By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY

History does not repeat. Yesterday will never be today or tomorrow, but historic patterns do repeat. History shows a pattern of the nations’ emergence, growth and decline. It provides facts and allows us to search for underlying causes of historic events.

Elected government officials, policy makers, educators and the society at large must clearly understand that ignorance, irresponsible government mandates and disregard of historic patterns may create irreversible socio–economic consequences.

In this essay I will briefly outline the causes of decline of the major world empires — Rome, Russia, Great Britain –- and point these causes to today’s decline of the socio-economic environment in the United States.

The fall of the Roman Empire was caused by many factors, including economic problems, government corruption, military overspending, never-ending wars and invasions by ferocious nomads and horsemen from the East.

— Economic causes: The government’s corruption and financial mismanagement led to inflation and debased currency; the empire’s economic troubles were made worse by its heavy overreliance on slave labor.

— Military causes: The Roman Empire over-expanded and spent too much on its military; the empire’s military became a drain on its resources, leaving little money for other socio-economic needs.

— Government corruption: Government corruption led to political instability, which weakened the empire; as Rome grew, rulers became more concerned with protecting themselves rather than serving the Empire.

— Invasions: Barbarian tribes invaded the empire, contributing to its decline; the arrival of the Huns in around 370 AD, and the migration of other barbarian tribes contributed to the Empire’s decline.

— Decline in morals: The Roman Empire’s final years were marked by declining morals, including violence, promiscuity, and lavish parties and celebrations.

The Romans established many cities and settlements along the Black Sea coast (today’s Ukraine and part of southern Russia), including Histria and Pompeipolis. The remains of Roman-era settlements along the Black Sea coast have survived centuries of rebuilding and inhabitation.

The Russian Empire declined due to a combination of poor leadership, economic and social unrest, and military defeats in World War I (1914-1918).

— Leadership: Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) was a poor leader who repeatedly dissolved the Russian parliament; the government was corrupt and inefficient; the military was mismanaged, with shortages of munitions and wounded soldiers left untended.

— Economy: The Russian economy was backward and suffered from food shortages; WWI substantially impacted Russia’s economy and decline of the prestige as a European power.

— Social unrest: Peasants, workers, professionals and soldiers became increasingly dissatisfied with the central Tsarist government; ethnic minorities in Russia (Jews, Poles, Latvians, Estonians) wanted to escape Russian domination; the military occupations and martial law crippled the civilian functions of the state.

— Military defeats: Russia suffered a series of defeats in the Crimean War (1861-65); Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905); and World War I (1914-1918). The military defeats undermined authority at the local and metropolitan levels. The Russian Socialist Revolution of October 1917 resulted from these causes. The Bolsheviks eventually overthrew the Russian Provisional Government in 1918 and later established the Soviet Union in 1922.

The British Empire declined due to a combination of factors, including devastating economic impacts of World War II (1939-1945), economic strain, and pressure for independence from its colonies.

— World War II: Britain’s defeats in Europe and Asia destroyed its economic and financial independence; Japan’s occupation of British colonies in Southeast and East Asia damaged Britain’s prestige.

— Economic strain: Britain was left with hundreds of billions of dollars in debt after World War II; the cost of maintaining its colonies became an expensive liability.

— Pressure for independence: The British Crown’s heavy-handedness and political missteps fueled nationalist movements; Britain’s colonies increasingly saw themselves as separate peoples.

— Other factors: The British Empire was transformed into the Commonwealth 56 sovereign countries, an association of independent states that still share a British monarch. By the 1970s, little of the British Empire remained.

Clearly, the decline of the major world empires and states, at the different historical eras, have many common causes and characteristics, such as: never-ending wars, social unrest, economic strains, invasion by outsiders (like today’s illegal immigration in the U.S.), military defeats, decline in moral values and traditions, a remarkable government corruption in all socio-economic levels, and spread of the destructive far-left neo-Marxist ideology worldwide.

When I arrived in the United States on February of 1978 as a political refugee from a socialist country, I never thought America would attempt to destroy itself from within with the radical neo-Marxist ideology—critical race theory, white privilege doctrine, systemic racism, Black Lives Matter and Pro-Palestinian antisemitic movement around the world.

Historically, the main reason leftism is radicalized in America today, and accelerating among our youth, is because young people of the post–Vietnam war generation had never experienced economic hardship or oppression by a totalitarian regime; they have been intensely subjected to political correctness, wants, and irrational and wasteful handouts instead of hand–ups.

Today, many radical educators believe themselves to be teaching the “truthful” history of the world, including American history. They aggressively and unwisely inject divisive concepts of “gender identity,” “Project 1619,” “white privilege doctrine,” “critical race theory” and violent and antisemitic pro-Palestinian movement into their teaching curriculums.

This neo-Marxism will only accomplish two main far-left objectives: (1) racial segregation and indoctrination among our youth, and (2) hatred of the historic past of our nation. It is imperative to acknowledge and understand, in contrast, that world events must be interpreted and understood in the historic context of their time, relying on factual truth rather than on subjective “truth” wrapped into neo-Marxist ideology.

In fact, far–left progressives are not as they think of themselves—liberal or open minded. In fact, they are illiberal and intolerant deflationists—i.e., I am going to serve you a bowl of soup once a month at your place, if you don’t crash into my ocean-front home to ask for more.

Far-left progressivism is now a religion for some groups; and they possess the typical zeal and emotional attachment to a far-left dogma—socialism and neo-Marxism—which blinds them to having a rational and open mind. Indeed, they are hypocritical fools, who are literally the main cause for the ideological and economic decline of America.

Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.