The main question regarding the future world order is whether it will be, as before, monocentric, or if polycentrism will replace monocentrism. The modern world is changing rapidly, but it is still monocentric. The beneficiary of its monocentricity is Western civilization, which strives to maintain its position at all costs. Russia is not satisfied with its position in the current world system: it strives for a multipolar, polycentric world, hoping that it will become one of its poles or centers. The main complaint of the United States and the collective West against Russia is that it is changing the existing world order.

Within the framework of this article, the author will characterize some of the most important trends and approaches that justify the monocentrism of the social world, on the one hand, and polycentrism, on the other.

UNIVERSALISM AS A RATIONALE FOR MONOCENTRISM

To substantiate monocentrism, the concept of universalism is used—that of man, humanity, human consciousness, and human history. “The universalist approach has a solid pedigree: in European thought, it traces its history back to at least the period of classical Greek philosophy and is clearly connected with the Platonic−Aristotelian understanding of the universality of human nature, rooted in the universality of reason” [Smirnov, 2019, p. 25]. The opposite of universalism is particularism, pluralism, and polycentrism. For polycentrism, significant are ideas about the sociocultural differentiation of the human essence.

Under the sign of universalism, Enlightenment ideology was created—a rationalist ideology that appealed to human reason, and this reason was thought of as one, universal. Certain relations between people, a certain state system, certain human rights, etc., were seen by Enlightenment thinkers as reasonable. Sanctified by a single human reason, these specific social institutions were proclaimed universal. Enlightenment thinkers designed their anthropocentric world for an abstract person with a single “human nature” and universal human reason. From such an understanding of man flowed both the unity of humankind and the unity of human history.

Liberalism was genetically connected with the Enlightenment ideology since the Enlightenment thinkers proclaimed liberty one of the “natural” human rights. Both the Enlightenment and liberalism were based on the principle of individualism—the priority of the interests of the individual over the interests of society or a social group. Modern liberalism pins its hopes on the globalization tendencies of our time, seeing in them an opportunity to implement its original setting of unifying the world and humankind.

VALUE MONISM AND VALUE PLURALISM

Although the general setting of liberalism, of course, has a universalist character, thinkers who introduced the idea of the plurality of the human essence worked within its framework. These should include, first, I. Berlin, a famous philosopher, political scientist, and historian of the 20th century. The most important point that Berlin introduced into political and philosophical thought is the doctrine of negative and positive liberty and his concept of value pluralism. Regarding the topic of this article, the latter is of interest.

The British thinker considered the values, goals, and ideals that people can strive for and that determine their lives. He insisted on the idea that there is a plurality of ideals and goals that people can seek. Berlin argued that in a number of aspects important for people value pluralism is better than value monism. Monism is associated with intolerance for those who hold different values—intolerance fraught with fanaticism. It can also be used to justify the claims of certain people and nations to control society and the world as a whole. Value pluralism, according to Berlin, is associated with tolerance for people who share other values, with respect for other value systems.

However, Berlin argues, the mainstream idea and tradition of Western thought was not pluralism at all but precisely monism, which he characterizes as the central thesis of Western philosophy from Plato to the present day. Concentrating the essence of the intellectual tradition of the West, the British philosopher holds that this tradition is based on three dogmas: (1) there is only one correct answer to any important question (all other answers, being deviations from the truth, turn out to be false); (2) there is a reliable way to get answers to these questions, and the true answers to them, in principle, can be found; (3) the correct answers, if found, must be completely compatible with each other, forming a single harmonious whole: a truth cannot be incompatible with another truth [Berlin, 2013]. When all the answers to the most important moral, social, and political questions are found and people begin to live in accordance with the truths found, a perfect life for people will be established, a perfect society—a golden age will come. Berlin believed that such a unified monistic model of values is indicative of all Western rationalism.

Value pluralism, in turn, means the possibility of a clash between certain values, a conflict between them. It becomes inevitable to make a choice in favor of certain values, while, accordingly, other values will not be actualized or will be realized only partially. The incompatibility of certain essential values brings Berlin to the conclusion that it is impossible to build a perfect society because it is conceived precisely as the harmonious implementation of all values. He believes that the idea of a perfect world where all benefits can be actualized is unfounded and conceptually inconsistent [Berlin, 2001].

Developing the doctrine of the diversity of values accepted by people tied to different cultures and historical eras, Berlin still tried to preserve the idea of a common human nature. He insisted that even with a plurality of values, there is something in common that all people share just because they are people. Such a value commonality, according to Berlin, expresses what is characteristic of man as such. In other words, the commonality of values is associated with the recognition of the commonality of human nature. This idea of a common human nature, preserved by Berlin, connects him with the tradition of the Age of Enlightenment and places him in the framework of liberalism. He conceived value pluralism within the framework of a liberal−democratic society.

J. GRAY’S CRITICISM OF UNIVERSALISM AND JUSTIFICATION OF A POLYCENTRIC WORLD

The English political philosopher J. Gray accepts Berlin’s idea of value pluralism, but he radicalizes it and takes it beyond the liberal doctrine. Gray’s value pluralism appears as a pluralism of cultures, cultural traditions, and lifestyles. What Gray brings to the fore is culture, which, in his opinion, unites people and creates a real community. Enlightenment and liberalism, in turn, share the illusion that devotion to a common foundation can exist without relying on a common culture but only through the recognition of abstract principles. According to liberal−legalist views, we need not a common culture but common laws and rules. Gray, however, is convinced that it is impossible to ensure civil peace in an abstract legal way. In his opinion, the United States, where legalistic ideas are especially strong, is moving towards uncontrollability.

The English philosopher emphasized the connection of liberalism with the Enlightenment, considering liberalism as the embodiment of the Enlightenment project, and neoliberalism as the latest edition of this project. From the Enlightenment, liberalism adopts a certain philosophical anthropology and philosophy of history. From anthropology, it takes ideas about an abstract person, an autonomous individual, devoid of sociocultural definitions. Cultural identities are recognized as insignificant or random in human life and history. This abstract person is then endowed with certain rights, and a social structure is built of these individuals. Of course, this is a purely mental construction, which has a very distant relation to a real person. The abstract person, free from cultural identities, appears in the anthropology of liberalism as a universal person, tailored for all conditions and times. Universalism, like individualism, is a principle of liberal ideology.

Gray holds that, at the present stage of liberalism, the Enlightenment project is coming to an end, exhausting itself. The inconsistency of its main commitments and beliefs is revealed. It is also refuted by the fact of the current revival of ethnic and religious particularism, which makes the universalism required by liberalism unattainable.

What will establish itself in the world after the final discrediting of the Enlightenment project, that is, liberalism? Gray believes that cultural pluralism will come. Each culture represents a certain set of values, a holistic way of human life. Liberalism is one such way of life, which has developed owing to historical circumstances in certain countries. Gray admits that liberalism will survive in countries where it has a historical basis, but its transformation into one of the traditions is unlikely to be easy and smooth. The claims of liberal societies that they are the rudiments of a single civilization must be forgotten [Grey, 1995]. Nevertheless, other civilizations can borrow elements of liberal practice if they meet their current needs.

Gray understands that the imperatives of technology and market institutions in the modern world are pushing it towards cultural monotony, in which Western culture prevails. However, this trend, in his opinion, must be resisted using political will and political institutions—national and possibly regional—to avoid cultural leveling. The experience of technological and economic development of some modern countries proves that modernization without Westernization is possible.

The diversity of cultures will be manifested, according to Gray, in a variety of forms of the political and state structure. Liberalism recognizes only one of them, the liberal democratic one, which it seeks to spread throughout the world. Pluralism, on the other hand, proceeds from the fact that different cultures may accommodate different forms of government and political regimes.

How will relations between different cultures develop in a multipolar world? Gray hopes that cultures will be able to negotiate, creating conditions for peaceful coexistence. He does not agree with S. Huntington, who believed that with the end of the Cold War between the capitalist and socialist blocs, a struggle between civilizations would begin in the world. According to Gray, the main idea of pluralism is that different cultures should peacefully coexist on Earth without giving up their differences [Gray, 1995].

Gray believes that at present the West is unable to abandon universalist claims and recognize its civilization as only one of many. It is not ready to coexist with other forms of government that do not accept its political culture. The Western tradition is perhaps too stagnant (in terms of its exclusivity) and is not amenable to renewal. Then all we can do is to rely on non-Western peoples, hoping that Western civilization has not distorted them too much.

UNIVERSALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

The most important component of the worldview of liberalism is a certain interpretation of history that is used to justify liberalism and to endow liberal societies with a privileged position in history. This philosophy of history proceeds, in the first place, from the idea of the unity of the global historical process. History in it is conceived as single: it embraces humanity into a common purposeful process that leads to the formation of a cosmopolitan liberal civilization. Further, in the liberal interpretation, history inevitably acquires a Eurocentric character. Liberalism is a product of European development, and if it is declared the goal of world history, then it becomes Eurocentric by default. However, Eurocentrism is also characteristic of most illiberal philosophies of history created by European thinkers. Third, the philosophy of the history of liberalism is based on the idea of social and historical progress, which took hold and began to shape the worldview of people in the Age of Enlightenment. That period perceived itself as an era of the introduction of reason, knowledge, and science and opposed itself to the past, in which, according to the Enlightenment thinkers, ignorance had dominated. Progress is conceived as a movement from lower to higher, from less perfect to more perfect, from worse to better, and this is how social historical development was considered in the Age of Enlightenment. The thinkers of the Enlightenment used the idea of progress to create a new interpretation of history, which was supposed to replace the old religious providential understanding of it. The idea of progress was intended to tie history together in a new way and to give it direction and meaning. At the same time, progress was interpreted as an absolute and supreme value, and now, to justify some phenomenon and give it the right to life, it was only necessary to declare it progressive. However, the idea of progress is always associated with the presence of a criterion: an indicator is needed that could make it possible to determine the superiority of one over the other. In the philosophy of liberalism, the criterion of progress is the introduction of a liberal way of life and an increase in the freedom of the individual. For example, this was how Lord Acton, a famous liberal historian of the second half of the 19th century, tried to present the history of humankind [Acton, 1992].

THE POLYCENTRIC CIVILIZATIONAL MODEL

The idea of the unity of the global historical process is opposed by a view on history that considers it as the development of separate isolated sociohistorical formations—cultures or civilizations, each of which is born at a certain moment and then goes along its own way of development. It is obvious that such a model of understanding history is quite consistent with the idea of a polycentric world, which, within the framework of this concept, breaks up into a number of civilizations that act as its poles or centers of power. This model of history in Russian philosophy was developed by N.Ya. Danilevskii, K.N. Leont’ev, and the Eurasians; in Western thought of the 20th century, it was developed by O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, F. Braudel, S. Huntington, and others.

The American political scientist Huntington in his article “The Clash of Civilizations?” (1993) [Huntington, 1993] and book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) [Huntington, 1996] argued that, after the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the bloc world (capitalist bloc, socialist bloc, nonaligned countries) was replaced by civilizational disintegration: a world order based on civilizations is emerging, and countries are grouped around the leading or pivotal countries of their civilizations. The most large-scale and dangerous conflicts, Huntington believed, in the current situation will occur between states and their groups belonging to different civilizations. F. Fukuyama’s predictions about the end of history are cancelled.

Huntington attributed Western, Sinic, Hindu, Islamic, Japanese, and Orthodox civilizations to the main civilizations of our time; he also singled out Latin American and, possibly, African civilizations [see Huntington, 1996]. He criticizes the concept of a “universal civilization,” which is allegedly taking shape in the modern world, showing that this does not actually happen and emphasizing that this concept is a characteristic product of Western civilization. He writes: “Universalism is the ideology of the West for confrontations with non-Western cultures” [Huntington, 1996]; “Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous” [Huntington, 1996]. The danger of such a belief, according to Huntington, is that it can provoke conflicts and wars between Western civilization and non-Western ones. “The security of the world requires acceptance of global multiculturality” [Huntington, 1996]. The American political scientist demonstrates that in the 20th century the balance of power between the Western civilization and non-Western ones gradually changed in favor of the latter in various parameters (controlled territory, population, economic potential, military power, political influence, and cultural influence). He believed that this process would continue into the 21st century. Huntington also sharply criticizes the multiculturalism preached in the United States, which rejects the identification of the United States with Western civilization and generally rejects civilizational identity, emphasizing subnational cultural characteristics and groupings defined in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. He says that multiculturalists want to create a country devoid of a cultural core and expresses the conviction that no country composed according to this principle will last long [Huntington, 1996]. Since multiculturalists defend group interests and values, they come into conflict with classical liberalism, which puts individual freedoms and rights in the first place; Huntington says that they challenge the core element of the American ideal. The American scientist pointed out that multiculturalism has different meanings inside the country (at home) and outside it, in the outside world. At home, multiculturalism is unacceptable: there must be a common culture, otherwise the country will fall apart. On a global scale, it is necessary since there is no single world, there are different cultures in it. Meanwhile, multiculturalists advocate the diversity of cultures within the country, and globalists (global monoculturalists) seek to universalize the whole world.

Attempts to universalize the world is imperialism, the desire to build a world empire, which can be achieved by a certain civilization that wants to universalize the world as it sees fit. According to the American researcher, imperialism is a logical consequence of universalism.

Huntington understood civilizations as cultural communities—extremely broad cultural integrities, determined by language, religion, value system, customs, and social institutions. He actually identified civilization with culture: “Civilization and culture both refer to the overall way of life of a people, and a civilization is a culture writ large” [Huntington, 1996]. At the same time, following Toynbee, he attached great importance in defining civilization with religion. The American scientist argues that in the modern world cultural identity comes to the fore, and not ideological and political, as it was in the era of confrontation between capitalism and socialism. Peoples and countries now unite and clash on cultural grounds. It seems that Huntington, placing an emphasis on culture and structuring the world under the civilizational paradigm, was inclined to ignore the independent significance of economic and political ties and dependencies. Thus, he tried to prove that only cultural commonality is the basis of economic cooperation, and without it economic ties cannot be built. Referring to regionalization in the modern world, he insisted that regional alliances, which include countries from different civilizations, are ineffective and unstable, that “regions are a basis for cooperation among states only to the extent that geography coincides with culture” [Huntington, 1996]. The author joins those who believe that civilization is not only a cultural community but also a territorial and political one. It is associated with a certain territory. Civilization is a certain (extremely wide) community of people, and this community can be formed not only on the basis of culture but also on other types of identity—territorial, ethnic, economic, social, political, and ideological.

THE CIVILIZATIONAL VIEW OF THE EURASIANS

The territorial aspect of the civilizational community was emphasized by the Eurasians—Russian emigrant thinkers of the 1920s−1930s (N.S. Trubetskoi, P.N. Savitskii, P.P. Suvchinskii, G.V. Vernadsky, N.N. Alekseev, and others). They put forward the idea of Eurasia as a special geographical and cultural entity, which is part of the Old World. According to Savitskii, Eurasia includes four natural zones: tundra, forests, steppes, and deserts, stretching in the horizontal direction and extending from the Black Sea−Baltic Sea intermarium in the west to the Far East; in the south, this territory is framed by mountain ranges [Savitskii, 2002a]. Russia as a special civilization is connected with it. From ancient times, the territory was inhabited by different peoples who interacted with each other in one way or another and then ended up as part of the Russian state. The Eurasianists developed the idea of a special path of development of Russia−Eurasia, different from both the West (Europe) and Asia (China, India, Islamic countries).

The geography of Eurasia, according to Savitskii, pushes its inhabitants to create a single political, economic, and cultural association, and in recent centuries this association has been carried out by Russia. The Eurasianists were convinced that Eurasia should be politically united, that it needed a powerful centralized state that would hold this large territory, protect borders, and develop communications and the economy. The state in the Eurasian concept was not just a collection of individuals or a political mechanism but a historical, cultural, economic, and, of course, political integrity (in the terminology of the Eurasians, symphonic personality).

The most important thesis of the Eurasian concept of the organization of Russia was the idea of autarky (from the Greek aυταρκεία, self-satisfaction). Russia, according to the founders of this movement, cannot afford to be dependent on the world market. It must have an independent powerful economy and its own extensive domestic market. This model will provide it with economic and political independence and a guaranteed opportunity for economic growth; otherwise, Russia risks becoming a peripheral zone of neighboring powers. Autarky, as the Eurasians emphasized, may well be established on the territory of Eurasia because this territory is provided with all the natural resources necessary for development, with a variety of soils and climate [see Savitskii, 2002b].

The Eurasianists also emphasized the importance of ideology in uniting this space and creating a civilizational community on it. They believed that the Eurasian state should be ideocratic, that is, it should obey a certain ideology and unite around it. Considering the question of what requirements this ideology should meet, Trubetskoi said that it cannot express the interests of a race, a certain people, a social class, or humanity as a whole but must pursue “the benefit of the totality of peoples inhabiting this autarkic special world” [Trubetskoi, 2007, pp. 619, 620]. He meant the unification of the peoples of Eurasia into one supra-ethnic cultural community (“multinational nation”), which has a common Eurasian consciousness. Trubetskoi noted that the feeling of belonging to this whole is quite compatible with the feeling of belonging to one’s own people, which is aware of itself as a member of this multinational whole. The most important role in uniting the peoples of Eurasia was, of course, to be played by the Eurasian state and the Eurasian ideology. Justifying the commonality of Eurasia, representatives of this movement emphasized elements of ethnographic and psychotypical proximity, the mixing of Russians with Finno-Ugric peoples and Turks, as well as their difference from Western and Southern Slavs.

A.G. Dugin, developing the concept of a multipolar world [Dugin, 2013], states that, in the new emerging world, the nation-state ceases to be a subject; therefore, the system of international relations formed on the basis of the Westphalian peace treaty, which recognized the sovereignty of nation-states, needs to be revised. Dugin means that the true subjects of international relations and the true sovereigns in a multipolar world are civilizations. Proceeding from this, he concludes that the weakening of nation-states can have a positive side. It seems, however, that the weakening of the role of the state should not be welcomed, just as the Westphalian system should not be buried, because it implies noninterference in the internal affairs of a state by other states, and Russia acts in the international arena as a state, and actions within the framework of this system are still carried out predominantly on behalf of states. It is also important that globalists seek to destroy the system of nation-states. Thus, Fukuyama at one time proclaimed that the Westphalian system was no longer relevant, but at the same time he kept in mind not a multicivilizational, but a unipolar world controlled by Western politicians and corporations without interference from nation-states. First of all, it is states, especially the core states of non-Western civilizations, that hinder the abolition of all large communities of people and the movement towards the transformation of humanity into an amorphous mass of atomic individuals without any identity.

THE PLACE OF RUSSIA IN THE POLYCENTRIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD

What is Russia—a state (of course, multiethnic) or a civilization? Both. It acts as a civilization coinciding with the state, or a civilizational state. Being the center of power, Russia has attracted neighboring states—primarily those located in the post-Soviet space—into its civilizational field and has become the pivotal state of the Eurasian civilization. At the same time, the Russian Federation is a civilization on its own, without adjoining states. Civilizations consisting of one state are possible. J.M. Barroso said at the Russia−EU conference in 2013 that Russia is a continent that pretends to be a country; Russia is a civilization disguised as a nation [see Sushentsov, 2016]. Shevchenko writes, “Russia is a huge and very complex state−civilization, which consists of a number of unique worlds—ethnic, religious, and regional (Siberia, the Far East, the Caucasus) [Spiridonova et al., 2016, p. 112]. He also notes that a state that recognizes itself as a civilization endows itself with new properties—“new creative functions, value orientations, and spiritual meanings” [Spiridonova et al., 2016, p. 6]. It acquires a mission—to preserve and develop its civilization.

The Russian conflict with Western countries has a civilizational background. Russia represents a different, non-Western civilization, which the West has always known. Until recently, we doubted it. Western civilization is aggressive. It is accustomed to dominating the world, and Western countries accept relations with their neighbor Russia “on an equal footing” only under the pressure of necessity. When Russia became a socialist country and headed the socialist camp, the difference in the social systems came to the fore in its confrontation with the West. Then, when the Russian social system became of the same type, the former, civilizational reason returned.

THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF A CIVILIZATION: CIVILIZATIONAL RUSSIAN IDEOLOGY

As was mentioned earlier, a civilization is a territorial, historical, political, economic, cultural, and ideological community. All these aspects are present in the current Russian civilization, except for the latter. Meanwhile, the ideological aspect is very important, as it ensures the unity and cohesion of the civilizational community and its self-identification. Dugin is right when he notes that civilization in a certain sense is a construct [Dugin, 2013, p. 120]: “A civilization is what needs to be created. However, this process of creating civilizations does not involve a completely artificial model, completely absent in reality. There is a cultural, sociological, historical, mental, psychological basis for civilizations, and it is empirically fixed” [Dugin, 2013, p. 121]. He also points to the role of the intellectual and political elite in the creation of a civilizational identity. The fact that Russian civilization can, at a minimum, coincide with the Russian state is its undoubted plus, which greatly facilitates construction. It is only necessary to bring together and consolidate the peoples inhabiting this state. Both Chinese and Indian civilizations are of a similar nature—they can, in principle, coincide with the main state. In turn, the Islamic civilization does not have this property, and this is its minus, which makes the very possibility of such a civilization problematic since the Islamic world is stretched over a very large area and includes very different countries. There is no political center in it, just as there are no universally recognized core states; moreover, confessional disintegration and struggle take place. The European Union is gradually moving towards formalization as a state. Brussels is gaining and retaining state functions, which, of course, gives rise to resistance from individual EU member states. What these processes will lead to—the actual emergence of a pan-European state, the collapse of the European Union, or some kind of transformation—is now difficult to predict.

What kind of ideology can civilizational Russian ideology be? First of all, note what it should not be. It should not coincide with the dominant ideology of Western civilization because today it is openly hostile towards Russia, as, indeed, before, and its ideology has an offensive, conquest-focused character, claims to be universal, and is used to subjugate other countries and nations and the whole world. It demonstrated its aggressive qualities very prominently when moving around the world—of course, relying on the power of Western civilization. The very fact of adopting this ideology would mean submission to the Western world. At the same time, note that the ideology of liberalism itself made it easier for us, as well as for other civilizations, to reject it because in its development it has acquired extreme forms that make it completely unacceptable for non-Western people—as well as for many people in the Western world too.

The above first condition can be considered negative for the content of the ideology of the Russian civilization. The positive side of this ideology is, in the first place, that it substantiates the integrity and specificity of the world that received the name Russia, as well as the belonging and vital involvement in this world of all the peoples that inhabit Russia and created it. This world should be presented as a sovereign civilization of the globe—a civilization capable of expansion. As for the specific values that should fill this ideology, the most important condition is that they be acceptable to all the peoples that form this civilization and that they do not stir rejection in anyone. This condition is seemingly difficult to fulfill because there are many peoples, and some of them were formed in the bosom of Orthodoxy, while others in Islam, still others in Buddhism, and still others preserve early tribal beliefs. In fact, it is not difficult to find values that are shared by all, very diverse, peoples of Russia—and which are present in all beliefs. These values are associated with veneration of ancestors, family, love for the homeland, cooperation and mutual assistance, kindness, courage, loyalty, and protection of the weak. An ideology can be built on them, counting on the fact that it will be close to all the peoples inhabiting our country and will effectively perform an integrating social function. These values are traditional; they are justified by the past and the overwhelming array of human experience. The ideology that absorbs them can conditionally be called traditionalist. It will not return us to a traditional society and is quite applicable to modern conditions of life. At the same time, it directly opposes the ideology that the Western world is trying to establish—an ideology that is based on ultra-individualism, LGBTQ identities, radical feminism, the destruction of the traditional family, defamation of childbearing, proclaiming the priority of minorities over the majority, and dehumanizing man and turning him into something else (so-called transhumanism).

It is also important that the Russian ideology built in this way will contribute to the rapprochement of Russia with other non-Western civilizations, which are also under pressure from Western ideology and seek to counteract it, relying on their fundamental values. In the concert of anti-Western forces, Russia can also play a leading role. It can also become a refuge for those people from Western countries who cannot accept the latest delights of Western ideology.

CONCLUSIONS

Universalism and polycentrism are directly opposite pictures of the sociohistorical world. Liberalism embraces universalism. In anthropology, universalism presupposes the universal immutable nature of man; in axiology, it implies value monism; and in the philosophy of history, a single universal history. Polycentrism in anthropology proceeds from the idea of the sociocultural and historical conditioning of man; in axiology, it implies value pluralism; and in the philosophy of history, a civilizational model of thinking of history. Universalism accepts the idea of a “universal civilization” (liberal); polycentrism recognizes the plurality of civilizations, each of which is unique and represents an independent world center.

In the polycentric picture of the world, Russia is a separate civilization, acting simultaneously as a state and as a civilization. By expanding its influence to neighboring countries, Russia is forming a Eurasian civilization.

An important factor in the formation of any civilization is ideology. Russian civilization cannot accept the ideology of liberalism; its civilizational ideology must be based on the traditional values of the peoples inhabiting Russia.