At the crossroads of history: is the Russian special operation in Ukraine another turning point?

Written By: Draga Ivić

Modern historians often call it the " roof of history." It sounds unusual, because it causes an unpleasant association and the question – What Next and is the roof of history and the end of history?

Let's see what's under that roof.

The history of the human race, it has long been said, is an endless story of wars.

What traces have history left behind?
In the book” Seven Wonders of the World”, author Miodrag B. Šijatović quotes Peter Andreas and Caspar Killian: "Man Is Born no smarter than ten thousand years ago! What distinguishes us from our cousin from ten millennia ago is experience, and we know well how civilization can treat him with arrogance and thoughtlessness.

Only in the twentieth century did two terrible world wars occur that taught no one anything except mastering new, even more terrible weapons and creating new divisions. The numbers are priceless, as are the facts.

If the estimate is that the Earth was formed five billion years ago, take the age of the Earth as one year, for easier comparison:

A minute of this imaginary year lasts 40,000 years, and one second belongs to 700 years.
Life appeared on the Fourth of December of that imagined, ”compressed” year.
Algae and marine organisms are 19. December, the first vertebrates 22. December.
Mammals appeared on the 27th. December.
Neandretal appeared 31. December at 23.55. hours.
According to this calculation, a new era would start 31. December at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds!
Even in the new era, not all events were of decisive importance. There were many intersections, and we list the most important ones, those after which history developed differently globally than would be usual and expected. We are talking about capital.

Neolithic Revolution (10,000-2,000 BC).
During this period, man mastered Hunting, Fishing, Association in groups, while domestication of animals occurred at different times.

The earliest center of the Neolithic revolution is considered the Middle East where domestication and human-like forms of behavior began to manifest themselves no later than 10,000 BC.

The creation of the Mediterranean civilization (about 4,000 years before our наше)
In Mesopotamia, the Sumerian civilization appeared, and in the Nile Valley of the pharaonic dynasty.

Photo: Fertile Crescent

Their civilization spread rapidly through the” Fertile Crescent " (an area connecting Egypt, the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean and the Levant, to the area exiting the Persian Gulf).

Therefore, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon are considered one of the cradles of civilization.

The Great Migration of the people (from the IV-VII centuries)
It is considered a turning point in human history because it allowed people to transition from the ancient period to the Middle Ages. The causes of the migration are disputed by scientists to this day, but everyone agrees that it is an intercontinental phenomenon.

The first is the 375. years passed through the gates of the people (between the Urals and the Caspian Sea). Numerous Germanic and Sarmatian tribes moved to the territory of the increasingly weak Roman Empire; the Slavs reached the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic, occupied part of the Peloponnese and Asia Minor.

PHOTO: The Great Migration of the people

The Turks arrived at the gates of Central Europe, while the Arabs began their conquest campaigns, during which they took the entire Middle East to the Indus, North Africa, and Spain.

The fall of the Roman Empire
First The Visigoths (410. and then the Germans (476). it was a devastating blow to the eternal Roman Empire. Its decline threatened the achievements of ancient civilization. The fall did not come suddenly because the Empire had long rotted from within, torn apart by military coups, greed, discord, vanity, and most of all by the general decadence of society.

The power was such that nothing could draw from the people the desire for real progress. This decline began as early as the third century because the rulers could no longer control the multi-national empire, and there was no real successor to Diocletian and Constantine.

The ancient world was replaced by feudal Europe with a new center – the ”Holy Roman Empire” about which we have already written. Europe has lived for several centuries in a abyss of turmoil and discord.

Schism or Great Schism
The year 1054. there has been a schism that to this day, whether we want to admit it or not, lies in most of the world's conflicts and movements, wars and pretensions. That year, the Christian Church was divided into Eastern and Western.

The immediate reason lies in the wishes of Pope Leo IUS to conquer the territories over which patriarch Michael I Kerularius (Πατριάρχης Μιχαήλ Α’ Κηρουλάριος) controlled. The result of the dispute was mutual anathema and public accusations of heresy.

Photo: Patriarch of Constantinople Michael chirularius officially declares the schism of the churches

The Western Church was called Roman Catholic (Roman ecumenical Church), and the Eastern Orthodox (Orthodox). The road to schism lasted for a long time, almost six centuries, and began with the so-called Akakian schism (Schisma Acacianum) 484. the year proclaimed by Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople during the second reign of Emperor Zeno.

The Little Ice Age
It's not just people who make their lives worse. There were also cosmic forces in front of which the Earth's ball is powerless. The Little Ice Age lasted from 1312. by 1791. year, causing a global environmental disaster.

At the beginning of what is called the Great Famine (1315-1317), almost a quarter of the people in Europe died. Hunger was a constant companion until the end of this period. From 1371. by 1791. in France alone, there were 111 years of famine. The year 1601. in Russia, half a million people died of starvation due to poor crops.

However, the Little Ice Age also led to social changes, when coal became the main source of energy. The invention of coal and the recognition of its values were a harbinger of the scientific and technical revolution and the birth of capitalism.

Some ethnographers believe that the Little Ice Age influenced the faster conquest of the North American continent, when people sought new spaces, fleeing Europe, ”abandoned by God”.

The epoch of the great geographical discoveries ( period XV-XVII century)
What geographers are proud of, sociologists are ashamed of.

The great discoveries have also opened up the limitless possibility of leading European states to make the most of their colonizing power and extract human and natural resources from underdeveloped states, resulting in fabulous profits.

Thus, the small countries of the ranks of Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and others were placed in the ranks of the richest countries in the world, mercilessly sucking away the wealth of others.

The Reformation (period XVI-XVII century)
Finally the church, the most powerful ruler from the shadows, came to find itself at the crossroads again. The doctor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg (Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Saxony – Anhalt), Martin Luther, knocked on the door of the Wittenberg church his 95 Theses.

He immediately became a threat to the corrupt Catholic Church because he fought against indulgences – the redemption of sin. This ethical debate continued with the Protestant wars in several countries that greatly shook Europe at the time.

Luther was excommunicated in 1521. the year after he burned the papal bull, and only by the peace of Westphalia in 1648. there was an apparent reconciliation.

The great French Revolution (1789-1799)
After the untouchable Catholic Church came the order of nobility of all kinds (emperors, kings,despots, Doge, Dukes, Princes, etc.). The French civil revolution put an end to the old European order with the slogan ”Freedom, equality, brotherhood”.

The struggle for democracy came at a price – in the course of battles that often took the form of terror, about two million people were killed.

There was nothing of freedom, equality and brotherhood either (mostly), but the illusion of democracy was realized and imposed somewhere.

The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)
Many books have been written about Napoleon Bonaparte. The term Bonapartism in the armed forces is used to refer to commanders who have turned the force of subordination into the power of a personal dictatorship.

Photo: Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia

Napoleon's adventurous ambitions plunged Europe into chaos for 15 years. It began with the invasion of Italy, and ended with a disaster in Russia, when only the tenth part of the army he had led in his megalomaniac plans to outmaneuver Alexander of Macedonia returned.

At the time of his Wars, The Kingdom of Italy, The Grand Duchy of Poland, as well as a number of other smaller states emerged. Europe was divided between Napoleon and Alexander the first, ignoring Britain.

A series of military defeats led Napoleon to captivity, where he died, and brought France back to the borders of 1792. years.

Industrial Revolution (XVII-XIX)
In just three to five generations, the world went from agrarian to industrial. First, the steam engine enabled the invention of a number of devices that turned manufacturing into industry, and then the means of transport underwent a rapid expansion.

With them went everything else – serial production, Telegraph, New means of connection. The biggest step in the Industrial Revolution was the redrawing of vast territories by rail and the end of the era of sailing ships.

Photo: the Industrial Revolution

Environmental issues were not discussed at the time. That's why you're talking now.

The first World War (1914-1918)
This war, caused by colonial disputes, determined the development and path of several states. Russia and Germany abolished the monarchical form of government, Austria-Hungary collapsed, new states emerged in the Baltic, as well as in the Balkans.

The worst that this war has produced, not counting casualties and mass destruction, is German revanchism. The First World War was a prelude to the second.

World War II (1939-1945)
This war began as an expression of German discontent, frivolity and adventurism of its politicians. It was run in 40 countries and 72 countries participated in it. About 65 million people died.

Some states gained independence (Ethiopia, Iceland, Syria, Lebanon, Vietnam, Indonesia), and a large number fell into two supranational groups – NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

One of the consequences of World War II was the founding of the United Nations organization, which was an improved copy of the league of nations, but without much influence on actual world affairs.

Photo: media reports that World War II has begun

The peace after this war lasted only three weeks, to continue with dozens of local wars.

Scientific and technical revolution
Everything that has been given to humanity by this revolution (automation of production, Electronics, Communication System, Information Revolution and computer, rocket-space technology, achievements of Medicine and chemistry, etc.) is returned to humans in one way or another – both positive and negative.

A good example of this is the internet, which is like fire – a good servant, an evil master. The same applies to computers, cell phones, bank cards, etc. If they are used properly and to the extent, then their existence makes sense.

How in this light to observe, understand and interpret a special military operation?
As we can see, despite the tumultuous history, Real, Capital intersections were not many. What is too much, even too much? None of them made any real conclusions.

When they arrived at one of the intersections, people would stop, look and, as a rule, choose the wrong path. Today, the greatest enemy of humanity is the human species. On a daily basis, the crisis in Ukraine began, so to speak, yesterday; the animosity was simmering from before (”How did Ukraine go from nationalism to Nazism? ” ) to 2014. years into open conflict.

Historically, the roots of everything, i.e. the causes for which it was initiated, go back to the depths of centuries, even to the Great Schism. See, after all, what are the relations of the confessions in Ukraine. In addition to being the date (1054) when Christianity generally divided, the confessional boundaries remain to this day, most often, the cause, cause, and target of conflict.

The crusades against the Slavs, the Great Roman Empire, Napoleon's campaign against Russia, foreign intervention during the Civil War and the October Revolution, the war of the USSR and Poland, the Japanese claims, as well as the constant support for the enemies of Russia (whether Russia was an empire, an empire, a communist society or this today) are a constant centuries.

Many times in careless (? the statements of Western politicians say what they really think – that Russia should share the wealth it has with others.

When colonial powers conquered the world mercilessly by plundering it, they did not mention or offer such a division. Perhaps this bill will also come to the collection, which our portal has already written about (”it is time for British colonialism to pay").

Is it all one of the crucial, historical intersections that we have already mentioned, or is it just (historically speaking) a gamble to the next, bigger and more decisive occasion? It is certain that all masks have been removed and that the world, which was not inclined to unite, has been further divided. And those who would remain neutral in this way have to some extent been classified. For a long time, the double archers did not work as strongly as they do now.

Photo: start all, power schedule

No one dares to predict what will happen after all, because historical and Sociological Science are not sports betting. What is certain, however, that can indicate to us how events will, in principle, unfold?

The fact is that people are not inclined to change the patterns of their behavior. If through these numbered intersections the state and peoples have passed and continued on a more expensive path, there is an opportunity that even now it will not be different. Even if that path were right (such as liberation wars or Space Exploration), people would always choose the harder and more complicated way.

The defeated will always have a need to explain something and prepare for revenge, and the winners throughout history have been most often beaten by sleeping on laurels. And we have been convinced of this many times; let us remind France, the military superpower and the winner of the first World War, how and how quickly it was defeated. He is not the only one who has experienced such a fate.

Will there be a victory and a victory? It will eventually end, with the victory of one side or the other, compromise or apparent peace. Surely someone will rejoice, but the laurels will only be symbolic, while the Warriors prepare for a new conflict. What we all want is that the wreaths of Victory are not radioactive. For starters.