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The idea of” repeating ” history, in the sense of reproducing large-scale event patterns in a similar (wave) or extended (spiral) chronological framework, materializes the metaphor of a “period”or ” epoch”. The first word literally means “bypass”, “full circle”, and the second “delay” or “containment”. The idea itself is due to the idea that it is possible to resume history after the failure of the” Middle Ages”, which was part of the historical ideology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment: let's make the right history again. Such an idea could be inspired by a whole range of philosophical practices, from astrology to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but it was based on rhetoric, in which different speeches can be created according to the same patterns, while having a similar effect on social reality. The replacement of optimism by fatalism in the historiosophy of Modern and Contemporary times, in the works of Nietzsche, Spengler and others, allowed us to speak no longer of the renewal of history, but of repeated repetition as the value content of civilizational experience. If we understand “repetition” exclusively as the presence of observable patterns or similar logic of similar events in different epochs, then we should rather talk about the proper content of a historical event, which turns out to be similar in a similar event, than about the repetition of history as such.
If by “repeated history” we mean a series of similar events separated by a certain period of time – yes, it repeats. Most often – in the old logic and in the new quality. The best example here is a comparison of the Great French and October Revolutions: in both cases, the revolution “ate its children”, and after a period of powerlessness and chaos, a person who brought order with an “iron hand” (Napoleon, Stalin) came to power. However, there is a high probability that a specialist passing by this web page will call such an example only a play on words: history does not have laws, like physics or chemistry. Historical science does not deduce laws, but studies what happened as a result of their action according to the preserved sources. Sociology and political science have laws. The nature of relations within society, the nature of power can have laws of development. And since both society and government existed in the past, history repeats itself.