Leonid E Grinin

Leonid E. Grinin, PhD, is a Russian philosopher of history, sociologist, political anthropologist, economist, and a scholar of historical trends and future studies. He is Senior Research Professor at the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Leading Research Fellow of the Laboratory for Destabilization Risk Monitoring of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Grinin is the Vice-President of the International Kondratieff Fund and member of the International Big History Association. He is also a Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Research Professor and Director of the Volgograd Center for Social Research. He is Editor-in-Chief of the international journals ‘Social Evolution & History’ and the ‘Journal of Globalization Studies’, as well as co-editor of the international almanacs Evolution, History and Mathematics, and Kondratieff Waves. He also serves as an Editor in a number of Russian scientific journals, including ‘Vek globalizatsii’, ‘Filosofia i obschestvo’ and some others.

Born in Kamyshin the Volgograd Region, Grinin attended Volgograd State Pedagogical University, where he got an M.A. in 1980. He got his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1996.

Grinin`s academic interests lie in the sphere of social laws, social evolution, driving forces of historical development, the theory of historical process and its periodization and certain aspects, evolution of statehood.

Grinin`s academic research in the field of Global Studies, futurology and Big History is connected with the analysis of modern problem of globalization and modernization, forecasts of the world political and social-economic development, current global crisis, economic cycles of different duration and their modeling, information-scientific revolution and its influence on global processes, history of globalization and periodization of global process analysis of global trends in historical processes, comparison of global processes in nature and society. Together with Alexander Markov and Andrey Korotayev, he studies regularities common to biological and social macroevolution.

Periodization of history

Grinin suggests a four-staged periodization of historical process. The transition from one stage to another is the change of all basic characteristics of the respective stage. As the starting point of such a change Grinin proposes the production principle that describes the major qualitative stages of the development of the world productive forces. Grinin singles out four principles of production: Hunter-gatherer; Craft-Agrarian; Industrial; and Information-Scientific. To clear up the chronology of the beginning of each respective stage he proposes the three production revolutions: the Agrarian or Neolithic Revolution; the Industrial Revolution, and the Information-Scientific Revolution.

Future technological development

Leonid Grinin connects major technological achievements with the Cybernetic revolution. He thinks that the technologies will develop in the direction of self-regulating systems which will penetrate many spheres starting from medicine to food production. With respect to possible dramatic changes of the human organism he argues that they may rise unprecedented ethical issues and seriously damage many vital aspects of our life including family relations, gender, and morals.

Development of political systems

Grinin insists that the two-stage scheme of the state macroevolution from Early State to Mature State, proposed by Henri Claessen and Peter Skalnik is not sufficient, and suggests that it should be modified as ‘Early State – Developed State – Mature State’, emphasizing that the differences between developed and early states are no less pronounced than the ones between the former and the mature states.

Globalization and sovereignty

In the world political science the subject of change, ‘diffusion’, or ‘disappearing’ of national sovereignty is widely debated. Grinin argues that on the whole globalization contributes to the change and reduction of state sovereign powers, and he investigates the reasons and consequences of the deliberate voluntary reduction of sovereign prerogatives as most states voluntarily and deliberately limit the scope of their sovereignty.

People of celebrity

Grinin also investigates the influence of the personal celebrity factor on the social life of modern society, analyses celebrities as a special stratum and reasons for the rapid increase in the importance of social role of personal celebrity. He argues that personal celebrity is to be added to the list of those features that determine the major forms of inequality and by analogy with Peter L. Berger's 'knowledge class people' suggests defining the stratum of people whose occupation is connected with celebrity and whose major capital is celebrity with the notion ‘people of celebrity’.

Among other things it has been suggested by Grinin to view social Anagenesis/aromorphosis as a universal / widely diffused social innovation that raises social systems’ complexity, adaptability, integrity, and interconnectedness.

Great Divergence and Great Convergence

Together with Andrey Korotayev he has also made a significant contribution to the current Great Divergence debate. As is noted by Jack Goldstone, the "new view, carefully presented and rigorously modeled by Grinin and Korotayev, provides a richer and more nuanced version of the ‘Great Divergence,’ bridging many of the differences between the traditional and California viewpoints. Yet they go further. Amazingly, by building a model utilizing human capital, global population growth, and regional productivity, they show how both the Great Divergence and the recent “Great Convergence”, i.e. the economic catching up of developing countries, are phases of the same process of global modernization.

Dr. Grinin is the author of more than 470 scholarly publications in Russian, English and Chinese including 30 monographs. These monographs include ‘Philosophy, Sociology, and the Theory of History’ - 2007, in Russian; ‘Productive Forces and Historical Process’ - 2006, in Russian); ‘State and Historical Process’ – 2009–2010, in Russian; ‘Social Macroevolution: World System Transformations’ (2009, in Russian; with Andrey Korotayev); ‘Macroevolution in Biological and Social Systems’ – 2008, in Russian; with Alexander V. Markov and Andrey V. Korotayev; ‘Global Crisis in Retrospective: A Brief History of Upswings and Crises’ – 2010, in Russian; with Andrey Korotayev; ‘The Evolution of Statehood: From Early State to Global Society 2011; ‘From Confucius to Comte: The Formation of the Theory, Methodology and Philosophy of History – 2012, in Russian; ‘Macrohistory and Globalization’, 2012; ‘Cycles, Crises, and Traps of the Modern World-System’, 2012, in Russian, with Andrey Korotayev; ‘The Big History of Development of the World: Cosmic Evolution’ – 2014; in Russian. The latest monographs are: ‘Great Divergence and Great Convergence. A Global Perspective’ – 2015; with Andrey Korotayev; ‘The Cybernetic Revolution and the Forthcoming Epoch of Self-Regulating Systems’ – 2016; with Anton Grinin; and ‘Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery’ –2016; with Andrey Korotayev and Arno Tausch.