Modern West-Russia confrontation as a stage of the clash of civilizations and its peculiarities

The attempt to create a “universal state” in the form of an American empire was the response to the global challenge of world interdependence according to A. Toynbee’s methodology. It was designed as a unipolar dictatorship, ignoring the interests of the new “world-civilizations” of the East. This matter led to the decline of Euro-Atlantic civilization’s development. The stage of “collapse” is accompanied by a number of local military conflicts that grew into a macro-regional one - the Ukrainian conflict. As part of the mobilization strategy, the idea of a “besieged fortress” is being rethought in the Russian academic literature, and the concept of the “besieged West” was invented in the West. The latter uses the concept of aggressive “oriental barbarism” and stimulates the policy of “deterring Russia”. The phenomenon of “negative patriotism” has become one of the problems of Russia’s public life. A. Toynbee assigned the genesis of this concept to the imitative nature of Russian elites. Russian researchers see it as a result of the devaluation of the historical significance of Russian national identity.

civilization, besieged fortress, west, oriental barbarism, negative patriotism, national identity, Russia