ИСТИНА

1. In the past two decades, the world situation has changed dramatically in terms of increasing tensity within single countries, and between nation-states or their alliances. It seems evident that we are being gradually dragged into a new cold war. This takes place against the background of increasing multi-aspect globalization This state of affairs is brightly represented by various sanctions. «Color revolutions», characteristical of the world order from the end of the 20th century, are even better example of the increasing instability. The best way to solve problems in such conditions is a dialogue of civilizations. 2. «Color revolutions» are different. They destabilize social life and threaten the existing social consensus not just within this or that country. What is the genuine nature of this phenomenon? Is the era of such revolutions over and can they be prevented? Unfortunately this era is not over and the revolutions are not, in fact, preventable. They can only be delayed, or downshifted to some lower level, but only for a period of time, in specific circumstances and with an adequate reaction of the authorities. The causes of revolutions cannot be eliminated by these means. To understand what goes on I suggest comparing some social and natural processes, being far from each other, but resembling one another in their external manifestations. It is enough to have a look at the map of the earth's lithospheric plates to understand that all the geological cataclysms occur at their fault lines. 3. What was said above can be seen as an analogy to what happens in society, if observed through the prism of cultural-cum-civilizational systems, which embrace whole humankind. These systems, like lithospheric plates, cover all social space of Earth and engender, along their lines of faults and collusions, all those tensions and social upheavals, of which «color revolutions» are so representative. Under cultural-cum-civilizational systems I mean self-sufficient holistic social structures that, on the one hand, are completely different as far as the basic parameters of culture are concerned. The presence of numerous discrepancies is accompanied by the existence of some dominating components, common for the whole society, such as language, religion, or ideology. 4. Western model of cultural-cum-civilizational development is characterized by aspiration for mastering the forces and the resources of nature, accompanied by acceleration of scientific and technological progress, by increasing anthropogenic pressure on the environment, by constant transformation of social ties and relations. As for the East, it is normally associated with traditionalism and cultural continuity, with a trend not to interfere natural processes and the natural course of events. The comparison of the Western and the Eastern types of social development lets me conclude that as soon as we observe the world from the viewpoint of its fractality, distingquishing its cultural-cum-civilizational systems (ecumenes), everything what we traditionally call independent cultures and civilizations can be easily arranged along a specific, visible line and positioned within the contemporary global picture of the world. The most valuable result of this analysis is that social conflicts and upheavals represented by “color revolutions”, sanctions, etc., are no more seen as something accidental. Their true nature becomes clear in the course of interaction and collision of various cultural-cum-civilizational systems. The above is the main obstacle to dialogue of civilizations, therefore, it is necessary to attach great importance to the transformations of the modern world and thoroughly study them.