Alexander Chizhevsky's 1921 claim of a relationship between solar activity and revolutionary mass behavior is examined. A Master Index of Violence-from-Below Events (MIVE) is compiled, consisting of 2,101 events and 4,000 references extracted from 18 historical sources (chronologies, timelines, etc.) covering the period A.D. 1700–1985. [...] The relationship between solar activity and violence-from-below is found to be highly significant (p < .001).
A.L. Chizhevsky (1897–1964), Russian scientist, Soviet Gulag prisoner, and founder of heliobiology, a field dedicated to
studying the impact of solar activity on biological, social, and psychological processes. His work spanned experimental
biophysics and hematology (structural analysis of blood). In addition to his scientific pursuits, Chizhevsky wrote poetry,
engaged in literary criticism, and taught history and archaeology.
At the 1926 Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, an American participant delivered a paper written in 1921 by Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky, who was then a 24-year old Russian scholar. Its bombastic title "The Influence of Cosmic Factors Upon the Behavior of Organized Human Masses, as Well as Upon the Universal Historical Process"
appeared laughable. The author claimed that occurrences of social
unrest, rebellions, upheavals, revolutions are significantly correlated
with solar activity, i.e., with the ups and downs of magnetic turbulence
of the sun. In his own words: "The
greatest revolutions, wars and other mass movements which have created
nations, have given origin to the turning points of history, and have
shaken the life of humanity and entire continents, tend to coincide with
the periods of the maxima of the sun’s activity". [...] Since 1958, after being rehabilitated from Stalin's Gulag system, Chizhevsky has been acknowledged in Russia and elsewhere as the founder of the discipline of "heliobiology." By then some of his claims had appeared less vaunting and more admissible, especially in medical science circles: Typhus, influenza pandemics, cholera, and other epidemic diseases, as well as the morbidity of animals, were alleged to be correlated with solar activity. Chizhevsky's major claim, however, the correlation of turning points in human history with solar maximum conditions, was deemed unthinkable.
Secrets of the Sun — A.L. Chizhevsky's legacy.
[...]
In line with Chizhevsky’s hypothesis it is assumed that human behavior,
if correlated at all with solar activity, would turn spontaneous and
impulsive under helioactive conditions among many people at the same
time. The probability of mass activation would increase. Therefore all
events indicating "violence-from-below"
are regarded pertinent, i.e. spectacular attempts by large groups of
people at enforcing changes of their living conditions. The category "violence from below" has been adopted from Johan Galtung who
distinguished between (1) violence from below (revolutionary violence);
(2) violence from above (counter-revolutionary); (3) horizontal
violence between equals over some incompatible goals; and (4) random
violence, related neither to interests nor to goals. » An event is coded violence-from-below if the chronology
refers to it by one or more of the above verbal labels. «
» The idea of Q-analysis is simple. If historical events are independent of solar activity, their temporal distances from
the nearest solar maximum should be random. Even though a revolution might coincide with a solar maximum due to chance, this should occur relatively infrequently. For larger numbers of historical turning points, temporal distances
from solar maximum years should not differ from chance expectation. The same applies for solar minimum years. «
Unlike
Chizhevsky, we did not lump events of Galtung's four categories
together. Thus, all horizontal violence acts were not considered, such
as territorial or international wars, which are generally not launched
by the people but by institutional authorities. Violence from above was
also excluded, except if such occurrences indicated preceding acts of
violence from below. Galtung's random violence events (Category 4),
such as massacres and pogroms—however rare expressions of mass
unrest—were also included. [...] Palace revolts, coups d’états, and
similar instances of violence without involvement of the ruled masses
remained unconsidered, as well as individual acts of violence directed
against authorities without apparent involvement of a larger population
(e.g., assassination, terror acts). [...]
Conclusions
Evidence has been accumulated in this study supporting the claim of Chizhevsky of a connection between solar activity and violence-from-below. A comprehensive Master Index of Violence Events (the MIVE database) was compiled, and influence of bias was strictly excluded. The procedure of analysis circumvented methodological artifacts arising from autocorrelations. In addition, the distribution generated by randomizations allowed for straightforward significance judgments. Finally, results obtained from genuine data were compared with results obtained from various controls. It
turned out that the hypothesized connection between solar activity and
violence-from-below is positive (the more solar activity, the more
social violence), and the correlation is generally not lagged.
» The more solar activity, the more social violence, and the correlation is generally not lagged. «
A p-value of less than 0.001 indicates the very strong statistical correlation between solar activity and violence-from-below,
making the result highly reliable, with the likelihood of the relationship occurring by chance being less than 0.1%.
In sum, history text references to violence-from-below events tend to coincide with the years of maximum solar activity. However, a number of ensuing problems need to be solved:
- Physical Variables: Which variables are actually effective? Are solar emissions responsible? Are mediators like geophysical disturbances or climate involved? Solar activity effects on the world’s climate are too small and too slow to explain unlagged revolutionary behavior. Geomagnetic influence is somewhat more likely, but cycles of geomagnetism peak about two years later than solar cycles. Cosmic radiation, whose intensity is attenuated by solar magnetism, might be an effective variable.
- Physiological Variables: Which psychobiological structures underlying violence-from-below are responsive to such hidden stimulation? Neural structures for sensory or subsensory perception, for emotional processes, or for cognitive processes?
- Effect Size: How strong are solar correlated (external) factors compared to social-political dynamics (internal factors)? The external factors are apparently strong enough to emerge despite internal political dynamics. If the external effects were weak, they would be diluted.
- Effect Limitations: Why is solar maxima not always associated with violence-from-below? Why did high violence-from-below sometimes emerge despite low solar activity? Historical incidences of unexpectedly high or low violence — “unexpectedly” in view of deviating solar conditions — might be of foremost interest for investigating the range of heliodependence of social-political dynamics.
- Concomitants: The role of revolutionary events in broader societal and historical contexts must be considered. Long wave oscillations have been claimed between liberal and conservative worldviews, and economic cycles of the famous Kondratiev type ought to be put into perspective. The connection between violence-from-below with conflicts of horizontal extension (international wars) needs investigation.
- Generalizations: Revolutionary movements are generally seen as expressions of new ideas rather than as blind valves releasing stowed-up aggressions: “Revolution is ... a war of ideas”. The question arises whether ideational activity in other domains, aside from the social-political domain, may oscillate with changing solar activity-related conditions.
- Present and Future: How strong is solar activity in 1996? We find ourselves in the midst of a solar minimum. Applying our above observations, we may be tempted to conclude that presently the probability of major world revolutions is low. The most recent turning point in contemporary history occurred in 1989, a solar maximum year. The 1989 revolution brought to an end an era whose beginning was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, a solar maximum year. The next solar maximum is expected for A.D. 2000 or 2001. The probability of revolutionary upheavals on this globe should then be greater. It seems advisable, however, to postpone predictions and to rather await further conclusions from research conducted by macroecologists, i.e., by a team of experts from all those disciplines of science, social science, and history whose contributions to solving the solar activity riddle are badly needed. Regrettably, such a team does not yet exist, but researchers in chronobiology/chronomedicine and in biogeomagnetics are not far from setting the stage: "An international and truly interdisciplinary effort will be required to ascertain the validity of biogeomagnetics ... to scrutinize physiological harbingers and their possible correlations with 'space weather' parameters."
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