Full version of the article Idei mysliteley-evraziytsev skvoz' prizmu naslediya Rerikhov [Ideas of Eurasianist thinkers through the prism of the heritage of the Roerichs] // Filosofiya i kul’tura [Philosophy and Culture]. 2021. No 10. Pp. 56-79

E. TURLEY*

* Egor TURLEY – PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Academic Secretary of the Scientific Council of the Interregional Non-Governmental Organization to Promote Preservation and Popularization of Cultural Heritage “National Roerich Committee".

 

The paper compares ideas of classic Eurasianists and their contemporaries, especially Nicholas, Helena and George Roerich, about a peculiar middle world formed by and around Russia. It shows that the notion of relation of biogeosystems with peoples and civilizations inhabiting them, as defined by the Eurasianist term “developmental place,” was also present in earlier natural philosophical concepts. In the epoch of development of noospheric ideas, there is established a natural science rationale and a new perspective not only in the seminal theory of ethnogenesis by Lev Gumilev, but also in conceptions of Russian cosmism, which is linked to the scientific, philosophical, literary and artistic heritage of the Roerichs. Their holistic views allowed imparting even more synthetic principles to the historical science they were developing than it was envisaged in the research of geosophy by Eurasianists. At the same time, George Roerich especially singled out geopsychology as a research tool of intercivilizational dialogue. The most striking episodes of realization of the Roerichs' Eurasianist vision is their Central Asian expedition and their peace-making activities, including those related to the unification of Eurasian peoples on the basis of broad cooperation. In addition to the need for international cooperation, the cultural and philosophical legacy of the Roerichs, which includes the Teaching of Living Ethics, provides ontological justification also for the impossibility of human evolution uncoupled from that of the planet and the Cosmos. Such a profound deliberation by the Roerichs on the destiny of Eurasia, related both to the civilizational foundations at the crossing “Russia – Mongolia – China – India” and to the future leading role of Siberia, makes it possible to fill the gaps in the constructs of the fathers of Eurasianism and to deliver more fully on the socio-cultural potential of Eurasia.

Keywords: Eurasianism, the Roerichs, Living Ethics, socio-natural history, globalization, ecology, holism.

 

The Geopolitical Space of Eurasia and the Integrity of Culture and Statehood of Russia

The heightened political and economic tensions between Russia and the West are sometimes linked to differences in cultural code. The divergences between civilizations are registered both at the level of public expectations and the search for autochthonous ideas (confessional, secular, and others), as well as in the trends of domestic humanities research [Shevchenko 2019; Melikov, Gezalov 2019; Zhul’kov 2019; Torkunov 2018]. The ongoing debates about civilizational identity frequently appeal to differences in proven economic practices: following the failures of the planned economy, Russia began integrating itself into the globally dominant model of immoderate consumption and overproduction. The destructive effect of this model on consciousness is well known – leading to mass stupefaction, apathy, and the loss of physical, emotional, and spiritual sensitivity – which directly affects the aesthetic and moral character of the individual. The low standards of mass culture, incomparable to the pathos of civic education in the mid-Soviet era – flawed as that era was in its own ways – are provoking increasing rejection in the minds of researchers, who counter such standards with eco-philosophical reasoning and eco-rationality within the framework of a Eurasianist model of cultural and political integrity for Russia [Barkova 2019]. At the same time, the side effects of contemporary global civilization – arising from the chasms of Western postmodernism – in no way diminish the accumulated heritage of high culture and Western philosophy, and European philosophy in particular, which have long commanded respect in Russia. Nevertheless, Eurocentrist discourse has lost much of its relevance on the scale of the planetary whole and of new vectors of evolution, since the axial historical process cannot be tied exclusively to European history, and even the undisputed masterpieces of European culture cannot, by definition alone, constitute the singular pinnacle of world culture.

The ideology of Eurasianism, in its certain quintessential form, can beneficially – in terms of relations with other cultures and nations – help Russia navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of a newly urgent national self-identification: on one side, radical nationalism seasoned with xenophobia, and on the other, unbridled cosmopolitanism in its current guise under globalization. Both in the legacy of the outstanding Roerich family and in the works of the classical Eurasianist thinkers, the history of the East and of Russia as its significant constituent part is presented as no less important than the history of Europe and the Western world [Khrenov 2014]. The picture of an emerging awareness of the world's cultural polycentricity is further complemented by the eastward vector of Russia's economic and political intentions, which gained situational momentum after 2014.

The connection between the worldview of the elder Roerichs – Nicholas and Helena – and the Silver Age, during which their creative maturity began, including in relation to Russian cosmism and the metaphysics of unitotality, has been reasonably well studied [Bashkova 2013; Trofimova 2015; Trofimova 2019]. However, the Roerichs' creative legacy also reveals a genetic link to Eurasianism, which, among the emigrated intelligentsia, through its Orientalism became a kind of geopolitical palimpsest – a layering upon Scythianism [Khrenov 2013; Zarifullin 2014] – itself largely a literary movement that was flesh of the flesh of the Silver Age. Eurasianist currents, of course, had been discernible even earlier, at the level of Slavophilism and pochvennichestvo (soil-bound school). The Orientalist of encyclopaedic learning G. Roerich, for instance, upon visiting the Saviour Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereyaslavl, reportedly declared: "It is here that the first Eurasianist was baptized" – referring to Alexander Nevsky [Zelinskii 2003]. In the view of the historian L. Gumilev, the positive complementarity – or, in something of a simplification, the subconscious (and this is significant) mutual sympathy[1] – between the Russian and Turco-Mongol ethnoses was itself the very occasion for the friendship between the prince and the son of Khan Batu. As evidence of this he cited the fact that "the political dependence of Rus on Sarai did not prevent the opening of an episcopal see with a Russian bishop in the capital of the Golden Horde as early as 1260, nor – following the "Great Troubles" – the subsequent reception onto Russian soil of Chinggisid refugees and ordinary Mongols who, upon being baptized, replenished the Muscovite military forces" [Gumilev, Ivanov 1992].

Russia is a Eurasian civilization possessing a gigantic chronotope of existence [Tagirov 2017]. And it is precisely the synthesis of Western and Eastern culture that gave rise to Eurasianist ideology. Throughout the entire course of its development, this dual unity is clearly discernible. In the formation of harmony within society, the spiritual principles of the Eastern worldview – in contrast to the prevailing European experience in the same domain – are accorded particular significance within Eurasianism. The East–West duality in the context of Eurasianism is explained not only as a geographical distinction, but as a dichotomy between the earthly and the sacred. The eminent globalization scholar A. Panarin, who in the post-Soviet period developed Eurasianist ideas in the context of Russia as the messiah of nations oppressed by global liberalism, for instance, contrasted the West as a supplier of innovative technologies of an instrumental kind – including social technologies – with the East, or the so-called Eastern phase of humanity's future, as a producer of spiritual ways of life and value-motivational initiatives [Panarin 1999]. Naturally, it is impossible to suppose that the East embodies exclusively the perfection and refinement of spiritual substance, while the West represents our real, purely material, imperfect world, filled with acquisitive preoccupations [Mamedova 2019]. Russia's greatest philosophers have in large measure drawn upon – and continue to draw upon with considerable success – the apparatus of Western philosophy, including the metaphysics elaborated in the works of the German classical tradition. This manifests itself in an explicit way in the conceptualization of Russia's global idea as well.

Reflections on national identity – and here a commonality between the ideas of the Roerichs and the Eurasianists is evident – are frequently bound up with the conviction that Russia, belonging exclusively to neither West nor East, constitutes in civilizational terms a distinct middle world. The English geopolitical school, in the person of the geographer H. Mackinder, once defined this world as the principal component of the Heartland (the "geographical pivot of history"), placing the struggle for it – the Great Game – at the key link in the achievement of global dominance [Postnikov 2005]. The United States subsequently entered the game on the "Grand Chessboard" of Eurasia, and their former foreign policy ideologist Z. Brzezinski, in the post-Soviet period, located the frontier of the contest for Eurasian space not merely in some states liminal to Russia, but close to the center of Europe, in a specific country. "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine <…> would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state, more likely to be drawn into debilitating conflicts with aroused Central Asians… <…> … Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia's own future evolution is concerned” [Brzezinski 1997, pp. 46, 149]. However, “The self-definition of Ukrainian nationhood, during the critical formative stage in the history of the new state, <…> became focused <…> on opposition to any Russian proposals for a more integrated CIS, for a special Slavic community (with Russia and Belarus), or for a Eurasian Union… <…> In Belarus, a Slavic Union without Ukraine meant nothing less than incorporation into Russia, thereby also igniting more volatile feelings of nationalist resentment" [Brzezinski 1997, pp. 113, 114]. Having achieved only regression with regard to Ukraine, Eurasian integration has stalled in the direction of Belarus as well.

In the era of the "new Great Game," when the Eurasian space is geopolitically strained by a dozen arcs of instability, the interests of the currently dominant Anglo-Saxon world may be connected to Britain in a less overt form – for instance, through the "deep state," a concept that has been rather frequently discussed in the politics of recent years. At the same time, the ideas of all-pervasive and all-regulating competition and the rivalry of self-interested individuals – so popular in the Western world – point to the unceasing visible influence of the longstanding precepts of English political philosophy on contemporary market capitalism: those very precepts that ultimately led to the absolutization of "economicsist" positivism, or "economicsism"[2], in all the governance decisions of capitalist countries [Alekseev, Alekseeva 2015]. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and the Hobbesian war of all against all make it impossible to genuinely appreciate altruism and cooperation as natural principles of human existence. It is no coincidence that the contemporary conceptualist scholar of noospherism A. Subetto applies the term social Darwinism to these aspects of modern Western philosophy and social-economic science [Subetto 2018] – aspects represented, for example, by new Keynesianism, libertarianism, and other variations of monetarism, as well as by discourses on the institutions of civil society, which are half-fictitious in nature: for it is precisely variability, heredity, and selection – that is, the Darwinian triad – that form their foundation.

What, then, might Russia juxtapose with Western conceptions? Following Plato's reflections on the power of ideas, it was apparently the Eurasianists who were among the first to establish ideocracy in political philosophy as a social order grounded in the primacy of certain ideals [Trubetskoy 1995; Karsavin 1993, p. 209]. Later, the uncompromising nature of this concept was characterized by N. Berdyaev as the "utopian statism of the Eurasianists" [Berdyaev 1993], and the term itself acquired numerous negative connotations, even becoming conflated in Western sociology with ideological totalitarianism[3]. With the emergence of neo-Eurasianist variations, this negative attitude was further entrenched on account of the political views and personal qualities of neo-Eurasianism's representatives, which makes dispassionate study of the Eurasianist phenomenon difficult for many researchers. Nevertheless, belief in ideals as the locomotive of statehood formed the understanding of the historical context specific to our country by the Eurasianists of the early twentieth century. In this sense, for Russia – and in the future for all of humanity – the project of a spiritual-ecological [Ivanov, Fotieva, Shishin 1999] (for some, an eco-socialist [Mantatov 2014]) civilization could serve as an ideal with a Eurasianist foundation. It is by no means necessary, moreover, that the state should become, on the path toward these ideals, the supreme arbiter of compromises – in the manner of L. Karsavin, for whom an accentuated statehood is called upon to compensate for the religious and ecclesiastical heterogeneity [Karsavin 2003] and the contradictions inherent in the vast expanses of Eurasia [Karsavin 1993, p.  214].

It can be said in advance that such a strategy will seek to realize itself not only through the pursuit of unity in cultural diversity – championed by the Roerichs and, to a significant degree, by the Eurasianists – which is opposed by the globalism of mass consumerism and the residual simulacra of multiculturalism. Nor only through eco-activism, currently diluted by populism, which opposes the modernist conceptions of the natural environment nurtured on Kantian ideas of nature as merely a realm of necessity. Predictably, there will also intervene a fundamentalism grown from archaic roots, along with religious obscurantism, as a hyperreaction to the destructive processes of Westernized society. However, the geopolitical protective framework for the civilizational ordering of Russia could, it seems, be better provided by that synthesis which is inherent to Eurasianism.

It is worth recalling that N. Moiseyev, a thinker known for his ecological orientation, observed with regard to the Russian people that "our role as 'founders of compromises' may prove to be an effective one" [Moiseev 1995]. In the messianism of the embattled and undeniably contradiction-riven Russian World – Pax Russica (invoked more in a humanitarian context, in contrast to the vanished Pax Sovietica and the Pax Americana that seeks to consolidate a unipolar world order) – compromise is interpreted as that which lies at the foundation of the brotherhood of peoples and which has been repeatedly tested across the Eurasian space. Like a number of other scholars, N. Moiseyev discerned the possibility of a fusion of socialism with capitalism, combining a socialist mode of distributing benefits with capitalist-type production – "alongside the simultaneous growth of cooperative organizations of various kinds" [Moiseev 1990]. He believed that the people would be capable of appreciating a combination of social protection and socially conditioned resource distribution with the opportunity for the expression of personal initiative in the spirit of capitalism.

The ideal of humanity for the foremost Russian-American sociologist P. Sorokin was associated with the concept of an "integral sociocultural order" [Sorokin 1964], which would unite the most diverse cultures. With regard to Russian culture, he discerned an analogy with a vast river composed of rivulets of Asiatic and European cultures pouring into it, rivulets that are "organically blended in a single homogeneous pattern" [Sorokin 1950]. It is precisely the diversity of unity and the unity of diversity that would constitute the essence of such a conglomerate of distinctive individualities. The Eurasianist N. Trubetskoy examined the same problem from the standpoint of what he described as the dialectical law of the fragmentation of languages and cultures, taken in conjunction with a unified and harmonious rainbow network – an intelligible construct of the diversity of peoples [Trubetskoy 1923].

The sobornost (communal spirit) of the Russian people found a simplified realization in the form of collectivism and the ubiquitous soviets (councils) of the republics of the Soviet Union. But from the second half of the twentieth century onward, the world witnessed the formation of interstate political-economic unions founded on different principles of integralism. This concerned, in the first instance, closely shared civilizational identity – as in the case of the European Union, which implements the principle of subsidiarity and has on that account recently diminished in membership, the slowly expanding EAEU, and the distant countries of Latin America in the form of the unstable Mercosur and the turbulently disintegrating Unasur. It also concerned more civilizationally heterogeneous yet still inter-neighboring alliances such as the SCO, ASEAN, and NAFTA, as well as entirely inter-civilizational and therefore least institutionalized examples of integralism, such as BRICS, the G7, and the G20.

There exist manifestations of national consciousness that are independent of political conjuncture, and that may enter into contradiction with one another, thereby bearing upon questions of historical continuity – both in relation to statehood and to integration processes. Thus, one frequently encounters the view that the Russian people – or more precisely, the population of Russia within its varying borders – is, in general, characterized by such positive traits as religious tolerance and openness toward other peoples, fraternal feeling and the assimilation of the achievements of other cultures, and a forward-looking orientation of aspiration [Schubart 1938]. However, driven by the characteristic ideals of the negation of the earthly world and its disorder in the name of a higher otherworldly existence – that is, by a kind of apophatic worldview – there periodically intensify impulses toward self-destruction, which were once described by F. Dostoevsky with respect to the intelligentsia of his time and which have marked various epochs of the rupture of social consciousness throughout national history [Schubart 1938]. The last such impulse, consciously recognized by many, gave rise to the period which H. Roerich described in 1951 as "the difficult years at the end of the last century before the year 2000" [Rerikh 1951]. At the same time, N. Roerich's thought that "above every Russia there is one unforgettable Russia <...> above all beauties there is one beauty, leading toward the knowledge of the cosmos" [Rerikh 1921] offers something of an answer to the apparent gaps in the logic of both national and world history.

The Roerichs' Central Asian Expedition and the Study of the Peoples of Central Eurasia as a Key to Eurasianist Constructions

The Roerichs' holistic views made themselves felt in the synthetic character of the historical science they developed, and methodologically this too brought them closer to the Eurasianists, who undertook various attempts at synthesis. Beyond identifying the causes of the movement of popular masses and the origins of cultural formations capable of bringing peoples together, the historical discipline must also systematically draw upon the data and theories of the natural sciences, engage more actively with other humanities, and take full account of the philosophy of history – as is done in integral philosophy. It was precisely this kind of approach that was laid as the methodological foundation of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute, with which Nobel laureates and world-renowned figures of culture corresponded, and in which scholars of East and West conducted research and exchanged experience – until the Second World War, having shattered countless humanitarian ties, finally brought the institution's work to an end [Belikov, Shaposhnikova 1977].

The commencement of the Urusvati Institute's work became possible as a result of the accumulation of valuable materials gathered by the spouses Nicholas and Helena Roerich, together with their elder son George Roerich, in the course of their large-scale research Central Asian Expedition [Fotieva 2016]. Its route [Golodnikova 2011] intersected with, and in the area of Nagchu practically coincided with, the trails of the Central Asian expeditions of the geographer N. Przhevalsky[4] [Engel’gardt 1891], who had set foot on Tibetan territory forty years before the Roerichs but who, unlike them, had been unable to cross the Tibetan plateau in its entirety. The Roerichs were not the first Russian travelers since Afanasy Nikitin – who journeyed "beyond the three seas" in the fifteenth century – to make their way from India to Russia, but they were the first to do so meridionally, passing through Karakorum and China. As had been planned in the expedition's objectives, the Roerichs thereby traversed the principal migration routes of the peoples of antiquity.

The connection between the Central Asian Expedition of the Roerichs and the possible great future of Eurasia is the subject of specialized research. The body of thematic literature that appeared in the 1990s–2010s was frequently lacking in documentary authenticity, or else failed to illuminate this period in the Roerichs' lives and their legacy as a whole within the full historical context of Russia's relations with the countries of Asia and the Roerichs' connection with their spiritual mentors. These contradictions were summarized in a number of publications [Gindilis, Frolov 2001; Budnikova 2009; Samokhina 2012]. Meanwhile, there existed truly grandiose plans for the establishment of the brotherhood of peoples – first in Russia and Asia, and thereafter on a worldwide scale [Shustova 2019c; Marianis 2015; Budnikova 2017]. It was precisely in the course of the expedition that the Roerichs were exposed to the greatest risk to their lives in the implementation of this so-called Great Plan, which they also referred to as the Plan of the Common Good. They faced particular danger when they arrived in Moscow in 1926 to deliver the message of the Mahatmas of the East to the Soviet government [Zarnitskiy 1965] – an acknowledgment of the positive social transformations of the Soviet state on the eve of its lurch toward the darkness of Stalinist repression. In order to prevent the country – not yet recognized by the United States and a number of European powers – from departing the evolutionary path of its declared communist constructions, in the course of meetings with high-ranking Bolshevik Party figures, including People's Commissars A. Lunacharsky and G. Chicherin, N. Roerich made attempts to persuade them that the unification of Russia with the peoples and countries of the East was possible. By that time, the image of Lenin had been penetrating the countries of Asia that were striving to free themselves from colonial oppression – Lenin, with whom the artist had, according to certain testimonies, met [Rerikhi... 2016] and discussed questions of "the application of religions to communism," as a defender of the popular masses. N. Roerich also, in all likelihood, did not fail to remind his interlocutors of the existence of other interested parties working in the same direction in Russia, Mongolia, and Tibet – countries that could form the backbone of a future so-called Union of the East, or "States of Asia." In support of this, arguments were advanced concerning the similarity of communist ideas (regarding forms of property and the mechanisms of social justice, the absence of God as a separate omnipotent personality, the universal materiality of existence, and so forth) with Buddhism (or rather, with Buddhist philosophy and the spirit of Buddhist teaching) – a similarity that would allow Buddhist peoples to embrace communism as a suitable form of state structure [Shustova 2019c, pp. 60–115]. Various assessments of such an ideological affinity exist [Sinitsyn 2012]; however, it is not without reason that the most renowned contemporary Buddhist authority – the Dalai Lama XIV – calls himself half-Marxist and half-Buddhist, and even regards the socialist economy associated with the ideas of Marx as closest to Buddhism [Dalai Lama 1996]. It is likewise striking that approximately 43 percent of Asia's land area (excluding the Asian territory of the former USSR) still falls within four socialist countries and the para-socialist state of Mongolia, in which Buddhism plays an important role.

That part of the Roerichs' mission which concerned engagement with the Soviet government in the 1920s did not meet with success – the government rejected the program of action relating to the Buddhist countries. However, the Roerichs' work toward the unification of many nations – peaceful in character, unlike the evolutionarily significant unifications of the past, such as the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the conquest of Eurasian lands by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, or the conquests of Napoleon – and toward the creation, for the first time (prior to the onset of the era of globalization), of a federal union encompassing existing heterogeneous states, continued. Thus, in H. Roerich's letter to President F.D. Roosevelt on the eve of the signing of the Roerich Pact[5] – a letter that bore witness, among other things, to the moral decay and militarization of Europe and Japan – one finds counsel on how this might be resisted, or at least its consequences in the impending international collision softened: "... Russia is the equibalance of America and only with such a construction will the World Peace become a solved problem. <…> Thus has come the time of reconstruction of the East and let the friends of the East be in America. The alliance of the nations of Asia is decided, the union of the tribes and peoples will take place gradually, there will be a kind of a Federation of countries. Mongolia, China and the Kalmuks will constitute the counterbalance of Japan and in this alliance of peoples, Your Good Will is needed, Mr. President. You can express Your Will in all its multiformity and the thoughts can be affirmed in this direction. Hence let the cultural construction begin in the heart of Asia” [Helena Roerich Letters]. This counsel, however, was not heeded to the degree it deserved.

The testimonies cited above regarding the Roerichs' peacemaking activities – which included attempts to unite nations and peoples on a sociocultural basis, primarily within Eurasia – are a vivid reflection of the Roerichs' contribution to the advancement of Eurasianist ideas, even though these ideas were expressed merely as a regionally specific variant of their universal humanistic and enlightenment mission. There were, however, many other features of their activity that aligned them with the Eurasianists in a more direct way. Thus, in the work of N. Roerich – on his canvases – despite their distinctly Russian motifs, one could already discern, even before his journey across the steppes and deserts of Central Asia, that his patriotism carried a multinational complexion. Throughout his entire life, his paintings trace both the broad Eurasian expanses and the alternating idols of the Slavs and Polovtsian encampments, Orthodox monasteries nestled on cliffs and hilltops, and the bogatyrs of the Russian epic with their Eastern faces (such as Svyatogor and Nastasya Mikulichna). In his book "Paths of Blessing" he wrote: "You know that the great plain of Russia and Siberia, after prehistoric epochs, served as the arena for the processions of all migrating peoples. Studying the monuments of these migrations, you understand the grandeur of these truly cosmic wanderings" [Rerikh 1924]. And yet for the artist, geography always contains a degree of convention: "...Eurasia came into being. No one will explain why Astrakhan, the Caucasus, and the Crimea are not, in their very essence, Asia. The conventional boundary along the Urals then dissolves into an inexpressible indefiniteness. There was a time when, out of ignorance and unreason, it was considered unseemly to call oneself an Asian. But then, through the labors of many enlightened people, this absurd prejudice was smoothed away. The far-sighted poet had already exclaimed: 'Yes, we are Asians.' How are we not Asians, when the Russian treasury – all of unexplored, preserved Siberia – occupies the greater part of Asia, in which no one will any longer doubt" [Rerikh 1995a].

A significant contribution to the development of Eurasianist ideas was made not only by N. Roerich [Shustova 2019a], but by other members of his family as well. Thus, S. Roerich, the younger son, established himself not only as a recognized major Russian artist, but as an Indian one too – his portraits of two great Prime Ministers of India hang in the central hall of the Indian parliament – and his role in the development of Russian-Indian humanitarian and cultural ties is indisputable. At the same time, the educational endeavors to which he devoted considerable attention exerted an influence on the upbringing of students at the institutions with which he collaborated, above all in Bangalore. His elder brother, G. Roerich, is known for his many initiatives and scholarly works in the fields of Tibetology, Mongolian studies, Indology, Buddhist studies, Oriental studies, and linguistics as such [Shustova 2010]. A considerable portion of these he realized in his capacity as head of the sector for philosophy and history of religion at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which helped to overcome the consequences of the decline in the level of Indological scholarship during the Soviet period [Shustova 2020a; Vasil’kov 2017] and to form a serious scholarly foundation for a cohort of authoritative representatives of Oriental studies and philosophy. To this constellation of outstanding scholars belong, for example, the historian G. Bongard-Levin, the world-renowned philosopher and Buddhist scholar A. Pyatigorsky, the distinguished linguist V. Toporov, Sh. Bira – who became Vice-President of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences – and many scholars who have won recognition within their respective professional circles.

In an article published in 1934, the continuation of which appears to have been lost by the newspaper's editor against the backdrop of a defamatory campaign launched in reactionary circles of the Far Eastern White émigré community against the culture-protecting Roerich Pact, G. Roerich wrote: "The harsh character of nature has left its imprint both on the character of the population of Central Asia and on the course of historical events <...> When we utter the word Mongolia, we immediately recall the great Mongol conquerors and the unparalleled sweep of their military audacity <...> When we speak of Tibet, before us arise the images of great Buddhist ascetics who presented the world with an unprecedented example of man's struggle with himself. Speaking of Turkestan, we recall the great caravan routes connecting the countries of the West with the regions of the Far East – routes along which the exchange of cultural values took place and along which the symbol of the cross reached and established itself in the steppes of pre-Buddhist Mongolia. In this environment of audacity and struggle, distinctive common features were formed among all the tribes inhabiting Central Asia <...> Only by clarifying this past for ourselves shall we be in a position to correctly evaluate the phenomena of Russian history and to recognize those common roots which inseparably bind primordial Rus to the countries of the East" [Rerikh Yu.N. 1934]. Such ideas of G. Roerich, by which he was guided in his scholarly work, directly correspond to the geosophy of Eurasianism, which was developed by a number of representatives of this current [Zelinskiy 2003]. As will be shown below, geosophy – first mentioned by F. Marthe as the philosophy of geography and, in the view of the German geographer, developed by the very first "geosopher" Strabo [Marthe 1877] – received particular elaboration within Eurasianism.

Thus, in the work of strengthening peace and cooperation between nations and peoples, it is necessary not to lose sight of the examples of already established unity in the history and culture of peoples and their joint cultural and economic activity. G. Roerich wrote of this: "In search of unity, attempting to build new bridges to bring nations together, we should not forget the lessons of the past and should carefully preserve the vestiges of a past unity, and wherever possible kindle anew the sacred fire of cultural unity, of cultural exchange which had once been the cherished achievement of mankind, and is so conspicuously lacking in our modern world" [Roerich 1950]. The ideas that led him to such reflections – particularly pertinent in today's globality – have even prompted the assertion that in his works [Rerikh 2004] G. Roerich moved beyond the civilizational approach and revealed himself as a historian of the world-systems approach [Kakeev 2005]. G. Roerich substantiated, in collaboration with his father, the unity of the historical space of Eurasia [Shustova 2018] – not only on the basis of previously unknown ornamental materials in the animal style, diachronically similar to the patterns of Scytho-Sarmatian cultures and representing a stadial [Zinchenko 2011] rather than genetic phenomenon of culture, but also on a wealth of evidence drawn from other fields of ornamental art, linguistics, folklore and folk epic, customs, the organization of communications, and modes of statehood. Among the most important integrating factors, Buddhism was identified as one that had already produced significant peacemaking consequences during the first millennium in the regions covered by the Roerichs' expedition. These regions of Central Asia owe their achievements in science and culture in large measure to the presence of a network of Buddhist monasteries. Standing in dialectical opposition to the unification of peoples across Eurasian space is nationalism. However, "true nationalism," in the words of N. Roerich, is "the best manifestation of the worthiest essence of a people," as well as "the characteristic sonority of nations, full of creative possibilities" [Roerich 1933]. The Eurasianist ideologue P. Savitsky, acquainted with the Roerichs through the Seminarium Kondakovianum – in which G. Roerich's work "The Animal Style among the Nomads of Northern Tibet" was published – wrote in this connection: "The endless plains accustom one to breadth of horizon, to the sweep of geopolitical combinations" [Savitskiy 1997, p. 302].

The Roerichs' Collaboration with Eurasianist Researchers

The Seminarium Kondakovianum also facilitated G. Roerich's indirect acquaintance with the son of Academician V. Vernadsky – the Eurasianist historian G. Vernadsky – with whom a correspondence on scholarly matters was maintained [Lavrenova 2012] (prior to this, N. Roerich had carried on an irregular correspondence with him [Sorokina 2004]). However, fate saw fit to bring G. Roerich in person together with such an original historian of Eurasianist orientation as L. Gumilev, who christened himself "the last Eurasianist" – though he was more accurately the initiator of neo-Eurasianism, yet in the Soviet period, than the last representative of the classical Eurasianist tradition [Belyakov 2009]. Their acquaintance was short-lived owing to George Roerich's sudden passing. The latter, in Lev Gumilev's words, gave excellent appraisals of his works – including in relation to their submission for publication – and was even on the point of facilitating Gumilev’s transfer to the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow [Kozyreva 2012] and his involvement in expeditionary work[6].

To no small degree, G. Roerich and L. Gumilev were united by their investigation of the geosophy of the Eurasian space – understood by P. Savitsky as "a synthesis of geographical and historical principles" [Savitskiy 1997, p. 286] – and of the regularities of the collective psychology of the peoples inhabiting the Earth. In this connection, in his article "The Rise of Orientalism," G. Roerich observed the following: "One after another, new peoples appeared on the historical stage. It is impossible to trace the source of this mighty stream. Here we encounter a still unexplained phenomenon in the life of nomadic peoples, a new problem in the psychology of the masses. Perhaps there is a force of attraction in the ancient centers of great civilizations? The psychology of peoples remains an almost unexplored field of science..." [Roerich 1923]. Thus, geopsychology emerges as an important mode of reflection on the complex problems of the existence and movement of peoples and ethnic groups – one that could contribute to the establishment of inter-civilizational dialogue in the present age of large-scale forced migration.

The concept of the whole as "multi-unity" [Karsavin 1993, p. 192] in the description of the life of peoples and civilizations once led the Eurasianist philosopher L. Karsavin to the concept of the "symphonic personality" [Karsavin 1993, pp. 177–180], corresponding to the integrity of Russia's distinctiveness as understood by the other Eurasianists and directly connected to P. Savitsky's term "developmental place" – understood as the geographical environment that shapes an autochthonous culture. To this kind of predetermination by developmental place, L. Gumilev correlated a notional energetic quantity – passionarity[7]. In it he discerned a certain biochemical energy, the magnitude of which, in combination with the landscape and the particular properties of specific ethnic groups, determined the stages of historical development. The considerable dependence of ethnic characteristics on the nature of the landscape and, consequently, on the modes of economic activity practiced within it, defines precisely the boundaries between landscape zones as areas of ethnogenesis, and explains why, under conditions of migration, ethnic groups strive to select an ecological niche capable of substituting for the difference in landscape [Gumilev 1989].

The totality of living thinking matter that humanity represents possesses a certain rhythm and periodicity, directly corresponding to those of the biosphere, which in turn reflects the temporal characteristics of the cosmic radiations reaching the Earth. In the ethnogenetic cycles, in which the passionary impulse constitutes the axial moment, the influence of the supraterrestrial and the terrestrial cosmos converge. Such an impulse, in L. Gumilev's conception, transforms the influence of the landscape through the economic activity of ethnic groups and ensures their convergence, or "co-directedness," with culture.

The spatial relationships on the surface of the globe and their influence on the course of humanity's historical development, as well as the combinations of natural complexes (including landscapes) with human consciousness, were investigated by the geographer-"geosopher" K. Ritter as early as the mid-nineteenth century [Hettner 1927]. Such multidimensional spaces, possessing pronounced properties of scalar fields and self-similarity, may also be applied to the description of L. Gumilev's concept of ethnic fields [Osipov 2010]. In this framework, sub-ethnoses, relicts, and isolates – in his terminology – represent factors of the corresponding phase space. According to his hypothesis, the ethnic field is a field of behavior and attractivity among the members of an ethnic system, arising on the basis of the passionary field. Historical ethnology – the theory of ethnogenesis in the paradigm of L. Gumilev, who is known for a number of erroneous or unsubstantiated generalizations in the interpretation of history [Rybakov 1971] – may in its essential core be regarded as a hypothetico-scientific component of the noospherogenesis of the twenty-first century, oriented toward the sustainable development[8] of humanity through the scientific provision of mechanisms and axiological foundations for the noospheric cooperation of ethnoses and super-ethnoses (analogues of the civilizations traditional to geopolitics).

  1. Gumilev's use of the term "super-ethnos" in place of cultures and worlds is connected to the fact that in his theory, the formation of this highest taxon of the ethnic hierarchy is linked precisely to the geographical scope of the passionary impulse, conditioned by a micromutation occurring along a strip following a certain geodesic line several thousand kilometers in length and two to three hundred kilometers in width (in the meridional direction it may be even wider). Active ethnogenesis, moreover, proceeds at a remove from uniform landscapes. Over time, in accordance with the shift of recessive traits toward the periphery observed by N. Vavilov – and the cyclical manifestation of recessive traits corresponds precisely to the period of passionarity fluctuation of fifty to one hundred years identified by L. Gumilev – the most passionary individuals migrate toward the boundary of the ethnic group's range (the point of contact with other ethnic groups, which typically inhabit a landscape of a different type), while the most passionary ethnic groups migrate toward the boundary of the super-ethnos's habitat. These processes may to some degree also serve to interpret the settlement patterns of the Eastern Slavs and the continental Mongoloids who together constitute the contemporary Eurasian super-ethnos.

The alternative name given to this super-ethnos by L. Gumilev – as a geographical rather than a spiritual or political phenomenon – is Russian (sometimes contrasted with the steppe super-ethnos); however, from the thirteenth century onward it came to encompass the Finno-Ugric peoples of Eastern Europe, Orthodox Ukrainians, Chuvash, Tatars, Bashkirs, and numerous Siberian peoples, including those constituting the so-called circumpolar super-ethnos, which is gradually losing its distinctiveness. He maintained that "the Eurasian peoples built a common statehood on the basis of the principle of the primacy of the rights of a people to a particular way of life. In Rus, this principle was embodied in the concept of sobornost and was observed with absolute consistency. In this way, the rights of the individual were also secured" [Gumilev 1993]. Such a principle corresponds to the aspirations toward free self-organization that are attributed to the Eurasian peoples – an aspiration that characterizes a people as a subject of free expression of will and self-determination [Evraziysky... 2010].

The manifestations of freedom in the relationships between the individual and society, peoples and the state, subjects and the federation, the whole and its parts, constitute likewise one of the important characteristics of human activity. The history of the twentieth-century Russia, as mentioned above, contained singular metamorphoses of sobornost and of the manifestations of free will. In connection with such phenomena, the books of Living Ethics – published predominantly on the basis of the notes of Helena and Nicholas Roerich – observe: " Freedom is precious as a way of protecting the personality and individualizing the energies attracted. But it is freedom that is the most distorted concept of all. Instead of being suffused with freedom, life is filled with tyranny and slavery, the very features that exclude cooperation and respect for personality. So it is that some people manage to form their existence from an exclusive combination of tyranny and slavery" [Heart 1932, § 85]. The cause of the abuses of freedom is stated therein as follows: " Only the one who has gone through the discipline of spirit can realize how strict the reality of freedom can be" [Agni… 1929, § 222].

In relation to the historically nomadic peoples of Eurasia, who served as the connective tissue between sedentary cultures, the categories of will and freedom acquired a particular dimension, owing to the vastness of the spaces they inhabited. Entirely distinct from that historical manifestation of global connectivity is the new nomadism proclaimed by J. Attali – the foremost ideologue of mondialism, former president of the EBRD, and conduit of the ideas of the Bilderberg Club. Torn from family and homeland, a bio-robot in search of a logistically advantageous niche for the creation of surplus value, the professional nomad will leap from one island of material prosperity in an ocean of poverty to another, serving a "cult of industrial cannibalism" [Attali 1991]. Yet almost up to the Modern era, a person of nomadic life – one who valued family bonds but had no attachment to the ownership of specific plots of land – naturally developed no fear of losing property and no drive toward its accumulation and the pursuit of wealth. The nomad's principal possession of the past was most often the horse, an inseparable companion in journeys across the steppe. It is for precisely this reason that rites connected with horses were so widespread across the Eurasian space – their ceremonial gifting of particular significance to maturing boys, their burial alongside deceased riders, and other sacrificial practices. Many sacred customs were not only transmitted from generation to generation among the nomads, but also became established in one form or another among those ethnic groups that are geoculturally connected with nomadic peoples. Thus, the cultural heritage of the semi-nomadic Scythians was once assimilated by the Proto-Slavic ancestors who inhabited the territory of what is now southern Russia and the neighboring countries of Eastern Europe.

On the History of the Russian People in the Works of L. Gumilev and the Roerichs

The name of the Russian super-ethnos corresponds to L. Gumilev's idea that it was formed primarily as a result of the intermixing of the Eastern Slavs and Turco-Mongol tribes. The latter, in the process, demonstrated to a divided Rus skilled battle tactics that were subsequently adopted as a model. Moreover, they refined the system of taxation and introduced the yam (stage) postal service, borrowed from China, which substantially improved postal communication and other links across the Russian expanses. Although the "Mongol question" in historiography continues to provoke sharply divergent interpretations, the accumulated body of research convincingly demonstrates that depicting the period of Horde dominion exclusively as an era of uninterrupted struggle and violence – just as reducing the internal development of Rus to Mongol impositions, with no allowance for multilateral and multi-level interaction – constitutes an unjustified oversimplification [Krivosheev 2003]. L. Gumilev, occupying a rather polar position and declining to regard the comparatively late foreign borrowing "yoke" as adequate, considered the relations between the two principal constituents of the super-ethnos to be a form of unequal political alliance, which placed a certain burden on the shoulders of the conquered people (as was customary in Europe in ordinary cases of the establishment of vassalage), yet at the same time permitted broad autonomy with respect to customs, beliefs, modes of economic activity, and daily life. Such concessions did indeed afford the country a certain opportunity to strengthen itself morally by the time of the state and communal monastic constructions of Sergius of Radonezh, to overcome internecine strife and throw off dependence on the morally disintegrating elites of the Ulus of Jochi – elites that had departed from the Genghis Khan’s Yassa – and to rise to the level of a major power, and ultimately an empire[9]. Such an interpretation of interethnic relations differs considerably from that which took shape in the historiography of the late Romanov dynasty (though, for example, according to N. Karamzin, the birth of autocracy and the rise of Moscow were the beneficent consequences of the invasion from the East [Karamzin 2003]). Later, the socio-cultural aspect of Russo-Horde relations was colored by ideological considerations in the Marxist scholarship of the USSR [Krivosheev 2003]. Yet as early as 1914, in his article "Joy of Art," N. Roerich reports that an alternative view of the consequences of the rule of Tatars – as the conquering Tatars, Mongols, and their allied tribes were formerly called – existed: "The Mongol invasions have left such a hatred behind them that their artistic elements are always neglected. It is forgotten that the mysterious cradle of Asia has produced these quaint people and has enwrapped them in the gorgeous veils of China, Tibet and Hindustan. Russia has not only suffered from the Tartar swords, but has also heard through their jingling the wonder-tales known to the clever Greeks and the intelligent Arabians who wandered along the Great Road from the Normans to the East" [Roerich 1922]. It emerges, then, that in his essay the artist in some measure anticipated both the early Eurasianists and, all the more so, L. Gumilev – the son of his contemporary, the poet N. Gumilev, who had declared in his time that "N. Roerich is the highest degree of contemporary Russian art" [Gumilev 2006].

It is also interesting to examine what can be found regarding the genesis of the Slavs in H. Roerich's notes from 1943: "The Slavs-Roxolani [the Alans "became the foundation in their intermixing with other peoples, in their manifestation as Roxolani," while "the Tocharians[10] are one of the branches of the Alans. The Tocharians absorbed Chinese culture"; Rerikh 1946, p. 63, redacted] came to Europe with the last migration of peoples three centuries before the beginning of the new, Christian era. The Slavs came from Central Asia. The Slavs manifested as a race of the Indo-Caucasian type. Indo-Caucasian types were manifested among the last Slavic tribes that came from the regions of present-day Turkestan. The Slavs are a beautiful branch of the Roxolani. They intermingled in southern Russia with the Scythians and the Pechenegs. They settled in the Caucasus and in southern Russia.

The Roxolani manifested as a warlike people and took to raiding their neighbors.

The Roxolani manifested as the core of the Great Russians. The Little Russians are Slavs intermixed with the Pechenegs and the Turco-Scythians.

The Roxolani intermixed with the Slavic tribes that had come earlier from Asia – the Ossetians. But 'Ossetian' is a distorted name for a people from the East. The Ossetians had a connection with the Indo-Germanic element. The Roxolani intermingled with them <...>

Russia will come to love the name 'Roxolani' when a new theory about the core of the Russian people manifests" [Rerikh 1943; redacted].

Cosmophysical Factors of Ethnogenesis in the Light of a Synthesis of the Concepts of Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Heliobiology with the Scientific and Philosophical Conceptions of the Roerichs

The noumenal side of the historical process[11] is not so strongly represented in the works of L. Gumilev and the Eurasianists, which prevented them from explaining more holistically the cultural uniqueness of the Russian space and of Eurasian ethnogenesis. However, even within L. Gumilev's socionatural, interdisciplinary approach – which has as many ardent supporters as it does irreconcilable critics [Maslova 2018] – the material (including biophysical) carriers of the cultural-spiritual principles that permeate the landscape and biota and saturate people and ethno-formations with their energy are nonetheless dependent upon non-terrestrial, supraterrestrial influences – at the very least, cosmophysical ones. He reflected on this while still in the Gulag, in conversation with the astrophysicist N. Kozyrev, whose reasoning about the birth of stars evoked "an association with the flash of ethnogenesis and its subsequent course through various phases to the state of a relict" [Vspominaya… 2003].

Although, in explaining the extra-planetary character of energetic influence, the author of the theory of ethnogenesis mentioned that "at night, when the ionosphere becomes thinner, cosmic radiation is capable of reaching the surface of the Earth" [Gumilev 1989, p. 312], he himself – presumably taking into account the periodicity of fluctuations in the thickness of the ionosphere – does not attach particular importance to this observation. He also wrote that there exist "hypotheses concerning the origin of passionary explosions or impulses: random fluctuations, the presence of a wandering gene, a reaction to an exogenous stimulus. However, all of the above are contradicted by the facts" [Gumilev 1989, p. 312]. Given that "such restructurings at the genetic level are readily stimulated by a laser beam" [Gumilev, Ivanov 1988], the scholar may also have entertained other variants of directed electromagnetic influence upon the surface of the Earth. At the same time, the possibilities of artificial agents and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence carried out in SETI projects found no reflection of any significance in his ideas.

Ultimately he returns to the variable thickness of the ionosphere: "The very fact that the axes of the zones of passionary impulses are disposed on the surface of the planet as lines whose ends are bounded by the curvature of the planet, while the perpendiculars to them pass through the center of the Earth, indicates the dependence of the axis of the impulse on the planet's magnetic field. The supposition that these energetic strikes upon the Earth proceed not from the Sun but from the diffuse energy of the Galaxy has received further refinement. The American astronomer John Eddy discovered that solar activity varies to such a degree that even the eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity cannot be traced consistently. On the basis of these conclusions, John Eddy compiled a graph of solar activity spanning five thousand years. And it emerged that all dated passionary impulses chronologically coincide with minima of solar activity or with periods of its decline. <...> When solar activity diminishes, the protective properties of the ionosphere decrease, and individual quanta or beams of radiation may reach the Earth's surface. And hard radiation, as is well known, causes mutations" [Gumilev 1989, p. 648].

If one compares the dates of events defined by L. Gumilev as belonging to particular passionary impulses with the graphical data of J. Eddy [Eddy 1977], it can be observed that some of them correspond only very approximately to minima of solar activity, or rather do not correspond at all. At the same time, with the so-called deep minima of solar activity – beginning with the Wolf Minimum (approximately 1280–1340) and including the most extensive and profound of them all, the Maunder Minimum, which falls mainly within the seventeenth century and against which the American calibrated the remaining indirect evidence of solar activity – the author of the theory of ethnogenesis correlated no impulses whatsoever[12]. Furthermore, in the work of J. Eddy and the writings of L. Gumilev, the Schwabe-Wolf cycles (averaging eleven years) were noted, but no account was taken of the double twenty-two-year Hale cycles, the "centennial" Gleissberg cycles, the "bicentennial" Suess (de Vries) cycles, the 2,300-year Hallstatt cycle, the non-cyclical Miyake events (surges in radiocarbon formation resulting from ionization of unestablished genesis – which, incidentally, are also unevenly distributed over the geoid; the temporal density of these events is nearly as low as that of the passionary impulses classified by L. Gumilev), and others. However, already in the present century, the astrophysicist B. Vladimirsky, employing the so-called Pulkovo series of restored Wolf numbers – an index of sunspot quantity characterizing solar activity, more precise than the data used by J. Eddy – cross-referenced them with the chronology of passionary impulses and found that prior to the onset of an impulse, a rise in solar activity is indeed observed, followed by a decline [Vladimirskiy 2015].

Nevertheless, even the solar activity that influences the Earth is not limited to sunspots alone. In the notes of H. Roerich incorporated into the book "Supermundane," the following observation is made in this connection: "Observations of sunspots should be regarded as a primitive approach. A universe of innumerable luminaries provides innumerable observations. And the combinations of astro-chemical currents can explain the ebb and flow of the Ocean of Life" [Supermundane 1938, § 933]. And Yu. Lebedev – a popularizer of the idea of the Multiverse – invoked, as a possible explanation for the influence of rays of unknown nature from space, the gluing of so-called Everettian spaces, for which the greatest similarity of the structures of electromagnetic, gravitational, and other fields present in the region of the overlapping sections of different universes is required: "The fewer the fields, the simpler their overall systemic structure and the easier the process of 'gluing' <...> Typical screening occurs during eclipses. But eclipses of what, and by what? <...> attempts to identify the passionary impulse of the eighteenth century BCE <...> with the paths of solar eclipses in the period of the twentieth to fifteenth centuries BCE <...> yielded no success. But this is hardly surprising. The Sun is only one of the possible sources of structure-forming flows of electromagnetic radiation. But the Sun 'shines' in the visible range. And in the radio range, in the ultraviolet, in X-rays, in the gamma range? Here the set of 'refulgent' celestial objects expands sharply – the Galactic Center, the Crab Nebula, Cygnus X-1, supernovae <...>, and <...> gamma-ray bursts <...> These, incidentally, exhibit a correlation with active galactic nuclei and with extragalactic objects with large redshift" [Lebedev 2000].

Many more comparisons and new measurements remain to be made before it will be possible to seriously advance scientific understanding of the connection between human and social behavior and the quasi-periodic processes in the cosmos – illuminated in the research on heliobiology and the so-called cosmopsychiatry by A. Chizhevsky nearly a century ago [Chizhevskiy 1924]. Later, in the investigation of the cosmophysical conditionality of the unavoidable (discrete) "distribution of values" – as the biophysicist and historian of science S. Shnoll termed the fine structure of histograms of various kinds of macroscopic fluctuations – it was demonstrated that this phenomenon accompanies measurements of processes of any nature, whether chemical, physical, or biochemical, and that changes in the spectrum of fluctuation amplitudes reliably correlate with the mutual disposition of the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and possibly other celestial bodies [Shnoll et al. 2000; Vladimirsky, Bruns 2010].

A number of socionatural processes, including within the frameworks of historiometry and cliodynamics, have also been studied in the light of the most recent statistical data and approaches [Vladimirsky 2020; Karako 2019; Anoprienko 2020]. Along this path, the comparison of concepts from ancient Eastern philosophy with the phenomena and conceptions of modern physics proves illuminating. Just as certain scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have sought and continue to seek parallels in Eastern religions [Bohr 1958; Heisenberg 1958; Bohm 2002; Capra 1975; Shustova 2019b], and just as a number of eminent scholars have drawn inspiration from ideas known in narrow circles in the East but first presented to the broad Western mind in theosophical sources of the nineteenth century [Cranston 1994; Gindilis 2013; Samokhina 2012], the prognostic and integrating potential of the knowledge forming the foundation of a whole range of scientific theories and philosophical teachings [Zhul’kov 2016] – including one as remarkable in its worldview comprehensiveness as Living Ethics [Ivanov, Fotieva 2013; Mal’bakhova 2008; Ivanov, Fotieva, Shishin 2012] – can be perceived by contemporary synthetic thinking [Gindilis 2016; Samokhina 2018; Aleksandrov 2014]. Such thinking, of course, can be characteristic only of those scholars who stand sufficiently removed from the reductionism and positivism of the contemporary scientific paradigm, which not infrequently borders on physicalism. It is precisely this thinking that could connect the regularities – noted in generally approximate and not always precise form in the research of universally recognized outstanding scholars discussed in the works mentioned above – with such multivalent concepts employed in Living Ethics as Fohat, Materia Lucida, Materia Matrix, and the Cosmic Magnet. Synonymous concepts have been reflected in a great many different human cultures and are connected with the concept of psychic energy – one possessing a long tradition in natural philosophy – encompassing the manifested Cosmos [Buttersack 1937; Rudzitis 2006; Samokhina 2018]. Certain regularities of such formal manifestation at the level of the biosphere were investigated, for example, within the framework of the hypothesis of formative causation and the morphic resonance of morphogenetic fields, proposed by the biologist R. Sheldrake [Osipov 2015] and – as in the case of L. Gumilev's hypothesis of ethnogenesis [Sorokin, Suvorova 2015] – failing to win broad recognition from the scientific community.

The Spiritual Space of Eurasia. The Destiny of Siberia

Developing the suppositions of noosphere researchers regarding the existence of life in the cosmos, Novosibirsk scholars note that "the rejected ethereal materiality and the unexploredness of the Earth's ether-sphere have conditioned the tragic isolation of humanity from the common trunk of Life in the Solar System. And yet the solidarity of Cosmic Life has never left people as 'orphans' – help has always been and always will be" [Kaznacheev, Dmitriev, Mingazov 2005]. For this reason, one of the key questions of the noospherogenesis of the twenty-first century to which N. Moiseyev drew attention was identified by him as the construction of a corresponding "Teacher" system. This is a task of planetary scope. In the "Teacher" system, the central figure is not merely a transmitter of knowledge, but a teacher in the broadest sense of the word – a system of "the formation, preservation, and development of the collective knowledge, morality, and memory of a people, and the transmission of all that has been accumulated to subsequent generations" [Moiseev 2010]. The corresponding upper link of the hierarchical chains existing on Earth may then be called the Teachers of humanity.

The Eurasianists did not develop ideas connected with the very possibility of a rational principle of an evolutionary level substantially higher than that of contemporary humanity. The phenomenon of spiritual teachership did not receive in their conceptions any cosmic dimension other than that present in traditional confessional representations – and predominantly Orthodox ones at that. Whereas the Roerichs, in whose works the heritage of Orthodox ascetics and the pearls of Christian thought found significant reflection, did not, in examining the history of the formation of the Eurasian peoples, lose sight of the fact that it is determined to a considerable degree by the culture-forming character of Buddhism, which is widespread throughout Asia. This is addressed in a whole series of G. Roerich's works [Shustova 2014], including the article "Buddhism and the Cultural Unity of Asia" [Roerich, not later than 1956], while the Buddhist conceptions relevant to the contemporary world – which among Buddhists themselves were received with particular approval by reformers from the milieu of Buryat Lamaism [Gerasimova 1964] and the international Buddhist organization the Mahabodhi Society [Dhammaloka 1948] – are addressed in H. Roerich's work "Foundations of Buddhism," printed by the Mongolian Academic Committee [Roerich 1971]. Beyond the absolutization of the influence of Orthodoxy on the structure of the future Eurasia – quite logical for the Russian founders of twentieth-century Eurasianism – one occasionally discerns an altogether prejudiced and superficial acquaintance with other religious systems of the East: for example, in N. Trubetskoy, who held that Satan had "woven himself a firm nest in the religious consciousness of India" and that his seal "is visible also in the pride of Buddhism" [Trubetskoy 1991]. Eastern metaphysics in general was perceived by many Russian philosophers of that era as frighteningly dissolving the properly human element on the spiritual path. Even so significant a figure as V. Solovyov, while acknowledging the value of Buddhist universalism, apparently lacked the opportunity to study certain important and profound works of Buddhist thinkers – translations into European languages were not so numerous at the time – that illuminate such complex concepts as emptiness (śūnyatā) and illusoriness (māyā). So that even given the methodical character of his investigations, his judgments about will-lessness, withdrawal from reality, and the striving toward nothingness as reliably characterizing Buddhism [Solovyov 1988a] may quite reasonably be regarded as insufficiently balanced. The exegetics burdened, as common to world religions, with dogmas blurred over the centuries and not susceptible to exhaustive retrospective study likely also played its part. The conceptions of metempsychosis present in early Christianity – adjacent to Gnostic teachings and defined as the heresy of Origen at the Fifth Ecumenical Council – as well as the concepts of samsara, Tao, and dharma on the path toward moksha or nirvana, as determined by the universal law of karma, were likewise alien to the nascent Eurasianism.

It was the Roerichs, then, who were in essence the first to point to such shortcomings in the Eurasianists' representation of the complex philosophical landscape (for example, in the case of E. Khara-Davan, a Eurasianist representative of Buddhist culture, in whose contributions to the Harbin journal "Luch Azii" (Ray of Asia) – where he even published an article entitled "Sacred Shambhala" containing numerous quotations from N. Roerich's "Heart of Asia" – the role of Buddhism in Eurasianist constructions is scarcely outlined) and to fill the corresponding lacunae in the Eurasianist discourse. Thanks to their explorations of the common spiritual roots of the most diverse peoples, the communality of the future Eurasia received a unique worldview justification, while contemporary participants in the Eurasianist movement came to be distinguished by a broader spectrum of views on the concrete realization of the future spiritual-ecological conglomerate of Eurasia. And such a state of affairs corresponds to that sufficiently high level of religious tolerance characteristic of only an extremely small number of polyconfessional countries in which strong positions would be held by no fewer than three of the largest world religions (in the Weberian sense), each having several hundred million followers. Beyond predominantly Orthodox Russia, these are China – with its deep-rooted disposition toward syncretism (when ajusted for the period of the Cultural Revolution and the complex political situation in certain of its autonomous regions) – and India, where with the arrival of the colonizers, Christianity was added to the prevailing religions of Hinduism and Islam. It is hardly surprising that in the country that is the heir to the wisdom of the Vedic civilization – connected with Eastern Europe through central Eurasia, as the Slavophile A. Khomyakov once wrote in his historical-linguistic investigations of the Indo-Iranian substrate [Khomyakov 1904] – there arose not only a whole range of religious movements, but also, for instance, such an extinct syncretic religious doctrine as Din-i-Ilahi, fashioned by the Mughal unifier of Hindustan, Akbar the Great, in his aspirations toward the religious unity of his subjects.

Over the past twenty years, the three aforementioned countries have been unable to realize the largest international infrastructure project of the New Silk Road, which only subsequently could have lent impetus to cultural integration as well (whereas in the value hierarchy to which the Roerichs adhered, global economic planning must follow the potential of cultural integration, and not the reverse). The Russian-Mongolian-Chinese corridor, contingent upon the modernization of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal-Amur Mainline, is stalling. The North-South corridor – technically already largely prepared – connecting Russia with India has barely advanced, as India is unable to resolve the problem of disputed territories in Kashmir and fears, partly on that account, having shared infrastructure with China. And the Power of Siberia pipeline, which only came into operation at the end of 2019 linking Russia and China, serves as a reminder that the idea of "Power of Siberia – 2" remains possible – fraught as it would be with serious ecological and demographic upheavals – if it were nevertheless to pass through the Ukok plateau, sacred to the Altaic peoples and inscribed, as a unique natural-historical complex, on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the "Golden Mountains of Altai." At the other two vertices of the triangle surrounding the legendary Mount Belukha lie the Uymon Steppe and the Bukhtarma Valley – the latter also known by the name of the mythical free land of Belovodye – where Altaic stonemasons (that is, mountain-dwellers) settled: fugitive Old Believers known for their spiritual aspirations and messianic disposition. One also recalls the Altai–Himalaya axis, situated, according to N. Roerich, between two cultural-civilizational magnets, two pillars [Rerikh 1996]. It is these that determine the future of Eurasia, yet they are virtually unaccounted for by the classical Eurasianists. And indeed, precisely such an axis would provide a direct connection between the three largest powers of the continent – India, China, and Russia [Ivanov, Fotieva, Gerasimova 2020]. At its northern end it would terminate in the sparsely populated and therefore well-preserved Siberia, which in the Roerichs' conception was envisioned as the nucleus of a future better world with its own particular peacemaking mission and an exceptionally important civilizational role [Ivanov 2017]. As was said of the north of Eurasia, and of Siberia in particular, in one of the books of Agni Yoga: "In the East people thought about a Northern Shambhala, which manifested as the aurora borealis. There also existed a legend that a banner would be set up at the point of the North Pole. Thus are traditions fulfilled; and one may glance into the distant future when, through a shifting of the terrestrial axis, new lands will be discovered which are now concealed. I have already spoken about the uncovering of the tundras. I commend those who look into the future" [Brotherhood 1937, § 509]. Taking into account the report that a polar expedition led by V. Chukov planted the Banner of Peace at the North Pole in 1989 [Rosov 1989], and that from 1990 onward, after a century and a half of observations of the slow drift of the North Magnetic Pole, its speed began to increase sharply to a maximum of approximately 60 km per year [Livermore, Finlay, Bayliff 2020] – with this pole (in contrast to the notably less displaced South Magnetic Pole) moving southward in an almost straight line toward Taimyr peninsula – one may note yet another coincidence that has become a global sensation. Although as early as 1936 N. Roerich had learned of archaeological finds beyond the Arctic Circle [Rerikh 1995b], from 2014 onward impressive openings began to be discovered in the tundras of the neighboring Yamal and Gydan peninsulas – craters that, in the literal sense, uncovered the subsoil through the explosive release of gases [Khimenkov et al. 2019]. And the recently developed magnet project "Vostok Oil" – in which an important role is assigned to Indian investors [Shakhovskaya, Timonina 2020] – thanks to the discovery in 2020 of a uniquely large deposit of valuable low-sulfur oil in the south of Gydan and the totality of other explored oil and gas fields in the north of the Taimyr district, has substantially consolidated Russia's position among the leaders in proven oil reserves and may become a powerful driver of growth for the Siberian north.

With regard to the future of Siberia in Eurasian historiography, there is also a well-known article by the foremost ideologue of the noospheric teaching, V. Vernadsky, written in the revolutionary year of 1917, in which it is stated: "As the proper utilization of our natural productive forces begins, the center of life of our country will increasingly shift – as D. Mendeleev long ago correctly observed – to the east, most likely to the southern part of Western Siberia. Russia will to an ever greater degree grow and develop at the expense of its Asian part, which harbors barely touched creative forces" [Vernadskiy 2013].

The words of the Roerichs' spiritual mentor Mahatma Morya – upon whom, as one of the Great Teachers of the East, they relied in matters of the possible evolution of the planet – concerning Siberia and the corresponding tasks of the Roerichs, were recorded in H. Roerich's notes for 1933 as follows: "Let us speak of My R[ussian] A[sia]. I wish to go through S[iberia] not because I was Sergius [of Radonezh], but thus a special cycle will be completed. In the places of the most ancient Culture, the Light of the spirit will again be kindled. People entirely reject the phenomenon of the magnetism of places, but the law of Cosmic Cycles is inevitable. These completions give equilibrium, which is especially necessary when the foundations of the planet are disturbed. In this manner, Our Plan is also the healing of the planet, and that is why the dark ones rage so furiously. Of course, many people will not understand why a movement in Asia may have special significance. They will say: 'These places are already inhabited.' But the matter is not one of habitation – the essence lies in the introduction of spiritual foundations. Already these ancient foundations were awakened in antiquity, and now once again the conscious concept of Hierarchy will enter into life. Thus, Our Plan is not only for the well-being of peoples, but for the establishment of the equilibrium of the planet" [Rerikh 1933; redacted].

The historian A. Zelinskiy – a disciple of both L. Gumilev and G. Roerich – concludes that "the Russian-Eurasian axis of history, situated in the region of the 50th parallel, was the nerve around which the vectors of ethnic super-tensions of tribes and peoples were grouped. Drawing on L. Gumilev's passionary concept[13], this 'axis' may be called the 'passionary axis of Eurasia'" [Zelinskiy 2005]. And the cyclonic barocenter in the western part of Mongolia, identified by the geophysicist E. Borodzich through statistical analysis, proved paradoxically to be the most powerful in the Northern Hemisphere[14]. It is worth noting, incidentally, that this anomalously large quantity of transported water volumes and precipitation arising over the rocky desert of the middle uplands, far from large bodies of water, has received no adequate explanation – a fact noted by the geophysicist I. Yanitskiy, who discovered the connection between helium anomalies and deep faults in the Earth's crust [Yanitskiy 2001] and who was interested in the influence of deep geological structures on climate.

The Co-evolution of Humanity and the Planet as the Foundation of Russia's Eurasian Development. Points of Contact with the Conceptions of Living Ethics

It is not precisely known what will befall the "passionary axis of Eurasia" in the era of global risks, but the fate of the entire planet depends in large measure on how humanity overcomes the impending technological singularity. In the series of Agni Yoga books, almost a hundred years ago, the special responsibility connected with the acceleration of all planetary processes was already addressed: "The timetable needs to be sped up, for otherwise ignorance will solidify. A host of plagues has swarmed onto the threshold of the New World" [New… 1926, § 96]. However, the universal mechanization of the life-order – in its current stage, digitalization, Industry 4.0, and the sixth technological paradigm, all of which are furthered by the emergency measures connected with the COVID-19 pandemic – could be lived through by proceeding from the higher purpose of the human being, which stands above the sphere of technologies and contrivances: " It is not the acceleration of technical discoveries that leads to concentration of the mind, but the desire of people themselves to learn something new. Yet, how can they learn if the most fundamental truths have not found a place in their consciousness? One must do more than listen politely to these truths; one must apply them as reality. <...> Do not think that these reminders are simply abstract moral precepts. The planet is ill, and people add to its destruction" [Supermundane 1938, §§ 183, 845].

Foreseeing the consequences of planetary imbalance – the tip of whose iceberg can be felt at present through the ecologically unfavorable situation – the Roerichs called attention, and by no means without reason, to at least the most conspicuous manifestations of the universal malaise: "Are there not enough earthquakes? Are there not enough wrecks, storms, excesses of cold and heat? <...> But humanity amidst chaos does not wish to be aware of the apparent signs!" [Ierarkhiya 2011, § 380]. Living Ethics draws attention to the following: "... if you were to record the whereabouts of earthquakes, floods, epidemics, unusual atmospheric events, and unexplained tensions, you would have a book about the sickness of the planet" [Supermundane 1938, § 251]. A comparison of atmospheric electricity and epidemics was undertaken in the 1930s by one of the pillars of Russian cosmism – which so frequently goes hand in hand with Eurasianism – A. Chizhevsky [Chizhevskiy 1934].

A sick planet means a sick humanity. During the spread of yet another atypical acute respiratory viral infection, the words from the book "Agni Yoga" become more relevant than ever: "Whence come the unexplainable epidemics, withering the lungs, the throat, and the heart? Beyond all the apparent causes there is something undetected by the physicians. It is not the circumstances of life, but other conditions that wipe out so many lives. <...> … who could say that epidemics of influenza should be cured by psychic energy? Who would pay attention to the new kinds of mental, brain, and nervous illnesses, such as sleeping sickness? It is not leprosy, or the old forms of plague or cholera that must be dreaded; for them, preventive measures already exist. But one must ponder over the new enemies that are created by the conditions of contemporary life. One cannot apply old treatments to them; a new approach will be found through the expansion of consciousness. One can trace, how, over the last thousand years, waves of sicknesses have swept over Earth. By these records one can compile a curious tabulation of human failings, because sicknesses clearly show the negative aspects of our existence" [Agni… 1929, §§ 441, 492]. A. Chizhevsky worked in this same direction when he studied the influence of solar processes on epidemic processes [Chizhevskiy 1930], but in recent times more detailed tables have been compiled, tracing numerous correlations with the movements of celestial bodies in the Solar System [Vikulin et al. 2016; Sukharev 2016; Sukharev 2011; Yagodinskiy 2006; Yagodinskiy 2011]. Furthermore, "one must pay attention to the origins of various epidemics. The manifestation of this or that epidemic is reflected upon the general conscious forces. The poisoning penetrates deeper than one may think, and regenerates and creates new microbes. Physical and psychic epidemics are very pernicious. Many degenerations of entire families originate from such regenerated microbes" [Fiery… 1934, § 67].

The imperative of harmonizing the bodily with the mental and spiritual, expressed in the popular saying of Juvenal, popularized by J. Locke, "A healthy mind in a healthy body," is known to many, although physicians often adopt it in a rather one-sided manner. And yet, the psycho-emotional state can significantly affect the recovery of patients with diseases of very different etiologies, including infectious ones. The tension being stoked around a spreading virus can create no lesser a problem for health than the infection itself: "... even the healthiest conditions of physical life cannot alone solve the problem of restoration of humanity’s health. The worst epidemic that threatens is from the mental side. <...> … cruelty, rudeness, and ignorance are nurseries of chaos. Dangerous epidemics arise around these hearths. <...> Psychic epidemics are increasing, together with the bodily ones. <...> … anyone who loses equilibrium and calmness becomes unreceptive to health-giving vibrations and subject to destructive ones. Such a one suffers great torment, and becomes a source of infection to others. Such agents of disease should themselves receive medical help, but, of course, physicians must first recognize the cause of their condition" [Supermundane 1938, §§ 603, 625, 864, 683]. The epidemiologist V. Yagodinskiy, known even in Soviet times, was able to bring forth data from the natural sciences in confirmation of these words [Yagodinskiy 2012]. Of additional interest to Eurasianists, from the standpoint of ethnopsychology, but also in continuation of the influence of the developmental place and landscape, is the heterogeneity and intersection of patterns of virulence, pathogenesis, and the spread of epidemics in general with the outlines of current and future processes of migration of the masses and the formation of human communities.

Questions of morality are also directly connected with hygiene. For the philosopher S. Frank, sympathetic to Eurasianist ideals, Christian morality was "the hygiene of the human spirit" [Frank 1992]; for many contemporary moral authorities, including those not bound by confessional ties, morality may rest upon other worthy spiritual orientations. The main point is that humanity, currently in the fever of technicalism, has a chance to ease its lot if it remembers that "the spiritual consciousness was lagging behind the physical. Ethics were lost amidst accumulations of formulas. Machines attracted man away from the art of thinking. Now they are content to be robots! For the equilibrium of the World the heart is needed..." [Fiery… 1934, § 262]. "Humanity must select the most firm paths. All mechanical discoveries merely demonstrate the need of the power in man himself" [Brotherhood 1937, § 62].

In realizing his enlightening mission, N. Roerich and the organizations built upon his initiatives around the world laid as their foundation a brief motto: "Peace through Culture" [Ikonnikova 2005]. In it, the original word mir is used in Russian in a twofold sense (peace and the world), and this refrain, despite its brevity, truly contains within itself references to many, if not all, of the key ideas that guided the Roerichs in the earthly embodiment of the ideas of Living Ethics. The prosperity of civilization is connected first and foremost with culture, not with economics. That is, of course, if we are speaking not of several centuries of "civilized barbarism," now culminating in consumerism, but at least of what is now commonly aspired to under the name of sustainable development[15], in which culture is embedded to a very limited degree within its social and ecological components.

Inspired by certain constructive examples of cultural development encountered during the Manchurian Expedition, N. Roerich wrote: "... they thought that the material crisis of the world could be resolved by material calculations. But the leprosy has gone too far. The crisis of the world is not material at all, but precisely spiritual. It can be healed only by spiritual renewal. The cold language of the brain has deceived the accountants, and once again it is urgently necessary to turn to that eternal language of the heart by which epochs of flourishing were created" [Rerikh 1934]. Similar thoughts were expressed as early as 1918 by N. Berdyaev: "In social life, spiritual primacy belongs to culture. It is not in politics and economics, but in culture that the goals of society are realized. And the value and quality of social life is measured by the high qualitative level of culture. The democratic revolution that has long been taking place in the world does not justify itself by the high value and high quality of the culture it brings with it into the world. Through democratization, culture everywhere declines in its quality and its value. It becomes cheaper, more accessible, more broadly developed, more useful and comfortable, but also flatter, diminished in its quality, unattractive, devoid of style. Culture passes into civilization" [Berdyaev 1991]. That very civilization whose prosperity is associated with democratic processes. In this connection, H. Roerich wrote to her correspondent in 1934: "... ”a democracy, vital and transformed, based on the realization of the responsibility of the individual toward his duties, on which responsibility his rights depend, a democracy consisting of the cooperation of all, together with the maximum of personal initiative for the sake of the General Good”–such a democracy, perhaps, we shall see [very soon, but now] we can only envision such a democracy in our best dreams. Thus the great Plato dreamed… <...> However, even such an ideal democracy would have to be led by someone; and such a leader would certainly need to possess spiritual synthesis. But the modern democracy that affirms the leadership which issues from the crowds fails all tests. Is it possible to expect that the consciousness of the majority will regenerate so quickly that everybody will understand at least his social responsibility and give elementary cooperation, to say nothing of the higher aspects of responsibility?" [Letters… 1954, p. 320]. As early as 1948 she added, with regard to the "bulwark of democracy": "... the country is governed by a plutocracy resting upon an ochlocracy – in Russian, a rogue (plout) and a ruffian (okhalnik). Democracy has died without reaching its coming of age" [Rerikh 2008].

Later, in the 1960s, a considerable body of analytical material was brought into correspondence with similar considerations within the framework of the critical theory of society developed by the Frankfurt School of philosophy. It included well-known thinkers and scholars, among them E. Fromm and his collaborator H. Marcuse, who was also criticized by the former for camouflaged escapism and certain distortions of post-Freudian concepts [Funk 2000]. In the latter's book "One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society" [Marcuse 1964], a philosophical-anthropological analysis was conducted of the hedonistic self-destructive tendencies of the modern way of life adopted in the West and now being transmitted to the majority of countries. As was shown in the book, many of a person's needs are simply imposed upon him from without, making him a slave to his own needs.

In that same decade, a vivid artistic embodiment of the analysis of Western (and, in the part concerning "ant-like pseudo-socialism," Chinese and Soviet) social order was achieved in the philosophical novel by I. Efremov "The Bull's Hour"[16] [Efremov 1970]. In his exposition, based on the so-called theory of inferno, the history of humanity developed through a dramatic transition from the Era of the Disunited World, with its global alienation, world oligarchy from the wealthy inhabitants of first-world nations, and peripheral "gangsterizing capitalism," mass psychoses and disinformation in the mass media, to the Era of Meeting Hands, in which, despite the technical level achieved by that time, primary attention is given to the development of the psychic capacities and psychological mastery inherent in the human being. The social order corresponding to this epoch the author – who was no stranger to Agni Yoga and maintained intensive communication with G. Roerich and several Roerich scholars – clothed in the form of improved communist constructions. If N. Berdyaev had earlier spoken of a specific phenomenon – Russian communism [Berdyaev 2016] – then to Efremov's communism of the future, which rests upon currently little-engaged qualities of the human being, one may apply the epithet "fiery," pointing to the forms of communal consciousness spoken of in the Yoga of Fire – Agni Yoga.

In an even earlier analysis of economic models, P. Savitsky, in his theory of khozyainoderzhaviye (from khozyain – a proprietor who, in the Russian economic tradition, normally possesses a certain set of moral principles), proceeded from the premise that the model of Homo oeconomicus, the "capitalist man," incorporated into classical economic theories, cannot be applied to Eurasianist sobornost [Savitskiy 1997, pp. 217–253]. The drive to extract maximum profit and the practical use of all possible technical means to that end inevitably leads to planetary catastrophe. Such an interdependence of humanity's sustainability, its technological level, and its moral and cultural foundation was reflected at the end of the last century by A. Nazaretyan in the hypothesis of techno-humanitarian balance [Nazaretyan 1999]. It also corresponds to the concerns expressed in this regard by both Eurasianists and the Roerichs.

On the path toward resolving global, universal human problems, the Roerichs emphasized the importance of one of the key concepts of the current epoch, without which further evolution is impossible – cooperation, or broad collaboration. Cooperation is manifested at all levels of the physical world – from subatomic systems and cells in an organism to the coordinated movement of planets and stellar systems – and so it is unsurprising that it is natural for human collectives and international communities. The Eurasianists, developing the ideas of Slavophile sobornost, likewise arrived at the optimality of communal structures. Social psychologists, philosophers, economists, zoologists, and scholars of many other disciplines continue to put forward ever new arguments in favor of cooperation having an advantage over competition [Soldatova, Nestik 2011]. The governments of all countries also frequently declare that they see salvation in cooperation, even if not fully believing it themselves. In an era of intensified migration waves caused by interethnic discord and the confrontation of religious fundamentalists, it is especially important to develop and assimilate the best experience of international cooperation and peacemaking [Turley 2018].

Even before the appearance of the first lines of the Teaching of Living Ethics, the formation of the first truly large international organizations was taking place – the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the League of Nations – but in Agni Yoga an original justification for the need for international cooperation specifically was put forth: " It is not at all necessary that everyone in the collective know everyone else. A wave of energy is instantly passed on through the nodes of transmission; therefore, the presence of an international collective is so necessary in taking action. That is why a wave of internationalism is needed, for the diversity of dynamics will yield greater intensity" [New… 1926, § 173]. There too it speaks of the beneficial influence of different nationalities and specializations within a collective for preserving the full potential of individuality and attuning the consonance of consciousnesses.

At the same time, at the foundation of cooperation and unity lies the concept of love, accessible to everyone: "… brothers will understand unity as a powerful motive force for the good of the world. It is impossible to place limits upon such unity, for its basis will be love " [Brotherhood 1937, § 166]. It is precisely with the development of the ability to love that the prosperity of nations may be connected: " The cooperative is a bulwark of the state and a nursery for public life. Whence will come public opinion? Whence will be formed the longed-for progress? Whence will solitary workers receive help? Surely, cooperation will also teach unity" [Aum 1936, § 441]. However, for communal cooperation, an understanding of the essence of labor is above all important. Thus, in the book "New Era Community" it is said: "Labor is the crown of Light. It is necessary that the students of the school keep in mind the significance of labor as a factor in the universe. The consciousness will grow strong as a result of labor" [New… 1926, § 117]. That is, through labor – of any kind, but always striving toward quality – that wholeness of consciousness is achieved of which V. Solovyov wrote [Solovyov 1988b], and through labor the common cause receives its apologia in the philosophy of N. Fyodorov [Fedorov 2008], which establishes an additional connection between Eurasianism and Russian cosmism through the ontological conceptions of Living Ethics.

Although the synergistic effect of cooperation is most easily felt in small collectives, Living Ethics reminds us that the consequences of such experiences will ultimately result in a global shift: "So long as the personality fears collective work, it is not yet individualized; it still remains in the stifling atmosphere of selfhood. Only true discernment of the indestructibility of freedom permits adherence to collective labor. Only through such true mutual respect can we attain the realization of harmonious labor – in other words, attain active good. In this good is kindled the fire of the heart… <...> In the beginning, fatigue because of disunity is unavoidable, but later the coordinated collective force will multiply the energy tenfold. Thus, even in small nuclei one can thrust forward the prototype of world progress" [Fiery… 1933, § 288]. At the foundation of worldwide cooperation lie the possibilities conditioned by the very infinity of our Universe: " A cooperative is not a closed community. Cooperation based on the law of nature contains within itself the element of infinity. <...> … the cooperative opens the doors to all possibilities. Besides, cooperatives are interconnected, and thus a working network will cover the whole world" [Aum 1936, § 441].

The laws of nature must be applied for the benefit not only of humanity itself, but of the entire biogeosphere, which contradicts the ideas of the post-human based on transhumanism and dehumanization. " Political economy should be based upon an understanding of the values of nature and their wise use; otherwise the state will rest on sand, – one can read in one of the books of Living Ethics. – … The most miserly person on Earth is often a planetary squanderer. The New World, if and when it arrives, will manifest love for the treasures of nature, and they will provide the best emulsion of vital essence. Multitudes will have to spread out from the cities into nature, but surely not to sand dunes! <...> Not nature, but men themselves destroyed the flowers" [Fiery… 1933, §§ 320, 321].

The Eurasianists affirmed the considerable determinacy of the cultural content of landscape (developmental place), and therefore the preservation of sociocultural types, including the Eurasian one, is largely determined by adherence to the limits of self-restoration of geo-ecosystems[17]. Thus, one of the possibilities for overcoming the negative consequences of widespread urbanization is the dispersal of the population into rural settlements (something that was especially important for the movement for ancestral homesteads that emerged in late 1990s Russia, and for other proponents of eco-settlements). In a similar vein, Living Ethics also states: "Your judgment is correct in regard to the need for an exodus from the festering cities and for a proportionate distribution of the population of the planet. <...> It must be understood that the illness of the planet depends to a great extent upon human balance. One should not abandon vast spaces and gather in fratricidal congestion on infected and blood-soaked sites! Not by accident did the ancient chieftains found their camps on virgin sites. Today, science itself favors the normal peopling of free spaces. None will be forgotten or excluded, and the very forces of nature, called into cooperation, will render healthful Earth’s diseased condition" [Fiery… 1933, § 323].

Living Ethics, representing in the interpretation of philosopher S. Ableyev a Eurasian anthropocosmism [Ableev 2014, Ableev 2015], thus affirms the necessity of the proportionate evolution of humanity and the planet as part of the greater Cosmos: "It is right to repeat about the sickness of the planet. <...> It is right to turn one’s thought to the task of cooperation with nature. It is right to recognize that to plunder nature is to squander the treasures of the people. <...> He who does not think about nature does not know the Abode of Spirit" [Fiery… 1933, § 530].

In essence, the original Russian theologian and naturalist Father P. Florensky called the "pneumatosphere" the refuge of the spirit – a sphere of ideas of the highest spiritual and moral potential, a sphere of the spirit [Perepiska… 1989]. This concept is related to the concept of V. Vernadsky's all-permeating living noosphere, currently used by some Eurasianists, with the qualification that P. Florensky's conceptions, even despite the cosmic nature of his anthropodicy, are nonetheless more theological: "... my interests organically grew together into a unified picture of the world, and in a vague presentiment I perceived a new Cosmos, yet one more organized and more permeated with the consciousness of the singular life of nature than that of Humboldt"[18] [Florenskiy 2000].

In his civilizational theory, P. Sorokin establishes a connection between elements of such noumenal constructions, prime symbols, and those constants that lie at the foundation of civilization: "… each of the vast cultural systems and supersystems is based upon some major premise or philosophical presupposition or prime symbol or ultimate value that the supersystem or civilization articulates, develops, and realizes in the process of its life-career in all its main parts or subsystems" [Sorokin 1966]. The characteristics of Eurasian civilization shown above constitute that foundation which allows it to persist, to use the expression of D. Mendeleev, "between the hammer of Europe and the anvil of Asia" [Mendeleev 1906]. At the same time, in the opinion of V. Toporov, whose translation of the Dhammapada, a pearl of moral-ethical literature, from Pali became available to readers in the USSR at the cost of extraordinary efforts by G. Roerich, "the Eurasian 'world-feeling,' even without knowing its own name, cannot but be preserved, if only in other forms. The direction and dynamics of the development of the various structures comprising the Eurasian space reinforce the thought of the growing role of such a 'world-feeling' in the very near future" [Toporov 1990].

Of such a phoenix-like civilization, undaunted by the collapse of great Eurasian empires, L. Gumilev said: "As for our present day, I will say that, according to our concept, the advantage of passionary tension stands on the side of the Soviet Union and the fraternal peoples within it, who have created a system that is relatively young in relation to Western Europe, and therefore have greater prospects for holding their ground in that struggle which has arisen periodically since the thirteenth century and will, apparently, continue to arise" [Gumilev 2007]. These words were spoken, accordingly, before the collapse of the USSR, yet even after that, in a deathbed interview, he affirmed: "... if Russia is to be saved, then it will only be as a Eurasian power, and only through Eurasianism" [Savkin 1992]. The phrase echoes the words of H. Roerich about Russia: "The renascence of Russia is a guarantee of thriving and peace for the whole world. The destruction of Russia is the destruction of the whole world" [Letters… 1967]. And this is unsurprising – in the ideas of the Eurasianists, the integrating role of Russia sounded as the central one. Almost verbatim quoting to her correspondents lines from the "wonderful article" by P. Savitsky [Savitskiy 1921], H. Roerich wrote as early as 1931, despite the first wave of Stalinist repressions of which the world had already learned: "... in the comfortable civilized world there is no more Russia… and in this absence there is a change, as in this particular ‘non-existence,’ Russia, in a certain way, becomes an ideological center of the world. If translated into the language of reality, this would mean that on the stage of the world’s history appeared a new ‘culturally-geographical world,’ which until now did not have the significance of a leading power. We look into the future. Does not the goddess of culture move toward the East from the European West, where she was settled for such a long time?…" [Letters… 1954, p. 90]. About the enrichment of the Russian nation by the Asian component, H. Roerich wrote a year before her death and in such a practically everyday context: "We – Russians – have much Eastern blood in us, and borrowed no small amount of useful wisdom of the East in our time from the Mongols. Here, my great-grandmother A. Yelchaninova was of the lineage of Genghis Khan. And I must confess, I love Eastern people" [Rerikh 2009].

The possibility of a civilizational choice and self-identification for Russia has been newly actualized in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. As researchers of cyclicity in civilizational processes in the Eastern Eurasian space predict, the post-coronavirus period, falling at the beginning of a new cycle of solar activity, should lead to a shift in the priorities of social development: the security and physical survival of humanity will come to the fore. At the same time, it is asserted that against the backdrop of the erosion of the foundations of the postwar international order that occurred during the previous cycle, anti-globalism may now more easily appeal to evidence of the disintegration of the world community [Bushuev, Klepach, Pervukhin 2020]. The world has become more fragmented, but at the same time the possibility has emerged to reassemble the fragments into new regional and hybrid alliances. The possibility has arisen to retrospectively clarify the concept of sovereignty, and the time has come to more globally engage the rich sociocultural potential of Russia and the countries of the future Eurasian union – with the integrating role of Russia, but also with the possibility for all countries that have reconsidered the phenomenon of international cooperation to contribute their own specifics to the range of cooperatively resolved issues. A distinctive ideology may help in strengthening the Russian "core" of the new macro-region in Eurasia. And taking into account the importance of renewing the scientific paradigm and the dangers of technicalism pushed beyond the bounds of ethics, the contributions of Eurasianist thinkers in combination with the expansive vision of the interconnected earthly and cosmic processes laid down in the cultural-philosophical heritage of the Roerichs and other cosmists appear to be of particular importance.

In the scientific and philosophical heritage of the Roerichs, in which Eurasianism is one of the key orientations, one can trace – together with consideration of the peculiarities of geographical location and the system of ways of life characteristic of Russia – the ideas of a common destiny of the Russian and Eastern peoples, which may serve as a solid foundation for a new union of many ethnic groups. At the same time, the entirely distinctive ontological and axiological grounding of Russia's position in the inter-civilizational context correlates to a significant degree with the ideas concerning the interconnection of humanity and the Universe and belonging to Living Ethics and its sources, which represent not only a new formulation of religious-philosophical concepts that had partially existed before, but also indications of the possibility of developing their scientific cognition.

[1] Such a definition carries politically conjunctural constraints that must be taken into account within the real historical process – a process that contains divergences from the main line of interethnic interaction and, in terms of L. Gumilev's theory, in the phase of breakdown often arrives at an outright rupture of the ethnic field: that very field which is called upon to describe the phenomenon of complementarity by analogy with the biological fields conceived by the theoretical biologist B. Kuzin [Gumilev 1989, p. 312; Kuzin 1992]. Moreover, in times of social upheaval on a state – and especially on a global – scale, far more powerful psychological dispositions come to prevail, bound up with the level of moral development and the psychological climate of society.

[2] The term "economics," introduced by the economist A. Marshall in place of "economic science" and used by him as a substitute for "political economy," has in recent decades sometimes been employed in a negative context within the neologism "economicsism" by critics of the dominant theories of macroeconomic stability, supply, and demand.

[3] It is noteworthy that, apparently, the first in the West to use the term ideocracy in this context were the Webb couple, whose colleague in the Fabian Society in London was A. Besant, who later became the head of the Theosophical Society, whose goal is universal brotherhood without discrimination. The son of her friend M. Nehru – Jawaharlal – sought to adapt the ideas of the corresponding and still-extant Fabian philosophical-economic current to socialist India. Yet standing in the way of the triumph of Fabian socialist ideals was supposed to be hostility toward bourgeois ideas – something that can hardly be expected of the Labour Party, with which the contemporary Fabian Society is affiliated.

[4] The Roerichs' route also intersected with later nineteenth-century Russian expeditions – those of G. Potanin, M. Pevtsov, V. Roborovsky, and P. Kozlov (the first and last of whom likewise explored Tibet, albeit in its peripheral reaches, far from the Roerichs' route).

[5] The Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments (the Roerich Pact), signed by the United States and twenty other countries of the Americas as well as later approved by the Indian government, was the first international protection treaty in history, establishing the unconditional neutrality of monuments, cultural and educational institutions (designated by the distinctive Banner of Peace), and their personnel, and prescribing their respect and protection both in time of war and in time of peace [Barenboim, Zakharov 2010].

[6] G. Roerich wished to draw him into a major international archaeological expedition investigating the heritage of the Kushan Empire – which rivaled ancient Rome in its splendor and in which Mahayana Buddhism flourished [Tamazishvili 2017].

[7] This resonates with the nickname "La Pasionaria" – which in Spanish means passionflower, with its blossoms reminiscent of the crown of thorns and, accordingly, of the Passion of Christ – adopted by the famous contemporary of L. Gumilev, the Spanish revolutionary D. Ibárruri.

[8] In the work of Academician N. Moiseyev, a more fundamental concept of the co-evolution of humanity and nature is discernible, with economic mechanisms forming the basis in a less distinctly manifested and therefore less dominant fashion.

[9] This empire differed from the colonial empires of Europe in a number of significant respects in a more fundamental and humane manner, which in the Soviet period made it possible to transform it into an empire of affirmative action, as the American historian T. Martin termed it [Martin 2002]; while certain excesses and systemic miscalculations in national policy were connected, among other things, with a certain chimerical character (in L. Gumilev's sense) of the conglomerate of nations within the USSR.

[10] The so-called Tocharian problem was later elaborated upon in the works of G. Roerich [Shustova 2020b].

[11] That which S. Bulgakov as a sophiologist and N. Berdyaev as a metaphysician termed the meta-historical, and which formed the basis of the visionary conceptions of D. Andreyev, and was later discerned by researchers of the Roerichs’ heritage as a component of the Roerichs' own ideas [Ivanov, Fotieva, Shishin 2006; Shaposhnikova 2011].

[12] It is noteworthy that according to the calculations of the renowned Indian spiritual figure Sri Yukteswar, the seventeenth century itself represents the hundred-year transitional period between Kali Yuga and Dvapara Yuga – the cosmological eras of Vedic conceptions [Sri Yukteswar Giri 1977]. This contradicts, however, the view that Kali Yuga has only recently concluded with respect to the greater part of present humanity or the Solar System as a whole (for example, as early as 1937 H. Roerich wrote of 1942 as the end of Kali Yuga, mentioning that this had also been calculated by Indian pandits [Rerikh 2003]), and that it will be succeeded not by the ascending arc of the cycle of yugas – Dvapara Yuga, then Treta and Krita Yugas – but directly by Krita Yuga, also known as Satya Yuga. As for the series of passionary impulses described by L. Gumilev himself, which breaks off at the thirteenth century (not counting his supposition regarding processes in Japan, China, and South Africa at the end of the eighteenth century [Suvorov 1988]), he was inclined to avoid the aberration of proximity, which is possible given the typical lifespan of an ethnos as estimated by him at 1,200 to 1,500 years.

[13] A. Zelinskiy himself preferred the term "pneumopassionarity," containing the root "pneuma" (spirit in Greek), since he held that "all great phenomena in the history of the human spirit possess a special form of energetics that cannot be reduced either to biogeochemical planetary processes, as in V. Vernadsky, or to strikes from the Cosmos, as in A. Chizhevsky and L. Gumilev" [Zelinskiy 2013].

[14] At least as of the late 1970s; however, Mongolian cyclones had already struck the participants of N. Roerich's expedition in Inner Mongolia with unprecedented downpours as early as 1935 [Rerikh 2015], and in past decades – including 1998, 2018, and 2019 – also led to catastrophic flooding in Transbaikalia far more markedly than other extratropical cyclones of East Asia [Shalikovskiy 2019; Kononova 2019].

[15] The concept of sustainable development, which has captured many minds, does not assign value to revolutionary leaps as bearing positive transformations, unless one is speaking, for example, of the scientific and technological revolution. At the same time, in the well-known history of humanity, a number of important positive shifts owe themselves precisely to revolutions [Subetto 2016], such as the Great French and Russian Revolutions [Zakharov, Ivanova 2017; Sheynis 2007]. Even less do adherents of this concept allow that future humanity must pass through revolutionary transformations comparable in scale to those that accompanied the explosion of religious and philosophical consciousness in the Axial Age, and that such changes must necessarily be connected with large-scale geological and biospheric catastrophes caused by cosmic conditions and planetary imbalance [Dmitriev 2012].

[16] It is noteworthy that the title relates to the Chinese concept of the evolution of primordial natures and cyclicity [Kontsevich 1975] and points to the pre-dawn hour, the time on the eve of the transition from darkness into a new dawn [Jia 2016].

[17] Mathematical models of their violation and tendencies of imbalance were described in the well-known work "The Limits to Growth" of 1972 [Meadows et al. 1972], since then repeatedly updated and taken into account by certain ideologists of the so-called green economy.

[18] Incidentally, P. Savitsky distinguished the Eurasian concept of Eurasia from the "old 'Eurasia' of A. von Humboldt" [Savitskiy 1997, p. 299], to which the German naturalist did not give precisely that name; the noun "Eurasia" was introduced into scientific usage by E. Suess [Suess 1883], the originator of the name of the continent Gondwana, several decades after Humboldt's analogy of Europe as a peninsula of Asia [Humboldt 1845] (i.e., for him Eurasia was simply one large Asia).

REFERENCES

 

Ableev S.R. (2014) Prirodnaya i psihicheskaya real'nost' v filosofii antropokosmizma: metafizicheskaya evristika postklassicheskih nauchnyh paradigm [Natural and psychical reality in philosophy of anthropocosmism: metaphysical heuristics of post-classical scientific paradigms]. Trudy Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta kul'tury i iskusstv, vol. 204, pp. 65–80.

Ableev S.R. (2015) Duhovnye idealy Zhivoy Etiki: sovershennoe soznanie i noosfernaya tsivilizatsiya [Spiritual ideals of living ethics: perfect consciousness and noosphere civilization]. Trudy Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta kul'tury i iskusstv, vol. 203, pp. 150–167.

Agni Yoga (1929) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Agni-Yoga.php). Here and henceforth the year is given for the Russian original.

Aleksandrov I.Yu. (2014) Kontseptsiya Novoy Nauki v Uchenii Zhivoy Etiki i osnovaniya novoevropeyskoy filosofii i nauki [The concept of the New Science in the Teaching of Living Ethics and the foundation of modern European philosophy and science]. Trudy Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo instituta kul'tury, vol. 204, pp. 81–112.

Alekseev A.P., Alekseeva I.Yu. (2015) Ekonomicheskiy pozitivizm i budushhee nauki [Economical positivism and the future of science]. Filosofiya nauki, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 169–190.

Anoprienko A.Ya. (2020) Nooritmy: Modeli sinkhronizatsii cheloveka i kosmosa [Noorhythms: models of human-space synchronization]. 3-e izd., dop. Donetsk: Tekhnopark DonGTU "Unitekh".

Attali J. (1991) Millenium. Winners and losers in the Coming World Order. NY: Times Books, p. 22.

Aum (1936) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Aum.php).

Barenboim P.D., Zakharov A.V. (2010) Pakt Rerikha kak etap vnedreniya v zhizn' esteticheskoy konceptsii pravovogo gosudarstva Nikolaya Rerikha [The Roerich Pact as a stage in the implementation of Nicholas Roerich’s aesthetic concept of the rule of law]. Zhurnal zarubezhnogo zakonodatel'stva i sravnitel'nogo pravovedeniya, no. 2, pp. 6–16.

Barkova E.V. (2019) Evraziyskaya model' tselostnosti: k ekofilosofskomu analizu svyazi dukhovnosti i territorial'nosti v perspektive razvitiya Rossii [A Eurasianist model of integrity: toward an ecophilosophical analysis of the relationship between spirituality and territoriality in the perspective of Russia's development]. Birich I.A. (ed.), Evraziyskiy proekt modernizatsii Rossii: istoriya i sovremennost' [A Eurasianist project for the modernization of Russia: history and present]. Moscow: GAOU VO g. Moskvy MPGU, pp. 165–181.

Bashkova N.V. (2013) Preobrazhenie cheloveka v filosofii russkogo kosmizma [Human transfigaration in the philosophy of Russian cosmism]. Moscow: Direct-Media.

Belikov P.F., Shaposhnikova L.V. (1977) Institut «Urusvati». Nauchnaya deyatel'nost' N.K. Rerikha i Yu.N. Rerikha v Indii [Urusvati Institute. Scientific activity of N. Roerich and G. Roerich in India]. Strany i narody Vostoka, no. 19, book 4. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 250–270.

Belyakov S.S. (2009) Evraziystvo L.N. Gumileva [Lev N. Gumilev’s Eurasianism] // Ural'skiy istoricheskiy vestnik, no. 4 (25), pp. 14–22.

Berdyaev N.A. (1991) O kul'ture [On culture]. Russkoe zarubezh'e: Iz istorii sotsial'noy i pravovoy mysli [Russian expatriate community: from the history of social and legal thought]. L.: Lenizdat, p. 217.

Berdyaev N.A. (1993) Utopicheskiy etatizm evraziytsev [Utopian statism of Eurasianists]. Rossiya mezhdu Evropoy i Aziey: Evraziyskiy soblazn [Russia between Europe and Asia: Eurasianist temptation]. Moscow: Nauka, p. 303.

Berdyaev N.A. (2016) Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma [The origins and meaning of Russian communism]. Saint Petersburg: Azbuka.

Bohm D. (2002) Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London and New York: Routledge Classics, p. 25.

Bohr N. (1958) Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. NY.: John Whiley & Sons, p. 20.

Brotherhood (1937) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Brotherhood.php).

Brzezinski Z. (2016) The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives: updated with a new epilogue. New York: Basic Books.

Budnikova Yu. (2009) K voprosu o dissertatsii V.A. Rosova “Russko-amerikanskie ekspeditsii N.K. Rerikha v Tsentral'nuyu Aziyu” [On V.A. Rosov’s thesis “Russian-American expeditions of N.K. Roerich to Central Asia”]. Novosibirsk: Rossazia.

Budnikova Yu.Yu. (2017) O tselyah i zadachakh Tsentral'noaziatskoy ekspeditsii Rerikhov po dnevnikam Eleny Ivanovny Rerikh 1925–1927 gg. [Diaries of Helena Roerich (1925–1927) on the aims and objectives of Nicholas Roerich’s Central Asian expedition]. Mezhdunarodnaya nauchno-prakticheskaya konferentsiya “Rerikhovskoe nasledie”, vol. XVI: 90-letie severnogo marshruta Tsentral'noaziatskoy ekspeditsii N.K. Rerikha [International scientific-practical conference “The Roerichs’ heritage”. Vol. XVI: 90th anniversary of the northern route of the Central Asian expedition of N.K. Roerich]. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg State University Publishers, pp. 124–131.

Bushuev V.V., Klepach A.N., Pervuhin V.V. (2020) Tsikly rossiyskoy (vostochno-evraziyskoy) tsivilizatsii [Cycles of Russian (East Eurasian) civilization]. M.: ID “Energiya”.

Buttersack F. (1937) Seelenstrahlen und Resonanz: Beobachtungen und Schlüsse [Psychic rays and resonance: observations and inferences]. München: Ratio-Verlag.

Capra F. (1975) The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boulder: Shambhala Publications.

Chizhevskiy A.L. (1924) Fizicheskie faktory istoricheskogo processa [Physical factors of the historical process]. Kaluga: 1-ya Gostipolitografiya.

Chizhevskiy A.L. (1930) Epidemicheskie katastrofy i periodicheskaya deyatel'nost' Solntsa [Epidemic catastrophes and periodic activity of the Sun]. Moscow: Izd-vo VOVG.

Chizhevskiy A.L. (1934) Atmosfernoe elektrichestvo i epidemii [Atmospheric electricity and epidemics]. Trudy Tsentral'noy nauchno-issledovatel'skoy laboratorii ionifikatsii [Proceedings of the Central Research Laboratory of Ionization], vol. III. Voronezh: Kommuna, pp. 293–310.

Cranston S. (1994) The Extraordinary Life & Influence of Helena Blavatsky Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement. 3rd ed. Santa Barbara: Path Publishing House, pp. 430–462.

Dalai Lama (1996). Beyond Dogma: The Challenge of the Modern World. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, pp. 15, 109, 110.

Dhammaloka (1948). Letters to Dr. G. Roerich (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/PGNR/PGNR-183.pdf).

Dmitriev A.N. (2012) Planetofizicheskie peremeny Zemli [Planetophysical changes of the Earth]. Kaznacheevskie chteniya [Kaznacheev Conference]. Novosibirsk: ZSO MSA.

Eddy J. (1977) The Case of the Missing Sunspots. Scientific American, vol. 236, no. 5, pp. 80–95.

Efremov I.A. (1970) Chas Byka [The Bull’s Hour]. Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya.

Engel'gardt M.A. (1891) N. Przheval'skiy, ego zhizn' i puteshestviya [N. Przhevalsky, his life and travels]. Saint Petersburg: tip. I.G. Salova, map.

Evraziysky mir: tsennsosti, konstanty, samoorganizatsiya [Eurasian world: values, constants, self-organization] (2010). Yu.V. Popkov (ed.). Novosibirsk: Nonparel', pp. 68, 71, 386.

Fedorov N.F. (2008) Filosofiya obshhego dela [Philosophy of the common task]. Moscow: Eksmo.

Fiery World, part 1 (1933) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Fiery-World-I.php).

Fiery World, part 2 (1934) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Fiery-World-II.php).

Florenskiy P.A. (2000) Detyam moim. Vospominaniya proshlykh dney [To my children. The memories of the past]. Kharkov: Folio, day 1925.VIII.23.

Fotieva I.V., Ivanov A.V. (2016) Mesto Indii v evraziyskom mirovozzrenii Rerikhov [The place of India in the Roerichs’ Eurasianist worldview]. Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie, no. 4, pp. 142–153.

Frank S.L. (1992) Dukhovnye osnovy obschestva [The spiritual foundations of society]. Moscow: Respublika, p. 303.

Funk R. (2000) Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas. An Illustrated Biography. New York: Continuum International, pp. 83, 100.

Gerasimova K.M. (1964) Obnovlencheskoe dvizhenie buryatskogo lamaistskogo dukhovenstva (1917–1930 gg.) [Renovation movement of the Buryat Lamaist clergy (1917–1930)]. Ulan-Ude: Buryatskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, p. 164–165.

Gindilis L.M. (2013) Nauchnoe i metanauchnoe znanie [Scientific and meta-scientific knowledge]. Zhivaya Etika i nauka [Living Ethics and science], issue II. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, Master Bank, pp. 510–538.

Gindilis L.M. (2016) Nauchnaya i metanauchnaya kartina mira [Scientific and meta-scientific worldview]. Moscow: Delphis.

Gindilis L.M., Frolov V.V. (2001) Filosofiya zhivoy etiki i ee tolkovateli. Rerikhovskoe dvizhenie v Rossii [Philosophy of Living Ethics and its interpreters. Roerich movement in Russia] // Voprosy filosofii, no. 3, pp. 85–101.

Golodnikova I.Yu., Zakharenko I.A., Kovaleva O.V. (2011) Razrabotka kartograficheskogo obespecheniya Atlasa nauchnyh ekspeditsiy N.K. Rerikha [Development of cartographic support for an atlas of scientific expeditions of Nicholas Roerich]. InterKarto/InterGIS 17: Ustoychivoe razvitie territoriy: teoriya GIS i prakticheskiy opyt. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoy konferentsii [InterCarto/InterGIS 17: Sustainable development of territories: GIS theory and practical experience. Materials of the international conference]. Barnaul: Mezhdunarodnaya Kartograficheskaya Assotsiatsiya, p. 63.

Gumilev L.N. (1989) Etnogenez i biosfera Zemli [Ethnogenesis and the Earth's Biosphere]. Leningrad (Saint Petersburg): LSU Publishers.

Gumilev L.N. (1993) Ritmy Evrazii: epokhi i tsivilizatsii [The rhythms of Eurasia: Epochs and civilizations]. Moscow: Ekopros, pp. 170–171.

Gumilev L.N. (2007) Avtonekrolog [Auto-obituary]. Lev Gumilev: Sud'ba i idei [Lev Gumilev: life and ideas], 2nd edtion. Moscow: Iris-press.

Gumilev L.N., Ivanov K.P. (1988) Etnosfera i Kosmos [Ethnosphere and Space]. Materialy Vtorogo Vsesoyuznogo soveschaniya po kosmicheskoy antropoekologii [Materials of the Second All-Union Conference on Space Anthropoecology]. Leningrad (Saint Petersburg): Nauka, Leningrad Branch, pp. 211–221.

Gumilev L.N., Ivanov K.P. (1992) Etnicheskie protsessy: dva podkhoda k izucheniyu [Ethnic processes: two research approaches]. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, no. 1, pp. 50–57.

Gumilev N.S. (2006) Polnoe sobranie sochineniy v 10 t., tom 7. Stat'i o literature i iskusstve. Obzory. Retsenzii [Complete works in 10 volumes. Vol. 7. Articles on literature and art. Reviews]. Moscow: Voskresen'e, p. 27.

Heart (1932) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Heart.php).

Heisenberg W. (1958) Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. NY: Harper & Brothers, p. 202.

Helena Roerich Letters. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum. Samuel I. Rosenman Papers, 1928–1972, with a duplicate in Harry L. Hopkins Papers, 1928–1946. URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20260403193555/https://heritage-roerich.ru/images/PDF/HR-to-FDR_Oct1934-Jan1936.pdf.

Hettner A. (1927) Die Geographie, ihre Geschichte, ihr Wesen und ihre Methoden [Geography, its history, nature, and methods]. Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, p. 84.

Humboldt A., von (1845) Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung. Bd. 1 [Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Vol. 1]. Stuttgart & Tübingen: J.G. Cotta'scher Verlag, p. 351.

Ierarkhiya [Hierarchy] (2011) Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, Master Bank, p. 186.

Ikonnikova S.N. (2005) Istoriya kul'turologicheskikh teoriy [History of cultural theories]. 2nd edition. Saint Petersburg: Piter, pp. 285–290.

Ivanov A.V. (2017) Sibir' kak territoriya mira [Siberia as a territory of peace]. Sibirskiy filosofskiy zhurnal, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 112–122.

Ivanov A.V., Fotieva I.V. (2013) Ot Platona – k “Zhivoy Etike”: razvitie tradicii metafiziki vseedinstva [From Plato to "Living Ethics": developing the tradition of metaphysics of unitotality]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Ser. 7. Filosofiya, no. 6, pp. 40–55.

Ivanov A.V., Fotieva I.V., Gerasimova I.A. (2020) Evraziyskie geopoliticheskie idei v kul'turnom nasledii Rerikhov [Eurasianist geopolitical ideas in the cultural heritage of the Roerich family] // Filosofskiy zhurnal, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 119–133.

Ivanov A.V., Fotieva I.V., Shishin M.Yu. (1999) Vremya velikogo razmezhevaniya: ot tekhnogenno-potrebitel'skoy – k dukhovno-ekologicheskoy tsivilizatsii [The time of the Great Delimitation: from the technogenic and consumption civilization to a spiritual and ecological civilization]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Ser. 7. Filosofiya, no. 6, pp. 3–25.

Ivanov A.V., Fotieva I.V., Shishin M.Yu. (2006) Skrizhali metaistorii: tvortsy i stupeni dukhovno-ekologicheskoy tsivilizatsii [Records of metahistory: creators and scales of a spiritual and ecological civilization]. Barnaul: Izd-vo AltGTU im. I.I. Polzunova; Izd-vo Fonda «Altai ⎯ 21 vek».

Ivanov A.V., Fotieva I.V., Shishin M.Yu. (2012) Chelovek voshodyaschiy: filosofskiy i nauchny sintez “Zhivoy Etiki” [An ascentional human: a philosophical and scientific synthesis of Living Ethics]. Barnaul: Izd-vo Fonda “Altai – 21 vek”.

Jia H. (2016) Lunny kalendar' i znaki zodiaka v povsednevnoy kul'ture Kitaya [Moon calendar and signs of the Zodiac in Chinese everyday culture]. Istoricheskie, filosofskie, politicheskie i yuridicheskie nauki, kul'turologiya i iskusstvovedenie, no. 7-1 (69), pp. 193–198.

Kakeev A.Ch. (2005) Istoriya narodov v zerkale mirosistemnogo podkhoda. K vykhodu pervogo toma "Istorii Srednej Azii" Yu.N. Rerikha [History of peoples in the mirror of the world-system approach. On the release of the first volume of the "History of Central Asia" by G. Roerich] // Kul'tura i vremya, no. 3 (17), pp. 223–225.

Karako P.S. (2019) Problema filosofskikh osnovaniy i nauchnosti kosmicheskikh idey A.L. Chizhevskogo [The problem of the philosophical foundations and scientific nature of the cosmic ideas of A.L. Chizhevsky]. Zhurnal Belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya. Psikhologiya, no. 3, pp. 9–15.

Karamzin N.M. (2003) Istoriya gosudarstva Rossiyskogo [History of the Russian State]. Moscow: OLMA-press, p. 268.

Karsavin L.P. (1993) Osnovy politiki [Fundamentals of Politics]. Rossiya mezhdu Evropoy i Aziey: Evraziyskiy soblazn [Russia between Europe and Asia: Eurasian Temptation]. Moscow: Nauka.

Karsavin L.P. (2003) Tserkov', lichnost' i gosudarstvo [Church, personality and state]. Sochineniya [Works]. Moscow: Progress-Tradiciya, p. 408.

Kaznacheev V.P., Dmitriev A.N., Mingazov I.F. (2005) Problemy kosmonoosfernoy futurologii [Problems of cosmonospheric futurology]. Novosibirsk: FGUZ “Tsentr Gigieny i epidemiologii v Novosibirskoy oblasti”, p. 232.

Khimenkov A.N., Sergeev D.O., Vlasov A.N., Volkov-Bogorodskiy D.B. (2019) Vzryvnye protsessy v oblasti rasprostraneniya mnogoletnemerzlykh porod − novy vid geokriologicheskoy opasnosti [Explosive processes in the permafrost zone as a new type of geocryological hazard] // Geoekologiya. Inzhenernaya geologiya. Gidrogeologiya. Geokriologiya, no. 6, pp. 30–41.

Khomyakov A.S. (1904) Polnoe sobranie sochineniy Alekseya Stepanovicha Khomyakova: dokumental'no-khudozhestvennaya literature [Complete works of Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov: non-fiction and fiction]. 4th edition, vol. 5. Moscow: Tipo-litografiya T-va I.N. Kushnerev i Co, pp. 401–454.

Khrenov N.A. (2013) Russkaya kul'tura na perekrestke Zapada i Vostoka. Rossiya kak podsoznanie Zapada, Vostok kak podsoznanie Rossii [Russia’s Culture at the West-East Crossroads. Russia as the Subconscious of the West, Orient as the Subconscious of Russia]. Iskusstvoznanie, no. 3–4, pp. 110–148.

Khrenov N.A. (2014) Kul'tura i kul'tury: Rossiya, Zapad, Vostok v situatsii krizisa evropotsentrizma [Culture and cultures: Russia, West, East in the situation of crisis of Eurocentrism]. Kul'tura kul'tury, no. 2 (2) (http://cult-cult.ru/culture-and-cultures-russia-west-east-in-the-situation-of-crisis-of-eurocentrism).

Kononova N.K. (2019) Pogodnye ekstremumy v Sibiri v 2019 g. i ih svyaz' s tsirkulyatsiey atmosfery [Weather extremes in Siberia in 2019 and their relationship with atmospheric circulation]. Trinadtsatoe Sibirskoe soveschanie i shkola molodykh uchenykh po klimatoekologicheskomu monitoringu: Tezisy dokladov rossiyskoy konferentsii [Thirteenth Siberian Conference and School of Young Scientists on Climate Ecological Monitoring: Abstracts of the Russian conference]. Tomsk: Agraf-Press, pp. 58–59.

Kontsevich L.R. (1975) Iz istorii lingvisticheskih ucheniy na Vostoke (Popytka interpretacii metayazyka pervogo pamyatnika koreyskoy pis'mennosti) [From the history of linguistic teachings in the East (An attempt to interpret the metalanguage of the first manuscript in Korean writing)]. Narody Azii i Afriki, no. 4, pp. 112–134.

Kozyreva M.G. (2012) L.N. Gumilev i sem'ya Rerikhov [Lev Gumilev and the Roerich family] // Sankt-Peterburgskiy universitet, no. 12 (3854), pp. 19–22.

Krivosheev Yu.V. (2003) Rus' i mongoly: issledovanie po istorii severo-vostochnoy Rusi, XII-XIV vv. [Russia and the Mongols: a study on the history of north-eastern Russia, XII-XIV centuries] Saint Petersburg: Izd-vo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, pp. 97–104.

Kuzin B.S. (1992) O printsipe polya v biologii [On the principle of the field in biology]. Voprosy filosofii, no. 5, pp. 148–164.

Lavrenova O.A. (2012) Kul'turnoe edinstvo Azii: perepiska G.V. Vernadskogo i Yu.N. Rerikha (1947–1958) [Cultural unity of Asia: correspondence of George Vernadsky and George Roerich (1947–1958)]. Kul'tura i vremya, no. 2, pp. 58–65.

Lebedev Yu.A. (2000) Neodnoznachnoe mirozdanie. Apokrificheskie razmyshleniya o Strelah Vremeni, letyashhih bez rulya i bez vetril [An ambiguous universe. Apocryphal reflections on Arrows of Time flying without a rudder and without sails]. Kostroma: Infopress, pp. 184–185.

Letters of Helena Roerich (1954). 1929–1938. Vol. 1. New York: Agni Yoga Society.

Letters of Helena Roerich (1967). 1935–1939. Vol. 2. New York: Agni Yoga Society, p. 98.

Livermore P.W., Finlay C.C., Bayliff M. (2020) Recent north magnetic pole acceleration towards Siberia caused by flux lobe elongation. Nature Geoscience, vol. 13, pp. 387–391.

Mal'bakhova I.Kh. (2008) Bioeticheskie problemy v kontekste “Zhivoy Etiki” N.K. Rerikha [Bioethical problems in the context of “Living Ethics” by Nicholas Roerich]. Nauchnye problemy gumanitarnykh issledovaniy, no. 9, pp. 98–103.

Mamedova N.M. (2019) Rossiyskaya identichnost' v svete idey sovremennogo evraziystva [Russian identity in the light of the ideas of modern Eurasianism]. Evraziyskiy proekt modernizatsii Rossii: istoriya i sovremennost' [A Eurasianist project for the modernization of Russia: history and present]. Moscow: GAOU VO g. Moskvy MPGU, pp. 133–141.

Mantatov V.V. (2014) Etiko-ekologicheskaya paradigma ustoychivogo razvitiya i proekt ekosotsialisticheskoy tsivilizatsii [Ethical-ecological paradigm of sustainable development and a project of ecosocialist civilization]. Vestnik Vostochno-Sibirskogo universiteta tekhnologiy i upravleniya, no. 4 (49), pp. 151–155.

Marcuse H. (1964) One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marianis A. (2015) Nikolay Rerikh. Misteriya zhizni i tayna tvorchestva [Nicholas Roerich. The mystery of life and the secret of creativity]. Moscow: Eksmo, pp. 339–372.

Marthe F. (1877) Begriff, Ziel und Methode der Geographie und v. Richthofen’s China [Concept, goal and method of geography and Richthofen's China] // Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin. Vol. 12. Berlin: Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, p. 445.

Martin T. (2001) An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism. In: A state of nations. Empire and nation-making in the age of Lenin and Stalin. Suny R.G., Martin T., eds. Oxford–New-York: Oxford University Press, pp. 67–90.

Maslova E.K. (2018) Sotsioestestvennye podhody k istorii: vliyanie sub’ektivnykh faktorov na priznanie nauchnosti teorii na primere konceptsiy L.N. Gumileva i Ye.S. Kul'pina [Soci-natural approaches to history: influence of subjective factors on the recognition of the scientific character of a theory in the case of L.N. Gumilev’s and E.S. Kulpin's concepts] // Istoriya i sovremennost, no. 3, pp. 94–115.

Meadows D.H., Meadows D.L., Renders J., Behrens W.M. III (1972) The Limits to Growth. NY: Universe Book.

Melikov I.M., Gezalov A.A. (2019) Ideologiya evraziystva kak variant otveta na vyzovy globalizatsii [The ideology of Eurasianism as the answer to the challenges of globalization]. Vestnik MNEPU, vol. 1, no. S, pp. 82–85.

Mendeleev D.I. (1906) K poznaniyu Rossii [On cognizing Russia]. Saint Petersburg: A.S Suvorin’s, p. 3.

Moiseev N.N. (1990) Chelovek i Noosfera [Man and the Noosphere]. Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, p. 338.

Moiseev N.N. (1995) Sovremenny antropogenez, tsivilizatsionnye razlomy. Ekologo-politologicheskiy analiz [Modern anthropogenesis, civilizational rifts. Ecological and political analysis]. Voprosy filosofii, no. 1, pp. 3–30.

Moiseev N.N. (2010) Sistema “Uchitel'” i sovremennaya ekologicheskaya obstanovka [The system “Master” and the present environmental situation]. Ekologiya i zhizn', no. 2, pp. 4–7.

Nazaretyan A.P. (1999) Sinergetika, kognitivnaya psikhologiya i gipoteza tekhno-gumanitarnogo balansa [Synergetics, cognitive psychology and the hypothesis of techno-humanitarian balance]. Obschestvennye nauki i sovremennost', no. 4, pp. 135–145.

New Era Community (1926) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/New-Era-Community.php).

Osipov V.A. (2010) O strukture geograficheskogo prostranstva [On the structure of geographical space]. Vestnik Tyumenskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, no. 3, pp. 126–133.

Osipov V.A. (2015) O “vtorom vremeni” i pyatom izmerenii geograficheskogo prostranstva. Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskaya geografiya [On the “second time” and the fifth dimension of geographical space]. Vestnik Assotsiatsii rossiyskikh geografov-obschestvovedov, no. 4, pp. 201–211.

Panarin A.S. (1999) Rossiya v tsiklah mirovoy istorii [Russia in the cycles of world history]. Moscow: MSU Publishers, p. 24.

Perepiska V.I. Vernadskogo i P.A. Florenskogo [Correspondence of V. Vernadsky and P. Florensky] (1989). Novy mir, no. 2, pp. 194–203.

Postnikov A.V. (2005) Skhvatka na “Kryshe Mira”: politiki, razvedchiki, geografy v bor'be za Pamir v XIX veke [Scramble on the “Roof of the World”: politicians, spies, geographers in the struggle for the Pamirs in the 19th century]. 2nd edition. Moscow: Ripol Classic.

Rerikh E.I. (1933) Zapisi besed s Uchitelem. “Prognozy na osnovanii mnogikh razmyshleniy” [Records of conversations with the Master. “Predictions Based on Many a Deliberation”] (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/EIR/EIR-150.pdf), spread 19.

Rerikh E.I. (1943) Zapisi besed s Uchitelem. “Ognenny opyt” [Records of conversations with the Master. “Fiery experience”] (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/EIR/EIR-098.pdf), pp. 117–118, 124.

Rerikh E.I. (1946) Zapisi besed s Uchitelem [Records of conversations with the Master] (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/EIR/EIR-160.pdf).

Rerikh E.I. (1951) Zapisi besed s Uchitelem. [seriya “Kosmicheskoe sotrudnichestvo”] Tetrad' 8 [Records of conversations with the Master. [“Cosmic cooperation” series] Notebook 8] (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/EIR/EIR-107.pdf), p. 146.

Rerikh E.I. (1992) Pis'ma. 1929–1938. V 2-h t. [Letters. 1929–1938. In 2 volumes], vol. 2. Minsk: Belarusian Roerich Foundation, PRAMEB, p 82.

Rerikh E.I. (2000) Pis'ma. V 9 t. [Letters. In 9 volumes], vol. II (1934). Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, p. 414.

Rerikh E.I. (2003) Pis'ma. V 9 t. [Letters. In 9 volumes], vol. V (1937). Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, p. 324.

Rerikh E.I. (2009) Pis'ma. V 9 t. [Letters. In 9 volumes], vol. IX (1951–1955). Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, p. 458.

Rerikh N. (1924) Odeyanie duha [Spiritual garment]. In: Puti blagosloveniya [Paths of blessing]. New-York–Paris–Riga–Harbin: Alatas, pp. 67–76.

Rerikh N. (1936) Svyaschenny Dozor [Sacred Watch]. Harbin, pp. 80–83.

Rerikh N.K. (1921) Tsvety Morii [Flowers of Moria]. Berlin: Slovo, p. 5.

Rerikh N.K. (1995a) Aziya [Asia]. Listy dnevnika. V 3 t. [Diary leaves. In 3 volumes], vol. 2. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, p. 114.

Rerikh N.K. (1995b) Podtverzhdeniya [Confirmations]. Listy dnevnika. V 3 t. [Diary leaves. In 3 volumes], vol. 2. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs.

Rerikh N.K. (1996) Rus' – Indiya [Rus’ – India]. Listy dnevnika. V 3 t. [Diary leaves. In 3 volumes], vol. 3. – Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, Master Bank, p. 199.

Rerikh N.K. (2015) Dnevnik Man'chzhurskoy ekspeditsii (1934–1935) [Diary of the Manchurian expedition (1934–1935)]. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs, p. 317, 322, 350–360.

Rerikh Yu.N. (1934) Velikie kochevye imperii Sredney Azii [Great nomadic empires of Central Asia]. Russkoe slovo. 18.11.1934.

Rerikh Yu.N. (2004) Istoriya Sredney Azii. V 3 t. [History of Central Asia. In 3 volumes], vol. I. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs.

Rerikhi na puti v Tibet. Dnevniki Zinaidy Fosdik: 1926–1927 [Roerichs on the way to Tibet. Diaries of Sinaida Fosdick] (2016) / Sostav., vstup. st., prim. V.A. Rosov. Moscow: GMV, pp. 160, 222.

Roerich G. (1923) L'essor de l'orientalisme [The rise of Orientalism]. La vie des peuples [The life of peoples], no. 44, pp. 258–266.

Roerich G. (not later than 1956) Buddhism and the Cultural Unity of Asia (https://roerichsmuseum.website.yandexcloud.net/GNR/GNR-064.pdf).

Roerich G.N. (1950) Cultural Unity of Asia. India Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 38–44.

Roerich H. (1971) Foundations of Buddhism. New York: Agni Yoga Society.

Roerich N. (1922) The Joy of Art in Russia // Art and Archaeology, vol. XIII, no. 2, pp. 51–68.

Roerich N. (1933) Sonority of Nations. In: Fiery Stronghold. Boston: Stratford Co., pp. 253, 255.

Rosov V.A. (1989) Znamya Mira nad Severnym polyusom [Banner of Peace over the North Pole] // Rerikhovskiy vestnik. No. 1. Leningrad-Izvara: Mezhdunarodny fond istorii nauki, pp. 10–11.

Rudzitis R. (2006) Psikhicheskaya energiya – putevodnaya zvezda chelovechestva [Psychic energy – the guiding star of mankind]. Minsk: Zvezdy Gor.

Rybakov B.A. (1971) O preodolenii samoobmana [On overcoming self-deception]. Voprosy istorii, no. 3, p. 153–159.

Samokhina N.E. (2018) Ponyatie psihicheskoy yenergii v filosofskoy psihologii Agni-Yogi [The concept of psychic energy in the philosophical psychology of Agni Yoga]. Psikholog, no. 2, pp. 13–29.

Samokhina N.E. (2012) Shambala: mif ili zagadka istorii? [Shambhala: a myth or a mystery of history?] Genesis: istoricheskie issledovaniya, no. 1, pp. 1–33.

Savitskiy P.N. (1921) Povorot k Vostoku [Turn to the East]. Ishod k Vostoku. Predchuvstviya i sversheniya. Utverzhdenie evraziytsev [Exodus to the East. Premonitions and accomplishments. Assertion of the Eurasianists]. Savitsky P., Suvchinsky P., Trubetskoy N.S., and Florovsky George. Sofiya: Balkan.

Savitskiy P.N. (1997) Kontinent Evraziya [The continent of Eurasia]. Moscow: Agraf, pp. 2–3.

Savkin I. (1992) Skazhu vam po sekretu, chto esli Rossiya budet spasena, to tol'ko kak evraziyskaya derzhava. Interv'yu L.N. Gumileva [I will tell you a secret that if Russia is saved, then only as a Eurasian power. Interview of Lev Gumilev]. Sotsium, no. 5.

Schubart W. (1938) Europa und die Seele des Ostens [Europe and the Eastern soul]. Luzern: Vita Nova Verlag.

Shakhovskaya L.S., Timonina V.I. (2020) Vzaimovygodnoe razvitie energeticheskikh interesov Rossii i Indii [Mutually beneficial development of energy interests of Russia and India] // Natsional'naya assotsiatsiya uchenykh, no. 56 (2), pp. 56–58.

Shalikovskiy A.V. (2019) Navodneniya v Zabaykal'skom krae: prichiny, posledstviya, vozmozhnosti prognoza [Floods in the Trans-Baikal territory: causes, consequences, forecasting opportunities]. Vodnye resursy i vodopol'zovanie [Water resources and water use]. No. 9. Chita: Transbaikal State University, pp. 11–18.

Shaposhnikova L.V. (2011). Zemnoye tvorchestvo kosmicheskoy evolyutsii [Terrestrial creative work of cosmic evolution]. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs; Master Bank.

Shevchenko V.N. (2019) Ontologicheskie konstanty Rossii kak gosudarstva-tsivilizatsii v kontekste vsemirnoy istorii [Ontological constants of Russia as a civilization-state in the context of world history] // Filosofskie nauki, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 29–47.

Sheynis V.L. (2007) Istoricheskoe mesto Oktyabr'skoy revolyutsii. Vzglyad iz 2007 goda [Place of the October Revolution in history. View from 2007]. Oktyabr' 1917 goda: vzglyad iz XXI veka: sb. materialov Vseros. nauch. konf., 6 noyabrya 2007 g [October 1917: view from the XXI century: proceedings of the All-Russian Scientific Conference, November 6, 2007]. Moscow: RIPO, p. 220–238.

Shnoll S.É., Zenchenko T.A., Zenchenko K.I., Pozharskiĭ É.V., Kolombet V.A., Konradov A.A. (2000) Regular variation of the fine structure of statistical distributions as a consequence of cosmophysical agents. Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 205–209.

Shustova A.M. (2010) Stanovlenie Yu.N. Rerikha – vostokoveda [G. Roerich becoming an orientalist]. Aziya i Afrika segodnya, no. 5, pp. 60–65.

Shustova A.M. (2014) Yu.N. Rerikh o roli buddizma v kul'turnom edinenii Azii [George Roerich about the role of Buddhism in cultural unity of Asia]. Vostok (Oriens), no. 6, pp. 116–123.

Shustova A.M. (2018) Monografiya Yu.N. Rerikha “Zveriny stil' u kochevnikov Severnogo Tibeta” [George N. Roerich’s monograph “The animal style among the nomad tribes of Northern Tibet”]. Vestnik Instituta Vostokovedeniya RAN, no. 1, pp. 188–195.

Shustova A.M. (2019a) Vklad N.K. Rerikha v nauku o Vostoke [Nicholas Roerich’s contribution to the studies of the Orient]. Orientalistika, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 890–915.

Shustova A.M. (2019b) Dialog Dalai-lamy s rossiyskimi uchenymi: kak odukhotvorit' nauku [Dialogue of the Dalai Lama with Russian scientists: how to spiritualize science]. Trudy Instituta vostokovedeniya RAN, no. 23, pp. 292–306.

Shustova A.M. (2019c) Istoricheskoe znachenie ekspeditsii N.K. Rerikha v Tsentral'nuyu Aziyu [The historical value of the expedition of Nicholas Roerich to Central Asia]. Moscow: Delphis.

Shustova A.M. (2020a) Vklad Yu.N. Rerikha v razvitie otechestvenoy indologii [George N. Roerich’s contribution to Russian indology] // Vostok. Afro-aziatskie obschestva: istoriya I sovremennost', vol. 1, pp. 160–177.

Shustova A.M. (2020b) Yu.N. Rerikh i tokharskaya problema [George de Roerich and Tocharian problem] // Vostochny kuryer, vol. 3–4, pp. 217–229.

Sinitsyn F.L. (2012) K istorii vozniknoveniya teorii obschnosti buddiyskogo ucheniya i kommunisticheskoy ideologii [On the history of the theory of community of Buddhist teaching and communist ideology]. Voprosy filosofii, no. 6, pp. 106–115.

Soldatova G.U., Nestik T.A. (2011) Istoriko-evolyutsionnaya perspektiva chelovechestva: ot paradigmy konflikta k paradigme tolerantnosti [Historical and evolutionary perspective of humanity: from the paradigm of conflict to the paradigm of tolerance]. Natsional'ny psikhologicheskiy zhurnal, no. 2 (6), pp. 15–24.

Solovyov V.S. (1988a) Opravdanie dobra. Nravstvennaya filosofiya [The justification of the good. Moral philosophy] // Sochineniya v 2-h t. [Works in 2 volumes], vol. 1. Moscow: Mysl', pp. 47–580.

Solovyov V.S. (1988b) Filosofskie nachala tsel'nogo znaniya [The philosophical principles of integral knowledge] // Sochineniya v 2-h t. [Works in 2 volumes], vol. 2. Moscow: Mysl', pp. 140–288.

Sorokin P.A. (1950) Russia and the United States. 2nd ed. London: Stevens for the London Institute of World Affairs, p. 37.

Sorokin P.A. (1964) The Basic Trends of Our Times. New Haven, CT: College & University Press, p. 16.

Sorokin P.A. (1966) Sociological Theories of Today. NY & London: Harper & Row, p. 380.

Sorokin Yu.A., Suvorova N.G. (2015) Evraziystvo L.N. Gumileva: k istorii izucheniya stepnykh tsivilizatsiy Evrazii [Eurasianism of L.N. Gumilev: on the history of studying the steppe civilizations of Eurasia]. Omsk: Izdatel'stvo Omskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, pp. 168–206.

Sorokina M.Yu. (2004) “Tam tak legko dyshitsya...”: Iz amerikanskogo arkhiva Georgiya Vernadskogo [“It is so easy to breathe there...”: from the American archives of George Vernadsky]. Diaspora: Novye materialy. Issue 6. Saint Petersburg: Feniks, pp. 620–696.

Sri Yukteswar Giri (1977) The Holy Science. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, pp. XVI-XVII.

Subetto A.I. (2016) Revolyutsii kak predmet nauchnoy i filosofskoy refleksii [Revolution as a subject of scientific and philosophical reflection]. Filosofiya i gumanitarnye nauki v informatsionnom obschestve, no. 2 (12), pp. 12–37.

Subetto A.I. (2018) Zhivaya etika Russkogo Kosmizma i Noosferizma [Living ethics of Russian Cosmism and Noospherism]. Subetto A.I. (ed.), Noosfernoe obrazovanie v evraziyskom prostranstve [Noospheric education in the Eurasian space]. Saint Petersburg: Asterion, pp. 457–471.

Suess E. (1883) Das Antlitz der Erde. Bd. 1 [The Face of the Earth. Vol. 1] Prague, Vienna & Leipzig: F. Tempsky & G. Freytag, p. 768.

Sukharev V.A. (2011) Epidemii prikhodyat iz Kosmosa [Epidemics come from outer space]. Simferopol': DiAiPi.

Sukharev V.A. (2016) Kosmicheskaya priroda epidemiy i pandemiy [The cosmic nature of epidemics and pandemics]. Tavricheskiy nauchny obozrevatel', no. 9 (14), pp. 139–147.

Supramundane (1938) The Teaching of Living Ethics (http://agniyoga.org/ay_en/Supermundane.php).

Suvorov V. (1988) Istoriya – nauka estestvennaya, ili vizit k professoru Gumilevu [History is a natural science, or a visit to Professor Gumilev]. Sel'skaya molodezh', no. 2, pp. 44–49.

Tagirov E.R. (2017) Evraziya – simvol istoricheskoy nadezhdy chelovechestva [Eurasia – a symbol of the historical hope of mankind]. Kul'tura v evraziyskom prostranstve: traditsii i novatsii, no. 1 (1), pp. 42–46.

Tamazishvili O.A. (2017) Deyatel'nost' Yu.N. Rerikha v Institute vostokovedeniya [Activities of G. Roerich at the Institute of Oriental Studies]. Yuriy Rerikh: Zhivoe nasledie. Materialy k biografii [George Roerich: living heritage. Biographical materials]. No. I. 2nd edition. Moscow: State Museum of the Orient, Foundation “Delphis”, pp. 125–148.

Toporov V.N. (1990) Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy – uchyony, myslitel', chelovek (k stoletiyu so dnya rozhdeniya) [Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy – scientist, thinker, person (on the centenary of his birth) // Sovetskoe slavyanovedenie, no. 6, pp. 51–84.

Torkunov A.V. (2018) Velikaya evraziyskaya derzhava v potoke peremen [Great Eurasian power in the stream of changes] // Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, no. 1, pp. 6–13.

Trofimova E.A. (2015) “Svet s Vostoka”: buddistskie motivy v tvorcheskikh iskaniyakh Serebryanogo veka [“Light from the East”: Buddhist motifs in the creative quest of the Silver Age]. Nauchnoe mnenie, no. 1-1, pp. 96–101.

Trofimova E.A. (2019) Russkiy kosmizm kak resurs preodoleniya evropotsentrizma [Russian cosmism as a resource to overcome Eurocentrism]. Tvorchestvo kak natsional'naya stikhiya: obschee i osobennoe v sovremennom sotsiokul'turnom prostranstve [Creativity as a national element: general and special in the modern socio-cultural space]. Saint Petersburg: SPbSUE Publishers, pp. 133–140.

Trubetskoy N.S. (1923) Vavilonskaya bashnya I smesheniye yazykov [The Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages]. Yevraziysky vremennik [Eurasian annals]. Book 3. Berlin: Evraziyskoe knigoizdatel'stvo, pp. 107–124.

Trubetskoy N.S. (1991) Religii Indii i khristianstvo [Religions of India and Christianity]. Literaturnaya ucheba, Nov–Dec, pp. 131–144.

Trubetskoy N.S. (1995) Ob idee-pravitel'nitse ideokraticheskogo gosudarstva [On the ruling idea of the ideocratic state]. Istoriya. Kul'tura. Yazyk [History. Culture. Language]. Moscow: Progress, pp. 438–444.

Turley E.V. (2018) Sistemnaya fenomenologiya v rassmotrenii etnicheskikh konfliktov [Systemic phenomenology in the consideration of ethnic conflicts]. Mezhkul'turnye kommunikatsii i mirotvorchestvo: sbornik statey VIII Vserossiyskoy nauchnoy konferentsii, 27 maya 2017 g. [Intercultural Communications and Peacemaking: a collection of articles of the VIII All-Russian Scientific Conference, May 27, 2017 Tyumen]. Tyumen: Editorial and Publishing Center of Tyumen State Institute of Culture, pp. 106–112.

Vasil'kov Ya.V. (2017) Yu.N. Rerikh i vozrozhdenie traditsiy klassicheskogo vostokovedeniya v SSSR [G. Roerich and the revival of the traditions of classical oriental studies in the USSR]. Yuriy Rerikh: Zhivoe nasledie. Materialy k biografii [George Roerich: living heritage. Biographical materials]. No. I. 2nd edition. Moscow: State Museum of the Orient, Foundation “Delphis”, pp. 79–109.

Vernadskiy V.I. (2013) Zadachi nauki v svyazi s gosudarstvennoy politikoy v Rossii [Tasks of science in connection with state policy in Russia]. Sobranie sochineniy v 24 t. [Collected works in 24 volumes]. Vol. 13. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 250–251.

Vikulin A.V., Vol'fson I.F., Vikulina M.A., Dolgaya A.A. (2016) Tsivilizatsiya glazami katastrof: prirodnykh i sotsial'nykh [Civilization through the eyes of catastrophes: Natural and social]. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy: KamchatGTU.

Vladimirskiy B.M. (2015) “Etnogenez i biosfera Zemli”: vliyayut li variatsii kosmicheskoy pogody na nastuplenie “passionarnykh tolchkov” L.N. Gumileva? [“Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the Earth”: whether cosmic weather variations affect onset of Lev Gumilev's “Passionarian Incitements”?] Prostranstvo i Vremya, no. 4 (22), pp. 202–212.

Vladimirsky B.M. (2020) Space Weather and Social Instability: Verifying D.O. Svyatskii and A.L. Chizhevskii’s Research Findings as a Case Study of the 12th–17th Centuries. Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 1359–1375.

Vladimirsky B.M., Bruns A.V. (2010) Cosmic Weather, Physical–Chemical Systems, and the Technosphere. Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, vol. 46, no. 8, pp. 935–951.

Vspominaya L.N. Gumileva: Vospominaniya. Publikatsii [Remembering Lev Gumilev: Memories. Publications] (2003) Saint Petersburg: Rostok, p. 228.

Yagodinskiy V.N. (2006) Uchenie o tsiklakh epidemiy. Gelioepidemiologiya: strategiya i prognoz [Teaching on epidemic cycles. Helioepidemiology: strategy and forecast]. Moscow: Terika.

Yagodinskiy V.N. (2011) Epidemicheskie tsikly i gelioepidemiologiya [Epidemic cycles and helioepidemiology]. Estestvennye i tekhnicheskie nauki, no. 1, pp. 5–14.

Yagodinskiy V.N. (2012) Kosmologiya dukha i tsikly istorii [Cosmology of the spirit and cycles of history]. Moscow: Institute of Russian Civilization.

Yanitskiy I.N. (2001) K taine Vsemirnogo potopa. Fizika i mekhanizmy protsessa [On the mystery of the Flood. Physics and mechanisms of the process]. Moscow: Gelios, pp. 16–20.

Zakharov V.Yu., Ivanova A.N. (2017) Diskussionnye aspekty revolyutsionnogo krizisa v Rossii 1917 g. [Discussion aspects of the revolutionary crisis in Russia in 1917]. Istoricheskaya i sotsial'no-obrazovatel'naya mysl', vol. 9, no. 5/2, pp. 19–29.

Zarifullin P.V. (2014) Novye skify [New Scythians]. Saint Petersburg: Limbus Press.

Zarnitskiy S., Trofimova L. (1965) Put' k Rodine [Way to the Motherland]. Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn', no. 1, pp. 96–107.

Zelinskiy A.N. (2003) To, chto protivostoit potoku tekushhego vremeni [That which withstands the stream of flowing time]. Knizhnik T.O. (ed.), 100 let so dnya rozhdeniya Yu.N. Rerikha: materialy Mezhdunarodnoy nauchno-obschestvennoy konferentsii 7–9 oktyabrya 2002 g. [100 Birth Anniversary of George Roerich: Proceedings of the International Scientific and Public Conference on October 7–9, 2002]. Moscow: International Centre of the Roerichs; Master Bank, pp. 55–60.

Zelinskiy A.N. (2005) Russko-evraziyskaya os' istorii: o monografii Yu.N. Rerikha “Istoriya Sredney Azii” [The Russian-Eurasian axis of history: on the monograph “The History of Middle Asia” by George Roerich]. Tvorcheskoe nasledie sem'i Rerikh v dialoge kul'tur: filosofskie aspekty osmysleniya [The Roerich family’s creative heritage in the dialogue of cultures: philosophical aspects of interpretation]. Minsk: Tekhnoprint, pp. 587–616.

Zelinskiy A.N. (2013) Velikiy evraziets [A great Eurasianist]. Mir i politika, no. 2 (77), pp. 53–70.

Zhul'kov M.V. (2016) Fenomen energii v istorii chelovecheskoy mysli [The phenomenon of energy in the history of human thought]. Filosofskaya mysl', no. 6, pp. 1–18.

Zhul'kov M.V. (2019) Global'nye vyzovy i natsional'nye otvety Rossii [Global challenges and national responses of Russia]. Vestnik MNEPU, vol. 1, no. S, pp. 563–565.

Zinchenko S.A. (2011) Zveriny stil' kak stadial'noe yavlenie v khudozhestvennoy kul'ture evraziyskikh stepey I tys. do n.e. – ser. I tys. n.e. [Animal style as a phased phenomenon of the Eurasian steppes' artistic culture of the 1st millennium BC – mid. 1st millennium AD]. Naskal'noe iskusstvo v sovremennom obschestve. K 290-letiyu nauchnogo otkrytiya Tomskoy pisanitsy [Rock art in modern society. On the 290th anniversary of the discovery of Tomskaya Pisanitsa.], vol. 2. Kemerovo: Kuzbassvuzizdat, pp. 32–37.

Publication of the original: https://heritage-roerich.ru/publications/88-publications/816.

Abridged version: Idei mysliteley-evraziytsev skvoz' prizmu naslediya Rerikhov [Ideas of Eurasianist thinkers through the prism of the heritage of the Roerichs] // Filosofiya i kul’tura [Philosophy and Culture]. 2021. No 10. Pp. 56-79. https://www.academia.edu/165834292/Ideas_of_Eurasianist_thinkers_through_the_prism_of_the_heritage_of_the_Roerichs.