No More Learning

For Dugin too, theosophism, cosmism and the New Age religions are a spiritualist version of post-industrial modernity and a veiled cult of technology. 58 He condemns their populism and lack of coherent spiritual conceptions, whereas he sees Traditionalism as intended for a restrict- ed elite, which is alone able to understand its requirements. 59
Dugin views religion as being at the founda- tion of societies as well as modes of analyzing societies. This implies a reinterpretation of mod- ern Western intellectual life, and especially of its scientific attitudes. Following the Traditionalist precept that rationality is a mental construct, and progress a notion that bears no relation to reali- ty, Dugin argues that the positivist foundation of contemporary science must be questioned in its very principle. 60 Since the Renaissance, the sep- aration between sacred and profane, like that between art and science, has opened the way to a distorted vision of the human ability to under- stand the universe. Dugin therefore calls for a rehabilitation of esoteric knowledge as part of scientific research, and appreciates Romantic Naturphilosophie because of its intention to recre-
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 11
ateaholisticknowledgeoftheworld. Likewise, he believes in the imminent end of positivist sci- ence, and in the rebirth of synthetic sciences that would be full of meaning and reveal man's place in the world.
Dugin formulates this idea by trying to theo- rize so-called "sacred sciences. " According to him, their sacredness expresses itself not in a spe- cific methodology, but rather in the functions and goals attributed to the discipline. Like the modern sciences, thus, these "sacred sciences" have a specific object of research, but they do not lose their ties with ontological and gnoseo- logical knowledge. 61 One of the fields capable of fusing objective data and philosophical back- ground is geopolitics. Dugin systematically pres- ents it not as a simple scientific discipline, but as a Weltanschauung, a meta-science which encom- passes all the other sciences, thereby endowing them with meaning. According to him, "geopolitics is a vision of the world. It is there- fore better to compare it not to sciences, but to systems of sciences. It is on the same level as marxism, liberalism, etc. , i. e. systems of inter- pretation of society and history. "62
Dugin does not limit himself to a spiritual or intellectual understanding of Traditionalism. He asserts that it is in itself an "an ideology or meta- ideology that is in many ways totalitarian and requires that those that adopt it accept its strin- gent requirements. "63 Among these requirements, political commitment seems fundamental to Dugin. According to him, Traditionalism is the metaphysical root of numerous political ideolo- gies, in particular those known as the theories of the Third Way. He thus outlines three types of doctrines that are simultaneously philosophical, religious and political, and between them govern the entire history of the world. The first, which he calls the polar-paradisiacal one, expressed itself on the religious level as esotericism or Gnosticism, on the historical level as the medieval civilization of the Ghibellines, then German National Socialism, and on the political level as eschatological totalitarianism. The second ideology, called the "creation-creator" one, is religiously exoteric, its historical incarnation is Catholicism 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 pantheism embodied in the militant atheism of the liberal
West. 64Duginthusformalizestwo"rights,"arev- olutionary and a conservative one (the third ide- ology represents the "left"), and displays a dis- tinct preference for the former of the visions of the world.
Dugin also proposes another Traditionalist terminology with which to define the political spectrum, which he sees as always being divided into three groups. The right is "History as Decadence, the necessity of instantaneous Restoration, the primacy of eschatology. " The center is "History as Constancy, the necessity to preserve the balance between the Spiritual and the Material. " The left is "History as Progress, the necessity to contribute to its advancement and acceleration in every possible way. "65 In this second account, conservatism seems to be classi- fied as being in the center, thereby reserving the right exclusively for the revolutionary move- ment of which Dugin considers himself a repre- sentative. This reveals the ambiguous political place he attributes to Traditionalism: "from the point of view of Integral Traditionalism, the only adequate position for implementing the principles of the Sacred Tradition to contempo- rary political reality is, in a normal case, that of the which is often called 'extreme right' [. . . ]. But social history advances in a sense which is strictly opposed to this ideal, from theocracy to secularism, from monarchism to egalitarianism, and from spiritual and empire-building disci- pline to an apology of comfort and individual well-being. [. . . ] This is why the 'extreme right' on the political level often proves to be too "left" for the authentic Traditionalist [. . . ] Some Traditionalists may pass from 'extreme right' positions to the 'extreme left,' revolutionary or even socialist or communist wing, while remaining fully consistent and logical in their actions. "66 This idea of the interchangeability of left and right is reminiscent of certain ideas of the Western New Right.
THE RUSSIAN EXPONENT
OF THE NEW RIGHT?
Dugin has often been compared to Alain de Benoist (b. 1943), the principal theoretician of the French movement called "New Right. " This school of thought emerged in the second half of the 1970s, going back to the GRECE (Groupe d'E? tudes et de Recherche sur la Civilisation Europe? enne) and the magazine Nouvelle E? cole. 67
12 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
The two men met during Dugin's stay in Paris at the end of the 1980s, and they remained close collaborators for a few years. In 1992, for exam- ple, the patriotic newspaper Den' published the transcript of a round table discussion with Dugin, Aleksandr Prokhanov, Sergei Baburin and Alain de Benoist. 68 When Dugin launched his own journal the same year, he called it Elementy and presented it as the Russian version of E? le? ments, the magazine of the European New Right. This publication made the split between Dugin and the more classical nationalists of Den' (future Zavtra) official, but did not prevent dis- agreements with de Benoist. Thus, in 1993, de Benoist strove to clear himself of associations with Dugin after a virulent French and German press campaign against the "red-and-brown threat" in Russia. In an interview, he acknowl- edged that he had become aware of a number of ideological divergences with Dugin, concerning politics--e. g. on the concept of Eurasia and Russian imperialistic tendencies69--but also the- ory. Indeed, de Benoist makes only partial use of Traditionalism, whereas Dugin draws on the whole body of that doctrine. Conversely, de Benoist is strongly attracted to Heidegger's phi- losophy, while Dugin does not find it congenial.
Nevertheless, the careers of both men have many features in common. For example, it is impossible to classify either using pre-defined ideological patterns, or to pin down their polit- ical sympathies precisely in the classical right- left spectrum. Both reject populism and, in spite a few fruitless attempts, neither of them has been able to find a political party capable of reflecting their complex thought. Since the early 1990s, de Benoist has never hidden his contempt for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front,70 while Dugin condemns the famous fig- ures of Russian nationalism, such as Eduard Limonov, Gennady Ziuganov, or Vladimir Zhirinovskii, despite having more or less direct- ly inspired them. Like the French thinker, he subjects the entire right-wing spectrum in his country to fierce criticism, denies the relevance of the distinction between right and left, and cannot accept the electoral populism of those groups, in particular their most xenophobic statements. In the diversity of his sources of inspiration 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 of Charles Maurras or Maurice Barre`s.
Both Dugin and de Benoist have therefore regularly had to explain their stance, and have been considered as "traitors" by other factions of the radical right. Dugin, for example, provided a lengthy explanation of his dismissal of ethno- nationalism. According to him, the Russian nationalist milieu is divided into two groups: on the one hand are the Pan-Slavists and monar- chists, who have an ethnocentric and politically outdated vision of Russia; on the other hand are the Eurasianists, Communists and pro-statists, who give priority to great state power over eth- nic feeling, and who are above all focused on the future. 71 Indeed, like de Benoist, Dugin attempts to "dissociate the question of identity affirmation from the question of nationalism":72 he extols non-xenophobic nationalism, criticizes Pan- Slavist sentimentalism such as it manifested itself in Russia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and rejects the popular anti-Caucasian phobia instrumentalized by politicians such as Ziuganov, or, even more strongly, Zhirinovskii.
Dugin thus calls for a rational, dispassionate nationalism, one that would acknowledge its borrowings from alternative projects such as religious fundamentalism, Third Worldism or left-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. Both also presuppose that the conquest of political power requires first gaining cultural power. For more than a decade, de Benoist's aim has been to disseminate his doctrines in French intellec- tual circles, in particular through the journal Krisis, which offers a space for critical discussion between the foremost right-wing and left-wing thinkers. This preference for culture also explains Dugin's choice of public strategy over the past few years.
In spite of their break, Dugin continues to make regular references to de Benoist, and shares his hope for a continental destiny for Europe, built along overtly anti-Atlanticist lines. He borrows many conceptions from the Jeune Europe movement, as well as from the Belgian Jean Thiriart (1922-92), who had striven for a Euro-Soviet empire to be brought about by a movement he called "national communitarian". What is common to all these trends is a striving
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 13
? for what they call organic democracy, which would place the state at the service of the national community. This kind of democracy would express itself in political unanimity as well as in a return to a "natural hierarchy" of social castes, and in a (professional, regional or confes- sional) corporatism that would leave no room for the individual outside the collectivity. Thus, Dugin distinguishes himself from other figures in the Russian nationalist movements precisely through his militant Europeanism, his exaltation of the Western Middle Ages, and his admiration for Germany. All these ideological features con- trast strongly with the ethnocentrism of his competitors and a Soviet tradition of equating Germany with "fascism". This is why Dugin has often been criticized, in particular by the Communists, for whom the Russian "anti-fas- cist" tradition rules out the recognition of any German, and more generally Western, cultural influence on Russian nationalism.
Even more than de Benoist, Dugin has an ambiguous position on the racial question. GRECE has largely abandoned the theme of "biological realism," which was very present in Jeune Europe and other radical nationalist fac- tions, and has preferred to insist on a cultural and non-racial differentialism since the 1960s. De Benoist was the main driving force behind this evolution, and, since the end of the 1960s, he has condemned all racial ideas, which he presents as an application of the Judeo-Christian presuppositions he criticizes. Nevertheless, racial arguments remain important in other Western radical right-wing circles. On this point, Dugin does not go as far as de Benoist: he remains more influenced by racialist currents as well as by those Traditionalists who, like Evola and unlike Gue? non, were also sensitive to racial topics. Thus, Dugin condemns racialism in its Nazi ver- sion for having led to the Holocaust, but also for having crystallized around a German-centered vision of the world instead of a European one. Dugin supports Evola's criticism of the racial and anti-Semitic determinism of Third Reich Germany, but shares his vision of race as the "soul" of peoples. 78
He systematically constructs an opposition between race and geopolitics, between national- ism and loyalty to the state, and systematically takes 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 between Whites (the Indo-European Slavs) and Yellows (the Finno-Turkic peoples): according to the Evolian principle of "spiritual racism," each of these races is endowed with innate qualities rev- elatory of certain philosophical principles79 which Dugin, borrowing from the Slavophile A. S. Khomiakov80 (1804-60), calls the Finnish and the Frisian principles: the former, that of the "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 of Eurasia, which is simultaneously white and yel- low, gives it a global role to play: Russia will start its Nordic renewal, and "wherever there is a sin- gle drop of Aryan (Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian, European) blood, there is a chance for racial awakening, for the rebirth of the primordial Aryan conscience. "81
Dugin's texts abound in references to Aryanism and Neo-paganism, a classic corollary of the racial ideology and of the idea of the original 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 the European idea, and from the doctrines of Europe-Action. These proponents of the idea of an ethnic and cultural unity of European peoples no longer wish to express their identity in an insular or chauvinist manner, remembering the obstacles that divided the European nationalists during the Second World War. Thus Dugin accepts the theory of a "defense of the West," if this term is understood in its ancient racial and Aryan sense, not in terms of contemporary Western culture. In his works, he regularly refers to Guido von List (1848-1919) and Jo? rg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954), the famous thinkers of Germanic Aryanism, and presents himself as one of the founders of Ariosophy, or the science of Aryan wisdom.
There are even more frequent references to Hermann Wirth (1885-1981), one of Dugin's favorite authors, and to his occultist theories on the Arctic homeland of the original Aryan peo- ples. "Thousands of years ago, our land wel- comed the descendants of the Arctic, the founders of the Hindu and Iranian civilizations. We (especially as Orthodox Christians) are the
14 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
most direct heirs of the Arctic, of its ancient tra- ditions. "82 Gue? non would have affirmed that the Hyperborean civilization was not in Scandinavia but more to the East, a theory that Dugin has discussed at length, in particular in The Mysteries of Eurasia (1991). In this book, he presents Siberia and its enormous Nordic continental mass as the original cradle of the Aryans, as well as the magical center of the world, following the idea that "the continents have a symbolic significance. "83 In The Hyperborean Theory (1993) and The Philosophy of Traditionalism (2002), he also professes his belief in a runic writing, a kind of Aryan Grail written in a universal proto-lan- guage, supposedly discovered and published by Hermann Wirth in 1933 under the name of Chronicle of Ura-Linda. 84
Dugin's occultist leanings are also apparent in his striving to create a metaphysics of the cardi- nal points, which he perceives as absolutes that are sources of identity. The North and the East are at the heart of his esoteric concerns: the North confirms Russia's Nordic identity, a fun- damental element of the discourse of racial identity inspired by Nazism. The East is the expression of Russia-Eurasia's inner Oriental nature. "The Drang nach Osten und Norden of Russia is the natural geopolitical process of Russian history. "85 Russia's global role then appears distinctly, since only Russia combines the symbolic distinctions of being racially Northern, Eastern by its cultural and religious choices, and economically Southern, an ally of a Third World resisting Westernization. In a blend of the Nazi and Eurasianist traditions, Dugin sees Siberia as destined to play a major role in the new Russian identity. He thus elab- orates a cosmogony of the world in order to make Siberia, the last "empire of paradise"86 after Thule, the instrument of his geopolitical desire for a domination of the world, justified by 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 to the Kabbala, alchemy, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, the law of astrological correspondences, parallels with Iranian and Indian culture, etc. Dugin defines this set of theories as sacred geography, that is to say, "the unknown science of the secrets of 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 the New Right, they have their roots in the esoteric ideas of the founding fathers of Traditionalism, and have been explored by mystical currents of the 1920s and 1930s close to fascism.
FASCISM, CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM
The connections between Dugin's ideas and fas- cism have been a subject of much debate. 89 However, the terms of the debate stand in need of definition. Fascism is a historically circum- scribed phenomenon that was politically and intellectually liquidated with the end of the Second World War, though it left some traces with small Neo-Fascist groups which reap- peared, above all in Europe and in Latin America, in the second half of the 20th century. Fascism can also be chronologically and ideolog- ically divided into Fascist movements and Fascist regimes (in Italy and Germany). Only the first interest us here. To classify a thought as "Fascist" does not, then, mean to predict that it will take power and endanger human lives, nor to catego- rize it in a discriminatory manner that would deny it the right to be analyzed. This terminol- ogy merely points to an adherence to a specific intellectual tradition. Intellectual fascism shares with the other currents of the "extreme right" a Romantic heroism (a cult of the leader, the army, and physical effort, and the indoctrination of the young), but distinguishes itself from them by its revolutionary and pro-socialist aspects, as well as by its attraction to futurism and esoteri- cism. Dugin's ideas share many features of this original 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 is understood to designate the contemporary racist extreme right, a designation that is moreover historically and conceptually incorrect.
On economics, Dugin unapologetically stands "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 he has borrowed from certain socialist theories, in particular on economics, since he is in favor of giving the state a crucial role in production structures. Economics was not at all addressed in
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 15
his first works, but it seems to have taken on an increasing importance since 2001. Dugin even hopes to establish the "theoretical sources of a new socialism,"90 based largely on a paternalistic version of Keynesian economics. He has also appropriated some Marxian ideas: for him, the opposition between labor and capital, Continentalism and Atlanticism, and East and West, are parallel. 91 These left-wing conceptions played a role in Dugin's rapprochement with the socialist-leaning economist Sergei Glaz'ev and their brief alliance in 2003 within the Rodina bloc, which presented itself as a left-wing alter- native to the Communist Party.
Dugin never plays the communist card. He has only negative things to say about Marxism- Leninism such as it existed in the USSR, and has, for several years, been a condescending crit- ic of the Communist Party. He appreciates Ziuganov's borrowings from his geopolitical the- ories, but condemns his electoral exploitation of Soviet nostalgia, and most of all regrets his ide- ological inconsistency. According to Dugin, the CPRF no longer has a claim to the heritage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and cannot even present itself as a left-wing party, since it advances a series of arguments that Dugin classifies as right-wing, such as social conservatism, racism and anti-Semitism, monar- chism, calls for tax cuts, etc. Dugin therefore believes that the Communist Party can be defined as an unacknowledged Eurasianist movement, whose function is to express social discontent, but not to take power. 92
This combination of economic socialism and conservatism regarding values is typical of cur- rents espousing the so-called "third way". Dugin acknowledges his fundamental attraction to rev- olutionary ideas: he has never been a partisan of any return to the past, which explains his gradual break with so many other nationalist figures. He does not play the card of czarist or Soviet nostal- gia and sees himself as resolutely turned toward the future. For example, he is a militant propo- nent of the introduction of modern technologies in Russia, cultivating a strong presence of his own on the Internet and calling for a "modern- ization without Westernization. " He is thus fully in accordance with the doctrines of so-called National Bolshevism, whose theoreticians he admires, 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 this strand of thought, which he did not identify as "Traditionalist,"93 but in the 1990s, he changed his mind and attempted a synthesis between his Gue? nonian philosophical conceptions and the political ideas of the National Bolsheviks. Like many dissidents, Dugin only took a positive view of the Soviet experience after two events: a trip to the West in 1989, and the disappearance of the regime in 1991.
Dugin then developed the distinction pro- posed by Mikhail Agursky, between "National Bolshevism," a messianic ideology that has a national basis but a universal vocation, and "national communism," the Soviet newspeak term that designated the separatism of the Russian Empire's ethnic margins. 94 Basing himself on Karl Popper,95 Dugin defines National Bolshevism as a "meta-ideology common to all the enemies of open society. "96 Indeed, what is most important for him is that right-wing and left-wing totalitarian ideologies are united in their refusal to accord a central role to the individual and to place it above the collectivity, be it social or national. The phenomenon of National Bolshevism, then, is not a specific moment of history, but a philosophical conception of the world 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 rests largely on mystical foundations, which once more reminds one of the original Fascists. He stresses the parallels between esotericism and political commitment, be it Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevik: National Bolshevism is thus to him merely a politicized version of Traditionalism, the modernized expression of the messianic hopes that have existed in Russia since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. According to Dugin, it heralds "the Last Revolution, worked by an acephalous, headless bearer of cross, sickle and hammer, crowned by the eternal swastika of the sun. "97 According to Dugin, the most complete incarnation of the Third Way was German National-Socialism, much more so than Mussolini's Italy or the inter-war Russian exiles. He then points out parallels between "Third Rome, the Third Reich, the Third Inter- national,"98 and attempts to prove their common eschatological basis. For Dugin, the original triad
16 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
of Father, Son and Holy Spirit reveal to the ini- tiated that the Third Reich, just like Third Rome, 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, Dugin explains: "By fascism we obviously do not mean a concrete political phenomenon, but our deep- seated secret fear that brings the nationalist, the liberal, the communist and the democrat closer together. This fear does not have a political or ideological nature, it expresses a more general, more deep-seated feeling [. . . ] [the fear of] a magical fascism. "94
Dugin therefore advances a positive reading of fascism, and does not denounce Nazism, even though he condemns its racism. He is content with regretting that Hitler attacked the USSR and made mistakes in his application of the theo- ries of conservative revolution, which were bet- ter preserved by left-wing Nazis who called for an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union. He especially appreciates the Waffen-SS95 and, even more, the cultural organization Ahnenerbe. 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: the ideologization of sex. According to him, men and women respond to different philosophical principles (active and passive), and men's superi- ority is proven etymologically since, in numerous languages, a single term designates both male persons and human beings in general. 96 Thus, the liberalization of sex, pornography, feminism, homosexuality, and the fashion for Freudianism and psychoanalysis are part of the process of forced Westernization of the world. This "era of gynecocracy"97 heralds the "castration" of men and, along with it, the disappearance of tradi- tional society. Dugin calls for a revindication of eroticism in a phallo-centric and patriarchal way, and hopes to develop a "patriotic conscience" of the sexual act because "empire represents the cul- minating point of eroticism. "98
Like the original Fascists, Dugin admires the Romantic taste for death and combat, shares a contempt for contemporary society, which he believes to be bourgeois and decadent, and aspires to form young, purified generations: "the Eurasian is a strong, healthy, and beautiful person, who has passionarity and passion [. . . ]
Our ideal is to make good physical and moral health, strength, valor, fidelity and pride honor- able goals. "99 The journals Elementy and Milyi Angel, as well as the Internet sites linked to Dugin, are therefore filled with a strong military symbolism, and sometimes exhibit muscular, weapon-laden and khaki-clad bodies. The back cover of one of his latest books, The Philosophy of War (2004), is particularly explicit: "The value of peoples, cultures and societies is proved in war and through it. The beautiful is what has as its foundation the accomplishment of self-affir- mation. War renews Man, and the price to pay for this gigantic personal effort confirms his adherence to the community. War has always been a collective business, having as its goal the conservation of the people and the State, the increase of their power, of their space, and of their life regions. Herein lies the social and national sense of war. "100
A VEILED ANTI-SEMITISM
His exaltation of this warlike spirit, combined with numerous references to Fascist ideas, prompts questions on the place of the "Jewish question" in Dugin's thought. As with the other Eurasianist thinkers, this question is particularly complex because they all combine philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic arguments. Dugin proposes his own version of that conjunction in the form of a paradoxical Judaeophobic philo-Zionism.
In The Conservative Revolution (1994), Dugin recognizes that the state of Israel has realized a kind of Traditionalism: "the only state that has partly succeeded in putting into practice certain aspects of the conservative revolution is the state of Israel. "101 This prompted him to establish close links with some Israeli ultra-nationalist currents. Thus, since 1998, Dugin has sought to develop contacts with that part of the Israeli right which upholds the belief that all Jews must live in Israel. This militant Zionism agrees with him because it is in accordance with the principle of ethno-plu- ralism: all peoples should live in peace, but "at home. " The Evraziia movement is linked with two radical Zionist groups, Vladimir Boukharsky's MAOF Analytical Group and Be'ad Artzeinu, controlled by Rabbi Avram Shmulevich. These two groups, situated to the right of the right-wing Israeli party Likhud, are led by two former Soviet citizens of Jewish ori- gin who emigrated to Israel and are now com-
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT?
17
mitted to politicizing the Israeli Russians. Both of them participated in the founding convention of Evraziia and occupy important positions in the party hierarchy. 102 The web site of the International Eurasianist Movement also men- tions a link with Avigdor Eskin, a former Soviet Jew who took refuge in Israel and is now fighting the "liberal oligarchy" which he says is running the country. 103 Some radical currents of Judaism (most often Zionist, but also Hasidic and mysti- cal)arealsorepresentedinEvraziiabyRabbisstill living 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 of unceasing attacks by secularization, a kind of reli- gious globalization: only the unification of the traditionalists of all religions will allow for the development of strategies of resistance. 104
Dugin's objective of an alliance with Israel derives from the idea of a distinction between "good" and "bad" Judaism, which had already been developed by the first Eurasianists, in par- ticular in Iakov Bromberg's texts on the Jewish question. Dugin borrows from Bromberg the distinction between a Eurasian and an Atlanticist Jewishness. For Bromberg, the goal was to involve the Jews of the Russian Empire in the construction of Eurasia, and to invite them to cultivate their specificities without trying to assimilate to the Russians. However, he belittled the 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 as those who choose to leave for Israel, because this act signals their awareness of their irreducible Jewish specificity. The "bad" Jews are those who continue to live in the diaspora and try to be assimilated by the surrounding cultures, be it in the Atlanticist or the post-Soviet world. Thus, unlike the original Eurasianists, Dugin does not attempt to attract the East European Jews, whom he presents as historical enemies of Russian nationalism.
Dugin thus demonstrates a complex philo- Zionism combined with anti-Semitic state- ments, another combination typical of a part of the Western New Right. While he regularly criticizes the vulgar anti-Semitism espoused by most currents of Russian nationalism, he does
expound a more sophisticated and euphemized version of anti-Semitism, centered on more sub- tle religious and philosophical arguments. For example, he disagrees with Rene? Gue? non, who considered the Kabbala to be an authentic eso- tericism: for Dugin, the sense of the universal-- an indispensable element of any real Traditionalism--is absent from the Kabbala, which, like the Talmud, is founded on the Jewish ethnic consciousness. 105 He also argues that Traditionalism views history as cyclical, whereas Judaism, because of its pessimism, regards it as linear. 106 For Dugin, the idea of God's incarnation as a man fundamentally changed the metaphysical cosmogony of Christianity. Thus, "from the point of view of Orthodox esotericism, the counter-initiation is, without doubt, Judaism. "107 Dugin then consid- ers the term "Judeo-Christianity" to be an incorrect formula, in particular for Orthodoxy, which he argues is even more distant from Judaism than Catholicism is. 108
This argument illustrates Dugin's version of anti-Semitism. He attempts to efface the com- mon historical roots that link Judaism to the two other monotheistic religions, and accuses the Jewish world of having created a biological con- ception of itself. This inversion, a classical feature of anti-Semitism, is found in many of his texts, where he rejects, but also partly admires, the Jews' alleged capacity for conceiving of them- selves as a race. Thus, according to Dugin, Israel is the archetypal example of a state founded on an ethnic 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 an ideological couple, in which it is difficult to know which caused the other: their polarity is a sign of their intimate correlation. 109
Dugin also repeatedly asserts that the Jews consider themselves to be a chosen people, which squarely opposes them to Russian Messianism, another ideology of national excep- tionalism. Another consistent opposition between Judaism and Russianness concerns the relation to territory. According to Dugin, life in the diaspora has desacralized in the Jewish mind the territories on which the Jews have lived for two millenia, and only the long inaccessible land of Israel has kept its sacred character. Their lack of emotion toward nature and their theological
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rejection of redemption by the earth--embod- ied by Jesus in Christianity--reveals their incompatibility with the Eurasian idea, for which territory is laden with meaning, as well as with Russian identity, marked by the cult of the nurturing soil. The famous Jewish nomadism found its most sophisticated expression in the maritime character of the thallassocracies. 110 This is why only the traditionalist Jews returning to live in Israel can be in agreement with the Eurasianist idea, all others being (possibly unconscious) bearers of an Atlanticist identity marked by affective indifference toward soil.
In his interpretation of Jewishness, Dugin also 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 masochism is Jewish, while sadism is Aryan. 111 The funda- mental difference between them resides in their vision of the universe: for the Jews, the cosmos is God's place of exile, whereas in Christianity, it is the place willed by God. Dugin's anti- Semitism appears in full here: the identity of the Jews, the 'Finnish' culture par excellence, is not just different from that of the Aryans, it is unas- similable to it. This irreducibility foreshadows, according to him, the coming metaphysical war between the Aryan and Semitic worlds: "The world of 'Judaica' is a world hostile to us. But the sense of Aryan justice and the gravity of our geopolitical situation require us to comprehend its 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, but also 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 committed philo-Zionism can partly be explained by Dugin's differentialist theories.
ETHNO-DIFFERENTIALISM AND
THE IDEA OF RUSSIAN DISTINCTIVENESS As we have already noted, Dugin followed the theoretical turn of the New Right, which moved from a biological view of the differences between 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 it fits into a conception of national distinctiveness that was already highly ethnicized. This differ- entialist neo-racism (in Taguieff's formula) and the exaltation of the "right to be different" are neither a new idea nor a mere import from the West. Throughout the 19th century, the princi- pal thinkers of "Russian national distinctive- ness" had upheld a culturalist approach, and, unlike their Western colleagues, accorded only very little importance to racial determinism. 113 Slavophile and Pan-Slavist thought remained under the influence of Hegel and Herder, and perceived the factual dimension of reality as a hidden fight between ideas. Thus, for over a century, it has been "normal" for Russian intel- lectuals sensitive to the national question to affirm, in Dugin's phrase, that "every people advances in History according to its own trajec- tory, upholding its own understanding of the world. 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 regard to this question: he uses the term ethnos with a positive meaning, seeing it as the primary point of collective reference ("the whole, the ethnos, according to the Eurasianists, is higher than the part, the individual"115), but at the same time remains critical of ethno-nationalism. According to Dugin, the superiority of the collectivity over the individual must be expressed in the political field as a "political ethnism. " This differential pluralism would be based on a corporatist system that would institutionalize intermediate echelons between the individual and the state. It would reveal Russia's true imperial nature. Unlike the Russians, who are "the empire's constitutive nation" [imperoobrazuiushchaia natsiia], the non- Russian peoples may benefit from cultural autonomy, but not from sovereignty, contrary to what was proclaimed during perestroika. 116 No nationality should be recognized territorially, because "Russians exist as the only national community within a supranational imperial complex. "117 Dugin argues that the negotiations between the federal center and the subjects of the federation started by Boris Yeltsin fostered separatism in the Caucasus and in the Volga-Ural region. This ethno-centrism should, on the con- trary, be condemned, since stands in the way of
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 19
a national supra-unification of the Eurasian eth- nos. Dugin's strength is in his capacity for playing with concepts: for example, he proposes to "meet these identification tendencies of the peo- ples and regions of the Federation half-way," but in a controlled way that would subject them to the center. 118
Whether he bases himself on Eurasianist or New Right arguments, Dugin condemns nationalism in its ethnic and "chauvinist"variety, which he considers dangerous and obsolete. The idea of an ethnic miscegenation of peoples cele- brated by Western newspeak appears to him as disastrous as was the theory of racial purity, because both lead to ethnocide. On the contrary, "the Eurasianist attitude toward the ethnos remains conservative, based on the principle of the absolute necessity of protecting each ethnic group from the prospect of historical disappear- ance. "119 This terminology remains paradoxical: not only does Dugin refrain from rejecting the idea of race, he also seems confused in his understanding of ethnicity, as he gives it an emi- nently culturalist and civilizationist meaning, while at the same time using the terminology of the ethnos, which, following the Soviet tradition, remains very much tied to nature and even biol- ogy. This contradiction can be explained by Dugin's "post-modern" approach: he says he wishes to restore all the ideas, both religious and ethnic, that have been thrown out by moderni- ty, which is why he addresses the ethnic question in both a positive and a negative way: positive when he uses it against the globalized liberalism which he views as destructive of the differences between peoples, and negative when he sees ethnic nationalism as preventing the affirmation of Eurasian unity.
Thus Dugin's main activity, for several years, has been to speak out for a new interpretation of the idea of human rights. He is convinced that they 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 discourse as the right has been doing for some time. According to Dugin, this theory will first be put into practice in Russia, because, due to its natu- ral federalism, that country advocates ethno-cul- tural autonomy in exchange for unitarianism in state affairs. "The concept of people [narod] must be recognized as the fundamental legal category,
as the main subject of international and civil law. "121 Individuals will be legally identified by their ethnic, religious or cultural affiliation. A similar theory had already been proposed a long time ago by Panarin, who put forward a "civi- lizational" rather than political pluralism which he saw as typical of Eurasia.
Dugin's absolutization of the ethnic collectiv- ity implies a difficult attitude toward the idea of cultural transfer. As Pierre-Andre? Taguieff has justly and repeatedly noted, the cult of difference implies a phobia of intermingling: it celebrates heterogeneity, but fears the mixing of peoples and traditions. Dugin considers the possibility of miscegenation between populations, or the transfer 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, but a cautious attitude on level of the masses. "122 Here he is once more in tune with the tradition of Soviet ethnology, which, following the theories of Yulian Bromlei and Lev Gumilev, had regular- lycalledforthedevelopmentofendogamoustra- 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 stereotypes into global intellectual debates. He adapts the Russian case to a more global theory on the cur- rent recomposition of collective identities under conditions of globalization, anchoring his ideas in alter-globalization movements, many of which have turned differentialism into one of their main dogmas.
CONTEXTUALIZING DUGIN'S PLACE
IN RUSSIAN PUBLIC LIFE
A survey of Dugin's ideas naturally prompts questions about the extent to which he is repre- sentative, about his strategies, and about the net- works through which his ideas are spread. In many senses, especially regarding his career, he can be considered to represent the general evo- lution of the Russian nationalist milieux over the past two decades. In the first half of the 1990s, these currents, then presented as "red-and- brown," were united in their opposition to the liberal reforms of the Yeltsin era. A change in their attitude toward the establishment set in during the prime ministership of Primakov, and gained momentum when Putin came to power,
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an event which recomposed and narrowed down the political spectrum. Numerous nation- alist figures came to support the authorities while preserving their political structures, resulting in a kind of vociferous but fictitious opposition. This was the case with Ziuganov's Communist Party, as well as with Zhirinovskii's LDPR and the Rodina bloc. Dugin also followed this 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 the public spectrum:123 radical in his political and philosophical doctrines, but centrist by virtue of his support for the current president. He thus embodies one of the main tendencies of the European radical right, which virulently attempts to differentiate itself from the centrist discourse of the powers-that-be on an ideolog- ical level, while developing a public strategy for gaining respectability.
Paradoxically, Dugin is isolated within the nationalist currents. He is their only substantial thinker, and his theories inspire numerous pub- lic figures and movements. At the same time, his theoretical position is too complex for any party to follow him entirely and turn him into its official thinker. He is also disturbing for the entire camp of Russian nationalism on several points: he condemns populism, which is central to 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 he makes numerous Aryanist statements and adopts an ambiguous anti-Semitism, he is seldom quoted by Aryanist leaders, as he does not refer to the main neo-pagan reference book, the Book of Vles. He is also strongly criticized by anti-Semitic circles for condemning theories of a Jewish plot, rejecting revisionism, and appar- ently denying the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This elitist position, which he refuses to compromise in exchange for electoral success, is reminiscent of Alain de Benoist. However, Dugin cannot be entirely equated with the New Right: his stance is also informed by Traditionalism and fascism (in the sense out- lined above). Thus he does not go as far as de Benoist on Third Worldism, and uses racist arguments in a more pronounced way.
Dugin's intellectual eclecticism assures him a certain degree of success among the young gen-
eration, revealing post-Soviet Russia's lack of foundations of identity. His occultist leanings, his exacerbated religious sensibility, his rejection of communist ideology but not of the Soviet experience, as well as his ahistorical discourse about Russian grandeur, are his attractive points. Not only do his geopolitical theories restore to Russia the role of a global superpow- er, he also modernizes a certain variety of polit- ical fundamentalism, exalts a sense of hierarchy and war, resurrects the mythical triangle between Germany, Russia and Japan, and argues that cultures are incommensurable and will unavoidably come into conflict with one anoth- er. His anti-Western feelings are reinforced by the revival of Pan-Asianism in South-East Asia: all Neo-Eurasianists admire these countries for having successfully allied economic dynamism to political authoritarianism, as well as for their general rejection of Western domination and the "return" to Islamic values in the Muslim states of Indonesia and Malaysia.
Attempts to classify such a doctrine and per- sonality inevitably remain guesswork: Dugin is above all in search of himself, and his inner quest, particular the religious one, probably constitutes one of the matrixes of his political doctrines. Dugin's strategies are therefore tai- lored to fit his personal evolution and the insti- tutional position he hopes to reach. These strategies are organized along several lines: Dugin understands that the Eurasianist and geopolitical part of his theories is best suited to be widely spread in contemporary Russian soci- ety. In the same way, the idea of a unification of the patriotic scene and the creation of a kind of "union of nationalists without borders," which the International Eurasianist Movement hopes to become, strike a chord with numerous Russian political circles. Traditionalism, escha- tologism and esotericism are relegated to the background of his public activities, and are reserved for a more restricted circle of initiated followers, for example in the framework of the New University. Dugin's Eurasianism is proba- bly more promising than his National Bolshevism or Traditionalism: the term "Eurasia" is being adopted very extensively in Russia among very varied social and political milieux, though in a way that strips it of its orig- inal theoretical implications. Dugin thus seems to have succeeded, at least regarding this aspect
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 21
of his thought, in his entryism into official structures. Indeed, as was observed very justly by the weekly Obshchaia gazeta, "Dugin is no longer 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 multiform strategy on the fringe of the classical electoral political spectrum. He develops a geopolitical discourse aimed at a large public, a concept of Eurasia as the basis for a new ideology of Russian great power for the Putin establishment, and Traditionalism and other philosophical and religious doctrines restricted to small but influ- ential and consciously elitist intellectual circles. Even if Dugin's institutional presence, in Russia and abroad, is based on groupuscules, the influ- ence of his personality and his works must not be underestimated. In spite of his rhetorical rad- icalism, which few people are prepared to follow in all its philosophical and political conse- quences, Dugin has become one of the most fashionable thinkers of the day. Using networks that are difficult to trace, he is disseminating the myth of Russian great power, accompanied by imperialist, racialist, Aryanist and occultist beliefs that are expressed in a euphemistic way and whose scope remains unclear, but that can- not remain without consequences.
Dugin's role as an ideological mediator will probably be an important point to consider in any long-term historical assessment: he is one of the few thinkers to engage in a profound renew- al of Russian nationalist doctrines, which had been repetitive in their Slavophilism and their czarist and/or Soviet nostalgia. His originality lies precisely in his attempt to create a revolu- tionary nationalism refreshed by the achieve- ments of 20th century Western thought, fully accepting the political role these ideas played between the two world wars. Therefore, in his opposition to American globalization, Dugin unintentionally contributes to the international- ization of identity discourse and to the uni- formization of those theories that attempt to resist globalization. He illustrates that, although aiming for universality, these doctrines are still largely elaborated in the West. This is a paradox- ical destiny for a Russian nationalist, whose self- defined and conscious "mission" is to anchor a profoundly Western intellectual heritage in Russia, and to use it to enrich his fellow citizens.
NOTES
1. For further details on the distribution of his publications (print runs, re-editions), see: Andreas Umland, "Kulturhegemoniale Strategien der russischen extremen Rechten: Die Verbindung von faschistischer ideologie und metapolitischer Taktik im Neoeurasismus des Aleksandr Dugin," O? ster- reichische Zeitschrift fu? r 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 refers to a famous collection of articles from 1909 called Vekhi, considered a manifesto against the ideology of the radical intelligentsia. The authors of Vekhi argued for the primacy of the spiritual and appealed to the revolution- ary intelligentsia to recognize the spiritual source of human life: to them, only concrete idealism, manifested in Russian in the form of religious philosophy, allows to objectivate traditional mysticism and to fuse knowledge and faith.
4. All his publications are available on the web. His two web sites, Arctogaia (www. arcto. ru) and Evraziia (www. evrazia. org) also include links to a nationalist network that includes web sites such as Novoe soprotivlenie (New Resistance), 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, The Conservative 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 of the 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: Orthodox Esotericism (Metafizika Blagoi Vesti (Pravoslavnyi ezoterizm), 1996) and The End of the World. Eschatology and Tradition (Konets sveta: Eskhatologiia i tradiciia, 1997).
7. The Mysteries of Eurasia (Misterii Evrazii) and The Hyperborean (Giperboreec, 1991), The Hyperborean Theory (1993).
22 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
8. Conspirology (Konspirologiia, 1992, republished in 2005), The Foundations of Geopolitics (Osnovy geopolitiki, 1996, four re-editions), Our Way. Strategic Prospects for the Development of Russia in the 21st Century (Nash put'. Strategicheskie perspektivy razvitiia Rossii v XXI veke, 1998), The Russian Thing. Essays in National Philosophy (Russkaia veshch'. Ocherki natsion- al'noi filosofii, 2001), The Foundations of Eurasianism (Osnovy evraziistva), The Eurasianist Path (Evraziiskii put') and The Eurasian Path as National Idea (Evraziiskii put' kak natsional'naia ideia, 2002).
9. Markus Mathyl, "The National-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: Two Neo-fascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Political Space," 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 politicheskaia biografiia, St. Petersburg: Amfora, 2002, p. 64.
12. Andrei Tsygankov, "Hard-Line Eurasianism and Russia's contending geopolitical per- spectives," East European Quaterly, no. 3, 1998, pp. 315-334.
13. Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii, Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997. On this book, see J. B. Dunlop, "Aleksandr Dugin's 'Neo-Eurasian' Textbook and Dmitrii Trenin's Ambivalent Response," Harvard Ukrainian 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 Eurasian Project: Russia-3, Dugin and Putin's Kremlin," paper presented at the National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Salt Lake City, 4-6 November 2005.
16. For further details on Dugin's connections with military circles, see: Dunlop, op. cit. , pp. 94, 102.
17. Franc? oise Thom, "Eurasisme et ne? o- eurasisme," Commentaires, no. 66/1994, p. 304.
18. "Evraziistvo: ot filosofii k politike," Dugin's paper at the founding congress of the Evraziia movement, 21 April 2001.
19. "My--partiia natsional'noi idei," Dugin's paper at the conference preparing the transformation of Evraziia from a move- ment into a political party, 1 March 2002.