Three world mega-civilizations have coexisted and been in constant competition for many centuries and even millennia: Chinese, Western European and Muslim. In their mega-wars, sometimes bloody and sometimes bloodless, the fate of the world, peoples and individuals is constantly being decided, they determine the past and future of the planet. First one or the other of them takes the lead, sometimes for many centuries, but none is yet able to achieve a final victory. It is important to think about the true, underlying reasons for these breakthroughs, to unravel the secret of leadership that leads to hegemony today of one civilization, tomorrow of another. For us, Russians, the meaning of these thoughts is that we are doomed to acutely and continuously experience a situation of survival. This is our permanent state. We know this from history and our own experience. Unraveling the secret of civilizational leadership and taking advantage of it means in many ways solving the age-old problem of the struggle for life for Russians.