World-Historical Cycles
* Article: “The World-Historical Cycles,” from The Earth in the Sun’s Embrace. Alexander Chizhevsky. In the book: Russian Cosmism. edited by Boris Groys
Translated from: Alexander Chizhevsky, Kosmicheskiy pul’s zhizni: Zemlya v obyatiyakh Solntsa. Geliotapaksia [Cosmic pulse of life: Earth in the Sun’s embrace], (Moscow: Mysl, 1995), 478–491.
Description
"Starting with the assumption that the historical distribution of popular mass movements is determined by solar force via its impact on the human neuropsychological apparatus—by increasing excitability and sharpening the people’s reflexes—I have found it necessary to make a detailed analysis from this perspective of all the historical materials my research has accumulated.
To this end, I have engaged in a specific psychiatro-psychological analysis of each historical event under consideration. I have studied in detail the various changes and fluctuations in the course of the masses’ psychological processes, insofar as these processes may be detectable through specialized forms of historical inquiry. By “psychological processes,” I mean mass sentiments of a certain kind, which find objective expression in the corresponding conduct of the masses and those who lead them. I have conducted this work from perspectives both psychological and psychiatric, making detailed investigations into deviations in the behavior of the masses from particular norms. Thus it has become possible to study simultaneously both the inner psychological processes of the masses and the relationship of these processes with one or another state of solar activity, all from a single, unified point of view. For me, this work serves as the foundation of a science of mass movements. Research into the relationship between the behavior of the masses during various historical events and the development of sunspots has allowed me to reach the following general conclusion:
- prolonged mass movements flow according to the cycle of solar activity and demonstrate fluctuations synchronous with this cycle. The behavior of the masses, expressed in varying degrees of neuropsychological excitability, undergoes fluctuations that run precisely parallel to fluctuations in the intensity of the sunspots.
Analyzing the discrete course of each individual event and then comparing its known stages with the stages of other historical events that took place during comparable periods of solar activity, I easily concluded that, despite the absence of any real connection between them, they all run an identical course, making at certain moments comparable rises, pivots, and falls."