
Prof. Sergey Karaganov, in an interview with Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan, outlines Russia's civilizational turn: rejecting Western liberalism, embracing its multiethnic spiritual heritage, Siberian future, and its Eastward path to revive a mission of service over consumption.
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Russia's historical civilisations
HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: You mentioned in our last interview with you that Russia is the proud heir of two great civilisations - the Mongol and the Byzantine civilisations...
The Byzantine legacies...
What did Russia inherit from Byzantium beyond Orthodox Christianity, other than its influence on the arts and architecture?
PROFESSOR KARAGANOV: Let me begin by saying that if we want to get to the deep origins of the identity of Russia, the Russians and other peoples of the Russian Empire and the USSR, as well as very many other peoples of Eurasia, we must go back to the end of the first millennium BC and the beginning of the first millennium AD. At that time, the vast spaces from Mongolia to the Carpathians and beyond, and then toward Iran and even India to the forests of today's Russia were roamed by Scythian tribes that left a significant cultural layer and a huge number of burial mounds. The Scythians were a very interesting people. Unfortunately, they did not leave literary texts, although they left a lot of household items testifying to their high culture. There is also the famous Scythian gold. These tribes, which made up a soft empire, laid the foundation for most of the peoples in Central Eurasia from Mongolia through Iran, Phoenicia, Byzantium, and Southern Russia, approximately to present-day Hungary. The Scythians spoke a language that apparently had Eastern Iranic roots. Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unite us with the peoples of Eurasia.
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