Competition of Civilizational Models of Development as a Factor of Historical Dynamics and Polarization of the World

The problem of historical dynamics and polarization of the world is discussed in the context of the social evolution of mankind and civilizational analysis of history. The latter is theoretically diverse. It contains two alternative research strategies: universalistic and particularistic. Comparing them, the author proposes to consider the process of civilizing countries and peoples in the context of the evolution of communities of the species Homo sapiens and the implementation of a more general macrohistorical trend: the globalization of mankind. It is shown that in this context, the civilization of mankind appears as an other being (its other) of its globalization, realized through a variety of regional socio-cultural forms of embodiment of this general historical trend. The largest and most stable of these forms of human coexistence are civilizations and the development models they create. In geopolitical and geoeconomic aspects, the competition of civilizations for influence, territories and resources concentrated on them is similar to the movement of the geological plates of the earths crust, the movement of which determines the dynamics of world history, forming successive poles of development. At present, humanity has returned from a short-lived state of dominance of the Euro-Atlantic (Anglo-Saxon) civilization led by the United States to the state of a multipolar World. This was expressed in the resuscitation of the civilizational and national self-awareness of the largest regional powers of the planet, who acutely felt the objective value-semantic confrontation with the West as special civilization countries. This and much more stimulated Russia to turn away from the unfriendly West to the South and East.