Solar Activity and "Violence-from-Below" Events | Suitbert Ertel

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%.

 

 Observed and predicted ​Solar Cycle Sunspot Number in the top chart,
and F10.7cm Radio Flux in the bottom chart, 2013-2036.

 

 Experimental Solar Cycle 25 Prediction, updated December 2, 2024.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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. 
   
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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."

Quoted from:
Suitbert Ertel (1996) - Space Weather and Revolutions - Chizhevsky's Heliobiological Claim Scrutinized. 

 

 The Terrestrial Echo of Solar Storms.

See also: 

Alexander L. Chizhevsky (1921) - Physical Factors of the Historical Process. (Физические факторы исторического процесса.)

Alexander L. Chizhevsky (1936) - The Terrestrial Echo of Solar Storms. (Земное эхо солнечных бурь.)

 Alexander L. Chizhevsky (1938) - Les Epidemies et les perturbations electro-magnetiques du milieu exterieur.

Sacha P. Dobler (2018) - Solar History: The Connection of Solar Activity, War, Peace and the Human Mind in the 2nd Millennium. 

Sacha P. Dobler (2020) - Solar Behavior: How Solar- and Geomagnetic Conditions shape Human History.

N. Chandra Wickramasinghe et al. (2020) - Solar Cycle, Maunder Minimum and Pandemic Influenza.

Mikhail Gorbanev (2020) - Shifting Pattern of Extraordinary Economic and Social Events in Relation to the Solar Cycle.

Exuberance is Beauty | On the Political Influence of the Sun

Boris Groys (2017) - During the period of modernity we got accustomed to the understanding of the human beings as determined by the social milieu in which they live, as knots in the informational networks, as organisms depending on their environment. In the times of globalization we learned that we are dependent on everything that happens around the globe – politically, economically, ecologically. But the Earth is not isolated in Cosmos. It depends on the processes that take place in the cosmic space – on black matter, waves and particles, star explosions and galactic collapses. And the fate of mankind also depends on these cosmic processes because all these cosmic waves and particles go through the human bodies. The positioning of the Earth in the cosmic whole determines the conditions under which the living organisms can survive on its surface.

Georges Batailles (1897-1962): "Solar radiation results in a superabundance of energy on the
surface of the globe. But, first, living matter receives this energy and accumulates it within
the limits given by the space that is available to it. It then radiates or squanders it, but
before devoting an appreciable share to this radiation it makes maximum use of it for growth.
Only the impossibility of continuing growth makes way for squander. Hence the real excess does not
begin until the growth of the individual or group has reached its limits."(HERE)

This dependence of the mankind on the cosmic events that are uncontrollable and even unknown is the source of the specifically modern anxiety. One can say: Cosmic anxiety. The anxiety of being a part of Cosmos – and not able to control it. Not accidentally our contemporary mass culture is so much obsessed with the visions of asteroids coming form the black cosmic space and destroying the Earth. But this anxiety has also more subtle forms. As an example one can cite the theory of the ‘accursed share” that was developed by Georges Bataille. According to this theory, the Sun always sends more energy to the Earth than the Earth, including the organisms living on its surface, can absorb. After all the efforts to use this energy for production of goods and raising the living standard of the population there also remains a non-absorbed, non-used rest of the solar energy. This rest of energy is necessarily destructive – it can be spent only through violence and war. Or, at least, through ecstatic festivals and sexual orgies that channel and absorb this rest of energy through the less dangerous activities. Thus, human culture and politics become also determined by the cosmic energies – forever shifting between order and disorder.

Now, Bataille’s solar myth reminds one strongly of the interpretation of the world history as defined by the activity of the Sun – interpretation that was formulated by Russian historian and biologist Alexander Chizhevsky in the 1920s and 1930s. During this period of time Chizhevsky’s ideas spread also to the West, especially to France and the USA, and some of his texts were published in French and English – so that his ideas could reach Bataille (for example A. L. Chizhevsky (1938): Les Épidémies et les perturbations electromagnetiques; Paris, Hippocrate). However, the main text written by Chizhevsky in which his theory is extensively formulated and proved by empirical data was published only relatively recently in Russian. Chizhevsky collected a huge empirical data – from the Roman and early Chinese sources up to the 1930s – to show the close correlation between the periods of the higher activity of the Sun and mass revolutionary movements. It is, of course, the Russian revolution in 1917 that gave the decisive impulse to his research. Chizhevsky asks: why under similar social, economic and political constellations in some cases masses become mobilized and revolutionized but in other cases they remain passive and indifferent. The answer that Chizhevsky offers is this: to be able to start a revolutionary movement the human beings should be mobilized not only on the level of the spirit but also on the level of the body. The human spirit can be mobilized through an ideology but, according to Chizhevsky the degree of mobilization of the human body, like of all the organisms living on the Earth, is dependent on the cycles of solar activity. 

Chizhevsky collected an incredible amount of astronomical and historical data to show the correlation between activity of the Sun and activity of revolutionary movements. As he shows the greatest revolutions coincided with the greatest activity of the Sun – and the historical process is characterized by a succession of active and passive periods corresponding to the 11 years cycles of solar activity (the highest degree of activity follows the 22 years cycle). But it seems to me that for our time the most interesting part of his results concerns the relationship between activity of the Sun and English parliamentary election. These results show that the influence of the Sun dictates not only the choice between revolution and status quo but also between leftwing and rightwing politics in the framework of regular parliamentary processes. Thus, Chizhevsky shows that for the period between 1830 and 1924 the summary activity of Sun during the rule of liberal governments was 155,6% higher than during the rule of conservative governments. The conservative governments never had power when the number of sunspots was over 93. The moments of change in the solar activity are almost precisely correlated to the changes of the English governments.

At the end of his text Chizhevsky suggests that the knowledge of the correlation between activity of the Sun and political activity of the masses can prepare the political classes to the seemingly unexpected changes of the public mood. During the financial crisis in the year 2009 some specialist remembered the so-called Kondratiev waves – Nikolai Kondratiev, a student of Chizhevsky, applied his theory on the economic cycles and predicted all of them including the 2009 crisis. On the political level one is reminded of the years 1968, 1989 and, again, 2010-11. Here it is interesting to mention that the present time is the time of the weakest solar activity since the 20th century – the period of political indifference and passivity of the masses. However, the political effects of the bigger numbers of sunspots are often ambiguous. Chizhevsky specifically warns that the growth of solar activity can lead not only to the adoption of progressive agenda by the masses but also to the rise of irrational and reactionary populist movements.

References:

Georges Bataille (1949) - The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. 

Alexander Chizhevsky (1924) - Physical Factors of the Historical Process.

Alexander Chizhevsky (1938) - Les Epidemies et les perturbations electro-magnetiques du milieu exterieur.

Nikolai Kondratieff (1925) - The Major Economic Cycles.