"aleksandr dugin: a russian version of the european radical right?" by marlene laruelle

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Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of theEuropean Radical Right?by Marlene Laruelle

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Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?

Marlene Laruelle

O C C A S I O N A L P A P E R # 2 9 4

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Aleksadr Dugin: A Russian Version of theEuropean Radical Right?

Marlene Laruelle is an Associate Scholar at the French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East EuropeanStudies in Paris. In 2005–2006 she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

This paper was translated by Mischa Gabowitsch.

ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT?

In studying contemporary RussianEurasianism—both as a doctrine and as apolitical movement—one constantly comes

across Aleksandr Dugin. One of the main rea-sons that he is relevant to any such study is thequasi-monopoly he exercises over a certain partof the current Russian ideological spectrum.This spectrum includes a plethora of right-winggroupuscules that produce an enormous numberof books and an impressive quantity of low-cir-culation newspapers, but are not readily distin-guishable from each other and display little the-oretical consistency or sophistication. Dugin isthe only major theoretician among this Russianradical right. He is simultaneously on the fringeand at the center of the Russian nationalist phe-nomenon. He provides theoretical inspiration tomany currents and disseminates precepts that canbe recycled at different levels. Above all he isstriving to cover every niche on the current ide-ological marketplace. He proceeds from theassumption that Russian society and Russia’spolitical establishment are in search of a new ide-ology: he therefore owes it to himself to exercisehis influence over all the ideological options andtheir possible formulations.

Beyond the doctrinal qualities that make himstand out among the spectrum of Russiannationalism, Dugin is noteworthy for his fren-zied and prolific output of publications begin-ning in the early 1990s. He has published over adozen books, either original texts or thematical-ly rearranged articles initially printed in variousjournals or newspapers. He has also edited sev-eral journals: Elementy (9 issues between 1992and 1998), Milyi Angel (4 issues between 1991and 1999), Evraziiskoe vtorzhenie (published as anirregular supplement to the weekly Zavtra, withsix special issues in 2000), and Evraziiskoeobozrenie (11 issues from 2001 to 2004).1 In1997, he wrote and presented a weekly one-

hour radio broadcast, Finis Mundi, which wasprohibited after he commented favorably on theearly 20th-century terrorist Boris Savinkov.2

Dugin also regularly publishes articles in numer-ous dailies and appears on several television pro-grams. In 1998, he took part in the creation ofthe “New University,” a small institution thatprovides Traditionalist and occultist teachings toa select few, where he lectures alongside notedliterary figures such as Yevgeny Golovin andIurii Mamleev. Since 2005, he has been appear-ing on the new Orthodox TV channel Spas cre-ated by Ivan Demidov, where he anchors aweekly broadcast on geopolitics calledLandmarks [Vekhi].3 He also regularly takes partin round table discussions on Russian televisionand occupies a major place in the Russiannationalist Web.4

Several intellectual tendencies manifestthemselves in his thought: a political theoryinspired by Traditionalism,5 Orthodox religiousphilosophy,6 Aryanist and occultist theories,7

and geopolitical and Eurasianist conceptions.8

One might expect this ideological diversity toreflect a lengthy evolution in Dugin’s intellec-tual life. Quite to the contrary, however, allthese topics did not emerge in succession buthave co-existed in Dugin’s writings since thebeginning of the 1990s. While Eurasianism andgeopolitics are Dugin’s most classic and best-known “business cards” for public opinion andthe political authorities, his philosophical, reli-gious and political doctrines are much morecomplex and deserve careful consideration. Thediversity of his work is little known, and hisideas are therefore often characterized in a rashand incomplete way. We therefore ought tolook for his intellectual lineage and try tounderstand his striving to combine diverse ide-ological sources. Dugin is one of the fewthinkers to consider that the doctrinal stock of

Russian nationalism has depreciated and mustbe revitalized with the help of Western input.Dugin is thus “anchoring” Russian nationalismin more global theories and acting as a mediatorof Western thought. It is this aspect of Duginthat will be the focus of this paper.

DUGIN’S SOCIAL TRAJECTORY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCEIt is particularly important to understandAleksandr Dugin’s complex place within Neo-Eurasianism, since, to a certain extent, his posi-tion is representative of certain more generalphenomena and thus helps trace the evolution ofRussian nationalist ideas over the past twentyyears or so. Between 1985 and 1990, Dugin wasclearly in favor of a “right-wing” Neo-Eurasianism, and close to conservative or evenmonarchist circles. In 1988, he joined the ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic orgnization Pamiat’,but did not feel intellectually at home there,since his ideas for a doctrinal renewal of theright were out of place in this fundamentallyconservative organization. He therefore leftPamiat’ the following year, condemning its nos-talgic monarchism and vulgar anti-Semitism. In1990–1, he founded several institutions of hisown: the Arctogaia Association, as well as a pub-lishing house of the same name, and the Centerfor Meta-Strategic Studies. During this period,Dugin drew closer to Gennadii Ziuganov’sCommunist Party, and became one of the mostprolific contributors to the prominent patrioticnewspaper Den’ (later renamed Zavtra), whichwas at that time at the height of its influence. Hisarticles published in this newspaper contributedto the dissemination of Eurasianist theories inRussian nationalist circles. At first he was sup-ported by the nationalist thinker AleksandrProkhanov, who thought that only Eurasianismcould unify the patriots, who were still dividedinto “Whites” and “Reds,” but Prokhanovquickly turned away and condemnedEurasianism for being too Turko-centric.

From 1993–4, Dugin moved away from theCommunist spectrum and became the ideologistfor the new National Bolshevik Party (NBP).Born of a convergence between the old Sovietcounter-culture and patriotic groups, the NBPsuccessfully established its ideology among theyoung. Dugin’s Arctogaia then served as a thinktank for the political activities of the NBP’s

leader, Eduard Limonov. The two men shared adesire to develop close ties with the counter-cul-tural sphere, in particular with nationalistically-minded rock and punk musicians, such as YegorLetov, Sergei Troitskii, Roman Neumoev orSergei Kurekhin.9 In 1995, Dugin even ran in theDuma elections under the banner of the NBP ina suburban constituency near Saint-Petersburg,but received less than 1 percent of the vote.10

However, this electoral failure did not harm him,as he was simultaneously busy writing numerousphilosophical and esoteric works to develop whathe considered to be the Neo-Eurasianist “ortho-doxy.” Limonov would thereafter describe Duginas “the ‘Cyril and Methodius’ of fascism, since hebrought Faith and knowledge about it to ourcountry from the West.”11

Dugin left the National Bolshevik Party in1998 following numerous disagreements withLimonov, seeking instead to enter more influen-tial structures. He hoped to become a “counselto the prince” and presented himself as a one-man think tank for the authorities. He succeed-ed in establishing himself as an advisor to theDuma’s spokesman, the Communist GennadySeleznev, and, in 1999, he became chairman ofthe geopolitical section of the Duma’s AdvisoryCouncil on National Security, dominated by theultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party ofRussia, led by Vladimir Zhirinovskii. At thetime, Dugin appeared to exert a certain influ-ence on Zhirinovskii, as well as on AleksandrRutskoi of the Social Democratic Party andGennady Ziuganov of the Communist Party12.The latter, for example, borrowed from Duginthe idea that Russian nationalism does not con-flict with the expression of minority nationalsentiments. Indeed, Ziuganov presented theCPRF as the main defender of Tatar nationalismand Kalmyk Buddhism. His book Russia after theYear 2000: A Geopolitical Vision for a New Statewas directly inspired by Dugin’s ideas on the dis-tinctiveness of Russian geopolitical “science”and his idea that Russia’s renewal provides theonly guarantee of world stability. Dugin also reg-ularly publishes on Russian official web sites,such as www.strana.ru, where he expresses hisideas on the opposition between the re-emerg-ing Eurasian empire and the Atlanticist model.

Dugin’s entry into parliamentary structureswas largely made possible by the publication (in1997) of the first version of his most influential

2 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294

work, The Foundations of Geopolitics: Russia’sGeopolitical Future.13 It is considered to be amajor study of geopolitics, and is often present-ed as the founding work of the contemporaryRussian school of geopolitics. By 2000, thework had already been re-issued four times, andhad become a major political pamphlet, enjoy-ing a large readership in academic and politicalcircles. Indeed, Dugin has always hoped toinfluence promising young intellectuals as wellas important political and military circles. Hehas stated that his Center for GeopoliticalExpertise could quickly become an “analyticalinstrument helping to develop the nationalidea”14 for the executive and legislative powers.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, he hasbeen especially keen on getting in touch withacting military officers: coming from a militaryfamily, he regularly asserts that only the armyand the secret services have a real sense of patri-otism. Thus, in 1992, the first issue of Elementycarried texts by three generals who were thenheads of department at the Academy of theGeneral Staff.15 In addition, The Foundations ofGeopolitics seems to have been written with thesupport of General Igor’ Rodionov, who wasminister of defense in 1996–7.16 Thanks to thisbook, Dugin has been invited to teach at theAcademy of the General Staff as well as at theInstitute for Strategic Research in Moscow. Heoffered them a certain vision of internationalpolitics colored by an “isolationism that onlyserves to disguise a project of expansion andconquest.”17 Following this best-seller, Duginconsiderably expanded his presence in the mainRussian media; to some, he became arespectable personality of public life. The suc-cess of his geopolitics book, now used as a text-book by numerous institutions of higher educa-tion, as well as his lectures at the Academy ofthe General Staff and at the so-called NewUniversity, satisfies his desire to reach the polit-ical and intellectual elites.

Thus the years 1998–2000 saw the transfor-mation of Dugin’s political leanings into a spe-cific current that employs multiple strategies ofentryism, targeting both youth counter-cultureand parliamentary structures. Dugin movedaway from opposition parties such as the CPRFand the LDPR and closer to centrist groups,lending his support to the then prime minister,Yevgeny Primakov. In 2000, he briefly partici-

pated in the Rossiia movement led by theCommunist Gennady Seleznev and wrote itsmanifesto, before leaving due to disagreementswith its leadership. Putin’s election as presidentin March 2000 caused an even stronger shift inDugin’s political attitudes, as he began to movecloser to country’s new strong man.

On 21 April 2001 he resolved to put hiscards on the table and created a movementnamed Evraziia, of which he was elected presi-dent. During its founding convention,Evraziia—often described as a brainchild ofpresidential counsel Gleb Pavlovsky, who isclose to Dugin—officially rallied to Putin andproposed to participate in the next elections aspart of a governmental coalition. The move-ment’s goal, according to Dugin’s declarations,is to formulate the “national idea” that Russianeeds: “our goal is not to achieve power, nor tofight for power, but to fight for influence on it.Those are different things.”18 On 30 May 2002,Evraziia was transformed into a political partythat Dugin defines as “radically centrist,” anambiguous formulation that springs from hisTraditionalist attitude. Dugin accepts the com-bination of “patriotism and liberalism” whichhe says Vladimir Putin is proposing, on the con-dition that the liberal element remains sub-servient to state interests and to the imperativesof national security. As he affirms, “our patriot-ism is not only emotional but also scientific,based on geopolitics and its methods,”19 a classicclaim of Neo-Eurasianists. According to its owndata, the new party has 59 regional branchesand more than 10,000 members. Its creation waspublicly welcomed by Aleksandr Voloshin, thenthe head of the presidential administration, andAleksandr Kosopkin, chief of the administra-tion’s Internal Affairs Department.

Dugin also enlisted the support of anotherinfluential figure close to the president, MikhailLeont’ev, the presenter of Odnako (broadcast byPervyi kanal, the first channel of Russian stateTV), who joined the party’s Central Committee.Strengthened by his success after these public dis-plays of recognition, Dugin hoped to acquireinfluence within a promising new electoral for-mation, the Rodina bloc, and use it as a platformfor a candidacy in the parliamentary elections inDecember 2003. This alliance, however, was tac-tically short-lived, and questionable in its ideo-logical import. Thus, Dugin never concealed his

3ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT?

disdain for the monarchist nostalgia and thepoliticized orthodoxy embodied by Rodina lead-ers such as Dmitrii Rogozin and NataliaNarochnitskaia. Indeed, it seems that SergeiGlaz’ev20 was the one who was responsible for therapprochement with Dugin. Although Glaz’ev can-not be considered a Neo-Eurasianist, he did par-ticipate in the founding convention of Evraziia in2002. The two men share an interest in econom-ic policies leaning toward socialism, and Duginacknowledged his sympathy for Glaz’ev’s eco-nomic ideas (which he calls “healthy”) even afterthe latter left Rodina in March 2004.

Dugin and Glaz’ev met as early as February2003 in order to constitute a party they definedas “left-patriotic.” In July, Evraziia declared itselfready to support the creation of this electoralbloc. However, internal arguments over person-alities ensued: the bloc needed to choose threeleaders who would be sure to become deputiesif it passed, and would benefit most from thecampaign’s publicity. Dugin hoped to be chosen,but was hampered by his political marginalitylinked to his reputation as an extravagant theo-retician whose ideas are too complex to informan electoral strategy.21 At the end of September,the disappointed Dugin left the Rodina bloc,explaining at a press-conference that Rodina’snationalism was too radical for him—a statementthat must draw a smile from those familiar withhis work. This nationalist setting had not dis-turbed him until then. Nor did he move closerto Rodina when certain overly virulent national-ists such as V. I. Davidenko, leader of the smallSpas party, were expelled from Rodina’s list ofcandidates under pressure from the Kremlin.

Dugin’s accusations against Rodina fall intotwo categories. He condemns the bloc for beingtoo close to the CPRF and its oligarchy, and crit-icizes its “irresponsible populism.” He also takesto task those he calls “right-wing chauvinists”:Sergei Baburin and the Spas movement.22 Bycontrast, Dugin insists on the conciliatory andmultinational mission of his Evraziia party, which“represents not only the interests of the Russians,but also those of the small peoples and the tradi-tional confessions.”23 Dugin has also accusedsome Rodina members of racism and anti-Semitism, stressing that the party includes formermembers of Russian National Unity24 as well asAndrei Savel’ev, who translated Mein Kampf intoRussian. The first set of criticisms is justified by

Dugin’s own convictions: he has never hidden hisdisdain for the present Communist Party, doesnot appreciate the emotional attitude of theOrthodox in matters of international politics,rejects all Tsarist nostalgia, has always denouncedthe racialism of Barkashov’s theories, and con-demns electoral populism. The second set of crit-icisms seems more opportunistic: a close readingof Dugin’s works clearly reveals his fascinationwith the National Socialist experience and hisambiguous anti-Semitism. Today, Dugin isattempting to play down these aspects of histhought in order to present himself as a “politi-cally correct” thinker waiting to be recognized bythe Putin regime.

In return, instances of Dugin borrowing ide-ologically from Rodina seem rather rare. HisTraditionalist, National Bolshevik and esotericideas, which constitute an important part of histhinking, are not appreciated by Rodina and havenot exercised any influence on the bloc’s con-ceptions. Indeed, Rodina is more conservativethan revolutionary, and cannot take up Dugin’sprovocative suggestions, which often aim tobreak the social order. The strictly Neo-Eurasianist aspect of Dugin’s ideas—his best-known “trademark” in Russian society today—is in tune with some of Rodina’s geopoliticalconceptions, but this concurrence is actuallyfounded on the anti-Westernism that is commonto both, not on a shared vision of Russia as aEurasian power. For this reason, despite theirattempted alliance, Rodina may not be said tohave adopted elements of Neo-Eurasianistthought in the strict sense of the term.Nevertheless, these difficult relations did notstop Dugin from being delighted with the resultsof the December 2003 elections, which carriedfour nationalist parties (the presidential partyUnited Russia, the CPRF, the LDPR, andRodina) into the Duma. Dugin has connectionswith every one of them, and some members ofeach of these parties openly acknowledge havingbeen inspired by his theories.

After this personal failure in Rodina, Duginreoriented his strategies away from the electoralsphere, and toward the expert community.Hence the transformation of his party into an“International Eurasian Movement” (IEM), for-malized on 20 November 2003. The new move-ment includes members from some twentycountries, and its main support seems to come


from Kazakhstan and Turkey. Whereas the orig-inal organization founded in 2001 comprisedmainly figures from civil society,25 the SupremeCouncil of the new Eurasian Movementincludes representatives of the government andparliament: Mikhail Margelov, head of theCommittee for International Relations of theFederation Council (the Parliament’s UpperHouse), Albert Chernyshev, Russia’s ambassadorto India, Viktor Kalyuzhny, vice-minister of for-eign affairs, Aleksey Zhafyarov, chief of theDepartment of Political Parties and SocialOrganizations in the justice ministry, etc. TheIEM even officially asked Vladimir Putin andNursultan Nazarbaev to head the movement’sSupreme Council. Dugin congratulates himselfon having moved beyond a mere political partyto an international organization. He now culti-vates his image in neighboring countries, heavi-ly publicizing his trips to Turkey, but also toKazakhstan and Belarus. Dugin has become azealous supporter of the Eurasian EconomicUnion and is pleased to think that he has influ-enced Aleksandr Lukashenko’s and NursultanNazarbaev’s decisions in favor of a tighter inte-gration of their countries with Russia. His website also presents the different Eurasianist groupsin Western countries. Italy is particularly wellrepresented, with numerous translations ofDugin’s texts, several Eurasianist-inspired websites, and a journal, Eurasia. Rivista di studigeopolitici. France is represented by the “Paris-Berlin-Moscow” association, while Britain haslong had a Eurasianist movement of its own.Austrian, Finnish, Serbian, and Bulgarian asso-ciations, and of course organizations in otherpost-Soviet republics, especially in Ukraine andKazakhstan, are presented as “fraternal parties”.

Having enthusiastically welcomed VladimirPutin as a “Eurasian man,”26 Dugin now, sinceearly 2005, appears to be deeply disappointed bythe president. According to him, Putin hesitatesto adopt a definitively Eurasianist stance, and hisentourage is dominated by Atlanticist and over-ly liberal figures. In current affairs, Dugin is try-ing to play on the wave of anti-Westernism thatswept part of the Russian political scene after therevolutions in Georgia in 2003, in Ukraine in2004, and in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. He thus set upa Eurasianist Youth Union, led by PavelZarifullin, which became highly visible inSeptember 2005 with the heavily publicized cre-

ation of an “anti-orange front.” Dugin is thuspursuing, with relative success, his objective ofbuilding up a global cultural hegemony: he istrying to gain a foothold in alter-globalizationmovements (which promote alternatives toAmerican-led globalization) and to participate ininternational ideological regroupings. This right,which Dugin modernizes and profoundlyrenews in his theories, seems therefore to suc-ceed in its strategy of entering into left-wingstructures that are badly informed and lookingfor any and all allies in their struggle againstAmerican domination.

Thus Dugin’s regular but always temporarypresence in the political field cannot, it seems,be considered a new phase of his life that wouldbuild on an already completed body of doctrine.Although Dugin currently seems to be concen-trating on his involvement in the Eurasianistmovement and publications on the topic ofEurasianism, one should not forget that a similarcombination had been in place from 1994 to1998, when his membership in the National-Bolshevik Party went hand in hand with publi-cations on the concept of National Bolshevism.Dugin thus seems to adjust his strategy in accor-dance with the available opportunities to influ-ence public opinion. Moreover, he continueseven today to disseminate the Traditionalist ideasthat have been his mainstay since the beginning,displaying a high degree of doctrinal consisten-cy. What has evolved is his public status, markedby his desire no longer to be considered an orig-inal and marginal intellectual, but rather to berecognized as a respectable political personalityclose to the ruling circles.

A RUSSIAN VERSION OF ANTI-GLOBALISM: DUGIN’S GEOPOLITICAL THEORIESAll the Neo-Eurasianist currents that emerged inthe 1990s share an imperial conception ofRussia, but they are all based on different pre-suppositions. Aleksandr Dugin occupies a partic-ular position inside this group, and is sometimescriticized virulently by the other Neo-Eurasianists. Indeed, Dugin “distorts” the idea ofEurasia by combining it with elements borrowedfrom other intellectual traditions, such as theoriesof conservative revolution, the German geopoli-tics of the 1920s and 1930s, René Guénon’sTraditionalism and the Western New Right.Nevertheless, Dugin has enjoyed the greatest

ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 5

public success of all Neo-Eurasianists, and mostdirectly influences certain political circles lookingfor a new geopolitics for post-Soviet Russia.

Dugin thus largely outweighs small intellectu-al groups that pursue their own Neo-Eurasianistreflections without having any direct access to alarger public. He can be considered today as theprincipal theoretician of Neo-Eurasianism, eventhough he shared this role with AleksandrPanarin in the 1990s. At first, the two men hadbeen rather opposed to each other, and Panarinhad refused to be assimilated into the same ideo-logical current. He described Dugin’s geopoliticsas pagan for viewing man as dependent on natureand led by a blind and determinist destiny, andconceiving the state as an isolated and selfishorganism, not providing any guarantee of globalstability, and relying only on strength. At thetime, Panarin considered this view to be thestrict opposite of the “civilizational” awarenessthat Neo-Eurasianism should be. The twothinkers did, however, end up sharing somepoints of view, as a consequence of Panarin’sintellectual evolution rather than to Dugin’s.Thus, Panarin gradually came to corroborateDugin’s public supremacy in matters Neo-Eurasian, attending the foundation of theEvraziia movement in 2001 and becoming amember of the party’s Central Council in 2002.27

According to Dugin, Panarin had even agreed,before his illness, to write a foreword to one ofDugin’s latest books, Political Philosophy.28 Thephilosopher’s sudden death, however, eliminatedthis ally-cum-competitor from the public stage.

Dugin’s attraction to the early Eurasianismdeveloped by 1920s and 1930s Russian émigrésis not a belated addition to his doctrines. At theend of the 1980s, while he was still close to cer-tain monarchist groups, Dugin had alreadybecome the apostle of a Eurasianist conceptionof Russia, and had contributed to its spreadamong the patriotic circles linked to Den’.Today, he continues to be a dominant influenceamong those trying to rehabilitate the foundingfathers of Eurasianism: he has edited compila-tions of the principal texts of the movement’smain theoreticians—Pyotr N. Savitsky, NikolayS. Trubetskoi, Nikolay N. Alekseev etc.—atAgraf, then through Arctogaia publications.29 Inhis introductions to these compilations, he sys-tematically tries to link the inter-war Eurasianistteachings as closely as possible with his contem-

porary definition of Neo-Eurasianism. He doesnot, however, appropriate the highly elaboratetheories of the founding fathers concerning thehistorical, geographical or religious legitimacyof the Russian Empire. He is content with try-ing to establish a geopolitics for post-SovietRussia, helping the country to become aware ofits particular eschatological sensibility: “the cur-rent transformations in Russia’s geopoliticalspace and all of Eurasia are difficult to under-stand unless interpreted as a sign of the times,announcing the proximity of the climax.”30

Dugin even criticizes the founding fathers forhaving been overly philosophical and poetic:according to him, Eurasianism had the rightintuitions (for example, the idea of a “third con-tinent” and the importance of the Mongol peri-od in the formation of Russian identity), butwas unsuccessful in formalizing them theoreti-cally. “In Eurasianism we are confronted with adouble indeterminacy: the indeterminacy char-acteristic of Russian thought itself, and anattempt to systematize this indetermination intoa new indeterminate conception.”31 His attitudetoward the other Neo-Eurasianists is even morenegative: apart from the historian and ethnolo-gist Lev Gumilev (1912–1992), many of whoseethnicist conceptions he shares, Dugin considershis ideological competitors worthless, andaffirms that their Neo-Eurasianist conceptionsare “hardly consistent [and] represent only anadaptation to a changing political reality of thewhole complex of ideas already quoted.”32

Dugin’s Eurasianism involves a great interest ingeopolitics, the main discipline on which he baseshis theories. For him, geopolitics by definitionserves the state in which it is elaborated. Thus,Russian geopolitics could only be Eurasianist,since it is responsible for restoring Russia’s greatpower status. It is also intended exclusively for theelites: according to Dugin, geopolitics is opposedto the democratic principle because the ability toknow the meaning of things is unavoidablyrestricted to the leaders. It is to this end that Duginrefers to the big names of the discipline, such asthe Germans Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), KarlHaushofer (1869–1946), and Friedrich Naumann(1860–1919), the Swede Rudolf Kjellen(1864–1922), and the Briton Sir HalfordMackinder (1861–1947). Indeed, there is little thatis Russian in Dugin’s intellectual baggage. Apartfrom Konstantin Leontyev (1831–91),33 whom


Dugin sometimes mentions, he is far moreinspired by Western authors than by Russians. Forexample, he speaks with admiration of theGerman organicists, such as Ernst Jünger(1895–1998), Oswald Spengler (1880–1936),Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876–1925), orErnst Niekisch (1889–1967) and Carl Schmitt(1888–1985). He borrows from Schmitt his con-ception of the nomos, the general form of organ-ization of the objective and subjective factors of agiven territory, and the theory of Großraum,“large spaces.”

Dugin attaches great value to this Germanheritage, and wishes to be viewed as a continen-tal geopolitician on a par with Schmitt andHaushofer: Russia’s centrality and continentality,to him, are comparable to those of Germany inthe 1920s–30s. He thus develops his own bipolarinterpretation of the world, opposing the‘Heartland’, which tends toward authoritarianregimes, to the ‘World Island’, the incarnation ofthe democratic and commercial system. He com-bines the classic Eurasianist theories with thisbipolar division of the world into sea-based andland-based societies, or thallassocracies and tel-lurocracies, and links them to various classic cou-ples of concepts from “Russian thought”(Western Christianity/Orthodoxy, West/East,democracy/ideocracy, individualism/collec-tivism, societies marked by change/societiesmarked by continuity). The opposition betweencapitalism and socialism is seen as just one partic-ular historical clash destined to continue in otherforms. “The Earth and the Sea disseminate theiroriginal opposition to the whole planet. Humanhistory is nothing but the expression of thisstruggle and the path of its absolutization.”34

Dugin then divides the world into four civi-lizational zones: the American zone, the Afro-European zone, the Asian-Pacific zone, and theEurasian zone. Russia must strive to establishvarious geopolitical alliances organized as con-centric circles. In Europe, Russia must of courseally itself with Germany, to which Dugin paysparticular attention. Presented as the heart ofEurope, Germany should dominate all ofCentral Europe as well as Italy, in accordancewith the theories of ‘centrality’ developed bythe Nazi geopoliticians as well as 19th centuryPrussian militarism. In Asia, Russia should allyitself with Japan, appreciated for its Pan-Asianideology and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis dur-

ing the Second World War. Within the Muslimworld, Dugin chooses Islamic Iran, admired forits moral rigorism. He presents Iran as one ofthe few real forces of opposition againstAmerican globalization, and invites it to unifythe entire Arab world, as well as Pakistan andAfghanistan, under its leadership. Dugin charac-terizes this quadruple alliance Russia-Germany-Japan-Iran which would react against the thalas-socracies (the United States, Britain in Europe,China in Asia, Turkey in the Muslim world) asa “confederation of large spaces,”35 since eachally is itself an empire that dominates the corre-sponding civilizational area. Unlike theEurasianists of the 1920s, Dugin does not talk ofan irreducible and romantic opposition betweenEast and West; in Dugin’s theories, both Asiaand Europe are destined to come underRussian-Eurasian domination.

As the maritime and democratic enemyallegedly has a “fifth column” in Russia, Dugincalls for a restoration of the Soviet Union and areorganization of the Russian Federation. He isthe only Neo-Eurasianist to include in his polit-ical project not only the Baltic States, but thewhole former socialist bloc.36 His Eurasia musteven expand beyond Soviet space, as he propos-es to incorporate Manchuria, Xingjian, Tibet,and Mongolia, as well as the Orthodox world ofthe Balkans: Eurasia would only reach its limitswith “geopolitical expansion to the shores ofthe Indian ocean,”37 an idea that was taken upand popularized by Zhirinovskii. Dugin alsoproposes a general repartition of the Federation,and especially of Siberia, which he considers tohave been on the verge of implosion for quitesome time. He calls for the abolition of the“national republics,” to be replaced by purelyadministrative regions subservient to Moscow.In The Foundations of Geopolitics, he acknowl-edges his hopes for the breakup of Yakutia,Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Buryatia, con-demned for their separatism and their capacityto form Buddhist or Pan-Turkic anti-Russianaxes with the neighboring regions. He wishes tounify them with industrialized regions that havea Russian majority, such as the Urals or thePacific shore [Primorskii krai].38

As in the Eurasianism of the 1920s–30s, thenon-Russian peoples, and particularly the Turko-Muslim minorities, are treated ambiguously.They are appreciated as key elements confirming


the distinctiveness of Russia’s Eurasian identity,but are also presented as potential competitors oreven enemies if they decided no longer to goalong with a Russian-dominated multinationalEurasia. The international events of the past fewyears, especially 9/11, as well as the second war inChechnya and the ensuing terrorist acts that cov-ered Russia with blood, forced Dugin to fine-tune his conception of Islam, and to be morecautious in his positive appreciation of a certaintype of Islamic radicalism. Thus, at a symposiumcalled “Islamic Threat or Threat against Islam?”organized by Evraziia on 28 June 2001, the partyofficials disavowed fundamentalism, presented as adanger to traditional Islam, and asserted a wish tocreate a Eurasian Committee for Russian-MuslimStrategic Partnership. According to Evraziia, tra-ditional Islam, Sufism, Shi’ism, and OrthodoxChristianity are spontaneously Eurasian, whereasCatholicism and Protestantism, but also U.S.-sponsored radical Islamism, represent Atlanticism.Dugin thus tries to distinguish between Shi’itefundamentalism, which he considers positive,from Sunni fundamentalism, which he disparages.

Dugin’s wish to dissociate a “good” tradition-al Islam from the other branches of the religion,which he all equates with Wahhabism, is sharedby numerous contemporarz Russian nationalistmovements, which aim to woo official RussianIslam. This kind of talk permitted Dugin torecruit the leaders of the Central SpiritualDirectorate of Russian Muslims into his Evraziiamovement. Dugin tries to preclude any compe-tition with Turkic Eurasianism on the questionof the country’s religious and national minori-ties. He has managed brilliantly to present hismovement not only as a tool for upholdingRussian power, but also as a pragmatic solutionto Russia’s internal tensions. Thus, from its cre-ation in 2001, Evraziia includes representativesof sensitive regions such as Yakutia-Sakha, theNorth Caucasus, and Tatarstan, and was pleasedto bring together all of Russia’s confessions:many muftis from the Central SpiritualDirectorate of Muslims, including their leader,Talgat Tadzhuddin, but also Buddhists (Dordzhi-Lama, the co-ordinator of the Union of KalmykBuddhists) and members of the Radical ZionistMovement, adhered to the party and stated theirdesire to fight the rise of religious extremismusing the integration strategy implicit in theEurasian idea.

However, Dugin does not limit himself tobringing Eurasianism’s geopolitical view ofRussia up to date. He seeks to anchor it in aglobal vision and to present it as a relevant modeof analysis that would help understand the entireevolution of the post-Cold War world. Onceagain, Dugin is playing the “guide,” using theinnumerable Western texts he is familiar with toadapt classic ideas from the history of Russianthought to contemporary debates. Thus, for sev-eral years now he has centered his argumentabout the Eurasian nature of Russia entirely onthe topic of globalization. According to him,globalization presents as obvious truth what isactually ideology: representative democracy asthe end of the history of human development,the primacy of the individual over any commu-nity, the impossibility of escaping the logic of theliberal economy, etc.39 He argues that only theEurasianist solution offers a viable alternativewith a strong theoretical potential that could faceup to the current globalization processes institut-ed by the United States. “Russia is the incarna-tion of the quest for an historical alternative toAtlanticism. Therein lies her global mission.”40

Like all Neo-Eurasianists, Dugin is a support-er of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civiliza-tions” argument, which is fashionable in Russia.Huntington’s warmongering allows Dugin toaffirm the necessity of maintaining the Russianimperial structure and to reject any prospect of aglobal equilibrium. According to him, theRussian nation needs to be prepared for“defending its national truth, not only against itsenemies, but also against its allies.”41 Indeed,Dugin’s geopolitical doctrine cannot functionwithout creating enemies. He bases his ideologyon conspiracy theories, presenting the newworld order as a “spider web” in which global-ized actors hide in order to better accomplishtheir mission. Dugin even dedicated a wholebook (published in 1993 and republished in arevised version in 2005) to what he calls con-spirology. The ideas expressed in it are contra-dictory. He harshly criticizes the presuppositionsabout Jewish, freemason, Marxist etc. conspira-cies held by numerous left- and right-wingpolitical groups, but he also shares some of theirideas.42 For example, he recounts a secret histo-ry of the Soviet Union in which a Eurasianistorder opposes its Atlanticist counterpart. Theputsch of August 1991 is described as the culmi-


nation of the occult war between these twoorders. According to Dugin, however, the alter-natives to globalization remain limited: eitherleft-wing ideologies worked out in the West, ora right-wing liberalism and the stagnation typi-cal of Asian countries. Dugin also notes thatthese two alternatives are opposed to each othereven though they share a common enemy. Hetherefore proposes that Russia elaborate a fertilecombination, because “all anti-globalizationtendencies are ‘Eurasianist’ by definition.”43

Dugin does not play the autarchy card at anycost: he is convinced that the Eurasian model ofresistance to American domination is exportableto the rest of the planet. He presents it as themost appropriate way of resisting the so-calledNew World Order. One of the aims of histhinking is therefore, as he describes it, “totransform Russian distinctiveness into a univer-sal model of culture, into a vision of the worldthat is alternative to Atlanticist globalization butalso global in its own way.”44

Thus Russia is called upon to participate inworld affairs while constructing a certainEurasian cultural autarchy. Much more than, forexample, Pyotr Savitsky and Count Trubetskoi,Dugin seems to have completely internalizedthe contradiction between, on the one hand, anexaltation of national distinctiveness and a pas-sionate rejection of any borrowing that wouldrisk “warping” Russia and, on the other hand, adesire for geopolitical and ideological expan-sionism and a new messianism. Far from beingjust a “successor” to the first Eurasianists, he is atheoretician who has multiple or even contra-dictory facets: many other doctrines have influ-enced his intellectual evolution at least as muchas, if not more than, Eurasianism.

TRADITIONALISM AS THE FOUNDATION OF DUGIN’S THOUGHTTraditionalism is a comparatively little studiedstrand of thought, although many 20th centurythinkers have been more or less discreetlyinspired by it.45 In the 1920s, René Guénon(1886–1951) formalized the main concepts ofTraditionalism in five books.46 He went througha Catholic phase, followed by a spiritualist stage(first in a theosophist lodge, then in the MartinistOrder), during which he discovered the orientalreligions and became disappointed with theWest, which he thought incapable of restoring a

mystical bond with faith. He left France forCairo, where he joined an Egyptian order andtried to put his Traditionalist precepts into prac-tice in Sufism. During the 1930s, his ideas weredeveloped in Italy, Germany and Romania, andTraditionalism became one of the main catch-words for fascist-minded spiritualist groups. Thework of Guénon’s main disciple, Julius Evola(1896–1974), an Italian painter close to theDadaists, should be mentioned here. One of hisbooks, Revolt against the Modern World (1934),had a deep influence on German and ItalianNeo-pagan movements. Traditionalism gained anew impetus in the 1960s, in particular in theMuslim world and, to a lesser extent, in Russia.

Traditionalists believe in the Tradition, thatis, in the existence of a world that was steady inits religious, philosophical, and social principlesand started disappearing with the advent ofmodernity in the sixteenth century. Modernityis considered to be harmful in that it destrois thepre-established hierarchical order that is naturalto the world: the hierarchization of humanbeings is believed to be of transcendent originand to have a mystical value. The Tradition isbetter preserved in non-Western civilizations,but through the colonial experience, thereassessment of the past begun in the West dur-ing Renaissance spread to other cultural spaces.Guénon gives this view—which, in its politicalaspects, is a typical example of counterrevolu-tionary thought (de Maistre, Bonald)—a reli-gious coloring that makes Traditionalism standout among conservative currents. For him, allreligions and esoteric traditions—regardless oftheir concrete practice—reveal the existence ofa now-extinct original sacred Tradition. Dubbedthe “primordial Tradition,” it is seen as the secretessence of all religions. Guénon then urges themodern world to regain an awareness of thisunity in the face of the desacralization and sec-ularization of the modern world. Through thisappeal, he has influenced numerous Gnostic andMasonic currents, as well as several Sufi orders.

Some Traditionalist texts seem to have beenknown in the USSR since the 1960s thanks tothe poet Yevgeny Golovin and his discovery ofLouis Pauwel’s The Morning of the Magicians.From the end of the 1970s, Dugin participatedin Golovin’s circle of occultist intellectuals,which included, among others, the Muslimthinker Geydar Dzhemal’ and the writer Yuri


Mamleev (who would later leave the country forthe United States). The intellectual unity of thiscircle was based on a simultaneous rejection ofthe Soviet experience, the West, andSlavophilism. These clandestine activities, as wellas the possession of forbidden books, causedDugin to be expelled from the Moscow AviationInstitute where he had been studying. Introducedto Traditionalism at a very young age, Dugintranslated the 1933 version of Evola’s PaganImperialism into Russian in 1981 and distributedit in samizdat. Choosing among the various cur-rents of Traditionalism, Dugin did not contenthimself with the search for an individual innerspiritual way—such as that, for example, of A. K.Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), which concen-trates on the aesthetic aspect of Traditionalism.Dugin is closer to Evola, who developed a politi-cized vision of Traditionalism, and does not hes-itate to affirm a sacrificial conception of politics:“We need a new party. A party of death. A partyof the total vertical. God’s party, the Russian ana-logue to the Hezbollah, that would act accordingto wholly different rules and contemplate com-pletely different pictures. For the System, death istruly the end. For a normal person, it is only abeginning.”47

The influence of Traditionalism on Duginseems to be fundamental: it constitutes his mainintellectual reference point and the basis of hispolitical attitudes as well as his Eurasianism.Dugin has made considerable efforts to dissemi-nate Traditionalist thought in Russia. He regu-larly translates extracts from the works of thegreat Traditionalist theoreticians, René Guénonand Julius Evola, but also from so-called “soft”Traditionalist authors such as Mircea Eliade andCarl Jung; so-called “hard” Traditionalists likeTitus Burckhardt; converts to Sufism, such asFrithjof Schuon; and converts to Islamism, likeClaudio Mutti. The journals Elementy, and,especially, Milyi angel, whose full subtitle is“Metaphysics, angelology, cosmic cycles, escha-tology, and tradition,” are dedicated to the diffu-sion of Traditionalist thought. They include arti-cles on specifically Russian apocalyptic tradi-tions, aiming to facilitate the acceptance ofTraditionalism in Russia by proving that ele-ments of it were present in old popular concep-tions (the mystical currents of Orthodoxy, themyth about the submerged city of Kitezh, hesy-chasm, and the teachings of Gregory of Palama).

Dugin also lectured on Traditionalism at theNew University in 2002, and published his lec-tures in The Philosophy of Traditionalism in thesame year. He believes that the contemporaryperiod, being profoundly eschatological, allowshim to disseminate the Traditionalist messagemuch more broadly than before, and to revealthe radical and revolutionary character ofGuénon by teaching what Dugin calls Guénon’s“eschatological humanism.”48 “Tradition, accord-ing to Guénon’s definition, is the totality ofdivinely revealed, non-human Knowledge,which determined the makeup of all sacred civi-lizations—from the paradisiacal empires of theGolden Age, which disappeared several millenniaago, to Medieval civilization which, in its variousforms (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian,etc.) reproduced the fundamental parameters ofSacred Order.”49

According to Dugin, the mission of soterio-logical Traditionalism has three stages: the first,or individual stage, is to contribute to the devel-opment of the Tradition as such, i.e. of esoteri-cism; the second, political and exoteric stage, isto reaffirm the superiority of the laws of thechurch (or, for example, of the Shari’a); thethird, or social stage, is to assist in the restorationof a hierarchy of medieval orders. Dugin isnever, however, a simple ideological “reproduc-er.” He hopes to “Russify” the doctrines thatinspire him, and to adapt them to what he callsthe traditional concepts of the Russian world.Thus, he defines himself as a “post-Guénonist,”50 seeking to deepen Guénon’s basicideas, which implies acknowledging certainpoints of disagreement with the founding father.His main criticism of the WesternTraditionalists, and in particular of Guénon,concerns their vision of Orthodoxy. In TheMetaphysics of the Gospel (1996), Dugin assertsthat Guénon, who held that Christianitybecame exoteric after the great Councils, wasactually targeting the two Western confessions,but not Orthodoxy, which has retained its initi-atic character and esoteric foundations to thisday.51 He also affirms that metaphysics and ontol-ogy, which Traditionalism attempts to rehabili-tate, have been particularly well preserved inOrthodoxy, which has never rejected an escha-tological approach: “We are the church of thefinal times […], the history of the terrestrialchurch is probably nearing its end.”52


Concerning the divisions between Neo-pagans and Christians that shook the WesternTraditionalist movement, Dugin remains in anambiguous position that is revelatory of his ownhesitations on this matter. He appreciates therehabilitation of paganism as Tradition proposedby Evola. Like Evola, he believes that Christianityhas remained the most pagan monotheism(through the figure of the Trinity), and admiresthe importance of entropy and eschatology in thepagan religions. He remains, however, deeplyanchored in Christianity and, like Guénon, seesit (but only in its Eastern variety) as the reposito-ry of Tradition. Dugin affirms that “the develop-mental stages of the metaphysical constructionsin orthodox Guénonian (and Evolian)Traditionalism [lead] to the ultimate affirmationof Orthodox Trinitarian metaphysics, in whichall the most valuable vectors of insight foundtheir complete and accomplished expression […]Everyone who follows this metaphysical logic […] necessarily arrives at Orthodoxy.”53

Dugin remains, however, attracted to Neo-pagan conceptions, which exalt the body andharmony with nature, although he remainsembedded in Orthodoxy as the founding institu-tion of Russian distinctiveness. His position onthis question is therefore revolutionary in itsbreak with Christianity, and fundamentally con-servative in its respect for the religious institutionand its hierarchy. Dugin links an esoteric accountof the world to Orthodoxy, which he sees ashaving preserved an initiatic character, a ritual-ism where each gesture has a symbolic meaning.He thus calls for the restoration of an Orthodoxvision of the world, for a “clericalization[otserkovlenie] of everything.”54 This opposition,however, which had divided the GermanNational Socialists and later the New Right,may seem less relevant for Russia: Orthodoxy,unlike Catholicism or Protestantism, is moreeasily instrumentalized as a specifically nationalrather than universal faith. This is indeed howDugin interprets it: he regularly participates inthe various nationalist movements launched byofficial Russian Orthodoxy.55 His adherence,since 1999, to the Old Believers allows him touphold a strictly national faith without having tomake the difficult choice of converting topaganism and reject official Orthodoxy.56

Dugin tries to present the Russian schism ofthe 17th century as the archetype of Traditionalist

thought, born of the rejection of the seculariza-tion of Orthodoxy, which he dates at around thesame time as that given by Guénon for the end ofTradition in the West (after the end of the ThirtyYears’War in 1648). So “Eurasianism will only beentirely logical if it is based on a return to theOld Belief, the true ancient and authenticRussian faith, the true Orthodoxy.”57 Accordingto Dugin, the schismatic church is simultaneous-ly conservative and revolutionary, espousing acult of the earth (like paganism), free of an insti-tutionalized conception of faith, and driven by afundamentally apocalyptic vision of the fate ofhumanity. This view is ideologically convenientsince it permits Dugin to avoid making a choicebetween a national paganism and a universalfaith. Thus, Orthodoxy, and in particular the OldBelievers, can incorporate Neo-paganism’snationalist force, which anchors it in the Russiansoil and separates it from the two other Christianconfessions.

Dugin fully agrees with the Traditionalistcriticism of spiritualism. Guénon already con-sidered spiritualism to be a “counter-initiation,”a reconstruction of pseudo-traditions actuallyborn of modernity, which must be condemnedfor wanting to usurp the real Tradition. ForDugin too, theosophism, cosmism and theNew Age religions are a spiritualist version ofpost-industrial modernity and a veiled cult oftechnology.58 He condemns their populism andlack of coherent spiritual conceptions, whereashe sees Traditionalism as intended for a restrict-ed elite, which is alone able to understand itsrequirements.59

Dugin views religion as being at the founda-tion of societies as well as modes of analyzingsocieties. This implies a reinterpretation of mod-ern Western intellectual life, and especially of itsscientific attitudes. Following the Traditionalistprecept that rationality is a mental construct, andprogress a notion that bears no relation to reali-ty, Dugin argues that the positivist foundation ofcontemporary science must be questioned in itsvery principle.60 Since the Renaissance, the sep-aration between sacred and profane, like thatbetween art and science, has opened the way toa distorted vision of the human ability to under-stand the universe. Dugin therefore calls for arehabilitation of esoteric knowledge as part ofscientific research, and appreciates RomanticNaturphilosophie because of its intention to recre-


ate a holistic knowledge of the world. Likewise,he believes in the imminent end of positivist sci-ence, and in the rebirth of synthetic sciences thatwould be full of meaning and reveal man’s placein the world.

Dugin formulates this idea by trying to theo-rize so-called “sacred sciences.” According tohim, their sacredness expresses itself not in a spe-cific methodology, but rather in the functionsand goals attributed to the discipline. Like themodern sciences, thus, these “sacred sciences”have a specific object of research, but they donot lose their ties with ontological and gnoseo-logical knowledge.61 One of the fields capable offusing objective data and philosophical back-ground is geopolitics. Dugin systematically pres-ents it not as a simple scientific discipline, but asa Weltanschauung, a meta-science which encom-passes all the other sciences, thereby endowingthem with meaning. According to him,“geopolitics is a vision of the world. It is there-fore better to compare it not to sciences, but tosystems of sciences. It is on the same level asmarxism, liberalism, etc., i.e. systems of inter-pretation of society and history.”62

Dugin does not limit himself to a spiritual orintellectual understanding of Traditionalism. Heasserts that it is in itself an “an ideology or meta-ideology that is in many ways totalitarian andrequires that those that adopt it accept its strin-gent requirements.”63 Among these requirements,political commitment seems fundamental toDugin. According to him, Traditionalism is themetaphysical root of numerous political ideolo-gies, in particular those known as the theories ofthe Third Way. He thus outlines three types ofdoctrines that are simultaneously philosophical,religious and political, and between them governthe entire history of the world. The first, whichhe calls the polar-paradisiacal one, expressed itselfon the religious level as esotericism orGnosticism, on the historical level as themedieval civilization of the Ghibellines, thenGerman National Socialism, and on the politicallevel as eschatological totalitarianism. The secondideology, called the “creation-creator” one, isreligiously exoteric, its historical incarnation isCatholicism or classical Sunnism. On the politi-cal level it blends theocracy, clericalism and con-servatism. The third ideology, defined as “mysti-cal materialism,” is a form of absolutist pantheismembodied in the militant atheism of the liberal

West.64 Dugin thus formalizes two “rights,” a rev-olutionary and a conservative one (the third ide-ology represents the “left”), and displays a dis-tinct preference for the former of the visions ofthe world.

Dugin also proposes another Traditionalistterminology with which to define the politicalspectrum, which he sees as always being dividedinto three groups. The right is “History asDecadence, the necessity of instantaneousRestoration, the primacy of eschatology.” Thecenter is “History as Constancy, the necessity topreserve the balance between the Spiritual andthe Material.” The left is “History as Progress,the necessity to contribute to its advancementand acceleration in every possible way.”65 In thissecond account, conservatism seems to be classi-fied as being in the center, thereby reserving theright exclusively for the revolutionary move-ment of which Dugin considers himself a repre-sentative. This reveals the ambiguous politicalplace he attributes to Traditionalism: “from thepoint of view of Integral Traditionalism, theonly adequate position for implementing theprinciples of the Sacred Tradition to contempo-rary political reality is, in a normal case, that ofthe which is often called ‘extreme right’ […].But social history advances in a sense which isstrictly opposed to this ideal, from theocracy tosecularism, from monarchism to egalitarianism,and from spiritual and empire-building disci-pline to an apology of comfort and individualwell-being. […] This is why the ‘extreme right’on the political level often proves to be too“left” for the authentic Traditionalist […] SomeTraditionalists may pass from ‘extreme right’positions to the ‘extreme left,’ revolutionary oreven socialist or communist wing, whileremaining fully consistent and logical in theiractions.”66 This idea of the interchangeability ofleft and right is reminiscent of certain ideas ofthe Western New Right.

THE RUSSIAN EXPONENT OF THE NEW RIGHT?Dugin has often been compared to Alain deBenoist (b. 1943), the principal theoretician ofthe French movement called “New Right.” Thisschool of thought emerged in the second half ofthe 1970s, going back to the GRECE (Grouped’Études et de Recherche sur la CivilisationEuropéenne) and the magazine Nouvelle École.67


The two men met during Dugin’s stay in Paris atthe end of the 1980s, and they remained closecollaborators for a few years. In 1992, for exam-ple, the patriotic newspaper Den’ published thetranscript of a round table discussion withDugin, Aleksandr Prokhanov, Sergei Baburinand Alain de Benoist.68 When Dugin launchedhis own journal the same year, he called itElementy and presented it as the Russian versionof Éléments, the magazine of the European NewRight. This publication made the split betweenDugin and the more classical nationalists of Den’(future Zavtra) official, but did not prevent dis-agreements with de Benoist. Thus, in 1993, deBenoist strove to clear himself of associationswith Dugin after a virulent French and Germanpress campaign against the “red-and-brownthreat” in Russia. In an interview, he acknowl-edged that he had become aware of a number ofideological divergences with Dugin, concerningpolitics—e.g. on the concept of Eurasia andRussian imperialistic tendencies69—but also the-ory. Indeed, de Benoist makes only partial use ofTraditionalism, whereas Dugin draws on thewhole body of that doctrine. Conversely, deBenoist is strongly attracted to Heidegger’s phi-losophy, while Dugin does not find it congenial.

Nevertheless, the careers of both men havemany features in common. For example, it isimpossible to classify either using pre-definedideological patterns, or to pin down their polit-ical sympathies precisely in the classical right-left spectrum. Both reject populism and, in spitea few fruitless attempts, neither of them hasbeen able to find a political party capable ofreflecting their complex thought. Since theearly 1990s, de Benoist has never hidden hiscontempt for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s NationalFront,70 while Dugin condemns the famous fig-ures of Russian nationalism, such as EduardLimonov, Gennady Ziuganov, or VladimirZhirinovskii, despite having more or less direct-ly inspired them. Like the French thinker, hesubjects the entire right-wing spectrum in hiscountry to fierce criticism, denies the relevanceof the distinction between right and left, andcannot accept the electoral populism of thosegroups, in particular their most xenophobicstatements. In the diversity of his sources ofinspiration and in his striving to to find an alter-native way of thinking, Dugin seems as alienat-ed from traditional Russian nationalism as de

Benoist is from the classic French nationalism ofCharles Maurras or Maurice Barrès.

Both Dugin and de Benoist have thereforeregularly had to explain their stance, and havebeen considered as “traitors” by other factions ofthe radical right. Dugin, for example, provided alengthy explanation of his dismissal of ethno-nationalism. According to him, the Russiannationalist milieu is divided into two groups: onthe one hand are the Pan-Slavists and monar-chists, who have an ethnocentric and politicallyoutdated vision of Russia; on the other hand arethe Eurasianists, Communists and pro-statists,who give priority to great state power over eth-nic feeling, and who are above all focused on thefuture.71 Indeed, like de Benoist, Dugin attemptsto “dissociate the question of identity affirmationfrom the question of nationalism”:72 he extolsnon-xenophobic nationalism, criticizes Pan-Slavist sentimentalism such as it manifested itselfin Russia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s,and rejects the popular anti-Caucasian phobiainstrumentalized by politicians such as Ziuganov,or, even more strongly, Zhirinovskii.

Dugin thus calls for a rational, dispassionatenationalism, one that would acknowledge itsborrowings from alternative projects such asreligious fundamentalism, Third Worldism orleft-wing environmentalism. Since the 1980s,Dugin and de Benoist have been the main pro-ponents, in their respective countries, of a doc-trinal revitalization of right-wing thought. Bothalso presuppose that the conquest of politicalpower requires first gaining cultural power. Formore than a decade, de Benoist’s aim has beento disseminate his doctrines in French intellec-tual circles, in particular through the journalKrisis, which offers a space for critical discussionbetween the foremost right-wing and left-wingthinkers. This preference for culture alsoexplains Dugin’s choice of public strategy overthe past few years.

In spite of their break, Dugin continues tomake regular references to de Benoist, andshares his hope for a continental destiny forEurope, built along overtly anti-Atlanticist lines.He borrows many conceptions from the JeuneEurope movement, as well as from the BelgianJean Thiriart (1922–92), who had striven for aEuro-Soviet empire to be brought about by amovement he called “national communitarian”.What is common to all these trends is a striving



for what they call organic democracy, whichwould place the state at the service of thenational community. This kind of democracywould express itself in political unanimity as wellas in a return to a “natural hierarchy” of socialcastes, and in a (professional, regional or confes-sional) corporatism that would leave no roomfor the individual outside the collectivity. Thus,Dugin distinguishes himself from other figuresin the Russian nationalist movements preciselythrough his militant Europeanism, his exaltationof the Western Middle Ages, and his admirationfor Germany. All these ideological features con-trast strongly with the ethnocentrism of hiscompetitors and a Soviet tradition of equatingGermany with “fascism”. This is why Dugin hasoften been criticized, in particular by theCommunists, for whom the Russian “anti-fas-cist” tradition rules out the recognition of anyGerman, and more generally Western, culturalinfluence on Russian nationalism.

Even more than de Benoist, Dugin has anambiguous position on the racial question.GRECE has largely abandoned the theme of“biological realism,” which was very present inJeune Europe and other radical nationalist fac-tions, and has preferred to insist on a culturaland non-racial differentialism since the 1960s.De Benoist was the main driving force behindthis evolution, and, since the end of the 1960s,he has condemned all racial ideas, which hepresents as an application of the Judeo-Christianpresuppositions he criticizes. Nevertheless, racialarguments remain important in other Westernradical right-wing circles. On this point, Dugindoes not go as far as de Benoist: he remains moreinfluenced by racialist currents as well as bythose Traditionalists who, like Evola and unlikeGuénon, were also sensitive to racial topics.Thus, Dugin condemns racialism in its Nazi ver-sion for having led to the Holocaust, but also forhaving crystallized around a German-centeredvision of the world instead of a European one.Dugin supports Evola’s criticism of the racialand anti-Semitic determinism of Third ReichGermany, but shares his vision of race as the“soul” of peoples.78

He systematically constructs an oppositionbetween race and geopolitics, between national-ism and loyalty to the state, and systematicallytakes a stand in favor of the latter. Nevertheless,he regularly uses the term “race” to clarify what

he calls “civilizational” differences. For instance,Eurasia to him is a racial synthesis betweenWhites (the Indo-European Slavs) and Yellows(the Finno-Turkic peoples): according to theEvolian principle of “spiritual racism,” each ofthese races is endowed with innate qualities rev-elatory of certain philosophical principles79

which Dugin, borrowing from the SlavophileA.S. Khomiakov80 (1804–60), calls the Finnishand the Frisian principles: the former, that ofthe “Whites,” is associated with authoritarian-ism, hierarchy, order, exotericism; to the latter,that of the “Yellows,” correspond equality, liber-ty, and esotericism. The hybrid nature ofEurasia, which is simultaneously white and yel-low, gives it a global role to play: Russia will startits Nordic renewal, and “wherever there is a sin-gle drop of Aryan (Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian,European) blood, there is a chance for racialawakening, for the rebirth of the primordialAryan conscience.”81

Dugin’s texts abound in references toAryanism and Neo-paganism, a classic corollaryof the racial ideology and of the idea of theoriginal superiority of the Whites. Here again,his inspiration comes from the New Right,which since the 1950s has tried to transcend tra-ditional nationalism by refocusing on theEuropean idea, and from the doctrines ofEurope-Action. These proponents of the idea ofan ethnic and cultural unity of European peoplesno longer wish to express their identity in aninsular or chauvinist manner, remembering theobstacles that divided the European nationalistsduring the Second World War. Thus Duginaccepts the theory of a “defense of the West,” ifthis term is understood in its ancient racial andAryan sense, not in terms of contemporaryWestern culture. In his works, he regularly refersto Guido von List (1848–1919) and Jörg Lanzvon Liebenfels (1874–1954), the famousthinkers of Germanic Aryanism, and presentshimself as one of the founders of Ariosophy, orthe science of Aryan wisdom.

There are even more frequent references toHermann Wirth (1885–1981), one of Dugin’sfavorite authors, and to his occultist theories onthe Arctic homeland of the original Aryan peo-ples. “Thousands of years ago, our land wel-comed the descendants of the Arctic, thefounders of the Hindu and Iranian civilizations.We (especially as Orthodox Christians) are the

most direct heirs of the Arctic, of its ancient tra-ditions.”82 Guénon would have affirmed that theHyperborean civilization was not in Scandinaviabut more to the East, a theory that Dugin hasdiscussed at length, in particular in The Mysteriesof Eurasia (1991). In this book, he presentsSiberia and its enormous Nordic continentalmass as the original cradle of the Aryans, as wellas the magical center of the world, followingthe idea that “the continents have a symbolicsignificance.”83 In The Hyperborean Theory (1993)and The Philosophy of Traditionalism (2002), healso professes his belief in a runic writing, a kindof Aryan Grail written in a universal proto-lan-guage, supposedly discovered and published byHermann Wirth in 1933 under the name ofChronicle of Ura-Linda.84

Dugin’s occultist leanings are also apparent inhis striving to create a metaphysics of the cardi-nal points, which he perceives as absolutes thatare sources of identity. The North and the Eastare at the heart of his esoteric concerns: theNorth confirms Russia’s Nordic identity, a fun-damental element of the discourse of racialidentity inspired by Nazism. The East is theexpression of Russia-Eurasia’s inner Orientalnature. “The Drang nach Osten und Norden ofRussia is the natural geopolitical process ofRussian history.”85 Russia’s global role thenappears distinctly, since only Russia combinesthe symbolic distinctions of being raciallyNorthern, Eastern by its cultural and religiouschoices, and economically Southern, an ally ofa Third World resisting Westernization. In ablend of the Nazi and Eurasianist traditions,Dugin sees Siberia as destined to play a majorrole in the new Russian identity. He thus elab-orates a cosmogony of the world in order tomake Siberia, the last “empire of paradise”86

after Thule, the instrument of his geopoliticaldesire for a domination of the world, justifiedby Russia’s “cosmic destiny.”87

Dugin advances various occultist lines of rea-soning in favor of this Hyperborean theory, draw-ing on the mystique of the alphabets, sounds,numbers, and geometric symbols, references tothe Kabbala, alchemy, Hermeticism, Gnosticism,the law of astrological correspondences, parallelswith Iranian and Indian culture, etc. Dugindefines this set of theories as sacred geography,that is to say, “the unknown science of the secretsof world history, of the enigmas of ancient civi-

lization and continents, and of the origin of races,religions and old mythologies.”88 All these ele-ments of occultist culture are not specific to theNew Right, they have their roots in the esotericideas of the founding fathers of Traditionalism,and have been explored by mystical currents ofthe 1920s and 1930s close to fascism.

FASCISM, CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTIONAND NATIONAL BOLSHEVISMThe connections between Dugin’s ideas and fas-cism have been a subject of much debate.89

However, the terms of the debate stand in needof definition. Fascism is a historically circum-scribed phenomenon that was politically andintellectually liquidated with the end of theSecond World War, though it left some traceswith small Neo-Fascist groups which reap-peared, above all in Europe and in LatinAmerica, in the second half of the 20th century.Fascism can also be chronologically and ideolog-ically divided into Fascist movements and Fascistregimes (in Italy and Germany). Only the firstinterest us here. To classify a thought as “Fascist”does not, then, mean to predict that it will takepower and endanger human lives, nor to catego-rize it in a discriminatory manner that woulddeny it the right to be analyzed. This terminol-ogy merely points to an adherence to a specificintellectual tradition. Intellectual fascism shareswith the other currents of the “extreme right” aRomantic heroism (a cult of the leader, thearmy, and physical effort, and the indoctrinationof the young), but distinguishes itself from themby its revolutionary and pro-socialist aspects, aswell as by its attraction to futurism and esoteri-cism. Dugin’s ideas share many features of thisoriginal fascism, as he is expecting a cultural rev-olution aiming to create a “New Man”. It can-not, however, be equated with fascism if that isunderstood to designate the contemporary racistextreme right, a designation that is moreoverhistorically and conceptually incorrect.

On economics, Dugin unapologeticallystands “on the left,” even if this Western (or even“all-too-French”) terminology is not necessari-ly applicable to the Russian political spectrum.For example, Dugin repeatedly asserts that hehas borrowed from certain socialist theories, inparticular on economics, since he is in favor ofgiving the state a crucial role in productionstructures. Economics was not at all addressed in

15ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT?

his first works, but it seems to have taken on anincreasing importance since 2001. Dugin evenhopes to establish the “theoretical sources of anew socialism,”90 based largely on a paternalisticversion of Keynesian economics. He has alsoappropriated some Marxian ideas: for him, theopposition between labor and capital,Continentalism and Atlanticism, and East andWest, are parallel.91 These left-wing conceptionsplayed a role in Dugin’s rapprochement with thesocialist-leaning economist Sergei Glaz’ev andtheir brief alliance in 2003 within the Rodinabloc, which presented itself as a left-wing alter-native to the Communist Party.

Dugin never plays the communist card. Hehas only negative things to say about Marxism-Leninism such as it existed in the USSR, andhas, for several years, been a condescending crit-ic of the Communist Party. He appreciatesZiuganov’s borrowings from his geopolitical the-ories, but condemns his electoral exploitation ofSoviet nostalgia, and most of all regrets his ide-ological inconsistency. According to Dugin, theCPRF no longer has a claim to the heritage ofthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union, andcannot even present itself as a left-wing party,since it advances a series of arguments thatDugin classifies as right-wing, such as socialconservatism, racism and anti-Semitism, monar-chism, calls for tax cuts, etc. Dugin thereforebelieves that the Communist Party can bedefined as an unacknowledged Eurasianistmovement, whose function is to express socialdiscontent, but not to take power.92

This combination of economic socialism andconservatism regarding values is typical of cur-rents espousing the so-called “third way”. Duginacknowledges his fundamental attraction to rev-olutionary ideas: he has never been a partisan ofany return to the past, which explains his gradualbreak with so many other nationalist figures. Hedoes not play the card of czarist or Soviet nostal-gia and sees himself as resolutely turned towardthe future. For example, he is a militant propo-nent of the introduction of modern technologiesin Russia, cultivating a strong presence of hisown on the Internet and calling for a “modern-ization without Westernization.” He is thus fullyin accordance with the doctrines of so-calledNational Bolshevism, whose theoreticians headmires, whether they were Russian exiles,members of the Soviet party apparatus, German

Communists, or left-wing Nazis. During his dis-sident years, Dugin seems to have opposed thisstrand of thought, which he did not identify as“Traditionalist,”93 but in the 1990s, he changedhis mind and attempted a synthesis between hisGuénonian philosophical conceptions and thepolitical ideas of the National Bolsheviks. Likemany dissidents, Dugin only took a positive viewof the Soviet experience after two events: a tripto the West in 1989, and the disappearance of theregime in 1991.

Dugin then developed the distinction pro-posed by Mikhail Agursky, between “NationalBolshevism,” a messianic ideology that has anational basis but a universal vocation, and“national communism,” the Soviet newspeakterm that designated the separatism of theRussian Empire’s ethnic margins.94 Basing himselfon Karl Popper,95 Dugin defines NationalBolshevism as a “meta-ideology common to allthe enemies of open society.”96 Indeed, what ismost important for him is that right-wing andleft-wing totalitarian ideologies are united in theirrefusal to accord a central role to the individualand to place it above the collectivity, be it socialor national. The phenomenon of NationalBolshevism, then, is not a specific moment ofhistory, but a philosophical conception of theworld which has lost none of its relevance, brack-eting together all non-conformist thinkers seek-ing an alternative to liberalism and communism.

Dugin’s view of National Bolshevism restslargely on mystical foundations, which oncemore reminds one of the original Fascists. Hestresses the parallels between esotericism andpolitical commitment, be it Fascist, Nazi, orBolshevik: National Bolshevism is thus to himmerely a politicized version of Traditionalism,the modernized expression of the messianichopes that have existed in Russia since the fall ofConstantinople in 1453. According to Dugin, itheralds “the Last Revolution, worked by anacephalous, headless bearer of cross, sickle andhammer, crowned by the eternal swastika of thesun.”97 According to Dugin, the most completeincarnation of the Third Way was GermanNational-Socialism, much more so thanMussolini’s Italy or the inter-war Russian exiles.He then points out parallels between “ThirdRome, the Third Reich, the Third Inter-national,”98 and attempts to prove their commoneschatological basis. For Dugin, the original triad


of Father, Son and Holy Spirit reveal to the ini-tiated that the Third Reich, just like ThirdRome, will be the kingdom of the Holy Spirit.Thus, examining the fear that the term “fas-cism” still causes today, even though the phe-nomenon no longer exists as such, Duginexplains: “By fascism we obviously do not meana concrete political phenomenon, but our deep-seated secret fear that brings the nationalist, theliberal, the communist and the democrat closertogether. This fear does not have a political orideological nature, it expresses a more general,more deep-seated feeling […] [the fear of] amagical fascism.”94

Dugin therefore advances a positive reading offascism, and does not denounce Nazism, eventhough he condemns its racism. He is contentwith regretting that Hitler attacked the USSRand made mistakes in his application of the theo-ries of conservative revolution, which were bet-ter preserved by left-wing Nazis who called foran alliance between Germany and the SovietUnion. He especially appreciates the Waffen-SS95

and, even more, the cultural organizationAhnenerbe. In his publications of the 1990s, par-ticularly in periodicals and on his web sites,Dugin’s ideological arsenal borrows from anoth-er typical component of the original fascism: theideologization of sex. According to him, menand women respond to different philosophicalprinciples (active and passive), and men’s superi-ority is proven etymologically since, in numerouslanguages, a single term designates both malepersons and human beings in general.96 Thus, theliberalization of sex, pornography, feminism,homosexuality, and the fashion for Freudianismand psychoanalysis are part of the process offorced Westernization of the world. This “era ofgynecocracy”97 heralds the “castration” of menand, along with it, the disappearance of tradi-tional society. Dugin calls for a revindication oferoticism in a phallo-centric and patriarchal way,and hopes to develop a “patriotic conscience” ofthe sexual act because “empire represents the cul-minating point of eroticism.”98

Like the original Fascists, Dugin admires theRomantic taste for death and combat, shares acontempt for contemporary society, which hebelieves to be bourgeois and decadent, andaspires to form young, purified generations:“the Eurasian is a strong, healthy, and beautifulperson, who has passionarity and passion […]

Our ideal is to make good physical and moralhealth, strength, valor, fidelity and pride honor-able goals.”99 The journals Elementy and MilyiAngel, as well as the Internet sites linked toDugin, are therefore filled with a strong militarysymbolism, and sometimes exhibit muscular,weapon-laden and khaki-clad bodies. The backcover of one of his latest books, The Philosophyof War (2004), is particularly explicit: “The valueof peoples, cultures and societies is proved inwar and through it. The beautiful is what has asits foundation the accomplishment of self-affir-mation. War renews Man, and the price to payfor this gigantic personal effort confirms hisadherence to the community. War has alwaysbeen a collective business, having as its goal theconservation of the people and the State, theincrease of their power, of their space, and oftheir life regions. Herein lies the social andnational sense of war.”100

A VEILED ANTI-SEMITISMHis exaltation of this warlike spirit, combinedwith numerous references to Fascist ideas,prompts questions on the place of the “Jewishquestion” in Dugin’s thought. As with the otherEurasianist thinkers, this question is particularlycomplex because they all combine philo-Semiticand anti-Semitic arguments. Dugin proposes hisown version of that conjunction in the form of aparadoxical Judaeophobic philo-Zionism.

In The Conservative Revolution (1994), Duginrecognizes that the state of Israel has realized akind of Traditionalism: “the only state that haspartly succeeded in putting into practice certainaspects of the conservative revolution is the stateof Israel.”101 This prompted him to establish closelinks with some Israeli ultra-nationalist currents.Thus, since 1998, Dugin has sought to developcontacts with that part of the Israeli right whichupholds the belief that all Jews must live in Israel.This militant Zionism agrees with him because itis in accordance with the principle of ethno-plu-ralism: all peoples should live in peace, but “athome.” The Evraziia movement is linked withtwo radical Zionist groups, VladimirBoukharsky’s MAOF Analytical Group and Be’adArtzeinu, controlled by Rabbi AvramShmulevich. These two groups, situated to theright of the right-wing Israeli party Likhud, areled by two former Soviet citizens of Jewish ori-gin who emigrated to Israel and are now com-


mitted to politicizing the Israeli Russians. Both ofthem participated in the founding convention ofEvraziia and occupy important positions in theparty hierarchy.102 The web site of theInternational Eurasianist Movement also men-tions a link with Avigdor Eskin, a former SovietJew who took refuge in Israel and is now fightingthe “liberal oligarchy” which he says is runningthe country.103 Some radical currents of Judaism(most often Zionist, but also Hasidic and mysti-cal) are also represented in Evraziia by Rabbis stillliving in Russia, for example Adol’f Shaevich.They are all united by the idea that Jewish tradi-tion, like Orthodoxy and Islam, is a target ofunceasing attacks by secularization, a kind of reli-gious globalization: only the unification of thetraditionalists of all religions will allow for thedevelopment of strategies of resistance.104

Dugin’s objective of an alliance with Israelderives from the idea of a distinction between“good” and “bad” Judaism, which had alreadybeen developed by the first Eurasianists, in par-ticular in Iakov Bromberg’s texts on the Jewishquestion. Dugin borrows from Bromberg thedistinction between a Eurasian and an AtlanticistJewishness. For Bromberg, the goal was toinvolve the Jews of the Russian Empire in theconstruction of Eurasia, and to invite them tocultivate their specificities without trying toassimilate to the Russians. However, he belittledthe West European Jews whom he saw as bear-ers of political and economic modernity, of cap-italism and communism, and as being excessive-ly assimilated to the Romano-Germanic world.In Dugin’s texts, the distinction is different: the“good” Jews are the citizens of Israel, as well asthose who choose to leave for Israel, because thisact signals their awareness of their irreducibleJewish specificity. The “bad” Jews are those whocontinue to live in the diaspora and try to beassimilated by the surrounding cultures, be it inthe Atlanticist or the post-Soviet world. Thus,unlike the original Eurasianists, Dugin does notattempt to attract the East European Jews,whom he presents as historical enemies ofRussian nationalism.

Dugin thus demonstrates a complex philo-Zionism combined with anti-Semitic state-ments, another combination typical of a part ofthe Western New Right. While he regularlycriticizes the vulgar anti-Semitism espoused bymost currents of Russian nationalism, he does

expound a more sophisticated and euphemizedversion of anti-Semitism, centered on more sub-tle religious and philosophical arguments. Forexample, he disagrees with René Guénon, whoconsidered the Kabbala to be an authentic eso-tericism: for Dugin, the sense of the universal—an indispensable element of any realTraditionalism—is absent from the Kabbala,which, like the Talmud, is founded on theJewish ethnic consciousness.105 He also arguesthat Traditionalism views history as cyclical,whereas Judaism, because of its pessimism,regards it as linear.106 For Dugin, the idea ofGod’s incarnation as a man fundamentallychanged the metaphysical cosmogony ofChristianity. Thus, “from the point of view ofOrthodox esotericism, the counter-initiation is,without doubt, Judaism.”107 Dugin then consid-ers the term “Judeo-Christianity” to be anincorrect formula, in particular for Orthodoxy,which he argues is even more distant fromJudaism than Catholicism is.108

This argument illustrates Dugin’s version ofanti-Semitism. He attempts to efface the com-mon historical roots that link Judaism to the twoother monotheistic religions, and accuses theJewish world of having created a biological con-ception of itself. This inversion, a classical featureof anti-Semitism, is found in many of his texts,where he rejects, but also partly admires, theJews’ alleged capacity for conceiving of them-selves as a race. Thus, according to Dugin, Israelis the archetypal example of a state founded on anethnic or racial principle, born of the Holocaust,of course, but also having contributed to the cre-ation of this drama to which the Jews fell victim.Dugin argues that Zionism and Nazism are anideological couple, in which it is difficult to knowwhich caused the other: their polarity is a sign oftheir intimate correlation.109

Dugin also repeatedly asserts that the Jewsconsider themselves to be a chosen people,which squarely opposes them to RussianMessianism, another ideology of national excep-tionalism. Another consistent oppositionbetween Judaism and Russianness concerns therelation to territory. According to Dugin, life inthe diaspora has desacralized in the Jewish mindthe territories on which the Jews have lived fortwo millenia, and only the long inaccessible landof Israel has kept its sacred character. Their lackof emotion toward nature and their theological


rejection of redemption by the earth—embod-ied by Jesus in Christianity—reveals theirincompatibility with the Eurasian idea, forwhich territory is laden with meaning, as well aswith Russian identity, marked by the cult of thenurturing soil. The famous Jewish nomadismfound its most sophisticated expression in themaritime character of the thallassocracies.110 Thisis why only the traditionalist Jews returning tolive in Israel can be in agreement with theEurasianist idea, all others being (possiblyunconscious) bearers of an Atlanticist identitymarked by affective indifference toward soil.

In his interpretation of Jewishness, Duginalso employs the esoteric elements that he devel-ops in his theory of peoples. According to him,the world is divided into two types of cultures:Finnish (Judaism and Sunnism) and Aryan(Christianity, Aryan paganism, Shiism). The par-allel is also sexual: Dugin argues that masochismis Jewish, while sadism is Aryan.111 The funda-mental difference between them resides in theirvision of the universe: for the Jews, the cosmosis God’s place of exile, whereas in Christianity, itis the place willed by God. Dugin’s anti-Semitism appears in full here: the identity of theJews, the ‘Finnish’ culture par excellence, is notjust different from that of the Aryans, it is unas-similable to it. This irreducibility foreshadows,according to him, the coming metaphysical warbetween the Aryan and Semitic worlds: “Theworld of ‘Judaica’ is a world hostile to us. But thesense of Aryan justice and the gravity of ourgeopolitical situation require us to comprehendits laws, its rules, its interests. The Indo-European elite is facing a titanic mission today:to understand those who are different from us,not only culturally, nationally, and politically, butalso metaphysically. And in this case, to under-stand does not mean to forgive, but to van-quish.”112 This paradoxical combination of a clas-sic anti-Semitism and a politically committedphilo-Zionism can partly be explained byDugin’s differentialist theories.

ETHNO-DIFFERENTIALISM AND THE IDEA OF RUSSIAN DISTINCTIVENESSAs we have already noted, Dugin followed thetheoretical turn of the New Right, whichmoved from a biological view of the differencesbetween peoples to a primarily cultural one.This fashion for ethno-pluralism, transferred

from the “left” to the “right” in the 1980s,catches on particularly well in Russia, where itfits into a conception of national distinctivenessthat was already highly ethnicized. This differ-entialist neo-racism (in Taguieff ’s formula) andthe exaltation of the “right to be different” areneither a new idea nor a mere import from theWest. Throughout the 19th century, the princi-pal thinkers of “Russian national distinctive-ness” had upheld a culturalist approach, and,unlike their Western colleagues, accorded onlyvery little importance to racial determinism.113

Slavophile and Pan-Slavist thought remainedunder the influence of Hegel and Herder, andperceived the factual dimension of reality as ahidden fight between ideas. Thus, for over acentury, it has been “normal” for Russian intel-lectuals sensitive to the national question toaffirm, in Dugin’s phrase, that “every peopleadvances in History according to its own trajec-tory, upholding its own understanding of theworld. That is why what is good for some peo-ples cannot be applied to others.”114

Dugin, however, deploys an ambiguous cul-turalist and biological terminology with regardto this question: he uses the term ethnos with apositive meaning, seeing it as the primary pointof collective reference (“the whole, the ethnos,according to the Eurasianists, is higher than thepart, the individual”115), but at the same timeremains critical of ethno-nationalism. Accordingto Dugin, the superiority of the collectivity overthe individual must be expressed in the politicalfield as a “political ethnism.” This differentialpluralism would be based on a corporatist systemthat would institutionalize intermediate echelonsbetween the individual and the state. It wouldreveal Russia’s true imperial nature. Unlike theRussians, who are “the empire’s constitutivenation” [imperoobrazuiushchaia natsiia], the non-Russian peoples may benefit from culturalautonomy, but not from sovereignty, contrary towhat was proclaimed during perestroika.116 Nonationality should be recognized territorially,because “Russians exist as the only nationalcommunity within a supranational imperialcomplex.”117 Dugin argues that the negotiationsbetween the federal center and the subjects ofthe federation started by Boris Yeltsin fosteredseparatism in the Caucasus and in the Volga-Uralregion. This ethno-centrism should, on the con-trary, be condemned, since stands in the way of


a national supra-unification of the Eurasian eth-nos. Dugin’s strength is in his capacity for playingwith concepts: for example, he proposes to“meet these identification tendencies of the peo-ples and regions of the Federation half-way,” butin a controlled way that would subject them tothe center.118

Whether he bases himself on Eurasianist orNew Right arguments, Dugin condemnsnationalism in its ethnic and “chauvinist” variety,which he considers dangerous and obsolete. Theidea of an ethnic miscegenation of peoples cele-brated by Western newspeak appears to him asdisastrous as was the theory of racial purity,because both lead to ethnocide. On the contrary,“the Eurasianist attitude toward the ethnosremains conservative, based on the principle ofthe absolute necessity of protecting each ethnicgroup from the prospect of historical disappear-ance.”119 This terminology remains paradoxical:not only does Dugin refrain from rejecting theidea of race, he also seems confused in hisunderstanding of ethnicity, as he gives it an emi-nently culturalist and civilizationist meaning,while at the same time using the terminology ofthe ethnos, which, following the Soviet tradition,remains very much tied to nature and even biol-ogy. This contradiction can be explained byDugin’s “post-modern” approach: he says hewishes to restore all the ideas, both religious andethnic, that have been thrown out by moderni-ty, which is why he addresses the ethnic questionin both a positive and a negative way: positivewhen he uses it against the globalized liberalismwhich he views as destructive of the differencesbetween peoples, and negative when he seesethnic nationalism as preventing the affirmationof Eurasian unity.

Thus Dugin’s main activity, for several years,has been to speak out for a new interpretation ofthe idea of human rights. He is convinced thatthey constitute, through their claim to universal-ity, a “new kind of totalitarianism”. He propos-es to develop a theory of the “rights of peo-ples,”120 appropriating Third Worldist discourseas the right has been doing for some time.According to Dugin, this theory will first be putinto practice in Russia, because, due to its natu-ral federalism, that country advocates ethno-cul-tural autonomy in exchange for unitarianism instate affairs. “The concept of people [narod] mustbe recognized as the fundamental legal category,

as the main subject of international and civillaw.”121 Individuals will be legally identified bytheir ethnic, religious or cultural affiliation. Asimilar theory had already been proposed a longtime ago by Panarin, who put forward a “civi-lizational” rather than political pluralism whichhe saw as typical of Eurasia.

Dugin’s absolutization of the ethnic collectiv-ity implies a difficult attitude toward the idea ofcultural transfer. As Pierre-André Taguieff hasjustly and repeatedly noted, the cult of differenceimplies a phobia of intermingling: it celebratesheterogeneity, but fears the mixing of peoplesand traditions. Dugin considers the possibility ofmiscegenation between populations, or thetransfer of cultural or political elements from one“civilization” to another, as dangerous. Indeed,he claims he has a “tolerant attitude toward eth-nic miscegenation on the level of the elites, buta cautious attitude on level of the masses.”122 Herehe is once more in tune with the tradition ofSoviet ethnology, which, following the theoriesof Yulian Bromlei and Lev Gumilev, had regular-ly called for the development of endogamous tra-ditions in order to preserve the “genetic fund”[genofond] of each ethnic entity. Once again,Dugin succeeds with aplomb in fitting old con-ceptions based on Russian or Soviet stereotypesinto global intellectual debates. He adapts theRussian case to a more global theory on the cur-rent recomposition of collective identities underconditions of globalization, anchoring his ideasin alter-globalization movements, many ofwhich have turned differentialism into one oftheir main dogmas.

CONTEXTUALIZING DUGIN’S PLACE IN RUSSIAN PUBLIC LIFEA survey of Dugin’s ideas naturally promptsquestions about the extent to which he is repre-sentative, about his strategies, and about the net-works through which his ideas are spread. Inmany senses, especially regarding his career, hecan be considered to represent the general evo-lution of the Russian nationalist milieux over thepast two decades. In the first half of the 1990s,these currents, then presented as “red-and-brown,” were united in their opposition to theliberal reforms of the Yeltsin era. A change intheir attitude toward the establishment set induring the prime ministership of Primakov, andgained momentum when Putin came to power,


an event which recomposed and narroweddown the political spectrum. Numerous nation-alist figures came to support the authoritieswhile preserving their political structures,resulting in a kind of vociferous but fictitiousopposition. This was the case with Ziuganov’sCommunist Party, as well as with Zhirinovskii’sLDPR and the Rodina bloc. Dugin also followedthis path from radical opposition to public pro-fessions of loyalty. This is why he likes to classi-fy himself as being in the “radical center” of thepublic spectrum:123 radical in his political andphilosophical doctrines, but centrist by virtue ofhis support for the current president. He thusembodies one of the main tendencies of theEuropean radical right, which virulentlyattempts to differentiate itself from the centristdiscourse of the powers-that-be on an ideolog-ical level, while developing a public strategy forgaining respectability.

Paradoxically, Dugin is isolated within thenationalist currents. He is their only substantialthinker, and his theories inspire numerous pub-lic figures and movements. At the same time,his theoretical position is too complex for anyparty to follow him entirely and turn him intoits official thinker. He is also disturbing for theentire camp of Russian nationalism on severalpoints: he condemns populism, which is centralto the strategies of of the main figures:Ziuganov, Zhirinovskii, and Eduard Limonov.The various nationalist currents do not recog-nize him as their ideologist; thus, while hemakes numerous Aryanist statements and adoptsan ambiguous anti-Semitism, he is seldomquoted by Aryanist leaders, as he does not referto the main neo-pagan reference book, theBook of Vles. He is also strongly criticized byanti-Semitic circles for condemning theories ofa Jewish plot, rejecting revisionism, and appar-ently denying the authenticity of the Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion. This elitist position, which herefuses to compromise in exchange for electoralsuccess, is reminiscent of Alain de Benoist.However, Dugin cannot be entirely equatedwith the New Right: his stance is also informedby Traditionalism and fascism (in the sense out-lined above). Thus he does not go as far as deBenoist on Third Worldism, and uses racistarguments in a more pronounced way.

Dugin’s intellectual eclecticism assures him acertain degree of success among the young gen-

eration, revealing post-Soviet Russia’s lack offoundations of identity. His occultist leanings,his exacerbated religious sensibility, his rejectionof communist ideology but not of the Sovietexperience, as well as his ahistorical discourseabout Russian grandeur, are his attractivepoints. Not only do his geopolitical theoriesrestore to Russia the role of a global superpow-er, he also modernizes a certain variety of polit-ical fundamentalism, exalts a sense of hierarchyand war, resurrects the mythical trianglebetween Germany, Russia and Japan, and arguesthat cultures are incommensurable and willunavoidably come into conflict with one anoth-er. His anti-Western feelings are reinforced bythe revival of Pan-Asianism in South-East Asia:all Neo-Eurasianists admire these countries forhaving successfully allied economic dynamismto political authoritarianism, as well as for theirgeneral rejection of Western domination andthe “return” to Islamic values in the Muslimstates of Indonesia and Malaysia.

Attempts to classify such a doctrine and per-sonality inevitably remain guesswork: Dugin isabove all in search of himself, and his innerquest, particular the religious one, probablyconstitutes one of the matrixes of his politicaldoctrines. Dugin’s strategies are therefore tai-lored to fit his personal evolution and the insti-tutional position he hopes to reach. Thesestrategies are organized along several lines:Dugin understands that the Eurasianist andgeopolitical part of his theories is best suited tobe widely spread in contemporary Russian soci-ety. In the same way, the idea of a unification ofthe patriotic scene and the creation of a kind of“union of nationalists without borders,” whichthe International Eurasianist Movement hopesto become, strike a chord with numerousRussian political circles. Traditionalism, escha-tologism and esotericism are relegated to thebackground of his public activities, and arereserved for a more restricted circle of initiatedfollowers, for example in the framework of theNew University. Dugin’s Eurasianism is proba-bly more promising than his NationalBolshevism or Traditionalism: the term“Eurasia” is being adopted very extensively inRussia among very varied social and politicalmilieux, though in a way that strips it of its orig-inal theoretical implications. Dugin thus seemsto have succeeded, at least regarding this aspect


of his thought, in his entryism into officialstructures. Indeed, as was observed very justly bythe weekly Obshchaia gazeta, “Dugin is nolonger considered to be the preacher of an ide-ological sect, but rather as an officially recog-nized specialist on geopolitical questions.”124

Dugin thus attempts to pursue a multiformstrategy on the fringe of the classical electoralpolitical spectrum. He develops a geopoliticaldiscourse aimed at a large public, a concept ofEurasia as the basis for a new ideology ofRussian great power for the Putin establishment,and Traditionalism and other philosophical andreligious doctrines restricted to small but influ-ential and consciously elitist intellectual circles.Even if Dugin’s institutional presence, in Russiaand abroad, is based on groupuscules, the influ-ence of his personality and his works must notbe underestimated. In spite of his rhetorical rad-icalism, which few people are prepared to followin all its philosophical and political conse-quences, Dugin has become one of the mostfashionable thinkers of the day. Using networksthat are difficult to trace, he is disseminating themyth of Russian great power, accompanied byimperialist, racialist, Aryanist and occultistbeliefs that are expressed in a euphemistic wayand whose scope remains unclear, but that can-not remain without consequences.

Dugin’s role as an ideological mediator willprobably be an important point to consider inany long-term historical assessment: he is one ofthe few thinkers to engage in a profound renew-al of Russian nationalist doctrines, which hadbeen repetitive in their Slavophilism and theirczarist and/or Soviet nostalgia. His originalitylies precisely in his attempt to create a revolu-tionary nationalism refreshed by the achieve-ments of 20th century Western thought, fullyaccepting the political role these ideas playedbetween the two world wars. Therefore, in hisopposition to American globalization, Duginunintentionally contributes to the international-ization of identity discourse and to the uni-formization of those theories that attempt toresist globalization. He illustrates that, althoughaiming for universality, these doctrines are stilllargely elaborated in the West. This is a paradox-ical destiny for a Russian nationalist, whose self-defined and conscious “mission” is to anchor aprofoundly Western intellectual heritage inRussia, and to use it to enrich his fellow citizens.

NOTES1. For further details on the distribution of his

publications (print runs, re-editions), see:Andreas Umland, “KulturhegemonialeStrategien der russischen extremen Rechten:Die Verbindung von faschistischer ideologieund metapolitischer Taktik imNeoeurasismus des Aleksandr Dugin,” Öster-reichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, vol.33, no. 2/2004, pp. 437–454.

2. Viacheslav Likhachev, Natsizm v Rossii,Moscow: Panorama, 2002, p. 103.

3. The title of this show is not neutral. It refersto a famous collection of articles from 1909called Vekhi, considered a manifesto againstthe ideology of the radical intelligentsia. Theauthors of Vekhi argued for the primacy ofthe spiritual and appealed to the revolution-ary intelligentsia to recognize the spiritualsource of human life: to them, only concreteidealism, manifested in Russian in the formof religious philosophy, allows to objectivatetraditional mysticism and to fuse knowledgeand faith.

4. All his publications are available on the web.His two web sites, Arctogaia (www.arcto.ru)and Evraziia (www.evrazia.org) also includelinks to a nationalist network that includesweb sites such as Novoe soprotivlenie (NewResistance), as well as to web-based maga-zines such as Lenin.

5. The Ways of the Absolute (Puti absoliuta), writ-ten in 1989 and published in 1991, TheConservative Revolution (Konservativnaia revoli-utsiia, 1994), Goals and Tasks of our Revolution(Tseli i zadachi nashei revoliutsii, 1995),Templars of the Proletariat (Tampliery proletaria-ta, 1997), The Philosophy of Traditionalism(Filosofiia traditsionalizma) and The Evolution ofthe Paradigmatic Foundations of Science(Evoliuciia paradigmal’nykh osnovanii nauki,2002), The Philosophy of Politics (Filosofiia poli-tiki) and The Philosophy of War (Filosofiia voiny,2004).

6. The Metaphysics of the Gospel: OrthodoxEsotericism (Metafizika Blagoi Vesti (Pravoslavnyiezoterizm), 1996) and The End of the World.Eschatology and Tradition (Konets sveta:Eskhatologiia i tradiciia, 1997).

7. The Mysteries of Eurasia (Misterii Evrazii) andThe Hyperborean (Giperboreec, 1991), TheHyperborean Theory (1993).


8. Conspirology (Konspirologiia, 1992, republishedin 2005), The Foundations of Geopolitics (Osnovygeopolitiki, 1996, four re-editions), Our Way.Strategic Prospects for the Development of Russiain the 21st Century (Nash put’. Strategicheskieperspektivy razvitiia Rossii v XXI veke, 1998),The Russian Thing. Essays in NationalPhilosophy (Russkaia veshch’. Ocherki natsion-al’noi filosofii, 2001), The Foundations ofEurasianism (Osnovy evraziistva), TheEurasianist Path (Evraziiskii put’) and TheEurasian Path as National Idea (Evraziiskii put’kak natsional’naia ideia, 2002).

9. Markus Mathyl, “The National-BolshevikParty and Arctogaia: Two Neo-fascistGroupuscules in the Post-Soviet PoliticalSpace,” Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 36, no.3/2003, pp. 62–76.

10. Stephen Shenfield, Russian Fascism.Traditions, tendencies, movements, London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001, p. 194.

11. Eduard Limonov, Moya politicheskaiabiografiia, St. Petersburg: Amfora, 2002,p. 64.

12. Andrei Tsygankov, “Hard-Line Eurasianismand Russia’s contending geopolitical per-spectives,” East European Quaterly, no. 3,1998, pp. 315–334.

13. Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushcheeRossii, Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997. On thisbook, see J.B. Dunlop, “Aleksandr Dugin’s‘Neo-Eurasian’ Textbook and DmitriiTrenin’s Ambivalent Response,” HarvardUkrainian Studies, vol. xxv, no. 1-2/2001,pp. 91–127.

14. Aleksandr Dugin, “Evraziiskaia platforma,”Zavtra, 21 January 2000.

15. Wayne Allensworth, The Russia Question:Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, Lanham, Md.: Rowman& Littlefield, 1998, and “The EurasianProject: Russia-3, Dugin and Putin’sKremlin,” paper presented at the NationalConvention of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Slavic Studies, SaltLake City, 4-6 November 2005.

16. For further details on Dugin’s connectionswith military circles, see: Dunlop, op. cit.,pp. 94, 102.

17. Françoise Thom, “Eurasisme et néo-eurasisme,“ Commentaires, no. 66/1994,p. 304.

18. “Evraziistvo: ot filosofii k politike,” Dugin’spaper at the founding congress of theEvraziia movement, 21 April 2001.

19. “My—partiia natsional’noi idei,” Dugin’spaper at the conference preparing thetransformation of Evraziia from a move-ment into a political party, 1 March 2002.

20. An economist by training, Glaz’ev wasknown since the collapse of the SovietUnion as a partisan of economic reforms.In 1991, he was named vice-minister (and,in December 1992, minister) of foreigneconomic relations in Egor Gaidar’s gov-ernment. He resigned after the October1993 events, when he refused to supportBoris Yeltsin in his struggle against theWhite House. Between 1993 and 1995, hewas a Duma deputy, chairing the parlia-ment’s committee on economic policies.Between 1995 and 1999, he worked at theFederation Council and moved closer toAleksandr Lebed’. During these years,Glaz’ev changed his mind on his liberaleconomic principles and moved closer tothe Communists. Today he is an interven-tionist and statist in economic matters,although he doesn’t advocate a return tothe Soviet model. In 1999, he was electeddeputy on the CPRF list. Within Rodina,Glaz’ev embodied the left wing. In spite ofhis hasty departure from the electoralblock, he succeeded in standing as candi-date in the presidential elections of March2004 and garnered 4.1% of the votes.

21. Dunlop, op. cit., p. 104.22. “Partiia Evraziia vykhodit iz bloka

Glaz’eva,” Km.Ru, 19 September 2003,http://www.km.ru/news/view.asp?id=7DD7770F40434412B24FDB116 DB19000.

23. http://glazev.evrazia.org/news/190903-1.html.

24. Aleksandr Barkashov’s Russian NationalUnity (RNU) was one of the first groupsto emerge after Pamiat’ split up. Barkashov,who rejects the Orthodox and czarist nos-talgia of Pamiat’ leaders, founded his ownmovement as well as the party newspaperRusskii poriadok. The RNU borrowed asignificant part of its symbols from Nazism:the swastika, the Roman salute, paramili-tary clothes, and parts of the NSDAP’sprogram, including a mixed economy and


eugenic theories. The RNU contends thatthe USSR implemented a program of racialmiscegenation between Slavs and non-Aryan peoples in order to make the Slavsdisappear. The RNU differed from numer-ous others post-Soviet nationalist groups inits racialist definition of the Russian nation.The movement imploded in 2000 and isnow split into numerous small groups.

25. The main exception was Dmitrii Riurikov,one of Boris Yeltsin’s counselors on inter-national politics. In 2001, he became amember of the central board of Evraziiawhile he was Russia’s ambassador toUzbekistan (he was later transferred toDenmark).

26. In Russian it is impossible to distinguishbetween ‘Eurasian’ and ‘Eurasianist’ (evrazi-iskii chelovek).

27. Andreas Umland, “Toward an UncivilSociety? Contextualizing the RecentDecline of Extremely Right-Wing Partiesin Russia,” Weatherhead Center forInternational Affairs Working Paper No.02-03, 2002.

28. http://evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1508.

29. He also republished Iakov Bromberg’s Evrei iEvraziia and E. Khara-Davan’s Rus’ mon-gol’skaia in 2002.

30. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 97.31. “Evraziisky triumf,” in: P. Savitsky,

Kontinent Evraziia, Moscow: Agraf, 1997,p. 434.

32. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 159.33. Leontyev stood for a far-reaching turn in

Russian thought. He argued that Russians arenot really Slavs but above all a people mixedwith Turkic groups. In an ambiguous man-ner, he anticipated the “turn to the East” ofthe later Eurasianists: he abandoned the lin-guistic argument about Slavic identity and,for example, acknowledged that he preferredthe Greeks to the other Slavs in the religiousrealm. Leontyev was the first to understandthe potential of the “Turanian argument” tohelp Russia assert her identity against Europe.See: M. Laruelle, “Existe-t-il des précurseursau mouvement eurasiste? L’obsession russepour l’Asie à la fin du xixe siècle,” Revue desétudes slaves, Paris: Institut d’études slaves, vol.LXXV, no 3-4/2004, pp. 437–454.

34. Misterii Evrazii, p. 19.35. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 247.36. However, Dugin accepts the separatism of

those areas that he considers non-Russian(he proposes to return the Kuril Islands toJapan and Kaliningrad to Germany) provid-ed they remain under the control of alliesof Eurasia and Continentalism.

37. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 341.38. He also wishes to return Ukraine into the

Russian sphere of influence and to divide itin accordance with what he calls the ethno-cultural realities of the country. For furtherdetails, see: Dunlop, op. cit., pp. 109–112.

39. “Evraziiskii otvet na vyzovy globalizacii,”Osnovy evraziistva, p. 541–563.

40. Nash put’, p. 47.41. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 261.42. Konspirologiia, also online at www.arctoga-

ia.com/public/consp.43. Evraziia prevyshe vsego, p. 4.44. Osnovy evraziistva, p. 762.45. The reference book on Traditionalism is:

Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World.Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual Historyof the Twentieth Century, Oxford/New York:Oxford University Press, 2004.

46. Introduction générale à l’étude des doctrines hin-doues in 1921, Le théosophisme, histoire d’unepseudo-religion in 1921, L’erreur spirite in1923, Orient et Occident in 1924, La crise dumonde moderne in 1927.

47. Tampliery proletariata, p. 128.48. Filosofiia traditsionalizma, p. 11.49. Milyi Angel, no. 1/1991, online at

www.angel.com.ru.50. Filosofiia traditsionalizma, p. 11.51. Puti absoliuta, republished in Absoliutnaia

rodina (Moscow, 1999), p. 174.52. Metafizika blagoi vesti, republished in

Absoliutnaia rodina, p. 510.53. Puti absoliuta, p. 152–153.54. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 255.55. See for example his papers given at the 6th

World Russian People’s Council in Osnovyevraziistva, p. 704–715.

56. The Old Believers are a current ofOrthodoxy born after the Schism [Raskol],that is the separation, in the 17th century,of a significant portion of the Orthodoxpopulation from the official Russianchurch. They refused Patriarch Nikon’s


reforms of the Orthodox ritual and liturgy.They were repeatedly persecuted in czaristtimes and were at the origin of numerousreligious and social revolts against the cen-tral authorities. Dugin sees himself as oneof the so-called “united believers” who fol-low the Old Believers’ rituals while recog-nizing the authority of the Patriarch. OtherOld Believers, who have refused toacknowledge the Patriarchate in exchangefor tolerance of their specific practice ofworship, are in a minority today.

57. Russkaia veshch, vol .1, p. 569.58. Milyi Angel, no. 3/1996.59. Milyi Angel, no. 2/1996.60. see his Evoliuciia paradigmal’nykh osnovanii

nauki, his candidate of sciences thesisdefended in 2000 at Rostov-on-DonUniversity.

61. Evoliuciia..., p. 66.62. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 12.63. Puti absoliuta, p. 5.64. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 85–97.65. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 99.66. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 4–5.67. See Pierre-André Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle

droite. Jalons d’une analyse critique, p.148–296.

68. In Den’ nos. 2, 22, 34 and 37/1992 and3/1993.

69. “I have a lot of reservations about a‘Eurasian’ construction, which seems to meto be mainly phantasmagorical” (Taguieff,p. 311).

70. Taguieff, p. 254–265.71. Konservativnaja revoliutsiia, p. 131–136.72. Taguieff, p. 259.73. Filosofiia traditsionalizma, p. 135–191.74. See for example the chapter “Races,

Runes, and Worships” in Misterii Evrazii,p. 673–736 or Nash put’, p. 21.

75. The Slavophile philosopher A. Khomyakov(1804–1860) divided the world into twophilosophical principles: Iranian andCushite. He borrowed this idea fromFriedrich Schlegel’s philosophy of history.For more information, see Laruelle M.,Mythe aryen et rêve impérial dans la Russie duXIXe siècle, Paris: CNRS-Éditions, 2005.

76. Giperboreiskaia teoriia, p. 5.77. Filosofiia traditsionalizma, p. 176.

78. Misterii Evrazii, republished in Absoliutnaiarodina, p. 575.

79. Metafizika blagoi vesti, p. 482.80. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 190.81. Misterii Evrazii, p. 78.82. Misterii Evrazii, p. 26.83. Misterii Evrazii, p. 2.84. For example in Erwägen Wissen Ethik, vol. 15,

no. 3/2004 between Roger Griffin, AndreasUmland, and A. James Gregor.

85. Osnovy evraziistva, p. 638–656.86. Russkaia veshch, vol. 1, ch. 2: “The social

idea,” pp. 251–500.87. Programma politicheskoi partii “Evraziia”.

Materialy uchreditel’nogo s”ezda. Moscow:Arktogeya, 2002, p. 112, and Osnovy evrazi-istva, p. 579–588.

88. Osnovy evraziistva, p. 585.89. Mikhail Agursky, Ideologiia natsional-bol’sheviz-

ma, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1980. See also:Erik van Ree, “The Concept of NationalBolshevism: An Interpretative Essay,” Journalof Political Ideologies, no. 3/2001, pp.289–307, and D. Shlapentokh, “Bolshevism,Nationalism and Statism: Soviet Ideology inFormation,” Cahiers du monde russe, no.4/1996, pp. 429–466.

90. Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies,London, 1945.

91. Tampliery proletariata, p. 8.92. Tampliery proletariata, p. 26.93. Tampliery proletariata, p. 25.94. Tampliery proletariata, p. 188.95. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 54.96. Filosofiia traditsionalizma, p. 353.97. Elementy no. 6/1995, p. 18.98. Russkaia veshch, vol. 1, p. 217.99. Evraziia prevyshe vsego, p. 5.100. Filosofiia voyny, back cover.101. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 27.102. Sedgwick, p. 237–240.103. http://avigdor-eskin.com/index.shtml.104. Osnovy evraziistva, p. 600.105. Puti absoliuta, p. 175.106. Milyi angel, no. 3/1996, www.angel.com.ru.107. Konets sveta, p. 348.108. Metafizika blagoy vesti, p. 248.109. See the chapter “Vojna narodov” in

Russkaia veshch.110. “Apokalipsis stikhii,” Elementy, no. 8/1997,

p. 56.


111. “Ad-Marginem. Sacher-Masoch,”Elementy, no. 6/1995, p. 64.

112. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 248.113. See, for example, M. Laruelle, “Regards

sur la réception du racialisme allemandchez les panslavistes et les eurasistes russes,” in: C. Trautmann-Waller (ed.),L’Allemagne des linguistes russes. Revuegermanique internationale, Paris, CNRS-Editions, no. 3, 2006, pp. 145–156.

114. Nash put’, p. 3.115. Programma politicheskoi partii “Evraziia,”

p. 25.

116. Evraziiskii vzglyad, p. 62.117. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 251.118. Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 593.119. Nash put’, p.135.120. Evraziia prevyshe vsego, p. 22.121. Nash put’, p. 124.122. Evraziia prevyshe vsego, p. 19.123. Evraziia prevyshe vsego, p. 4.124. A. Maksimov., O. Karabaagi, “Oni v

svoikh koridorakh,“ in: Obshchaia gazeta,31 May 2001.


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Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of theEuropean Radical Right?by Marlene Laruelle

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