Implementation of an Ideological Paradigm: Early Duginian Eurasianism and Russia's Post-Crimean Discourse

Abstract

Alexander Dugin, the well-known public philosopher, entered Russia's intellectual and political life in the 1990s, with strongly anti-American and often anti-Western statements. Dugin's philosophy, especially in its early version, was of great use for foreign analysts with its emphasis on the irreconcilable conflict between the Eurasian civilization – with Russia in its centre – and the Atlanticist civilization led by the United States. While the image of Atlanticism and Americanism as despiritualizing forces ready for global predominance emerged in Dugin's work early on, it was later supplemented by another image, stressing Atlanticism as a desire to play God, to change the nature and the man himself. Consequently, Atlanticism and Americanism cannot live in peace until the Eurasian civilization is destroyed completely. While geopolitical Duginism of the 1990s had few direct translations into actual Russian foreign policy, it had an indirect relationship to Putin's posture in Crimea and Ukraine, and on the economically centred Eurasian Union. The importance of Duginism in the minds of segments of the American and British leadership is due, rather, not so much to the danger of an aggressive Russia, but to the waning of Washington's influence in Europe. Duginism is less a manifestation of Kremlin policy, than an ideological construction mostly belonging in the past. Instead, pragmatic nationalists are the most influential people in the present-day Russian elite.