Time to return to tradition

Exclusive. It has long been customary to see only two forms of government among the variety of forms – democracy and dictatorship, seeing them as irreconcilable opposites. But if we turn to the classics, in particular Plato and Aristotle, whose depth of thought has been surpassed by few to this day, it turns out that there are much more of these forms, namely – six, and among them the ancient philosophers distinguished three correct and three incorrect ones.

Despite some differences in the views of these two great thinkers of antiquity, the main idea was common - there can be power of one, or of a few, or of many.

And in each case there are two options – monarchy (the correct form of government) was opposed by tyranny (incorrect), aristocracy (correct) – democracy (incorrect – sic!), polity (the perfect form of Athenian democracy) – ochlocracy (there’s not even anything to say here).

It would not be a big mistake to claim that in all subsequent centuries almost no one discovered anything new in political science (with the possible exception of N. Machiavelli), all the ideas of the Modern Age (T. Hobbes, J. Locke, C.-L. Montesquieu, J.-J. Rousseau, etc.) were, in fact, a development of ancient thought. And the course of European history itself has repeatedly proven and now proves the evolutionary nature of the development of forms of government in states, when monarchy degenerated into tyranny, aristocracy (or "classocracy", according to V. Lipynsky) - into democracy, which later inevitably degraded into ochlocracy.

However, the above is only a retelling of what has long been known. But it would be worth emphasizing that not only historical development determines the forms of state structure, but also geographical conditions. In particular, on the example of the vast continent of Eurasia, one can trace how the form of government changes in space from oceanic and coastal regions (where it is traditionally "softer") to intracontinental ones with their inherent rigid style of government.

There is much evidence for this, and it comes from different times. If we take antiquity, it was coastal Greece with its favorable climate and fertile soil that was the birthplace of democracy (and politics), while Egypt and Mesopotamia, where normal life was concentrated within a narrow strip, were examples of tyranny. Roughly in the middle we can place Ancient Rome, and it is worth noting that the transformation of the republic into an empire was accompanied, or rather motivated, by the simultaneous expansion of Roman possessions into the interior of the continent.

During the Middle Ages, there were coastal Italian city-republics - Venice, Genoa, and it is worth mentioning Florence, although located not on the sea, but on the Arno River. Bright examples of democracy, which largely inherited the traditions of ancient Greek policies. One can cite the example of England - an island kingdom, where the powers of the king and parliament were distributed already in the 13th century. In contrast, absolute monarchies gradually formed in most continental European states, and on the threshold of Asia (the Moscow State, the Ottoman Empire) the rule began to take on the features of tyranny, which was the essence of the "sharply continental" Arab Caliphate, the empire of Genghis Khan, and the "unawakened" (according to T. Shevchenko) China.

The sea itself is a "mitigating" factor, and, moreover, in the economic plane it has long promoted trade, and the wealth of merchants objectively limited the monarchical power. It is no coincidence that it was in the coastal Netherlands in the 16th century that the first bourgeois revolution took place, and yesterday's possession of Spain quickly became the greatest world power.

The example of the island of England (later Great Britain) is a vivid example of the dialectical combination of freedom and tradition. The country, one of the first to be vaccinated against bloody revolutions, has been developing evolutionaryly for over three hundred years, honoring the past and at the same time relentlessly modernizing.

Largely maritime, France experienced numerous revolutions and uprisings over the course of almost two centuries, which pushed it from the leading positions in the world that this country occupied in what was probably its best times under Louis XIV and Napoleon I.

The Central European (transitional from maritime to continental) empires of the Modern Age (the German Second Reich, Austria-Hungary) were characterized by an evolutionary expansion of freedoms, which is especially noticeable in the example of the Habsburg state, in which social and national problems were combined and gradually resolved.

And what about Ukraine? We often hear assurances from our compatriots about their unconditional commitment to democracy, which, after all, our Constitution proclaims as the basis of the state system. But democracy, whatever it may be, should not contradict tradition. And our traditions consist in a rather soft, limited by boyars, the power of the Old Kyiv princes (a variant that to some extent echoes the English one), the authority of the hetman's mace (a real tragedy for the nascent nation was the failure suffered by B. Khmelnytsky in his attempt to introduce a hereditary monarchy) and the constitutional treaty of Pylyp Orlyk, concluded at a time when there were still few analogues in Europe. Thus, the combination of autocracy and freedom on the principles of aristocracy is eternally natural for Ukraine and inherent to it, provided that it gains independence.

So isn't it time to return to traditions today? Doesn't the modern bloody war unleashed by the ruthless Kremlin aggressor encourage us to reject everything brought from the outside, that which is not suitable for Ukrainian soil and is not accepted by the mentality of our people? The best examples from the past save us in times of greatest anxiety and danger, just as they saved the Balkan peoples who in the 19th century freed themselves from the Ottoman yoke and founded their own states on the basis of a thousand-year-old political heritage.

"Army, language, faith" are truly traditional values ​​(of course, this list is not exhaustive) that support the Ukrainian nation and prevent it from submitting to a much more numerous conqueror. Not only physically, but also spiritually, because tradition does not allow us to lose our identity, no matter how much both in the East and some in the West would like it, imposing foreign ideologies on us and littering the Ukrainian language with either Russisms (or rather, Russianisms) or Anglicisms (this is not about motivated borrowings, but the spread, in essence, of the global Surzhyk).

Ukraine has survived more than one century of captivity, will overcome the current Muscovite invasion and unite its national territory. Victory is a matter of the nation's survival, so there is no other prospect. Moscua delenda est!

Andriy Kurbsky, observer Newsky