Could Western Civilization be preserved in Eastern Europe just as Roman Civilization was once preserved in Byzantium, which is (almost) Eastern Europe? Considering that Eastern Europe is so much poorer than Western Europe and many of the nations there seem to have a lower average IQ and higher levels of corruption, than countries such as the UK, the question may seem bizarre. But my own recent research, combined with other emerging data, is leading me to think that the question is increasingly reasonable.
I’ve written a lot in recent years about how the West, like the Roman Empire, is likely to collapse due, in part, to dysgenic breeding among Whites: Intelligence is strongly genetic, it’s behind every aspect of civilization and there is a negative association, especially among women, between intelligence and fertility, such that we are losing about 1 IQ point per decade for genetic reasons. Imperial Rome clearly witnessed a negative relationship between socioeconomic status – a strong proxy for intelligence – and fertility and, likewise, went into decline. It also witnessed immigration from the periphery of the Empire, where conditions were often easier, so historical selection for intelligence wouldn’t have been as intense. Either way, as my colleagues and I set out in our study “Intelligence Trends in Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of Roman Polygenic Scores,” we know that Roman intelligence went into decline during the Late Republic for genetic reasons.
There are a number of reasons why we might expect intelligence in parts of Eastern Europe to eventually exceed that of much of Western Europe. Firstly, they industrialized later which would have mean they moved into dysgenic fertility later, as living conditions improved later. Secondly, studies indicating they have lower IQ will at least in part reflect the fact that they are poorer and have worse education systems, mindful of the fact that about 20% of IQ differences relate to the presence of an intellectually stimulating environment. As they become wealthier, having been economically retarded by Communism, we would expect to see a so-called Flynn Effect; an increase in IQ for environmental reasons. Thirdly, there is far less Third World immigration into these countries. Third World immigration will negatively impact the IQ even of the native population because it will worsen the education system (due to poor immigrant behaviour) and render the general environment less intellectually stimulating for everybody. Likewise, if you bring increasingly stupid people into a university, you render the general environment less intellectually stimulating for everybody and so people are pushed to their phenotypic maximum intelligence to a lesser extent. In other words, you create a Flynn Effect in reverse. It should also be remembered that parts of Eastern Europe — such as Estonia, Hungary or Slovenia — had about the same average IQ as the UK (British IQ is the Greenwich Mean, always set at 100) — even in the immediate wake of Communism, when data could be collected.
In my study “Changes in Cognitive Capital in Eastern and Western Europe: Some Implications from School Assessment Studies,” I drew upon three international student assessments that are accepted to be excellent proxies for IQ tests and for which we have large samples from each country: PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS, based on the results between 1995 and 2019. When the lower school and economic standards were taken into account, ex-Communist countries displayed significantly stronger growth scores on the PISA tests, which are robustly associated with IQ. In other words, Eastern Europe is rapidly catching up with Western Europe in terms of their students’ performances in Mathematics, Science and Verbal Reasoning. It is probable that part of the reason is that Western countries are declining, relative to Eastern European countries, due to the effects of dysgenics and due to the effects of low IQ immigration.
The change is consistent with related trends that have recently emerged. The UK’s ITV News reported on 12th March 2025 that the UK’s poorest households were now poorer than the poorest households in Slovenia. Slovenia is one of the wealthiest countries in the old Communist Bloc and was the first to be economically robust enough to be allowed to adopt the Euro. If we judge a nation’s success and development level by the living standards of its poorest people (which is probably a good way to do so, as massive economic disparities are associated with developing countries), then, in effect, this means that Slovenia, a Second World Nation, has caught up with and overtaken Britain.
On the same day, the Daily Telegraph reported that parts of the UK are now worse off than the poorest parts of Lithuania and they are considerably worse off than Finland, which, a century ago, was poorer than the Baltic States. Finland now has the wealthiest “poor people” in Europe. However, parts of Birmingham and Northeast England are poorer than the poorest parts of Lithuania. As “Stella” quipped on X: “Import the Third World, Become the Second World.” This makes sense in terms of Birmingham. But the other area of England that was poorer than the poorest parts of Lithuania was the Northeast, which is overwhelmingly White. This would be more consistent with the consequences of dysgenic breeding among Whites combined with intelligent people from that region tending to migrate to the more prosperous south.
At this rate, British people may start moving to the more prosperous Eastern Europe, just as educated people in the chaotic Western Empire once moved to Byzantium. I predicted that this would happen in my 2022 book The Past is a Future Country where I discussed the idea of a Neo-Byzantium, but I didn’t think I’d start to see the signs of it only three years later. The West, or, at least, Western Europe, seems to be collapsing at a shockingly fast rate.