World Public Forum for the Dialogue of Civilizations
Rhodes Forum
October 2-6, 2013
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4 - Who should be the Successor of the Roman Empire?
by
Prof. Dr. Dimitri Kitsikis
University of Ottawa, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,
Honorary President, The Dimitri Kitsikis Public Foundation
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1 – What was the Roman Empire?
The
World Empire that we call Ecumenical Empire has vanished today. It had nothing
to do with the Colonial Empires of the past, as were the British World Empire
of Queen Victoria in the 19th century of “Britannia rules the Waves”
or the Imperialist Empire of the United States of today, neither with the Class
Empire of the Soviets in the 20th century. In fact, both the Colonial and
Imperialist Empires were class empires as well, of the feudal class and later
of the bourgeois class, while the Soviet Union was the class empire of the
workers. Any nation in the world that would have become a socialist Marxist-Leninist
state, as Bulgaria for instance, which had expressed the wish to join the
Soviet Union, should have joined the Soviet Union. So, if the USA would have
become a socialist Marxist-Leninist state, then it would normally join the
World Soviet Union of workers.
So
what was an ecumenical empire? There were only two genuine ecumenical empires
for the last 2500 years: The Chinese Empire and the Empire of the Intermediate
Region. From the Intermediate Region was detached as the Moon from the Earth, a
third pseudo-ecumenical empire, starting after the reign of Charlemagne and
developing with the pretentious title of the so-called Holy Roman Germanic
Empire of Charles Quint. In fact it had more to do with the Vatican than with
Rome and it developed into the colonial and imperialist empires of the West.
Only
the two genuine ecumenical empires used the concept of facing the Barbarians.
The Western Empires used the concept of conquering and destroying the natives
and the savages. This distinction is paramount. An Ecumenical Empire is universal
by definition. This means it has no borders. It is not a state with borders.
There exists an outside world, like the extraterrestrial world where undefined
creatures live, that could be superior or inferior, but with whom the Universal
Empire has no relations. It means, an ecumenical empire has no ministry of
Foreign Affairs. The Chinese Empire was forced by the Westerners to create a
ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1861 and the Roman Empire of the Ottomans was
forced by the same Westerners to create a ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1836.
Creating a ministry of Foreign Affairs means that you become a state having
relations with other states. You lose the status of an ecumenical empire.
The
Ecumenical Empire of the Intermediate Region appeared when the Greek
civilization of the city-states, espoused by the Hellenized barbarian state of
Macedonia was inculcated into the body of the Persian Empire by subjugating the
Greek city-states to the ideal of an Alexandrian ecumenical empire. Alexander
did not conquer. He did not expand at the expense of Persia. It was a royal
succession story. Alexander took the crown of Persia, put it on his head,
proclaimed that the Persian dynasty of Darius had failed and became himself
Persian Emperor on the Persian territories.
This
Ecumenical Persian Empire of Alexander and his Epigones was continued by the Hellenized
barbarian Roman state of Italy who, in the same way that Macedonia had done
before, claimed and obtained the succession of the Alexandrian ecumenical
empire. Orthodoxy in the 4th century carried on the task by
preserving the Greek civilization in the form of a Christian Roman Ecumenical
Empire keeping always the Barbarians at large, the empire historians called
later Byzantine Empire. A change of dynasty occurred in 1453 which did not alter
the substance of the Ecumenical Empire but brought something new at the top:
While up to Constantine the Great, the Roman dynasties were pagan, while the
dynasties that followed Constantine where Christian, the Ottoman dynasty that
succeeded the Christian dynasty of the Palaiologos was of another religion,
Bektashism-Alevism, a dynasty that for strictly political reasons, adopted at
the beginning of the 16th century with Sultan Yavuz Selim, Sunni
Islam, in the form of a political ideology, while continuing to be surrounded
by a military and political elite of Christian Romans that had been converted,
through the devşirme, into the
religion of bektashism.
The
Ottoman emperors continued to call themselves Caesars (Kayşar or Kayseri Rum)
and Romans (Sultanı
Rum) and adopted the same enemies than the Byzantines i.e.
the Pope and the Roman Catholics in the West, the Persians in the East. They
relied on a Greek-Bektashi common world leaving at the periphery the Arab
Sunnis whom they pretended to support but who in reality they neglected. On March
3, 1924, with the end of the Caliphate, the 2500 year-long Ecumenical Roman Empire
seized to exist.
2 - Which was the Capital of the Roman Empire?
Alexander
captured and destroyed the ceremonial capital of Persia, Persepolis, in 330 BC.
But the administrative and intellectual capital of Persia was Babylon since 539
BC which continued to be the capital of Alexander and there he died in 323 BC.
After a period of division by the Epigones of Alexander, Rome in Italy arose as
a new Babylon in the time of Christ and this is why in the Apocalypse of John,
Rome is compared to Babylon (and in the 20th century, New York, as
the pagan capital of the West, has also been called Babylon). Being pagan
Rome-Babylon is abandoned by Constantine the Great who moved it to
Byzantium-Constantinople, and was called the Second Rome. So for the last 1600 years,
from 330 AD to 1924, Constantinople has been the capital of the Roman Empire.
The Intermediate Region of
Civilization of Christian Orthodoxy and Islam, between the Catholic-Protestant
West and the Hindu-Buddhist East (representing the three “planets of
civilization” of the Earth) has been represented politically by the Ecumenical
Roman Empire with its capital Constantinople for the last 1600 years. This
Empire was basically Orthodox with two parameters: the pre-Christian Greek
religion and the Bektashi-Alevi religion, while Islam as a Christian heresy of
the Arab people had always played a secondary role inside the Empire.
3 - Who Created the Eastern Question?
The Eastern Question is an
expression created in the Foreign Affairs departments of the West and in the
Political Science departments of the Western Universities to express the will
of Western imperialism to subjugate, dismantle and destroy the Ecumenical Roman
Empire ruled at the time by the Ottoman dynasty. The Western aim was to take full
control of the Eastern Mediterranean and its route to India and stop any
attempt of Russia to descend to the Southern warm seas of Eastern Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean.
Since March 24, 1999, the bombing by
Nato of Yugoslavia and the dismantling of that country, the Eastern Question
has been promoted as a problem by the United States, the British Commonwealth
and its Western Allies, in the same way than in the past. In a planetarian war
that started in 1999 and aims at coming to its peak in a generation, around
2030, by a nuclear destruction of China, this new Eastern Question
systematically creates chaos and the dismantling of political ensembles in
small defenseless states of the type of Kuwait (the Kuwaitization process). The
Western aim has not changed since the 18th century: in order to insure the total control of the
route of Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and the Chinese seas by the
Anglo-Saxons and keep out of the way Russia, plus China today, no strong state
should survive in the way, except as a barrier against Russian descent.
This barrier against Russian descent
was expressed in the 19th century by the English doctrine of the
“integrity of the Ottoman Empire”. There was a basic contradiction in this
doctrine: The Ottoman Empire should be weakened
to the point of becoming “The Sick Man of Europe” in order to totally control
it but it should not be dismantled because then its pieces would have to be
distributed between the Great Powers and England would not have the whole cake.
On the other side weakening meant encouraging national and social uprisings
inside the Ottoman Empire that would dismantle it and this could be exploited
by Russia which then could find its way through the warm seas. This
contradiction went on from 1815 to 1914 and finally at the outbreak of the First
World War, England was obliged to accept the cutting of the cake with Russia
which was promised Constantinople and the Straits in 1915. Fortunately for the
West, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution saved Great Britain which did not have to
give the promised share to tsarist Russia.
The story is the same today with the
leadership of the Anglo-Saxons having passed from the hands of England to the
hands of America. On the one hand Washington encourages since the Truman
Doctrine of 1947 the formation of a state barrier against the Russian descent.
The blue print is still Alexander’s state from the Adriatic Sea to China. This
large territory was occupied by two state entities which were always at odds
and could not be united: the Roman-Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. So
today the best thing Washington could do is to recreate these two state
entities: the Neo-Ottoman Empire, up to now through Erdoğan, and the
Neo-Persian Empire of the future once the anti-Western leadership in Tehran
will be toppled. Already this Neo-Persian Empire was encouraged by Washington
to be formed under the Shah, until he was toppled by Khomeini in 1979. As for
the Arabs, situated further down, at the belly of the two neo-Empires, they
have been used since 1916, since the First World War, as agitators, as
dismantlers, only good enough to secure gas to the Western imperialists.
But the same contradiction is
present in this new Eastern Question: the two neo-Empires have to stay weak as
new “sick men of Europe”, just good enough to stop Russian descent. But
weakening means encouraging national and social uprisings inside the two state
entities that would dismantle them and this could profit Russia, like in Syria
today, which then could find its way through the warm seas. In fact, Assad’s Syria
has developed into a Stalingrad, stopping American conquest of the East, on the
road to China.
Putin, as a new Stalin, forces the
West to sit at the same Yalta-type table and share with him. Washington is
aware that in order to come out as the victor against China (the main enemy),
at the end of the planetarian war, around 2030, it has to divide and rule,
which means to encourage a split between Moscow and Beijing. After all, in the
past, even though Russia and China were both Communist allies, they finally
became staunch enemies after 1958.
4 – The Internal struggle for succession inside the Intermediate Region
During the 18th-20th
centuries Eastern Question, Russia, as a great power was included by historians
among the Western Powers. This was wrong. Russia never belonged to the West.
Peter the Great’s efforts to Westernize Russia proves it. Only non-Western
countries can be westernized. A Western country has no need to be westernized
as it is Western “by birth”. Westernization is the process of cultural
imperialism developed since the 15th century AD, in order to assimilate
the non-Western world of both the Intermediate Region and the East.
On
the contrary, Russia always belonged to the Intermediate Region of Civilization
and it kept its presence at the northern periphery of the Ecumenical Roman
Empire, in the same way Iran was present at the Eastern periphery and the Arabs
were present at the Southern periphery. All three peripheral Empires of the Intermediate
Region were struggling for centuries to take over the succession of
Constantinople to become the Ecumenical Empire. This was an internal conflict
to the Intermediate Region: brothers that tried to get hold for themselves of
the inheritance left by their father.
So
the Eastern Question had two aspects: An internal conflict for succession and
an external intervention of the Great Powers aiming, not at preserving the
Ecumenical Empire but, on the contrary, aiming at destroying it. When in 1919,
the Greeks landed in Smyrna, the sultan in Istanbul “cried like a child” saying
that if the British had landed in Smyrna, not being part of the Intermediate
Region, they would one day be obliged to quit, while the Greeks being part
of the Intermediate Region and
struggling for succession, would never leave, if successful.
5 – Russia as Third Rome
In
1453 Turks and Russians were pretenders inside the Intermediate Region to the
throne of Constantinople. The Turks won, the Russians lost. But still Moscow
proclaimed to be the third Rome after the fall of the Second Rome to the Turks.
Why?
The
proof that both Empires of the Intermediate Region and the West, pretended to
come from the same mother i.e. the Ecumenical Empire of Rome of Greek
civilization, is that in the West as well as in the Intermediate Region, the
claim of being the Third Rome arose. In the West, the second Rome was the
pseudo-Holy Germanic Roman Empire in which Austria’s Habsburgs had attempted to
unite Germany under their rule. So the Austrian Empire claimed that they were
the heir of that “Holy Roman Empire”, and so they were the Third Rome. The
German Empire of 1871 also claimed to be the Third Rome, through lineage of the
Holy Roman Empire. That is why the Germans used the title of Kaiser, which meant Caesar. But this
claim was even more unfounded as the German Empire was led by a Protestant
ruler, not even a Roman Catholic. Still later Mussolini’s Italy claimed to be
the Third Rome (Terza Roma). These
claims to be the Third Rome proved that up to the 20th century the concept of
an Ecumenical Empire survived in the Greek civilization, either genuinely
inside the Intermediate Region or bastardized in the realm of the Western
planet. The concept of the nation-state is totally foreign to Greek civilization
which has always moved between two concepts: the city-state (decentralized
communal organization of society) and then Ecumenical Empire (multinational
decentralized political ensemble under the coordinating rule of an absolute
monarch).
So,
when the Roman Empire of the Palaiologos dynasty fell in 1453, there was no
question for the disappearance of the Ecumenical Empire. In fact, there had
always been one Roman Empire. The expression of “Eastern Roman Empire” was
invented by the West to justify the existence of a Western Roman Empire which
never existed. The Ottoman dynasty who conquered Constantinople proclaimed to
be the Third Rome. Mehmet II declared himself Caesar of Rome. Gennadios, the
new ecumenical patriarch, recognized this title to Mehmet and Mehmet enthroned
Gennadios as the new ecumenical patriarch. Naturally, the pseudo-Roman Empire
of Western Europe could not recognize Mehmet as Caesar of Rome.
The
royal lineage played a decisive role in claiming the heritage. Both the Turks
and the Russians could pretend to possess such a lineage. Mehmet II was
claiming descent from Ioannes Tzelepes Komnenos as his ancestor, sultan Orhan I
Gazi (1324-1360) had married a Byzantine princess. Ivan III of Muscovy
(1440-1505) had married Zoe-Sophia Palaiologina, niece of Constantine XI
(1449-1453).
The
Russian claim was not only based on lineage but also on Orthodoxy, the common
religion of Russia and Byzantium. This, did not have a significant importance
at the beginning because Russia in the 15th century was far away and
still considered a barbarian country, but with time and the decline of the
Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Romans of the Empire (be they of Greek, Bulgarian,
Serbian, Romanian, Albanian, Armenian, Arab or Turkish languages) started looking
more and more to the northern heir they called “to xantho genos tou Borra” (the
blond people of the North).
By
the beginning of the 19th century, social and national uprisings
inside the Ottoman Empire, were calling more and more for Orthodox Russia to help.
The West was extremely upset by such a phenomenon but as, after the defeat of
Napoleon in 1815, Russia was a great power and an ally in the Holy Alliance
with the West, England and France had to sit at the table of negotiations with
Russia, in the same way today, during the Syrian crisis, Obama is obliged to
seat at the same table with Putin.
Third
Rome or New Rome? The second expression was used for Constantinople since
Constantine the Great. Even today, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul bears
officially the title, “Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical
Patriarch”. But in 1589, the importance of Moscow was recognized by the
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II Tranos, who elevated the
Russian religious leader from the rank of archbishop of Moscow to that of
Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1924
and the entrapment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate inside the Republic of Turkey
which does not recognize the ecumenicity of the Greek Patriarch, it is normal
that the Russian Patriarch has taken more and more importance, to the point of
disputing the primacy of the Orthodox world to the Greek Patriarch.
Furthermore, Moscow is placed on seven hills, as is Rome and Constantinople.
The son of Ivan III and of Zoe-Sophia Palaiologina, Vasili III of Russia
(1505-1533), received in 1510 a letter from the Russian monk Philotheos of
Pskov who in an apocalyptic prophecy, stated: “Two Romes have fallen. The third
stands. And there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian
Tsardom”.
6 – The importance of Mystras
Zoe
Palaiologina was the daughter of Thomas Palaiologos, brother of Constantine XI.
Both co-ruled the Despotat of Mystras until, in 1449, Constantine was crowned
in Mystras last emperor of Rome and left for Constantinople. After the conquest
of Mystras by Mehmet II, Zoe was taken to Rome where the Pope changed her name
to Sophia and raised her as a Roman Catholic. He then, in 1469, offered her as
second wife to Ivan III of Russia, grand duke of Muscovy, hoping to convert the
Russian ruler to Catholicism. Ivan III married her in Moscow in 1472.
But as tradition goes, women make
History and Zoe-Sophia (like Hürrem with Süleyman the Magnificent) was a woman
inspired by God. Not only didn’t she convert Russia to Catholicism
but she entrenched her country of adoption deep into Orthodoxy. Her paramount
importance proves how grateful Russia has to be towards the Greeks. Over the
years she gained great influence on her husband’s decisions. She was not
confined to the royal harem with the other women, but ruled in fact the country
and officially received in person the representatives of the foreign countries.
As a staunch Orthodox she transformed Russia into Byzantium by introducing
grand Byzantine ceremonies and court etiquette and entrenched the idea of
Moscow being the Third Rome. She imposed her son Vasili as heir.
Perhaps, Putin had in mind what Russia owes to this
maiden of Mystras when he expressed interest in visiting Mystras this year.
Mystras
today is a village but the symbolic importance of this castle is paramount for
the future of New Rome, compared only to the importance of Constantinople. This
is why, in 1975, I decided to marry a genuine maiden from Mystras and built a
residence there. I founded in 1996 the Mystras brotherhood that since then
publishes a quarterly in Greek called Endiamese
Perioche (Intermediate Region). On July 20, 2013, the mayor of Sparta in
which Mystras is included, received the visit of Plenipotentiary Minister and
ambassador of Russia in Greece, Evgueny Yurkov, who speaks fluent Greek, to
whom was handed the official offer to bestow on President Putin the title of
honorary citizen of Sparta-Mystras. An eventual private visit of Putin to
Mystras, standing inside the cathedral where the last emperor of Byzantium was
crowned in 1449, the uncle of Zoe-Sophia Palaiologina, Constantine XI, should
be of great symbolic importance.
7
– Who should be the Successor of the Roman Empire?
The three
regions of civilization, the West, the Intermediate Region and the East could
be compared to three planets, each of them ruled by an ecumenical empire. Two
planets are not interdependent. Planet Earth does not depend on Planet Mars.
They do not have ministries of Foreign Affairs. They are autarchic. This is why
each of them was ruled by an ecumenical i.e. universal empire. It was the case
of China and of the Intermediate Region that could not be, by definition,
imperialistic. The third planet, a bastard pseudo-planet, which had escaped
from the Intermediate Region, pretended to be autarchic but in fact was
imperialistic and tried to conquer the two other planets, a process called
Westernization. This was due to a psychoanalytical phenomenon of the disturbed
Western psyche.
Each
of the three planets is represented by a main people who are the guardians of
each planet’s civilization. The West is represented today by the USA. The East
is represented by China. Hellenism, from ancient Rome to Orthodoxy, is today
represented by Russia. So Russia has the right to rule over the Intermediate
Region. On condition that it recognizes the spiritual guidance of Hellenism.
This also means that in the Russian realm, the Greek language, bearer of the Roman
and Orthodox civilization, should be taught to each citizen as the universal
language, from the primary school to University. We Greeks, under these
conditions, like in the time of Kapodistrias, are expecting the descent of the
blond people of the North.
8
– Isocrates against Demosthenes
The
kingdom of Macedonia was a barbaric kingdom that was Hellenized in the same way
than Rome. The proof of their Hellenization is that they finally participated
in the Olympic Games. Their elite were brought up by famous Greek teachers like
Aristotle and they adopted the Greek
language and the Greek civilization.
Athens in the
4th century BC was in deep decline. Isocrates was hellenocentric and
a Pahhellene. For him Hellenism had no borders and only Barbarians existed at
the periphery of the Greek Ecumene. On the contrary Demosthenes was an Athenian
nationalist. He limited his fatherland to the borders of the city-state, the
equivalent of today’s nation-state. Alexandrian Hellenism was universal,
Athenianism was shrinking Hellenism. Alexander in 324 BC, one year before his
death, gave a memorable speech to his soldiers. He said nationalism was
destructive while hellenocentrism included all races under the sky. This was a
qualitative jump from the city nationalism of Demosthenes and Euripides’s
provincial racism to ecumenical Hellenism which by encompassing the Universe
reigned over the Intermediate Region for two thousand years, until 1821, when
the revolted Greeks shrunk again into the provincialism of a nation-state. For
instance, even though the Greeks owe their success of the 1821 revolution
mostly to their fellow Albanians, the society of the present state of Athens,
forbids the carrying of the Greek blue and white flag of Bavarian origin, by
young Albanian students who win top grades in their classes and who declare to
be children of Greek civilization, even though the present Greek state is
totally debased, in comparison to its Byzantine past, while the Albanian state
still carries the genuine double-eagle red flag of Byzantium.
Russia started
like Macedonia and Rome, in the middle of barbarianism and slowly rose to
civilization by Hellenizing itself. Alexander fought in the name Hellenic
civilization and so did the Romans. Russia should do the same if it wants to be
as successful as were its predecessors, the Macedonians and the Romans.
Otherwise, the Americans will be staying indefinitely in Eastern Mediterranean
till the Chinese take over.
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