Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to speak as a representative of Belarusian philosophy and thought, which are, of course, part of the common Russian or even Eurasian thought. We live in a single cultural space and there are no linguistic and mental borders between us.

I would like to introduce the subject of my talk and outline the first thesis. In my opinion, the special operation that Russia is currently conducting in Ukraine is comparable to those epochal events that various researchers call either breaks or breakthroughs, i.e. revolutionary achievements that mark epochal turns in Russian history. Each of these turns has its own name.

The emergence of the Old Russian state, the period before the Mongol invasion and after it is called the period of Holy Russia. This is when the main ideologemes connected with the adoption of Orthodoxy, the spread of Russian identity, its understanding by scribes, authorities and other people were formed.

Then comes the era of Moscow as the Third Rome. In this period, Moscow feels like a truly Orthodox kingdom, an ark in a hostile world. When there are Catholics and Islamic states around, Moscow becomes a guiding star for all Orthodox.

With the beginning of the era of Peter the Great and the founding of St Petersburg, a kind of westernised form of Russian statehood, known as the Russian Empire, comes into being.

In 1917, Russia faced the next stage, the next break or breakthrough. It is the Soviet Union, the red messianic project that was to extend to the whole planet. The culmination of this project is the Russian outreach beyond the planet, i.e. the realisation of the ideas of cosmism introduced into Russian philosophy in the XIX century by Nikolai Fedorov. They were implemented only in the second half of the XX century by the Soviet state.

In my opinion, 24 February 2022 will mark the same milestone in the formation of Russian statehood. I do not know what this era will be called. It won’t be the Soviet Union. Some other terms and other words will be in demand. We have to understand that this is not just about restoring lost lands. This is a call for global reorganisation. It is a reorganisation that neither Russia, nor its allies, nor the world as a whole will be able to cope with without a dramatic transformation. Whether the representatives of the political establishment and the majority of the Russian population understand this or not, I believe it to be true. It is the task of philosophers to understand the epochal and global scale of what is happening. A historic, great, multifaceted Russia will emerge from all this in a completely new quality. What is happening now on the territory of the former Ukraine is a struggle to acquire this quality.

Territorial acquisitions will change the geopolitics of Russia. The southern and coastal areas will add a certain power. The same will happen demographically. About ten or fifteen million people sharing the Russian culture and speaking the Russian language, even if somewhat stupefied, will still ensure a large increase in the population. In the intellectual sphere, new thinkers will emerge from this global war and special operation to find new terms for this era, a new language of the future.

The impulse that Russia will receive as a result of the successful completion of the special operation is to transform the country. Russia will not only deal with its western borders, Ukraine and some local conflicts in the West, but this will mark its triumphant comeback as a great power in Eurasia. Russia will be able to solve not only its own problems, but those of its allies in Central Asia and on the whole western front, with Turkey and Iran. It will be a very different Russia.

For us, philosophers, theorists and practitioners at the same time, the task is to think about the language of the future. Yes, the terms Holy Russia, Moscow – the Third Rome, the Red Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire are wonderful, but unfortunately, they all belong to the past. A new era will inevitably give birth to new terms and new images. Now, with the help of our philosophical intuition, we can try to grasp these new images and words and see that Russia is bound to rise again. It will expand its borders and go beyond the traditional territory of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

We can foresee that there will have to be serious cooperation with Iran. We may see a union of these two worlds: the Russian and the Persian. We still do not know how Turkey will behave and what will happen to it. The balance in the relationship is still being maintained. The Turks are balancing their ambitions: Western projects and even, to some extent, a Eurasian orientation. We can see a situational alliance being forged with China, and we will have to react to it.

In this non-Western world, Russia will play a very important role. The role of a kind of inventor and practical implementer of a new type of relationship, a new type of language between peoples. A kind of balancer will be needed in Eurasia, between the Turkic, Persian, Chinese and Indian worlds. The balancer that all these great worlds will trust. No one can do this better than Russia, because now we are witnessing a complete bankruptcy of the West: both financially, politically and in terms of values. Trust in the West has been completely lost. Everyone sees that the West has not brought prosperity, that the West is hypocritical and deceitful. It is a real empire of lies, the kingdom of lies, the resort of lies. The world sees that the West is losing its moral right to dictate anything. A versatile multipolar world is emerging, in which Russia should play the role of a katechon, the function of a balancer, a necessary communicator and translator from different languages of civilisations into a universal language. This role is not new. It goes back to the birth of Russia as a civilisation, but it has really manifested itself in the last one hundred and fifty years. Russia’s mission is to create and express truly universal meanings. It was not for nothing that I remembered Fedorov and his cosmism. These ideas were embodied in the Soviet project. The one who will lead the way of humanity somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond the limits, and the one who will think about how to do it. The one who can find the formula for interaction with other civilisations will be the leader of the near future, of the next century. And no one can do this better than Russian civilisation, Russian thought. At least because we have already done it.

Yes, there were mistakes that led to the collapse of the previous forms of our civilisation, our statehood. But that does not mean that everything should be neglected. Of course not. There were outstanding achievements, such as the victory over the absolute evil of Nazism. Now we have to repeat the same procedure. We must once again destroy this evil, this virus that is constantly present in the West, including the part of our civilisation that sympathises with the West.

We have to repeat a certain breakthrough which, for example, in Soviet times was manifested in the conquest of space. This space can be different. It is not necessarily a new way out of the earth on a new technological platform. It can be a psychological transcendence. Perhaps with the help of our Russian thought, its flight and the adoption of the thoughts of peoples and civilisations close to us, we will discover the inner cosmos in a human being. This can potentially transform our psychological and perhaps then our somatic nature.

This breakthrough proves to be something of value in Russian civilisation, and this is something the Ukrainians lack. All their thoughts about the future are formed in Russian philosophical schools. These are either methodologists, or Marxism, or the rehashing, through Russian thought, of Western right-wing thinkers. They are secondary. There are no thoughts about the future, there are no future projects in Ukraine. They simply accept certain Western values without thinking, they believe in them. This means that they are giving up their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty. This means that they will lose, because they do not have this weapon that Russian culture and Russian civilisation have. Now we must rise above the horizon of this war and realise that the war is being fought for the future.

I am sure that the special operation is a global war and it will give our culture an impulse of fresh blood and thoughts. There will be new images, new terms, new words that will describe our movement into the future. That is the point of this overdue confrontation. It could no longer be tolerated, and now this breakthrough is taking place before our very eyes. Let it be tragic, but not without a kind of purifying sense and meaning.

Translated by Daria Mochalova