Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the
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Dugin - Alexander Dugin and New European Radical Right
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Aleksandr Dugin:
A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? by Marlene Laruelle
? ? ? OCCASIONAL PAPER #294 KENNAN INSTITUTE
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? The Kennan Institute is a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
Marlene Laruelle
? ? OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Aleksadr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
In studying contemporary Russian Eurasianism--both as a doctrine and as a political movement--one constantly comes across Aleksandr Dugin. One of the main rea- sons that he is relevant to any such study is the quasi-monopoly he exercises over a certain part of the current Russian ideological spectrum. This spectrum includes a plethora of right-wing groupuscules that produce an enormous number of books and an impressive quantity of low-cir- culation newspapers, but are not readily distin- guishable from each other and display little the- oretical consistency or sophistication. Dugin is the only major theoretician among this Russian radical right. He is simultaneously on the fringe and at the center of the Russian nationalist phe- nomenon. He provides theoretical inspiration to many currents and disseminates precepts that can be recycled at different levels. Above all he is striving to cover every niche on the current ide- ological marketplace.
Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
Marlene Laruelle
? ? OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Aleksadr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
In studying contemporary Russian Eurasianism--both as a doctrine and as a political movement--one constantly comes across Aleksandr Dugin. One of the main rea- sons that he is relevant to any such study is the quasi-monopoly he exercises over a certain part of the current Russian ideological spectrum. This spectrum includes a plethora of right-wing groupuscules that produce an enormous number of books and an impressive quantity of low-cir- culation newspapers, but are not readily distin- guishable from each other and display little the- oretical consistency or sophistication. Dugin is the only major theoretician among this Russian radical right. He is simultaneously on the fringe and at the center of the Russian nationalist phe- nomenon. He provides theoretical inspiration to many currents and disseminates precepts that can be recycled at different levels. Above all he is striving to cover every niche on the current ide- ological marketplace. He proceeds from the assumption that Russian society and Russia's political establishment are in search of a new ide- ology: he therefore owes it to himself to exercise his influence over all the ideological options and their possible formulations.
Beyond the doctrinal qualities that make him stand out among the spectrum of Russian nationalism, Dugin is noteworthy for his fren- zied and prolific output of publications begin- ning in the early 1990s. He has published over a dozen books, either original texts or thematical- ly rearranged articles initially printed in various journals or newspapers. He has also edited sev- eral journals: Elementy (9 issues between 1992 and 1998), Milyi Angel (4 issues between 1991 and 1999), Evraziiskoe vtorzhenie (published as an irregular supplement to the weekly Zavtra, with six special issues in 2000), and Evraziiskoe obozrenie (11 issues from 2001 to 2004). 1 In 1997, he wrote and presented a weekly one-
hour radio broadcast, Finis Mundi, which was prohibited after he commented favorably on the
2 early 20th-century terrorist Boris Savinkov.
Dugin also regularly publishes articles in numer- ous dailies and appears on several television pro- grams. In 1998, he took part in the creation of the "New University," a small institution that provides Traditionalist and occultist teachings to a select few, where he lectures alongside noted literary figures such as Yevgeny Golovin and Iurii Mamleev. Since 2005, he has been appear- ing on the new Orthodox TV channel Spas cre- ated by Ivan Demidov, where he anchors a weekly broadcast on geopolitics called Landmarks [Vekhi]. 3 He also regularly takes part in round table discussions on Russian television and occupies a major place in the Russian nationalist Web. 4
Several intellectual tendencies manifest themselves in his thought: a political theory inspired by Traditionalism,5 Orthodox religious philosophy,6 Aryanist and occultist theories,7 and geopolitical and Eurasianist conceptions. 8 One might expect this ideological diversity to reflect a lengthy evolution in Dugin's intellec- tual life. Quite to the contrary, however, all these topics did not emerge in succession but have co-existed in Dugin's writings since the beginning of the 1990s. While Eurasianism and geopolitics are Dugin's most classic and best- known "business cards" for public opinion and the political authorities, his philosophical, reli- gious and political doctrines are much more complex and deserve careful consideration. The diversity of his work is little known, and his ideas are therefore often characterized in a rash and incomplete way. We therefore ought to look for his intellectual lineage and try to understand his striving to combine diverse ide- ological sources. Dugin is one of the few thinkers to consider that the doctrinal stock of
? ? Marlene Laruelle is an Associate Scholar at the French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East European Studies in Paris. In 2005-2006 she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
This paper was translated by Mischa Gabowitsch.
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 1
Russian nationalism has depreciated and must be revitalized with the help of Western input. Dugin is thus "anchoring" Russian nationalism in more global theories and acting as a mediator of Western thought. It is this aspect of Dugin that will be the focus of this paper.
DUGIN'S SOCIAL TRAJECTORY
AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
It is particularly important to understand Aleksandr Dugin's complex place within Neo- Eurasianism, since, to a certain extent, his posi- tion is representative of certain more general phenomena and thus helps trace the evolution of Russian nationalist ideas over the past twenty years or so. Between 1985 and 1990, Dugin was clearly in favor of a "right-wing" Neo- Eurasianism, and close to conservative or even monarchist circles. In 1988, he joined the ultra- nationalist and anti-Semitic orgnization Pamiat', but did not feel intellectually at home there, since his ideas for a doctrinal renewal of the right were out of place in this fundamentally conservative organization. He therefore left Pamiat' the following year, condemning its nos- talgic monarchism and vulgar anti-Semitism. In 1990-1, he founded several institutions of his own: the Arctogaia Association, as well as a pub- lishing house of the same name, and the Center for Meta-Strategic Studies. During this period, Dugin drew closer to Gennadii Ziuganov's Communist Party, and became one of the most prolific contributors to the prominent patriotic newspaper Den' (later renamed Zavtra), which was at that time at the height of its influence. His articles published in this newspaper contributed to the dissemination of Eurasianist theories in Russian nationalist circles. At first he was sup- ported by the nationalist thinker Aleksandr Prokhanov, who thought that only Eurasianism could unify the patriots, who were still divided into "Whites" and "Reds," but Prokhanov quickly turned away and condemned Eurasianism for being too Turko-centric.
From 1993-4, Dugin moved away from the Communist spectrum and became the ideologist for the new National Bolshevik Party (NBP). Born of a convergence between the old Soviet counter-culture and patriotic groups, the NBP successfully established its ideology among the young. Dugin's Arctogaia then served as a think tank for the political activities of the NBP's
leader, Eduard Limonov. The two men shared a desire to develop close ties with the counter-cul- tural sphere, in particular with nationalistically- minded rock and punk musicians, such as Yegor Letov, Sergei Troitskii, Roman Neumoev or Sergei Kurekhin. 9 In 1995, Dugin even ran in the Duma elections under the banner of the NBP in a suburban constituency near Saint-Petersburg, but received less than 1 percent of the vote. 10 However, this electoral failure did not harm him, as he was simultaneously busy writing numerous philosophical and esoteric works to develop what he considered to be the Neo-Eurasianist "ortho- doxy. " Limonov would thereafter describe Dugin as "the 'Cyril and Methodius' of fascism, since he brought Faith and knowledge about it to our country from the West. "11
Dugin left the National Bolshevik Party in 1998 following numerous disagreements with Limonov, seeking instead to enter more influen- tial structures. He hoped to become a "counsel to the prince" and presented himself as a one- man think tank for the authorities. He succeed- ed in establishing himself as an advisor to the Duma's spokesman, the Communist Gennady Seleznev, and, in 1999, he became chairman of the geopolitical section of the Duma's Advisory Council on National Security, dominated by the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, led by Vladimir Zhirinovskii. At the time, Dugin appeared to exert a certain influ- ence on Zhirinovskii, as well as on Aleksandr Rutskoi of the Social Democratic Party and Gennady Ziuganov of the Communist Party12. The latter, for example, borrowed from Dugin the idea that Russian nationalism does not con- flict with the expression of minority national sentiments. Indeed, Ziuganov presented the CPRF as the main defender of Tatar nationalism and Kalmyk Buddhism. His book Russia after the Year 2000: A Geopolitical Vision for a New State was directly inspired by Dugin's ideas on the dis- tinctiveness of Russian geopolitical "science" and his idea that Russia's renewal provides the only guarantee of world stability. Dugin also reg- ularly publishes on Russian official web sites, such as www. strana. ru, where he expresses his ideas on the opposition between the re-emerg- ing Eurasian empire and the Atlanticist model.
Dugin's entry into parliamentary structures was largely made possible by the publication (in 1997) of the first version of his most influential
2 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
work, The Foundations of Geopolitics: Russia's Geopolitical Future. 13 It is considered to be a major study of geopolitics, and is often present- ed as the founding work of the contemporary Russian school of geopolitics. By 2000, the work had already been re-issued four times, and had become a major political pamphlet, enjoy- ing a large readership in academic and political circles. Indeed, Dugin has always hoped to influence promising young intellectuals as well as important political and military circles. He has stated that his Center for Geopolitical Expertise could quickly become an "analytical instrument helping to develop the national idea"14 for the executive and legislative powers.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has been especially keen on getting in touch with acting military officers: coming from a military family, he regularly asserts that only the army and the secret services have a real sense of patri- otism. Thus, in 1992, the first issue of Elementy carried texts by three generals who were then heads of department at the Academy of the General Staff. 15 In addition, The Foundations of Geopolitics seems to have been written with the support of General Igor' Rodionov, who was minister of defense in 1996-7. 16 Thanks to this book, Dugin has been invited to teach at the Academy of the General Staff as well as at the Institute for Strategic Research in Moscow. He offered them a certain vision of international politics colored by an "isolationism that only serves to disguise a project of expansion and conquest. "17 Following this best-seller, Dugin considerably expanded his presence in the main Russian media; to some, he became a respectable personality of public life. The suc- cess of his geopolitics book, now used as a text- book by numerous institutions of higher educa- tion, as well as his lectures at the Academy of the General Staff and at the so-called New University, satisfies his desire to reach the polit- ical and intellectual elites.
Thus the years 1998-2000 saw the transfor- mation of Dugin's political leanings into a spe- cific current that employs multiple strategies of entryism, targeting both youth counter-culture and parliamentary structures. Dugin moved away from opposition parties such as the CPRF and the LDPR and closer to centrist groups, lending his support to the then prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov. In 2000, he briefly partici-
pated in the Rossiia movement led by the Communist Gennady Seleznev and wrote its manifesto, before leaving due to disagreements with its leadership. Putin's election as president in March 2000 caused an even stronger shift in Dugin's political attitudes, as he began to move closer to country's new strong man.
On 21 April 2001 he resolved to put his cards on the table and created a movement named Evraziia, of which he was elected presi- dent. During its founding convention, Evraziia--often described as a brainchild of presidential counsel Gleb Pavlovsky, who is close to Dugin--officially rallied to Putin and proposed to participate in the next elections as part of a governmental coalition. The move- ment's goal, according to Dugin's declarations, is to formulate the "national idea" that Russia needs: "our goal is not to achieve power, nor to fight for power, but to fight for influence on it. Those are different things. "18 On 30 May 2002, Evraziia was transformed into a political party that Dugin defines as "radically centrist," an ambiguous formulation that springs from his Traditionalist attitude. Dugin accepts the com- bination of "patriotism and liberalism" which he says Vladimir Putin is proposing, on the con- dition that the liberal element remains sub- servient to state interests and to the imperatives of national security. As he affirms, "our patriot- ism is not only emotional but also scientific, based on geopolitics and its methods,"19 a classic claim of Neo-Eurasianists. According to its own data, the new party has 59 regional branches and more than 10,000 members. Its creation was publicly welcomed by Aleksandr Voloshin, then the head of the presidential administration, and Aleksandr Kosopkin, chief of the administra- tion's Internal Affairs Department.
Dugin also enlisted the support of another influential figure close to the president, Mikhail Leont'ev, the presenter of Odnako (broadcast by Pervyi kanal, the first channel of Russian state TV), who joined the party's Central Committee. Strengthened by his success after these public dis- plays of recognition, Dugin hoped to acquire influence within a promising new electoral for- mation, the Rodina bloc, and use it as a platform for a candidacy in the parliamentary elections in December 2003. This alliance, however, was tac- tically short-lived, and questionable in its ideo- logical import. Thus, Dugin never concealed his
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 3
disdain for the monarchist nostalgia and the politicized orthodoxy embodied by Rodina lead- ers such as Dmitrii Rogozin and Natalia Narochnitskaia. Indeed, it seems that Sergei Glaz'ev20 was the one who was responsible for the rapprochement with Dugin. Although Glaz'ev can- not be considered a Neo-Eurasianist, he did par- ticipate in the founding convention of Evraziia in 2002. The two men share an interest in econom- ic policies leaning toward socialism, and Dugin acknowledged his sympathy for Glaz'ev's eco- nomic ideas (which he calls "healthy") even after the latter left Rodina in March 2004.
Dugin and Glaz'ev met as early as February 2003 in order to constitute a party they defined as "left-patriotic. " In July, Evraziia declared itself ready to support the creation of this electoral bloc. However, internal arguments over person- alities ensued: the bloc needed to choose three leaders who would be sure to become deputies if it passed, and would benefit most from the campaign's publicity. Dugin hoped to be chosen, but was hampered by his political marginality linked to his reputation as an extravagant theo- retician whose ideas are too complex to inform an electoral strategy. 21 At the end of September, the disappointed Dugin left the Rodina bloc, explaining at a press-conference that Rodina's nationalism was too radical for him--a statement that must draw a smile from those familiar with his work. This nationalist setting had not dis- turbed him until then. Nor did he move closer to Rodina when certain overly virulent national- ists such as V. I. Davidenko, leader of the small Spas party, were expelled from Rodina's list of candidates under pressure from the Kremlin.
Dugin's accusations against Rodina fall into two categories. He condemns the bloc for being tooclosetotheCPRFanditsoligarchy,andcrit- icizes its "irresponsible populism. " He also takes to task those he calls "right-wing chauvinists": Sergei Baburin and the Spas movement. 22 By contrast, Dugin insists on the conciliatory and multinational mission of his Evraziia party, which "represents not only the interests of the Russians, but also those of the small peoples and the tradi- tional confessions. "23 Dugin has also accused some Rodina members of racism and anti- Semitism, stressing that the party includes former members of Russian National Unity24 as well as Andrei Savel'ev, who translated Mein Kampf into Russian. The first set of criticisms is justified by
Dugin's own convictions: he has never hidden his disdain for the present Communist Party, does not appreciate the emotional attitude of the Orthodox in matters of international politics, rejects all Tsarist nostalgia, has always denounced the racialism of Barkashov's theories, and con- demns electoral populism. The second set of crit- icisms seems more opportunistic: a close reading of Dugin's works clearly reveals his fascination with the National Socialist experience and his ambiguous anti-Semitism. Today, Dugin is attempting to play down these aspects of his thought in order to present himself as a "politi- cally correct" thinker waiting to be recognized by the Putin regime.
In return, instances of Dugin borrowing ide- ologically from Rodina seem rather rare. His Traditionalist, National Bolshevik and esoteric ideas, which constitute an important part of his thinking, are not appreciated by Rodina and have not exercised any influence on the bloc's con- ceptions. Indeed, Rodina is more conservative than revolutionary, and cannot take up Dugin's provocative suggestions, which often aim to break the social order. The strictly Neo- Eurasianist aspect of Dugin's ideas--his best- known "trademark" in Russian society today-- is in tune with some of Rodina's geopolitical conceptions, but this concurrence is actually founded on the anti-Westernism that is common to both, not on a shared vision of Russia as a Eurasian power. For this reason, despite their attempted alliance, Rodina may not be said to have adopted elements of Neo-Eurasianist thought in the strict sense of the term. Nevertheless, these difficult relations did not stop Dugin from being delighted with the results of the December 2003 elections, which carried four nationalist parties (the presidential party United Russia, the CPRF, the LDPR, and Rodina) into the Duma. Dugin has connections with every one of them, and some members of each of these parties openly acknowledge having been inspired by his theories.
After this personal failure in Rodina, Dugin reoriented his strategies away from the electoral sphere, and toward the expert community. Hence the transformation of his party into an "International Eurasian Movement" (IEM), for- malized on 20 November 2003. The new move- ment includes members from some twenty countries, and its main support seems to come
4 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
? from Kazakhstan and Turkey. Whereas the orig- inal organization founded in 2001 comprised mainly figures from civil society,25 the Supreme Council of the new Eurasian Movement includes representatives of the government and parliament: Mikhail Margelov, head of the Committee for International Relations of the Federation Council (the Parliament's Upper House), Albert Chernyshev, Russia's ambassador to India, Viktor Kalyuzhny, vice-minister of for- eign affairs, Aleksey Zhafyarov, chief of the Department of Political Parties and Social Organizations in the justice ministry, etc. The IEM even officially asked Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbaev to head the movement's Supreme Council. Dugin congratulates himself on having moved beyond a mere political party to an international organization. He now culti- vates his image in neighboring countries, heavi- ly publicizing his trips to Turkey, but also to Kazakhstan and Belarus. Dugin has become a zealous supporter of the Eurasian Economic Union and is pleased to think that he has influ- enced Aleksandr Lukashenko's and Nursultan Nazarbaev's decisions in favor of a tighter inte- gration of their countries with Russia. His web site also presents the different Eurasianist groups in Western countries. Italy is particularly well represented, with numerous translations of Dugin's texts, several Eurasianist-inspired web sites, and a journal, Eurasia. Rivista di studi geopolitici. France is represented by the "Paris- Berlin-Moscow" association, while Britain has long had a Eurasianist movement of its own. Austrian, Finnish, Serbian, and Bulgarian asso- ciations, and of course organizations in other post-Soviet republics, especially in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, are presented as "fraternal parties".
Having enthusiastically welcomed Vladimir Putin as a "Eurasian man,"26 Dugin now, since early 2005, appears to be deeply disappointed by the president. According to him, Putin hesitates to adopt a definitively Eurasianist stance, and his entourage is dominated by Atlanticist and over- ly liberal figures. In current affairs, Dugin is try- ing to play on the wave of anti-Westernism that swept part of the Russian political scene after the revolutions in Georgia in 2003, in Ukraine in 2004, and in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. He thus set up a Eurasianist Youth Union, led by Pavel Zarifullin, which became highly visible in September 2005 with the heavily publicized cre-
ation of an "anti-orange front. " Dugin is thus pursuing, with relative success, his objective of building up a global cultural hegemony: he is trying to gain a foothold in alter-globalization movements (which promote alternatives to American-led globalization) and to participate in international ideological regroupings. This right, which Dugin modernizes and profoundly renews in his theories, seems therefore to suc- ceed in its strategy of entering into left-wing structures that are badly informed and looking for any and all allies in their struggle against American domination.
Thus Dugin's regular but always temporary presence in the political field cannot, it seems, be considered a new phase of his life that would build on an already completed body of doctrine. Although Dugin currently seems to be concen- trating on his involvement in the Eurasianist movement and publications on the topic of Eurasianism, one should not forget that a similar combination had been in place from 1994 to 1998, when his membership in the National- Bolshevik Party went hand in hand with publi- cations on the concept of National Bolshevism. Dugin thus seems to adjust his strategy in accor- dance with the available opportunities to influ- ence public opinion. Moreover, he continues even today to disseminate the Traditionalist ideas that have been his mainstay since the beginning, displaying a high degree of doctrinal consisten- cy. What has evolved is his public status, marked by his desire no longer to be considered an orig- inal and marginal intellectual, but rather to be recognized as a respectable political personality close to the ruling circles.
A RUSSIAN VERSION OF ANTI-GLOBALISM: DUGIN'SGEOPOLITICALTHEORIES
All the Neo-Eurasianist currents that emerged in the 1990s share an imperial conception of Russia, but they are all based on different pre- suppositions. Aleksandr Dugin occupies a partic- ular position inside this group, and is sometimes criticized virulently by the other Neo- Eurasianists. Indeed, Dugin "distorts" the idea of Eurasia by combining it with elements borrowed from other intellectual traditions, such as theories of conservative revolution, the German geopoli- tics of the 1920s and 1930s, Rene? Gue? non's Traditionalism and the Western New Right. Nevertheless, Dugin has enjoyed the greatest
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 5
public success of all Neo-Eurasianists, and most directly influences certain political circles looking for a new geopolitics for post-Soviet Russia.
Dugin thus largely outweighs small intellectu- al groups that pursue their own Neo-Eurasianist reflections without having any direct access to a larger public. He can be considered today as the principal theoretician of Neo-Eurasianism, even though he shared this role with Aleksandr Panarin in the 1990s. At first, the two men had been rather opposed to each other, and Panarin had refused to be assimilated into the same ideo- logical current. He described Dugin's geopolitics aspaganforviewingmanasdependentonnature and led by a blind and determinist destiny, and conceiving the state as an isolated and selfish organism, not providing any guarantee of global stability, and relying only on strength. At the time, Panarin considered this view to be the strict opposite of the "civilizational" awareness that Neo-Eurasianism should be. The two thinkers did, however, end up sharing some points of view, as a consequence of Panarin's intellectual evolution rather than to Dugin's. Thus, Panarin gradually came to corroborate Dugin's public supremacy in matters Neo- Eurasian, attending the foundation of the Evraziia movement in 2001 and becoming a member of the party's Central Council in 2002. 27 According to Dugin, Panarin had even agreed, before his illness, to write a foreword to one of Dugin's latest books, Political Philosophy. 28 The philosopher's sudden death, however, eliminated this ally-cum-competitor from the public stage.
Dugin's attraction to the early Eurasianism developed by 1920s and 1930s Russian e? migre? s is not a belated addition to his doctrines. At the end of the 1980s, while he was still close to cer- tain monarchist groups, Dugin had already become the apostle of a Eurasianist conception of Russia, and had contributed to its spread among the patriotic circles linked to Den'. Today, he continues to be a dominant influence among those trying to rehabilitate the founding fathers of Eurasianism: he has edited compila- tions of the principal texts of the movement's main theoreticians--Pyotr N. Savitsky, Nikolay S. Trubetskoi, Nikolay N. Alekseev etc. --at Agraf, then through Arctogaia publications. 29 In his introductions to these compilations, he sys- tematically tries to link the inter-war Eurasianist teachings as closely as possible with his contem-
porary definition of Neo-Eurasianism. He does not, however, appropriate the highly elaborate theories of the founding fathers concerning the historical, geographical or religious legitimacy of the Russian Empire. He is content with try- ing to establish a geopolitics for post-Soviet Russia, helping the country to become aware of its particular eschatological sensibility: "the cur- rent transformations in Russia's geopolitical space and all of Eurasia are difficult to under- stand unless interpreted as a sign of the times, announcing the proximity of the climax. "30
Dugin even criticizes the founding fathers for having been overly philosophical and poetic: according to him, Eurasianism had the right intuitions (for example, the idea of a "third con- tinent" and the importance of the Mongol peri- od in the formation of Russian identity), but was unsuccessful in formalizing them theoreti- cally. "In Eurasianism we are confronted with a double indeterminacy: the indeterminacy char- acteristic of Russian thought itself, and an attempt to systematize this indetermination into a new indeterminate conception. "31 His attitude toward the other Neo-Eurasianists is even more negative: apart from the historian and ethnolo- gist Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), many of whose ethnicist conceptions he shares, Dugin considers his ideological competitors worthless, and affirms that their Neo-Eurasianist conceptions are "hardly consistent [and] represent only an adaptation to a changing political reality of the whole complex of ideas already quoted. "32
Dugin's Eurasianism involves a great interest in geopolitics, the main discipline on which he bases his theories. For him, geopolitics by definition serves the state in which it is elaborated. Thus, Russian geopolitics could only be Eurasianist, since it is responsible for restoring Russia's great power status. It is also intended exclusively for the elites: according to Dugin, geopolitics is opposed to the democratic principle because the ability to know the meaning of things is unavoidably restricted to the leaders. It is to this end that Dugin refers to the big names of the discipline, such as the Germans Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), and Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919), the Swede Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922), and the Briton Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). Indeed, there is little that is Russian in Dugin's intellectual baggage. Apart from Konstantin Leontyev (1831-91),33 whom
6 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Dugin sometimes mentions, he is far more inspired by Western authors than by Russians. For example, he speaks with admiration of the German organicists, such as Ernst Ju? nger (1895-1998), Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925), or Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967) and Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). He borrows from Schmitt his con- ception of the nomos, the general form of organ- ization of the objective and subjective factors of a given territory, and the theory of Grossraum, "large spaces. "
Dugin attaches great value to this German heritage, and wishes to be viewed as a continen- tal geopolitician on a par with Schmitt and Haushofer: Russia's centrality and continentality, to him, are comparable to those of Germany in the 1920s-30s. He thus develops his own bipolar interpretation of the world, opposing the 'Heartland', which tends toward authoritarian regimes, to the 'World Island', the incarnation of the democratic and commercial system. He com- bines the classic Eurasianist theories with this bipolar division of the world into sea-based and land-based societies, or thallassocracies and tel- lurocracies, and links them to various classic cou- ples of concepts from "Russian thought" (Western Christianity/Orthodoxy, West/East, democracy/ideocracy, individualism/collec- tivism, societies marked by change/societies marked by continuity). The opposition between capitalism and socialism is seen as just one partic- ular historical clash destined to continue in other forms. "The Earth and the Sea disseminate their original opposition to the whole planet. Human history is nothing but the expression of this struggle and the path of its absolutization. "34
Dugin then divides the world into four civi- lizational zones: the American zone, the Afro- European zone, the Asian-Pacific zone, and the Eurasian zone. Russia must strive to establish various geopolitical alliances organized as con- centric circles. In Europe, Russia must of course ally itself with Germany, to which Dugin pays particular attention. Presented as the heart of Europe, Germany should dominate all of Central Europe as well as Italy, in accordance with the theories of 'centrality' developed by the Nazi geopoliticians as well as 19th century Prussian militarism. In Asia, Russia should ally itself with Japan, appreciated for its Pan-Asian ideology and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis dur-
ing the Second World War. Within the Muslim world, Dugin chooses Islamic Iran, admired for its moral rigorism. He presents Iran as one of the few real forces of opposition against American globalization, and invites it to unify the entire Arab world, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, under its leadership. Dugin charac- terizes this quadruple alliance Russia-Germany- Japan-Iran which would react against the thalas- socracies (the United States, Britain in Europe, China in Asia, Turkey in the Muslim world) as a "confederation of large spaces,"35 since each ally is itself an empire that dominates the corre- sponding civilizational area. Unlike the Eurasianists of the 1920s, Dugin does not talk of an irreducible and romantic opposition between East and West; in Dugin's theories, both Asia and Europe are destined to come under Russian-Eurasiandomination.
As the maritime and democratic enemy allegedly has a "fifth column" in Russia, Dugin calls for a restoration of the Soviet Union and a reorganization of the Russian Federation. He is the only Neo-Eurasianist to include in his polit- ical project not only the Baltic States, but the whole former socialist bloc. 36 His Eurasia must even expand beyond Soviet space, as he propos- es to incorporate Manchuria, Xingjian, Tibet, and Mongolia, as well as the Orthodox world of the Balkans: Eurasia would only reach its limits with "geopolitical expansion to the shores of the Indian ocean,"37 an idea that was taken up and popularized by Zhirinovskii.
A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? by Marlene Laruelle
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
Marlene Laruelle
? ? OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Aleksadr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
In studying contemporary Russian Eurasianism--both as a doctrine and as a political movement--one constantly comes across Aleksandr Dugin. One of the main rea- sons that he is relevant to any such study is the quasi-monopoly he exercises over a certain part of the current Russian ideological spectrum. This spectrum includes a plethora of right-wing groupuscules that produce an enormous number of books and an impressive quantity of low-cir- culation newspapers, but are not readily distin- guishable from each other and display little the- oretical consistency or sophistication. Dugin is the only major theoretician among this Russian radical right. He is simultaneously on the fringe and at the center of the Russian nationalist phe- nomenon. He provides theoretical inspiration to many currents and disseminates precepts that can be recycled at different levels. Above all he is striving to cover every niche on the current ide- ological marketplace.
Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
Marlene Laruelle
? ? OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Aleksadr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?
In studying contemporary Russian Eurasianism--both as a doctrine and as a political movement--one constantly comes across Aleksandr Dugin. One of the main rea- sons that he is relevant to any such study is the quasi-monopoly he exercises over a certain part of the current Russian ideological spectrum. This spectrum includes a plethora of right-wing groupuscules that produce an enormous number of books and an impressive quantity of low-cir- culation newspapers, but are not readily distin- guishable from each other and display little the- oretical consistency or sophistication. Dugin is the only major theoretician among this Russian radical right. He is simultaneously on the fringe and at the center of the Russian nationalist phe- nomenon. He provides theoretical inspiration to many currents and disseminates precepts that can be recycled at different levels. Above all he is striving to cover every niche on the current ide- ological marketplace. He proceeds from the assumption that Russian society and Russia's political establishment are in search of a new ide- ology: he therefore owes it to himself to exercise his influence over all the ideological options and their possible formulations.
Beyond the doctrinal qualities that make him stand out among the spectrum of Russian nationalism, Dugin is noteworthy for his fren- zied and prolific output of publications begin- ning in the early 1990s. He has published over a dozen books, either original texts or thematical- ly rearranged articles initially printed in various journals or newspapers. He has also edited sev- eral journals: Elementy (9 issues between 1992 and 1998), Milyi Angel (4 issues between 1991 and 1999), Evraziiskoe vtorzhenie (published as an irregular supplement to the weekly Zavtra, with six special issues in 2000), and Evraziiskoe obozrenie (11 issues from 2001 to 2004). 1 In 1997, he wrote and presented a weekly one-
hour radio broadcast, Finis Mundi, which was prohibited after he commented favorably on the
2 early 20th-century terrorist Boris Savinkov.
Dugin also regularly publishes articles in numer- ous dailies and appears on several television pro- grams. In 1998, he took part in the creation of the "New University," a small institution that provides Traditionalist and occultist teachings to a select few, where he lectures alongside noted literary figures such as Yevgeny Golovin and Iurii Mamleev. Since 2005, he has been appear- ing on the new Orthodox TV channel Spas cre- ated by Ivan Demidov, where he anchors a weekly broadcast on geopolitics called Landmarks [Vekhi]. 3 He also regularly takes part in round table discussions on Russian television and occupies a major place in the Russian nationalist Web. 4
Several intellectual tendencies manifest themselves in his thought: a political theory inspired by Traditionalism,5 Orthodox religious philosophy,6 Aryanist and occultist theories,7 and geopolitical and Eurasianist conceptions. 8 One might expect this ideological diversity to reflect a lengthy evolution in Dugin's intellec- tual life. Quite to the contrary, however, all these topics did not emerge in succession but have co-existed in Dugin's writings since the beginning of the 1990s. While Eurasianism and geopolitics are Dugin's most classic and best- known "business cards" for public opinion and the political authorities, his philosophical, reli- gious and political doctrines are much more complex and deserve careful consideration. The diversity of his work is little known, and his ideas are therefore often characterized in a rash and incomplete way. We therefore ought to look for his intellectual lineage and try to understand his striving to combine diverse ide- ological sources. Dugin is one of the few thinkers to consider that the doctrinal stock of
? ? Marlene Laruelle is an Associate Scholar at the French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East European Studies in Paris. In 2005-2006 she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
This paper was translated by Mischa Gabowitsch.
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 1
Russian nationalism has depreciated and must be revitalized with the help of Western input. Dugin is thus "anchoring" Russian nationalism in more global theories and acting as a mediator of Western thought. It is this aspect of Dugin that will be the focus of this paper.
DUGIN'S SOCIAL TRAJECTORY
AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
It is particularly important to understand Aleksandr Dugin's complex place within Neo- Eurasianism, since, to a certain extent, his posi- tion is representative of certain more general phenomena and thus helps trace the evolution of Russian nationalist ideas over the past twenty years or so. Between 1985 and 1990, Dugin was clearly in favor of a "right-wing" Neo- Eurasianism, and close to conservative or even monarchist circles. In 1988, he joined the ultra- nationalist and anti-Semitic orgnization Pamiat', but did not feel intellectually at home there, since his ideas for a doctrinal renewal of the right were out of place in this fundamentally conservative organization. He therefore left Pamiat' the following year, condemning its nos- talgic monarchism and vulgar anti-Semitism. In 1990-1, he founded several institutions of his own: the Arctogaia Association, as well as a pub- lishing house of the same name, and the Center for Meta-Strategic Studies. During this period, Dugin drew closer to Gennadii Ziuganov's Communist Party, and became one of the most prolific contributors to the prominent patriotic newspaper Den' (later renamed Zavtra), which was at that time at the height of its influence. His articles published in this newspaper contributed to the dissemination of Eurasianist theories in Russian nationalist circles. At first he was sup- ported by the nationalist thinker Aleksandr Prokhanov, who thought that only Eurasianism could unify the patriots, who were still divided into "Whites" and "Reds," but Prokhanov quickly turned away and condemned Eurasianism for being too Turko-centric.
From 1993-4, Dugin moved away from the Communist spectrum and became the ideologist for the new National Bolshevik Party (NBP). Born of a convergence between the old Soviet counter-culture and patriotic groups, the NBP successfully established its ideology among the young. Dugin's Arctogaia then served as a think tank for the political activities of the NBP's
leader, Eduard Limonov. The two men shared a desire to develop close ties with the counter-cul- tural sphere, in particular with nationalistically- minded rock and punk musicians, such as Yegor Letov, Sergei Troitskii, Roman Neumoev or Sergei Kurekhin. 9 In 1995, Dugin even ran in the Duma elections under the banner of the NBP in a suburban constituency near Saint-Petersburg, but received less than 1 percent of the vote. 10 However, this electoral failure did not harm him, as he was simultaneously busy writing numerous philosophical and esoteric works to develop what he considered to be the Neo-Eurasianist "ortho- doxy. " Limonov would thereafter describe Dugin as "the 'Cyril and Methodius' of fascism, since he brought Faith and knowledge about it to our country from the West. "11
Dugin left the National Bolshevik Party in 1998 following numerous disagreements with Limonov, seeking instead to enter more influen- tial structures. He hoped to become a "counsel to the prince" and presented himself as a one- man think tank for the authorities. He succeed- ed in establishing himself as an advisor to the Duma's spokesman, the Communist Gennady Seleznev, and, in 1999, he became chairman of the geopolitical section of the Duma's Advisory Council on National Security, dominated by the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, led by Vladimir Zhirinovskii. At the time, Dugin appeared to exert a certain influ- ence on Zhirinovskii, as well as on Aleksandr Rutskoi of the Social Democratic Party and Gennady Ziuganov of the Communist Party12. The latter, for example, borrowed from Dugin the idea that Russian nationalism does not con- flict with the expression of minority national sentiments. Indeed, Ziuganov presented the CPRF as the main defender of Tatar nationalism and Kalmyk Buddhism. His book Russia after the Year 2000: A Geopolitical Vision for a New State was directly inspired by Dugin's ideas on the dis- tinctiveness of Russian geopolitical "science" and his idea that Russia's renewal provides the only guarantee of world stability. Dugin also reg- ularly publishes on Russian official web sites, such as www. strana. ru, where he expresses his ideas on the opposition between the re-emerg- ing Eurasian empire and the Atlanticist model.
Dugin's entry into parliamentary structures was largely made possible by the publication (in 1997) of the first version of his most influential
2 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
work, The Foundations of Geopolitics: Russia's Geopolitical Future. 13 It is considered to be a major study of geopolitics, and is often present- ed as the founding work of the contemporary Russian school of geopolitics. By 2000, the work had already been re-issued four times, and had become a major political pamphlet, enjoy- ing a large readership in academic and political circles. Indeed, Dugin has always hoped to influence promising young intellectuals as well as important political and military circles. He has stated that his Center for Geopolitical Expertise could quickly become an "analytical instrument helping to develop the national idea"14 for the executive and legislative powers.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has been especially keen on getting in touch with acting military officers: coming from a military family, he regularly asserts that only the army and the secret services have a real sense of patri- otism. Thus, in 1992, the first issue of Elementy carried texts by three generals who were then heads of department at the Academy of the General Staff. 15 In addition, The Foundations of Geopolitics seems to have been written with the support of General Igor' Rodionov, who was minister of defense in 1996-7. 16 Thanks to this book, Dugin has been invited to teach at the Academy of the General Staff as well as at the Institute for Strategic Research in Moscow. He offered them a certain vision of international politics colored by an "isolationism that only serves to disguise a project of expansion and conquest. "17 Following this best-seller, Dugin considerably expanded his presence in the main Russian media; to some, he became a respectable personality of public life. The suc- cess of his geopolitics book, now used as a text- book by numerous institutions of higher educa- tion, as well as his lectures at the Academy of the General Staff and at the so-called New University, satisfies his desire to reach the polit- ical and intellectual elites.
Thus the years 1998-2000 saw the transfor- mation of Dugin's political leanings into a spe- cific current that employs multiple strategies of entryism, targeting both youth counter-culture and parliamentary structures. Dugin moved away from opposition parties such as the CPRF and the LDPR and closer to centrist groups, lending his support to the then prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov. In 2000, he briefly partici-
pated in the Rossiia movement led by the Communist Gennady Seleznev and wrote its manifesto, before leaving due to disagreements with its leadership. Putin's election as president in March 2000 caused an even stronger shift in Dugin's political attitudes, as he began to move closer to country's new strong man.
On 21 April 2001 he resolved to put his cards on the table and created a movement named Evraziia, of which he was elected presi- dent. During its founding convention, Evraziia--often described as a brainchild of presidential counsel Gleb Pavlovsky, who is close to Dugin--officially rallied to Putin and proposed to participate in the next elections as part of a governmental coalition. The move- ment's goal, according to Dugin's declarations, is to formulate the "national idea" that Russia needs: "our goal is not to achieve power, nor to fight for power, but to fight for influence on it. Those are different things. "18 On 30 May 2002, Evraziia was transformed into a political party that Dugin defines as "radically centrist," an ambiguous formulation that springs from his Traditionalist attitude. Dugin accepts the com- bination of "patriotism and liberalism" which he says Vladimir Putin is proposing, on the con- dition that the liberal element remains sub- servient to state interests and to the imperatives of national security. As he affirms, "our patriot- ism is not only emotional but also scientific, based on geopolitics and its methods,"19 a classic claim of Neo-Eurasianists. According to its own data, the new party has 59 regional branches and more than 10,000 members. Its creation was publicly welcomed by Aleksandr Voloshin, then the head of the presidential administration, and Aleksandr Kosopkin, chief of the administra- tion's Internal Affairs Department.
Dugin also enlisted the support of another influential figure close to the president, Mikhail Leont'ev, the presenter of Odnako (broadcast by Pervyi kanal, the first channel of Russian state TV), who joined the party's Central Committee. Strengthened by his success after these public dis- plays of recognition, Dugin hoped to acquire influence within a promising new electoral for- mation, the Rodina bloc, and use it as a platform for a candidacy in the parliamentary elections in December 2003. This alliance, however, was tac- tically short-lived, and questionable in its ideo- logical import. Thus, Dugin never concealed his
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 3
disdain for the monarchist nostalgia and the politicized orthodoxy embodied by Rodina lead- ers such as Dmitrii Rogozin and Natalia Narochnitskaia. Indeed, it seems that Sergei Glaz'ev20 was the one who was responsible for the rapprochement with Dugin. Although Glaz'ev can- not be considered a Neo-Eurasianist, he did par- ticipate in the founding convention of Evraziia in 2002. The two men share an interest in econom- ic policies leaning toward socialism, and Dugin acknowledged his sympathy for Glaz'ev's eco- nomic ideas (which he calls "healthy") even after the latter left Rodina in March 2004.
Dugin and Glaz'ev met as early as February 2003 in order to constitute a party they defined as "left-patriotic. " In July, Evraziia declared itself ready to support the creation of this electoral bloc. However, internal arguments over person- alities ensued: the bloc needed to choose three leaders who would be sure to become deputies if it passed, and would benefit most from the campaign's publicity. Dugin hoped to be chosen, but was hampered by his political marginality linked to his reputation as an extravagant theo- retician whose ideas are too complex to inform an electoral strategy. 21 At the end of September, the disappointed Dugin left the Rodina bloc, explaining at a press-conference that Rodina's nationalism was too radical for him--a statement that must draw a smile from those familiar with his work. This nationalist setting had not dis- turbed him until then. Nor did he move closer to Rodina when certain overly virulent national- ists such as V. I. Davidenko, leader of the small Spas party, were expelled from Rodina's list of candidates under pressure from the Kremlin.
Dugin's accusations against Rodina fall into two categories. He condemns the bloc for being tooclosetotheCPRFanditsoligarchy,andcrit- icizes its "irresponsible populism. " He also takes to task those he calls "right-wing chauvinists": Sergei Baburin and the Spas movement. 22 By contrast, Dugin insists on the conciliatory and multinational mission of his Evraziia party, which "represents not only the interests of the Russians, but also those of the small peoples and the tradi- tional confessions. "23 Dugin has also accused some Rodina members of racism and anti- Semitism, stressing that the party includes former members of Russian National Unity24 as well as Andrei Savel'ev, who translated Mein Kampf into Russian. The first set of criticisms is justified by
Dugin's own convictions: he has never hidden his disdain for the present Communist Party, does not appreciate the emotional attitude of the Orthodox in matters of international politics, rejects all Tsarist nostalgia, has always denounced the racialism of Barkashov's theories, and con- demns electoral populism. The second set of crit- icisms seems more opportunistic: a close reading of Dugin's works clearly reveals his fascination with the National Socialist experience and his ambiguous anti-Semitism. Today, Dugin is attempting to play down these aspects of his thought in order to present himself as a "politi- cally correct" thinker waiting to be recognized by the Putin regime.
In return, instances of Dugin borrowing ide- ologically from Rodina seem rather rare. His Traditionalist, National Bolshevik and esoteric ideas, which constitute an important part of his thinking, are not appreciated by Rodina and have not exercised any influence on the bloc's con- ceptions. Indeed, Rodina is more conservative than revolutionary, and cannot take up Dugin's provocative suggestions, which often aim to break the social order. The strictly Neo- Eurasianist aspect of Dugin's ideas--his best- known "trademark" in Russian society today-- is in tune with some of Rodina's geopolitical conceptions, but this concurrence is actually founded on the anti-Westernism that is common to both, not on a shared vision of Russia as a Eurasian power. For this reason, despite their attempted alliance, Rodina may not be said to have adopted elements of Neo-Eurasianist thought in the strict sense of the term. Nevertheless, these difficult relations did not stop Dugin from being delighted with the results of the December 2003 elections, which carried four nationalist parties (the presidential party United Russia, the CPRF, the LDPR, and Rodina) into the Duma. Dugin has connections with every one of them, and some members of each of these parties openly acknowledge having been inspired by his theories.
After this personal failure in Rodina, Dugin reoriented his strategies away from the electoral sphere, and toward the expert community. Hence the transformation of his party into an "International Eurasian Movement" (IEM), for- malized on 20 November 2003. The new move- ment includes members from some twenty countries, and its main support seems to come
4 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
? from Kazakhstan and Turkey. Whereas the orig- inal organization founded in 2001 comprised mainly figures from civil society,25 the Supreme Council of the new Eurasian Movement includes representatives of the government and parliament: Mikhail Margelov, head of the Committee for International Relations of the Federation Council (the Parliament's Upper House), Albert Chernyshev, Russia's ambassador to India, Viktor Kalyuzhny, vice-minister of for- eign affairs, Aleksey Zhafyarov, chief of the Department of Political Parties and Social Organizations in the justice ministry, etc. The IEM even officially asked Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbaev to head the movement's Supreme Council. Dugin congratulates himself on having moved beyond a mere political party to an international organization. He now culti- vates his image in neighboring countries, heavi- ly publicizing his trips to Turkey, but also to Kazakhstan and Belarus. Dugin has become a zealous supporter of the Eurasian Economic Union and is pleased to think that he has influ- enced Aleksandr Lukashenko's and Nursultan Nazarbaev's decisions in favor of a tighter inte- gration of their countries with Russia. His web site also presents the different Eurasianist groups in Western countries. Italy is particularly well represented, with numerous translations of Dugin's texts, several Eurasianist-inspired web sites, and a journal, Eurasia. Rivista di studi geopolitici. France is represented by the "Paris- Berlin-Moscow" association, while Britain has long had a Eurasianist movement of its own. Austrian, Finnish, Serbian, and Bulgarian asso- ciations, and of course organizations in other post-Soviet republics, especially in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, are presented as "fraternal parties".
Having enthusiastically welcomed Vladimir Putin as a "Eurasian man,"26 Dugin now, since early 2005, appears to be deeply disappointed by the president. According to him, Putin hesitates to adopt a definitively Eurasianist stance, and his entourage is dominated by Atlanticist and over- ly liberal figures. In current affairs, Dugin is try- ing to play on the wave of anti-Westernism that swept part of the Russian political scene after the revolutions in Georgia in 2003, in Ukraine in 2004, and in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. He thus set up a Eurasianist Youth Union, led by Pavel Zarifullin, which became highly visible in September 2005 with the heavily publicized cre-
ation of an "anti-orange front. " Dugin is thus pursuing, with relative success, his objective of building up a global cultural hegemony: he is trying to gain a foothold in alter-globalization movements (which promote alternatives to American-led globalization) and to participate in international ideological regroupings. This right, which Dugin modernizes and profoundly renews in his theories, seems therefore to suc- ceed in its strategy of entering into left-wing structures that are badly informed and looking for any and all allies in their struggle against American domination.
Thus Dugin's regular but always temporary presence in the political field cannot, it seems, be considered a new phase of his life that would build on an already completed body of doctrine. Although Dugin currently seems to be concen- trating on his involvement in the Eurasianist movement and publications on the topic of Eurasianism, one should not forget that a similar combination had been in place from 1994 to 1998, when his membership in the National- Bolshevik Party went hand in hand with publi- cations on the concept of National Bolshevism. Dugin thus seems to adjust his strategy in accor- dance with the available opportunities to influ- ence public opinion. Moreover, he continues even today to disseminate the Traditionalist ideas that have been his mainstay since the beginning, displaying a high degree of doctrinal consisten- cy. What has evolved is his public status, marked by his desire no longer to be considered an orig- inal and marginal intellectual, but rather to be recognized as a respectable political personality close to the ruling circles.
A RUSSIAN VERSION OF ANTI-GLOBALISM: DUGIN'SGEOPOLITICALTHEORIES
All the Neo-Eurasianist currents that emerged in the 1990s share an imperial conception of Russia, but they are all based on different pre- suppositions. Aleksandr Dugin occupies a partic- ular position inside this group, and is sometimes criticized virulently by the other Neo- Eurasianists. Indeed, Dugin "distorts" the idea of Eurasia by combining it with elements borrowed from other intellectual traditions, such as theories of conservative revolution, the German geopoli- tics of the 1920s and 1930s, Rene? Gue? non's Traditionalism and the Western New Right. Nevertheless, Dugin has enjoyed the greatest
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 5
public success of all Neo-Eurasianists, and most directly influences certain political circles looking for a new geopolitics for post-Soviet Russia.
Dugin thus largely outweighs small intellectu- al groups that pursue their own Neo-Eurasianist reflections without having any direct access to a larger public. He can be considered today as the principal theoretician of Neo-Eurasianism, even though he shared this role with Aleksandr Panarin in the 1990s. At first, the two men had been rather opposed to each other, and Panarin had refused to be assimilated into the same ideo- logical current. He described Dugin's geopolitics aspaganforviewingmanasdependentonnature and led by a blind and determinist destiny, and conceiving the state as an isolated and selfish organism, not providing any guarantee of global stability, and relying only on strength. At the time, Panarin considered this view to be the strict opposite of the "civilizational" awareness that Neo-Eurasianism should be. The two thinkers did, however, end up sharing some points of view, as a consequence of Panarin's intellectual evolution rather than to Dugin's. Thus, Panarin gradually came to corroborate Dugin's public supremacy in matters Neo- Eurasian, attending the foundation of the Evraziia movement in 2001 and becoming a member of the party's Central Council in 2002. 27 According to Dugin, Panarin had even agreed, before his illness, to write a foreword to one of Dugin's latest books, Political Philosophy. 28 The philosopher's sudden death, however, eliminated this ally-cum-competitor from the public stage.
Dugin's attraction to the early Eurasianism developed by 1920s and 1930s Russian e? migre? s is not a belated addition to his doctrines. At the end of the 1980s, while he was still close to cer- tain monarchist groups, Dugin had already become the apostle of a Eurasianist conception of Russia, and had contributed to its spread among the patriotic circles linked to Den'. Today, he continues to be a dominant influence among those trying to rehabilitate the founding fathers of Eurasianism: he has edited compila- tions of the principal texts of the movement's main theoreticians--Pyotr N. Savitsky, Nikolay S. Trubetskoi, Nikolay N. Alekseev etc. --at Agraf, then through Arctogaia publications. 29 In his introductions to these compilations, he sys- tematically tries to link the inter-war Eurasianist teachings as closely as possible with his contem-
porary definition of Neo-Eurasianism. He does not, however, appropriate the highly elaborate theories of the founding fathers concerning the historical, geographical or religious legitimacy of the Russian Empire. He is content with try- ing to establish a geopolitics for post-Soviet Russia, helping the country to become aware of its particular eschatological sensibility: "the cur- rent transformations in Russia's geopolitical space and all of Eurasia are difficult to under- stand unless interpreted as a sign of the times, announcing the proximity of the climax. "30
Dugin even criticizes the founding fathers for having been overly philosophical and poetic: according to him, Eurasianism had the right intuitions (for example, the idea of a "third con- tinent" and the importance of the Mongol peri- od in the formation of Russian identity), but was unsuccessful in formalizing them theoreti- cally. "In Eurasianism we are confronted with a double indeterminacy: the indeterminacy char- acteristic of Russian thought itself, and an attempt to systematize this indetermination into a new indeterminate conception. "31 His attitude toward the other Neo-Eurasianists is even more negative: apart from the historian and ethnolo- gist Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), many of whose ethnicist conceptions he shares, Dugin considers his ideological competitors worthless, and affirms that their Neo-Eurasianist conceptions are "hardly consistent [and] represent only an adaptation to a changing political reality of the whole complex of ideas already quoted. "32
Dugin's Eurasianism involves a great interest in geopolitics, the main discipline on which he bases his theories. For him, geopolitics by definition serves the state in which it is elaborated. Thus, Russian geopolitics could only be Eurasianist, since it is responsible for restoring Russia's great power status. It is also intended exclusively for the elites: according to Dugin, geopolitics is opposed to the democratic principle because the ability to know the meaning of things is unavoidably restricted to the leaders. It is to this end that Dugin refers to the big names of the discipline, such as the Germans Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), and Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919), the Swede Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922), and the Briton Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). Indeed, there is little that is Russian in Dugin's intellectual baggage. Apart from Konstantin Leontyev (1831-91),33 whom
6 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Dugin sometimes mentions, he is far more inspired by Western authors than by Russians. For example, he speaks with admiration of the German organicists, such as Ernst Ju? nger (1895-1998), Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925), or Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967) and Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). He borrows from Schmitt his con- ception of the nomos, the general form of organ- ization of the objective and subjective factors of a given territory, and the theory of Grossraum, "large spaces. "
Dugin attaches great value to this German heritage, and wishes to be viewed as a continen- tal geopolitician on a par with Schmitt and Haushofer: Russia's centrality and continentality, to him, are comparable to those of Germany in the 1920s-30s. He thus develops his own bipolar interpretation of the world, opposing the 'Heartland', which tends toward authoritarian regimes, to the 'World Island', the incarnation of the democratic and commercial system. He com- bines the classic Eurasianist theories with this bipolar division of the world into sea-based and land-based societies, or thallassocracies and tel- lurocracies, and links them to various classic cou- ples of concepts from "Russian thought" (Western Christianity/Orthodoxy, West/East, democracy/ideocracy, individualism/collec- tivism, societies marked by change/societies marked by continuity). The opposition between capitalism and socialism is seen as just one partic- ular historical clash destined to continue in other forms. "The Earth and the Sea disseminate their original opposition to the whole planet. Human history is nothing but the expression of this struggle and the path of its absolutization. "34
Dugin then divides the world into four civi- lizational zones: the American zone, the Afro- European zone, the Asian-Pacific zone, and the Eurasian zone. Russia must strive to establish various geopolitical alliances organized as con- centric circles. In Europe, Russia must of course ally itself with Germany, to which Dugin pays particular attention. Presented as the heart of Europe, Germany should dominate all of Central Europe as well as Italy, in accordance with the theories of 'centrality' developed by the Nazi geopoliticians as well as 19th century Prussian militarism. In Asia, Russia should ally itself with Japan, appreciated for its Pan-Asian ideology and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis dur-
ing the Second World War. Within the Muslim world, Dugin chooses Islamic Iran, admired for its moral rigorism. He presents Iran as one of the few real forces of opposition against American globalization, and invites it to unify the entire Arab world, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, under its leadership. Dugin charac- terizes this quadruple alliance Russia-Germany- Japan-Iran which would react against the thalas- socracies (the United States, Britain in Europe, China in Asia, Turkey in the Muslim world) as a "confederation of large spaces,"35 since each ally is itself an empire that dominates the corre- sponding civilizational area. Unlike the Eurasianists of the 1920s, Dugin does not talk of an irreducible and romantic opposition between East and West; in Dugin's theories, both Asia and Europe are destined to come under Russian-Eurasiandomination.
As the maritime and democratic enemy allegedly has a "fifth column" in Russia, Dugin calls for a restoration of the Soviet Union and a reorganization of the Russian Federation. He is the only Neo-Eurasianist to include in his polit- ical project not only the Baltic States, but the whole former socialist bloc. 36 His Eurasia must even expand beyond Soviet space, as he propos- es to incorporate Manchuria, Xingjian, Tibet, and Mongolia, as well as the Orthodox world of the Balkans: Eurasia would only reach its limits with "geopolitical expansion to the shores of the Indian ocean,"37 an idea that was taken up and popularized by Zhirinovskii.
