Table of contents:
1 A biographical overview
2 Main part: The Theory of Ethnogenesis and Philosophy of History
2.1 Humankind, the biosphere and passionarnost’
2.2 Vernadskii and the biosphere
2.3 Nature of history
3 Conclusion: final thoughts
1 A biographical overview
Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev was born in St.Petersburg on 1 October 1912, the only child of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev and Anna Andreevna Gorenko (generally known by her pseudonym of Akhmatova). Both his parents were poets, and outstanding young participants in St Petersburg’s cultural “Silver Age” which was then at its zenith: during Lev’s early childhood, visitors to their apartment...
