The Epochs of Passionaries and Conservatives and the Image of the Future in Historical Processes

Introduction. The problem of revival of public life

For the social sciences, it is necessary to structure the history of humankind “in time and space”, i.e., to build its general schematic picture in the form of a small number of large communities differing in peculiar types of culture and patterns of development (structuring “in space”), which goes through peculiar long-term periods differing in their semantic content (structuring in time). The first step in creating a scientific picture of this kind was the development of categories of socio-economic formations in the theory of Marxism. With regard to structuring “in space”, the theory of civilizations by Danilevsky and Toynbee divided humanity into specific communities.

Other features and models of structuring “in time and space” have been proposed in historical science, but the picture (or scheme) of history based on the categories of formations and civilizations has long remained the most convenient and generally accepted. However, in recent decades (or in the last century), the category of formations has become less and less suitable for reflecting historical processes: this is due to the fact that economic factors and problems cease to occupy indisputable first places in the general system of historical development factors. This article reveals the signs of deterioration in the adequacy of the category of formations. It is necessary to search for new principles of structuring history. The article demonstrates the possibilities of using the category of socio-psychological type of passionaries for this, as well as the phenomenon of society’s attitude toward images of the Future and the Past.

To demonstrate the significance of the proposed approach, let us start by presenting a specific problem. Now the entire writing world is paying attention to the signs of the onset of a global crisis, which seems inevitable and comprehensive. The expected economic crisis is far from its main part. The geopolitical confrontation between supporters of a unipolar and multipolar world (UPW – MPW) poses a threat of global upheaval and the destruction of the established world order, now it can be called the main contradiction defining the movement of history. The countries are divided into two groups: the countries of Western civilization, where the power center is “charged” with the goal of spreading its societal structure and its position as a hegemon to the entire planet (globalists), and the countries that are ready to resist this pressure, forming a multipolar world. But perhaps more importantly, this geopolitical confrontation is unfolding in the context of the fading spiritual energies of the great communities designated as civilizations.

In the present-day Russia, a serious part of this crisis consists in personnel shortage, more specifically, a shortage of qualified workers in the industrial sector. Young people do not want to get a job at a factory either as a worker or an engineer, preferring (despite lower salaries) the service sector. Working at the factory is accepted exclusively in “clerical and intellectual” positions. We can assume that it is easier to improve one’s social status (and income level at the same time) in the service sector and administrative and managerial activities than in industry.

T. Voevodina analyzes the motives for such behavior1. The main reason is the rejection of work related to responsibility and discipline, with a daily presence at the enterprise and a regulated working day. A person wants to “be their own master”. Comfortable working conditions such as coffee, air conditioning, keyboard, are important. In service sector enterprises, employees spend a very small proportion of their time on actual productive work. Neither the heads of enterprises nor the employees themselves are concerned about this. Analysts and journalists, for instance, Sergey Anureev in his article “The Purge of White Collars”2, show that managers do not take advantage of opportunities to reduce the number of excessive white-collar workers who “shuffle papers”; and they themselves do not tend to seek promotion at the present time, as a rule.

The lack of citizen activity and incentives that awaken and raise the energy of society is one of the most important Russian problems. In my opinion, when solving it (as well as when solving most other problems related to historical processes), it is necessary to use approaches of social psychology. Such approaches were developed by C.G. Jung, Z. Freud, E. Fromm and other great psychologists, as well as philosophers and historians since O. Spengler, Lev Gumilev and others (Volkonsky, 2002). Their works provide a system of concepts that allow us to begin constructing a new theoretical picture of historical development in time and space, a new classification of periods and civilizational differences. The aim of the work is to show the importance of this area of research in relation to the latest historical processes.

Passionaries and conservatives

At the beginning of the 20th century, as at the present moment, Europe and Russia were facing a crisis. It is more correct to call it a global catastrophe – two world wars, the Great Depression. (Let us hope that the crisis now expected will not become such a disaster). What is the difference between the current run-up to the crisis and the beginning of the 20th century? This is primarily a socio-psychological and spiritual difference. The current global crisis is not only expected, it has already occurred in some areas of human life, in particular, in the spiritual and semantic sphere (Chiesa, 2019). Cultural scientists talk about an “ideological vacuum”. The importance of ideological and cultural-psychological factors is often underestimated by representatives of the social sciences. Science requires reliance on clearly defined and verifiable facts and processes. These factors usually do not meet these requirements. Currently, one of the urgent problems both in Russia and in Western countries is the need to increase economic growth. Forecast options are usually developed on the basis of models (essentially behaviorist) based on the strict dependence of the production volumes of many private and public economic organizations on the financial and resource parameters that stimulate their activity. Such models, with the same resource constraints, will produce dramatically different results when applied in an epoch of growth or in an epoch of spiritual decline and recession. In an epoch of growth, there will be a much larger number of people who want to launch their own business, become an entrepreneur, or find a new job – a higher-paying one with career opportunities.

The worldviews underlying the forecasts lack an indicator that characterizes the overall level of social activity. In this article, when studying such issues, we propose to consider it necessary to take into account the psychological state of society, and regularly use concepts whose content relates to psychology, more precisely to social psychology, namely, the concept of passionaries, people of a passionate psychological type, introduced by L. Gumilev. These are people who have a lot of energy and direct it to great things, as a rule, to transform society, who are ready to risk their own lives and the lives of their community in the name of a great goal. The main stimuli for the activity of a passionary individual, as a rule, are “transpersonal” values and meanings, i.e. not individual, personal interests, but spiritual and ideological entities or semantic attitudes related to the life of the community with which the passionary individual identifies themselves (Volkonsky, 2002).

The socio-psychological type of passionary can be illustrated by the movements of nonconformism during the period of perestroika in the USSR and in the 1990s, the emergence of numerous rock groups of a social orientation (“Grazhdanskaya oborona”, “Instruktsia po vyzhivaniyu” and many others). Oleg Sudakov’s memories3 of this time are essentially a documentary about passionaries who have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of freedom: “On December 19, 1993, there was a big concert at Gorky Palace of Culture… About three thousand people gathered in front of the building. The director of the palace of culture, having looked at the whole horde of listeners who had come, refused to let them in. People protested, shouted political slogans, and then riots began: windows in the building were smashed, bottles, cobblestones, and ice floes were thrown at riot police who arrived to handle the situation… As a result, we had a desire to prolong that protest enthusiasm. This is how the musical and political action “Russian Breakthrough” was invented… We wanted the country to be stirred up, so that all real, active, “violent” personalities would be involved in this process. There is a point of concentration that can be compared to boiling water.

L. Gumilev and other researchers used the category of passionaries as one of the factors of the theory of ethnogenesis. This article demonstrates the possibility of effective application of this category as one of the factors in the shorter-term development processes of society. Along with passionaries, it is proposed to use an alternative socio-psychological type – conservatives.

The history of the five centuries of Modern Times shows that the factors and conditions that generate such meanings and incentives that encompass society and last for a long time can be either a capitalist system with a focus on personal enrichment and power, or transpersonal values and meanings, identification with the goals and ideology of society or the largest steadily developing organizations. The most important part of these systems is the socio-psychological idea of goals, the idea of the Future.

The spiritual and ideological foundations of society, including the images of the Future, differ dramatically in countries of different civilizations. The experience of the 1990s – an attempt to turn Russia into a capitalist country on the Western model – shows that such a transformation in Russia leads to the destruction of the socio-economic system and the resistance of all healthy forces of society. The works (Volkonsky, 2024; Volkonsky, 2025) present the concept of confrontation between two civilizations: the countries of the Collective

West and the countries of the emerging civilization of the multipolar world. The ideological basis of the former is individualistic liberalism, the latter – ideology of statehood.

As a rule, the conditions of long-term stability of a society began to be perceived by passionaries as “dark times”, as the need to change the trajectory of historical development (Balatsky, 2024; Volkonsky, 2025), but they do not always have such an opportunity.

Most of society consists not of passionaries, but people who seek to prevent the dangers associated with drastic changes in the conditions of their lives and society. Their dominant priority is reliability and stability. This part of society should be called conservatives (from Latin conservate – preserve) and it should be paid no less attention than passionaries (Volkonsky, 2002). For them, the image of the Future does not mean the image of desired or necessary changes. Values and indicators characterizing time periods play an important role in the worldview of conservatives. But often this is not the “time of the Future”, but the “time of the Past”.

Here are some thoughts on the role of passionaries and conservatives in historical processes. The desire to make changes in the existing social structure was noted above as the main feature of a passionary. Moreover, it is necessary to carry out transformations in the near future in order to directly participate in the events. The main feature of conservatives is their commitment to the longterm preservation of the foundation of society (let us call it the framework). There are situations in history when quite radical transformations are necessary for the long-term preservation of the framework. If conservatives dominate during this period and they have power in their hands, their desire to avoid changes, or at least postpone them, often leads to the loss of power by the conservative ruling elite and, possibly, the transfer of power to the counterelite that consists of passionaries.

Examples are periods of waiting for a crisis: in the United States, the years leading up to the presidential election on November 5, 2024, and in the USSR, the years leading up to its collapse in 1991. In the United States, during Biden’s presidency, the ruling part of the elite (globalists of the Democratic Party, including the press and social media) strongly supports and promotes the “culture of abolition, rejection” – the abolition of traditional values and moral norms: strengthening the position of LGBT people, supporting the “deep church” of Satanists as a tool to eliminate Christianity4. Representatives of the ruling elite deny the past in order to pose as passionaries. But the main attitude, and the entire political course of this community, and its real historical task is to preserve and promote the formation of Western global supremacy, which confirms the conservatism of this community.

Trump is a representative of the psychological type of passionaries. He and his supporters see the inevitability of a turning point in world history – a period of changing socio-economic formations that has already begun in other countries. He is convinced of the need for the United States to find a place in a new multipolar world in order to remain one of the leading powers. To “make America great again”, it is necessary to change the political course and all priorities: from the priority of international problems to domestic problems, from the reckless outbreak of wars and their step-by-step escalation to the preference for peaceful, at least temporary, conflict resolutions. The loss of power by the conservatives was historically a foregone conclusion.

A similar picture was observed in the USSR. The party-state ruling elite after 1968 was afraid of any serious reforms, preserving and continuing the epoch of conservatives. The attempt to incorporate market elements into the mechanism of economic management (the Kosygin reform) had to be postponed. Dissident and pro-Western sentiments were growing in the country. The West was quite successful in solving its problems and preparing for economic and political attacks on the Soviets (the Reaganomics period). The need to update the governing system and ideology in Russia was obvious. A new attempt to make a reform “from above” turned out to be belated. The socialist formation was defeated by the expansion of the Western formation of global supremacy. The conservative ruling stratum in the USSR lost its power.

The use of categories of passionaries and conservatives allows us to hope for the creation of theoretical concepts capable of explaining such important processes as wars: their emergence, escalation, and end. In 2024, Christopher Blattman’s book Why We Fight (Blattman, 2024) was published. The book examines many approaches to explaining the causes and processes of the deployment of wars. With regard to the outbreak of serious military conflicts between large countries, the process described in Chapter 3 of Part 1 is closest to the subject of our article. As a result of previous historical events, the ruling social group (or party), an alternative to the official government, is charged with the intention of unleashing war (let us call it a militant group). The radio and the press are at the disposal of this group. A significant part of society (but far from the majority) is “predisposed” to war. Due to propaganda and the desire of local leaders to benefit and raise their public status, after a short time the militant group gains the majority of supporters in society and becomes the official government.

Blattman did not answer a question that has a simple explanation when using the categories of passionaries-conservatives. What distinguishes the militant group? Due to what factors does such a group gain significant power opportunities, is it an accident or a fairly natural phenomenon? Our answer is as follows. A group of militarists are passionaries who have not found or created an ideological basis for using their excessive energy in a peaceful way. In such situations, the passionaries always have a “backup plan” – to launch a war. The described phenomenon is highly probable.

Taking into account and analyzing socio-psychological factors is becoming especially important now, when the world remains on the verge of a radical danger – the danger of an escalation of inter-civilizational confrontation and the outbreak of a world war. It is among the representatives of passionaries that there are always groups who are ready to risk not only their lives, but also humanity for the sake of a great goal. They may be in those social strata that possess powerful capabilities.

We can conclude that the role of passionaries and conservatives deserves to be taken into account as an independent driving force of history, to be taken into account when shaping a political course and when developing theoretical concepts.

The participation of people of the psychological types under consideration in historical processes has a serious impact on their destinies. Passionary personalities in periods of rapid social change, wars and revolutions take on the first roles in society. In calm times, conservatives as representatives of the majority, fearing that the passionaries will break the established way of life, push them on the sidelines. Of course, reforms are often carried out “from above”. Carrying out such reforms undoubtedly requires the energy and will of passionaries. Some of the passionaries find their vocation within the framework of a quietly developing, stationary social structure. But many passionaries do not find a suitable career in government and public structures and often perceive this as a personal tragedy. At such times, many of them use their excess energy to fixate on a particular idea and become creators of new ideologies and new cultural trends.

Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov is a typical representative and brilliant exponent of the fate of passionaries in the conservative epoch:

Below the mirrored azure brightens, Above the golden rays increase – But you, wild rover, pray for tempests As if in tempests there was peace!

[translation by Vladimir Nabokov].

Lermontov longs to fight the storm, but there is no storm. And he sees it as a tragedy: “I expect that nothing more goes... I would like to fall asleep forever” [translation by Yevgeny Bonver].

Another example is Nietzsche. He is waiting for people who possess psychological qualities – “the will to grow in strength, the will to power”. “What is happiness?”, Nietzsche-Zarathustra asks. The answer is “The feeling that power is growing, that some resistance has been overcome”. Nietzsche is waiting for the passionaries to come. Nietzscheanism is a call for them to come to the fore: “Don’t put up with the current order, push the falling, the weak one!” And the call was heard. The Silver Age of Russian culture, hatred of capitalism, and the anti-capitalist revolution are all, among other reasons, a response to the Nietzschean challenge5.

And he was waiting for the appearance of such passionaries primarily in Russia: “Willpower is strongest and most amazing in Russia, in the vast middle kingdom, where Europe seems to be returning to Asia. There, the power to want has long been postponed and accumulated. There, the will is waiting in a threatening way to free itself”; “We Germans need unconditional rapprochement with Russia... The British are utilitarians, we cannot allow the establishment of English stencils and the American future, but we should conclude an alliance with Russia”; “There must be a will that awakens an instinct, anti-liberal to the point of brightness – a will for tradition, for authority, for responsibility for centuries, for solidarity of past and future generations. The only country that currently has a future... is Russia”6.

Nietzsche saw Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov as essentially a psychological portrait of a passionary who, however, could not withstand the weight of his vocation.

Eras of domination by passionaries or conservatives, and socio-economic formations

When analyzing historical processes, it may be useful to identify periods when passionaries predominate (epochs of passionaries, epochs of change) and when conservatives predominate (epochs of conservatives, epochs of stability). Like socioeconomic formations, these epochs may be different in different countries, and in some periods one can say that there is a global dominance of one of the two psychological types.

These epochs usually have different rates of economic growth. Extremely high rates of economic growth (breakthroughs, “economic miracles”) often occur within the framework of the conservative epoch, although, as a rule, the conservative epoch is characterized by moderate rates. The epochs of passionaries are usually characterized by high rates of inflation and the activity of financial markets (stock and bond markets), the epochs of conservatives are characterized by relatively low inflation and the passivity of financial markets.

It is important to emphasize that the epoch of the dominance of conservatives is a time of stability of economic, political and other social structures, but the economy of this time is not in stagnation or recession. The pace can be moderate, and in some periods it can be very high. At the same time, in order to overcome economic and political volatility, and to implement their aspirations for stable and effective social development, conservatives often need efforts no less than passionaries for radical changes. Examples include the periods of postrevolutionary dictatorships, when participants in a ruling group seeking to ensure stability and security are required to be resolute and make tremendous efforts in all spheres of life.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to return to Gumilev’s basic definition of passionaries as people endowed with “excessive” energy, and to use the word, for example, innovators for people with a psychological propensity for change. To make the material of the article more understandable and interesting for specialists, we use the term passionaries rather than innovators. The nature of the psyche of passionaries (according to Gumilev) proves that this is the object that has been called a psychological type since the works of Carl Jung. The nature and structure of the individual and collective psyche of innovators and conservatives are less stable, there is no reliable data on the genetic (hereditary) rootedness of the corresponding inclinations. Perhaps it is more appropriate to use the psychological attitude rather than the term psychological type to define them (Jung, 1997).

The use of the psychological type of passionaries has long been included in the arsenal of social sciences. However, the reasons for the emergence of passionaries and the mechanisms of their influence on historical processes have clearly not been studied enough. The most important question is whether the growth of passionary tension should be considered the root cause of historical processes, or, conversely, passionary tension is a consequence of the current historical situation? As already noted, Lev Gumilev considered periods of passionary influence only of very long duration, like the phases of ethnic group development; but according to his theory, the emergence and growth of passionarity in society is determined by natural factors and does not depend on historical processes.

Many experts disagree with this concept, for example (Balatsky, 2022; Ekimova, 2024; Turchin, 2024). P. Turchin believes that the potential for passionarity is always present in the elite. The passionary core of the elite is usually concentrated in the counter-elite and appears on the stage of History during periods of the conflicts of elites. E.V. Balatsky’s work presents a step-by-step process of the emergence of passionary tension in society. The “explosion of passionarity” is a response, a “hyperreaction” to a cascade of external challenges as a “release of hidden reserves” of passionarity. We agree with this idea of the causes of the emergence of passionary tension and formulate it as follows: it does not emerge, but manifests itself in certain historical conditions.

Another question concerns the assessment, positive or negative, of the rise of passionary tension, as well as innovative and conservative attitudes. The answer to this question cannot be given regardless of the prevailing historical situation. In modern Russia, many people have the impression that the most important problem in an epoch of stability and stagnation is always ensuring an increase in the proportion of passionaries in society with their excessive energy, creating conditions for the rise of passionary tension. But we must remember that all the “color revolutions” (including Gorbachev’s perestroika and Yeltsin’s coup of the 1990s) were associated precisely with the growing influence of passionaries and innovators in society with the need for radical change. In the following sections of the article, the situation in modern, Putin’s Russia is considered in more detail, in which the ideology of conservatives plays a significant role. However, this is a complex problem in its own right, which we are not ready to give definite answers to.

In my opinion, using the categories of the epoch of change and the epoch of stability can provide a structuring of history that is sufficiently significant and more adequate to its modern course than the framework of formations. Let us illustrate this in more detail. It is possible to “link” the epochs of passionaries to “turbulent” periods of changing socio-economic formations and serious military conflicts, and the epochs of conservatives to quiet periods of peaceful development without serious wars and changes (“fractures”) in the fundamentals of social structure.

We should note the simplicity and compactness of the picture of world history offered by the model of formation-civilization synthesis (Volkonsky, 2025). Modern times are characterized by the presence of two mainly independently developing civilizations. One is the countries of Western Europe, which are closely connected and interact with each other, where even before the emergence of the capitalist system, the culture and deep ideology of individualistic liberalism were formed. Another civilization is a group of countries dominated by the value of the State and its organizational structure. A new formation arises and develops first within the framework of the previous one, and the “moment” of the change of formations should be considered a certain landmark event when its dominance in the economic, political, and institutional fields is achieved, as a result of which there is a sharp shift (turning point) in the deep ideology (Volkonsky, 2025) of the majority of the population or at least the elite. Usually, during periods close to such events, social, political, military clashes and other turbulent historical processes occur. We should note that the orders and social structures of the previous formation always persist for a long time after the “moment of change” of formations, so the use of the word “change” is conditional.

The period of the change of “feudalism – capitalism” formations in Europe can be considered the period from the Great French Revolution to the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815). The idea of the passionary epoch is quite consistent with this. Of course, the spread of the capitalist formation in Europe, as well as the preservation of feudal structures of power and property, took place throughout the 19th century. But the most important process at that time was the powerful economic, institutional, and cultural development within the framework of the capitalist formation. The dominant ideological (and diplomatic) orientation was the prevention of wars and the search for peaceful solutions. It can be considered that the epoch of conservatives lasted until the beginning of the revolutionary events in Russia in 1905. The period of the change of formations of “capitalism – socialism” – from 1905 to the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922. This period includes the First World War, the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and other tumultuous events, a typical epoch of passionaries.

How can we determine the semantic essence and dating of the formation that appeared in the civilization of liberalism in response to the expansion of socialism? This formation manifested itself most clearly and meaningfully with the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and during the Second World War (the epoch of the passionaries). During the Cold War, a common ideology of the formation (including the ideology of neoNazism as an extreme option) was formed – the ideology of Western global supremacy. This term can be accepted as the name of the formation. This ideology includes elements taken from both the ideology of liberalism (the principle of total liberation of the individual) and the ideology of statehood (the covert center of supreme power, the “deep state”).

During the Cold War period of 1946–1991, until the destruction of the Soviet Union (the period of confrontation between the formation of Western supremacy and the formation of socialism), conservatives dominated. 1991 can be called the beginning of a short period of undivided dominance of the Western supremacy formation.

We can say that this period ended when Russia announced the beginning of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in 2022, when the emerging political and ideological system of relations between the countries becomes a generally recognized new driving force of history. In the work (Volkonsky, 2025), this emerging system is called a new formation – the formation of a multipolar world (MPW). But is it advisable to view this political and economic system as a new formation, or is it considered that the categories of socio-economic formations are not applicable to the study of a new historical situation? Is it possible to use the categories of “the epochs of passionaries and conservatives”? New theoretical tools are needed to answer these questions.

War is not necessarily a time of passionary dominance if society and the elite are united and stable. But this is the time to identify the passionaries. And the post-war stage is always associated with the change of a significant part of the elite. This change can take place under the control of the State – personnel reform “from above”. These considerations make it possible to show the seriousness of warnings about dangers and indicate ways to analyze them.

Are the categories of formations no longer suitable?

With the increasing complexity of the social life of humankind, the formation-civilization model and the concept of formations as applied to specific historical processes lose their simplicity and clarity, as the importance of the historical factors themselves that determine formations weakens. Let us will point out the following processes. A very effective category of formations for the philosophy of history was defined in Marxism as a set of industrial relations that generates a superstructure, in particular, political and ideological relations between States and other communities. The rapid progress of production and technology by historical standards has led to a significant shift of the main drivers and problems of historical development, the driving forces of history from the sphere of material production to the sphere of political and ideological relations, and the shift of priority problems and factors from the field of domestic to the field of international relations and geopolitics.

During the periods of dominance of certain formations, each of them extended to the entire group of countries leading in the corresponding civilization. And it was possible (albeit with reservations) to define “moments of change of formations” as points separating the course of a common historical time. But already in the 20th century, it became problematic to determine such moments: several formations coexist and interact simultaneously over centuries of time. And with the emergence of a multipolar world, new powerful sovereignly developing countries with different traditions and cultures, with different histories, and countries of different civilizations have entered the world stage. And it is now possible to talk about a consistent change of formations only in relation to each country individually.

Another process that leads to a loss of clarity and unambiguity in defining specific formations is the process of convergence of their institutional and ideological content, as well as their mixing. Most of the 20th century was marked by the confrontation (sometimes escalating to hot wars)

between capitalism and socialism. The ideologies of these formations were the ideological expression of significantly different, “divergent” codes of Western and Non-Western civilizations. However, in parallel, there was an ideological and institutional convergence of their social structures (Volkonsky, 2025), especially after the destruction of the Soviet Union. Both the divergence and the convergence were mainly related to domestic issues and factors.

In the developed countries of Europe and America, signs of a convergence between the formations of capitalism and socialism are the recognition of the State’s obligation to ensure a minimum necessary standard of living for citizens, the availability of education and healthcare services, the inclusion of the thesis of a Welfare State in the official ideology, etc. In the former countries of the Socialist Commonwealth, this is the widespread use and inclusion of market mechanisms, theses on human rights, etc. in the dominant ideology. Both in ideology and in other spheres of social structure, the rapprochement led to a combination (far from always effective) of elements of capitalism and socialism, Westernism and patriotism. The ideologies of these countries have lost their clear formality.

Important changes have occurred with the concepts of classes and the class structure of society – their adequacy to modern reality and their role in historical processes. In Western countries, the ruling class, which once consisted mainly of capitalists, has radically expanded to include a layer of economic managers and the scientific and technological elite. In socialist countries, the bourgeoisie class practically ceased to exist, so that the class division of society was replaced by the division of society into a stratum of managers and scientific and technological workers (the elite) and the mass of other citizens, including workers, employees and peasants.

Concepts that do not take into account such changes may contain dangerous errors. An example is B.K. Kuchkin’s article “Fascization of Russia”7, where he accuses G.A. Zyuganov and other Communist Party theorists of being nothing less than like-minded and ideological associates of the national socialists. In my opinion, Kuchkin’s mistake is that he considers the very attitude toward the “community of the people”, toward the creation of a “unified social consciousness” to be a distinctive feature of the fascist ideology, an element that distinguishes it from the ideology of socialism. This difference was relevant when voiced by Georgy Dimitrov in his speech at the 7th Congress of the Comintern (1935). At that time, it was about revolutionary socialism in the countries of Europe where fascization was taking place. But even then, this did not apply to socialism in the USSR. The socialist basis of the Communist Party’s ideology is not revolutionary socialism. Indeed, both modern socialism and fascism use the ideological and institutional structures of nationalism and statehood. But they differ radically in goals and values. The goal of fascism (and neofascism) and its idea of the unity of society is to assert and preserve the hegemony of the West (it is a product of the formation of global superiority of the West). And the goal of modern socialism is to ensure equality, fraternity, justice and the ideals of a multipolar world.

The considered historical trends lead to the following changes. The internal factors and problems that determine the divergences and confrontations of formations fade into the background, and their influence weakens. The problems of inter-country relations, primarily geopolitical problems, came to the fore. It turns out that a long-term stable confrontation between large groups of countries is determined only by rational-volitional factors and decisions of their power elites? This does not correspond to the much more meaningful definition of the category of formation in theory.

The image of the Future in different historical periods

An important socio-psychological factor is the attitude of society toward the future. It has already been noted above that at the beginning of the 20th century, as now, Europe and Russia were experiencing a pre-crisis. But these periods radically differ in the dominant socio-psychological and spiritual atmosphere. An important feature of this difference is the belief in the possibility (and often the inevitability) of a better Future that will follow the upheaval crisis. This belief, or faith, was based on the successes of the industrial revolution, on the development of scientific and production corporations – the basis of future Progress. Back then, all this was developing powerfully, capturing more and more countries and social strata.

But this same powerful scientific and technological Progress is perceived by a part of humanity as a harbinger of the Future, not at all Bright, but Catastrophic. Here is what the great German physicist Max Born writes, who survived (in the UK!) the defeat of German Nazism, in the book My Life: “Although I am in love with science, ... the current political and militaristic horrors, the complete disintegration of ethics ... are a necessary consequence of the growth of science”.

To live for the sake of the future, putting aside the values and possibilities of the current moment, to put all your efforts into achieving the Image of the Future that has developed in your system of meanings, if necessary, to risk your life – people with such a state of mind, with such a psychological attitude have always been a significant part of the European peoples. And it is not just passionaries. Conservatives often become heroes for the sake of maintaining a stable order and preventing its loss in the future. Passionaries differ in that their Image of the Future necessarily includes change. In the religions of Christianity and Islam, the image of the Future is the other world. However, in them this Image refers only to the future of each believer individually, and not to the state of society as a whole.

However, in Russia in the period of the late 19th and early 20th century, the aspirations to the future capture the entire society. These are not only the “new people” of M. Gorky – Nil, Shishkin (The Philistines), Pavel Vlasov (Mother) – people who believe that the rule of the “old life” is over, who are ready to defend their right to live in a new way. These are Chekhov’s heroes, who can only dream of the future. Here is Olga (one of the Three Sisters): “Our sufferings will turn into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will come on earth”.

In Russia, faith in a Bright Future was largely the result of a new socio-economic formation, which was the response of Russian civilization to the challenge of an alien capitalist formation coming from the West (Volkonsky, 2025).

It must be said that the Western attitude toward the Future was often associated with war and the destruction of the old life, the Russian attitude almost always imagines the Future to be bright, happy, and stable (Volkonsky, 2017).

Russians usually have a good idea (if not from school, then from the stories of the older generation) of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1960s. many people say that the reason for the high semantic significance of the Future among the population of the USSR is the fact that the determination to build a future communist society was a central part of the state ideology. But back then, confidence in the constant improvement of life was not only a part of the communist worldview, but simply an unquestionable reality. Not everyone knows that at the beginning of the 20th century, the semantic attitude toward the Future was also typical for the worldview of Western countries. Here is a quote from F.T. Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (1909): “We are standing on the edge of centuries! Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible?”

The expectation of “explosive” socio-economic development was then typical for a large proportion of the population of the United States and the capitalist countries of Europe. This aspect of the development of the USA and Europe in the 1930s and 1950s is perfectly shown in Maksim Kalashnikov’s articles. We would like to specifically mention his excellent description of the 1939 New York World’s Fair “The World of Tomorrow” (Kalashnikov, 2023), which reflects the general mood at that time, the belief in “explosive” scientific, technological and economic growth.

Although the post-war decades were not a period of high prosperity for Russians, most of those generations invariably recall those decades (and even the pre-war 1930s, recalled by those who were not affected by repression) as a bright epoch; the poet D. Samoilov writes about it in the collection “Days”: “We have not forgotten these days, we are burning with the fire of those days in which we lived the coming day”.

Images of the Future and the Past as a tool for structuring historical processes

Currently, the spiritual vacuum has left no trace of the universal aspiration for a Bright Future, which was described above. At the same time, it is obvious that faith in one or another Image of the Future undoubtedly plays an important role in solving the problem of revitalizing society. In this section, we will briefly describe the role that Images of the Future and the Past play in the difference between the codes of Western and Russian civilizations.

The idea of the Future as a constant improvement in living conditions began to assert itself in Western countries in connection with the development of capitalism. Adam Smith explains the reasons for the unprecedented process in history – the constant growth of the economy. Value is created by labor (meaning entrepreneurial activity) rather than land, as was the case in medieval societies. The land and the crops harvested from it are limited. But under capitalism, industry began to develop. Its development is unlimited due to the development of technology, updating the product structure, localization, etc. The idea of endless accumulation of wealth and unlimited Progress arises, which becomes the most important postulate of the ideology of capitalism. With the development of the capitalist system, the importance of the economic and political-ideological spheres of life is changing. Economic problems and indicators come to the fore, become targeted, while political ones turn out to be secondary, becoming the means to achieve them and solve problems.

The belief in the inevitability of a Better Future is in itself an important driving force that increases social activism. When the deep-seated shortcomings of the capitalist system accumulate and the ideology of the socialist formation begins to develop, one of its main tenets becomes the postulate of unlimited economic and technological progress. And the Image of a Bright Future occupies one of the first places in it.

Traditional societies (in particular, feudal societies) are societies based on religion and traditional social structure. The preservation of traditions and their sacralization are supported, in particular, by the dominance of agricultural production, its dependence on the ever-recurring change of seasons, which determines the need for stability of the way of life. Therefore, traditional societies are opposed to the innovations of Modernity, and ideologists and figures of the Modern Times have to fight against traditions and their defenders. A.G. Dugin formulates the result of these processes in a generalized form: “Modernity is the negation of Tradition” (Dugin, 2020, p. 151). In other words, it is not just a belief in the Future, it is a denial of the Past.

For a Westerner of the Modern Times, there is only the Future, the purpose of his/her activity. The past can only be an obstacle on the way to the goal. The path traveled, as soon as it is passed and has become the past, loses its meaning and value. For a person of a traditional society (Pre-modern), the future is only imagination, dreams, and the past is the actual reality, without which humanity would remain only a creation of imagination, emptiness. The whole significance and value, the whole reality of Humanity, lies in the path traveled, in the heights reached, in the discovered, constructed, created treasures, in the realized goals. And these values, this built-up world, are eternal.

The constant updating of economic and technological living conditions creates an atmosphere of priority value of innovation in all spheres of life; the future is identified with the new. The general attitudes of Modernity create priority conditions for passionaries. Meanwhile, the inevitable uncertainty of the Future is a serious disadvantage of focusing on the Future and rejecting reliance on the Past. This strengthens the position of conservatives, defenders of the stability of the social order and traditional values. The image of the Future is bifurcated into a Future for passionaries and a Future for conservatives. This creates the potential for a split in society.

In recent decades, the socio-psychological phenomenon of attitudes toward the Future and the Past has turned out to be one of the key characteristics of the modern period of development of the Collective West and its civilizational difference from most countries of the rest of the world. The “deep state” of the United States and the extreme part of its elite, relying on a number of minorities, hoping to activate society at the expense of their energy. A whole “cancel culture” has been created, the abolition of all traditional values and moral norms related to the past as outdated (for example, the LGBT ideology and the entire transgender orgy). As the former US Vice President Kamala Harris said: “What can be, unburdened by what has been”.

In the United States, the result of such an ideology and policy was not the economic breakthrough that ideologists had hoped for, but a political and ideological split between the elite and the entire society. Currently, the two parts of the elite have different visions of the near future. Donald Trump’s supporters are hoping for his stated policy of shifting attention to internal problems, of which the United States has accumulated a lot. By solving these problems, it is expected to overcome the slow but steady process of the country’s loss of its global hegemony. Another part of the ruling elite, the globalists– categorically rejects a change in the political course that requires maintaining by any means (including military and terrorist means), or rather the return of geopolitical control over the world achieved by victory in the Cold War.

In the countries of the East in the conditions of a multipolar world, social structures are diverse. They are not subject to the homogenizing influence of the Center. The leading countries, Russia and China, have gone through an epoch of striving for change with the transfer of meanings to the Future and the split of society during the period of the change from capitalism to socialism. The modern confrontation with Western globalism requires the creation of an ideology that stably opposes its expansion. The answer is to increase the importance of tradition and history. In other words, the Past is becoming a weapon of the countries of the East.

By creating a great multi-ethnic State, Russian civilization has demonstrated a rare example of peaceful coexistence and cooperation between ethnic groups with different cultures professing different religions, beliefs and cults. It is a rare and valuable achievement of Russian civilization that, having embraced and creatively developing the opportunities opened up by Western Modernity, it has preserved in its original integrity and values the best systems and qualities of spirituality of past times (for example, the phenomenon of Christianity undistorted by Protestantism). Western civilization cultivates those qualities of the psyche that give strength and the ability to overcome resistance, while Russian civilization cultivates those qualities that give an attitude and the ability to understand people of another culture, achieve harmony and cooperation without violence, and the need to coordinate and combine new meanings with old ones. One of the reasons for the destruction of the socialist State of the USSR was the determination to “abolish the Past” that contradicted the code of Russian civilization.

The period of Putin’s Russia is characterized by the restoration of this ability of Russia, a deep and official process of gradual integration of the Past, its best moments, with a focus on the Future. The value of history is included in ideology, and rightwing conservative values are becoming increasingly important. This is not a “return of the Past”, but its attraction and fusion with the Present and the Future. This is the process of creating a single space “Past – Present – Future”, or “Eternal Development”.

Hopefully, this process will provide a historically effective solution to the problem of “passionaries in the epoch of conservatives”.

The problem of economic breakthrough in modern Russia

Knowledge about the influence of psychological types on society would be very valuable for Russia now. The social structure of modern Putin’s Russia is probably best defined in the book (Sergeitsev et al., 2020) as a “people’s State”. Its main defining features are:

– people’s trust in the State and the State’s trust in the people;

– mass participation of the people in the work of the State, rejection of any class structure.

The most important feature of Putin’s political course is the commitment to stability, minimizing the risks of division, disintegration of the unity of society and the State, and comprehensive support for the most peaceful and politically stable historical process of our time – a multipolar world. This is a typical conservative epoch. The anti-Putin opposition consists not only of supporters of Western liberalism, but also includes patriots, whose attitude is the need to move to high rates of economic growth. Some of them are those who consider the current system of Russia to be capitalism, from which the main troubles and threats originate, including the danger of its fascization. Pyataya gazeta newspaper8 (on the role of capitalism) is often the exponent of this ideology. The articles of B.K. Kuchkin have already been mentioned above. Their main ideology is revolutionary socialism. And here is an article9 that “exposes” the Kazan Declaration of the 16th BRICS Summit as a “subproject” for projects of globalization and “sustainable development” promoted by Western curators. These are examples of “passionaries in the epoch of conservatives”.

There are examples of “passionaries in the epoch of conservatives” who have not only found their place, but also have a profound positive impact on the development of the country. We will talk about periods of extremely high growth rates, economic breakthroughs (“economic miracles”). Such breakthroughs usually occur when there are no external or internal threats to the destruction of the unity of society and the stability of the State, i.e. in the epoch of the dominance of conservatives. But P. Turchin (Turchin, 2024) and E. Balatsky (Balatsky, 2023) shows that rapid economic growth itself usually disrupts the balance in many sectors of life and may pose a danger of disintegration of elites unity. It is unlikely that cautious conservatives become initiators of economic breakthroughs. Most likely, these are the passionaries who managed to convince the conservatives, overcome their resistance and found their vocation in the great cause of economic and technological transformation of the country.

Currently, a significant part of the patriotic elite is convinced of the possibility and necessity of high rates of economic breakthrough for the Russian economy now and in the near future10. S.Yu. Glazyev developed a concept of outstripping development that allows increasing growth rates in a mixed market-state economy (Glazyev, 2021). Its key idea is as follows. The State, through planning mechanisms or targeted, project financing and lending, ensures the development (and growth) of the sector of reproduction of productive forces more intensively, with faster growth rates than the “market” rates of consumer demand. Priority is given to the development of production and technological complexes of a new technological paradigm. The outstripping growth in the number of workers in this sector and their incomes leads to an increase in the growth rate of general consumer demand, followed by food and light industries, utilities and transport services. This is how the Soviet economy developed, outstripping the possibilities of reproduction compared to the growth in demand, demonstrating the world’s first economic miracle. Such ideas of the passionary elite and their development are undoubtedly an important component of the success of a political course that integrates the objectives of sustainability and good economic growth. Right now, Russia has enough resources for an economic breakthrough. Perhaps the main issue is the shortage of passionaries. Perhaps the gradual intensification of economic and technological development will lead to the emergence of an increasing number of passionaries.

So far, the problem of the influence of conservatives and passionaries, the connection of their dynamics with political, economic, and ideological processes remains unexplored. The question regarding what determines the change of the epochs of “conservatives – passionaries” and “passionaries – conservatives” remains important both for the theory and for the formation of public policy. The conservative epoch continues. Is the transition to the dominance of passionaries the result of the accumulation of economic, political, scientific and technological factors and contradictions, leading to a cascade of rapid changes in the social structure, which opens up a field of activity for passionaries? Or is the most important reason the increase in numbers, the accumulation of energy, the ideas of rebuilding society in the very social stratum of passionaries?

A modern turning point in the historical trajectory

In Western countries, such a turning point is expected by many political scientists and journalists as a deep crisis (sometimes even as a catastrophe) associated with the Trump presidency in the United States, and in Europe with the possible rise to power of the “right-wing”. While the West is still expecting a turning point, in Russia the nature of Putin’s rule, especially after the beginning of the

SMO, proves beyond doubt that a turning point has occurred. Russia is demonstrating the end of Western hegemony; it has become one of the leading poles in the multipolar world. A similar transformation took place in China even earlier: during the Deng Xiaoping period, and even more convincingly during the Xi Jinping period. In this section, we will try to dispense with the categories of formation and use psychological types and images of the Future and the Past.

There are few radical transformations taking place in the state-political, socio-economic, and institutional structures of Western countries, so we can assume that the epoch of conservatives is still going on there. However, in the United States, the period following the presidential election on November 5, 2024 and D. Trump’s victory in it may become the epoch of passionaries. Simon Hunt, an industry expert, gives a vivid description of the global situation expected after the election in an interview (titled “Before the Storm”11) a few weeks before November 5. He shows how Iran, China, and large US corporations are preparing for a possible big war, not wanting it and fearing risky steps.

For 30 years, the United States has pursued a policy of preserving the ideology and the entire formation of Western superiority (this is a necessary condition for the unity of the elite and the unity of the people). This is a policy aimed at fragmenting Russia, controlling China’s economy, using Israel as a springboard in the Middle East, etc. But in recent decades, this policy has led to an obvious, gradual but steady loss of this superiority, in other words, to a loss in the confrontation between Western civilization (with a view to a unipolar world) and the East (with a view to a multipolar world).

D. Trump’s assuming office as president means the destruction of the entire ideological structure that has been built for decades by Democrats and Neocons in conjunction with the “deep state”. But more importantly, the mass of participants in the created structure will surely lose their seats. Many observers predict, if not a civil war, then “serious civil unrest” We must expect the beginning of the passionary epoch. Of course, it is not yet known how much of Trump’s statements he will be able to put into practice. But here are the goals that emerge based on his statements and intended appointments12. For example, Trump promises to impose universal duties of 10–20% on all imports and up to 60% on all Chinese goods. Another area of Trump’s reforms should be the protection of the country from illegal immigration. This is the construction of a wall along the southern border of the United States and the expulsion of illegal migrants (if necessary, even with the involvement of the army). He is also going to ask the US Congress to lift “environmental” restrictions on energy development. Trump will demand drastic spending cuts from US foreign policy and from their participation in all external conflicts. In general, Trump’s intentions are aimed at reorienting the entire political course from the tasks of ensuring US global hegemony to domestic tasks. For this, he is ready for confrontation with the all-powerful “deep state” and its “cleansing”.

In the information and ideological space of Western Europe in 2024, a pair of categories “left” and “right” became more active and widely used. The difference in ideas about the future plays a crucial role in the political movements of the left and the right and in the understanding of these categories. Usually, political movements based on the value of national cultures and defending the established customary class structure of society were considered right-wing, while ideas and movements aimed at reducing economic inequality, limiting the power of the oligarchy, and generally fighting for socialist values were considered left-wing. Extreme variants of right-wing and left-wing movements are Nazism and communism.

Since the Great French Revolution, the concepts of “left” and “right” have been used in the struggle between the emerging capitalist social order and feudal-monarchical regimes. The “leftists” have become entrenched as supporters of change and the elevation of the value of the future, while the “rightists” are committed to preserving the established order and values of the past. Individualistic liberalism, the main ideological weapon in the process of building the capitalist system, has become the most important symbol of the left. In the 19th and 20th century, the dominant contradiction of the historical process was the class struggle. Leftists were called fighters for the interests of the lower classes, for their liberation from the rule of the bourgeoisie. By the beginning of the 20th century, the ideology of socialism had taken shape, and the left became its main carrier, while adherents of national culture, the established class structure and the State were considered right-wing.

At the same time, the capitalist system has successfully developed on the basis of technological progress. This system was heading for a “revolution of managers” and it did not need the symbols of the Past. In both socialist and capitalist countries, the expectation of a Better Future prevailed. The juxtaposition of time, Past and Future, has receded into the background. The categories left and right were rarely used. In the minds and cultures of most countries, the left-wing political trend has remained associated with the struggle for the interests of the lower classes against the rule of the bourgeois oligarchy and for the expansion of individual rights and freedoms.

In mid-2024, anti-globalist parties such as Marine Le Pen’s National Union, the Alternative for Germany, and the Freedom Party of Austria, which advocate national sovereignty, unexpectedly performed well in the elections to the European Parliament, and then to the parliaments of France, Saxony, and Thuringia in Germany and Austria. Globalists began to use the categories of “left – right” as a weapon to combat this danger. The globalists, the “fighting group” of the financial oligarchy, have appropriated the name “leftists”, leaving in this category only liberal liberation meanings and, as a rule, not mentioning the attitude toward the struggle of the lower classes against the bourgeoisie. They call successful nationalist parties “ultra-right” in order to link them with the threat of a resurgence of fascism. Although the globalists’ support for Ukrainian and other neo-Nazis brings them closer to the fascist ideology. In the Western media, the accusation of right-wing conservatism has become almost an expletive. This is how Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is “called”. Cooperation with European or American rightwingers in elite circles is considered “indecent”13.

The concepts of “left” and “right” in politics have lost the stability of their meanings, clearly not suitable for theoretical analysis. The concepts of passionaries and conservatives that are close to them turn out to be more reliable. This is understood and taken into account by Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) pursues a leftist policy in the conventional sense of the term and opposes the expansion of American hegemony. She offers Germans “left-wing conservatism” – a hybrid of an economy with fair income redistribution and traditional social policy (described in detail in an article by British political scientist Fraser Myers in the publication Spiked, Russian translation)14.

Of course, the revival of the “left – right” categories is not the main sign or symptom of a historical turning point in Western Europe. Such a symptom of its brewing can be considered the very entry of new political and ideological forces onto the historical scene. But more important is the state of the spiritual and ideological vacuum, which was mentioned at the beginning of the paper. It can be illustrated with the help of socio-psychological categories. As it was noted, now in the countries of the Collective West the entire spiritual and ideological structure is based on the Image of the Future and the “culture of the abolition of the Past”. That is why the lack of new “inclusive” ideas is so painful for them and opens up a field of action for passionaries. For Russian society, the lack of new ideas is not so painful at all, since the value sense of Eternal Development plays an important role in Russian civilization.

The categories “the epoch of passionaries” and “the epoch of conservatives”, “Images of the Future and the Past”, probably will not be able to replace the framework of socio-economic formations, but they can serve as a good additional theoretical construct clarifying important and relevant problems.

Conclusion

The paper shows the recent decline in the adequacy of the Marxist tools of socio-economic formations. The results of the work can be considered a demonstration on the basis of historical processes of the need for regular consideration of social psychology factors in scientific research and in the formation of public policy, namely the psychological types of passionaries and conservatives, as well as the phenomenon of society’s attitude toward the future and the past. The use of the category of psychological types makes it possible to give a meaningful division of historical time into the epochs of the dominance of passionaries and the dominance of conservatives. The use of the phenomenon of the image of the Future characterizes the transition from traditional societies to societies of the Modern Times.

These psychological factors characterize the division of society based on them, primarily the elite, and have a serious impact on the relationship between the divided parts. This has a serious impact on other social processes. In other words, we must consider the role of these psychological factors as an independent driving force of history. It is proposed to use the division of historical time into the epochs of the dominance of passionaries and the epochs of the dominance of conservatives. This makes it possible to assess the mistakes of the ruling elites and state authorities associated with the inability to identify the moments of change of these epochs and take measures to account for them. For this purpose, we provide historical examples.

The paper considers the important task for modern Russia of constructive use of the energy of passionaries in the epoch of conservatives to enhance economic and technological develop- ment, as well as the use of the image of the Past in shaping the ideology of conservatives in the period of universal orientation toward the Future.

We would like to end the paper by confirming a well-known but often forgotten thesis: the development of history, economics and other social sciences is directly related to advances in scientific psychology.