No More Learning

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. Dugin also proposes a general repartition of the Federation, and especially of Siberia, which he considers to have been on the verge of implosion for quite some time. He calls for the abolition of the "national republics," to be replaced by purely administrative regions subservient to Moscow. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, he acknowl- edges his hopes for the breakup of Yakutia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Buryatia, con- demned for their separatism and their capacity to form Buddhist or Pan-Turkic anti-Russian axes with the neighboring regions. He wishes to unify them with industrialized regions that have a Russian majority, such as the Urals or the Pacific shore [Primorskii krai]. 38
As in the Eurasianism of the 1920s-30s, the non-Russian peoples, and particularly the Turko- Muslim minorities, are treated ambiguously. They are appreciated as key elements confirming
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 7
the distinctiveness of Russia's Eurasian identity, but are also presented as potential competitors or even enemies if they decided no longer to go along with a Russian-dominated multinational Eurasia. The international events of the past few years, especially 9/11, as well as the second war in Chechnya and the ensuing terrorist acts that cov- ered Russia with blood, forced Dugin to fine- tune his conception of Islam, and to be more cautious in his positive appreciation of a certain type of Islamic radicalism. Thus, at a symposium called "Islamic Threat or Threat against Islam? " organized by Evraziia on 28 June 2001, the party officials disavowed fundamentalism, presented as a danger to traditional Islam, and asserted a wish to create a Eurasian Committee for Russian-Muslim Strategic Partnership. According to Evraziia, tra- ditional Islam, Sufism, Shi'ism, and Orthodox Christianity are spontaneously Eurasian, whereas Catholicism and Protestantism, but also U. S. - sponsored radical Islamism, represent Atlanticism. Dugin thus tries to distinguish between Shi'ite fundamentalism, which he considers positive, from Sunni fundamentalism, which he disparages.
Dugin's wish to dissociate a "good" tradition- al Islam from the other branches of the religion, which he all equates with Wahhabism, is shared by numerous contemporarz Russian nationalist movements, which aim to woo official Russian Islam. This kind of talk permitted Dugin to recruit the leaders of the Central Spiritual Directorate of Russian Muslims into his Evraziia movement. Dugin tries to preclude any compe- tition with Turkic Eurasianism on the question of the country's religious and national minori- ties. He has managed brilliantly to present his movement not only as a tool for upholding Russian power, but also as a pragmatic solution to Russia's internal tensions. Thus, from its cre- ation in 2001, Evraziia includes representatives of sensitive regions such as Yakutia-Sakha, the North Caucasus, and Tatarstan, and was pleased to bring together all of Russia's confessions: many muftis from the Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims, including their leader, Talgat Tadzhuddin, but also Buddhists (Dordzhi- Lama, the co-ordinator of the Union of Kalmyk Buddhists) and members of the Radical Zionist Movement, adhered to the party and stated their desire to fight the rise of religious extremism using the integration strategy implicit in the Eurasian idea.
However, Dugin does not limit himself to bringing Eurasianism's geopolitical view of Russia up to date. He seeks to anchor it in a global vision and to present it as a relevant mode of analysis that would help understand the entire evolution of the post-Cold War world. Once again, Dugin is playing the "guide," using the innumerable Western texts he is familiar with to adapt classic ideas from the history of Russian thought to contemporary debates. Thus, for sev- eral years now he has centered his argument about the Eurasian nature of Russia entirely on the topic of globalization. According to him, globalization presents as obvious truth what is actually ideology: representative democracy as the end of the history of human development, the primacy of the individual over any commu- nity, the impossibility of escaping the logic of the liberal economy, etc. 39 He argues that only the Eurasianist solution offers a viable alternative with a strong theoretical potential that could face up to the current globalization processes institut- ed by the United States.
"Russia is the incarna- tion of the quest for an historical alternative to Atlanticism. Therein lies her global mission. "40
Like all Neo-Eurasianists, Dugin is a support- er of Samuel Huntington's "clash of civiliza- tions" argument, which is fashionable in Russia. Huntington's warmongering allows Dugin to affirm the necessity of maintaining the Russian imperial structure and to reject any prospect of a global equilibrium. According to him, the Russian nation needs to be prepared for "defending its national truth, not only against its enemies, but also against its allies. "41 Indeed, Dugin's geopolitical doctrine cannot function without creating enemies. He bases his ideology on conspiracy theories, presenting the new world order as a "spider web" in which global- ized actors hide in order to better accomplish their mission. Dugin even dedicated a whole book (published in 1993 and republished in a revised version in 2005) to what he calls con- spirology. The ideas expressed in it are contra- dictory. He harshly criticizes the presuppositions about Jewish, freemason, Marxist etc. conspira- cies held by numerous left- and right-wing political groups, but he also shares some of their ideas. 42 For example, he recounts a secret histo- ry of the Soviet Union in which a Eurasianist order opposes its Atlanticist counterpart. The putsch of August 1991 is described as the culmi-
8 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
nation of the occult war between these two orders. According to Dugin, however, the alter- natives to globalization remain limited: either left-wing ideologies worked out in the West, or a right-wing liberalism and the stagnation typi- cal of Asian countries. Dugin also notes that these two alternatives are opposed to each other even though they share a common enemy. He therefore proposes that Russia elaborate a fertile combination, because "all anti-globalization tendencies are 'Eurasianist' by definition. "43
Dugin does not play the autarchy card at any cost: he is convinced that the Eurasian model of resistance to American domination is exportable to the rest of the planet. He presents it as the most appropriate way of resisting the so-called New World Order. One of the aims of his thinking is therefore, as he describes it, "to transform Russian distinctiveness into a univer- sal model of culture, into a vision of the world that is alternative to Atlanticist globalization but also global in its own way. "44
Thus Russia is called upon to participate in world affairs while constructing a certain Eurasian cultural autarchy. Much more than, for example, Pyotr Savitsky and Count Trubetskoi, Dugin seems to have completely internalized the contradiction between, on the one hand, an exaltation of national distinctiveness and a pas- sionate rejection of any borrowing that would risk "warping" Russia and, on the other hand, a desire for geopolitical and ideological expan- sionism and a new messianism. Far from being just a "successor" to the first Eurasianists, he is a theoretician who has multiple or even contra- dictory facets: many other doctrines have influ- enced his intellectual evolution at least as much as, if not more than, Eurasianism.
TRADITIONALISM AS THE FOUNDATION
OF DUGIN'S THOUGHT
Traditionalism is a comparatively little studied strand of thought, although many 20th century thinkers have been more or less discreetly inspired by it. 45 In the 1920s, Rene? Gue? non (1886-1951) formalized the main concepts of Traditionalism in five books. 46 He went through a Catholic phase, followed by a spiritualist stage (first in a theosophist lodge, then in the Martinist Order), during which he discovered the oriental religions and became disappointed with the West, which he thought incapable of restoring a
mystical bond with faith. He left France for Cairo, where he joined an Egyptian order and tried to put his Traditionalist precepts into prac- tice in Sufism. During the 1930s, his ideas were developed in Italy, Germany and Romania, and Traditionalism became one of the main catch- words for fascist-minded spiritualist groups. The work of Gue? non's main disciple, Julius Evola (1896-1974), an Italian painter close to the Dadaists, should be mentioned here. One of his books, Revolt against the Modern World (1934), had a deep influence on German and Italian Neo-pagan movements. Traditionalism gained a new impetus in the 1960s, in particular in the Muslim world and, to a lesser extent, in Russia.
Traditionalists believe in the Tradition, that is, in the existence of a world that was steady in its religious, philosophical, and social principles and started disappearing with the advent of modernity in the sixteenth century. Modernity is considered to be harmful in that it destrois the pre-established hierarchical order that is natural to the world: the hierarchization of human beings is believed to be of transcendent origin and to have a mystical value. The Tradition is better preserved in non-Western civilizations, but through the colonial experience, the reassessment of the past begun in the West dur- ing Renaissance spread to other cultural spaces. Gue? non gives this view--which, in its political aspects, is a typical example of counterrevolu- tionary thought (de Maistre, Bonald)--a reli- gious coloring that makes Traditionalism stand out among conservative currents. For him, all religions and esoteric traditions--regardless of their concrete practice--reveal the existence of a now-extinct original sacred Tradition. Dubbed the "primordial Tradition," it is seen as the secret essence of all religions. Gue? non then urges the modern world to regain an awareness of this unity in the face of the desacralization and sec- ularization of the modern world. Through this appeal, he has influenced numerous Gnostic and Masonic currents, as well as several Sufi orders.
Some Traditionalist texts seem to have been known in the USSR since the 1960s thanks to the poet Yevgeny Golovin and his discovery of Louis Pauwel's The Morning of the Magicians. From the end of the 1970s, Dugin participated in Golovin's circle of occultist intellectuals, which included, among others, the Muslim thinker Geydar Dzhemal' and the writer Yuri
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 9
Mamleev (who would later leave the country for the United States). The intellectual unity of this circle was based on a simultaneous rejection of the Soviet experience, the West, and Slavophilism. These clandestine activities, as well as the possession of forbidden books, caused Dugin to be expelled from the Moscow Aviation Institute where he had been studying. Introduced to Traditionalism at a very young age, Dugin translated the 1933 version of Evola's Pagan Imperialism into Russian in 1981 and distributed it in samizdat. Choosing among the various cur- rents of Traditionalism, Dugin did not content himself with the search for an individual inner spiritual way--such as that, for example, of A. K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), which concen- trates on the aesthetic aspect of Traditionalism. Dugin is closer to Evola, who developed a politi- cized vision of Traditionalism, and does not hes- itate to affirm a sacrificial conception of politics: "We need a new party. A party of death. A party of the total vertical. God's party, the Russian ana- logue to the Hezbollah, that would act according to wholly different rules and contemplate com- pletely different pictures. For the System, death is truly the end. For a normal person, it is only a beginning. "47
The influence of Traditionalism on Dugin seems to be fundamental: it constitutes his main intellectual reference point and the basis of his political attitudes as well as his Eurasianism. Dugin has made considerable efforts to dissemi- nate Traditionalist thought in Russia. He regu- larly translates extracts from the works of the great Traditionalist theoreticians, Rene? Gue? non and Julius Evola, but also from so-called "soft" Traditionalist authors such as Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung; so-called "hard" Traditionalists like Titus Burckhardt; converts to Sufism, such as Frithjof Schuon; and converts to Islamism, like Claudio Mutti. The journals Elementy, and, especially, Milyi angel, whose full subtitle is "Metaphysics, angelology, cosmic cycles, escha- tology, and tradition," are dedicated to the diffu- sion of Traditionalist thought. They include arti- cles on specifically Russian apocalyptic tradi- tions, aiming to facilitate the acceptance of Traditionalism in Russia by proving that ele- ments of it were present in old popular concep- tions (the mystical currents of Orthodoxy, the myth about the submerged city of Kitezh, hesy- chasm, and the teachings of Gregory of Palama).
Dugin also lectured on Traditionalism at the New University in 2002, and published his lec- tures in The Philosophy of Traditionalism in the same year. He believes that the contemporary period, being profoundly eschatological, allows him to disseminate the Traditionalist message much more broadly than before, and to reveal the radical and revolutionary character of Gue? non by teaching what Dugin calls Gue? non's "eschatological humanism. "48 "Tradition, accord- ing to Gue? non's definition, is the totality of divinely revealed, non-human Knowledge, which determined the makeup of all sacred civi- lizations--from the paradisiacal empires of the Golden Age, which disappeared several millennia ago, to Medieval civilization which, in its various forms (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, etc. ) reproduced the fundamental parameters of Sacred Order. "49
According to Dugin, the mission of soterio- logical Traditionalism has three stages: the first, or individual stage, is to contribute to the devel- opment of the Tradition as such, i. e. of esoteri- cism; the second, political and exoteric stage, is to reaffirm the superiority of the laws of the church (or, for example, of the Shari'a); the third, or social stage, is to assist in the restoration of a hierarchy of medieval orders. Dugin is never, however, a simple ideological "reproduc- er. " He hopes to "Russify" the doctrines that inspire him, and to adapt them to what he calls the traditional concepts of the Russian world. Thus, he defines himself as a "post- Gue? nonist,"50 seeking to deepen Gue? non's basic ideas, which implies acknowledging certain points of disagreement with the founding father. His main criticism of the Western Traditionalists, and in particular of Gue? non, concerns their vision of Orthodoxy. In The Metaphysics of the Gospel (1996), Dugin asserts that Gue? non, who held that Christianity became exoteric after the great Councils, was actually targeting the two Western confessions, but not Orthodoxy, which has retained its initi- atic character and esoteric foundations to this day. 51 He also affirms that metaphysics and ontol- ogy, which Traditionalism attempts to rehabili- tate, have been particularly well preserved in Orthodoxy, which has never rejected an escha- tological approach: "We are the church of the final times [. . . ], the history of the terrestrial church is probably nearing its end. "52
10 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Concerning the divisions between Neo- pagans and Christians that shook the Western Traditionalist movement, Dugin remains in an ambiguous position that is revelatory of his own hesitations on this matter. He appreciates the rehabilitation of paganism as Tradition proposed by Evola. Like Evola, he believes that Christianity has remained the most pagan monotheism (through the figure of the Trinity), and admires the importance of entropy and eschatology in the pagan religions. He remains, however, deeply anchored in Christianity and, like Gue? non, sees it (but only in its Eastern variety) as the reposito- ry of Tradition. Dugin affirms that "the develop- mental stages of the metaphysical constructions in orthodox Gue? nonian (and Evolian) Traditionalism [lead] to the ultimate affirmation of Orthodox Trinitarian metaphysics, in which all the most valuable vectors of insight found their complete and accomplished expression [. . . ] Everyone who follows this metaphysical logic [. . . ] necessarily arrives at Orthodoxy. "53
Dugin remains, however, attracted to Neo- pagan conceptions, which exalt the body and harmony with nature, although he remains embedded in Orthodoxy as the founding institu- tion of Russian distinctiveness. His position on this question is therefore revolutionary in its break with Christianity, and fundamentally con- servative in its respect for the religious institution and its hierarchy. Dugin links an esoteric account of the world to Orthodoxy, which he sees as having preserved an initiatic character, a ritual- ism where each gesture has a symbolic meaning. He thus calls for the restoration of an Orthodox vision of the world, for a "clericalization [otserkovlenie] of everything. "54 This opposition, however, which had divided the German National Socialists and later the New Right, may seem less relevant for Russia: Orthodoxy, unlike Catholicism or Protestantism, is more easily instrumentalized as a specifically national rather than universal faith. This is indeed how Dugin interprets it: he regularly participates in the various nationalist movements launched by official Russian Orthodoxy. 55 His adherence, since 1999, to the Old Believers allows him to uphold a strictly national faith without having to make the difficult choice of converting to paganism and reject official Orthodoxy. 56
Dugin tries to present the Russian schism of the 17th century as the archetype of Traditionalist
thought, born of the rejection of the seculariza- tion of Orthodoxy, which he dates at around the same time as that given by Gue? non for the end of Tradition in the West (after the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648). So "Eurasianism will only be entirely logical if it is based on a return to the Old Belief, the true ancient and authentic Russian faith, the true Orthodoxy. "57 According to Dugin, the schismatic church is simultaneous- ly conservative and revolutionary, espousing a cult of the earth (like paganism), free of an insti- tutionalized conception of faith, and driven by a fundamentally apocalyptic vision of the fate of humanity. This view is ideologically convenient since it permits Dugin to avoid making a choice between a national paganism and a universal faith. Thus, Orthodoxy, and in particular the Old Believers, can incorporate Neo-paganism's nationalist force, which anchors it in the Russian soil and separates it from the two other Christian confessions.
Dugin fully agrees with the Traditionalist criticism of spiritualism. Gue? non already con- sidered spiritualism to be a "counter-initiation," a reconstruction of pseudo-traditions actually born of modernity, which must be condemned for wanting to usurp the real Tradition. 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".