Dugin Research Articles

Alexander Dugin’s ‘times of troubles’ as paradigms of Russian history

Alexander Dugin, the seminal philosopher and journalist in post-Soviet Russia, was especially influential in the late Yeltsin/early Putin era. His visions of Russian history and the relationship between past and present reflect the views of many ethnic Russians who became quite disappointed with the results of the post-Soviet transformation. Dugin believed the collapse of the state was a temporary setback, one of many in Russia’s long history, when a collapse usually led to a new glorious rise. The current ‘Time of Trouble’ is a good example; as a matter of fact, Russia has had not one but many ‘Times of Troubles’. (‘Time of Trouble’ is the term that had been used by both pre-Revolutionary and Soviet historians. In its strict historical meaning, the event covered the period from the end of the sixteenth century to 1613.)

Menzel, Birgit; Hagemeister, Michael and Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer (eds). The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions (review)

REVIEWS 373 The reception of these myths and representations of monarchy is an area that would benefit from greater exploration. While Wortman suggests that inherent contradictions developed in the myth of monarchy, it is important to grasp the ways in which the image of the monarch were understood and interpreted by both Russia’s elites and its people more generally are important. The ‘naive monarchism’ of the Russian peasant, to use Daniel Field’s phrase, is an important component in the perception of the monarch. The politics of the Russian empire were more than just a dialogue between monarch and elites, and the broader reception of the symbolic ideas of monarchy are significant for comprehending the development and eventual collapse of the Romanov regime. This thought-provoking collection of essays reminds us of the complexity of Russian political culture: Wortman’s work on the Russian monarchy is significant and original. School of History Peter Waldron University of East Anglia Menzel, Birgit; Hagemeister, Michael and Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer (eds). The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions. Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, 17. Otto Sagner, Munich and Berlin, 2012. 448 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. €48.00. The twenty-one essays in The New Age of Russia are the fruitful result of an international research conference on the metaphysical roots of Soviet civilization, held in Berlin in March 2007. They examine an enormous number of esoteric phenomena, including holistic medicine, ceremonial magic, UFOs and space travel, popular occultism, mystical literature, shamanism, Eastern mysticism, theosophical doctrines and parapsychology, among others. BerniceRosenthal,oneofeditors,startedthisparticularballrollinginJune1991, when she organized a conference on Russian occultism at Fordham University. The New Age of Russia appears fifteen years after Rosenthal’s path-breaking The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, NY and London, 1997), a collection of essays by the American, European and Russian scholars who participated in the 1991 event. A comparison of the two volumes reveals how this second event evolves from the first and how the field has expanded and matured. The principal essays of The New Age of Russia are organized into three chronological sections. Each section addresses particular representations of occult thought in its time period. Not surprisingly, the essays are asymmetrical, in that some are synthetic, others analytical, while methodologies and approaches to the material vary considerably. SEER, 93, 2, APRIL 2015 374 In the first section, which covers the pre-Revolutionary and early Soviet period, an engaging essay by Julia Mannherz introduces the contradictory nature of popular occult entertainment in the late empire. Konstantin Burmistrov’s eye-opening survey of the many occult circles and groups that existed in the 1920s and 1930s follows; his essay introduces intriguing new material from the FSB archives. Oleg Shishkin’s essay on Bolshevik occultists explores the complex topic of secret Soviet government research into the occult. Marcus Osterrieder discusses Nicholas Roerich’s ‘political occultism’ without succumbing either to politics or adulation, and Michael Hagemeister reveals the occult roots of Soviet space exploration in his discussion of Konstantin Tsiolkovskii’s theosophical interests. The second section, ostensibly covering the high Soviet period (1930–85), focuses on occultism in the Space Age. Birgit Menzel’s comparative essay surveys and locates Russian ‘occuculture’ in the context of its European and American counterparts of the period 1960–85, while Leonid Heller looks at occultism in literature and popular fiction. Matthias Schwartz explores the occult aspects of Soviet science fiction from the 1920s to Tarkovskii’s film, Stalker (1979), and Marlène Laruelle provides a lucid discussion of the cultish revival of Nikolai Fedorov’s Cosmism, a peculiarly Russian attempt to ‘synthesize Gnostic beliefs and scientific progress’ (p. 239). The essays of the third section explore the emergence of Russian esotericism from the occult underground in the late-Soviet and post-Soviet periods. This section is longer and necessarily less ‘shaped’ than the first two, since its time frame has yet to complete it historical run. Demyan Belyaev’s essay addresses popular and boulevard esotericism, occult self-help, fraudulent psychics and the role of the media in a disintegrating post-Soviet landscape. Mark Sedgwick discusses the neo-Eurasianist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, creator of...

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

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.

The Great Friendship: Geopolitical Fantasies About the Russia/Europe Alliance in the Early Putin Era (2000–2008) – The Case of Alexander Dugin

In post Soviet Society Europe emerged as a geographical symbol of everything positive that the end of the Soviet regime had brought to post Soviet urban Russians. At the same time the USA became the symbol of all that was negative in these changes. These attitudes had been shaped during the first years of Putin’s tenure. The views of Alexander Dugin, the seminal Russian philosopher, could here be an example.

Vmesna Evropa v očeh Cohena in Dugina

Članek prinaša primerjalno analizo geopolitičnih pristopov ameriškega in ruskega geopolitika Saula B. Cohena in Alexandra Dugina k določanju položaja Vmesne Evrope v sodobnem svetu. Prikazana je prostorska definicija termina, ki ga je v znanstveno literaturo uvedel F. Tunjić, in pogled na to območje z vidika pomorskih in kopenskih geopolitik skozi razmišljanja omenjenih avtorjev. Poskušamo tudi primerjati sedanji geopolitični trenutek s tendencami, predstavljenimi v delih teh avtorjev, in določiti prihodnji geopolitični razvoj v Vmesni Evropi.

Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity by Edith W. Clowes (review)

Reviewed by: Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity by Edith W. Clowes Natalia Pervukhina-Kamyshnikova Edith W. Clowes , Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xviii + 179 pp. The central theme of Russia on the Edge is the Russian search for self-identity in the former Soviet Union. Its theoretical foundation is the idea of the changing roles of the center and periphery in Post-colonial studies, as discussed by Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha. Edith W. Clowes focuses on the shift from the temporal historic orientation to the spatial imagining of geographies suggestive of a dispersed variety of locutions. She argues that in contemporary Russia the traditional opposition of the western centers of the capitals and the Asian subconscious of the periphery has transformed into a metaphorical post-colonial north-south axis (153). In brief, Clowes describes the ambiguity of social and cultural positions of both the colonizers and the colonized in Russia. She astutely adds that the Russian state colonized its own subject (11). [End Page 348] This vertical metaphor of the Russian colonizing tradition indeed deserves better development than it has so far received. Recent studies (Alexander Etkind, for example) move in that direction by showing how vertical, internal colonization by the government of its numerous subjects continues both in the periphery and in its changing centers. The six chapters of Russia on the Edge offer analyses of a variety of self-representational projects. In "Deconstructing Imperial Moscow," Clowes deals with the literary and architectural images of a city first perceived as the center of Eastern Christianity, the "Third Rome," and in Stalin's time, as the center of Russia's colonial power over the Soviet Empire. Contemporary post-modernist texts serve as deconstructive tools questioning the reality of Moscow's very existence. To that thesis the author subordinates a considerable number of texts, from Evgeny Zamiatin's We to Tatiana Tolstaya's Slynx and Mikhail Ryklin's reading of the Moscow metro. Deconstruction of architectural and literary texts may have warranted separate chapters; this would have helped to avoid the unfortunate omission of fundamental works on Stalinist architecture such as those by Vladimir Paperny and Boris Groys. The most revealing and influential ideological model of Russian identity discussed in the book is that promoted by Alexander Dugin. In "Postmodernist Empire meets Holy Rus'," Clowes provides a helpful description of Dugin's philosophy as combining Slavophil values, Eurasian thought from the 1920s, neo-fascism, and orientation towards what Dugin calls postmodernism, a fusion of the old left and the old right (44, 61). Dugin is steeped in a messianic tradition envisioning Russia as the nucleus of multi-polar resistance (51) to the liberal values of Western Europe and North America. Russian identity is defined first by the Russian Orthodox faith and, second, by putting the interests of the State and the Empire above those of the individual. Clowes discusses developments only through 2006. However, the last five years have, indeed, demonstrated the decisive influence of Dugin's ideas on Russia's internal politics and military doctrine under the recent tandem rule of Putin/Medvedev. The study also closely examines Viktor Pelevin's Chapaev and Pustota, which, as Clowes convincingly argues, is a parody of Neo-Eurasianism. Like Venedikt Erofeev and Vladimir Voinovich, Pelevin dismisses attempts to define oneself not only in terms of the Empire but also in terms of any unchanging space. Although Dugin's striking project of national self-identification may seem shocking and even insane, it has produced a significant impact on the ideas of ultra-conservative and neo-Nazi thinkers and politicians. Dugin was a co-organizer, with Eduard Limonov (their ways eventually parted), of the oppositional National-Bolshevik Party. Mikhail Ryklin, an expatriate living in Germany, is a prolific translator and philosopher of culture. He introduced major European philosophical texts of the [End Page 349] twentieth century to Russian audiences and thus influenced humanistic scholarship in Russia. Ryklin is a strong critic of the neo-Stalinism revived by Putin. However, despite frequent reference to Ryklin's works, the reader does not learn much beyond the self-evident, such as...

An ANZAC1-Indo-Russian Alliance?

Since the implosion of the Soviet bloc, a ‘unipolar’ world has emerged around the USA, challenged by an Islamic bloc. The USA takes advantage of this Islamic opposition to vigorously pursue its world policies in the name of ‘the war on terrorism’ this being the guise by which President George H.W. Bush announced the intention of leading the United Nations into a ‘new world order’. Russia and China have attempted to confront this mono-polar post-Cold War situation by forming a pact between each other and bordering states, the Central Asia and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. This holds out the prospect of a Eurasian bloc to confront the world hegemony of the USA, which seeks to draw to it the European Union and return Europe to the subordinate role she played vis-é-vis the USA during the Cold War, pushed into coming under the US orbit by the fear of Warsaw Pact invasion. It is by no means clear that the USA has a long-range commitment to containing China, despite its anti-China lobby. There has for decades existed a pro-China lobby, including some of the USA’s leading political and business figures, one of whose public manifestations is the Trilateral Commission created by David Rockefeller. These ‘Trilateralists’, et al. see the creation of regional blocs as the prelude to a ‘new world order’, and one such bloc is envisaged as being that of an Asian economic community along similar lines to that of the European Union. The expanding economic, military and diplomatic influence of China and the recent emergence of India as a rival power in Asia have wide geopolitical implications that involve Russia. Between these powers and the possibility of military confrontation over water resources, the traditionally ‘Western’ societies of Australia and New Zealand have placed their futures in a China-dominated Asian bloc, in the belief that their export-driven economies can only thrive in such a vast market. This article proposes a radical new alliance away from a China-dominated Asia and towards an Indo-Russian orientation. The methodology, including points of difference, is inspired by Professor Alexander Dugin’s ‘Eurasian’ geopolitical paradigm.

Aleksandr Dugin’s transformation from a lunatic fringe figure into a mainstream political publicist, 1980–1998: A case study in the rise of late and post-Soviet Russian fascism

The paper 1 1 The paper expands on my earlier survey : Toward an Uncivil Society? Contextualizing the Recent Decline of Parties of the Extreme Right Wing in Russia, 2002. On Dugin’s fascism, see Griffin, Loh, and Umland (2006); Umland (2006b, 2006c, 2006d), reprinted in: Verkhovskii (2006), and Laruelle (2007). was completed in 2008 and complements previous analyses of post-communist Russian right-wing extremism, in general, and studies of “neo-Eurasianism,” in particular, surveying some circumstances of the emergence of its major ideologist Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962). It introduces some teachers and collaborators of Dugin who influenced him before he became a known journalist, writer and commentator in the late 1990s. It also sketches some of Dugin’s initiatives and activities until he rose to the position of an official advisor to Gennady Seleznev, the Speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, in 1998. The footnotes provide a comprehensive bibliography on Western and Russian sources on the Russian “New Right.” It concludes with some suggestion where further research into the Dugin phenomenon could go. Current position Assistant Professor of Contemporary Russian History at The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society ( http://www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html), Stuttgart and Hannover. Biographical sketch CertTransl (Leipzig), MA (Stanford), MPhil (Oxford), DipPolSci, DrPhil (FU Berlin), PhD (Cambridge). Visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 1997–1999, and Harvard’s Weatherhead Center in 2001–2002. Bosch visiting lecturer at Yekaterinburg’s Urals State University in 1999–2001, and Kyiv’s Mohyla Academy in 2003/2005. In January-December 2004, temporary lecturer in Russian and East European studies at St. Antony’s College Oxford. In 2005–2008, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Lecturer Kyiv’s Shevchenko University. Papers in Problems of Post-Communism, East European Jewish Affairs, Osteuropa, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Politicheskie issledovaniya, European Political Science, Political Studies Review, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Voprosy filosofii, Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, Ab Imperio and other journals. Editor of The Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Russia: Philosophical, Legal und Empirical Studies (Stuttgart: Ibidem 2004), Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Hochschullehre in Osteuropa. Vols. 1, 2, 3 & 4 (Frankfurt a.M. u.a.: Peter Lang 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2009), and, with Roger Griffin and Werner Loh, Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right. With an afterword by Walter Laqueur (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag 2006).

Russian-Belarusian Integration: Playing Games Behind the Kremlin Walls by Alex Danilovich (review)

608 Рецензии/Reviews Dmitry SHLAPENTOKH Alex Danilovich, Russian-Belarusian Integration: Playing Games Behind the Kremlin Walls (Basingstoke : Ashgate, 2006). 234 pp. ISBN: 978-075-464-630-3. Belarus is definitely not a superpower or a rising great power. Still, it has taken many visible and seemingly contradictory steps in the realm of foreign policy, at least from the external observer’s point of view. And quite a few of these steps could have broad and quite serious implications for the global community, even changing the balance of power on a grand scale. Indeed, Belarus recently increased contact with China and this could very well provide China a footstep into Europe. Belarus ’s relationship with Iran could provide Iran with diplomatic support and technological know-how at a time when Iran has become increasingly isolated. As a matter of fact, the role of Belarus as the provider of essential technology and even advanced weapons to Iran increased sharply after Russia’s recent (summer 2010) decision to join the West in imposing sanctions on Iran. According to rumors, it was Belarus that provided Iran with S-300 advanced antiballistic and antiaircraft missiles that could well complicate U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran. Together with Iran, Belarus is fully supported by leftist Venezuela and anti-Israeli and implicitly anti-American Syria, with whom President Lukashenko met. Lukashenko’s cooperation with anti-Western regimes does not mean that he is a devoted enemy of the West. As a matter of fact, he winked at Teheran and Brussels at the same time, and one can assume, Belarus’s flirtation with the European Union could change the balance of power in Europe. Belarus’s relationship with Russia has played quite an important role in the foreign relations of both countries. Indeed, Belarus was the only country in the post-Soviet era that expressed a desire to join Russia in some kind of union, and this was as early as the Yeltsin era. Still, not much has been written, at least in English, on the Russian/Belarusian relationship and Belarus in general, and only recently have books on the subject started to emerge.1 The book 1 Nelly Bekus. Struggle Over Identity: The Official and the Alternative “Belarussiannes”. Budapest and New York, 2010; Andrew Savchenko. Belarus: A Perpetual Borderland. Leiden and Boston, 2009. While Belarus is not of much interest to Western scholars, social science in Belarus continues to develop, despite Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule. The collection of articles, “Istoricheskii poisk Belarusi” (Historical Search for Belarus), could serve as an example here. It includes articles on a variety of subjects. Quite a few of them have nothing to do with Belarus. Still, some do and the most interesting one is based on archival materials (Istoricheskii poisk Belarusi: al’manakh / Red. A. Iu. Bundin. Minsk, 2006). 609 Ab Imperio, 4/2010 under review here is important not only because it covers this important subject but also because the author employs a fresh approach to the topic. There are, of course, different explanations as to why nations engage in war or join together in alliances. For some it is just an aspect of the biological drive – social Darwinist explanations regard aggressiveness as a part of human nature, which makes friendship fleeting. It can be manifestations of mysterious cosmic energy that provide nations with “passionarnost’” as Lev Gumilev put it, and drive them either together or apart. For others, the conflicts or unions are caused by ideological and cultural differences or similarities. One can clearly see this approach in works of the late Samuel Huntington or of Alexander Dugin. Finally, there are pragmatists, such as John J. Mersheimer , who see no reason for war or peace other than state interests. The problem with all of these grand schemes, at least in our view, is that their protagonists are attempting to find a universally applicable theory. Yet one can hardly find a theory that works for all countries, and at all times. This does not mean that each theory should be used only for a given country. It just implies that particular groups of countries and different circumstances require a unique approach. Danilovich provides his own theory of foreign policy, which...

Is Aleksandr Dugin a Traditionalist?“Neo‐Eurasianism” and Perennial Philosophy

H ow relevant is Integral Traditionalism or Philosophia Perennis to an adequate assessment of the multifaceted phenomenon of post-Soviet Russian neo-Eurasianism, as a whole, and to the eclectic social doctrine of Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962), in particular?1 A final answer to this question would be only possible if Dugin's International Eurasian Movement (Mezhdunarodnoe Evraziiskoe dvizhenie)?or another organization principally inspired by him?were to rise to power and through its policies clarify which aspects of his vague ideology are most significant.2 Nevertheless, in this article we shall evaluate the significance of Integral Traditionalism for Dugin's ideological constructs. Such an attempt is motivated in part by Dugin's repeated self-identification?despite the epigraph?as a Traditionalist and his numerous references to the classics of Integral Traditionalism.

The Fundamentalist Utopia of Gennady Shimanov from the 1960s-1980s

During the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev between 1964 and 1982, Soviet cultural ideology underwent barely visible yet crucially important ideological changes. The staunch Marxist-Leninist paradigm succumbed to a more pragmatic orientation. Self-sustaining existence at cold peace with society became a principal objective of the ruling elite. Evaporation of an official ideology prompted a compromise with the upper levels of society, and drove the regime toward a reluctant recognition of some new ideological schemes, combining Leninism and nationalistic populism. (1) There are various points of comparison between late Imperial Russia, modern Russia after 2000, and the advent of nationalism during the Brezhnev era. In the late nineteenth century, when the model of the enlightened monarchy was exhausted in Imperial Russia, the tsar and his camarilla were impelled to increasingly employ populist rhetoric and promote an ideological model of the people's monarchy, exemplified by Slavophiles and their followers. (2) The decrepit Soviet Empire reflected a similar intellectual context in its final decades. In both cases, a tangible opposition from the right appeared, painfully observing what it saw as pernicious changes and large-scale societal decline. The revolutionaries from the right, (3) both in late Imperial Russia and in Brezhnev's USSR, manifested a blend of xenophobia and Orthodox pietism under the ideological umbrella of Slavophilism. The latter served as a referent ideology and a guiding star for many dissidents. (4) In Russia today, the agreement between the siloviki (security and military) group, certain oligarchs, church hierarchy, and radical right-wing ideologists is obvious. (5) The Eurasian Movement, headed by Aleksandr Dugin, has been especially influential among top political leadership, and is becoming popular in academia and the mass media. (6) The most recent resurgence of modern Slavophilism can be seen Mikhail Iur'ev's provocative text The Fortress Russia (2004), which suggests economic and political isolationism, closure of cultural and academic ties with the West, introduction of an old nonmetric system of measure, rejection of the principle of separation of powers, implantation of a military perspective and rigorous Orthodoxy, and promotion of the concept of Moscow as the Third Rome. (7) Iur'ev is no political outsider, but the President of Eurofinance Group, one of the richest Russians, former Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, and an active member of Dugin's Eurasian Movement. All different tendencies of modern traditionalism, Slavophilism and religious fundamentalism can be grouped together under the banner of the Russian idea, (8) or, more specifically, the Russian Doctrine, as formulated in 2005 and supported by conservative intellectuals of Orthodox background such as Egor Kholmogorov, Mikhail Leont'ev, Dmitri Rogozin, and Natalia Narochnitskaia. (9) This ideology is based on the revised fundamentals of Messianism: uniqueness, the spirituality of the people in contrast to the character of the West, the need for a strong state, economic autonomy, Orthodoxy as the spiritual core of the people, and Russia as the Northern--the Eurasian--civilization, challenging the corrupt Atlantic civilization. The Doctrine movement, having amassed considerable economic and political capital and provided itself with the quasi-academic school of studies on conservatism, is a serious political player, which gives another chance to Soviet underground fundamentalists. (10) Since 2000, former conservative dissidents like Gennady Shimanov, Leonid Borodin and Vladimir Osipov have become noticeably more active in political journalism and politics and have published memoirs and collections of articles. (11) This present study concerns the ideological stirrings of this movement during the Soviet period. The Setting for Fundamentalist Revival Slavophilism and nostalgia for old rural Russia were espoused by Soviet intellectuals shortly after Nikita Khrushchev's dismissal from power in 1964. …

Aleksandr Dugin's Neo‐Eurasianism: The New Right à la Russe1

AbstractRussian political thinker and, by his own words, geopolitician, Aleksandr Dugin, represents a comparatively new trend in the radical Russian nationalist thought. In the course of the 1990s, he introduced his own doctrine that was called Neo‐Eurasianism. Despite the supposed reference to the interwar political movement of Eurasianists, Dugin's Neo‐Eurasian nationalism was rooted in the political and cultural philosophy of the European New Right. Neo‐Eurasianism is based on a quasi‐geopolitical theory that juxtaposes the ‘Atlanticist New World Order’ (principally the US and the UK) against the Russia‐oriented ‘New Eurasian Order’. According to Dugin, the ‘Atlanticist Order’ is a homogenizing force that dilutes national and cultural diversity that is a core value for Eurasia. Taken for granted, Eurasia is perceived to suffer from a ‘severe ethnic, biological and spiritual’ crisis and is to undergo an ‘organic cultural‐ethnic process’ under the leadership of Russia that will secure the preservation of Eurasian nations and their cultural traditions. Neo‐Eurasianism, sacralized by Dugin and his followers in the form of a political religion, provides a clear break from narrow nationalism toward the New Right ethopluralist model. Many Neo‐Eurasian themes find a broad response among Russian high‐ranking politicians, philosophers, scores of university students, as well as numerous avant‐garde artists and musicians. Already by the end of the 1990s, Neo‐Eurasianism took on a respectable, academic guise and was drawn in to ‘scientifically’ support some anti‐American and anti‐British rhetoric of the Russian government.

Pax Russica: For a Eurasian Alliance Against America

New Perspectives QuarterlyVolume 25, Issue 4 p. 56-60 Pax Russica: For a Eurasian Alliance Against America ALEKSANDR DUGIN, ALEKSANDR DUGIN Writer, political activist and father figure for contemporary Russian nationalism, ALEKSANDR DUGIN is the founder of Russia's International Eurasian Movement and a popular theorist among Russia's hard-line elite. He envisions a strategic bloc comprising the former Soviet Union and the Middle East to rival the US-dominated Atlantic alliance. Megan Stack of NPQ's associate paper The Los Angeles Times interviewed Dugin in August at his Moscow office, a room draped with flags bearing the slogan “Pax Russica.”Search for more papers by this author ALEKSANDR DUGIN, ALEKSANDR DUGIN Writer, political activist and father figure for contemporary Russian nationalism, ALEKSANDR DUGIN is the founder of Russia's International Eurasian Movement and a popular theorist among Russia's hard-line elite. He envisions a strategic bloc comprising the former Soviet Union and the Middle East to rival the US-dominated Atlantic alliance. Megan Stack of NPQ's associate paper The Los Angeles Times interviewed Dugin in August at his Moscow office, a room draped with flags bearing the slogan “Pax Russica.”Search for more papers by this author First published: 13 October 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5842.2008.01026.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume25, Issue4Fall 2008Pages 56-60 RelatedInformation

Alexander Dugin's Views on the Middle East

Alexander Dugin, influential Russian geo-politician and proponent of Eurasianism, regards Russia as a heartland state that should engage in a web of alliances with various Eurasian powers to confront Russia's natural enemy, the US. While Eurasianism has been quite popular in the late Yeltsin era and Putin regime, it is important for other reasons as well. It demonstrates that, in the wake of the Cold War, the most unexpected combinations could happen.

Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right by Roger Griffin , Werner Loh , Andreas Umland (review)

574 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 nationalistic underground, treason, and spying on behalf of theUSA. Tried in secret in 1952, all but two of them (one was Fefer) were executed. Soon after Stalin's death the following year, the case was reopened and shown to have been 'a gross fabrication, and that the "confessions" of the defendants had been obtained through torture and refinedmistreatment' (p. xi). Reha bilitation, the prerogative of the Politburo, came two years later under strict secrecy, and itwas not made known to the public until 1988. This episode is among the best known indicators of Soviet Jewish policy, but for the firsttime in 2001 and now in paperback the transcript of the trial has been published, with a masterly and highly informative introduction by Joshua Rubenstein. Dismissing the proceedings as a 'fairy-tale' (p. 186), one of the chief defendants, the veteran revolutionary Solomon Lozovskii, described one of his tasks as a deputy foreignminister as providing propaganda mate rial in perfect English and Yiddish (for the largeAmerican readership). Told to find his staffhimself, he had hired people who were too old for active service and, more important,who had lived abroad, a logical approach that now backfired. He was accused of transforming the JAC into a centre of nationalistic activity, 'assigningMikhoels and Fefer the task of establishing contact with reactionary circles in theUnited States' (p. 184).He threw the challenge back at his accusers: 'there was no Central Committee, no govern ment, just Lozovsky and a couple ofJews who did everything. It's astonishing. I organise a rally according toparty directives. Every speaker received instruc tions from theCentral Committee [...] Is itreally possible to imagine that the radio committee, which was not subordinate to me, would broadcast appeals and speeches on the air without Central Committee approval?' (p. 186). As an exercise inmutual recrimination and officially organized entrap ment typical of Stalinist practice, this is a valuable addition to the literature of an unspeakable period of Soviet history, and Yale University Press deserves credit formaking available works of such a high editorial order and at such affordable prices. StAntony'sCollege,Oxford H. Shukman Griffin, Roger; Loh, Werner and Umland, Andreas (eds). Fascism Past andPresent, West andEast: An International Debate onConceptsand Cases in the Comparative Study of theExtreme Right. With an afterword by Walter Laqueur. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 35. Ibidem, Stuttgart, 2006. 510 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Appendix. 34.90 (paperback). This volume brings together contributions by thirty-one scholars,mostly from Britain, theUnited States, and Germany, including some classical figures in fascism studies, notably Walter Laqueur (who contributes an Afterword) and Ernst Nolte of the Free University of Berlin. The debate, one purpose of which is to enhance mutual understanding between English-speaking and German-speaking scholars, is conducted partly in English and partly in German. At issue are two interconnected questions: What is ? or was ? fascism? And do fascists stillexist? In particular, do fascists exist inpost-Soviet reviews 575 Russia? It is the discussion of this last question that justifies placing the book in a series entitled 'Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society'. While the titlepage refers to a single debate, the table of contents reveals that there are actually two.The 'primary' debate pitsRoger Griffin ofOxford Brookes University, inventor of a controversial definition of fascism in terms of a 'palingenetic myth' (i.e.,myth of national rebirth), against his various critics. A 'secondary' debate, even more impassioned than the primary one, revolves around the specific though pertinent question of whether theRus sian political and ideological operator Aleksandr Dugin is a fascist or mere ly a harmless crackpot. Andreas Umland (currently at the National Taras Shevchenko University inKiev) argues the former view, A. James Gregor (University of California at Berkeley) the latter.The Appendix provides an article by Dugin himself, translated by Umland from theRussian, to help the reader make up his or her own mind. It is an extremely complex debate, but itmay help to distinguish three broad points of view. First, we have Griffin and those who on the whole support his approach. (Griffinhas modified his original position in impor tant respects.) Second, there are scholars like Gregor who reject...

European Communism 1848-1991 by Ronald Kowalski (review)

reviews 575 Russia? It is the discussion of this last question that justifies placing the book in a series entitled 'Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society'. While the titlepage refers to a single debate, the table of contents reveals that there are actually two.The 'primary' debate pitsRoger Griffin ofOxford Brookes University, inventor of a controversial definition of fascism in terms of a 'palingenetic myth' (i.e.,myth of national rebirth), against his various critics. A 'secondary' debate, even more impassioned than the primary one, revolves around the specific though pertinent question of whether theRus sian political and ideological operator Aleksandr Dugin is a fascist or mere ly a harmless crackpot. Andreas Umland (currently at the National Taras Shevchenko University inKiev) argues the former view, A. James Gregor (University of California at Berkeley) the latter.The Appendix provides an article by Dugin himself, translated by Umland from theRussian, to help the reader make up his or her own mind. It is an extremely complex debate, but itmay help to distinguish three broad points of view. First, we have Griffin and those who on the whole support his approach. (Griffinhas modified his original position in impor tant respects.) Second, there are scholars like Gregor who reject not only Griffin's definition but the need forany generic social-science definition of fas cism, which they regard as a unique historical phenomenon that is extremely unlikely to re-emerge in recognizable form. Third, there are those who are highly critical of Griffin but who accept the need for some kind of gener ic definition. Some though far from all of these writers have an alternative definition to offer ? for example, Nolte's definition in terms of attitude to 'transcendence'. (For an alternative definition, which none of the contribu tors to thisvolume discuss, see chapter one ofmy Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements, Armonk, NY, and London, 2001, reviewed in SEER, 81, 2003, 2, pp. 372-74.) The political as well as intellectual importance of the questions under discussion should make this volume of interest to a wide circle of readers. Unfortunately, the level of abstraction is very high in some places and even thewell-educated general reader isunlikely to have the extensive background knowledge assumed by many contributors. This is really a book for specialists. The book could have been made more accessible ifthe editors had taken the trouble to provide an introductory survey of the debate to help the general reader findhis way through themorass. True, theywould have been better placed to do so if they had been 'neutral' figures rather than? like two of the three editors ? central protagonists in the debate. Providence, RI S. D. Shenfield Kowalski, Ronald. European Communism 1848-iggi. European History in Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2006. vii + 267 pp. Appendices. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. ?17.99 (paperback). Communism in the form inspired by the Soviet Union was, in thewords ofEric Hobsbawm quoted by the author of this study, 'neitherpossible, desirable, nor 576 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 [...] necessary' (p. 1).Nevertheless, Ronald Kowalski is reluctant to dismiss it as 'an abject failure', pointing to successful modernization of a number of countries, albeit in some cases and in some periods at a horrifying human and ecological cost, and to indirect benefits inprompting the development of welfare states inWestern Europe. Given a questioning attitude towards the virtues of global capitalism, he sees Communism as worthy of serious study. The book runs throughMarx's thinking, the experience of Social Demo crats in pre-1914 Germany, the development of Russian Marxism, the First World War and its associated revolutionary upheavals, the Stalin period in the Soviet Union, developments under Khrushchev and his successors, Com munist parties in Western Europe, Communists in power inEastern Europe and the final collapse following Gorbachev's reforms. Some parts of this are covered well. Kowalski is good at encouraging students to 'be wary of received opinion' (p. 59) and at demolishing some simplistic views. Thus, he argues, Marx was at times sketchy and contradictory. Lenin clearly changed his positions and itcan be questioned whether he reallywas aMarxist. Stalin's brutal industrialization cannot be blamed on theory or ideology alone: the situation would have been very...

Dugin Eurasianism: a window on the minds of the Russian elite or an intellectual ploy?

This paper considers the views of Alexander Dugin, a leading proponent of Eurasianism in contemporary Russia. The point of his teaching is the preservation of the traditional social/cultural make-up of each civilization. He also believes that the Russian Slavs together with the minorities of the Russian Federation constitute a quasi-unity of Eurasian civilization. He emphasizes that globalism, led by the USA, is a mortal threat to the cultural identity of Russia/Eurasia and all other civilizations. For this reason the USA and Russia are locked in mortal conflict with one other. At the outset of his intellectual career, in post-Soviet Russia, Dugin believed that Putin would follow the Eurasian road. It would be wrong to see Dugin as an intellectual guru at the head of the post-Soviet elite. Still, his views are important, for they indicate the kinds of ideas that circulate in the minds of the Russian elite.

Dugin, Eurasianism, and Central Asia

Eurasianism as a concept emerged among Russian émigrés in the 1920s, with the premise that Russia is a unique ethnic blend, primarily of Slavic and Turkic peoples. Its geopolitical implications for Russia include gravitation toward mostly Turkic Central Asia. Alexander Dugin, one of its best-known proponents, believes that the demise of the Soviet Union was simply a tragic incident. The people of the former USSR should again be united in a grand Eurasian empire, with Russia a benign and generous patron, providing its “younger brothers” clients economic largesse and defense, mostly against the predatory USA. The “orange revolutions” and the rise of Russian nationalism, for whose proponents a restored imperial presence is rather marginal, indicate that Eurasianism—along with the dream of the resurrection of the USSR—is becoming less viable.

Новые правые интеллектуалы в России: Стратегии легитимации

SUMMARY: The article by Mikhail Sokolov is an attempt to apply the sociology of intellectuals’ approach to the phenomenon of the Russian New Right. The trend that emerged in France in the 1960s has lost its influence everywhere in Europe except Russia. During the post-Soviet transition, the local “chapter” of the international right intellectual network enjoyed unprecedented popularity. Its leader, Alexander Dugin, became one of a few widely recognized public intellectuals. The story of the movement is reconstructed in the first part of the article. The second part discusses the factors of success of the Russian New Right. The author critically scrutinizes and rejects such explanations as a demand for ideological services by the rightist political organizations, or specific esthetic responses by intellectuals to the challenges of the post-communism transformation. Instead, Sokolov reconstructs a specific social structure of competing for cultural capital in the field of production of new meanings. This specific conjuncture allowed the leaders of the New Right to position their paradigm as the most fashionable and promising cultural trend. At the end, the author makes prognoses about the future of the New Right in Russia.

Is there a politics to geopolitics?

The term geopolitics is understood and used in a variety of ways. Political geographers typically invoke the term with reference to the geographical assumptions and understandings that influence world politics. Outside of the academy, geopolitics often connotes a conservative or right-wing political-territorial calculus associated with the strategic designs of Henry Kissinger, Aleksandr Dugin, and followers of the new Geopolitik in Germany. This forum considers the nature and significance of the gap in the ways that the term geopolitics is understood and deployed. Four eminent contributors to the literature in political geography offer their thoughts on the meanings associated with the term and potential confusions that arise from its different uses.