Modernity casts a bright light on the events of the past, highlights their significance. The point is not that history is "a politics turned to the past," but simply that the historian has a better understanding of the period he is studying if he knows how it ended. These notes will also relate to the current situation, but their main focus is different: a reassessment of the past. The need for such a statement of the problem is connected, in particular, with the fact that the Institute of Oriental Studies is preparing to publish the fifth and sixth volumes of the History of the East, covering the XX century, and it seems to me that many authors involved in their writing do not sufficiently take into account the new realities and remain in the positions of"and so on. Two events of recent years make us reconsider the views on the history of this century that prevailed earlier and still exist in our environment. This is the collapse of the Soviet Union and the terrorist act of September 11, 2001. The disappearance of the USSR is not just the collapse of a superpower, it is the collapse of ideals, it is the disappearance of the former scale of values by which the course of world history was assessed- page 51 progressivity-reactionary figures, movements, and concepts-was defined. Sometimes the collapse of the USSR is seen as the collapse of Marxism. The connection between these two phenomena is not obvious. The erosion of Marxist theory in Soviet social studies began long before the collapse of Soviet power. The greatest contribution to the vulgarization and vulgarization of this theory was made by those who were in charge of science. The question of the value of certain Marxist ideas requires separate consideration. This is not the subject of these notes. However, in order to be understood correctly (in particular, to defend myself against the accusation of a sweeping denial of everything that has been done by Marxist historical science), I will have to briefly outline ... Читать далее