WORKING PAPER SERIES

Identity:
A PostnonclassicalViewpoint

Igor PILIAIEV(Institute for Economics and Forecasting,
The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

March 31, 2023
TC-E-22-2

Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo

TC-E-21-1

Identity: A Postnonclassical Viewpoint

This academic paper was presented and discussed at the Tokyo College researchmeeting on “Identity” held on Friday, March 3rd, 2023.
Released date: March 31st, 2023.

Copyright © Igor Piliaiev

1

ABSTRACTThis paper rethinks conflicting identities in the Eurasian mega-continental
space from postnonclassical positions through a new interpretation of the East-Westparadigm in its fractal reproduction, from the close historical interaction andcomplementarity of East and West at all levels – from macro-regional to local andpersonal.
The author posits that in modern China, at all levels from local individual tothe central authorities and structures of civilization, one can see a hybridinterweaving of three historical Chinas – the imperial, the Republic of China, and
the People's Republic of China.
While exploring the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war of identities, especiallyin the Luhansk region of Ukraine, the author argues that for more than sevencenturies after the Mongol invasion, one can observe a clear fractality in thehistorical and ethnocultural development of the space of the former ancient Rus state.
The contemporary Russia-Ukraine war is being waged simultaneously on
geopolitical, international, transnational, and regional scales, fractally breaking
down, in the deep worldview and values dimension, into many local, interpersonal,
and even intrapersonal conflicts.
Proceeding from fractal universal regularities of the world and society as wellas dynamic changes of the global power structure, the author concludes that the true
ontological reason for identity wars is the denial of the fractal nature of the binary
opposition in identity.
Thus, the full-scale war on the territory of Ukraine, which poses an existential
threat to global security, can be stopped by non-military means only through thesearch, according to the concept of fractality and the fractal essence of society, for acertain balance – axiological, cultural, geopolitical – between the East and West.
Moreover, the only way for the world's leading actors to avoid direct military clash
and global nuclear catastrophe is to abandon the doctrinal or fatally messianic
thinking and adopt the planetary postnonclassical approaches and thus, bridge
traditional dichotomies such as “East–West” or “Ours–the Other.”2

Identity: A Postnonclassical Viewpoint
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to rethink conflicting identities in the Eurasian megacontinental space from postnonclassical positions through a new interpretation of theEast-West paradigm in its recursive dimension, outlining ways to resolve andprevent identity wars in the future from this basis.
We are facing an amazing paradox of our times.
On the one hand, the contemporary world, especially the Western world overthe past decade, has made an impressive leap in moving away from binarism towards
the recognition of fluid gender identities (from two to many dozens of genders), as
social constructs. Scientists in the field of artificial intelligence research and thedevelopment of robotics, in particular Prof. Jennifer Robertson and Prof. Yukie
Nagai, emphasize the importance and relevance, though not problem-free, of thecurrent trend of moving away from “stereotyped minds to diverse minds.”1
Meanwhile, in the field of geopolitics, we have been observing in the last
decade a completely opposite trend – towards polarization, towards the restorationof bipolar confrontation, towards the binarism of political-values, political-regimes,
political-cultural and political-ideological oppositions (conflicts). In fact, we aretalking about the global actualization of the black-and-white dichotomy, the binary
zero-sum game.
In this context, the world in which we have found ourselves since February
24th, 2022 is somewhat reminiscent of the Peace of Augsburg (signed in September

1

Affective (Kansei) Robotics in Japan: Designing and Programming Gender and Emotions in
Humanoid Robots (ft. Prof. Jennifer ROBERTSON). Commentator: Prof. NAGAI Yukie,
Moderator: Hannah DAHLBERG-DODD. Zoom Webinar held at Tokyo College. February 20,
2023. URL: https://www.tc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ai1ec_event/8587/.

3

1555) with its notorious principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“Whose realm, his
religion”).
According to Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, “Vladimir Putin and his
counterparts in the Russian Orthodox Church are driven by a dualistic worldview,which sees the world in black-and-white, as being divided to essentially good andessentially evil parts. Russia, according to this worldview, incarnates the former part,while the West, the latter one. The Russian propaganda effectively appeals to andenhances this worldview among its target groups”.2
However, the same black-and-white political thinking is characteristic of themainstream segment of the contemporary West. As Prof. Kyohei Norimatsu aptly
points out, “To this day, both the new universal norm of communism and rebellion
in favor of ethnic particularities exhibit the same tendency to fall back on a fixationon the West. That said, this is not solely a Russian problem. Outside the UnitedStates and Western Europe, and even within them, there are growing movements
away from modern universals in favor of a return to ethnic traditions. We must be
careful not to think about what is happening in Ukraine and Russia as something
happening only to someone else.”3
Meanwhile, because of synergistic interaction, a new quality is being created,fundamentally different from the dichotomous qualities of struggling opposites. It isfrom this logic that, for example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India is “pursuing
its own interests with a new assertiveness, throwing off any sense of inferiority andrejecting unalloyed alignment with the West.”4
1. The postnonclassical science: historical roots and present features

2

Hovorun, Archimandrite Cyril (December 20, 2022). War and Appeals to Magical
Consciousness. Public Orthodoxy. URL: https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/12/20/war-andappeals-to-magical-consciousness/.
3
Norimatsu, K. (January 31, 2023). Russian nationalism and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Interview
dated October 26, 2022. The University of Tokyo Public Relations Office. URL: https://www.utokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/features/z0405_00002.html.
4Cohen, R. (January 7-8, 2023). Russia’s war paves way for India’s ambitions. The New YorkTimes, pp. 1 and 4. P. 1.

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The ideas of non-linearity and multiple self-similarity (recursiveness) ofsocio-historical processes go back to the Indo-European mythologeme of the “circleof time.” They are found in the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, ancient Stoics, in theteachings of the Greek early Christian theologian and philosopher Origen (thefavorite writer of a most prominent Ukrainian philosopher H. Skovoroda), in the
Renaissance era (when interest in the cyclical concept of time naturally increased),in the idea of eternal return (“The center is everywhere. The curve is the path ofeternity”5) – the fundamental thought of the entire philosophy of F. Nietzsche, in thenoospheric worldview of V. Vernadskyi6 and P. Teilhard de Chardin7. Heralding
the latest discoveries of post-nonclassical science, in the early 1920s, the outstanding
zoologist, anthropologist and geographer Lev Berg emphasized that “evolution itself
is to a large extent the unfolding of already existing predispositions.” 8 According to
N. Berdyaev, an outstanding existentialist philosopher of the first half of the 20th
century, both nature and society are formed by single universal energies, 9 adiscovery of regularities and an epistemic interpretation of which have been
approached by contemporary science – synergetics in particular.
The present-day ideas of postnonclassical science about the fundamental
unity of human, society, and the universe and about fractality, as a universal patternof natural, biological, and social phenomena and processes, are close to Holism10 –the philosophy of integrity – a school of modern Western philosophy, which

5

Nietzsche F. (2002). Tak govoril Zaratustra / Fridrikh Vil'gel'm Nitsshe [Nietzsche F. Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. In: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]. Transl. by. Yu. M. Antonovsky. Ed. by K. A.
Svasyan. Moscow: Ripol Classic, 608 pp. P. 98.
6
Vernadsky, V. ([1943] 2005).The Biosphere and the Noosphere. Executive Intelligence Review,32(7), pp. 30-33.
7Teilhard de Chardin, P. ([1959], 1976).The Phenomenon of Man. New York, London, Toronto,
et al.: Harper Perennial, 319 pp.
8Berg, L. S. (1977). Trudy po teorii evolyutsii [Proceedings on the theory of evolution], 1922‒
1930. ‒ Leningrad: Nauka [Science], 1977, 387 pp. P. 311.
9
Berdyaev, N. A. Filosofiya svobodnogo dukkha [Philosophy of the Free Spirit]. Moscow:
Respublika [Republic], 1994. 479 pp. P. 169.
10
The term proposed by the Protestant Afrikaner, statesman of South Africa and the British
Commonwealth, military leader and philosopher Jan Christian Smuts (1870 - 1950).

5

considers the integrity of the world as a result of creative evolution directed by theintangible and incognizable “factor of integrity.”
2. The phenomenon of fractality in the postnonclassical worldview
In the last third of the 20th century, topologically non-trivial objects (the socalled strange attractors) were discovered through synergy, which radically change
the usual ideas about space. Each of these objects has an irregular, self-similar
structure, small parts of which are similar to the whole object at arbitrary
magnification. Such objects are called fractals (lat. fractus – ground, fractional),
and their non-trivial topological property is called fractality.
Fractality is identical to the existence of large-scale spatial invariance: a partof any fractal repeats the whole with a certain coefficient of similarity. Both themacrocosm (star clusters, galaxies, the universe)andmicrocosm (allmacromolecules, the human genome, the structure of DNA11, water, light, sound,electromagnetic, gravitational waves12, etc.) have a fractal structure, the same as thespace of human activity: social, economic, historical, geopolitical, cultural, etc. 13
The nature of the human personality, identity, is also fractal. Nietzsche points
out that the true purpose of a human is to reveal his/her identity not as a “point in

11

The fractal arrangement of DNA in chromosomes was proven only in 2005 (see: Nechaev, S.,
Vasilyev, O. (2005) On Topological Correlations in Trivial Knots: from Brownian Bridges to
Crumpled Globules. Journal of Knot Theory and Its Ramifications. Vol. 14, No. 02. Pp. 243-263.
12 Another universal sign of the fractal nature of the universe - gravitational waves, predicted by
the general theory of relativity, were experimentally registered on September 14, 2015, by theinternational LIGO observatory (Washington state, USA). See: Orlando, S. (February 11, 2016)
Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein’s prediction. UFNews. Gainesville, FL:
University of Florida. URL: http://news.ufl.edu/articl: es/2016/02/gravitational-waves-detected100-years-after-einsteins-prediction.php.
13 Afanas'yeva, V. V., Kochelayevskaya, K.V. & Lazerson, A.G. (2013) Prostranstvo:
noveyshaya ontologiya [Space: the latest ontology]. Saratov: Nauka Publishing Center, 223 pp.;
Lagarias, A. & Prastacos, P. (2021) Fractal dimension of European Cities: A comparison of thepatterns of built-up areas in the urban core and the peri-urban ring, Cybergeo: European Journalof Geography [Online], Systems, Modelling, Geostatistics, Doc. 987. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4000/cybergeo.37243 ; Yefimchuk, I. V. (2010) Fraktal'nost' istorii.
Obshchestvennyye nauki i sovremennost' [Social sciences and modernity]. No. 5, pp. 146-156.

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the evolution of a race or of a state or of a science,”14 but as an integral phenomenon
that reflects the universe in itself - with all its recursive natural regularities.
In his work “The Ego and the Id” the founder of psychoanalysis Z. Freudcompares personal with a bulb: “<...> if it is gutted, it would be possible to identify
all the successive identities that formed it sometime.”15
By fractality, human and society are self-similar to the universe, being its
integral component. The outstanding American philosopher of the 20th century
George Santayana believed that “nature carries its ideal with it and that the
progressive organisation of irrational impulses makes a rational life.”16 And every
time the mind forms such ideals and chooses such ways of harmonizing relationshipsthat best meet the requirements of life impulses of the individual and society as awhole.
Fractality, as a defining feature of the post-nonclassical vision of the world,
essentially overcomes the nomadological (anarcho-“nomadic”) conception of theworld, proposed in the 1970s by the French pro-anarchist philosophers Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and was later called poststructuralism, having becomethe "mainstream" of European and, in general, Western philosophy in the postbipolar era of the 1990s – the alleged F. Fukuyama's “end of history.” A key conceptsymbol of their nomadology, the rhizome, as a metaphor of postmodern
consciousness, is a network of multiple non-linear anti-hierarchical connections
opposite to the linear structures of being and thinking typical of classical Westernculture. While the root (or pivot)—the key concept of structuralist binary thinking—has a center and goes deep, the rhizome is a structure with a missing semantic center,growing in breadth. Rhizome - a kind of “body without organs” – is not responsible
for any structural or generative model, it is far from any idea of a genetic axis as a
14

Nietzsche, F. (1997, published online on 05 June 2012 [1874]). Schopenhauer as Educator. In:
Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations Ed. by Daniel Breazeale. Transl. by R. J. Hollingdale.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Pp.
125
–
194.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812101.008.
15 Cit. by: Uvarova, S. G. (2012) Sub’yekt kak syuzhet [Subject as a Plot]. Psychoanalysis.
Chasopys. No. 1(16), pp. 30–35. P. 32.
16 Santayana, G. (1922) The Life of Reason. N. J., vol. 1—5. Vol.1. 291 pp. P. 65.

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deep structure.17 The rhizome’s intrinsic “multiplicity” is a negation of the tree’s
properties and manifests at all levels in the absence of any main stem or root. In thiscase, it is obvious that it is not possible to reduce the rhizomatic structure of society
to a single common denominator or single general property, be it liberal democracy
or a free market or, at the other end of the spectrum, a paternalistic empire or anationalized economy.18
However, reflecting the factors of nonlinear multiplicity and stochasticity
inherent in natural and social phenomena (which allowed us to come close to
creating, for example, a quantum computer), poststructuralist “nomadism” striving
to “do away with foundations”19 fundamentally denies causation and the very desire
to harmonize being (individual, society, and the outworld), the knowledge of its deep
integrity, and unity.
By contrast, the fractal methodological approach to the universe, world andsociety is grounded and rooted in the progressive theoretical breakthroughs andachievements of the last quarter of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries.
Thus, from the postmodern understanding of the world, we can take the concept ofrhizome, and from the postnonclassical understanding we can take the universal
property of fractality. As a result of such a synergetic approach, the world, society
in particular, may be represented and cognized as a substantive multiplicity, or
plurality (“rhizome”) of interwoven “tree-properties” each nevertheless having its
root-centers and its own logic of fractal development (ramification). Such “treeproperties” are capable both of “grafting” and being “grafted” by various factors andactors, leading in organic nature to mutations and in the social world to socioeconomic, political, cultural, and even civilizational transformations spawning
hybrid or principally new properties.

17

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Translation and Foreword by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 28 pp.
18
Piliaiev, Igor (2019). The Nature of the Armed Conflict in the Donbas: A PostnonclassicalViewpoint. Ideology and Politics. No. 3(14), pp. 77‒105. P. 78.
19
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). Op. cit. P. 24.

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3. The East-West fractal dichotomy in studying political and historical
identities in the Eurasian space
The East-West fractal dichotomy seems to actively influence contemporary
identity conflicts in the Eurasian mega-continental space, especially along thecivilizational fault line zones of Eastern Europe. At the same time, it is important torealize the relativity of such a dichotomy.
As we know, in the era of the Great Migration, the borders of “political Asia”
stretched to the terrains of modern Switzerland (Avar Khaganate of the 5th-6th
centuries, founded by Attila) and in the 8th century – modern France (the Arabconquests).
In Eastern Europe, there is the historical memory of the Great Bulgaria of
Khan Asparukh, the Turkic and West Turkic Khaganates, and, of course, theEmpires of Genghisides, the Golden Horde, Timur and the Ottoman Empire (thelatter at the end of the 17th century even waged the battle for the “Golden Apple ofEurope” – Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire). Not to mention that prior tobeing within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, and the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth for centuries, the lands of modern northern and central
Ukraine, for over 120 years, were under the rule of the Horde, while the lands ofmodern southern and southeastern Ukraine, since the middle of the 6th to the startof the 8th century, were under the rule of Turkic and West Turkic Khaganates; thenfrom the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 9th century – under Khazar Khaganate;
and in the 16th-18th centuries were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
Whereas adherents of the civilizational academic school consider the culturalorders conflicts in terms of a certain isolated logic of development and evenantagonism of distinct civilizational and cultural worlds (systems), we can, instead,consider the cultural value and civilizational dichotomy in its fractal reification at
all levels – from macroregional to local and personal (to illustrate the above point,
see below a paradigmatic ancient artifact from the Tokyo National Museum and an
English translation of a holistic verse of the widely renowned contemporary Kazakh
9

poet and diplomat Olzhas Suleimenov written at the start of humankind’s cosmicera).

The author’s photo from the Tokyo National Museum’s collection: In the Kofun period ofJapan, local chieftains favored mirrors that depicted Chinese mythology. The non-reflective sideof this Chinese bronze mirror shows sacred beasts and two mythical figures: the Queen Motherof the West and the King Father of the East. Found at Shindo Ötsukayama Tumulus, Kanagawa,the mirror dates the 4th century.
There is no East and there is no West.
The sky has no end.
There is no East, and there is no West,
The father has two sons.
There is no East, and there is no West,
There are sunrise and sunset,
There is a big word – EARTH!
Olzhas Suleimenov.
From the Sunny Nights poetry collection, 196220

20

Translated by the author of this paper from the original text of the poem in: Olzhas Suleymenov:«Net Vostoka, i Zapada net. Yest' bol'shoye slovo - ZEMLYA!» [“There is no East, and there is
no West. There is a big word – EARTH!”]. Panorama Shymkenta. May 13, 2016. URL :https://panorama.shymkala.kz/index.php/world/item/1409-olzhas-sulejmenov-net-vostoka-izapada-net-est-bolshoe-slovo-zemlya.

10Let us consider the fractal-synergetic approach applied to the example ofmodern China.
In viewing the above, regarding the identity of modern China, such definitions
as “communist,” “Confucian,” “socialist,” or “capitalist,” etc. look like obvious
ideological simplifications. In fact, in modern China at all levels – from the local
individual to the central authorities and structures of civilization (cultural codes,
ideology, worldview, social mentality, etc.) we see a hybrid-interweaving of threehistorical Chinas – the imperial, the Republic of China and the People's Republic ofChina (see Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1. Fractal Impact of Overlapping the Historical China Identities

Source: created by the author.

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Figure 2. Personalistic interrelationship of the three key polities of Chinese civilization in the 20th
century – Imperial China (till 1911, with short periods in 1915-1916 and 1917)
Republic of China (ROC) (1912-1949), The, and The People’s Republic of China (PRC) (from1949 to the present)

Zaifeng, Prince Chun (1883 – 1951),
regent of his son Puyi, the last emperor of China of the Qing
dynasty, in September 1912 formally declared his support

for the ROC, since the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until
his death in February 1951 Chun lived and died in Beijing, PRC.

Yuan Shikai (18591916),
Prime Minister of theImperial Cabinet(2 Nov. 1911 – 10 March
1912),
President of the ROC(10 March 1912 – 12 Dec.
1915),
the Emperor of China(12 Dec. 1915 – 22 March1916) ,
President of the ROC(22 March 1916 – 6 June
1916)

Aisin-Gioro Puyi (1906-1967),
the last emperor of China of the Qing
dynasty (2 Dec. 1908 - 12 Feb. 1912,
1-12 July 1917), since 1959 – acitizen of
the PRC with special
permission from Chairman Mao
Zedong, since 1964 until his death – aneditor of the National People’s Political
Consultative Conference of the PRC mi
Chairman

Pujie (1907–1994),
a Qing dynasty imperial
prince of the AisinGioro, theyounger brother of Puyi,
the last Emperor of
China, Member of the
Presidium of the 7th
National
People's
Congress of the PRC
for 1988-1993

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925),
Provisional President of the
Republic of China (1 Jan. 1912 –10 March 1912), the founder ofmodern, republican China

Chiang Kai-shek,
leader of the ROC from
1928 until 1949 in China(including Taiwan forSoong Ch'ing-ling (1893–1981) -–Sun Yat-sen’s spouse since 1915 till his
death, the sister-in-law of Chiang Kaishek; Member of the Kuomintang
Central Executive Committee (1925), Honorary Chairwoman of the
Revolutionary Committee of the KMT(1947), Chairwoman of the PRC (31 Oct.
1968 – 24 Feb. 1972), Honorary
Chairwoman of the PRC (May 1981)

siblings Soong

1945-1949), andfrom then on in Taiwan.

Soong Mei-ling (1898 – 2003) –Chiang Kai-shek‘s spouse since
1921 till his death, the sister-in-law
of Sun Yat-sen, First Lady of the
ROC (since 1943)

Mao Zedong (1893-1976),
an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central
Executive Committee (1924-1927), member of the KMT's
Central Land Committee (1927), founder of the
PRC, Chairman of the Communist Party of China (19431976), 1st Chairman of the PRC (1954-1959)

12

Source: Created by the author based upon data available at Encyclopedia Britannica (URL:
https://www.britannica.com/ ) as well as upon facts found in the following publications: Schram,S. (1989). The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 256 pp. P.
170; Joseph, W. A. (2014). Politics in China. An Introduction. Second edition. Oxford University
Press. 2014. xxiv + 554 pp.; Kirkpatrick, M. (November 3, 2009). China's Mystery Lady. WallStreetJournal.
URL:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703574604574500412440365156 ; Xinhua(October 29, 2003). Madame Soong Mei-ling remembered by all Chinese. China Daily. URL:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-10/29/content_276451.htm.

As Fernand Braudel put it, “Capitalism only triumphs when it becomes
identified with the state, when it is the state.”21 And it was almost never a case for
China.
In the traditional Confucian system, profit and wages are not the principal
motivators of the economic subjects’ behavior. China's economy has never been
capitalist in the sense that profit and capital maximization have never been its main
engine or the basis for decision-making by the main economic entities. It also retains
a strong overall basis towards the East Asian centuries-old tradition of a greater
utilization of human (primarily domestic) than of non-human resources.22
As a typical example, one can take, at this contemporary moment, the great
number of traditional Japanese ethnic cuisine restaurants in Tokyo or traditional
Chinese ethnic cuisine restaurants in Taipei with their stable menus, noadvertisement campaigns, lack of information in foreign languages, and a staff that
almost never speaks English or another Western language. And the prices for these
traditional meals are very moderate. They are family businesses throughout
generations. And this picture is characteristic even for areas adjacent to the worldclass university campuses where thousands of foreigners work, study and live.
So, the nature of the contemporary Chinese economy is not “partially socialist”
and “partially capitalist” but rather a state-regulated market that is not capitalist.

21

Braudel F. (1977). Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Charles Village,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 136 pp. P. 92.
22
Sugihara, K. (2003). The East Asian Path of Economic Development: A Long-Term Perspective.
In: G. Arrighi, T. Hamashita, and M. Seldon (Eds.). The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and
50 Years Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 78-123.

13

In fact, prior to the Great Divergence between East and West at the turn of the
18th and 19th centuries, the East Asian developmental path, and that of China inparticular, was as market-based as the European one, but was not the bearer of acapitalist dynamic.23 From the long-durée world-system methodological viewpoint,
we see that China has its own robust market economy tradition. It echoes with
Grzegorz Kołodko’s insights about China’s “Third Way.”24
4. Application of the fractal-synergistic approach to the analysis of theRussia-Ukraine war of identities, especially in the Donbas region of Ukraine
The lands of Kyivan Rus after its disintegration in the middle of the 13th
century, because of the Mongol invasion, were accumulated over the centuries
around sharply conflicting centers: conditionally European (Galician-Volyn Rus,
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austria,
Austria-Hungary, again Poland) and Eurasian (Vladimir-Suzdal Rus, Grand Duchy
Grand Duchy of Moscow, Russian Tsardom, Russian Empire). Only for a shorthistorical period – in 1939-1941 and 1944-1991 – were these centers in the format
of a single state – the USSR, in which a fractal dichotomy was traced from themacrolevel (the civilizational contrast between the western republics of the Baltic
States, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and the eastern republics of Central Asia, andwithin the RSFSR (the present Russian Federation) – between Ingria, orIngermanland (St. Petersburg and a few districts of the Leningrad oblast), theNovgorod, Pskov, Arkhangelsk oblasts, Karelia and the Eurasian regions of theVolga area, North Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, Dauria) to the subregional and even
local level (the ethnocultural and axiological contrast between the historicallySlobidska Ukraine’s districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and theirmobilizationally industrialized areas, which in 2014 became the base of the alleged

23

Arrighi G. (2008). Adam Smith in Beijing. Lineages of the Twenty-first Century. London, New
York: Verso, 418 pp. P. 93.
24
Kołodko, G. W. (2018). Sotsializm chy kapitalizm? Tertium datur [Socialism or capitalism?
Tertium datur]. Ekonomika i prohnozuvannya [Economics and forecasting]. No. 1, pp. 7‒36.

14

“DPR” and “LPR”). Thus, for more than seven centuries after the Mongol invasion,
we observe not only the civilizational, cultural and geopolitical bipolarity, but alsoa clear fractality of the historical and ethnocultural development of the space of theformer ancient Rus state: Western Rus – Eastern Rus, Ukrainian ethnogenesis in thestates of Central Europe and in the Tsarist Russia, Ukraine – Russia, Right-Bank
Ukraine – Left-Bank Ukraine, the historically Slobozhan Donbas – themobilizationally industrialized Donbas, etc.
This dichotomy was particularly acute during the national liberation struggles
over the territory of Ukraine following the October 1917 Bolshevik coup in
Petrograd. By its civilizational nature, it was a struggle “not for life, but for death”
between the Horde-Eurasian Russia of the Bolsheviks and the imperial absolutist
monarchists who joined them (represented by tens of thousands of former tsarist
officers and generals, part of the tsarist intelligentsia and bureaucrats who
deliberately joined the Bolsheviks because of their messianic-imperial beliefs25) andEuropean Rus-Ukraine, which – although not for long, but quite symbolically inAugust-November 1920 – united on the pro-Western (approved by the Entente
representatives) platform of recognizing the statehood of the Ukrainian People's
Republic (UPR) and allied actions of the UPR Army and the Russian Army of Baron
Wrangel against the Bolsheviks.
Fractal causality fits perfectly into the spiral dialectic of social processes since
the spiral itself is a fractal. If the social system (political regime) stabilizes, the spiralthat will twist in the phase space will correspond to an oscillatory process with adecaying amplitude. If the system is destabilized, the “unwinding” spiral willcorrespond to an oscillating process with an increasing amplitude, which ultimately
leads to the destruction of this social system (political regime).26

25

Shulgin V. V. (2002). Posledniy ochevidets: Memuary. Ocherki. Sny [The last eyewitness:
Memoirs. Essays. Dreams]. Moscow: OLMA-PRESS, 588 pp. P. 579.
26
See: Zhukov, D.S. & Lyamin, S.K. (2011). Fraktal'noye modelirovaniye sotsial'nopoliticheskikh fenomenov i protsessov [Fractal modeling of socio-political phenomena andprocesses]. Pro Nunc. Sovremennyye politicheskiye protsessy [Pro Nunc. Modern politicalprocesses]. No. 1 (10), pp. 161-171. P. 170.

15

The results of a sociological survey funded by Umea University (Sweden)
and conducted by Michael Gentile in the city of Luhansk in late 2013, on the eve of
the armed conflict in the Donbas, testified that “geopolitical identities in Luhansk
have a complex political stratigraphy that includes demographic, socio-economic,
cultural and attitudinal components.” 27 As Gentile claimed as early as 2015:“Luhansk is one of (currently) two main hubs in the ongoing armed conflict in the
Donbas, meaning that an in-depth understanding of the political stratigraphy of thegeopolitical identities in this city provides the key to a better understanding of thespecific context upon which the Russo-Ukrainian war—let us call things by their
name—has been projected.”28
Not so long before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine the author ofthis paper applied the fractal-synergetic analysis to the entire Luhansk oblast
disaggregated into various administrative raions.
According to the results of the last All-Ukrainian Population Census held in
200129, Ukrainians make up 58.0% of the national composition of Luhansk oblast,with Russians at 39.0%. By contrast, in 2001, only 30% of Luhansk oblast’s
population considered Ukrainian to be their native language, specifically 63.8% of
the rural inhabitants and 25.5% of the urban dwellers. In 8 of the 12 raions of
Luhansk oblast where the Ukrainian authorities controlled and exercised powers
before the 2022 Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian language wasconsidered native by anywhere from 93.8% (the Markivka raion) to 62.8% (theTroitske raion) population, while from 6 raions where the state authorities of Ukraine
temporarily do not exercise their powers since 2014, only in one—the Dolzhansk

27

Gentile, M. (2015). West-oriented in the East-oriented Donbas: A political stratigraphy ofgeopolitical identity in Luhansk, Ukraine, Post-Soviet Affairs. No. 31(3), pp. 201-223. P. 213.
28
Ibid.
29
State Statistics Committee of Ukraine (2003-2004). All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001,
English version, General results of the census, Linguistic composition of the population. URL:
http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/language.

16

(former Sverdlovsk)—did more than half of the population (56.0%) indicatedUkrainian as their native language.30
I consider – conditionally and for the purposes of the local fractal-value
analysis of the Luhansk region as an inter-civilizational borderland zone actualized
by geopolitical armed conflict – Ukrainian ethnicity, Ukrainian language, andhistorical affiliation to the Yekaterinoslav31 or Kharkiv32 provinces to be indicatorsof European identity; and Russian ethnicity, Russian language as well as belonging
to the region of the Don Cossacks to be indicators of the pro-Russian (pro-Eurasian)historical and cultural identity. Respectively, I consider ethnicity, native language,territorial affiliation, and historical memory as determinants of some relatively stablevalue identities, even though the latter may be changeable under crucial
circumstances.
My analysis has shown that the strongest pro-Ukrainian identity is mainly inthe northern mostly rural raions (the historical Slobozhanschina and theZaporozhzhian Host’s historical lands): Bilovоdsk, Bilokurakyne, Kreminna,
Markivka, Milove, Novopskov, Svatove, Starobilsk, the Popasna and Troitske raions.
The strongest pro-Eurasian (pro-Russian) historical and cultural identity is present
in the raions of Antratsit, Dovzhansk, Khrustalny (former Krasniy Luch), Sorokine(former Krasnodon), and Stanychno-Luhanske (See the Map below).

30

The author’s analytical calculations according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census
data (State Statistics Committee of Ukraine 2003-2004).
31
In the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries most of the future territory of
the Yekaterinoslav province was controlled by the Zaporozhian Host (Sich), a polity of Cossacks
having been at those times under the sovereignty of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [see:Markova, O. & Khvedchenya, S (2007). Katerynoslavsʹka huberniya [Katerynoslav province]. In
Entsyklopediya istoriyi Ukrayiny [Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine], Smoliy, V. A. (editor-inchief): in 10 volumes; Institute of History of Ukraine of the NAS of Ukraine. Kyiv: Naukova
Dumka. Vol. 4. P. 135].
32
Kharkiv province is the province that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries on the
territory of Sloboda Ukraine (Slobozhanshchina). Those lands from the second half of the 13th
century until the 16th century were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and during the 17th and18th centuries the Ukrainian population, especially the Cossacks, of the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth seeking for free land was resettling en masse to that newly formed border regionof tsarist Russia [see: Markova, O. (2013). Kharkivsʹka huberniya [Kharkiv province]. [In:] Smoliy,
V. A. (editor-in-chief ). Op. cit. Vol. 10. P. 351].

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In general, the aggregated indicator of ethno-cultural identity in the Luhansk
region (2E-3A) proves that in the last year of the All-Ukrainian population census(2001) in this region, the pro-Eurasian identity somewhat prevailed over the proEuropean one.

In this context, the formation of interactive fractal maps (tables) of value
identity in the context of regions (oblasts), districts (raions) and administrative18

territorial units of local self-government seems relevant. Accordingly, the maps
(tables) should zoom in fractally even further – to the level of individual settlements,
their historical and functional parts, streets, micro-districts – and then zoom out
fractally – to the level of the regions, Ukraine, countries of Central and Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union, the whole of Europe, Eurasia, and so on.
Searching for “red” (problem) indicators should be carried out in the automatic
search mode throughout the entire fractal depth for each indicator (index).
On the basis of recent scientific achievements regarding the fractal nature of
the universe and society, and taking into account the relativity and fractality of theEast-West dichotomy, as well as other value paradigms, it seems appropriate tocreate in the future, in contrast to a discrete-dichotomous approach, a computermodel of the value continuum to the full depth of fractal analysis—from the world
system to local levels—searching for a dynamic equilibrium of value parametersin the conflict zone. We see this as an important task of modern conflictology.
Conclusion
The contemporary Russia-Ukraine war is being waged simultaneously on thegeopolitical (actually, the post-colonial and post-imperial phantom pains of thecurrent political regime in the Russian Federation have become the main driver ofthe war), and on the international, transnational, and regional scales, fractally
breaking down – in the deep worldview and values dimension – into many local,
interpersonal, and even intrapersonal conflicts. We have certain parallels of thisfractal worldview and value conflict of “trees” and “rhizomes,” already in the
Confucian dimension, in the conflict between “red” mainland China andideologically “white” Taiwan and “quasi-white” Hong Kong.
In fact, the true ontological reason for identity wars is the denial of thefractal nature of the binary opposition in identity.
In my opinion, the full-scale war on the territory of Ukraine, which poses anexistential threat to global security and even the existence of humanity, can be
stopped by non-military means only through the search, according to the concept of19

fractality and the fractal essence of society, for a certain balance – axiological,
cultural, geopolitical – between the East and West.
We have considered the East–West cultural, value, and civilizational
dichotomy in its fractal reproduction, in the close historical interaction andcomplementarity of East and West at all levels – from macro-regional to local andpersonal.33 Based on this approach, the only way for the world's leading actors to
avoid direct military clash and global nuclear catastrophe is to avoid doctrinal or
fatally messianic thinking by adopting the planetary (or noospheric according to
V. Vernadskyi and P. Teilhard de Chardin) postnonclassical thinking that opens theway to the global civilization of the future, the dialectical overcoming (bridging) of
traditional dichotomies such as “East–West” or "Ours–the Other.”
Meanwhile, proceeding from fractal universal regularities of the world andsociety, as well as dynamic changes of the global power structure with a rising
impact of the Confucian tradition identities, the East-West conceptual opposition
requires further interdisciplinary research and development.

33

Kistersky L., Marmazov V. & Piliaiev I. (2021). Prospects for the East-West Civilizational
Convergence: Confucian Tradition Democracy in the Republic of Korea. Monograph. Prague:
Coretex CZ SE, 2021, 248 pp. P. 193.

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