged a return to ku-wen: one does not strive for something inferior. This applied to literature, philosophy and science. The negative attitude of the T’ang Renaissance thinkers to the preceding period was very strikingly manifested in the case of religion.
It will be recalled that the “Middle Ages” as understood by Han Yu, i. e., the period from the 3rd to the 6th century, was marked by the spread and consolidation in China of a new religion, Buddhism. It began to penetrate China from the Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan as early as the 1st century A. D. In the T’ang Empire the influence of this religion, which enjoyed the patronage of the nobility and the emperors themselves, was not only preserved but even enhanced. The strength of this influence in the days of Han Yii is indicated by the moving of the “bone of Buddha” to China. Part of it was brought to Ch ’ang-an, the capital of the empire, and placed with great pomp in the palace temple.
Han Yii reacted to this ceremony by his famous pamphlet On the Bone of Buddha. He protested against encouragement of what he regarded as wild superstitions. “After all, Buddha”, Han Yii wrote, “died long ago. This is merely a fragment of decayed bone! It is merely filth and dirt. Why should it be placed in the palace?”
Han Yii held a sharply negative attitude to Buddhism and in general to the forms of religion current in China of his time. He was a Confucianist; the Lun-yii, the book expounding Confucius’teaching, states that the “teacher spoke neither of gods nor demons”. To a direct question how he regarded them Confucius had replied, “I revere the gods and demons, but keep away from them as far as possible.” Han Yii quoted these words in his pamphlet.
This, naturally, is not sufficient grounds for speaking of Han Yii as an atheist, but his contempt for religion as a collection of various superstitions is beyond doubt. Most of the other leaders of the ku-wen movement treated religion in the same way. We should bear in mind that the two widespread religions of China, Buddhism and Taoism, were in their prime at that time.
What in medieval China was called “Confucianism” was actually secular education. That was a doctrine of society and the state, of man and morals; it was a doctrine of nature and its cognition. In the T’ang Empire the educational system, which was in the hands of the Confucianists, was of a completely secular nature. All the leaders of the ku-wen movement were representatives of such secular education.
Han Yii also formulated the basic principle of this movement. He designated it with the word fen (“human") or, more fully, fen tao (“the human way”). One is tempted to translate this term by the
word “humanism”. And this is permissible not only etymologically, but also essentially: advocates of the T’ang Renaissance persistently put forward the proposition of man’s supreme value as the foun-da tion of social life, education and culture. Han Yu wrote a special treatise on the subject, which he named Yuan Jen {On Man).
This enables us to state that in the East, too, the concept of the “Middle Ages” arose in a definite historical period and was determined by the course of historical development; moreover, it had not only a chronological hut also a cultural-historical content. At least that was the case in the history of the Chinese people.
Was there anything similar in the history of other Eastern peo-
Let us turn to the Muslim world and first of all to the Muslim world of Western Turkistan between the 9th and 11th centuries. We know that this period witnessed great progress in science, philosophy and education. We also know that al-Farabi Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Khwarizmi, al-Biruni and other great men of the time were shaping the new trends in science and philosophy, having assimilated the legacy of the ancient world. They drew from alf the sources of the great ancient civilisations with which their peoples came into contact in their historical destinies. The major source was European antiquity, particularly the Hellenistic period; they also drew from the ancient Indian sources. Future studies will probably reveal that they are indebted for some things to ancient China too—if not directly, then through the heritage of the older peoples in Western Turkistan that have maintained close relations with ancient China. Even in hoary antiquity, Western Turkistan was a crossroad to major seats of civilisation and itself one of the centres of this civilisation. That is why advanced scientists and philosophers of the Western Asian world—genuine humanists in their outlook—in creating a new enlightenment and education in the 9th-llth centuries, just like their colleagues in China before them and their colleagues in Europe after them, bypassed some historical period which lay between their time and the ancient world, in other words, their “Middle Ages”.
This brief excursion into the past enables us to say that the Eastern historians have a right to use the term “Middle Ages” on the same grounds on which it was introduced by the European humanists in the 15th-17th centuries. At the same time these facts, it seems to us, allow us to raise the question of whether we should not regard the stage in the history of the European peoples known as the Renaissance, as a manifestation of a general law of the historical process, which necessarily arrives at a definite moment in the development of great civilisations. This idea is also suggested by the fact that the movement for turning to “ancient education”, as it was manifested both in the history of the Chinese people and in Europe, arose in an atmosphere of a rapidly developing urban culture, with the existence of a numerous stratum of writers, publicists, histori-
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ans, philosophers and public leaders, intimately connected with this urban culture and the life of the influential urban sections; an important factor was the development of book printing.
Naturally, all these phenomena must under no circumstances be completely identified. If we agree to name them “Renaissance”, then the “T’ang Renaissance” and “Western Asian Renaissance” have their profoundly specific features, setting them apart from each other, and each of them from the “European Renaissance”. Rut are we justified in seeing only these differences without paying attention to similarities, the more so since these similarities are rooted in the historical essence of these phenomena?
Let us now compare the chronology of the Middle Ages in these centres of world civilisation.
For the Chinese humanists in the T’ang Empire the Middle Ages began after the disintegration of the ancient Han Empire, that is in the 3rd century; for the great thinkers and scientists of Western Turkistan and Iran, after the fall of ancient Parthia, also in the 3rd century; for the European peoples, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in the 5th century. For the T’ang humanists the Middle Ages ended in the “return to antiquity”—the epoch of T’ang Renaissance. It clearly emerged, as stated earlier, in the 8th century, but was prepared in the preceding century. For the humanists of Western Asia the end of the Middle Ages was marked by the epoch of the Ghaznevid Renaissance, which began in the 9th century and reached it apex in the 10th and 11th centuries. For the European world, the Middle Ages ended in the “epoch of European Renaissance”, which started in Italy in the 14th century and subsequently brought about the great progress of civilisation throughout Europe.
As soon as we define the beginning of the Middle Ages in these three centres of world history, we can clearly perceive, from the present level of historical knowledge, the true historical content of these Middle Ages. The Middle Ages is the period when feudalism originated, struck root and developed.
Opinions differ as to the end of antiquity in China. Present-day Chinese historians regard antiquity as the epoch of slave-owning society and are inclined to date its fall and, consequently, the beginning of the feudal period to distant times, in any case not before the 4th or 3rd century B. C. True enough, elements of feudalism began to develop in China earlier than among other peoples. Though this is indisputable, we should bear in mind that the disintegration of the slavery system and crystallisation of the feudal order usually took a long time and that elements of the disintegrating slavery system and the gradually emerging feudal system could exist side by side for centuries. That is why, from the viewpoint of the history of slave-owning society, these centuries could be regarded as the last, waning phase of the slavery period in the history of the given people, and, if approached differently, from the standpoint of the history of feudal society, could be considered the initial phase of
the feudal period. The last centuries of the Roman Empire could likewise be differently assessed. The same applies to the times of the Han Empire, that is, the last two centuries B.C. and the first two centuries A.D. The attitude of the T’ang humanists, who saw the divide between antiquity and Middle Ages at the end of the Han period, gives us grounds for considering this epoch as the waning phase of the slavery period in the history of China, notwithstanding the existence of rather developed elements of feudalism in the Han Empire. If that is the case, then both for China and for Rome—somewhat earlier for the former and somewhat later for the latter — the Middle Ages in the indicated chronological bounds were equally the time of the final rooting and development of feudalism.
In the history of Iran the period of the Parthian kingdom, a state with a slave-owning system, was the epoch of antiquity. After the fall of Arsacid Parthia and the formation in its place of the Sas-sanid Empire, feudal relations gradually began to strike root in this state. The Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan and NorthWest India was a slave-owning state. That was antiquity for the peoples in this part of the Old World. After the fall of the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century, feudal relations gradually began to take shape in this area, too.
Both in the East and the West the Middle Ages thus have one and the same historical content: it is the time of the rooting and development of feudalism.
Marxist historical science demonstrates that the transition from the slavery formation to feudalism at that time was of profoundly progressive significance. This leads us to regard the Middle Ages differently than the humanists. Their attitude, as we know, was negative. The humanists saw the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignorance, from which, it seemed to them, mankind could escape only by turning to radiant antiquity. We, however, cannot but see in the advent of the Middle Ages a step forward, and not back. The Parthenon, the Ellora and Ajanta temples are great creations of the human genius, but the Milan Cathedral, Alhambra and the Horyuji Temple in Japan are no less great.
What reasons, then, do we have for building the history of the Middle Ages on the scale discussed earlier, i. e., on a scale which would include not only the history of the European peoples, but also the history of the Asian and North African peoples, of the entire civilised world known at that time? In other words, what reasons do we have for building the history of the Middle Ages on a world historical scale?
We have the most important thing: a single common background. This background is the history of the establishment of feudalism as
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a formation dominating on the scale of world history. Chronologically, the 3rd century is the point of departure.
At that time the ancient world was represented on a world historical plane by five states if we count only the “great powers” of those days. These were: the Han Empire in Eastern Asia, the Gupta Empire in India, the Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan, the Parthian kingdom in Mesopotamia and Iran, and the Roman Empire in Western Asia, North Africa and Western Europe. The disintegration of the Han Empire began at the end of the 2nd century; Parthia fell at the beginning of the 3rd century. Two of the biggest powers of the ancient world in the East thus collapsed at about the some period. The other powers survived longer: they disintegrated only in the 5th century.
It is well known, however, that when historians speak of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, they refer to a fact which did not have any epochal significance: the dethroning of Romulus Augustul, the last Roman emperor, by Odoacer. Actually, the empire ceased to exist earlier. In the 4th century it disintegrated into two parts, the eastern and the western, and already then the “barbarian” conquerors began to dominate the western part. Definite signs of disintegration of the Roman Empire appeared even before, in the 3rd century; its weakening was also manifested in that it survived the onslaught of the “barbarian” peoples at that time only with great difficulty.
Thus, it should be recognised that in the 3rd century the collapse of the ancient slave-owning world was evident not in two but in three of its centres: China, Iran and the Roman Empire. Of course, the degree and scale of this disintegration and, consequently, the degree and scale of the establishment of feudal relations in each of these three countries differed greatly. This process was strongest in China and weakest in Iran. Therefore, in the history of individual peoples and countries and even in regional history, the chronology of the transition to feudalism will be different in each case. But xf we take this process as a whole, on the scale of world history, these local distinctions in the degree of the rooting of feudalism cannot alter considerably the general chronology.
The transition to feudalism in the other two centres of world civilisation began much later. The Kushana kingdom fell at the end of the 5th century; the Gupta Empire was also defeated at the end ol the 5th century and completely vanished early in the 6th century.
It would be wrong, however, to expect the historical process of feudalism s establishment to take place throughout the Old World in the same chronological bounds. We should sooner be surprised at the proximity, in point of time, of the development of this process in three major states of the ancient world: in Eastern Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. The epochal significance of the developments in these countries can be judged by the fact that signs of collapse were already in evidence in the 4th century both in
the Kushana kingdom, i.e., the country which on one side bordered on Parthia, already defeated, and, on the other, on the disintegrated Han Empire; almost simultaneously with the fall of the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century came the fall ot the neighbouring Gupta Empire. Therefore, if we take the world historical scale, it is the 3rd century that should be regarded as the beginning of the process which led to the establishment of feudalism as the prevailing socioeconomic system.
Many historical facts, which accompanied the establishment of feudalism and were common both to the East and the West, can serve as the foundation for tracing a history of the Middle Ages on a truly world-wide scale. One of these facts is the emergence of a number of new, “young” peoples on the world historical scene during this period, between the 3rd and 5th centuries. The population of the two powerful empires of the ancient world, the Han and the Roman, with their ancient civilisation, which for a long time suffered from the raids of these peoples, designated them with words of an absolutely identical meaning: the Chinese called them hu or hu-jen, and the Romans, barbari. Roth these names mean “alien” and at the same time “uncivilised”. For the Chinese in the 3rd to the 5th centuries these were the Huns, Tibetans, Hsien-pi, Jujan; somewhat later also the Turkic people. For the Romans of these centuries these were the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Langobards, Franks, Huns and, somewhat later, the Slavs.
Some of the peoples that surrounded ancient China brought about in the 4th century her cleavage into two parts, the southern and the northern, when they set up their “barbarian kingdoms” in the northern part (the Huns, Tibetans and Hsien-pi); other peoples—the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Franks, who surrounded ancient Rome—contributed, also in the 4th century, to the break-up of the Roman Empire into two halves, eastern and western, and then settled in the territory of the western half. The situation was similar in other areas of the ancient world. As early as the 3rd century Parthia fell into the hands of a group of Iranian tribes which founded a new state ruled by the Sassanids. The Kushana kingdom and the Gupta Empire fell in the 5th century under the blows of Ephtha-lites (White Huns), who also had their state on the conquered territory for a certain time.
Common features, however, should not overshadow the essential differences in the clashes of the “old” and “young” peoples. It will be recalled that as a result of “barbarian” invasions of the Western Roman Empire the latter ceased to exist and the “barbarian kingdoms” which arose in its stead initiated a complete change of the picture in Europe. The subsequent history in this area is the history of these “young” peoples.
The process was different in China: the barbarian conquests, far from destroying the Chinese state, did not even interrupt its existence. The southern part of the country remained outside the
invasions. Moreover, it did not in any way subsequently turn into a kind of Byzantium, but remained the selfsame China. And even in the northern part, where “barbarian kingdoms” were formed, they soon ceased to be “barbarian”, turning into Chinese. The native Chinese population in this part of the country assimilated the newcomers and passed on its civilisations to them. This was the basis for the subsequent restoration of the country’s political unity.
In view of this, the “barbarian conquests” affected the process of feudalism’s development in different ways. “Young” peoples stood at that time at a lower stage of social development than the peoples of ancient civilisations: some of them were in a late stage of the primitive-communal system, others already had elements of feudalism. That is why these peoples, coming in close contact with the peoples of ancient civilisations, in which the crystallisation of feudalism was under way, were drawn into this process. But in some cases they played a bigger part in this process and in other cases, a lesser part.
Many of these tribes, both in the East and the West, developed beyond the bounds of the ancient civilisations. In Asia these were the Manchu-Tungus tribes (as we call this ethnic group now) who long ago settled on the territory subsequently named Manchuria; close to them were the forebears of the present-day Koreans, who in the 1st century B.G. set up their own states on the Korean Peninsula; north-west of China lived the Jujan, who in the 5th century reached the apex of their might; in the 6th century the Turkic people formed a powerful state on vast expanses north-west of China, subordinating the Jujan. In Europe such tribes were represented by the Sueves in the northern part and the Slavs in the eastern and southeastern parts.
This process was subsequently continued, drawing ever new peoples into the general historical stream. In Eastern Asia these were the Japanese, Tanguts, K’itan, Churchen and Mongols; in Western Asia, various Turkic tribes; in the Middle East, the Arabs. Some of these peoples settled on the territory of old civilised countries, creating their own states there and either merging with the local population or annihilating it; others created states of their own on new territories, thereby bringing new vast areas of the Old World into the common stream of history.
A common feature in the history of the peoples in the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West, was that they were building their civilisations having as a legacy the civilisation of the ancient world. Some of them were direct heirs to this legacy because they were living on the territory of the great states of antiquity. For others this civilisation, as it were, was external. But the power of the ancient civilisations was such that all peoples fell under their spell and were drawn into their orbit. That is why ancient civilisations played a special part in the history of the Middle Ages.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages the world had five old centres of civilisation: China, India, the Kushana kingdom, Parthia and the Graeco-Roman world. All the peoples of East and SouthEast Asia were under the influence of the ancient Chinese civilisation; various nationalities in India and in Western Turkistan were influenced by India’s civilisation; in its turn, the civilisation of Western Turkistan extended its influence to North-West India, to the peoples of Central Asia and even to China; Graeco-Roman civilisation prevailed in Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, and in the Hellenistic period it even reached Western Turkistan.
This situation determined the very intricate development of the economic, social and political institutions of the peoples in the Middle Ages. Many of these institutions either grew out directly from the corresponding institutions of the ancient world or were shaped under their influence. That is why “purity” of social forms, which may occur under an independent historical development of a people free of any outside influence (by the way, a case which has hardly even existed in history), could not be observed in this historical setting. The Middle Ages, an epoch radically differing from antiquity, was nevertheless a successor to this antiquity. This duality—succession of civilisation, on the one hand, and renunciation of the old civilisation for the sake of the new, on the other—were an essential feature of cultural development in the Middle Ages, the feature which made for the complexity and, frequently, the contradictory nature of individual phenomena of this process.
The role of antiquity in the development of the Middle Ages stands out very clearly in two historical stages: when medieval feudal society crystallised and when it passed into a new, relatively later phase. The crystallisation of the feudal system proceeded amidst a sharp clash of the new and the old along all lines, a clash which brought about the collapse of the slave-owning world represented by ancient states;at thesame time the new feudal system was shaped,incorporating many elements of the culture of the slave-owning states.
The role of the ancient civilisation was strikingly revealed during the transition of medieval feudal society to a new phase of its development, when elements of relations new for that time—early capitalist relations—began to appear. That was the epoch called “Renaissance” in Europe. The same name, it seems to us, with the necessary account of the specific conditions, could be applied to some Asian countries too. Transition to the new form was accompanied by a certain departure from the “medieval” and recourse to the “ancient”. Antiquity was called upon to facilitate the development of the new order, the one of which the humanists of Europe, China and Western Asia dreamed. As we know, that naturally was not a complete negation of the Middle Ages. They could not be fully discarded: feudalism, i. e., the system which we call medieval, continued to exist. Nor was this a revival of antiquity. Antiquity could not be restored either: that would imply a return to the slavery system.
Everything of medievalism that could still be developed was preserved and things that could facilitate the necessary forward movement were borrowed from antiquity. On the other hand, we also know full well how great was this new manifestation of the influence of antiquity on the medieval world, how long it persisted and to what diverse consequences in the sphere of culture it led.
Thus, the special role played by the heritage of the ancient world in the history of the Middle Ages was manifested both in the East and the West. This can serve as another reason for constructing the history of the Middle Ages on a world scale.
We can point to many common developments. Let us dwell on one of the most essential, the special role played by religion and the church in the history of medieval society.
The appearance of world religions in the Middle Ages is a development unknown in antiquity. These were Buddhism in Eastern and Central Asia, and partly in Western Turkistan, Islam in Western Asia and North Africa and Christianity in Europe and partly in Western Asia. It goes without saying that Buddhism and Christianity originated and developed in antiquity, but it was only in the medieval period that they turned into world religions. Islam arose in the Middle Ages but it also swiftly gained world-wide importance. It was feudalism, medieval society, that gave the very possibility of religions acquiring such an exceptional position. The new basis at first needed a superstructure which could help it strike solid root: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam provided such a superstructure and, moreover, of an all-embracive character.
A superstructure which strengthens its basis consists of a legal system, political theory, ethical system, aesthetic views, philosophy and religion. In the Middle Ages religion was a system of law, political doctrine, moral teaching and philosophy combined. It was a synthesis of all the superstructures over the feudal basis, at least until this basis began to be undermined by factors leading to capitalism. This all-embracive nature of religion in the Middle Ages was displayed everywhere.
Buddhism is not only a religious creed; it is a philosophy with its own theory of knowledge and doctrine of being; it is a moral teaching; it is a doctrine of society and the state; lastly, it is a system of aesthetic views which stimulated the flowering of remarkable Buddhist art—architecture, sculpture and painting; poetry, narrative prose and drama arose.
Islam is not only a sum total of religious beliefs; it is a political doctrine, a system of legal and ethical prinoiples.
The same can be said about medieval Christianity; suffice it to read the Summa theologiae to see that it contains elements of the superstructures of all kinds, up to economic theory.
Therefore, the disintegration of this synthesis, the release of individual independent spheres from this integral whole was a symptom of emancipation from the power of religion and of a
decline of its importance. We know that the first to be thus released was natural science, astronomy and mathematics. It is for this reason that their origin and development was of truly revolutionary significance for those days, heralding the dawn of a new social system.
But the matter was not limited to the purely ideological side of religion. Superstructures bring into being corresponding institutions and act through them. The church was an institution of religion as a superstructure, and to the same extent as the superstructure itself its institution was of an all-embracive character. The development of the church as a huge, ramified, powerful public organisation was a new, highly characteristic feature of the medieva
' Here again we can note in each case a similarity of phenomena in the East and the West, for all their specific features. Christianity was not the only religion to create a church: both Islam and Buddhism did the same. Moreover, the organisational forms ol these three churches were close in their essence.The church brought togeth er the clergy and the laity; the clergy was organised on a hierarchic scale. The principle on which this hierarchy rested was also the same: it was the principle of authority.
One more feature was fully displayed in the religions ol the Middle Ages. All the three churches were above all major political organisations The history of the Christian, Islamic and Buddhist churches is primarily the history of their political activity. It is hardly necessary to recall that these organisations were instruments of the ruling class, the feudal lords, in most fully subordinating the people they exploited.
This specific nature of religion in the Middle Ages and its particular role both as an ideology and a church organisation (a role equally played in the history of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) can be added among the common factors in medieval life which form the ground work for constructing a history of the Middle Ages as a general history of the countries and peoples of the Old World m that period.
But for all the common features, we must not lose sight ol the considerable differences in the sphere and degree of influence exerted by religions on the ideology and social life in different countries during the medieval period. An example of these differences is afforded by the role of Catholicism in the life of the West European peoples and of Buddhism in China. In China, Buddhism has never even during its heyday, played a role in the life of society and the state equal to that of Catholicism in the West European countries. For example, in China one of the most important spheres — education and enlightenment — was always in the hands of the so-called Confucianists, proponents of secular education. School education and the academy of learning were also in the hands of the Confucianists. Buddhist treatises never served as textbooks in these schools. And if Confucianists did read
these treatises, it was only to criticise them and reject them on the basis of this criticism. In this respect the situation in medieval China redically differed from the one in Christian Europe and Islamic Asia and Africa.
We could enumerate other phenomena which serve as a reliable mainstay for constructing a general, world-wide and not regional— Western of Eastern—medieval history. Let us examine only one of the most important phenomena: the peasant movement.
It was during the Middle Ages that peasant movements gained a scale observed neither earlier not later. This is natural because under feudalism the peasants made up the bulk of the toiling population and were the main antagonistic class facing the dominating class, the feudal lords. The other oppressed sections of society—artisans, hired labourers and the urban plebs—began to act independently only in tbe period of late feudalism, and even then but relatively. Throughout the Middle Ages these oppressed sections rose up to fight only when joining the peasants. That is why the class struggle in the Middle Ages assumed the form of clashes between the main antagonistic classes of feudal society—the peasants and the feudal lords.
The peasant movements in Europe have been thoroughly studied. They have been less studied in the East, and yet it is in the East that the peasant struggle in the Middle Ages assumed the largest scale and the keenest forms. This is particularly true of China.
From the viewpoint of the historical process, the most important thing is to consider not the uprisings themselves but the role they played in history.
Peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages, as a rule, ended in failure: the feudal elements usually brutally crushed them. But it would be altogether wrong to see only this aspect. Despite all the repressions brought down upon the peasants, it were these uprisings that moved history forward at decisive moments. In the history of China, this point can be illustrated by three striking examples.
A sweeping uprising, known as the Yellow Turban rebellion, broke out in the Han Empire in the 180’s. All oppressed sections of the population, chiefly the feudally-bound peasants and the slaves, took part in it. The rebellion was crushed, but it undermined the very foundations of the Han Empire and compelled the ruling class completely to abandon the survivals of slave exploitation and go over to feudal exploitation. For that period this change-over was a step forward in social development.
A second example. In the 70’s of the 11th century a peasant war flared up in the T’ang Empire, known as the Wang Hsien-chi and Hwang Ch’ao rebellion. As always, the peasants made up the mass of the rebels and they were joined by other oppressed sections of the population. The uprising was crushed, but the form of exploitation which had prevailed until then, the form based on state bondage, was abolished and replaced by the dependence of
the peasants directly on the feudal lords. That was definitely in the interest of the exploiter class, but it ushered in the era of so-called fragmented feudalism, marked by considerable economic independence of the separate feudal domains, which facilitated the country s general economic development. Consequently, that was a step forward for those days. The ruling class, which used to cling to the old form of feudal exploitation, went over to another form under the pressure of this peasant uprising.
Here is a third example. In the first half of the 17th century^a peasant war flared up in the Ming Empire, known as the Li Tzn-ch’eng rebellion. It, too, was crushed—with the help of Manchus summoned by the Chinese feudal lords. But this rebellion, apart from bringing about the overthrow of the ruling dynasty, had a more important result: it brought Chinese feudalism to its last phase, the phase of absolutism, that is, it pushed history forward.
These three examples, it seems'to us, corroborate the thesis of the Marxist theory of the historical process: it is the people, the working classes, that are the real makers of history. Naturally, this is illustrated just as strikingly by the struggle of the peasants m the West too. This can serve as a reliable compass in revealing the common course of the historical process in the West and in the East.
Is all this, however, sufficient? Is it enough for constructing the history of the Middle Ages, enough for proving that during this period feudalism prevailed throughout the Old World; that feudalism had grown up on the ruins of the ancient slave-owning world; that during this period, both in Asia and Europe, new peoples appeared on the historical arena; that many of them initiated the subsequent crystallisation of modern nations; that the entire historical process was marked by the intertwining of elements of the new civilisation with elements of the old civilisation; that religion and the church played a tremendous role in this process and that the masses, their struggle, gave an impetus to history? For a common history some kind of a community of life itself is necessary. Was there such a community in the historical life of the peoples ot Asia, Europe and North Africa in the Middle Ages?
No one will challenge the statement that the peoples ol Europe in the course of their history came in close contact with one another. This is attested to by the long existence of the “history of the Middle
Ages”, in the European sense of this term, as a special branch ol historical science. No one will deny that the historical destinies o the peoples in Western Asia and also in India were closely intertwined; this gave rise, long ago, to the “history of the East in general and even"the history of medieval East” in particular. Die peoples of the Far East and of South-East Asia were likewise closely intercon-
nected. But what about a common historical life of the East and the West as a whole? Did it exist?
Let us turn to things we know well; let us turn to the ancient world. Ancient Greece was not only a European country: its colonies in Asia Minor made it an Asian country as well. The GraecoPersian wars eloquently attest to the closest proximity of the history of Greece to the history of the Middle Eastern peoples. The history of the West in the age of Alexander the Great ceased to be the history of the West alone; it also turned into the history of the East. Moreover, in the Hellenistic world, which took shape after the campaigns of Alexander, there was no division into the East and the West in general. European Greece, African Egypt, West-Asian Syria and Bactria in Western Turkistan were all in equal measure parts of this world.
It is also difficult to make a division into the East and the West in the Roman epoch. The Roman Empire was in no way solely a European state either geographically, politically or culturally. Even in the domain of religion, Mithraism and Christianity, which prevailed in the Roman Empire in the last centuries of its existence, were phenomena equally Eastern and Western. It is also well known how closely the history of Rome was related to the history of the Asian and North African peoples around it.
What was the Kushana kingdom like? Ittwas located in Asia so that geographically it belonged to the East. But it included the territory of former Bactria, a country of Hellenistic culture; it ruled the territory of present-day Afghanistan and part of NorthWest India, and from there Buddhism penetrated; it was in constant contact with the Han Empire and this signified penetration of Chinese civilisation and at the same time the spread of Buddhism from Kushana to China. During its heyday the Kushana kingdom was truly the crossroad and junction of Iranian, Indian, Hellenistic and Chinese civilisations, which enriched the local culture. Sufficient proof of this is furnished by the art of Gandhara, the surviving memorials of pictorial art: in the images of Buddha and Bodhisattva of those days we can discern features of Indian art, elements of Hellenistic art and echoes of the pictorial art of ancient China. This blending of different cultures was peculiarly symbolised in that Kanishka, the ruler of the Kushana kingdom at its apex, bore four titles: Son of Heaven (Dewaputra), King of Kings (Shaonan shao), Caesar, and Maharaja. These were the titles of the rulers of China, Iran, Rome and India.
Let us turn to the Han Empire. It will be recalled that its history was closely intertwined with the history of the peoples on the Korean Peninsula, of South-East Asia and of the “Western area” (Hsi yii), as the Chinese called Eastern Turkistan and Western Asia in those days. Needless to speak of the history of the numerous “barbarian” tribes which dwelt north and north-west of the Chinese borders: the history of these tribes is directly included in the so-called dy
nastic chronicles of China. For example, Ho Han-shu (History of the Later Han Dynasty) has sections outlining the history of the peoples of the Korean Peninsula and the “Western area”. Through Western Turkistan the Chinese people also came in contact with the peoples of India and Western Asia.
The Chinese even knew about the “great land of Ch’in” (Ta Ch'in) in the distant West: this is how they called the Roman Empire. The ancient Romans likewise knew about the “Chinese land” somewhere in the Far East; they knew that the silk fabrics brought to Rome by Eastern merchants came from that country. Roth countries at times even tried to establish direct contacts. A Han mission was sent to Rome in the 1st century A.D.;it did not get to Rome but visited Roman Syria. When Marcus Aurelius Antoninus defeated the Parthians in the 2nd century and reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, he sent a mission to China. It went there by sea—over the Indian Ocean to the shores of Cochin-China and from there by land to Loyang, the Han capital. Trade ties thus existed between the two great empires of the East and the West. It was maintained both along the continental “northern route”, across countries of Western Asia, and the marine “southern route”, from the Persian Gulf to Indochina.
All these well-known facts are cited merely to recall that even in the ancient world a certain community of the historical life of the Eastern and Western peoples existed. In^the Middle Ages this community, far from disappearing, increased in scale and its content became more diversified. This can be easily demonstrated even by a cursory review of the major events of the Middle Ages.
At the very beginning of the Middle Ages we find a manifestation of community in the history of the Eastern and Western peoples; it is the history of the Huns. Let us recall it.
The Huns, that part of the tribe which remained in its homeland in Eastern Asia, at the beginning of the 4th century bore down upon the Chin Empire of Chine, which for a short time restored the old empire under the power of another dynasty, and captured the northern part of that empire. The Huns from the part of the tribe which at the end of the 2nd century left their ancient homeland and moved westward, stopped for a time in Central Asia and then moved on. One of these groups, named Ephthalites by European historians, attacked and overran the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century and shortly afterwards also subjugated the Indian Gupta Empire. Another group moved to the Caspian Sea, occupied its northern coast up to the southern foothills of the Urals and then, carrying along the subjugated tribes and mixing with them to a certain extent, moved farther west, establishing in the second half of the 4th century its state in the steppes of the lower Volga, the Don and the North Caucasus; in the last quarter of the 4th century these Huns, crossing the Don —the frontier of the Goth power—defeated the Ostrogoths and, moving farther to the Dniester, routed the Visigoths
and reached the borders of the Roman Empire. The onslaught of the Huns on Rome began in the 5th century and led to shifting the centre of the Hun state to the very heart of Europe, to Pannonia.
Where was the history of the Huns enacted? In the East? In the West? In Eastern Asia? In Western Turkistan and Western Asia? In India? In Eastern Europe? In Central Europe?... There can only be one answer: everywhere throughout the Old World, from the northern provinces of China to the western provinces of Rome. Is it possible to outline the history of the Huns otherwise than within the bounds of a general history of the peoples of the Old World in the Middle Ages?
The case of the Huns clearly demonstrates the impossibility of constructing this history within the hounds of the East or West alone. The history of some other peoples that appeared on the historical scene in the Middle Ages—Turks, Arabs and Mongols—also oversteps these bounds.
The history of the Turkic tribes begins in Asia, in the Altai area. In the 6th century these tribes formed a strong tribal alliance, named the Turkic Khaganate by Western historians. In those days the possessions of the Turks represented a vast country extending from the Khingan Mountains in the East to Sogdiana in Western Turkistan, which was wrested by the Turks from the Ephtlialite Huns. The centre of this country was on the bank of the Orhon River (present-day Northern Mongolia). Rut even at that time this state, which was an unstable union of many nomad tribes, was actually divided into two poorly connected parts, the eastern and the western, each having its own Khagan. That is why the further development of the history of the Turks followed along two lines. The history of the Eastern Turks proceeded in close neighbourhood of China and was intimately linked with Chinese history. A strong onslaught of Turks on Northern China was in evidence as early as the 6th century. The Chinese were compelled either to beat them back by force of arms or buy them off with gifts and tribute. The clashes continued throughout the 6th and 7th centuries and were so intense that during that period the “Turkic danger” was the principal
threat to China. .
As early as the 6th century, i. e., during the existence of a single Turkic state, the WesternTurks subjugated Western Turkistan and even Persia, and established relations with Byzantium. Through these old civilised countries they engaged in the lively trade that connected the East and the West. .
There is no need to outline the history of the Western Turkic tribes; it is well known. In subsequent centuries we find Turkic states in Western Asia, India and Europe. To what part of the Old World does the history of the Turks belong? Was Tamerlane s empire only Asian? Was the Ottoman Empire only Asian? Is it possible in general to present the history of the Turkic peoples outside the framework of the history of the East and the West?
The history of the Arabs is similarly a common development both for the East and the West. In the Middle Ages, Arab states lay in a chain from Arabia and Western Turkistan along the entire coast of North Africa to the Atlantic, and from there extended to the Iberian Peninsula. The history of these states in the East was the history not only of the Arabs themselves, but also of the peoples of Western Turkistan and even North-West India; the history of the Arabs of Arabia is linked also with the history of Ethiopia. The history of the Arabs in Western Asia is most intimately connected with the history of Byzantium and even countries of Western Europe. The history of Europe deals with the Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula. In equal measure it is impossible to outline the history of the Cordovan Caliphate separately from the history of Spain and the history of Spain in the Middle Ages, separately from the history of the Moors.
Similarly, the history of the Mongols cannot be presented within the bounds of the history of the East alone. The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, extending from the Pacific to the western frontiers of Eastern Europe, is a development belonging both to the East and the West. It is difficult to imagine that the Mongols in the days of Genghiz Khan or Kublai Khan could even have an idea of a frontier dividing their possessions into “the East” and “the West”. It should be noted that the concept of “the East” was formed in Europe, but the Asian peoples had no concept of “the West” in the Middle Ages. “The West”, as a concept opposed to “the East”, appeared, for example, among the Chinese and the Japanese only in the recent period and it owes its origin to their familiarity with the European word “East” in its specifically European sense.
Such is the case with the history of some peoples in the Middle Ages: it can be outlined only within the framework of world history. This applies not only to peoples that emerged from Asia; it is also true of some European peoples. Let us recall the history of Byzantium or the history of Kiev Bus and Muscovy. Is it possible to expound the history of Byzantium without the history of Persia, the Arab Caliphate or Turkey? Can we consider the history of Kiev Rus and Muscovy without touching upon the Mongol Empire or Tamerlane’s state?
That the historical life of the peoples in the East and the West was intertwined in the Middle Ages, is beyond doubt. This intertwining differed at different times and among different peoples both in degree and in content. At times it could be entirely absent. But if we take the history of the Eastern and Western peoples in the Middle Ages as a whole, this intertwining is present everywhere.
The history of separate peoples, both big and small, can and should be outlined; every people is a maker of history and has its own destiny. The historical activity of each people has a significance of its own. It is possible and necessary to present the history of groups
of peoples closely interconnected by their historical destinies It w fully possible, for example, to write histories . of the peoples ■ of Eastern Asia (the Chinese, Koreans and the Japanese), the peoples of India and Western Asia, the history of the Slav peoples, the peoples of Western Europe, and so on. But a general history of the Middle Ages is no less important and necessary. It is possib because the life of individual peoples in the Old World was closely connected with general history; it is necessary because only m such a general framework will many processes m the history of individual peoples and groups of peoples appear in their true light and true
perspective.
How is this general history of the Middle Ages to be constructed How can we prevent it from turning into a collection of histories oi individual countries or peoples or at best into some kind of general compendium of these histories: in other words, into a new variant of the so-called “universal histories” which have existed for a long time and have their own traditions? How are we to construct this history so as to obtain a truly general history of countries and
peoples in the Middle Ages? , , , , ,
A truly universal history of the Middle Ages can be elaborated only if we constantly bear in mind its specific features, which set it apart from the histories of individual peoples and countries or the histories of groups of peoples. Some of the tasks of such a world history, it seems to us, can be easily formulated. . .
One task is to reveal the content and importance of each historical event affecting simultaneously several countries and peoples, several groups of countries and peoples, or even the East and the West as a whole, not from the angle of the history of one participant m this event but in the aspect of world history.
Let us take one historical fact as an example.
We know the Crusades and their history. But the very tact that we know this under the name of “Crusades” shows that they are presented “from this side”—from the side of Europe. Replacing the name “Crusades” by some other would change nothing in our “European” approach to these events.
Yet the Crusades are events which in equal measure are the history of Eastern peoples; they can be presented “from that side” too. There are no less grounds for it than for outlining them m the aspect of European history. Let us imagine that these events are described by a Muslim historian. He will speak about them differently than European historians. He will perhaps present them as ‘ defence against the invasion of infidels”, perhaps as “the history of Islam s advance to the West”, etc. To approach these events from the angle of European history is fully warranted, but only for the history of Europe. It is similarly justified to outline them from the aspect
of the history of the Arabs and later of the Turks, but only in writing the history of the Arabs or Turks. A world history of the Middle Ages must approach these events differently: it must view them not from “this” or “that” side, but from above, i. e., independent of the concepts of both sides. Only in that case will these events appear before the historian in their general-historical, i. e., most proper light.
Let us take another example. We know of the Mongol conquests in Eastern Europe; we know of the struggle waged by the Russian people against the invaders and the fall of the latter’s state. This collapse can be presented as deliverance from the Mongol yoke; this is how it should be done in writing the history of the Russian people. We can speak about this collapse as the saving of the West European peoples from the Mongol danger; this is how it should be presented in the histories of these peoples. But the historian of the Middle Ages as a whole will see here simultaneously the persistent struggle of the Chinese people against the Mongol conquerors, a struggle which led to their liberation from the Mongol yoke; the struggle of the peoples of Western Asia against the Mongol conquerors and the fall of Mongol rule in this area of the Old World; the heroic resistance of the Russian people who won their freedom in protracted struggle. World history will see these three facts simultaneously; they will be linked with one another and together reveal the true meaning of the events. This will be the collapse of the world Mongol Empire and the beginning of new development for the peoples that for a time had been fettered by the conquerors’ rule.
Such is one task of the history of the Middle Ages: to reveal the content and significance of all events in a truly world-historical aspect.
Another possible task is to bring out the role of each people in the general historical process in the Middle Ages. This can be achieved in two ways: first, by tracing the history of each people as an independent phenomenon, and not as an appendage to the history of some other people; second, by revealing the intertwining of the history of each people with the history of other peoples. These two aspects must necessarily accompany each other, reciprocally supplement and correct each other. We must not, for example, present the history of the Arabs only from the moment when the European peoples actually faced them; it is necessary to ouline the entire history of the Arab tribes in the Middle Ages. But to prevent this from turning into a history of the Arabs only, it should be expounded in the context of the Arabs’ role in the general historical life of the Middle Ages. Then the history of the Arabs will appear as the process of emergence of various Arab tribes onto the world historical scene, as a process of their spread over a huge part of the Old World—from the Arabian Peninsula to the Atlantic coast and to Indonesia; as a process of the formation of several Arab nationalities that created their oAvn states; as a process of their pene-
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trating the history of other peoples both in Europe and Asia, which exerted a serious influence on the latter’s history and even on the destinies of some of them.
The Middle Ages in the history of the Russian people, too, will appear in a special light before the historian. He will see in it the drawing together and unification of a number of East Slavonic tribes, their conversion into a powerful factor of world history, the formation of an East-Slavonic state as a crossroads of the history of the East and the West, and the resultant consequences: the need to wage a struggle for existence and development in two directions— Western and Eastern; the historian will see the subsequent formation of a state which in the 16th century became a mighty power that crossed the Urals and thereby laid the beginning of a multinational state that connot be divided between the East and the West, with all the attendant consequences for the further course of world history.
Another task of the general history of the Middle Ages can thus be defined as the presentation of the history of each people in the light of their place and role in the general historical process.
But this task in itself raises another problem—tracing and revealing the process of historical life in the Middle Ages as a whole. This is the most difficult and most urgent problem of all. It may be sa’d that no genuine history of the Middle Ages is possible unless it is solved.
It would be premature now to outline ways for accomplishing this task and predicting its results. We shall limit ourselves to the most general considerations.
We look upon the Middle Ages as a period of the emergence and development of the feudal socio-economic system, which replaced the old slave-owning system. But a careful study of the history of the peoples in the Middle Ages clearly brings out several indisputable facts: the establishment of feudalism in various countries of the medieval world differed in point of time; the conditions for the emergence of feudalism and its development in various countries differed; the degrees of its development differed and, lastly, its forms were diverse, whereas its socio-economic essence in general was the same.
Only a general history of the Middle Ages can disclose and explain all these phenomena—through a study of the history of individual peoples and countries and simultaneously the history of all of them taken together. Without this it is impossible to ascertain why in one country feudalism struck root earlier than in. another; why in some countries it was established in one way and in other countries, in a different way; why in one place it was more stable and better developed than in others; why in one place it was manifested in some forms and elsewhere in other forms. Without a general study it is impossible to establish the most important thing: how all this
historical multiformity fitted into a single process of historical development; how, in what concrete forms, in what sequence and interconnection it proceeded and to what ultimately it led medieval society. In other words, what was it that brought to life the feudal system of medieval society, what comprised the driving force of its tremendous development and what led to its decline and, ultimately, to its fall.
This common process has one concrete side which comprises its historical specific feature. This is the common trend, common direction of the historical process of the birth, development and decline of feudalism. Disclosure of this direction explains the historical destinies of the peoples in the Middle Ages and also in the new times.
Let us review the general course of the world historical process during the Middle Ages. We at once will see that in the common history of the East and the West the East played a progressive part for a long time. The processes which subsequently became common for the West and the East started earlier in the East. The onslaught of the “barbarians” on ancient civilised states, for example, began in the East: as far back as the 3rd century B.C. the Chinese had to build various fortifications to protect themselves from invasions from the north. That was the beginning of what subsequently became the Chinese Wall. Its counterpart on the north-eastern borderlands of the Roman Empire, the Trajan Wall, was needed only at the beginning of the 2nd century A.D.
The movement of tribes which encompassed Asia and Europe and ultimately led to the rise of new nationalities and new states, in other words, the greatest historical development which marked the initial period of the Middle Ages, originated in the East and, moreover, long before it spread to Europe. The Huns were pressed back from the northern borders of the Han Empire at the end of the 1st century A.D.; this movement of the Huns reached Europe and pushed the Black Sea Goths westward, towards the Roman Empire, only in the 4th century.
New “barbarian kingdoms” began to arise in the East earlier than in the West: they appeared on the territory of Northern China at the beginning of the 4th century, whereas in Europe they arose only in the 5th century on the territory of the Western Roman Empire. Feudalism as the basis of the economic, social and state system began to take shape in the East earlier than in Europe. Similarly, rudimentary elements of capitalism appeared in the feudal society in the East before they appeared in the West. Another indication of the leading role of the East is the fact that the biggest and most powerful states in that epoch arose in the East in view of the early and extensive development of feudalism there.
Lastly, one more indication of the leading role of the East in the Middle Ages can be mentioned: the cultural superiority of the East over the West in that period. It is beyond dispute that theChinese,
Indian, Arabic, Iranian and Western Turkistan peoples in that epoch in many spheres of technology and material culture, andparticu-larly in the arts, in the sphere of law, political doctrines, philosophy, historiography, science and literature, were ahead of the West; for a long time these cultures were much richer in content than the analogous spheres of culture in the West.
Alongside all this, conditions also developed in the East which gradually began to retard the historical process and to impede the development of capitalist elements. Since such conditions did not arise in the West, the development of feudalism and, subsequently, the growth of capitalism, proceeded there at a faster pace. The result was that at a definite moment in the Middle Ages the centre of mankind’s forward movement in the Old World began to shift from the East to the West. Thus started what came to be called the lag of the East, at first in the economic and then also in the political and the cultural spheres. In the new times this lag brought about a situation directly opposite to that in the Middle Ages: whereas in medieval times the East kept up its onslaught on the West, in the new period the West began its onslaught on the East, which ultimately turned most of the Eastern countries into colonies, semicolonies and dependencies of the West. Thus, a truly scientific study of the history of peoples in the Middle Ages on a world-historical scale, i. e., embracing both the Eastern and the Western peoples, makes it possible to explain the course of the historical process in the new times as well.
1955
K. MapKC h <1>. 9Hreni>c, CcamHemiH, t. 23, MocKBa, 1960,CTp.346. 34