On the Meaning of History in the Eurasian Realm

This article focuses on the nature of the historical process within the broad geopolitical context of the so-called Greater Eurasia. The starting point of the research is the category of “silence” as a key phenomenon in Russian and Asian history, examined in its cultural, political, and psychological dimensions. Silence manifests in various forms, starting from the hesychia in the Orthodox tradition and extending to various forms of deceptive communication, bragging, jesting, the show-off culture, and others. This concept is explored in the context of two global cognitive approaches: one based on the principle of the identity of things to themselves, and the other based on the principle of their inequality to themselves, the self-difference of all being, a deviation from oneself, where reality is seen as becoming, the transition of things into something other, and consequently, the limit of existence. The first principle formed the foundation of Western intellectual tradition, while the second dominated the spiritual traditions of Asia. The principle of self-difference implies relations of free companionship, synergy, the dynamic centration of global forces, and affirms universal similarity, the mutual penetration of opposites, where things embrace and contain each other, such that all being and the entire world seem to be preserved within themselves, becoming their own secret. Here, the singular merges with the individual, and the centripetal movement, or involution, the return to the origin of existence, turns out to be the condition for inexhaustible diversity and the hidden, perpetual continuity of life. This cognitive approach ensures great creative potential and spiritual discipline in personal and social life, through which moments of life experience are transmuted into a repertoire of typified and stylized forms of cultural practice. In this way, the timeless body of tradition is created, and the restoration of the fullness of being for all things (apocatastasis) becomes possible. Historically, the uncertainty of the structural foundations of tradition and the oblivion of the symbolic dimension of experience led to their gradual replacement by the logic of the sameness of things, characteristic of the Modern era. However, the principle of self-difference has resurfaced in the contemporary “postmodern” situation, characterized by the erosion of ideology, with history becoming a process of revealing within the depths of individual experience the perspective of a global humanity in the limitless diversity of its manifestations.