Leonid Luks's Report "Russia and the West on the Threshold of the New Time. Notes on the Uniqueness of Historical Paths"

On April 7, 2021, within the framework of the seminar "West and East: Universalism of Culture", the academic supervisor of the Laboratory Professor Leonid Luks made a report

The division of the church into western and eastern churches in 1054 and the invasion of Russia by the Tatars were devastating blows to the unity of the European world. Since the XII-XIII centuries, Russia was less and less involved in the spiritual and political processes taking place in the West. And yet, despite the almost complete mutual isolation of the two parts of Europe, there were elements of striking similarity in their development since the second half of the fifteenth century. That time, both in Russia and in the West, was the era of the victorious march of the centralized absolutist state. The complex hierarchical system of feudal dependence was gradually replaced by the unification of all relations. Between the central state power and the mass of subjects, the intermediate links that had previously divided and limited the prerogatives of the supreme power gradually disappeared. However, the spiritual processes that accompanied and accelerated the formation of centralized states in the West and in the East, the theoretical constructions that substantiated the new statehood, were radically different from each other. Both parts of Europe were inspired by different hierarchies of values. In the lecture, the beginning of the New Time, a truly revolutionary era, the consequences of which are felt to this day, was analyzed from this double angle of view – in terms of external similarities and internal differences.

Watch a video of the seminar on YouTube.