Dugin's daughter, Darya, was assassinated in car bombing in 2022.[22] The assassination is widely believed to have been conducted by Ukraine,[23][24] though the exact relation of the assassins to the Ukrainian government is undetermined.
Early life and education
Dugin was born in Moscow, into the family of a colonel-general in the GRU, a Soviet military intelligence agency, and candidate of law, Geliy Aleksandrovich Dugin, and his wife Galina, a doctor and candidate of medicine.[25] His father left the family when he was three, but ensured that they had a good standard of living, and helped Dugin out of trouble with the authorities on occasion.[26] He was transferred to the customs service due to his son's behaviour in 1983.[27]
In 1979, Aleksandr entered the Moscow Aviation Institute. He was expelled without a degree either because of low academic achievement, dissident activities or both.[28] Afterwards, he began working as a street cleaner. He used a forged reader's card to access the Lenin Library and continue studying. However, other sources claim he instead started working in a KGB archive, where he had access to banned literature on Masonry, fascism, and paganism.[29]
In 1980, Dugin joined the "Yuzhinsky circle[ru]", an avant-garde dissident group which dabbled in Satanism, esoteric Nazism and other forms of the occult.[30] The Yuzhinsky circle gained a reputation for Satanism, for séances, a devotion to all things esoteric – mysticism, hypnotism, Ouija boards, Sufism, trances, pentagrams and so forth.[31][32] In the group, he was known for his embrace of Nazism which he attributes to a rebellion against his Soviet upbringing, as opposed to genuine sympathy for Hitler.[33] He adopted an alter ego with the name of "Hans Sievers", a reference to Wolfram Sievers, a Nazi researcher of the paranormal.[34]
Studying by himself, he learned to speak Italian, German, French, English,[35] and Spanish.[36] He was influenced by René Guénon and by the Traditionalist School. In the Lenin Library, he discovered the writings of Julius Evola, whose book Pagan Imperialism he translated into Russian.[37][38]
Dugin published Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997. The book was published in multiple editions, and is used in university courses on geopolitics,[29] reportedly including the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military.[43] It alarmed political scientists in the US,[44] and is sometimes referenced by them as being "Russia's Manifest Destiny".[45] In 1997, his article, "Fascism – Borderless and Red", described "national capitalism" as pre-empting the development of a "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism" in Russia. He believes that it was "by no means the racist and chauvinist aspects of National Socialism that determined the nature of its ideology. The excesses of this ideology in Germany are a matter exclusively of the Germans... while Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism with a passionate desire for true changes."[46] The "Waffen-SS and especially the scientific sector of this organization, Ahnenerbe," was "an intellectual oasis in the framework of the National Socialist regime", according to him.[46]
Dugin soon began publishing his own journal entitled Elementy, which initially began by praising Franco-Belgian Jean-François Thiriart, belatedly a supporter of a "Euro-Soviet empire which would stretch from Dublin to Vladivostok and would also need to expand to the south, since it require(s) a port on the Indian Ocean."[47] Consistently glorifying both Tsarist and Stalinist Soviet Russia, Elementy also indicated his admiration for Julius Evola. Dugin also collaborated with the weekly journal Den (The Day), previously directed by Alexander Prokhanov.[42] In the journal he obtained the last interview of the Belgian Nazi collaboratorLeon Degrelle six months before his death.[48]
Ideology
Aleksandr Dugin in 2014
Dugin disapproves of liberalism and the West, particularly US hegemony.[14] He asserts: "We are on the side of Stalin and the Soviet Union".[49] He describes himself as being a conservative: "We, conservatives, want a strong, solid state, want order and healthy family, positive values, the reinforcing of the importance of religion and the Church in society". He adds: "We want patriotic radio, TV, patriotic experts, patriotic clubs. We want the media that expresses national interests".[50]
Dugin adapts Martin Heidegger's notion of Dasein (Existence) and transforms it into a geo–philosophical concept.[52] According to Dugin, the forces of liberal and capitalistWestern civilization represent what the ancient Greeks called ὕβρις (hubris), "the essential form of titanism" (the anti-ideal form), which opposes Heaven ("the ideal form—in terms of space, time, being"). In other words, the West would summarize "the revolt of the Earth against Heaven". To what he calls the West's "atomizing" universalism, Dugin contrasts an apophatic universalism, expressed in the political idea of "empire".[52] Values of democracy, human rights and individualism are considered by him not to be universal but uniquely Western.[53]
In 2019, Dugin engaged in a debate with French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy on the theme of what has been called "the crisis of capitalism" and the insurrection of nationalist populisms.[54]
Dugin spent two years studying the geopolitical, semiotic and esoteric theories of the controversial Dutch thinker Herman Wirth (1885–1981), one of the founders of the German Ahnenerbe. This resulted in the book Hyperborean Theory (1993), in which Dugin largely endorsed Wirth's ideas as a possible foundation for his Eurasianism.[64] Apparently, this is "one of the most extensive summaries and treatments of Wirth in any language".[65] According to the Moldovan anthropologist Leonid Mosionjnik, Wirth's overtly wild ideas fitted perfectly well in the ideological void after the demise of communism, liberalism and democracy.[66] Dugin also promoted Wirth's claim to have written a book on the history of the Jewish People and the Old Testament, the so-called Palestinabuch, which could have changed the world had it not been stolen.[67]
At the end of the Second Chechen War, Dugin was apparently requested by the Chechen side to come and negotiate, in addition he has met with the former president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the ambassadors of Iran and Syria.[68]
Dugin's ideas, particularly those on "a Turkic–Slavic alliance in the Eurasian sphere", have begun to receive attention among certain nationalistic circles in Turkey, most notably among alleged members of the Ergenekon network, which is the subject of a high-profile trial (on charges of conspiracy).[citation needed] Dugin's Eurasianist ideology has also been linked to his adherence to the doctrines of the Traditionalist School. (Dugin's Traditionalist beliefs are the subject of a book length study by J. Heiser, The American Empire Should Be Destroyed—Aleksandr Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology.[69]) Dugin also advocates for a Russo-Arab alliance.[70]
In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution... The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.
The reborn Russia, according to Dugin's concept, is said by Charles Clover of the Financial Times to be a slightly remade version of the Soviet Union with echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, where Eurasia was one of three continent-sized super states including Eastasia and Oceania as the other two and was participating in endless war between them.[39] In the Eurasian public discourse sphere, the totalitarian communist policy deployed in over three decades of works by various international groups that are part of the movement, is "a version of reintegration of the post-Soviet space into a 'Eurasian' sphere of influence for Russia".[71] The North American program "works with a wide range of partners from all sectors of civil society" and "is advanced through grant making, advocacy and research, regional initiatives, and close engagement".[72]
The Kremlin invited Dugin to speak at its Anti-Orange Rally in Moscow in February 2012. There, Dugin addressed tens of thousands with this message:[73]
Dear Russian people! The global American empire strives to bring all countries of the world together under its control. They intervene where they want, asking no one's permission. They come in through the fifth column, which they think will allow them to take over natural resources and rule over countries, people, and continents. They have invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Syria and Iran are on the agenda. But their goal is Russia. We are the last obstacle on their way to building a global evil empire. Their agents at Bolotnaya Square and within the government are doing everything to weaken Russia and allow them to bring us under total external control. To resist this most serious threat, we must be united and mobilized! We must remember that we are Russian! That for thousands of years we protected our freedom and independence. We have spilled seas of blood, our own and other people's, to make Russia great. And Russia will be great! Otherwise it will not exist at all. Russia is everything! All else is nothing![73]
Dugin's Eurasianism is often cited as belonging to the same spectrum of these movements,[76] as well as also having influences from Hermetic, Gnostic and Eastern traditions.[77] He calls to rely upon "Eastern theology and mystical currents" for the development of the Fourth Political Theory.[78]
According to Marlene Laruelle, Dugin's adherence to the Old Believers allows him to stand between Paganism and Orthodox Christianity without formally adopting either of them. His choice is not paradoxical, since, according to him—in the wake of René Guénon—Russian Orthodoxy and especially the Old Believers have preserved an esoteric and initiatory character which was utterly lost in Western Christianity. As such, the Russian Orthodox tradition may be merged with Neopaganism and may host "Neopaganism's nationalist force, which anchors it in the Russian soil, and separates it from the two other Christian confessions".[74]
Dugin wrote a 1997 essay in which he described Soviet-era serial killer Andrei Chikatilo as a mystic and "a practitioner of Dionysian "sacraments" in which the killer/torturer and the victim transcend their "metaphysical dualism" and become one".[79]
Political parties
National Bolshevik Party
In 1992, Eduard Limonov founded the National Bolshevik Front (NBF) as an amalgamation of six minor groups.[80] Aleksandr Dugin was among its earliest members and was instrumental in convincing Limonov to enter politics, and signed the declaration of the founding of the party in 1993.[81] The party first attracted attention in 1992 when two members were arrested for possessing grenades. The incident gave the NBP publicity for a boycott campaign they were organizing against Western goods.[82]
The NBF joined forces with the National Salvation Front (a broad coalition of Russian communists and nationalists).[83] In 1998, Dugin left the NBP as a result of a conflict with other members of the party.[84] This led to the party moving further left in Russia's political spectrum, and led to members of the party denouncing Dugin and his group as fascists.[85]
Eurasia Party
Dugin (left) at the International Conference "New Horizon" in May 2018 in Mashhad, Iran
The Eurasia Party, which advances neo-Eurasianist ideas, was launched in April 2001. Dugin was reported as the group's founder. He said the movement would stress cultural diversity in Russian politics, and oppose "American style globalisation, and would also resist a return to communism and nationalism." It was officially recognized by the Ministry of Justice on 31 May 2001.[42] The Eurasia Party claims support in some military circles and by leaders of the Orthodox Christian faith in Russia. The party hopes to play a key role in attempts to resolve the Chechen problem, setting the stage for Dugin's objective of a Russian strategic alliance with European and Middle Eastern states, primarily Iran.
"It is impossible to do without the mobilization of the Russian people, without explaining to them its historical mission, without awakening its deepest beginning, without these words "brothers and sisters". Get up, Russian people, wake up, you are called to accomplish great deeds... All your ancestors, all generations were moving towards this moment, towards this clash with our ontological enemy... We are fighting absolute Evil, embodied in Western civilization, its liberal-totalitarian hegemony, in Ukrainian Nazism. We were created for this mission. That's what is needed now - a call is needed."
Dugin supports Russian PresidentVladimir Putin and his foreign policies but has opposed the Russian government's economic policies. He stated in 2007: "There are no more opponents of Putin's course and, if there are, they are mentally ill and need to be sent off for clinical examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, and Putin is indispensable". It was voted number two in flattery by readers of Kommersant.[88][clarification needed]
In the Kremlin, Dugin represents the "war party", a division within the leadership over Ukraine.[89] Dugin is an author of Putin's initiative for the annexation of Crimea by Russia.[90] He considered the war between Russia and Ukraine to be inevitable and appealed for Putin to intervene in the war in Donbas.[90] Dugin said: "The Russian Renaissance can only stop at Kyiv."[91]
On 31 March 2014, Oleg Bahtiyarov, a member of the Eurasia Youth Union of Russia founded by Dugin, was arrested.[86] He had trained a group of about 200 people to seize parliament and another government building, according to the Security Service of Ukraine.[86]
Dugin stated he was disappointed in President Putin, saying that Putin did not aid the pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine after the Ukrainian Army's early July 2014 offensive.[92] In August 2014, Dugin called for an eradication of Ukrainian identity.[94]
Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group said that the influence of Dugin's "Eurasian ideology" on events in eastern Ukraine and on Russia's invasion of the Crimea was beyond any doubt.[95] According to Vincent Jauvert, Dugin's radical ideology became the basis for the internal and foreign policy of the Russian authorities.[96] "So Dugin is worth listening to, in order to understand to which fate the Kremlin is leading its country and the whole of Europe."[96]
Before war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Dugin visited South Ossetia and predicted: "Our troops will occupy the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the entire country, and perhaps even Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which is historically part of Russia, anyway."[100] Afterwards he said Russia should "not stop at liberating South Ossetia but should move further," and "we have to do something similar in Ukraine."[101] In 2008, Dugin stated that Russia should repeat the Georgian scenario in Ukraine, namely attack it.[102] In September 2008, after the Russian-Georgian war, he did not hide his anger towards Putin, who "dared not drop the other shoe" and "restore the Empire."[96]
On 10 October 2014, Dugin said, "Only after restoring the Greater Russia that is the Eurasian Union, we can become a credible global player. Now these processes slowed down very much. The Ukrainian maidan was the response of the West to the advance of the Russian integration."[103] He described the Euromaidan as a coup d'état carried out by the United States: "America wishes to wage the war against Russia not by its own hands but by the hands of the Ukrainians. Promising to wink at up to 10 thousand victims among the peaceful population of Ukraine and actually demanding the victims, the United States led to this war. The United States carried out the coup d'état during the maidan for the purpose of this war. The United States raised neo-NazisRussophobes to the power for the purpose of this war."[104]
Dugin said Russia is the major driving force for the current events in Ukraine: "Russia insists on its sovereignty, its liberty, responds to challenges thrown down to it, for example, in Ukraine. Russia is attempting to integrate the post-Soviet space."[103] As Israeli political scientist Vyacheslav Likhachov states, "If one seriously takes the fact that such a person as Alexander Dugin is the ideologist of the imperial dash for the West, then one can establish that Russia is not going to stop as far as the Atlantic Ocean."[105]
In the 2014 article by Dmitry Bykov "Why TV, Alexander Dugin and Galina Pyshnyak crucified a boy", Channel One Russia's use of the aired story by Dugin and Pyshnyak about the allegedly crucified boy as a pretext for escalating the conflict was compared to the case of Beilis.[106] On 9 July 2014, Dugin on his Facebook account wrote a story that a 6-year-old child was allegedly nailed down to an advertisement board and shot to death before his father's eyes.[107]
On 16 July 2014, Novaya Gazeta provided a videotape of its correspondent Eugen Feldman walking along the main square in Sloviansk, asking local old women if they had heard of the murder of the child. They said such an event did not take place.[107] The website Change.org hosted a petition of citizens who demanded "a comprehensive investigation with identification for all persons involved in the fabrication of the plot."[107]
On 2 October 2014, Dugin described the situation in Donbas: "The humanitarian crisis has long since been raging on the territory of Novorossiya. Already up to a million, if not more, refugees are in the Russian Federation. A large part of the inhabitants of the DPR and the LPR simply moved abroad."[108] In the end of October 2014, Dugin advised the separatists to establish dictatorship in Novorossiya until they win in the confrontation.[109]
Influence on Putin
Dugin's influence on the Russian government and on president Vladimir Putin is disputed.[6] He has no official ties to the Kremlin,[16] but is often referred to in the media as "Putin's brain",[18] and as being responsible for shaping Russian foreign policy.[110][111][112][113] Others contend that Dugin's influence is limited and has been greatly exaggerated,[20][19][9] on the basis that the correlations between his views and Russian foreign policy do not imply causation.[21]
In 2016, international relations professor Peter Rutland wrote a review of a book by Charles Clover, the Financial Times's Moscow correspondent. Rutland wrote:
"Clover makes it clear that Dugin does not have any sort of direct influence over Putin. Rather what is happening is that Dugin expressed, early on, the zeitgeist of post-Soviet Russia, identifying the forces of disorientation and ressentiment that fueled Putin's subsequent actions."[114]
Mark Galeotti, writing in 2022 for The Spectator, argued that Western commentators tend to overstate the importance of Dugin in Russian politics, sometimes even describing him as a new Rasputin. He argued that Dugin's influence on the politics since 2016 was negligible, but that he tried to present himself as an influential person.[115]
In November 2022, the Latvia-based newspaper Meduza reported that, according to sources close to the Kremlin, Dugin's influence on Putin had grown after the killing of his daughter Daria Dugina. According to Meduza's interlocutors, the Western media had often exaggerated Dugin's political influence in the past, but after the murder of Dugina, Putin had allegedly started to take a serious interest in his ideas and to use one of his favourite terms ("Anglo-Saxon") in a public speech.[116]
Dugin openly criticized Putin for failing to defend "Russian cities" such as Kherson, which was liberated from Russian control on 11 November 2022.[117][118]
Relationships with radical groups in other countries
Dugin made contact with the French far-right thinker Alain de Benoist in 1990.[119][28] Around the same time he also met the Belgian Jean-François Thiriart and Yves Lacoste.[120] In 1992 he invited some of the European far-right figures he had met into Russia.[121] He also brought members of Jobbik and Golden Dawn to Russia to strengthen their ties to the country.[68]
According to the book War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, Dugin met Steve Bannon in Rome in 2018 to discuss Heidegger, Traditionalist esotericism, and a series of geopolitical matters which Bannon disagreed with him, wherein Bannon pressed him to abandon his support for China, Turkey, and Iran.[122] Dugin also developed links with far-right and far-left political parties in the European Union, including Syriza in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, the Freedom Party of Austria, and Front National in France, to influence EU policy on Ukraine and Russia.[94][123][124][125] Dugin is also closely aligned with Israeli journalist Avigdor Eskin, who previously served on the board of Dugin's Eurasia Party.[126]
Fifth column
The typical rhetoric about the fifth column as foreign agents is used by Dugin for political accusations in many publications. In his 2014 interview published by Vzglyad and Komsomolskaya Pravda, he says, "A huge struggle is being conducted. And, of course, Europe has its own fifth column, its own Bolotnaya Square-minded people. And if we have them sitting idly and doing nasty things on TV Rain, Europe is indeed dominated and ruled by the fifth column in full swing. This is the same American riffraff."[127][128]
He sees the United States standing behind all the scenes, including the Russian fifth column. According to his statement, "The danger of our fifth column is not that they are strong, they are absolutely paltry, but that they are hired by the greatest 'godfather' of the modern world—by the United States. That is why they are effective, they work, they are listened to, they get away with anything because they have the world power standing behind them."[127][128] He sees the US embassy as the center for funding and guiding the fifth column and asserts, "We know that the fifth column receives money and instructions from the American embassy."[108]
Dugin proposes to deprive the fifth column of Russian citizenship and deport the group from Russia: "I believe it is necessary to deport the fifth column and deprive them of their citizenship."[131] However, in 2007, Dugin argued, "There are no longer opponents of Putin's policy, and if there are, they are mentally ill and should be sent to prophylactic health examination."[132][133] In 2014, Dugin in an interview to Der Spiegel confirmed that he considers the opponents of Putin to be mentally ill.[40]
In one of his publications, Dugin introduced the term the sixth column and defined it as "the fifth column which just pretends to be something different",[129] those who are in favor of Putin, but demand that he stand for liberal values (as opposed to the liberal fifth column, which is specifically against Putin). During the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Dugin said that all the Russian sixth column stood up staunchly for Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.[91] As he asserts, "We need to struggle against the fifth and sixth columns."[103]
Russian-American artist Mihail Chemiakin says Dugin is inventing "the sixth column". "Soon, probably, there would already be the seventh one as well. 'The fifth column' is understandable. That is we, intelligentsia, lousy, dirty, who read Camus. And 'the sixth column', in his opinion, is more dangerous, because that is the personal entourage of Vladimir Putin. But he is naïve and understands nothing. And as for Dugin, he can tell him who to shoot to death and who to imprison. Maybe Kudrin, and maybe Medvedev..."[134]
According to Dugin, the whole Internet should be banned: "I think that Internet as such, as a phenomenon is worth prohibiting because it gives nobody anything good."[135] In June 2012, Dugin said in a lecture that chemistry and physics are demonic sciences, and that all Orthodox Russians need to unite around the president of Russia in the last battle between good and evil, following the example of Iran and North Korea.[136] He added: "If we want to liberate ourselves from the West, it is needed to liberate ourselves from textbooks on physics and chemistry."[136]
Dugin has characterized his position on the Ukrainian conflict as "firm opposition to the Junta and Ukrainian Nazism that are annihilating peaceful civilians" as well as rejection of liberalism and US hegemony.[93]
Loss of departmental headship
In 2008 Dugin established a Center for Conservative Studies at the Moscow State University. The Center focused on counter-Enlightenment and conservative ideas of authors such as Guénon, Evola, Schmitt and Heidegger, and on their application to Russian politics.[28] In 2014 Dugin lost that academic position due to the controversy following an interview where he commented on the death of 42 anti-Maidan activists in Odesa saying "But what we see on May 2nd is beyond any limits. Kill them, kill them, kill them. There should not be any more conversations. As a professor, I consider it so". Media outlets interpreted this as a call to kill Ukrainians.[92][137][138] A petition entitled "We demand the dismissal of MSU Faculty of Sociology Professor A. G. Dugin!" was signed by over 10,000 people and sent to the MSU rector Viktor Sadovnichiy.[139][137]
Dugin claimed to have been fired from this post. The university claimed the offer of the position of the department head resulted from a technical error and was therefore cancelled, and that he would remain a professor and deputy department head under contract until September 2014.[92] Dugin wrote the statement of resignation from the faculty staff to be reappointed to the Moscow State University staff due to the offered position of department head, but since the appointment was cancelled he was no longer a staff member of the faculty nor a staff member of the Moscow State University (the two staff memberships are formally different at the MSU).[14]
After the loss of leadership in Russia, Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute of Fudan University, invited Dugin for lectures, which caused a shift in Dugin's attitude towards China. Originally advocating "territorial disintegration, division, and political and administrative partition" of China, Dugin has since supported China's "Tianxia" and believes that a Russian-Chinese alliance would help counter Atlanticism. Dugin has been appointed as a senior fellow at Fudan University, and Chinese public opinion considers Dugin to be the most important thinker around Putin.[141][142]
Personal life
Dugin's first wife was Evgenia Debryanskaya, a Russian activist. They have a son, Artur Dugin, whom they named in honor of Arthur Rimbaud.[79] Dugin had a daughter, Darya Dugina, with his second wife, philosopher Natalya Melentyeva.[143] On 20 August 2022, Darya Dugina was killed in a car bombing when the car she was driving exploded near Bolshiye Vyazemy, a suburb of Moscow.[144][145] It is unclear whether she was targeted deliberately, or whether her father, who had been expected to travel with her but switched to another car at the last minute, was the intended target.[145]
On 3 March 2022, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned the outlet Geopolitika[ru] due to its alleged control by Dugin. Additionally, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Dugin's daughter Darya on the basis of her work as chief editor of the website United World International (UWI). According to the United States Department of the Treasury, UWI was developed as part of Project Lakhta, owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is held responsible for part of the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[148][149]
In January 2023, both Japan and Ukraine imposed sanctions on Dugin for promoting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.[150][151]
Bibliography
Several of Dugin's books have been published by the publishing house Arktos, an English-language publisher for traditionalist and alt-right books, which also published works by other fascists and neo-Nazis.[152][153][154]
Talking to the Wolf: The Alexander Dugin Interviews, Arktos (2023)
Templars of the Proletariat, Arktos (2023)
The Great Awakening vs the Great Reset, Arktos (2021)
Political Platonism, Arktos (2019)
Ethnos and Society, Arktos (2018)
Konflikte der Zukunft – Die Rückkehr der Geopolitik, Bonus (2015)
The Eurasia Party is a neo-Eurasianist Russian political party. It was registered by the Ministry of Justice on 21 June 2002, approximately one year after the pan-Russian Eurasia Movement was established by Aleksandr Dugin.
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The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia is a geopolitical book by Aleksandr Dugin. Its publication in 1997 was well received in Russia; it has had significant influence within the Russian military, police forces, and foreign policy elites, and has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military. Powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin, a Russian political analyst who espouses an ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist ideology based on his idea of neo-Eurasianism, who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff.
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During Ukraine's post-Soviet history, the far-right has remained on the political periphery and been largely excluded from national politics since independence in 1991. Unlike most Eastern European countries which saw far-right groups become permanent fixtures in their countries' politics during the decline and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the national electoral support for far-right parties in Ukraine only rarely exceeded 3% of the popular vote. Far-right parties usually enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election. Only once in the 1994–2014 period was a radical right-wing party elected to the parliament as an independent organization within the proportional part of the voting: Svoboda in 2012. Since then far-right parties have failed to gain enough votes to attain political representation, even at the height of nationalist sentiment during and after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The "Russian world" is a concept and a political doctrine usually defined as the sphere of military, political and cultural influence of Russia. It is a vague term, mostly used to refer to communities with a historical, cultural, or spiritual tie to Russia. This can include all ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in neighboring states, as well as those who belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. The concept of the "Russian world" is linked to Russian neo-imperialism. President Vladimir Putin established the government-funded Russkiy Mir Foundation to foster the idea of the "Russian world" abroad. The concept is sometimes also called the Pax Russica, as a counterweight to the Pax Americana after WWII.
Ruscism, a portmanteau of Russian fascism, is a neologism and a derogatory term which is used by a number of scholars, politicians and publicists to describe the political ideology and policies of the Russian state under Vladimir Putin. It is used in reference to the Russian state's autocratic political system, ultranationalism and neo-imperialism, militarism, expansionism, corporatism, close alignment of church and state, political repression, use of censorship and state propaganda, and a cult of personality around Putin.
"Address concerning the events in Ukraine" was a televised address by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 21 February 2022, announcing that the Russian government would recognise the Ukrainian separatist regions of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic as independent. During the speech, Putin also made a number of claims regarding Ukrainian history and Ukrainian domestic politics. Genocide experts, historians and other experts have shown these claims to be false and possibly justifying a genocide. The speech, which marked a significant escalation in the culminating Russo-Ukrainian crisis, was followed three days later by another speech declaring "a special military operation" in Ukraine—announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"Where have you been for eight years?", "Where have you been for the last eight years?", or "Why have you been silent during the past eight years?" is a rhetorical question widely used by Russian propaganda in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in support of Russia, mainly pointing out what Ukraine has been doing to the Donbas during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), and that the Russo-Ukrainian War has been ongoing since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. It has been described as Russian pro-war propaganda.
Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina, also known under the pen name Daria Platonova, was a Russian journalist, political scientist, and activist. She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a supporter of Vladimir Putin and a far-right political philosopher, whose support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine she shared.
Elementy was a political magazine which was started and published by Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. Its subtitle was Evraziiskoe Obozrenie. It existed between 1992 and 2000 and was the mouthpiece of neo-Eurasianism in Russia.
↑ Lukic, Rénéo; Brint, Michael, eds. (2001). Culture, politics, and nationalism in the age of globalization. Ashgate. p.103. ISBN9780754614364. Retrieved 12 October 2015. Dugin defines 'thalassocracy' as 'power exercised thanks to the sea,' opposed to 'tellurocracy' or 'power exercised thanks to the land'... The 'thalassocracy' here is the United States and its allies; the 'tellurocracy' is Eurasia.
In a 1999 interview for the Polish magazine Fronda, Dugin explains: "In Russian Orthodox christianity a person is a part of the Church, part of the collective organism, just like a leg. So how can a person be responsible for himself? Can a leg be responsible for itself? Here is where the idea of state, total state originates from. Also because of this, Russians, since they are Orthodox, can be the true fascists, unlike artificial Italian fascists: of Gentile type or their Hegelians. The true Hegelianism is Ivan Peresvetov – the man who in 16th century invented the oprichnina for Ivan the Terrible. He was the true creator of Russian fascism. He created the idea that state is everything and an individual is nothing." "Czekam na Iwana Groźnego"[I'm waiting for Ivan the Terrible]. 11/12 (in Polish). Fronda. 1999. p.133. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
Rascoe, Ayesha (27 March 2022). "Russian intellectual Aleksandr Dugin is also commonly known as 'Putin's brain'". NPR News. Retrieved 21 August 2022. Dugin is a good old-fashioned mystical fascist of the sort that kind of flourished after World War I, when many people in Europe felt lost, felt like the Old World had failed, and were searching around for explanations. And a certain set of them decided the problem was all of modern thinking, the idea of freedom, the idea of individual rights. And in Dugin's case, he felt that the Russian Orthodox Church was destined to rule as an empire over all of Europe and Asia. And eventually, in a big book in 1997, he laid out the road map for accomplishing that. He's continued to be intimately involved in the Russian military, Russian intelligence services and Putin's inner circle.
Dunlop, John B. (31 January 2004). "Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics". The Europe Center, Stanford University. Retrieved 13 May 2022. By summer 2001, Aleksandr Dugin, a neo-fascist ideologue, had managed to approach the center of power in Moscow, having formed close ties with elements in the presidential administration, the secret services, the Russian military, and the leadership of the state Duma.
↑ Burton, Tara Isabella (12 May 2022). "The far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin's view of Russia". The Washington Post. Washington D.C. Retrieved 21 August 2022. In the early 1990s, he co-founded the National Bolshevik Party with controversial punk-pornography novelist Eduard Limonov, blending fascist and communist-nostalgic rhetoric and imagery; edgy, ironic (and not-so-ironic) transgression; and genuine reactionary politics. The party's flag was a black hammer and sickle in a white circle against a red background, a communist mirror image of a swastika. The party's half-sincere mantra? 'Da smert' (Yes, death), delivered with a sieg-heil-style raised arm.
↑ Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, Arktos (2014) p.26
1 2 Laruelle, Marlène (2015). Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship. Lanham. p.59. ISBN9781498510691.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Доктор Дугин (in Russian). Литературная Россия. Archived from the original on 22 October 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. pp.234–235. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. Dugin, who left Alexander's mother when his son was three. While Dugin had very little contact with the man after that, it does appear that his father loomed large in his life. Dugin has been vague in various interviews about his father's profession. He told me and others that Geli was a general in military intelligence (the GRU). But when pressed, he admitted he didn't actually know for a fact what he did. 'At the end of his life he worked for the customs police, but where he worked before that – he did not tell me. That I do not really know.' Dugin's friends, however, are adamant that his father must have been someone of rank within the Soviet system. For starters, the family had the accoutrements of prestige – a nice dacha, relatives with nice dachas, and access to opportunities. According to Dugin's close friend and collaborator Gaidar Dzhemal, Geli Dugin had, on more than one occasion, intervened from a high-ranking position in the Soviet state to get his son out of trouble.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. Dugin is very forthright about his early Nazi antics, which he says were more about his total rebellion against a stifling Soviet upbringing than any real sympathy for Hitler. Still, virtually everyone who remembers Dugin from his early years brings it up.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. He adopted the nom de plume 'Hans Sievers', which added a hint of Teutonic severity to an already colourful and fairly camp militaristic–folklore style. The impression he created was, as his later collaborator Eduard Limonov described it, a 'picture of Oscar Wildean ambiguity'. Sievers was not just a stage name: it was a complete persona and alter ego. This was painstakingly composed of as many antisocial elements as its creator could find – a total and malevolent rebellion not just against the Soviet Union, but against convention and public taste as a whole: his namesake, Wolfram Sievers
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. The KGB's goal, according to Yakovlev, was to allow the dissident movement to 'let off steam', but it quickly lost control of Pamyat. 'From Pamyat there grew a new generation of more extreme Nazi movements. In this way the KGB gave birth to Russian fascism.'
1 2 3 John Dunlop (January 2004). "Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics"(PDF). Demokratizatsiya. 12 (1): 41. Archived from the original(PDF) on 7 June 2016. 'It is especially important,' Dugin adds, 'to introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements—extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S.'
↑ "Elogio di Bernard-Henri Levy, il filosofo engagé dei nostri tempi oscuri"[Praise to Bernard-Henri Levy, the committed philosopher of our dark times]. Linkiesta (in Italian). 5 November 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2020. A few weeks earlier, the confrontation with Aleksandr Dugin, Russian intellectual and theorist of the Euro-Asian empire.... Sometimes he [Lévy] stands as a witness, sometimes he thinks as an activist. Sometimes, and in certain periods more and more, he stands as a bulwark. Against Zemmour and for the Kurds. Against Dugin and for democracy.
↑ "Aleksander Dugin: Czekam na Iwana Groźnego"[Aleksander Dugin: I am waiting for Ivan the Terrible]. Fronda (in Polish). 23 February 2015. p.133. Retrieved 27 April 2020. In Russian Orthodox christianity a person is a part of the Church, part of the collective organism, just like a leg. So how can a person be responsible for himself? Can a leg be responsible for itself? Here is where the idea of state, total state originates from. Also because of this, Russians, since they are Orthodox, can be the true fascists, unlike artificial Italian fascists: of Gentile type or their Hegelians. The true Hegelianism is Ivan Peresvetov – the man who in 16th century invented the oprichnina for Ivan the Terrible. He was the true creator of Russian fascism. He created the idea that state is everything and an individual is nothing.
↑ Highly critical of Dugin's enthousiasm for Wirth: Leonid A. Mosionjnik, Technology of the Historical Myth (Tekhnologiya istoricheskogo mifa), Saint Petersburg 2012, p. 95–102 et passim (here for download).
↑ James D. Heiser (May 2014). The American Empire Should Be Destroyed: Alexander Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology. Repristination Press. ISBN978-1891469435.
↑ Yasmann, Victor (29 April 2005). "Russia: National Bolsheviks, The Party Of 'Direct Action'". Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. Retrieved 15 November 2018. For this mobilization, the NBP used a bizarre mixture of totalitarian and fascist symbols, geopolitical dogma, leftist ideas, and national-patriotic demagoguery.
↑ Кто похвалит его лучше всех[Who will praise him better than the rest]. Kommersant (in Russian). 2007. Retrieved 24 March 2016. (Click the "Results" ("Результаты") button at the bottom of the page)
↑ Burbank, Jane (22 March 2022). "The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War". The New York Times. New York City. Retrieved 23 March 2022. After unsuccessful interventions in post-Soviet party politics, Mr. Dugin focused on developing his influence where it counted – with the military and policymakers... In Mr. Dugin's adjustment of Eurasianism to present conditions, Russia had a new opponent – no longer just Europe, but the whole of the 'Atlantic' world led by the United States. And his Eurasianism was not anti-imperial but the opposite: Russia had always been an empire, Russian people were 'imperial people', and after the crippling 1990s sellout to the 'eternal enemy', Russia could revive in the next phase of global combat and become a 'world empire'.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. Before being introduced to Alexander Dugin in June 1990, the French writer Alain de Benoist had never really gone out of his way to meet Russians, and they had never really gone out of their way to meet him.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. Another radical Dugin courted was Jean-François Thiriart, an eccentric Belgian optician, who was a proponent of National Bolshevism and a European empire stretching from Vladivostok to Dublin... Dugin also met Yves Lacoste, publisher of Hérodote, a journal devoted to geopolitics, who appears to have been an adviser to various French political figures.
↑ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-22394-1. Dugin travelled extensively in Europe. He spoke at a colloquium organized by de Benoist, and appeared on Spanish TV and at various conferences. In 1992 he would ultimately invite his new cohort of European far-rightists to Moscow, where they met some of Dugin's new patrons, who – they were surprised to realize – included quite a few military men.
↑ Huang, Yuxiang (May 2022). "杜金從仇中到親中的轉變"[Durgin's transformation from China-hating to China-friendly]. Yazhou Zhoukan (in Traditional Chinese). Retrieved 29 May 2023.
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