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Being in the gloom of poverty and local regional conflicts, Africa has hypothetical chances in the system of the global economy. Dangerous becomes the tendency of ethno-political conflicts breaking Somali and Zaire and destabilizing the situation in the region of Great Lakes. A further growth of the population can turn into a regional demographic catastrophe.
By developing integrational structures of the North-American free trade zone (NAFTA), North America gradually realizes the economic expansion into South America with the purpose to create the zone of free trade from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Democratization of the power in the countries of Latin America creates a common political field of both Americas. It is a further approaching of North and South America that will become a tendency of the next stage of the regional epochal cycle.
We note that the tendencies of social-historical development at the global and regional levels properly affect the national level of development. Moreover, the lower the hierarchical level of an «element» of the unit social system of the mankind, the stronger becomes the desynchronization of development, defined by own peculiarities.
After a withdrawal from the transformational crisis (2000-2012), Ukraine is fated, on the whole, to repeat the historical experience of West European countries and countries of North America of the post-war period but with own sociocultural peculiarities. It is expected that Ukraine will «arrive at» the revolutionary phase of the new epochal cycle in the second half of the XXI century.
From the time of disintegration of the USSR, Russia as well as Ukraine is in the stage of the transformational crisis (co-evolutionary phase of the epochal cycle). In this case, the probability of conservation of the historical «inertia» to the unification of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia by type of the European Union remains high. The conservation of uncertainty concerning the reformation of the federal structure (the fate of Russia-Belorussia union, definition of the status of Chechnya and other regions) of Russia stimulates the regional stress breaking the orthodox-moslem consensus.
Contrary to Ukraine and Russia, Belorussia is, in essence, in the revolutionary phase opening a new epochal cycle of development. In the behavior of the contemporary administration of Belorussia, we see rather expressive «revolutionary» features. In our opinion, one can say that processes and phases of development, which are opposite in orientation, occur in Belorussia, on the one hand, and in Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand. By using the symbolic language of N. Rerikh we may assume that Belorussia will become, probably, a peculiar «connective tissue» between three east-Slavonic peoples.
As for the leading states of the European Community, we note that France is completing the evolutionary stage of the cycle beginning from student disturbances in 1968. The identification of the national interests with imperatives dictated by the European Community remains problematic for this country. The main tendencies of the further social-historical development of France will be defined by the elections of President and Parliament in 2002. With the accession to power of the red-green coalition and after the national unification, stimulating the process of Integration of Europe, Germany approaches, in fact, to the revolutionary phase of a new epochal cycle. The first symptoms are a possible restructurization of the political system of the country which is related to the scandal concerning the financing of parties. We clearly observe the tendency of gradual disappearance of traditional political parties of the industrial epoch and the objective formation of parties of a «new type» as a consequence of new post-industrial values of the time of «Internet». In Great Britain, the victory of the Labour Party in elections in 1997 marked the beginning of the final phase of the evolutionary stage of a new epochal cycle. This phase of development will be brought nearer by growing tendencies to the transfer of powers from the center to places (restoration of assemblies in Scotland, Welsh, and North Ireland). In this case, of importance is the geographical and economic closeness to Europe (launch of the tunnel under the Channel, intention to carry out the referendum on joining the European Monetary Union, etc.). Italy is also on the threshold of the revolutionary stage of development. One may expect the sharpening of contradictions between the rich North and poor South, which finds itself at the center of ways of illegal migration to Europe. The threat comes from the geographical proximity of Italy to conflict zones in Balkan Peninsula, Near-East, and North Africa. Vatican finds itself in front of the choice between the weakening of positions of the Catholic Church and attempts to join all existing orthodox confessions under the roof of the universal church, which will be one of the signs of approaching «the end of times» according to the system of esoteric knowledge.
Being characterized by the Confucian tradition and peculiarities of longer epochal cycles on the boundary of the XXI century, China is «flowing» in transformational processes (1978-?) of the co-evolutionary transient period and, without any doubt, will become one of the world «centers of force» (by Brzezinski). With the appearance of the Celestial Empire on these positions, there appears a possibility to solve the problem of Taiwan on new principles of the unification of countries with coinciding vectors of social development.
India along with China (with some delay) goes on the way of the co-evolutionary stage of development of the epochal cycle. This phase of development comprises the search for an agreement between moslems and hinduists with the purpose to conserve the unity of the country. The solution of this problem allows India following China to become one of the regional leaders, pretending to the influence both in South Asia and in the whole world, in the subsequent evolutionary period.
The situation in Japan approaches to the co-evolutionary stage of the epochal cycle by actualizing the synthesis of traditional and post-modernist values. It is seen that its content will be a transformation of the society, which is still industrial in its essence though comparatively more developed than in other industrial states. Possessing shorter cycles of development as compared with China and India, Japan is «doomed», respectively, on a more radical manifestation of transformational processes. As for the last, we note the high probability of nonpredictability of events and noncontrollability of the transient situation in many respects.
The USA are on the threshold of the revolutionary phase of a new epochal cycle. A mechanism of these historical changes can be «launched» in the nearest period of 2000-2002 (the period of maximum solar activity). It is obvious that, in the first quarter of the XXI century like in the time of the «Great Depression», the USA are in prospect to be the leader of a new epoch and to open a new experience of the policy, eventually having «finished» with the traditional practice of a party-class paradigm, for the whole world.
In fact, already in the midst of the second half of the XX century with the active participation of the USA, the preconditions for such a policy were developed, the UNO being a possible precursor of the new world government. These preconditions strengthen the current tendencies to globalization of the economic development of the world.
A probable economic decline in the period of a revolutionary crisis will be compensated to a great extent due to prosperity of the economy in the 90s of the XX century and the contemporary level of the world financial control from the side of the USA. In this case, whereas nothing threatens the leadership of the country in the technological sphere, the probability of a decrease of its political influence is rather high. Indeed, the nation has already no wish to pay by lives of its soldiers for victories in local wars. At the expense of a growth of the amount of Afro-Americans, Spanish-Americans (immigrants from countries of South America), and Asian-Americans, the ethnic structure of the population of the USA will radically change in the first half of the XXI century. The situation will promote a growth of racist extremism and failures in the operation of the ethnocultural «melting crucible». In this case, it is rather probable that the «two-party» political mechanism will be broken. This can be stimulated by a possible splitting in the financial oligarchy, whose fractions can be oriented either to the conservation of workplaces in the USA or to the export of capital, which is formalized in the external strategical policy of isolation or expansion. The basis of the arising situation in the country will be formed by the new global contradiction of social development, the contradiction between the political and ordinary consciousnesses.
The verification of the working hypothesis with empiric data will allow one to refine the foreseen tendencies.
Appendices
Appendix 1
THEME OF THE PUBLIC LECTURE
PRESENTED BY DOCTOR OF SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCES E. A. AFONIN
AT V. I. VERNADSKY NATIONAL LIBRARY
ON OCTOBER 22, 1998
THEME OF THE LECTURE: «SOCIAL RELATIVISM OR
SOCIOLOGY OF THE TRANSIENT TIME OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT»
1. CYCLICITY OF NATURE AND NATURAL PROCESSES
1.1. Cycles «cosmic», «biological», «social» (by the terminology
of P. Sorokin).
1.2. Cycles of development of a personality in ontogenesis (by
the generalization of D. Feldshtein)
1.3. Experimental confirmation of the hypothesis of
evolutionary changes of «sociopsychotype» (on materials of
the complex of sociological and social-psychological
studies performed at the system of bodies of the State
Safety of the USSR in the second half of the 80s and during
elections in 1994 and 1998 in Ukraine).
1.4. Epochal social-historical cycle (author’s conception).
2. PROBLEM OF MACRO (INTEGRAL) INDICES IN SOCIOLOGY
2.1. Principle of L. Pasteur – P. Curie.
2.2. Societal processes, states, features. Societal indices
(by O. Donchenko).
2.3. Statistical effects of «demographical transition».
2.4. Methods of mathematical statistics and their use in social
studies during the transient time of social development.
3. SPECIFIC SOCIOLOGICAL (MONITORING) STUDIES IN UKRAINE: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (UKRAINE, RUSSIA, AND BELORUSSIA)
4. FACTOR OF SOLAR ACTIVITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SOCIAL-HISTORICAL PROCESSES. IS A SOCIAL BURST PROBABLE
IN UKRAINE ?
5. APPLIED ASPECTS OF THE NEW APPROACH.
Appendix 2
TEXT OF THE INFORMATION EXTENDED DURING THE WORK
OF THE 65TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL
FEDERATION OF LIBRARIAN ASSOCIATIONS
(IFLA 99, BANGKOK, THAILAND)
AND THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF
CORRESPONDENTS OF THE EUROPEAN CENTER OF PARLIAMENT
STUDIES AND DOCUMENTATION
(ECPRD-CORRESPONDENTS
CONFERENCE, BERN, SWITZERLAND)
Dear colleagues !
The group of scientists, representatives of nongovernmental nonprofit organizations such as the Ukrainian Social Innovation Society, Atlantic Council of Ukraine, and Librarian Department of the Ukrainian Parliament, has begun the initiative study in the context of the sociology of history, which covers the period of two millennia (AD).
PROJECT IS CONDITIONED BY:
* globalization of transformational processes;
* objectivity, irreversibility and cardinal character of current
social changes;
* noncorrespondence of the existing ideas to new conditions
of social development;
* growth of danders which acquire extreme forms during the
the transient period;
* decrease in efficiency of the activity of global, regional,
political, economic, and other international and national
institutions.
Now once again, we are faced with the urgent need to basically reinterpret the historical development, to introduce corrections to the existing ideas as for a periodization of the history, and to create efficient prognostic models of social development. Motives to the realization of these urgent needs become, in fact, the basis of our research initiative.
MAIN AIM of the basic stage of the research project is the development of an applied model of «universal epochal cycle» as a means of social analysis and prognostication. A further work on the project will be open and interdisciplinary due to the wide participation of experts in the fields of political science, economy, right, psychology, ethnology, studies of religion. language, arts, etc.
RESEARCH PLANS will be carried out on a wide historical material, which represents 50 countries of the world community chosen by geographical, cultural-religious, and demographical signs. The sampling includes 20 countries of Europe, 15 of Asia, 3 of North America, 4 of Latin America, and Australia.
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