Porshnev Boris Fedorovich About the beginning of human history (Problems of paleopsychology)

Boris Fedorovich Porshnev (03/07/1905 - 11/26/1972) - Soviet historian and sociologist.

Doctor of historical and philosophical sciences. Honorary doctorate from Clermont-Ferrand University in France.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. was in evacuation in Kazan, where he worked as a professor and head of the department of history of the historical and philological faculty of Kazan State University (KSU) named after. V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin.

From 1957 to 1966, he was the head of the sector for the modern history of Western European countries at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, since 1966 he led the group for the study of the history of socialist ideas, and since 1968 he headed the sector for the study of the history of the development of social thought at the Institute of World History of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Supporters of cryptozoology consider him the founder of hominology (the so-called science of Bigfoot).

Main works: Essay on the political economy of feudalism, M., 1956., The current state of the issue of relic hominoids, M., 1963., Feudalism and the masses, M., 1964., Mellier, M., 1964., Social psychology and history , M., 1966., France, English Revolution and European politics in the middle of the 17th century, M., 1970., About the beginning of human history, M., 1974.

Books (12)

About the beginning of human history. Problems of paleopsychology

Revised edition 2007.

B. Porshnev's monograph is devoted to the problem of the origin of social man and human society.

The author summarizes many years of research in the field of physiology of higher nervous activity, general and social psychology, history, political economy, sociology, political science, etc. In contrast to the approaches that are dominant in world science, analyzing the transition from animal to human in the “individual-environment” model , B. Porshnev puts the "individual-individual" model in the center.

The main place is occupied by studies of the transformation of an animal into a person from the point of view of the psychology and physiology of higher nervous activity, based on a rethinking of the data and conclusions obtained by Russian and foreign scientists belonging to the schools of I. Pavlov and A. Ukhtomsky, L. Vygotsky and A. Wallon.

Essay on the political economy of feudalism

The present book is a book on political economy, and not on economic history. Its task is to highlight, on the basis of the instructions of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, the main theoretical issues related to the characterization of social production, economic relations of feudal society and their development.

It is necessary to make a reservation that the political economy of feudalism is still based mainly on facts from the history of economic relations between Western Europe and the USSR and much less on the countries of the East, since the history of the economy of the countries of the East has not been sufficiently developed. However, the fundamental provisions and laws that characterize feudal relations of production are, of course, universal in nature, in their basic features they are undoubtedly applicable to the history of all countries, all peoples.

Social psychology and history

The author proves that the human psyche is social, because it is largely conditioned by the socio-historical environment. The first chapter is devoted to Lenin as a social psychologist. Lenin was engaged in social psychology as a theorist and practitioner of the revolutionary struggle. The rest of the chapters deal with the main categories of social psychology. Much attention is paid by the author to the category "us and them". “We and them” is more primary and deeper than “I and you”. "We and them" - the impulse of the initial settlement of people. The whole vast human history is also “us and them”.

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War and the entry into it of Sweden and the Muscovite state.

The book deals with the complex problems of the social, political, diplomatic, military history of European states on the eve and at the first stages of the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648) - the first all-European war that broke out at the turn of the Middle Ages and modern times and took place against the backdrop of broad popular movements of this transitional period from feudalism to capitalism.

Using a wide range of sources in a new way, including rich materials from the Russian archives, B. F. Porshnev shows the place of Russia in the system of European states of that time, its role in the history of the Thirty Years' War.

Feudalism and the populace

In the book Feudalism and the Masses of the People, which is devoted to some theoretical questions of political economy and historical materialism, one of the leading and most promising ideas of Marxism-Leninism for concrete development is taken as a leitmotif - the idea of the decisive role of the masses in history.

At the same time, the book is an attempt to develop a doctrine of socio-economic formations by analyzing one of them - feudalism - as a whole.

France, the English Revolution and European politics in the middle of the 17th century

A strange and wonderful year: 1648.

The culmination of the English Revolution and the signing of the Peace of Westphalia; the Fronde in France and the People's Republic in Italy; national liberation action of the Ukrainian people and a wave of uprisings in the cities of the Muscovite state. The years surrounding from 1648 are also saturated with a thunderous atmosphere. The first all-European war, called the Thirty Years' War, covered Germany and other countries with the smoke of fires, and at the same time the revolution in England lit up Europe with its flame. Thus began the history of the new time.

B. V. Porshnev's book compares two planes of the history of these critical years: the struggle of states and the struggle of classes, in other words, international relations and internal social movements on a European scale.

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Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………. 3

Chapter 1. Historical views of B. F. Porshnev ………………………………… 6

Chapter 2

Chapter 3. Society, culture, religion in the historical constructions of B. F. Porshnev ………………………………………………………………………….. 21

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………... 25

List of sources and literature …………………………………………….. 26

Notes …………………………………………………………………….. 28

Appendix …………………………………………………………………….. 31

Introduction

The name of Professor Boris Fedorovich Porshnev is well known to the scientific world both in our country and abroad. Historian and philosopher, anthropologist and economist, psychologist and physiologist - his range of interests is truly boundless.

Porshnev's universalism is absolutely unprecedented for the science of the 20th century in its scope. The age of specializations, fragmentation, emergence and separation of new sciences cannot bring many names of encyclopedic knowledge and comprehensive interests. Therefore, it seems interesting to us to turn to the figure of B. F. Porshnev, who, from the height (and width) of his various knowledge, could draw generalizing conclusions about the development of mankind.

Deepening a scientist into a narrow field undoubtedly allows him to achieve the highest results in his field of activity. However, it has been noticed that many discoveries are made at the intersection of sciences. In addition, generalizations of a global scale require a breadth of fields of activity. Therefore, the "dispersion" of a scientist in various fields of knowledge has its advantages.

Generalizations of a connoisseur of a number of disciplines can lead to great discoveries - or they can remain misunderstood by contemporaries. This happened, for example, with L. N. Gumilyov. B. F. Porshnev, perhaps, found himself in exactly the same situation, with the only difference that the legacy of L. N. Gumilyov was recognized and he found many followers of the case, but many of B. F. Porshnev’s conclusions still only the property of the "history of science". (By the way, as will be shown below, B.F. Porshnev, on the basis of completely different data than L.N. Gumilyov, using different methods, sometimes comes to the same conclusions - for example, with regard to the spread of two streams of aggression - the Crusaders and the Tatars - Mongol - in the XIII century and, in this regard, the historical choice of Russia).

It seems to us interesting and important to dwell in more detail on the scientific activity of this outstanding person, especially since gradually much of what he worked on is recognized by science. No one will be surprised by such a discipline as historical psychology, which is taking shape as a separate science of the so-called. human science is a science that comprehensively studies a person from all points of view - from anthropological to philosophical and social.

The purpose of this work is to analyze the views of B. F. Porshnev, to determine his contribution to historical science.

The tasks are:

1) study and analyze the main works of B. F. Porshnev;

2) determine the innovative conclusions of the scientist.

In this work, we relied on the works of B. F. Porshnev. Of course, it was not possible to cover all of them, because the scientist wrote more than 200 scientific papers. First of all, it is necessary to name such monographs as "People's uprisings in France before the Fronde (1623--1648)" Porshnev BF People's uprisings in France before the Fronde (1623--1648). M., 1948. (published in 1948, she was awarded the State Prize in 1950), “Essay on the political economy of feudalism” (1956), Porshnev B.F. Essay on the political economy of feudalism. M., 1956. “Feudalism and the masses” (1964), Porshnev BF Feudalism and the masses. M., 1964. "Social psychology and history" (1966), Porshnev BF Social psychology and history. M., 1966. "France, the English Revolution and European Politics in the Middle of the 17th Century." (1970) Porshnev BF France, The English Revolution and European Politics in the Middle of the 17th Century. M., 1970. and many others. A complete list of the works of B. F. Porshnev used in this abstract is given at the end of the work.

In addition, those few articles that were written about B. F. Porshnev, in particular, the preface by N. Momdzhyan and S. A. Tokarev in the book by B. F. Porshnev “On the beginning of human history. Problems of paleopsychology” Momdzhyan N. and Tokarev S. A. Preface // Porshneva B. F. On the beginning of human history. Problems of paleopsychology. M., 1974. S. 2 - 11. and an article by O. T. Vite “B. F. Porshnev: the experience of creating a synthetic science of social man and human society” in the journal “Politia”. Vite O. T. B. F. Porshnev: the experience of creating a synthetic science of social man and human society // Politiya. 1998. No. 3.

The article by N. Momdzhyan and S. A. Tokarev highly appreciates the overall contribution of B. F. Porshnev to science, primarily historical, but his generalizing conclusions about the development of mankind, philosophical-anthropological and historical-psychological observations are carefully characterized as, undoubtedly, very controversial, but interesting: “In the interesting and very valuable work of B. F. Porshnev, there are many controversial provisions. The reader should be prepared from the outset for a critical perception of the original research. As is often the case in scientific work, the author, carried away by a new and very important hypothesis, sometimes shows a tendency to overly absolutize this or that idea, to turn it into the original one, decisive in understanding the range of issues under consideration ... Making such a warning, we are firmly convinced that that everything said by B.F. Porshnev will undoubtedly benefit science, forcing scientists to reconsider, recheck, and perhaps, armed with new data, refute the hypotheses put forward by him. Momdzhyan N. and Tokarev S. A. Decree. op. S. 5.

On the other hand, O. T. Vite examines B. F. Porshnev’s contribution to the development of science in more detail precisely in “controversial” works, highly appreciating the advanced observations of the scientist.

Chapter 1. Historical views of B. F. Porshnev

B. F. Porshnev (1905 - 1972) was born in Leningrad, graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow State University and postgraduate studies at the RANION Institute of History. In 1940 he defended his doctoral dissertation in history, and in 1966 his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Since 1943, B. F. Porshnev worked at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1968 - the Institute of General History) as a senior researcher, head of the sector of modern history, and then the sector of the history of the development of social thought. Along with his scientific activities, B. F. Porshnev carried out a great deal of pedagogical, scientific and editorial work.

B. F. Porshnev's extensive research in the field of history was combined with the development of problems of anthropology, philosophy and social psychology and was aimed at developing an integrated approach to the study of man in the socio-historical process. The works of B. F. Porshnev were translated into many foreign languages. He held an honorary doctorate from the University of Clermont-Ferrand.

It has already been said above that the research of Boris Porshnev affected almost all areas of social sciences, as well as some related areas of natural sciences. Research in all these areas was considered by Porshnev as closely related aspects of the formation of a single synthetic science - "about a social person or human society." Porshnev's universalism is completely unprecedented for the science of the 20th century. in its scope and at the same time it assumes reliance on the most accurate empirical facts in accordance with the most stringent scientific criteria formed in this century.

In one of the articles on the so-called Bigfoot, Porshnev included a brief autobiographical essay. In it, he writes that from his youth he sought to be educated in many different fields of knowledge. Multilateral education helped, writes Porshnev, working in certain areas of science "to see what should not be seen" that others did not notice.

According to his convictions, B. F. Porshnev was a Marxist, and, according to O. T. Vite, he was an orthodox, conscious, consistent and convinced, but at the same time anti-dogmatic Marxist. Vite O. T. Decree. op. He took the liberty of deciding on his own, without waiting for the sanction of the Politburo, what is Marxism, did not give up his views under the influence of the political situation or the change in the scientific predilections of the new ideological bosses, in relation to whom he made only stylistic concessions. Therefore, he was never able to make a scientific career adequate to the scale of his creative personality, and did not see the main work of his life published: the set of the book “On the Beginning of Human History” prepared in 1968 was scattered.

At the same time, Marxism was not a husk in his studies, which now, after the collapse of the power of the CPSU, can be easily discarded. Marxism is present in his research as a key scientific paradigm, as a foundation, as a universal methodology. Outside of Marxism, according to O. T. Vite, Porshnev's scientific heritage crumbles, that is, from his point of view, it loses the most valuable thing - a common connection, integrity. There.

History is one of the few sciences where Porshnev enjoys the unconditional authority and respect of most specialists, even those who disagree with him on many specific issues.

An important contribution of B. F. Porshnev to historical science is his justification the unity of the historical process simultaneously in synchronic and diachronic terms.

He proved synchronic unity on a whole series of special studies that revealed the connection of events that took place at the same time in different countries, which, as it seemed to many historians, were not even too aware of the existence of each other. The unity of history in the diachronic sense was then much easier to defend than today (Marxism, formational theory). However, it is one thing to abstractly proclaim fidelity to the formational approach that ensures the unity of the progressive development of mankind, and another to demonstrate the specific mechanisms of such unity.

Porshnev explored two related problems (or difficulties). First, the role of the class struggle and social revolutions as mechanisms for the progressive development of mankind. Secondly, the features of those synchronic connections that allow us to talk about the transition of humanity, and not of isolated countries.

Porshnev outlined in detail the evolution of the ties that united humanity into a single whole in the report “Is the history of one country conceivable?”. Porshnev BF Is the history of one country conceivable? // Historical science and some problems of the present. Articles and discussions. M., 1969.

P. 310. (Today it is difficult to imagine the boldness of the declared topic, but one has only to remember the background against which it was expressed - the fundamental ideological postulate of building socialism "in one single country").

In this report, Porshnev identifies “three types of connections between human communities”: “The first type consists mainly in mutual isolation from neighbors. History, starting from primitive times, was universal mainly in this negative sense: the culture and way of life of any tribe developed by opposing their own to someone else's. Each population not only, if possible, moved away from its neighbors, but mainly because of the impossibility of settling, it isolated itself from everything - starting from dialect and utensils. Each knew, of course, only its closest neighbors, but cultural and ethnic contrasts with neighbors created a general network, because none of them, of course, lived in isolation ... The second type of world-historical connection develops as a kind of antithesis to the previous one. Is it possible to find a common denominator in all this diversity of local cultures? Yes, that is what war is. Qualitative differences are translated into quantitative language by war: who is who, who is stronger... Wars or political equilibrium between states become for a long time an important expression of world history... establish direct relations with them... Starting from the era of great geographical discoveries, international trade (aka international robbery) begins to intensively construct this third type of interconnection in world history. The first two are preserved and develop further, but the third kind, as it were, denies them: this is not a chain connection, but a gradually emerging connection of all countries with all. Trade entails the growth of all types of communication and information, the exchange of goods gives rise to this or that exchange of people. In this sense - a direct universal connection - history becomes world-wide only from the era of capitalism. There. pp. 310 - 311.

Let us dwell on the results of B. F. Porshnev’s synchronic studies related to three chronological points: the 17th century. (Thirty Years' War), XIII century. (Battle on the Ice) and the heyday of the slave system.

The Thirty Years' War was studied by Porshnev for many years. The results of this work are reflected in many publications, including the fundamental trilogy, of which only the third volume appeared during his lifetime, and the second did not appear at all. Porshnev BF France, the English Revolution and European Politics in the Middle of the 17th Century. M., 1970; Porshnev B. F. The Thirty Years' War and the Entry of Sweden and the Muscovite State into It. M., 1976.

This fundamental trilogy was for Porshnev an experience of historical research of a specially selected "synchronous slice", several decades thick and covering - ideally - the entire space of the human ecumene.

The core of research into the events of the Thirty Years' War was a thorough and scrupulous analysis of the synchronous interaction of various countries, the connection between their foreign and domestic policies, and not only the countries of Europe, but partly of Asia as well. Among other things, Porshnev also proposed special tools - graphic diagrams demonstrating the structure of "geopolitical" intercountry ties and the dynamics of this structure. Porshnev B.F. France, English Revolution and European Politics… S. 39 - 40.

It was the analysis of synchronic connections that allowed Porshnev to "see" (and prove) that the famous "blitz krieg" of Gustavus-Adolf was largely financed by the Muscovite state, while previously many believed that in Muscovy they were not even aware of the war going on in Europe. Financing was carried out according to a simple and well-known scheme for many today's Russian entrepreneurs, which in modern economic jargon should be called "exclusive liberalization of foreign trade": the Swedes received the right to buy grain in the Moscow State at domestic prices, then export it through Arkhangelsk for sale on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange already at European prices. Porshnev B. F. Thirty Years' War ... S. 202 - 229.

As a result, by 1631, Gustavus Adolphus managed to deploy large military forces in Germany and in the autumn of this year to carry out a swift throw into the depths of its territory. Further, however, everything stalled and, in the end, the success of Gustavus Adolphus was nullified. One of the most important factors in this outcome (although not the only one) was the sequence of events that determined each other, for the sake of discovering which (these sequences) Porshnev, in fact, proposed to study “synchronous sections”: under the pressure of growing social discontent, the Moscow state reduces subsidies to Sweden (emission financing of public spending was not practiced then), and also ends the war with Poland. As a result, Gustavus Adolphus' resources are simultaneously reduced and a serious adversary appears, freed from "Eastern" problems.

Using the example of the events that culminated in the Battle of the Ice, Porshnev showed not only the synchronic connection of what was happening at that time throughout the Eurasian space, but also the significance of those events for the diachronically unified historical path of the countries and peoples involved in this synchronic connection: “The Chingizid Empire, which put pressure on Russia from the east, from Asia, and the Hohenstaufen empire, which threatened it from the west, from Europe - ... both of these conquering empires, which arose almost simultaneously ... were nothing more than relapses of barbarian states in the 13th century. It is no coincidence that the founder of one of these empires, Genghis Khan, declared himself the heir to the emperors of ancient slave-owning China, while the founder of another, Frederick Barbarossa, imagined himself the direct successor of the emperors of slave-owning Rome. Both empires were nothing more than attempts to turn off the main road of history, to abandon the difficulties of the feudal restructuring of society and, turning to face the irrevocable past, to rely on the ruins of the ancient slave-owning order, on the indelible remnants of the past that hampered feudal progress. Porshnev B.F. Battle on the Ice and World History // History Faculty of Moscow State University. Reports and messages. M., 1947. Issue. five.

Porshnev analyzes in detail the “striking similarity of the historical fates of these two reactionary empires”, two “historical twins”, who succeeded in “enormous conquests”: two conquering empires, spreading towards each other with gigantic force. After analyzing numerous direct and indirect evidence of the positions of the “two predators” in relation to each other, Porshnev comes to the conclusion: “If Russia had been crushed and the borders of the two empires had converged on its devastated territory ... we can confidently assume that both predators would not have entered in a fight with each other - at least immediately - and, having mutually tested their strength, they would amicably divide the world among themselves.

Since Russia could not give a simultaneous rebuff to both empires, "Alexander Nevsky made a choice: to strike at the western aggressor and compromise with the eastern." And such a choice, according to Porshnev, had the deepest "diachronic" consequences for all mankind. Although the Teutonic Order survived after the Battle of the Ice, its importance as an "iron fist", which all European countries had to reckon with, fell sharply. Less than 20 years later, "the gigantic conquering power of the Hohenstaufen ceased to exist." The recurrence of destructive and aggressive barbarian statehood ceased to slow down the development of Europe along the path of "feudal progress". There.

On the contrary, in Asia, the elimination of such a relapse was stretched out for another two centuries: “Russia was forced not only to allow the preservation of the immense and deadening Mongol Empire, but also to become, at least to a certain extent, its integral part. Only at such a price could the forward movement of the rest of humanity be bought at that moment. There. So, concludes B., F. Porshnev, “until the 13th century, universal history cannot “state the unconditional backwardness of the social system of the East in comparison with the West, or, in general, the cardinal dissimilarity of the historical destinies of East and West. Only since the 13th century has this phenomenon appeared on the historical stage. Europe is moving fast. Asia is sinking into stagnation. It is impossible not to explain this by the different fate of the two reactionary empires, which had previously developed with such amazing symmetry. The choice made by Alexander Nevsky, although itself determined, to a large extent in turn determined the divergence of the paths of the West and the East. There. Thus, from the point of view of Porshnev, an important clarification must be made to the famous phrase "Rus saved Europe from the Mongols": first of all, from their own, European "Mongols".

Porshnev also proposed a resolute revision of the content of the concept of "slave-owning society". Porshnev B.F. Feudalism and the masses. M., 1964. He showed that a slave-owning society as an internally connected social organism, as a single developing whole, cannot be reduced to a slave-owning state. Too many connections and contradictions, which are certainly purely internal for the classical slave economy system cannot be detected inside state borders.

Referring to the works of the Soviet historian A. Malchevsky, Porshnev writes: “The process of reproduction in the ancient slave-owning society turns out to be impossible without regular and grandiose seizures “from outside”, and seizures not only of the products of labor of other peoples, but above all of a part of these peoples themselves, becoming within the slave state the main productive force, the main producing class. In these features, the slave-owning system differs from the feudal system and most clearly from the bourgeois one: in the latter, the "main producing class" completely "gets along" within the state borders. Porshnev emphasizes that the specificity of the slave-owning society described by him can be found all over the world: “The great slave-owning powers of ancient Iran, ancient India, ancient China, the Hellenic states of Asia were surrounded by the same oceans of barbarian peoples beating against their shores, either defending or attacking, expressing, no less than in the West, something by no means "external", but the internal antagonism of the ancient world as a polarized whole. The deeper this polarization became, the more clearly it materialized in the form of all kinds of "Chinese walls" and "Roman ramparts", the more inevitably the hour of the breakthrough approached. There. S. 512.

Thus, the hour of “feudal synthesis” was approaching, that revolutionary process of diffusion of the two halves or poles of the slave-owning whole, from which feudal society would already grow.

According to O. T. Vite, Porshnev could not but understand that the stated concept of the evolution of the slave-owning formation and its revolutionary transformation into a feudal one automatically casts doubt on one of the official subjects of “Soviet pride”: domestic history did not know slavery. After all, the nature of the connection of Kievan Rus with the Eastern Roman Empire, with Byzantium, obviously, fits into the general logic: Russia really was not a slave-owning state, since it was a source of replenishment of slaves for such a state within a single social organism.

Therefore, Porshnev limited himself to an extremely cautious discussion on this topic: “But it is by no means devoid of objective grounds and is by no means offensive either to Western European countries or to Russia that Kievan Rus stands in approximately the same historical relation to the Eastern Roman Empire as the Frankish state to the Western Roman Empire. There. S. 513.

B. F. Porshnev's contribution to economics, more precisely, historical economics, is significant. BF Porshnev wrote one of the first studies on the political economy of feudalism. Porshnev BF To the question of the basic economic law of feudalism // Questions of history. M., 1953. No. 6; Porshnev B.F. Essay on the political economy of feudalism. M., 1956. It still remains almost the only full-scale theoretical study of the economic basis of feudal society, written from a Marxist position.

Much less well known are the results of Porshnev's economic research on two specific economic topics that are closely related to each other: property and forced labor. Research on these topics is not presented systematically in special works, they are scattered over a number of articles and books written at different times.

The phenomenon of property is analyzed by Porshnev from the same positions as all other problems associated with "social man and human society." Porshnev is interested in how the “relationship” of property arose during the period of separation of a person from the animal world in conditions of divergence, how the emergence of this phenomenon is associated with those unusual neurophysiological mechanisms of interindividual interaction, the appearance of which accompanied the “pushing out” of a neoanthrope into social relations.

Porshnev specifically studied the formation of property relations under feudalism and in primitive society. For example, he analyzed the formation of personal peasant property under feudalism in the following way: “The personal labor property of a peasant is not so much a prerequisite, but a product of the gradual development of feudal society. In fact, after all, labor property is not yet property, as long as no one seeks to systematically take it away. A one-time attempt to take away property, for example, an attempt at military robbery, gives rise to defense, but such a sporadic saving of things from destruction is not at all the formation of property. Finally, peasant individual property reached maturity only with the advent of the possibility of alienating it for an equivalent, i.e. with the advent of cities ... Here it finally ceased to be only the defense of property and became its appropriation, ceased to be only property in the sense of refusing to give and became property in the sense of the desire to acquire. Porshnev B. F. History of the Middle Ages and Comrade Stalin's indication of the main feature of feudalism // Izvestia of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Series of History and Philosophy. M., 1949. T. VI. No. 6. S. 535 - 536.

Forced overwork is an absolutely necessary element of all human history. We are talking about the forms of external coercion, of which three are known: direct coercion - slavery, mixed - feudalism, and indirect - capitalism. Of these three forms, Porshnev was mainly concerned with the second. The problem was that under feudalism, one indirect coercion to work is not enough and it is supplemented by direct - the so-called incomplete ownership of the worker.

Chapter 2lsheepB. F. Porshneva

Porshnev himself considered the problems of anthropogenesis to be the subject of his main specialty. In the preface to the main work of B. F. Porshnev, summing up his research in the field of anthropogenesis and outlining a program for further research - “On the beginning of human history (Problems of paleopsychology)”, Porshnev B. F. On the beginning of human history ... N. Momdzhyan and S A. Tokarev write: “Which of all these diverse areas of knowledge was in the focus of the scientific interests of B. F. Porshnev? No matter how others look at it, the author himself believed that it was the content of this book, offered to the attention of readers, that expresses the deepest, most important layer of scientific thinking for him - the basis of his philosophical outlook. This area can be abbreviated (and the author calls it so) "problems of paleopsychology". Momdzhyan N. and Tokarev S. A. Decree. op. pp. 7 - 8.

BF Porshnev clearly understood the ambiguous role of special sciences in the study of the problems of anthropogenesis. Paleoanthropologists, paleontologists and paleoarchaeologists - hardly the main "legitimate" researchers of human origins - were extremely superficially familiar with serious scientific results obtained in zoology, psychology, neurophysiology, sociology. In order to break through this vicious circle, Porshnev resolutely set about filling in the gaps mentioned above.

According to Porshnev, two false postulates prevented a serious scientific breakthrough in the study of anthropogenesis. Porshnev B.F. Is a scientific revolution in primatology possible now? // Questions of Philosophy. 1966. No. 3. S. 113 - 116.

Firstly, the belief that the archaeological remains of the life activity of fossil hominids prove that they have abstract-logical (conceptual), creative thinking, and hence the recognition by people of not only neoanthropes, but also paleoanthropes (Neanderthals) and even more ancient species. This postulate has two main roots - the myth of hunting large animals as the main occupation of the human ancestor and the myth of the invention of fire by him.

Secondly, the conviction that the evolutionary form that preceded Homo sapiens "y died out disappeared from the face of the Earth immediately after the appearance of this latter.

It is almost impossible to summarize the content of this book - the problems raised by the author are so diverse and complex. They are both complex and controversial. But if you still try to highlight its leitmotifs in the content of the book, they can be reduced to the following.

Speaking about the specific features of a person, the author considers such only truly human labor, that is, labor regulated by speech, directly connected with it. It is speech that makes labor possible as a specifically human, conscious, purposeful activity. Therefore, neither walking upright, nor the production of the simplest tools, according to the author, are not yet signs of man. As for the human ancestors from Australopithecus to Neanderthal, the author refers them, according to the classification of Carl Linnaeus, to the troglodytid family. Representatives of this family produced elementary tools, used fire, had an upright posture, but they did not have speech, so they cannot be called people, and their life together cannot be called a society. That is why the mystery of the origin of man is reduced to explaining the origin of human speech.

A special chapter is devoted to the phenomenon of speech, which is given the role of the most important regulator of human behavior, a determinant on the way of transforming prehuman levels of life activity into truly human ones. The psychophysiological correlate of such regulation is the second signaling system. The author attaches special importance to this concept, since in the psychophysiological plan the question of the formation of a person is transformed by him into the question of the transformation of the first signaling system into the second. In fact, Porshnev proved that in the biblical “In the beginning was the word” there is much more materialism than in references to “labor”, “collective hunting”, etc.

The second-signal interaction of people consists of two main levels and, in turn, is divided into the primary phase - interdictive and secondary - suggestive. The divisions carried out allowed the scientist to approach the disclosure of the subtle and complex process of the genesis of the second-signal connections between individuals. Revealing the mechanism of suggestion, B. F. Fedorov essentially joins the concept of the social origin of higher psychological functions of a person, developed by the famous Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky in relation to the mental development of a child. According to B.F. Porshnev, the mechanism of "referring to oneself" turns out to be an elementary cell of speech-thinking. Dyplasia - an elementary contradiction of thinking - is analyzed by the author as an expression of the social relations "we - they" that are initial for a person.

Proclaiming the need to overcome zoological prejudices, Porshnev wrote: “The dispute will not be about facts, because most of the facts of paleoanthropology and paleoarchaeology have a high degree of reliability, but about the glasses through which they are used to looking at these facts.” There is no reason to consider the presence of fire and stone tools as a sign of the appearance of "man". Only a neoanthrope can be recognized as a man in the exact sense of the word.

Human culture, according to Porshnev, has grown out of the divergence of paleoanthropes and neoanthropes, out of the need for the latter, interacting with the former, to increasingly move away from the forms of interaction imposed on them. An analysis of zoological data (beginning with Darwin) on various forms of speciation leads Porshnev to the conclusion about a kind of "spontaneous artificial" selection underlying divergence.

Of course, some of the provisions put forward by B.F. Porshnev can be difficult to understand and accept for a person who is confident that he is the crown of creation. Exaggerating, the scientist claims that we owe our appearance on earth to some disgusting animal, which deliberately brought us out by artificial selection to perform the only function - to serve it as a food base! And, let's say, not only the initiation-mutilation of adolescents in primitive tribes, but also the beautiful custom of giving flowers is just the result of a deep and long-term transformation of our ancient and not at all beautiful main function - to present our own children produced by some vile animals as a "gift" for this, into the world in large numbers and personally killed?

And, consequently, all universal human values, both religious and secular, both "Western" and "Eastern", the entire cultural self-consciousness of a person was formed due to the need to distance oneself from one's past, from one's ancestor, but, on the other hand, really achieved distancing is reliably ensured by only one thing: the naive belief that "we" by definition, from "the very beginning" are "their" (real ancestors) opposite.

But since these disgusting animals are our direct ancestors, then

killing one's own kind is not a deviation, but the true human nature that distinguishes us from all other animals! (For the latter, this is still the exception, not the rule).

An analysis of the available data on ecological niches in which at different stages the human ancestor had to “fight for existence”, on the evolution of his brain, on an unprecedentedly close relationship with a huge number of other animals, leads Porshnev to a twofold conclusion: Porshnev B.F. About the beginning of human history ... S. 404 - 405.

The human ancestor had all the anatomical and physiological prerequisites for mastering interdiction;

Without the development of such tools, the human ancestor was doomed to extinction.

The transition from stage to stage occurred, of course, not without natural selection from numerous mutations, the scale and diversity of which were provoked by the crisis, and therefore not without a multitude of unstable transitional forms. And only in one of the mutations - the neoanthrope - the third stage (suggestion) was reliably and forever fixed by this selection.

Considering what has been said above about the peculiarities of the relationship of neoanthropes with paleoanthropes in the era of divergence, Porshnev’s resolute refutation of the widespread prejudice about the almost “bourgeois” behavior of primitive man is understandable: “According to this current idea, the economic psychology of any person can be reduced to the postulate of the desire for the maximum . The lower limit of alienation (goods or labor), which is psychologically acceptable in this case, is alienation for equivalent compensation ... Indeed, behavior contrary to the indicated postulate under capitalism cannot be anything other than an appendage. But even under feudalism, as can be seen from the sources, economic psychology contained much more of this reverse principle: a significant number of medieval legal and legislative acts prohibit or restrict gratuitous donation, offering, donation of real and movable property. The farther into the depths of centuries and millennia, the more convex this impulse. There. In fact, Porshnev outlines the contours of the science of the primitive economy. However, due to the fact that the traces of primitive economic culture that have survived in our time are more related to culture as such, this topic is classified under the section "culturology".

Chapter 3. Society, culture, religion in the historical constructions of B. F. Porshnev

On the basis of the same position on the development of mankind from the "food base" and opposition to "ancestors", B. F. Porshnev develops his sociological theories. Within the framework of this concept, the "nucleus" or "elementary cell" of socio-psychological processes defines the opposition "we - they". The origin of this opposition dates back to the time of the spread among neoanthropes of the practice of using those specific mechanisms of influence on each other that had previously developed in their relations with paleoanthropes. The awareness of oneself as a community (“we”) is formed, according to Porshnev, in the process of negative interaction with “them”, that is, with paleoanthropes. Such a repulsion, being transferred inside the neoanthropes themselves, gives rise to many oppositions "we - they", each of which is based on the initial mutual "suspicion" that "they" are not quite human. Porshnev B.F. Social psychology and history. M., 1978.

In the process of human history, the development of this initial opposition leads to the formation of a gigantic network of various communities (“we”), partly intersecting, partly absorbing each other, each of which is aware of itself as such, opposing itself to a certain “they”. Porshnev B.F. Is the history of one country conceivable… S. 314 - 315.

Also, Porshnev's research, affecting culture, mainly concerns its origin, neurophysiological, zoological, as well as socio-psychological prerequisites for its various manifestations.

Although the majority of comparative historical research on ethics and aesthetics deals almost exclusively with ideas of “good” and “beautiful”, from Porshnev’s point of view, on the contrary, the most interesting would be studies of precisely what was considered “bad” and “bad” by different peoples in different eras. "ugly".

On the other hand, this is a study of the very physiological and psychological mechanism for the implementation of the prohibition - the prohibition to do something "bad". Porshnev analyzes the most ancient prohibitions, highlighting their three most important groups.

To the first group, he refers prohibitions to kill one's own kind, i.e. restriction of the fundamental biological peculiarity of a person formed during the divergence: “Apparently, the oldest form of this prohibition was the prohibition to eat a person who died not by one or another natural death, but killed by a human hand. The corpse of a man killed by a man is untouchable.” Porshnev B. F. Problems of the emergence of human society and human culture // Bulletin of the history of world culture. 1958. No. 2. S. 40.

Porshnev refers to the second group of prohibitions as “prohibitions to take and touch certain objects, to perform certain actions with them. This group of prohibitions is especially closely connected with the formation of the social relation of property. There. S. 42.

Finally, Porshnev refers sexual prohibitions to the third group of prohibitions, in particular, the most ancient of them - the prohibition of sexual intercourse between mothers and sons, then brothers and sisters. Summing up his analysis of the way of life of the most ancient people, Porshnev writes: “At the dawn of the formation of society ... these prohibitions meant the preferential rights of male aliens. But the conflict that developed in this way between them and the younger men who grew up on the spot was resolved in the form of the emergence, firstly, of the isolation of the younger ones into a special social group, separated from the older ones by a complex barrier, and secondly, exogamy - one of the most important institutions of the emerging human society. ". There.

The scientist's views on the history of religious beliefs, the origin of ideas about "good" and "bad" deities also differ significantly from generally accepted views - both religious and secular.

For Porshnev, human culture is born in an era of divergence. In a number of special studies, he convincingly showed that the images of deities, proto-deities, various varieties of "evil spirits" are a reflection of the paleoanthrope with whom a person had to interact for a long time, as well as a reflection of the specific features of this interaction itself. And the more ancient these images are, the more literal physical features and behavioral features of a real, "living" paleoanthrope are in them. Porshnev B.F. A book about morality and religion of the oppressed classes of the Roman Empire // Bulletin of ancient history. M., 1963. No. 1 (63); Porshnev BF The search for generalizations in the field of the history of religion // Questions of history. M., 1965. No. 7.

In the functioning of the institution of the church, B. F. Porshnev is also looking for material prerequisites. In his opinion, the essence of the Christian doctrine as a complex of ideas that perform the function of protecting the economic basis of feudalism can be reduced, Porshnev writes, “to two main ideas that guide people’s behavior: first, to the doctrine of what they should do (about virtues), and secondly, about what they should not do (about sin). There. The main Christian virtue, with all the variety of individual prescriptions of religion, ultimately comes down to one point: "live for God"2, i.e. don't live for yourself.

Porshnev considers this virtue as a powerful tool that slows down the economic resistance of the peasant: “It is clear that this teaching, if accepted, should have served as a colossal obstacle to strengthening the peasant economy and the peasants’ desire to improve their standard of living. Moreover, it directly demanded: “Give,” and then it was not difficult to show that since in the end it is necessary to give to God, then it is most natural to give to those who represent God on earth - the church and the authorities (for there is no power other than from God )” Ibid. However, the main problem for the superstructure was open resistance. Therefore, although the principle of “life not for oneself” was brought to the fore by Christianity, the main thing was still the doctrine of sin: “The task of religion was not so much to persuade the peasant to give his labor and the fruits of his labor to the landowner and daily deny himself in satisfying vital needs, as much as in persuading him not to resist: after all, the very existence of feudal exploitation necessarily forced the peasant to defend his economy, strengthen it, in this sense, “live for himself” and resist. There.

And here it all comes down, ultimately, to one point - to sin. defiance. Porshnev emphasizes that the doctrine of sin was a powerful tool in the fight not only against uprisings, but also against the lower forms of open peasant resistance - partial resistance, departures. The doctrine of sin not only disarmed the peasantry, but also armed its opponents: “Since rebellion is the element of Satan, there should be no place for mercy; not only the right, but the duty of a Christian is to strike the rebels with the sword. There.

Summing up the analysis of the key ideas that religion inspired in the workers, Porshnev compares the role of the church and the state: “The essence of religion was, as we see, the same thing that was the essence of the state - the suppression of the threat of uprisings by the threat of punishment ... But there was a deep difference between them. The state had really enormous power to carry out its threats. Authority only reinforced this material force. On the contrary, the church had immeasurably less material resources and mainly acted by ideological suggestion. Why did they believe her?" There. Here the scientist again turns to the analysis of the socio-psychological nature of persuasion (sermon) as a form of counter-counter-suggestion - that is, in general, to the mechanism by which paleoanthropes initially forced their "food base" into obedience.

Conclusion

Boris Fedorovich Porshnev's research touched on almost all areas of the social sciences, as well as some related areas of the natural sciences. Research in all these areas was considered by Porshnev as closely related aspects of the formation of a single synthetic science - "about a social person or human society." Porshnev's universalism is completely unprecedented for the science of the 20th century. in its scope and at the same time it assumes reliance on the most accurate empirical facts in accordance with the most stringent scientific criteria formed in this century.

However, the quote is quite applicable to the fate of the scientist - the statement of one biographer about the fate of the famous economist J. Schumpeter: "He had many students, but there were no followers." Vite O. T. Decree. op. Porshnev had and has many students and even supporters of his views in certain areas of knowledge. But there are no followers in the specialty “the science of a social person or human society”, because such a specialty did not work out with the Porshnev paradigm.

“Something needs to be done with all this gigantic heritage,” says O. T. Vite. - True, until the daredevil was found. There.

Appendix

List of sources and literature

Sources

Porshnev B.F. Fight for troglodytes // Prostor. 1968. Nos. 4-7. No. 7. P. 125

Porshnev B. F. History of the Middle Ages and Comrade Stalin's indication of the main feature of feudalism // Izvestia of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Series of History and Philosophy. M., 1949. T. VI. No. 6. S. 535 - 536.

Porshnev BF To the question of the basic economic law of feudalism // Questions of history. M., 1953. No. 6.

Porshnev B.F. A book about morality and religion of the oppressed classes of the Roman Empire // Bulletin of ancient history. M., 1963. No. 1 (63).

Porshnev B. F. Battle on the Ice and World History // History Faculty of Moscow State University. Reports and messages. M., 1947. Issue. five.

Porshnev BF Is the history of one country conceivable? // Historical science and some problems of the present. Articles and discussions. M., 1969.

Porshnev B. F. Popular uprisings in France before the Fronde (1623-1648). M., 1948.

Porshnev BF Essay on the political economy of feudalism. M., 1956.

Porshnev BF The search for generalizations in the field of the history of religion // Questions of history. M., 1965. No. 7.

Porshnev B. F. Problems of the emergence of human society and human culture // Bulletin of the history of world culture. 1958. No. 2. S. 40.

Porshnev BF Social psychology and history. M., 1966.

Porshnev B. F. The Thirty Years' War and the Entry of Sweden and the Muscovite State into It. M., 1976.

Porshnev B.F. Feudalism and the masses. M., 1964.

Porshnev B. F. France, the English Revolution and European Politics in the Middle of the 17th Century. M., 1970.

Literature

Vite O. T. B. F. Porshnev: the experience of creating a synthetic science of social man and human society // Politiya. 1998. No. 3.

Momdzhyan N. and Tokarev S. A. Preface // Porshneva B. F. About the beginning of human history. Problems of paleopsychology. M., 1974. S. 2 - 11.

Notes

Scientific activity

Peru BF Porshnev owns two dozen monographs and more than 200 articles.

Porshnev believed that the study of history as a set of facts is fundamentally wrong, that this science is just as logical and regular as the exact sciences. He was going to describe human history from this point of view. However, Porshnev managed to write only the beginning of this "rewritten" history - "On the beginning of human history." The uniqueness of this monograph lies in the fact that the author for the first time tried to explain one of the most difficult questions of the formation of Homo sapiens in the historical period of his separation from monkey ancestors, relying not on mythological guesses, but on strict patterns of development and dynamics of higher nervous activity. All the outstanding achievements of the world and, especially, domestic physiology of nervous and higher nervous activity, related not only to paleopsychology, but to the entire psyche of Homo sapiens, entered the structure of his theoretical constructions.

The history of the publication of this book is very tragic, because it cost Porshnev his life. He hardly managed to get the book published, agreeing for this to remove entire chapters important for expressing his main idea. However, the set was scattered, and the book came out only after Porshnev's death, in. This edition is also incomplete.

The first complete edition of Porshnev's book was published in 2006, edited by B.A. Didenko. Then, “On the Beginning of Human History” was published in its entirety under the scientific editorship of O. T. Vite, who restored the manuscript in its original version, and also did a great job of expanding the scientific apparatus of the book.

Porshev's works demonstrate his education not only in the humanities, but also in special ones, such as general physiology of nervous activity, higher nervous activity, pathopsychology and psychiatry, linguistics and psycholinguistics. Deep knowledge in these areas of science allowed Porshnev to reveal the concepts of instinctive and conscious labor, touched upon by Marx and Engels, and their role in the humanization of anthropoid apes.

The use of the dominant by A.A. by the author of the law is also impressive. Ukhtomsky and inadequate (side) reflexes (in passing noted by IP Pavlov) when revealing the mechanism of formation of the second signal system - the physiological basis of speech activity.

In his works, Porshnev comes to the non-trivial conclusion that it is possible to combine the problem of studying the class struggle and the study of paleotropes:

In 1964, Porshnev completed work on the brochure "From higher animals to man." In it, he directly pointed out how, in the process of the divergence of paleoanthropists and neoanthropists, the opposition “we - they” was born: “... it was not so much natural selection that acted here, but a kind of artificial selection - repulsion of one variant from another, even if it did not differ much at first . Against this background, the further, the more unfolded the second process. It consists in the formation of certain relations of generic groups. But in these relations the first process is reproduced, as it were: each group relates both to its neighbor and to others as, to some extent, “non-humans”. People call and consider only their own group. In relation to the nearest links, this is not so pronounced, but the more distant the link in the chain, the more clearly it is treated as “non-humans” ”

The concept of B. F. Porshnev

The concept of BF Porshnev is based on a suggestive approach to historical analysis. He substantiates the interpretation of historical events and the historical process as a whole as a successive change of phases of "suggestion-counter-suggestion-counter-counter-suggestion".

The idea that there are interdisciplinary links between history and psychology is not new. The concept of B.F. Porshneva represents one of the original perspectives of this idea and has repeatedly become the subject of scientific controversy and influenced the development of both historical and psychological science.

Explanations of history based on the psychological mechanism of suggestion have always aroused interest and questions in the scientific community. This concept was developed by Porshnev in the mid-1960s, when such a clearly expressed psychological idea was "introduced" into the field of history, which at that time could not yet be interpreted outside the conceptual framework of the Marxist-Leninist theory of society. The book (collection of articles) "History and Psychology", published under the editorship of B.F. Porshnev and L.I. Antsyferova in 1971. It was an attempt to consolidate the position of the original scientific school based on the union of the two sciences.

The essence of B. F. Porshnev's position is best described by the author in his article on the essence of the suggestive approach to historical analysis in the above-mentioned collection. It consists in the fact that suggestion, being a cell of social psychology, is not observed in everyday life in its pure, isolated form. Therefore, firstly, it is difficult for a researcher to get close to it and, secondly, it is difficult to be convinced of its significance for the historical activity of man. But Porshnev considers that “suggestion is more powerful over a group of people than over an individual, and also if it comes from a person who somehow personifies a group, society, etc., or from direct verbal influences of a group of people (shouts of the crowd, chorus, etc.)”. Given this circumstance, Porshnev establishes the significance of suggestion for the formation of a person as a social being and argues that “suggestion as such, in its pure form, should once have had an automatic, irresistible or, as psychologists and psychiatrists say, fatal character.” From this it follows that the mental community (“we”) is ideally a field of absolute faith, and “complete suggestion, complete trust, complete we are identical to non-logic (fundamental unverifiable.” But (by analogy with the law of reverse induction of excitation and inhibition) suggestion is not receives absolute power over a person: a suggestive influence encounters protective mental anti-actions, and the first of such phenomena is distrust. The antithesis of suggestion becomes counter-suggestion. the objective life of society, the contradictions and antagonism of economic and other relations, ”says Porshnev and notes that he is considering here not the reasons that led people in different historical conditions to disrupt the coercive power of the word, but the psychological mechanism of a negative reaction to suggestion, which intensified in the course of history and through which history has changed.

According to Porshnev, suggestion does not disappear in the course of history; as countersuggestion grows and becomes more complex, it takes on other forms. But the countersuggestion itself is changing: from a simple refusal to obey people's words, it turns into a restriction of obedience by various conditions. In the course of history, it is more and more important for a person not only from whom the instructions that require obedience come. “He wants the words to be understandable to him not only in their inspiring part, but also in the motivational part, that is, he asks why and why, and only when this condition is met, he turns on the suggestion switch that has been turned off for a while.”

The main ideas of B.F. Porshneva

1. There is a fundamental gap between man and all other animals.

2. Anthropogenesis is not an ascending process of gradual humanization of ape-like ancestors, but a steep turn over the abyss, during which Something appeared in nature and then disappeared, something fundamentally different from both monkeys and people.

3. "Remnants of the past" in human behavior are associated not so much with the "monkey" inheritance, but with what arose in the process of anthropogenesis.

4. Human thinking is not a development of information processing methods that exist in other animals, but a fundamental new formation.

5. Human thinking is primarily collective and was originally carried out by a network of brains connected by speech signals. Only as society develops, individual thinking is formed.

6. Human labor is fundamentally different from the labor of bees and beavers in that a person first thinks and then does. This work is peculiar only to Homo sapiens. The work of Pithecanthropes and Neanderthals was like the work of a beaver, not Homo sapiens.

7. Man is not a biosocial, but a completely social being.

Criticism of Porshnev's concept

According to a number of researchers, Porshnev's theory does not answer the question of why the same suggestive influence causes a different reaction, even when it comes to suggestions coming to the crowd or from the crowd.

The counter-suggestive mechanism of mistrust is also not entirely clear: the problem of including logic should be comprehended taking into account the achievements of ethnomethodology (G. Garfinkel and his followers showed that everyday logic, common sense, have a different nature than formal logic). Understanding as a necessary part of the countersuggestive response also differs in its mechanism and results.

The meaning of the concept of Porshnev

Porshnev's concept outlined a promising way to combine socio-psychological research with historical research, which can enhance its heuristics when supplemented with other approaches to solving similar research problems.

Major works

Popular uprisings in France before the Fronde (1623-1648). M.-L., 1948.
Essay on the political economy of feudalism. M., 1956.
The current state of the issue of relic hominoids. M., 1963.
Mellier. M., 1964., in HTML and RTF format
Feudalism and the Popular Masses. M., 1964.
Social psychology and history. M., 1966. (1st, abridged ed.)
France, the English Revolution and European politics in the middle of the 17th century. M., 1970.
History and psychology. Sat. articles. Ed. B.F. Porshnev. M., 1971.
The Thirty Years' War and the entry into it of Sweden and the Muscovite state. M., 1976.
Social Psychology and History. Ed. 2nd, add. and correct. M., 1979.
About the beginning of human history (problems of paleopsychology). St. Petersburg, 2007. (Restored by O. Vite to the original author's text.) First edition - 1974, second - 2006

Notes

Literature

Porshnev BF On the beginning of human history. - M.: FERI-V, 2006. - 640 pages.

Sources

Berse I.-M. Reflections on how history is written
Vite O. T. Boris Fedorovich Porshnev and his criticism of human history
B. F. Porshnev in the discussion about the role of the class struggle in history (1948-1953) // French Yearbook 2007. M., 2007.
Kondratiev S. V., Kondratiev T. N. B. F. Porshnev - an interpreter of French absolutism // French Yearbook 2005. M., 2005.
Shadrin S.S. Faculty of History of Kazan University (1939-2007): reference book. - Kazan: KSU, 2007. 46 p.
Shadrin S. S. The Faculty of History in 1939-2004. // Kazan University as a research and socio-cultural space: Sat. scientific articles and messages. - Kazan: KSU, 2005. S. 63-69.

O. T. Vite "Creative heritage of B. F. Porshnev and its modern significance"

The presentation of Porshnev's contribution to the science of anthropogenesis in the form of his contribution to a number of completely independent sciences is extremely difficult, because these sciences intersect on the problem of anthropogenesis to such an extent that it is almost impossible to draw a line between them. However, there is one circumstance that makes such a path justified.

Porshnev clearly understood the ambiguous role of special sciences in the study of the problems of anthropogenesis. On the one hand, paleoanthropologists, paleontologists and paleoarchaeologists - hardly the main "legitimate" researchers of human origins - were extremely superficially familiar with serious scientific results obtained in zoology, psychology, neurophysiology, and sociology. On the other hand, these listed sciences themselves were extremely poorly developed precisely in the application to the Pleistocene time:

"Not a single zoologist has seriously taken up the ecology of the Quaternary ancestors of people, and yet the systematics proposed by paleontologists for the animal species surrounding these ancestors cannot replace ecology, biocenology, ethology. Not a single psychologist or neurophysiologist, for his part, has taken up the phylogenetic aspect of his science, preferring to listen to the improvisations of specialists in a completely different field: those who know how to excavate and systematize finds, but who are not able to put even the simplest experiment in a physiological or psychological laboratory No qualified sociologist or philosopher has written anything about the biological prehistory of people that would not have been induced , ultimately, by the same paleoarchaeologists and paleoanthropologists who would themselves need these issues in scientific guidance.

In order to break through this vicious circle, Porshnev resolutely set about filling in the gaps mentioned above in zoology, physiology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and so on.

Porshnev is a materialist. And in this regard, he is not alone in the circle of anthropologists. However, he is perhaps the only materialist researcher who has taken into account, assimilated the whole array of religious criticism of materialistic ideas about anthropogenesis, which has accumulated since the release of Darwin's book. Origin of Species. Of all the materialistic concepts of the origin of man, Porshnev's concept today remains the only one that has managed to eliminate all those naively simplified elements of the materialist approach to the problem, which religious criticism has long and quite reasonably pointed out.

Without any exaggeration, we can say: if at the level of modern knowledge of facts there is an alternative to religious ideas about anthropogenesis, then this is Porshnev's concept. Even despite the fact that no one has been working with her professionally for 25 years. All other concepts cannot be recognized as such an alternative.

I want to emphasize: no matter how great and significant specific discoveries in various aspects of this vast problem are, no matter how promising for further research the bold hypotheses put forward by him, the most important significance of Porshnev’s research in the field of anthropogenesis lies in the field of philosophy: in the development of such a concept that in the context of scientific knowledge of the late XX century does not need a hypothesis about the creator.

It is characteristic that, responding to accusations of "anti-science", "striving for a sensation", etc., which began to be heard about Porshnev's search for "Bigfoot", he emphasized precisely the philosophical significance of his discoveries:

"And today, very few people still understand that troglodytes are a great event in philosophy. In philosophy, citizens of the judge, in philosophy there was a sensation, but that was not what the prosecution meant. Materialism is the healer of blindness. Thanks to him, we saw what was under one's nose, but what one shouldn't have seen. Not a monster, not a worthless wonder of mountains and thickets, but a paramount fact of "philosophical anthropology""

According to Porshnev, two false postulates prevented a serious scientific breakthrough in the study of anthropogenesis.

The conviction that the archaeological remains of the life activity of fossil hominids prove that they have an abstract-logical (conceptual), creative thinking, and therefore require the recognition of people not only neoanthropes, but also paleoanthropes (Neanderthals) and even more ancient species.
This postulate has two main roots - the myth of hunting large animals as the main occupation of the human ancestor and the myth of the invention of fire by him.
The belief that the evolutionary form that preceded homo sapiens had died out disappeared from the face of the Earth immediately after the appearance of this latter.

The main work of Porshnev, summing up his research in the field of anthropogenesis and outlining a program for further research, is About the beginning of human history (Problems of paleopsychology)- was published two years after the death of the author - in 1974.

The published book did not include three chapters from the manuscript. Two of them included a carefully and thoroughly substantiated refutation of the two named myths underlying the first false postulate. Forced to shorten the text, Porshnev decided that it was more important to preserve the methodology than the details of the empirical evidence. The third chapter of those not included concerned the second false postulate. Some of this chapter was included in the text of the book. But not all. In general, Porshnev considered it less successful. Looking ahead, I note that research on the topics of this chapter is the most difficult, but also the most important for the further development of the entire concept and even the entire science of "human society and social man."

And only when the scientific community of anthropologists managed to almost completely isolate themselves from Porshnev, completely free themselves from the need to listen to him, did a "miracle" happen in the anthropological community: Porshnev's conclusions regarding the origin of fire and the diet of the closest human ancestors were accepted. Today, the vast majority of anthropologists actually share those conclusions for the recognition of which Porshnev fought selflessly and unsuccessfully for almost twenty years. However, these selfless efforts are practically unknown to anyone today or completely forgotten. Recognition was given to the conclusions, the correctness of which was first proved by Porshnev, but his superiority is not recognized.

Unlike the first two myths or prejudices noted by Porshnev, the third is still shared by the absolute majority of specialists. It is this third prejudice that makes it difficult to see the topic of the divergence of paleoanthropes and neoanthropes (as the key biological problem of the transition to sociality) and all its most complex aspects.

As mentioned above, this prejudice is extremely simple: the appearance of man led to a very rapid extinction of the ancestral form. To overcome this prejudice, Porshnev launched an offensive in four directions.

First, he carefully, in all aspects and nuances, analyzed all those insoluble contradictions, to which any attempts to reconstruct the appearance of man inevitably lead, while maintaining the named prejudice. Porshnev convincingly showed that such reconstructions, for all their differences, inevitably lead to the same logical dead end, from which there is only one honest way out: to admit that without the hypothesis of a creator, the problem of the appearance of man is fundamentally unsolvable. This direction lies again at the intersection of zoology and philosophy.

Secondly, Porshnev showed that the traditional myth contradicts all the available data of zoology, which, as already noted, most anthropologists were not familiar with. More precisely, from zoological literature, anthropologists were well aware only of journalism, replete with fashionable anthropomorphisms, but not strictly scientific zoological literature. All the data of zoology convincingly testify that the rule of speciation is the long-term coexistence of a new species, budding from an ancestral form, with the latter. Consequently, the burden of proof in the dispute between supporters and opponents that the appearance of man was the rarest zoological exception should lie precisely on the supporters of exceptionalism.

Thirdly, Porshnev did a gigantic job of collecting facts about the parallel existence of the nearest ancestral form (paleoanthrope) next to man (neoanthrope) not only in prehistoric times, but also in the modern era up to the present day. He showed that the relict animal ancestor of man, which has survived to this day, known under various names (in particular, as "Bigfoot"), although somewhat degraded, having lost some of the skills that have become redundant, but remained a representative of the same ancestral species - a relict paleoanthrope.

The final book of 34 copyright sheets, summarizing the many years of selfless work of Porshnev and his closest collaborators, met with fierce resistance from the scientific community, but still came out:

“It is true that the book was printed in such a print run as the medieval early printed books were, one hundred and eighty copies. But it entered the world of human books. director of the Institute of Anthropology of Moscow State University ordered not to purchase a single copy for the library. It existed from now on"

Fourthly, Porshnev reconstructed the appearance of man on the basis of alternative premises corresponding to the data of zoological science.

In the course of work in the fourth direction, Porshnev had to distinguish himself by serious research not only in zoology, but also in a number of other sciences.

Having gone through a whole series of ecological crises and acquired in the course of natural selection absolutely amazing biological and neurophysiological "tools" of adaptation, the animal ancestor of man at the end of the Middle Pleistocene faced a new crisis that threatened him with inevitable extinction. This ancestor, in accordance with Porshnev’s research mentioned in the previous section, built himself an interdiction using the neurosignal mechanism of interdiction (it will be discussed below, in the section Physiology) unique symbiotic relationships with numerous predators, herbivores, and even birds. The ability to use the biomass of animals that died of natural death or killed by predators for food was provided by a tough instinct that did not allow him to kill anyone.

“And now, along with a critical reduction in the biomass they get, they had to compete with predators in the sense that they still start killing someone. But how to combine two such opposite instincts: “do not kill” and “kill”?

Judging by many data, nature prompted [...] a narrow path (which, however, later led evolution to an unprecedented road). The solution to the biological paradox was that instinct did not forbid them from killing members of their own species. [...] The ecological gap left for self-salvation in a specialized species of bipedal primates doomed by nature, omnivorous by nature, but carrion-eating according to the main biological profile, was to use part of its population as a self-reproducing food source. Something remotely similar to such a phenomenon is not unknown in zoology. It is called adelfophagy ("eating fellows"), sometimes reaching a more or less noticeable character in some species, although it never becomes the main or one of the main sources of nutrition.

After analyzing numerous zoological data on cases of adelfophagy, as well as archaeological data indicating attempts by a paleoanthrope to embark on this path, Porshnev comes to the conclusion:

“The only way out of the contradictions was the splitting of the very species of paleoanthropes into two species. A new one broke away relatively quickly and violently from the previous one, becoming an ecological opposite. If the paleoanthropes did not kill anyone other than their own kind, then the neoanthropes represented an inversion: as they turned into hunters It was the paleoanthropes that killed them. At first they differ from other troglodytes in that they do not kill these other troglodytes. And much, much later, having laced themselves from the troglodytes, they no longer only killed the latter, like any other animals, as "non-humans", but also killed similar themselves, that is, neoanthropes, each time with the motive that they are not quite people, rather closer to "non-humans" (criminals, strangers, non-believers)".

An analysis of zoological data (starting with Darwin) on various forms of speciation leads Porshnev to the conclusion about a kind of "spontaneous artificial" selection underlying the divergence:

“It was by quite “unconscious” and spontaneous intensive selection that the paleoanthropes isolated special populations from their ranks, which then became a separate species. The form isolated from crossing, apparently, met, first of all, the requirement of susceptibility to interdiction. These were “large-browed”

. They were quite successful in suppressing the impulse to kill paleoanthropes. But the latter could eat part of their offspring. The "big foreheads" could also be induced to overpower the "not to kill" instinct, that is, they could be induced to kill for paleoanthropes as a "ransom" of various animals, at first at least sick and weakened, in addition to the previous sources of meat food. One of the symptoms for spontaneous selection was probably the hairlessness of their body, as a result of which the entire surrounding animal world could visibly differentiate them from hairy - harmless and safe - paleoanthropes.
This process cannot be empirically described, since fossil data are poor, it can only be reconstructed by a retrospective analysis of later cultural phenomena - spinning them back, going back to the lost initial links. We will accept as a methodological premise the notion that the development of culture does not continue, but denies and in every possible way transforms what people have left behind the threshold of history. In particular, the whole huge complex of phenomena related to the varieties of funeral cults, that is, the infinitely diverse treatment of the corpses of brothers and tribesmen, is a denial and prohibition of the habits of paleoanthropes. People of different historical eras and cultures "buried" in every possible way, that is, they saved, hid the dead, which made it impossible to eat them. An exception, which, perhaps, just goes back to the turning point we are interested in, is the leaving of the dead specifically for eating by the "devas" in the ancient pre-Zoroastrian religion of the Iranians and in Parsism. Do not the "devas" appear here as the successors of fossil paleoanthropes? Perhaps the same can be suspected in the rite of lowering the deceased on a raft down the river, in the rite of leaving him on the branches of a tree, high in the mountains, etc. "

Porshnev's interpretation of the most ancient burials as manifestations of the first cultural prohibitions will be given below in the section Culturology.

Traces of the use of a specially grown part of the population of neoanthropes as a food base for paleoanthropes have been preserved - notes Porshnev - in the so-called initiation rites:

"Their essence lies in the fact that adolescents who have reached puberty (mainly boys and to a lesser extent - girls), grown up in considerable isolation from the adult composition of the tribe, are subjected to rather painful procedures and even partial mutilation, symbolizing mortification. This rite is performed somewhere sometime in the forest and expresses, as it were, the sacrifice of these adolescents and the devouring of forest monsters.The latter are fantastic replacements for the once not at all fantastic, but real devourers - paleoanthropes, just as the action itself was not a performance, but a genuine killing. this phenomenon played a role at the origins of mankind, survived in the form of initiations, science learned from the wonderful book by V. Ya. Propp

, which showed that a huge part of fairy-tale mythological folklore is a later transformation and rethinking of the same initial core: the sacrifice of boys and girls to the monster, or, more precisely, this act, already transformed into different versions of the initiation rite.

Porshnev explains the long-term preservation of human sacrifices, which have already separated from the function of serving as a food base for paleoanthropes, by the following reasons:

"If once the killing of people was associated with the specific relationship of neoanthropes with paleoanthropes and was very early replaced by the sacrificial killing of animals, in particular cattle, then in Central and South America large livestock was almost absent and the primitive rite was preserved until the time of complex cults, while the ancient Greeks since time immemorial, they have replaced human sacrifices with hecatombs - mountains - of slaughtered cattle offered to deities of any rank.

After analyzing numerous data on the evolution of sacrifices, Porshnev summarizes:

"Thus, in our eyes, the curve of the ascending biological significance of these sacrifices is first restored, that is, an increase in the volume of food sacrificed for non-humans (or rather, anti-humans), and later begins and then sharply replaces this real biological function with a symbolic function. The latter can come as if directly from human sacrifices (religious suicide, self-mutilation, self-restraint in the form of fasting and asceticism, imprisonment), and from sacrifices of livestock and food (animal dedication, sacrifice of first-fruits, feeding a fetish, burning, splashing, libation)".

Porshnev sums up his analysis of divergence as follows:

“So, if, on the one hand, we feel in the depths of divergence the killing of a significant part of the juveniles of a certain lacing variety (the number of these juveniles was gradually reduced to the rite of sacrificing only the firstborn), then, on the other hand, we also find the mutual killing of each other by adults from this second line came slavery, that is, the preservation of life for the wounded and prisoners, and its subsequent transformations and mitigations in the further economic evolution of mankind, and on the other hand, all forms of peaceful neighborhood, that is, the transformation of wars into the stability of borders, into the delimitation of coexisting ethnic groups, cultures and states.Wars have remained as sporadic cataclysms that humanity still cannot overcome.

But our theme is only the beginning of human history. The divergence or detachment from paleoanthropes of one branch that served as nourishment for the original one is what we find in the source, but a direct study of this biological phenomenon is unthinkable. We can only reconstruct it, as well as all the overwhelming power of its consequences, almost exclusively from the later results of this upheaval: with the help of our knowledge of historical man and human history.

Pishnev's analysis of emerging cultural prohibitions associated with the further evolution of family and sexual relations of people will be discussed below in the section Culturology.

The above excerpts partly answer the question of the reasons for the gigantic, but almost unaccountable resistance of fellow scientists and the "public" in general, which Porshnev had to face all his life. The introduction of this concept into scientific circulation, into the sphere of wide public discussion, can cause a culture shock of unprecedented scale and depth.

All universal values, both religious and secular, both "Western" and "Eastern", will require a deep revision, rethinking, "re-justification". After all, on the one hand, the entire cultural "self-consciousness" of a person was formed due to the need to "distance" from one's past, from one's ancestor (more on this will be discussed below), but, on the other hand, the actually achieved "distancing" is reliably provided only by one : the naive belief that "we" by definition from "the very beginning" are "their" (real ancestors) opposite.

And here the "clever" Porshnev appears and tries to open "us" eyes to the fact that "we" are just turning into this very opposite (and will turn for a long time), while "we" owe their appearance on earth to some disgusting animal , which specially brought "us" by artificial selection to perform the only function - to serve as a food base for it! Something like a "thinking" beef cow...

Porshnev noted in one place: if we sum up all the ethical ideas about the disgusting, vile, dirty, unworthy of a person, then we get nothing more than a real image of a paleoanthrope from the times of divergence. And that means the image of the first people who, looking at the paleoanthrope, as if in a mirror, slowly began to "correct".

How to live, knowing that "we", people, by biological definition, are "worse than animals", that the killing of our own kind is not a "deviation", but the true "our" nature, which distinguishes "us" from all other animals (in the latter - Is this the exception, not the rule?

How to live, knowing that the beautiful custom of giving flowers is just the result of a deep and long transformation of "our" ancient and completely "ugly" main function - to present as a "gift" to some vile animals of their own children, produced for this into the world in large numbers and personally killed?

The image of a "highly moral person" as just a difficult and not fully achieved result of historical development is weak and, most importantly, completely unusual comfort...

How can you not be frightened here "unaccountably"? How not to reject decisively? How not to try to refute? How not to plug your ears if you can't refute?

Studies of the physiological prerequisites of human speech allowed Porshnev to translate the problem of the "sign" into the genetic plane - "Which of these two signs is more original?":

"The answer is: the second. This is indirectly evidenced, by the way, by the semasiological nature of proper names in modern speech: if they, like all words, satisfy the second feature, then substitution by another sign is less pronounced in proper names, and in the limit even tends to zero [...] In other words, proper names in modern speech activity are monuments, albeit worn out, of that archaic time when words had no meaning at all"

Hence, in the original paragraph, the word "doesn't matter":

"Language signs appeared as an antithesis, as a denial of reflex (conditioned and unconditioned) stimuli - signs, indicators, symptoms, signals. [...] Human language signs are basically defined as antagonists to those that are perceived or given by any animal"

On the other hand, Porshnev showed that of the three main functions of human speech signs identified by semiotics (semantics, syntax, pragmatics), the most ancient and, in this sense, the most important is the pragmatic function - the relation of the word to human behavior.

Summing up his analytical review of research on the psychology of speech, Porshnev throws a bridge from linguistics - through psychology - already to physiology:

“As for the latest successes in the psychology of speech, we can now summarize what has been said above: the prospect of showing the control function of the second signal system, human speech signs, both in lower mental functions, including the work of the sense organs, in reception, in perception, has come to light. and in higher mental functions and, finally, in the sphere of action, activity. The forecast is justified that little by little, with further advances in science, nothing from the human psyche and almost nothing from the physiological processes in humans will remain outside the bracket "

The latter (the control function of speech in relation to physiological processes) is not only analyzed by modern science in a number of cases, but is also included in some special "practices": for example, all known "miracles" demonstrated by "yogis" reveal exactly the ability, relying on the mechanisms of the second signaling system, to consciously manage even the genetically most ancient physiological functions of the body, including those that are under the control of the autonomic nervous system, that is, they are common to humans and plants.

Porshnev writes on the same subject elsewhere:

“Human words are able to overturn what the “first signal system” developed - conditioned reflex connections created by higher nervous activity and even innate, hereditary, unconditioned reflexes. It, like a storm, can break into seemingly reliable physiological functions of the body. can sweep them away, turn them into opposites, scatter and shuffle them in a new way [...] There is no such biological instinct in a person, there is no such primary signal reflex that could not be transformed, canceled, replaced by the reverse through the second signal system - speech "

An analysis of the neurophysiological prerequisites for the formation of speech in the closest human ancestors allowed Porshnev to assert that the "word" arose as a tool for forcing one another, an external "order", from which it was impossible to evade. This is also consistent with the data of linguistics about the greatest antiquity among the parts of speech of the verb, and of the nouns - proper names (which arose as signs of the prohibition to touch, touch).

Therefore, it is necessary to assume that one individual "forced" the other to do something contrary (opposite) to the signals prompted by its sensory sphere: otherwise, there would be no biological sense in the occurrence of this mechanism.

Even such a cursory and superficial review shows how Porshnev's approach to the analysis of the origin of "sociality" is richer and more promising than traditional arguments about "joint labor activity." As if bees or beavers "work" not "together".

Only with the advent of speech, language can we talk about the emergence of man (and human labor). Porshnev proved that in the biblical "in the beginning was the word" there is much more materialism (and Marxism) than in references to "labor", "collective hunting", etc. However, that "word", which, indeed, was "in the beginning", was the bearer of coercion, and not the meaning, not the designation.

After analyzing a huge array of studies by domestic and foreign specialists who studied various aspects of human speech (the second signal system, according to Pavlov), Porshnev states that the general development of science has come close to resolving the question of how the "labor" of an animal differs from human labor:

"The key phenomenon of human labor is the subordination of the will of the worker as the law of a certain conscious goal. In the language of modern psychology, this can be an external instruction (command) or auto-instruction (intention, design)"

Labor, in the strict human sense, presupposes something more than the "jointness" of action, it presupposes compulsion one another. What in the course of development is internalized into "self-compulsion", etc. The initial biological situation that brought coercion to the fore was generated by the divergence of the ancestral species, as discussed above.

True, here again it begins to "smell" of Marxism, exploitation, surplus value ... For more details on this, see below in the section Economic Sciences.

All further development of speech communication consisted in the development of more and more complex tools for protecting against the need to automatically execute a "command", on the one hand, and tools for breaking such protection. This will be discussed in the following sections of this review.

In linguistics, almost the same thing happened as in anthropology: Porshnev is practically not remembered (with a few exceptions), no one is explicitly engaged in the further development of the Porshnev paradigm, however, in an implicit form, Porshnev's main conclusions are actually recognized by most linguists today.

The dominant principle is fully implemented only at the pole of inhibition, that is, as inhibitory dominant. But at the same time, the possibility of inversion of these centers, the possibility of "inversion of the inhibitory dominant" remains.

All external stimuli, falling into the sensory sphere of the animal, are differentiated into "relevant" and "irrelevant." The first are sent to the "Pavlov center", the second - to the "Ukhtomsky center". In accordance with the principle of dominance, this second center quickly "overflows" and passes into the phase of inhibition. In other words, everything that can interfere with the desired action is collected in one place and decisively inhibited. Thus, the “Ukhtomsky center” provides the “Pavlov center” with the opportunity to build complex chains of reflex connections (the first signal system) to carry out the “business” biologically necessary for the animal without interference:

“According to the proposed view, any excited center (we will conditionally express it this way for simplicity), which is dominant at a given moment in the sphere of excitation, is associated with some other center, which at the same moment is in a state of inhibition. In other words, with the behavioral the act correlates another specific behavioral act, which is predominantly and inhibited"

It is precisely such hidden "behavioral acts" that are useful to the animal only by its "attractive" force for everything unnecessary, and are discovered by the experimental physiologist in the so-called "ultraparadoxical" phase in the form of an "inadequate reflex": instead of drinking, the animal suddenly begins to "scratch" " etc.

This "paired" mechanism of "Pavlov-Ukhtomsky" conceals in itself a whole revolution in the animal world, for it opens up the possibility for one animal to interfere in the "actions" of another. After all, if it is possible to convert an inhibited action into an active form, then the “action” associated with it, biologically useful at the given moment for the animal, turns out to be paralyzed, because the center, which provided the latter “according to Pavlov”, switches to the mode of operation “according to Ukhtomsky”. In order for a system of distant interaction to arise on the basis of such an "inversion of the inhibitory dominant", one more link is necessary - imitation, imitation: the active side of the interaction performs some action, which, being "imitated" by the passive side, automatically inhibits the action carried out by the latter:

The combination of these two physiological agents - inhibitory dominance and imitativeness - gave a new quality, namely, the possibility, provoking imitation, to bring to life an "anti-action" to any action, that is, to inhibit any action in another individual without the help of positive or negative reinforcement and on distance"

Porshnev called such a distant (mediated by an imitation reflex) neurosignal effect of one individual on another "interdiction". Here is an example of "defensive" interdiction in a herd given by Porshnev:

“Some leader, who is trying to give a command, is suddenly forced to interrupt it: the members of the herd frustrate this act by causing him, at a decisive moment, remotely, say, to scratch his head or yawn, or fall asleep, or some other reaction that it irresistibly provokes (as an inversion of the inhibitory dominant) the law of imitation"

With this example, Porshnev illustrates the necessary conditions for the appearance of interdiction. It appears precisely when the human ancestor, who has a highly developed imitative reflex, due to the changing ecological environment, increasingly had to accumulate in more and more numerous and random groups, where such a reflex not only became dangerous - its irresistible force already threatened "a biological catastrophe". ". Interdiction, overcoming the irresistible (nothing else) force of imitation, precisely prevents this threat.

Thus, imitation plays a twofold role in the development of interdiction. On the one hand, a developed imitative reflex provides a channel for the transmission of the interdictive signal itself. On the other hand, the same developed imitative reflex turns the interdictive signaling effect into a necessary condition for the survival of this species.

Interdiction - writes Porshnev - "constitutes the highest form of inhibition in the activity of the central nervous system of vertebrates" .

An analysis of the available data on ecological niches in which at different stages the human ancestor had to "fight for existence", on the evolution of his brain, on an unprecedentedly close relationship with a huge number of other animals, leads Porshnev to a twofold conclusion:

the human ancestor had all the anatomical and physiological prerequisites for mastering interdiction;
without the development of such tools, the human ancestor was doomed to extinction.

Having "discovered" for itself interdiction as a way of signaling influence on its own kind, the human ancestor immediately began to spread this practice in relation to all other animals. Porshnev's research led him to the conclusion that the human ancestor "practiced" interdiction on the widest scale, in relation to a wide variety of mammals - predators and herbivores - and even birds.

The development of interdiction allowed the human ancestor to occupy a completely unique ecological niche, to build symbiotic relationships that had never been seen before in the animal world.

About ten years ago, an elderly Leningrad physiologist, in a private conversation, explained the current situation as follows: modern physiologists recognize only that which is the result of using a microscope, a scalpel, chemical analysis, etc. Everything else is "philosophy".

Nevertheless, I would venture to express my confidence that the need of physiologists for "philosophy" in the spirit of Pavlov, Ukhtomsky and Porshnev has not disappeared forever. She will be back.

[ The following chapters have been omitted, which basically provide an exposition of the relevant topics from Porshnev's book "On the Beginning of Human History":

In Porshnev's analysis of the main ethical question "what is good and what is bad?" I will note three interrelated aspects.

To the first group, he refers prohibitions to kill his own kind, that is, the restriction of the fundamental biological features of a person formed during the divergence, which was already discussed above:

"Apparently, the most ancient design of this prohibition was the prohibition to eat a person who died not by one or another natural death, but killed by a human hand. The corpse of a person killed by a person is untouchable. It cannot be eaten, as, apparently, it was natural among our distant ancestors in relation to the rest of the dead. An analysis of Paleolithic burials leads to this conclusion"

.
“From the dead, untouchability extended to a living person. He, apparently, was considered untouchable if, for example, he was smeared with red ocher, was in a hut, had pendants on his body. At a certain stage, the right to kill a person is limited to using only a distant, but not contact weapons; along with this, wars appear, which in primitive society were conducted according to very strict rules. However, a person killed according to the rules could already be eaten "
.

Thus, Porshnev outlines the process of gradually overcoming the "property" of a person to kill his own kind. Elsewhere he speaks thus of the process by which the state monopolizes the right to kill (this will be discussed in the section Political science):

“Here we are not talking about an assessment of whether this is good or bad. After all, one can look at the process of this monopolization as a way for humanity to overcome the indicated “property”: as a prohibition to kill each other, carried out “by means of exclusion” - for those narrow situations when it is possible and should (this is the mechanism for the implementation of many prohibitions in the history of culture, in the human psyche)"

Porshnev refers to the second group of prohibitions "prohibitions to take and touch certain objects, to perform certain actions with them. This group of prohibitions is especially closely connected with the formation of a social relation of property", which will be discussed in the next section.

“At the dawn of the formation of society [...] these prohibitions meant the priority rights of male aliens. But the conflict that developed in this way between them and the younger men who grew up on the spot was resolved in the form, firstly, of the separation of the younger ones into a special social group, separated from the older ones. difficult barrier, and secondly, the emergence of exogamy - one of the most important institutions of the emerging human society"

As mentioned above, the system of the "shuffling herd" implies a continuous renewal of its composition, during which new male aliens appear from time to time, adjoining this "herd", and after a while leaving it again.

Of the results of Porshnev's research, affecting such a cultural phenomenon as religion, I will briefly dwell on only two.

First, this is the early history of religious beliefs, the origin of ideas about "good" and "bad" deities. Porshnev's analysis differs significantly from generally accepted views - both religious and secular.

Secondly, it is an analysis of the development and place in society of religion as an institution, as a "church". Porshnev's research shows the closest connection between this institution, which, according to Marxist terminology, belongs primarily to the superstructure, and the class struggle. Below in the section Political science this will be discussed in more detail. Here I will only mention that, from the point of view of the development of the phenomenon of suggestion, the church in the period of greatest power (in feudal society) was one of the two (along with the state) key instruments of "institutional" counter-suggestion, which overcame resistance (counter-suggestion) to the word of the ruling classes (that is, their suggestions).

Considering what has been said above about the peculiarities of the relationship of neoanthropes with paleoanthropes in the era of divergence, Porshnev’s decisive refutation of the widespread prejudice about the almost “bourgeois” behavior of primitive man is understandable:

“According to this current idea, the economic psychology of any person can be reduced to the postulate of striving for the maximum possible appropriation. The lower limit of alienation (of goods or labor), psychologically acceptable in this case, is alienation for equivalent compensation. [...] Indeed, behavior However, even under feudalism, as can be seen from the sources, economic psychology contained much more than this reverse principle: a significant number of medieval legal and legislative acts prohibit or restrict gratuitous donation, offering, donation of immovable and movable property. The farther into the depths of centuries and millennia, the more convex this impulse "

In primitive economic culture, Porshnev states the absolute dominance of precisely "this impulse":

"Mutual alienation of vital goods obtained from the natural environment was an imperative of the life of primitive people, which is even difficult for us to imagine, because it does not correspond either to the norms of animal behavior, or to the principles of the individual's material interest, the principles of appropriation, prevailing in modern and recent history. "Give" was the norm relations."

"These were antibiological attitudes and norms - to give, squander the benefits that instincts and primary signal stimuli would require to consume yourself, maximum - to give to your cubs or females" .

In fact, Porshnev outlines the contours of the science of the primitive economy. However, due to the fact that the traces of primitive economic culture that have survived in our time are more likely to culture as such, this topic is classified under the section "Culturology":

"The norm of the economic behavior of each individual [...] consisted precisely in the all-round "squandering" of the fruits of labor: the collectivism of the primitive economy consisted not in the arrangement of hunters during the round-up, not in the rules for dividing hunting prey, etc., but in the maximum treat and gifting each other. [...] Giving, treating, giving away is the main form of product movement in archaic societies "

On the contrary, the development of human society consisted in the creation of an increasingly complex system of restrictions for this "form of product movement", in the "negation" of the indicated starting point:

"At the dawn of history, only obstacles of a tribal, tribal and ethno-cultural nature stopped "waste" within the local framework and thereby did not allow the ruin of a given primitive community or group of people. This means that the fragmentation of primitive humanity into a huge number of communities or communities (moreover, of different levels and intersecting), standing to each other in one way or another in the opposition "we - they", was an objective economic necessity"

As can be clearly seen from the above passage, Porshnev's analysis is constantly turned to problems that lie at the junction, at the intersection of various sciences, in this case at least four - history, economics, social psychology and cultural studies. Below, in the section economic science, it will be shown that, according to Porshnev, the creation of the described system of primitive restrictions on mutual "squandering" also means the formation of primitive property relations.

The perception of Porshnev's creative heritage in cultural studies is a very unusual phenomenon.

On the one hand, it so happened that culturology today is increasingly beginning to claim the role of the very "synthetic science of social man or human society", the construction of which Porshnev dreamed of. And the popularity of his name among culturologists is perhaps the highest in the sciences in general. In any case, in Russia.

On the other hand, modern cultural studies absolutely does not correspond to Porshnev's criteria of a "synthetic science of a social person or human society." Elements of genetic analysis of cultural phenomena, the most important for Porshnev, are extremely rare here. Therefore, it is not surprising that, in contrast to name Porshneva his valid views in cultural studies are completely unpopular. Within the framework of this science, not only is Porshnev's creative heritage not developed, research is not carried out on the basis of its scientific paradigm, but these latter, strictly speaking, are not even very well known there. [ The following chapters have been omitted:

Of course, Porshnev, to a much greater extent, did not look for facts himself, but used the facts collected by other scientists. But he revealed such significance and such connections between them that the “discoverer” of these facts himself could not and did not want to see. Thanks to this, he was able to fill the "dead zones" that lie at the junctions of various sciences. This issue has been discussed in several sections above.

On the other hand, Porshnev himself discovered many facts. Moreover, he formulated a general methodology to clearly separate "fact" from its "interpretation":

"On the table of a scientist lies a huge pile of people's messages about a phenomenon unknown to him. [...] This pile of messages proves at least one fact, namely, that such a pile of messages exists, and we will not act foolishly if we subject this fact to research. After all perhaps this first observed fact will help at least to guess the reason for the lack of other facts, and thereby find the way to them.

The most dangerous thing for a scientist, according to Porshnev, is to immediately start culling: the least reliable ones are thrown away, leaving only a minimum of the most reliable ones for analysis:

"The starting point should be distrust of the entire pile of messages as a whole, without the slightest privileges and concessions. This is the only way a scientist has the right to start his reasoning: maybe everything told to us by different people about a relic hominoid is not true. Only with such an assumption can a scientist objectively consider an indisputable fact - a stack of messages. Since everything in it is wrong, how to explain its appearance? What is it and how did it arise?

Obviously, what has been said applies not only to the facts about the relic hominoid.

Let's approach the problem from the other side.

For any "social scientist", and even more so for such a "universalist" as Porshnev, one fundamental difference between the social sciences and the natural sciences is of key importance. If a physicist or chemist cannot explain why his brilliant discovery is rejected by society, then the fact of such misunderstanding does not cast doubt on his professional competence. If a social scientist does not understand, then he is a bad social scientist, because the question of the mechanisms of the susceptibility of society (the population, the scientific and political elite, etc.) to various innovations is directly included in the subject of his science.

Did Porshnev understand the problem of "introduction"? Undoubtedly.

After all, it was he and no one else who investigated the mechanisms of protection against suggestion (counter-suggestion) and ways to break such protection (counter-counter-suggestion). He, as a high-class professional, could not help but see what forms of counter-suggestion are being used to defend against his arguments, but he did not find suitable forms of counter-counter-suggestion. The situation is somewhat similar to Z. Freud, who in each objection to the results of his research found one of the "complexes" he studied. In the same way, Porshnev clearly saw in the reaction to the presentation of the results of his research the methods of protection he himself analyzed from the influence of the word.

Why did he not find suitable forms of counter-counter-suggestion?

Of course, man is not omnipotent, and even in the most intellectually developed community, the possibility of recurrences of the most primitive forms of counter-suggestion, which turn out to be especially effective against those who cannot afford to sink to the same level, is never turned off.

However, it seems that the point is not only in this, and even mainly - not in this. I will hypothesize that Porshnev was seriously mistaken in his assessment of the appropriate forms of counter-counter-suggestion.

Porshnev, of course, suffered, so to speak, from the professional illness of any "diachronic universalist" - an overestimation of the level of progressiveness of the stage of development in which he himself lived, obvious to most contemporaries. This is precisely what Hegel was rightly accused of.

It is safe to assume that Porshnev was aware of the threat posed by this disease for him personally. Here is a very characteristic discourse of his on Hegel:

“Nowhere do we find in Hegel a direct statement that the Prussian monarchy in its real state of that time is already an achieved ideal [...]. accompanied by countless praises and ceremonial bows"

The same can be said about Porshnev himself. He both painted a "utopia of the further development" of the USSR (and of the "socialist camp" as a whole), and "presented his demands and bills" to it, avoiding neither "praise" nor "ceremonial bows." However, even taking into account all this (let us reproduce Porshnev's logic of the analysis of the "basic sociological problem"), we have to state: there is too much that he wrote about the surrounding socialist reality, undoubtedly sincerely, but which, in terms of the power of analysis, is incomparably smaller than his studies of other formations. .

Of course, the not quite adequate assessments of the social system of the USSR caused by such a "disease" in no way detract from his merits in the study of the rest of history - these assessments constitute an immeasurably small part of his creative heritage. However, it was they who prevented Porshnev from building a dialogue with colleagues.

He quite often resorted to arguments that did not reach the goal, were not and could not be heard by his contemporaries: he saw in them not at all the people they really were. One example related to the dialogue with colleagues on problems of the history of feudalism.

Already by the beginning of the 1950s (if not earlier), for the majority of serious historians, the glaring contradictions between the canonical (and frozen, from the point of view of concrete content) formulas of "Marxism-Leninism" and the gigantic array of new, reliably established empirical facts accumulated by historians became obvious. during the years of Soviet power. Every scientist faced a fatal fork.

The majority took the path of ritual oaths of allegiance to the canonical formulas in "prefaces" and "introductions", resolutely refusing to actually use them as any important methodological tools. Porshnev, one of the few, "went the other way": he undertook a comprehensive and thorough revision of the very content of the "empty" formulas. It is clear that scientists following these two different paths could not avoid a rapid divergence up to a complete misunderstanding of each other.

However, then Porshnev did not lose hope, trying to clarify that the notorious "formulas" are applicable not only for ritual purposes:

"The authors of a number of textbooks and works on the feudal era, [...] even if they recognize in words the function of suppressing and curbing the peasantry as the essence of the feudal state, further leave this "essence" aside, without resorting to it to explain even the most significant aspects and changes of the feudal state (for example, centralization), explaining them by some other, non-principal, functions of the state. But what kind of “essence” is this, since nothing significant in the history of the feudal state can be explained by it?

From the above words, it can be seen that Porshnev used an argument that could only cause the opposite effect, namely, an extremely negative emotional reaction, the meaning of which he, as a specialist in social psychology, was obliged to understand. Indeed, in fact, Porshnev catches them trying to break through the monopoly of the ideological superstructure "from the flank". He reproaches them precisely with what, in his own analysis of similar processes in feudal society, he attached exceptionally important and unquestionably progressive significance! Could such arguments achieve the goals Porshnev was striving for?

The second example is the one described above in the section Zoology an episode with the reaction of the scientific community to the implicit accusation of anthropologists of idealism. In fact, Porshnev did not take into account that the logic of the evolution of a monopolistic ideological superstructure and the logic of scientific knowledge, which determines the evolution of the theoretical concept underlying this superstructure, can directly contradict each other.

However, I emphasize: the value of Porshnev's analysis of the medieval ideological superstructure, which makes it possible to understand the essence of any totalitarian ideological superstructure, certainly outweighs his own, not quite adequate, perception of such a superstructure in Soviet society, and indeed this society as a whole.

And the last.

After all that has been said, one important question remains. Is it possible at all, in accordance with Porshnev's methodology and consistent with the results of his research, to correct the formation theory precisely in that part that remained most vulnerable to criticism due to Porshnev's occupational illness indicated above? So that it would correspond to all the facts of the last decades of human development, including the events of the last ten years?

After all, the point here is not only to explain, say, the collapse of a number of communist regimes, but also to show unconditional progressiveness within the framework of the "formation process" of these events.
The current state of the issue of relic hominoids. - M.: VINITI, 1963. For an abbreviated presentation, see the Struggle for troglodytes. Space, NoNo 4-7. - Alma-Ata, 1968. Back Back

Boris Fedorovich Porshnev(03/07/1905 - 11/26/1972) - Soviet historian and sociologist. Doctor of historical (1941) and philosophical (1966) sciences. Honorary Doctor of Clermont-Ferrand University in France (1956).

Boris Fedorovich Porshnev graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov and postgraduate studies in history at RANION.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated to Kazan, where he worked as a professor and head of the department of history (1941-1942) at the Faculty of History and Philology of Kazan University. Here he defended his doctoral dissertation on popular uprisings in France in the 17th century.

For the monograph "People's Uprisings" B. F. Porshnev on March 3, 1950, by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, was awarded the Stalin Prize of the USSR III degree for 1949.

From 1957 to 1966 he was the head of the sector for the modern history of Western European countries at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, since 1966 he led the group for the study of the history of socialist ideas, and since 1968 he headed the sector for the study of the history of the development of social thought at the Institute of World History of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Porshnev's works have been translated into many foreign languages. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Clermont-Ferrand.

Peru BF Porshnev owns two dozen monographs and more than 200 articles.

Porshnev believed that the study of history as a set of facts is fundamentally wrong, that this science is just as logical and regular as the exact sciences. He was going to describe human history from this point of view. However, Porshnev managed to write only the beginning of this "rewritten" history - "". The uniqueness of this monograph lies in the fact that the author for the first time tried to explain one of the most difficult questions of the formation of Homo sapiens in the historical period of his separation from monkey ancestors, relying not on mythological guesses, but on strict patterns of development and dynamics of higher nervous activity. All the outstanding achievements of the world and, especially, domestic physiology of nervous and higher nervous activity, related not only to paleopsychology, but to the entire psyche of Homo sapiens, entered the structure of his theoretical constructions.

The history of this book is tragic. Porshnev hardly obtained permission to publish the book, agreeing for this to remove chapters that are important for expressing his main idea. However, in the end, the set was scattered, and the book came out only after Porshnev's death in 1974. This edition is also incomplete.

The first complete edition of the book was published in 2006 under the editorship of B.A. Didenko. Then the book "On the Beginning of Human History" was published in 2007 under the scientific editorship of O.T. Vita, who restored the manuscript in its original version, and also did a great job of expanding the scientific apparatus of the book.

Porshnev's works demonstrate his education not only in the humanities, but also in special ones, such as general physiology of nervous activity, higher nervous activity, pathopsychology and psychiatry, linguistics and psycholinguistics. Deep knowledge in these areas of science allowed Porshnev to reveal the concepts of instinctive and conscious labor, touched upon by Marx and Engels, and their role in the humanization of anthropoid apes.

The main ideas of B.F. Porshneva

There is a fundamental gap between man and all other animals.

Anthropogenesis is not an ascending process of gradual humanization of ape-like ancestors, but a steep turn over the abyss, during which Something appeared in nature and then disappeared, something fundamentally different from both monkeys and people.

"Remnants of the past" in human behavior are associated not so much with the "monkey" inheritance, but with what arose in the process of anthropogenesis.

Human thinking is not a development of information processing methods that exist in other animals, but a fundamental new formation.

Human thinking is primarily collective and was originally carried out by a network of brains connected by speech signals. Only as society develops, individual thinking is formed.

Human labor is fundamentally different from the labor of bees and beavers in that a person first thinks and then does. This work is peculiar only to Homo sapiens. The work of Pithecanthropes and Neanderthals was like the work of a beaver, not Homo sapiens.

Man is not a biosocial, but a completely social being.

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Porshnev Boris Fedorovich About the beginning of human history (Problems of paleopsychology)

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Portal for the student. Self-training

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Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

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