In spite of the decline and fall of France as a global power, a positive lesson can nevertheless be drawn from the story of the Fifth Republic—taking inspiration from the French, Russia must set out to pursue a civilizational niche of its own—offering a distinctly Russian vision for global development, writes Nikita Ryabchenko, international relations and world development researcher
« Penser fait la grandeur de l’homme »
(Man’s greatness lies in his ability to think)
Blaise Pascal
Yet another governmental crisis in France, unfolding against the backdrop of ongoing financial and economic instability, socio-cultural challenges, a general loss of strategic initiative and a decline in influence over global—and even regional—politics, once again places Paris at the centre of expert attention, showing us what is essentially the waning of the historical might of the French nation.
Under these circumstances, many may feel (and not without justification) that, if today’s Fifth Republic does have anything to teach about the future in strategic and conceptual terms, it is only ex negativo—through learning from failed moves and taking note of how one should definitely not act.
At the same time, from a cultural and historical perspective France (alongside the United Kingdom and Germany, Spain and Italy) continues to represent an important chord in the score of Western European civilisation, embodying an alternative, distinct component of the Greater West—one that in recent decades has seemed to remain in the shadow of its hypertrophied and still dominant Anglo-American counterpart.
Yet, even as the homeland of Voltaire and Montesquieu gradually exits the stage of global great-power politics, it still preserves its spiritual and intellectual legacy, the distinctiveness of its cultural and cognitive code. And from such a broad historical perspective—detached from the troubles of the current political moment—Russia, as a civilisation state, can draw useful strategic lessons from France in a far more positive sense.
Exploring this unusual facet of the French historical experience may begin with answering a simple question: what, in essence, constitutes France’s distinctiveness in comparison with Western Europe’s other civilizational lines? Since the time of Socrates, the threefold foundations of European culture have been laid in teachings and notions of the just, the beautiful and the true (Greek ethics, aesthetics and epistemology). While in antiquity the harmonious unity of these notions was, to a certain extent, preserved, the gradual formation of the main national lines of Western European civilisation led to a shift in the balance between ethics, aesthetics and epistemology, each acquiring its own emphasis. This, in turn, made a notable contribution to the cultural distinctiveness of its “northern” (English and German), “central” (the French one) and “southern” (Spanish and Italian) branches.
The “northern” branch, in its development, placed its bet on a high degree of abstraction and the rational pursuit of truth in the natural sciences, progressing from the legacy of Aristotle to the Baconian paradigm in science, which first gave England and then Germany powerful engineering schools and advanced achievements in scientific and technological progress. By contrast, the “southern” branch, represented by the Spaniards and Italians, traditionally placed greater emphasis on aesthetics—hence the emergence of Italy’s unparalleled musical culture and Spain’s unique school of painting, combined with the sensually rich social practices of both countries.
Against this backdrop, the central, French branch of Western European civilisation has repeatedly tended throughout history to reproduce the classical balance, with conceptions of ethics (that very notion of social justice) traditionally acting as the driver of socio-cultural change. This mental equilibrium of the central, French line in Europe—set against the northern and southern lines—manifested itself in the fact that France’s high intellectual tradition went hand in hand with its aesthetic tradition, the two existing in close interaction, reinforcing and nourishing one another. The motivation behind French intellectual effort, unlike that of the German or English traditions, was not the pursuit of an abstract philosophical ideal or of practical means towards enrichment, but rather the search for principles of organising social relations of the best possible kind—in other words, ethical principles.
It is no coincidence that the French Revolution, though not the first bourgeois revolution in Western Europe, nonetheless became the only Great Revolution of the modern era. Likewise, the French language—an analytical language with a complex grammar—shaped the style of international thinking not in the natural sciences or engineering, nor in music or navigation, but in socio-political philosophy and diplomacy—precisely those domains where the principles and norms of civilised relations between people are created and applied.
The balance of cultural foundations likely also has its roots in the very geography of the “French hexagon” (Fr. L’Hexagone): the geometric regularity of the territory, the diversity of natural zones and landscapes, access to three strategic bodies of water, and equidistance from other Western European centres of development. All of this, alongside the French language and key historical imprints, made a substantial contribution to the formation of France’s unique cultural code.
The relic radiation of this code, which is French through and through, has proved so powerful that it lasts to this day—despite the well-known geopolitical decline and the pressure of downward trends in French politics, economics and culture that emerged after the end of the Glorious Thirty Years of 1945–75 (Fr. Les Trente Glorieuses) and continue up to the current governmental crisis. When viewed from this cultural-historical, civilizational depth (regardless of the political course of the present ruling elites in Paris), the discipline of international relations, serving foreign-policy strategy, is capable of finding within France’s relic radiation those particular cues that could significantly strengthen Russia’s future strategy as a civilisation state, with its already distinctive Russian civilizational identity (in customs, language and modes of thought).
In the task of reviving (Renaissance being the French word) its civilizational identity, Russia today finds itself facing a dilemma. To achieve full civilizational development, it must present the world with a new “wonder of the world” in the form of cutting-edge technologies and social institutions that reflect and transmit its civilizational values and ideals. Yet the pinnacles of institutions and values associated with an attractive way of life remain occupied by the Americans, while the technological heights of the material world are rapidly being taken over by the Chinese. From this perspective, a niche for a Russian “wonder of the world” would, at first glance, appear elusive.
However, it is precisely an appeal to the French civilizational experience that unlocks this conceptual “closed door” from an unexpected angle. The aforementioned French balance of notions of the just, the beautiful and the true finds expression in well-known formulas—French le bien-être (“well-being”) and l’art de vivre à la française (“the art of living the French way”). Both point to a holistic, harmonious understanding of quality of life that cannot be reduced either to a retreat into speculative abstractions or to a ruthless struggle for dominance and enrichment. Rather, within the French worldview, the focus is on a tangible quality of earthly life, where spiritual and intellectual achievements are combined with the fine arts (les beaux-arts), everyday beauty, and a taste for life as such.
Is it not precisely this idea of a high, earthly quality of life for physically, spiritually and intellectually developed people that constitutes the niche Russia could occupy in the competition of “wonders of the world” among twenty-first-century civilisations? Guided by this vision, Russia could, in the foreseeable future, fulfil a mission of harmonising the material and spiritual achievements of East and West, creating integrated ecosystems of quality of life—both domestically and, in clustered form, across different regions of the world (with the existing global infrastructure of Rosatom in its regions of presence potentially serving as a strong foundation).
Such ecosystems might, for example, take the form of “smart green cities” in a distinctly Russian interpretation (re-thinking the globalist concept of the same name and outpacing the famed Silicon Valley), where the human-centred coexists with the nature-like, and where an integral quality-of-life indicator is calculated on the basis of an expanded, proprietary set of material, spatial-temporal, environmental, medical, aesthetic, socio-psychological and other parameters.
Perhaps it is no accident that Dostoevsky remains one of the most sought-after Russian writers in France even today: his aphorism “Beauty will save the world” precisely reflects that same triune linkage of the just, the beautiful and the true which generates the distinctive spectrum of French radiation.
