Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics

John B. Dunlop1

One perceptive observer of the Russian political scene, Francoise Thom, noted as far back as 1994 that fascism, and especially its “Eurasianist” variant, was already at that time displacing Russian nationalism among statist Russian elites as a post-communist “Russian Idea,” especially in the foreign policy sphere.  “The weakness of Russian nationalists,” she emphasized, “stems from their inability to clearly situate Russian frontiers.  Euras[ianism] brings an ideological foundation for post-Soviet imperialism.”2
There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted an influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites comparable to that of Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 neo-fascist treatise, Foundations of Geopolitics.3

The impact of this intended “Eurasianist” textbook on key elements among Russian elites testifies to the worrisome rise of fascist ideas and sentiments during the late Yeltsin and the Putin periods.

The author of this 600-page program for the eventual rule of ethnic Russians over the lands extending “from Dublin to Vladisvostok,” Aleksandr Gel’evich Dugin, was born in 1962, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Russian military officers.4   According to one recent press report, Dugin’s father was a general in the GRU (Russian military intelligence).5   By all accounts, Dugin was a bright and precocious youth with a talent for learning foreign languages (he is said to have mastered no fewer than nine of them).  While still a teenager, he joined a secretive group of Moscow intellectuals interested in mysticism, paganism, and fascism.  Both the “masters” of this group and their disciples engaged, inter alia, in translating the works of foreign writers who shared their interests.  As one of his contributions, Dugin completed a translation of a book by the Italian pagan-fascist philosopher Julius Evola.

Dugin is reported to have been detained by the KGB for participating in this study group, and forbidden literature was subsequently discovered at his apartment.  According to one account, he was then expelled from the Moscow Aviation Institute, where he had enrolled as a student some time in the late 1970’s.  According to another account, he eventually managed to graduate from the institute.6

In 1987, during the second year of Gorbachev’s period of rule, at a time when he was in his mid-twenties, Dugin emerged as a leader of the notorious anti-Semitic Russian nationalist organization, Pamyat’, headed by photographer Dmitrii Vasil’ev.  During late 1988 and 1989, Dugin served as a member of the Pamyat’ Central Council.

In 1989, taking advantage of increased opportunities to visit the West, Dugin spent most of the year in travels to Western European countries.  While there, he strengthened ties witleading figures of the European New Right, such as the Frenchman Alain de Benoist and the Belgian Jean-Francois Thiriart.  These contacts led to Dugin’s “belated reconciliation” with the USSR, just as that state was approaching its final demise.  It was, it appears, to a significant extent as a result of these contacts with the European Nouvelle Droite that Dugin became into a fascist theorist.  On the subject of Dugin’s indubitable fascist orientation, Stephen Shenfield has written:  “Crucial to Dugin’s politics is the classical concept of the ‘conservative revolution’ that overturns the post-Enlightenment world and installs a new order in which the heroic values of the almost forgotten ‘Tradition’ are renewed.  It is this concept that identifies Dugin unequivocally as a fascist.”7

By the beginning of the 1990’s, as the Soviet Union was approaching its collapse, Dugin began to assume a more high-profile political role.  He formed an association with “statist patriots” in the communist camp and was, for a brief period, close to the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Genadii Zyuganov.  According to Stephen Shenfield, Dugin “probably played a significant part in formulating the nationalist communist ideology that was Zyuganov’s hallmark.”8
In 1991, the year that witnessed the end of the USSR, Dugin made the acquaintance of an important neo-fascist writer with ties to elements in the Russian military, Aleksandr Prokhanov, whose journal Den’ (subsequently renamed Zavtra), served as a key sounding-board for the “red-brown opposition.”9   Dugin himself soon emerged as “one of the leading ideologists of Den’ in its best period (1991-1992).”10

From July of 1992 on, Dugin also began to edit his own journal, Elementy:  evraziiskoe obozrenie, which appeared twice yearly (later once a year) in a print run of 5,000-10,000.  The journal’s title was borrowed from that of the theoretical journal of the French New Right, Elements, edited by Alain de Benoist.  Concerning Dugin’s journal, Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Vladimir Pribylovskii have noted:  “In speaking of Elementy, one should not forget that half of each issue is comprised of ‘geopolitical notebooks’ containing articles about the global opposition of various civilizations, primarily Russia and the West…”11

During the early 1990’s, Dugin founded his own publishing house, named “Arktogeya.”

This name was borrowed from that of the publishing house of German racist writer Guido von List (1848-1918).  It combines the ancient Greek words arktos (north) and gea or gaia (land), a reference to the vanished polar continent that was supposedly the original home of the Aryans.12

In 1991-1992, Prokhanov and Dugin attempted to form an alliance between certainleaders of the European New Right and several department heads and professors at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.  The no. 1, 1992 issue of Elementy published the transcript of an April 1992 roundtable, held on the premises of the academy, which included Lieutenant General Nikolai Klokotov, head of the Academy’s strategy department;  Lieutenant General Nikolai Pishchev, deputy head of the same department;  Major General Vladislav Iminov, head of the Academy’s department of military history;  and “the leader of the European New Right,” Alain de Benoist, as well as Jean Lalou, another New Right spokesman.13

The commander of the General Staff Academy, General Igor’ Rodionov, was reported to be “particularly well-disposed toward Dugin,” and Dugin’s ideas evidently continued to enjoy his support once he became Russian Defense Minister in 1996-1997.14   It may be of significance that Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics was written during the time that Rodionov was serving as defense minister.15

The interest of the General Staff Academy and of the GRU in geopolitics and in Eurasianism reached back some forty years.  “Beginning in the 1950’s,” Francoise Thom has remarked, “Soviet strategists like General Shtemenko and Admiral Gorshkov were inspired by Eurasianist thinking.”16   As for Dugin, he has singled out Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, a Soviet military chief of staff in the early 1980’s, as “an outstanding geopolitician, strategist and Eurasian.”17

In 1993, Dugin joined his efforts to those of a charismatic demagogue, Eduard Limonov (born 1943), and founded the National Bolshevik Party (NBP).  As Verkhovskii and Pribylovskii have pointed out, “The ideology of the National Bolshevik Party was fully generated by one man – Aleksandr Dugin.”18   While Limonov played the role of a fascist-style leader, Dugin served as second-in-command and as the party’s chief theoretician.  The new organization appears to have been more influenced by German than by Russian émigré National Bolshevism.  The German National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch had “advocated a German-Russian alliance against the West. In the Soviet Union, especially Stalin’s Soviet Union, many German nationalists [like Niekisch] saw the logical fulfillment of the war against ‘Jewish capitalism’.”19   In 1995, Dugin ran for the Russian State Duma on a National Bolshevik platform but was resoundingly rejected by voters, receiving a mere 0.85% of the vote.20
In 1997, Dugin broke with the stormy Limonov and began a noteworthy political ascent.

In that same year, as has been mentioned, he brought out his Foundations of Geopolitics, one of the more influential works of the post-communist period, written, it appears, with the assistance of General Nikolai Klokotov of the General Staff Academy, who served as an official consultant to the project.  Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, head of the International Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, may also have served as an advisor.21   Perhaps due in part to such high-level input, “Dugin’s geopolitical ideas [as expressed in Foundations] are clearly much more influential than are the other more openly mystical and esoteric sides of his philosophy.”22

During the following year of 1998, Dugin’s career took a key step forward when he was named an advisor on geopolitics to Gennadii Seleznev, chairman (or “speaker”) of the Russian State Duma, a major player in Russian politics (for the month of June, 2001, Seleznev was ranked the tenth most influential political figure in Russia by Nezavisimaya gazeta’s panel of  experts23).  In the course of a March 1999 radio interview, Seleznev made public the fact that Dugin was serving as one of his advisors and “he urged that Dugin’s geopolitical doctrine be made a compulsory part of the school curriculum.”24   Two years later, at the founding congress of the new “Eurasia” movement, Dugin boasted, “I am the author of the book Foundation of Geopolitics, which has been adopted as a textbook in many [Russian] educational institutions.” During the same congress, the aforementioned General Klokotov – now a professor emeritus but one who continued to teach at the academy – noted that the theory of geopolitics had been taught as a subject at the General Staff Academy since the early 1990’s, and that in the future it would “serve as a mighty ideological foundation for preparing a new [military] command.”25   Dugin’s book is presumably being used at present as a textbook at the General Staff Academy.

In 1999, Dugin’s publishing house brought out a volume of writings by the inter-warémigré Eurasian writer, Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi.  In his introduction to the volume, Dugin wrote that Trubetskoi “can be termed the Eurasian Marx.”26   It seemed that Dugin saw a similar exalted role for himself as the formulator of a new “Russian Idea” at the dawn of a new century and millennium. Some time in late 1999, Dugin founded “The Center for Geopolitical Expertise” in Moscow.  In an article appearing in Zavtra, he speculated that this new center might shortly become “an analytical instrument of the Eurasian Platform for, simultaneously, the Presidential Administration, the Government of the Russian Federation, the Council of Federation, and the

 

State Duma.”27   In late March of 2000, in a second article appearing in Zavtra, Dugin offered a vision of a future path-breaking role for the Russian secret police (which, of course, had until recently been headed by the newly elected Russian president, Vladimir Putin).  Whereas in his 1993 book, Konspiralogiya, Dugin had criticized the secret police for perceived “Atlanticist” [i.e., pro-American and pro-British] sympathies, he now toasted the KGB (the initials he preferred to FSB) as “a new caste, a new social stratum” called upon both to hold the line against “American hegemony” and to “recreate a mighty Eurasian sovereign state” which would include all of the CIS republics.28

In August of 2000, after reading an article with which he agreed by “one of the chief ideologists of the [Putin] Kremlin,” Gleb Pavlovskii, Dugin wrote the latter suggesting a meeting.  Pavlovskii, the creator of several influential pro-Kremlin web-sites, agreed to a meeting.  Commenting on this burgeoning relationship, journalist Andrei Kolesnikov remarked: “Extreme right ideology is not only turning into the dominant view in Russian publications and state rhetoric, it is also becoming fashionable in a salon sense.”29

In November of 2000, shortly before undertaking a trip to Brunei, President Putin declared publicly:  “Russia has always perceived of itself as a Eurasian country.”30   Dugin later termed this statement “an epochal, grandiose revolutionary admission, which, in general, changes everything.  The prophecy of [French conspiratologist] Jean Parvulesco has come to pass…  There will be a Eurasian millennium.”31

 

On April 21, 2001, Dugin achieved new heights with the founding congress of the “Pan- Russian Political Social Movement ‘Eurasia’.”  The holding of this congress underscored the close relations which Dugin had formed with present and especially former members of the Russian special services.  The congress took place in a hall belonging to the “Honor and Dignity” Club, an organization of veterans of the special services and law enforcement organizations.  The head of the club, Vladimir Revskii, had earlier served in Vympel, a special operations unit attached to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB (and, later, the SVR).  Revskii officially opened the congress and was later elected to membership in “Eurasia’s” ruling body, the Political Council.

An even more noteworthy role was played at the congress by Petr Suslov, also a former Vympel member, and a retired colonel in the SVR.  Suslov served as head of the committee which organized the congress and was then elected deputy leader of the new movement (with Dugin being chosen the leader).32   During the course of a July 2001 interview, Suslov confided that he was a graduate of the Ryazan’ Paratroop School who had then “served in the structures of the KGB… in a unit which conducted special operations abroad.”33   In this capacity, he said, he had served in Afghanistan, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, and Vietnam.  Retiring from the SVR in 1995, he had later become a consultant on issues relating to the Caucasus for Duma speaker Seleznev, which had provided him with an opportunity to meet Dugin, who was advising Seleznev on geopolitical questions.  The two soon realized that they agreed on many key questions.

 

 

Writing for the Gleb Pavlovskii-sponsored SMI.ru, journalist Grigorii Osterman has commented:  “[Petr] Suslov himself enjoys broad connections within the leadership of the FSB (there exists information that he is an external employee of the central apparatus of the FSB), as well as in the Presidential Administration, bodies to which the leader of ‘Eurasia,’ Dugin, also has entrée.”34   “Dugin is already being perceived,” the weekly Obshchaya gazeta observed, “not as the preacher of an ideological sect but as an officially recognized specialist on geopolitical questions.”35

In a similar vein, the investigative weekly, Versiya, observed in late May of 2001: “Contacts between Pavlovskii and ‘Eurasia’ actually do occur, but most likely on the level of personal consultations.  Aleksandr Dugin and the head of Kremlin politico-technology enjoy good, friendly relations.”  Under Vladimir Putin, the newspaper continued, Dugin had become “one of the drafters of the concept of national security.”  It was noted that Dmitrii Ryurikov, a leading advisor to President Yeltsin on foreign affairs, and the then Russian ambassador to Uzbekistan, had agreed to become a member of “Eurasia’s” Central Council.  Dugin’s new organization, Versiya went on, was also engaged in “the preparing of analytical reports on foreign affairs for the Presidential Administration…” As for the financial support of “Eurasia,” the newspaper wrote:  “The financial support of the movement comes through regional organizations of the special services.  And this support, according to our sources, is not small.

Moreover, not only finances are provided but also ‘necessary’ connections…”36 In his address to the founding congress of “Eurasia,” Dugin first of all expressed his gratitude to “the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation,” for its assistance, before proceeding also to thank the Moscow Patriarchate, the Central Spiritual Administration for the Muslims of Russia, and other organizations.37   On May 31, 2001, the Russian Ministry of Justice officially registered the “Eurasia” movement, which was reported to have branches in fifty regions of Russia.38   In late June of 2001, “Eurasia” hosted an ambitious conference, provocatively titled “Islamic Threat or a Threat to Islam?” held at the Presidential Hotel in Moscow.  The titular co-chairmen of the conference were Seleznev (who did not attend) and Sheikh Talgat Tadzhuddin, the officially recognized head of the Muslims of Russia and the CIS states.39

By the summer of 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.  In an interview with the Krasnoyarsk division of Ekho Moskvy Radio on July 25, 2001, Dugin, commenting on Putin’s role at the recent G-8 meetings in Genoa, affirmed, “It is my impression that in the international sphere Putin is splendidly realizing the Eurasian political model.”40   Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist incidents in New York City and Washington, DC, Dugin’s opinion was solicited by a major Russian newspaper, along with the views of the secretary of the Russian Security Council, the speaker of the Federation Council and various Duma faction leaders, which testifies to the perceived influence which Dugin was seen to wield at that time in Russia.41

Several Russian journalists underscored that Dugin-style “Eurasianism” met a number of

 

political needs in Russia.  A belief in the primacy of the rights of the individual over those of the state, one journalist, Evgenii Ikhlov wrote, would result in the control of civil society over the state.  In Russia, by contrast, Ikhlov continued,

[O]ur new chief stratum are incapable of ruling under such a democracy…  [T]hey stand in need of an attractive foundation for another, non-democratic model.  Here Eurasianism extraordinarily fits the bill.  It offers the following:  an authoritarian-charismatic (autocratic) model; selfless and ascetical serving of the regime as the highest form of valor (the messianic great power syndrome);  the agreement of ethnic and religious minorities to play a subordinate role;  and imperial xenophobia…”42

 

“What induces the regime to seek a new ideology in Eurasianism?” another journalist, Dmitrii Radyshevskii, asked.  And he answered:

Here [in Dugin-style Eurasianism] there are ideas which meet the psychological needs of society:  there is an alternative to the failed love affair with the West; there is the [Russian] tradition of messianism;  and there is the proximity of Asia…  The regime stands in need of a new ideology, but of a traditional one, ‘integral and great.’  All of this is happily combined in Eurasianism…”43

 

 

The Geopolitics of Dugin’s 1997 Book

 

Dugin’s militant views on geopolitics, as expressed in his 1997 “textbook,” will presumably strike Western readers as both crude and mad, representing but a slight improvement over, say, the ravings of Duma deputy speaker Vladimir Zhirinovskii.  While Dugin’s ideas and prescriptions are indeed extreme, dangerous and repellent, it should be emphasized that they are very much in the tradition of the writings of inter-war fascists and of adherents of the European Nouvelle Droite.  Historically speaking, fascist “thought” has more than once resulted in explosive expansionism.  It should be noted, moreover, that Dugin does not focus primarily upon military means as a way of achieving Russian dominance over Eurasia; rather he advocates a fairly sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services, supported by a tough, hard-headed use of Russia’s gas, oil, and natural resource riches to pressure and bully other countries into bending to Russia’s will.  While Dugin, apparently, does not in the least fear war, he would prefer to achieve his geopolitical goals without resorting to it.

Drawing on the extensive twentieth century literature on geopolitics – and especially on the inter-war German school of Karl Haushofer – Dugin posits a primordial, dualistic conflict between “Atlanticism” (sea-faring states and civilizations, such as the United States and Britain) and “Eurasianism” (land-based states and civilizations such as Eurasia-Russia).44   As Wayne Allensworth has noted, once one penetrates below the surface of Dugin’s seemingly rational and scholarly language in Foundations of Geopolitics, one becomes aware that “Dugin’s geopolitics are mystical and occult in nature, the shape of world civilizations and the clashing vectors of historical development being portrayed as shaped by unseen spiritual forces beyond man’s comprehension.”45   In Dugin’s treatise, as Allensworth underscores, the author has appropriated almost wholesale “the idea” of Belgian geopolitician Jean Thiriart, who “recognized the Russified Soviet Union as the final bastion of civilization in a Europe overrun by rootless American consumerism.”  Thiriart had earlier advocated the formation of a new “Holy Alliance” of the USSR and Europe aimed at constructing a “Euro-Soviet Empire,” which would stretch from Vladivostok to Dublin and would also need to expand to the south, “since it required a port on the Indian Ocean.”46

The Gorbachev Debacle

The Gorbachev years (1985-1991) represent, in the eyes of the author of Foundations of Geopolitics, one of the most wrenching geopolitical defeats in the millennial history of Russia- Eurasia-USSR.  Beginning in 1989, it became clear that “no-one in the Soviet leadership was capable of explaining the logic of traditional [Soviet] foreign policy and, as a result, there took place the lightning-fast destruction of the gigantic Eurasian organism...” (p. 95).47   Unexpectedly, the USSR “found itself in almost the same situation as postwar Germany – its world influence reduced to nothing, its territory sharply diminished, its economy and social sphere reduced to ruins” (p. 96).

The Soviet disaster of 1989-1991, like the earlier German one, resulted, Dugin contends, from a failure of the country’s leaders to heed the counsel of its geopoliticians.  Hitler disregarded the advice of Karl Haushofer and other specialists when he decided to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.  In similar fashion, a “certain secret department of the GRU” and other voices had long been advocating a “Eurasian” course for the USSR, but their advice went unheeded (p. 103).

As Dugin sees it, the “project” which Westernizing Russian reformers attempted to implement during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years has by now been fully discredited:  “This project denies such values as the people, the nation, history, geopolitical interests, social justice, the religious factor, etc.  In it, everything is constructed on the principle of maximal economic effectiveness, on the primacy of the individual, on consumerism and the ‘free market’” (p. 179).

The Atlanticists (and, especially, the United States), Dugin believes, consciously plotted the downfall of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR.  “The Heartland therefore is required to pay back Sea Power in the same coin” (p. 367).  The goal, as Dugin sees it, is to resuscitate and reinvigorate Eurasia/Russia after the near-fatal geopolitical blows it absorbed in 1989-1991.

The current Russian Federation, which appeared in 1991 from under the rubble of the USSR, is, Dugin emphasizes, not a full-fledged state but rather “a transitional formation in the broad and dynamic global geopolitical process” (p. 183).  The new states which have come into existence on the space of the former Soviet Union also do not, with the sole exception of Armenia, possess any markings of authentic statehood (p. 187).  Rather they represent artificial, ephemeral political constructs.

The ethnic Russian people, in contrast, are seen as “the bearers of a unique civilization.”48   Russians are a messianic people, who possess “universal, pan-human significance” (p. 189).  The Russian people, Dugin insists, can only serve as the core ethnos of a vast empire:  “[T]he Russian people (= Russia) never made its goal the creation of a mono- ethnic, racially uniform state” (p. 190).  Such a distorted view represents “the Atlanticist line masking itself as ‘Russian nationalism’” (p. 213).

The Moscow-Berlin Axis

Within the territorial sprawl of Eurasia, Dugin’s program focuses upon the formation of three key “axes”:  Moscow-Berlin, Moscow-Tokyo, and Moscow-Teheran.  With regard to the future of Europe, Dugin writes:  “The task of Moscow is to tear Europe away from the control of the U.S. (NATO), to assist European unification, and to strengthen ties with Central Europe under the aegis of the fundamental external axis Moscow-Berlin.  Eurasia needs a united,

friendly Europe” (p. 369).  In advocating such a path, Dugin appears to be influenced by the writings of the European New Right who, from the 1970s on, argued for “the strict neutrality of Europe and its departure from NATO” (p. 139).  The basic principle underlying the Moscow- Berlin axis, Dugin writes, will be “the principle of a common enemy [that is, the United States]” (p. 216).

In exchange for cooperating with Russia in this project, Germany, Dugin proposes, ought to be given back “Kaliningrad oblast’ (Eastern Prussia)” (p. 228).  As a result of a Grand Alliance concluded between Russia and Germany, the two countries will divvy up into de facto spheres of dominance the territories lying between them.  There is to be no “sanitary cordon.” “The task of Eurasia,” Dugin emphasizes, “consists in making sure such a [sanitary] cordon does not exist” (p. 370).  Russia and Germany together, he insists, “must decide all disputed questions together and in advance...” (p. 226).

The Moscow-Teheran Axis

The most ambitious and complex part of Dugin’s program concerns the South, where the focal point is a Moscow-Teheran axis.  “The idea of a continental Russian-Islamic alliance,” he writes, “lies at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy…  [T]his alliance is based on the traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization…” (p. 158).  “On the whole,” he continues, “the entire Islamic zone represents a naturally friendly geopolitical reality in relation to the Eurasian Empire, since the Islamic tradition … fully understands the spiritual incompatibility of America and religion.  The Atlanticists themselves see the Islamic world, on the whole, as their potential opponent” (p. 239).

As the result of an especially broad Grand Alliance to be concluded with Iran, Eurasia- Russia, Dugin maintains, will enjoy the prospect of realizing a centuries-old Russian dream and finally reaching the “warm seas” of the Indian Ocean.  “In relation to the South,” he writes, “the ‘geopolitical axis of history’ [Russia] has only one imperative – geopolitical expansion to the shores of the Indian Ocean” (p. 341).  “Having received geopolitical access – in the first place, naval bases – on the Iranian shores,” he writes, “Eurasia will enjoy full security from the strategy of the ‘Anaconda ring’…” (p. 241).  Eurasia-Russia and the Empire of Iran, he emphasizes, will have “one and the same geopolitical tendency…” (p. 242).

As a consequence of this Grand Alliance, Eurasia-Russia, Dugin asserts, should be prepared to divide up the imperial spoils with “the Islamic Empire in the South” (p. 239).  After asking the question “What is the Russian South?” Dugin answers that it includes “the Caucasus [all of it]”;  “the eastern and northern shores of the Caspian (the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmeniya)”;  “Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgiziya and Tajikistan”; plus “Mongolia” (already discussed).  Even these regions, he notes, should be seen “as zones of further geopolitical expansion to the south and not as ‘eternal borders of Russia’” (p. 343). “Control over the Caucasus,” Dugin notes at one point in the book, “opens … an exit to the

Interviewed by a journalist from the army newspaper Krasnya zvezda in May of 2001, Dugin patiently explained:  “Eurasian space is the territory of Russia, the countries of the CIS and a part of the adjacent territories to the West and to the South, where there is no clear-cut geopolitical orientation.  All of this comprises Eurasian strategic space broadly understood.”52

The army reporter offered no objections to this quite mad schema.

Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics, to sum up, represents a harsh and cynical repudiation of the architecture of international relations which was laboriously erected following the carnage of the Second World War and the emergence of nuclear weapons.  With Dugin and with his “system,” one has returned, it seems, to something like the combustible inter-war period and to something akin to the rise of fascism in Europe, with the lurid imperial fantasies of the Duce and the Fuhrer and other fascist demagogues.  Could, one wonders, a reversion to a destructive past be the “dividend” which Russia and the West are to receive for having finally and with enormous effort put an end to the Cold War?

Postscript—Aleksandr Dugin after 11 September 2001

In the period directly following the attacks upon the United States on 11 September 2001, Dugin’s political stock in Russia appeared at first to be as high as ever.  Over the course of a single week in late September, he was, for example, featured twice on the pages of the military daily, Krasnaya zvezda.53   From September through December 2001, Dugin continued to benefit from broad exposure in the Russian media.  He exploited this situation to launch one assault after another against what he considered to be deeply flawed policy decisions on the part of the Russian leadership vis-à-vis the American military buildup in Afghanistan and, especially, on the subject of the obtaining by the U.S. of basing rights in former Soviet Central Asia.

Comparing the attacks of 11 September to such key historical events as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Dugin decreed that the twenty- first century “has begun as an epoch in the hegemony of the U.S. in the world, as a mono-polar world.”54   In Dugin’s perverse view, it was the United States government itself that was behind the events of 11 September, events which had been unleashed to distract the American public from the weak state of the country’s economy.  “Whoever was the author of the terror acts,” Dugin commented to a Kazakhstani publication, “had to be a very serious structure, and only the U.S. is that.”55

By conducting an all-out assault on Islamic radicalism, the U.S., as Dugin saw it, had directly  endangered the Russian state, not to speak of his own cherished Eurasian project.  As a result of the assault by the U.S. on the Taliban, “the situation will be destabilized throughout the world

wherever there is an Islamic populace.  In addition to Islamic states, this zone includes Eurasia Russia, and Europe…. Henceforth Russia must live in an infinitely less secure position… The situation seems to me to be catastrophic.”56

How should Russia have reacted to the vigorous American response to the events of 11 September?  What Russia should have done, Dugin insisted, was to announce that it intended “to preserve full neutrality” with regard to the conflict in Afghanistan and that it would remain true to the “multi-polar model of the world.”  Russia should have come to immediate agreement “with China, India, Iran and other Islamic countries concerning the elaboration of a single strategy.”57

What particularly exercised Dugin was the fact that recent polls suggested that the Russian populace shared his ideas and not those of the Russian leadership.  He cited the results of a public opinion survey conducted by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) on 2-5 November 2001: 71% of respondents in that poll believed that Russia belonged to a “‘Eurasian’ or Orthodox civilization” and that a Western path of development was thus unsuitable for the country; only 13% of respondents deemed Russia to be “a part of Western civilization.”58

During the first three months of 2002, Dugin virtually disappeared from the pages of the Russian press.  Presidential disfavor may have been a factor behind this (temporary) change in status. In mid-January 2002, Putin, during a state visit to Poland, affirmed unambiguously: “Russia is a European country and not a Eurasian one, if one takes into account the cultural criteria proposed by [the late] Academician Dmitrii Likhachev.”59 These comments may have been directed, inter alia, at Dugin and his followers.

The Founding of the “Eurasia” Political Party

By the spring of 2002, Dugin had managed to emerge from brief obscurity and to reclaim and perhaps increase the level of political influence that he had enjoyed before the events of 11 September 2001.  On 30 May 2002, the founding congress of the “Eurasia” Political Party, headed by Dugin, was held in Moscow.  At that time, the political-social movement “Eurasia” was officially transformed into a political party of the same name.  A total of 204 delegates representing fifty-nine regions of the Russian Federation were in attendance.  It was announced at the congress that the new party, which was said to number 10,000 members nation-wide, intended to compete for seats in the State Duma during the forthcoming December 2003 elections.  It was apparently a perceived strong need to involve Dugin and his new party in the Duma election effort that induced the Russian Presidential Administration to rescue them from temporary obscurity.

Keynote addresses to the May 2002 congress were made by Dugin and by Talgat Tadzhuddin, chairman of the Central Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Russia and the European Countries of the CIS.  In his speech, Dugin underlined that his new party would be promoting “scientific patriotism based on geopolitics.”  Among the goals of the new party were: “immediately to set about transforming the CIS and the Eurasian Economic Community into a ‘Eurasian Union’”; to oppose America-centric “globalism”; and the conjoining of the peoples and religious confessions of Russia into a harmonious “Eurasia-wide nationalism.”60

 

Letters of greeting were read to the participants in the new political party’s founding congress from Aleksandr Voloshin, head of the Russian Presidential Administration, and from Aleksandr Kosopkin, head of the Main Department for Domestic Politics of the Presidential Administration. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish confessions participated in the work of the gathering.61

During mid and late 2002, evidence concerning Dugin’s increased political clout began to mount up.  It was reported, for example, that Dugin was serving as an informal advisor to Aleksandr Voloshin and that he was preparing various draft programs for him and for the Presidential Administration.62   At the same time, Dugin continued to serve as an advisor “on geopolitics and national security” to Duma speaker Gennadii Seleznev.63 In addition, Dugin was named a member of the prestigious Experts’ Council of ORT state television.  The thirty-five members of this council were reported to be meeting once a week to advise the ORT management on programming issues.64

One reason that Dugin succeeded in reclaiming a position of influence may have been connected with the somewhat more nuanced view of the Russian leadership’s policies that the Eurasian leader began to articulate.  The most detailed expression of this attempt at political fine- tuning occurred in the course of an interview that he gave to the newspaper Versiya in June of 2002.65 During this interview, Dugin expressed a recognition that Putin was required to tack politically between the positions of those who wanted a “strong hand” and “a patriotic orientation” and those who favored Western values.  According to recent public opinion polls, he underlined, 71% of Russians are patriots while only 13% are enamored of Western-style liberalism.  Before the upcoming Russian parliamentary and presidential elections, therefore, it seemed inevitable that “statist initiatives will receive a new impulse.”  The Eurasian Party that he heads, Dugin emphasized, has a greatly superior ideology, for example, to that of the lackluster pro-Putin “Edinaya Rossiya.”  Putin, Dugin concluded, stands today in strong political need of a “Eurasian flank,” and the Eurasia Party is happy to provide it.

Dugin Emerges as a Virulent Critic of the U.S.-led War in Iraq

 

Like the events following 11 September 2001, the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and its coalition partners and the war that accompanied it during March-April of 2003 (the conflict was officially declared by the U.S. to be over in May) served once again to move Dugin and his views close to the center of the Russian political stage.  During this charged period, he published a large number of articles in the Russian press, granted numerous interviews to the media and participated in a plethora of round-table discussions.66 Like a number of statist Russian intellectuals, Dugin suspected (and clearly hoped) that the United States would come a cropper in the conflict.  Dugin and his close ally, leading spinmeister Gleb Pavlovskii, one website, Stringer-news.ru, noted acidly in mid-April, had been engaged in “fomenting anti-American sentiments in Russian society” and in maintaining that “Russia was close to the Arab world and would fuse with it in ecstasy,” when “suddenly it was made clear that it [their position] had been a mistake!  A terrible unforgivable mistake! The vengeful Americans had already placed Russia on the black list of their opponents or of their unreliable partners.”67   Left in an even more exposed position than Dugin was his close political ally, Talgat Tadzhuddin, who “on 3 April [2003] had declared a jihad against the U.S. in connection with the war in Iraq.”68

That Dugin had been intentionally fomenting violent anti-Americanism could scarcely be doubted.  “I believe,” he asserted in mid-May of 2003, “that the chief enemies of Russia are the two Bushes—both Bush senior and junior—plus Bill Clinton.  And also certain advisors of the Russian president…who are adherents of a pro-American course.”69 “Bush today is a new Hitler,” he trumpeted in late May.70   Despite a widespread perception that he had overreached politically, Dugin nonetheless continued to enjoy fairly extensive access to the Russian media.

Dugin’s “Eurasia” Prepares for the December 2003 Duma Elections

At the end of February 2003, Dugin had entered into negotiations with a leading Russian politician, Duma deputy Sergei Glaz’ev, concerning the possible creation of a “left patriotic” coalition that would link “Eurasia” and Glaz’ev’s “Party of the Russian Regions.” Glaz’ev was a leading economist of quasi-socialist inclinations and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  On 1 March 2003, Glaz’ev participated as a guest in a meeting of Dugin’s party held at the Presidential Hotel in Moscow; on 19 May, Dugin, in turn, attended a conference hosted by Glaz’ev.71

 

On 24 July 2003, at the Hotel Rossiya in central Moscow, a closed meeting was held of the Political Council of “Eurasia.” At this meeting, it was resolved to support the creation of a “left- patriotic bloc” with Glaz’ev and his party. “According to the unanimous opinion of the participants of the enlarged political council,” a report concerning the meeting observed, “S. Glaz’ev is at the present moment the optimal political figure for the consolidation of the broadest spectrum of left patriotic forces.”72 In a statement appearing on a web-site affiliated with Glaz’ev’s organization, Dugin was quoted as maintaining: “The bloc of Glaz’ev today has the best chance of all the new forces seeking to participate in the elections. It has all chances not only to break the 5% barrier but to gain much more than that.”73

While Dugin asserted that the new bloc would be a “protest” one that was “oppositional” in orientation, he was (and not for the first time) being misleading.  As a number of political commentators pointed out, the new coalition—which aspired to involve other parties as well-- was being brought to life through the intensive efforts of Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, a close ally of Aleksandr Voloshin.  The aim behind the creation of the new bloc was patently to have it take votes away from Gennadii Zyuganov’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).  Indeed in late April of 2003, Dugin had participated in a conference organized by Kremlin “political technologists” in which the creation

of a “KPRF-2” had been openly discussed.74 On 11 August 2003, Zyganov charged bitterly: “Sergei Glaz’ev is being pushed by the Presidential Administration headed by Aleksandr Voloshin and Vladislav Surkov into the creation of a left patriotic bloc.”75

 

By late July of 2003, discussions were being held concerning precisely which three Russian politicians should head the so-called troika on the “party list” of the new bloc as it began to prepare to contest the Duma elections.  Dugin appears to have entertained hopes that he might be able to capture the No. 3 slot in the troika, following Glaz’ev and, perhaps, Dmitrii Rogozin, the well-known chair of the State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs.76 On 6 August 2003, it was reported, however, that Vladislav Surkov of the Presidential Administration had confirmed soon-to-retire Colonel General Georgii Shpak, the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, for the No. 3 spot.77   The situation remained volatile and extremely fluid, however, and there remained at least a distant chance that Dugin might be able to break into the coalition’s election troika.78   That the Kremlin would even contemplate assisting the placing of a figure such as Dugin on the troika of an electoral bloc having what some commentators saw as a realistic prospect of breaking the 5% barrier constituted grounds for concern.

Notes

1 The author would like most warmly to thank Robert Otto for his generous and extremely helpful bibliographical assistance.  Thanks are also due to Glen Howard for bringing several useful bibliographical items to my attention, and to my research assistants, Joyce Cerwin and Yuliya Shmeleva, for their fine work.

2 Francoise Thom, “Eurasiansm:  A New Russian Foreign Policy?” Uncaptive Minds, vol. 7, no. 2 (1994), p. 76.

3 Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki:  Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow:  Arktogeya, 1997), 600 pp. The book was republished without change by Dugin in 1999, together with lengthy supplemental materials – of no great significance – appended under the title “Myslit’ prostranstvom”:  Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii;  Myslit’ prostranstom (Moscow:  Arktogeya, 1999), 925 pp.  My references are to the 1997 edition.

 

 

 

4 Unless otherwise indicated, the biographical information on Dugin provided in this paper comes from Stephen

Shenfield, Russian Fascism:  Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (Armonk, NY:  M.E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 190-220.

5 See Nikita Kaledin, “Podpol’e vykhodit naruzhu,” Stringer-news.ru, 1 April 2003.  By contrast, Geidar Dzhemal’, who served as a kind of mentor for Dugin in the early-to-mid 1980’s, recently stated: “His [Dugin’s] father is a general in the KGB…” (In Konservator, egk.ru, 11 April 2003).  Given Dugin’s veneratin of the GRU in his early writings, it seems more likely that his father served in the GRU.

6 Charles Clover, “Will the Russian Bear Roar Again?” Financial Times (December 12, 2000).

7 Shenfield, Russian Fascism, p. 195.  For a representative sample of Dugin’s theoretical fascist writings, see the

750-page volume:  Aleksandr Dugin, Absolyutnaya rodina (Moscow:  Arktogeya, 1999).

8 Ibid., p. 192

9 On Prokhanov, see John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, second expanded edition

(Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 169-177.

10 Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Vladimir Pribylovskii, Natsional-patrioticheskie organizatsii v Rossii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Institut eksperimental’noi sotsiologii,’ 1996), p. 50.

11 Ibid., p. 51.

 

 

 

12 Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press,

1997), p. 395.

13 See “Rossiya, Germaniya i drugie,” Elementy, no. 1, 1992, pp. 22-25.

14 Shenfield, Russian Fascism, p. 198.

15 Clover, “Will the Russian Bear…”

16 Thom, “Eurasism…,” pp. 67-68.

17 Aleksandr Dugin, Konspiratologiya (Moscow:  Arktogeya, 1993), p. 115.

 

18 Verkhovskii and Pribylovskii, “Natsional-patrioticheskie organizatsii…,” p. 50.

19 Wayne Allensworth, The Russian Question:  Nationalism, Modernization and Post-Communist Russia (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 257.

20 Shenfield, Russian Fascism, p. 194.

21 Clover, “Will the Russian Bear…”

22 Shenfield, Russian Fascism, p. 199

 

23 “100 vedushchikh politkov Rossii v iyune,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 July 2001.

24 Shenfield, Russian Fascism, p. 197.

25 See “Stenogramma raboty uchreditel’nogo s’’ezda Obshcherossiiskogo Politicheskogo Obshchestvennogo

Dvizheniya ‘Evraziya,’ 21 aprelya 2001,” at http://eurasia.com.ru:8101/syezd.htm

26 See the introduction by Dugin to Nikolai Trubetskoi, Nasledie Chingizkhana (Moscow:  AGRAF, 1999), pp. 5-25

 

 

27 Aleksandr Dugin, “Evraziiskaya platforma,” Zavtra (January 21, 2000).

28 Aleksandr Dugin, “Zarya v sapogakh,” Zavtra (March 31, 2000).

29 Andrei Kolesnikov, “Posle podvodnoi lodki,” Izvestiya (August 29, 2000).

30 Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya vsegda oshchushchala sebya evroaziatskoi stranoi,” Strana.ru (November 13, 2000).

31 Posted on May 23, 2001 at: http://www.arctogaia.com/public/putin/htrr.

 

 

32 Yaroslava Zabello, “Evraziya – prevyshe vsego?” Transkaspiiskii proekt:  informatsiono-analaticheskii server

(June 13, 2001).

33 Pavel Polnyan, “Sibir’ otchenlyaetsya legko,” Moskovskii komsomolts v Krasnoyarske, no. 29 (July 18, 2001), at:

http://arctogaia.krasu.ru/eurasia/dugin_krsk12.shtrr

 

 

 

34 Grigorii Osterman, “Esli vakhkhabizm ne sdaetsya, ego ipravlyayut,” SMI.ru (June 28, 2001).

35 Aleksandr Maksimov, Orkhan Karabaagi, “Oni v svoikh korridorakh,” Obshchaya gazeta (May 31, 2001).

 

36 Latysheva, “Issledovateli…”

37 “Stenogramma…”

38 In Strana.ru (June 4, 2001).

39 Tadzhuddin was in fact recognized by a minority of the forty Muslim administrations in Russia but, on the other hand, he was able to boast of “not at all bad connections with the [Russian] special services,” with whom he had been cooperating since taking up his current post in 1980.  See Maksimov and Karabaagi, “Oni v svoikh korridorakh.”  It should be noted that, on June 19, 2001, a rival organization of “Eurasians,” headed by State Duma deputy Abdul-Vakhed Niyazov, held a founding congress for a new Eurasian Party of Russia (EPR).  Niyazov is an ethnic Russian (name:  Vadim Medvedev), who converted to Islam in 1996.  On July 26, 2001, the EPR, with branches in seventy regions of Russia, was registered by the Russian Ministry of Justice.  Dugin has assailed this

rival group as being witting tools of Saudi Arabia and of Wahhabism. On this rival Eurasian organization, see Novye izvestiiya (June 30, 2001) and (July 27, 2001);  Nezavisimaya gazeta (June 8, 2001) and (July 31, 2001);  SMI.ru (June 19, 2001);  Moskovskii komsomolets (August 3, 2001);  and NG-religii (August 8, 2001). For discussions of

the bitter feud between Dugin’s Eurasian organization and that of Niyazov, see Dmitrii Oreshkin, “Spor slavyan,” Moskovskie novosti (April 15, 2003), and Arkadii Veselov, “Vesennee obostrenie evraziistvom,” Nezavismaya gazeta, (May 21, 2003).  Two recent articles on Niyazov’s organization are: “Novaya sila novoi Rossii,” Rossiiskaya gazeta (July 24, 2003), and “Most v novuyu Rossiyu,” Nezavisimaya gazeta (July 29, 2003).

 

 

40 A. Dugin, “Interv’yu dlya ‘Ekho Moskvy-Krsnoyarsk’,” 25 iyulya 2001, posted at:

http://arctogaia.krasu.ru/eurasia/dugin_int_1.shtm.

41 See “Rossiya dolzhna uchest’ oshibki Ameriki,” Nezavisimaya gazeta (September 13, 2001).  For Dugin’s take on the September 11th events, see his “Lastochki Apokalipsa,” (September 12, 2001), at http://arctogaia.com/public/lastochki.html.

42 Evgenii Ikhlov, “Oni v svoikh korridorakh:  Dve storony novogo evraziistva,” Obshchaya gazeta (August 2,

2001).

43 Dmitrii Radyshevskii, “Soblazn evraziistva,” Moskovskie novosti, no. 18 (May 1-14, 2001).

 

 

 

44 For a useful survey of the twentieth century Western geopolitical literature, see Geoffrey Parker, Western Geopolitical Thought in the Twentieth Century (London:  Croom Helm, 1985).  Chapter five of Parker’s book is devoted to “German Geopolitik.”

45 Allensworth, The Russian Question, p. 249.

46 Ibid., p. 251

 

47 Here and subsequently, the page numbers given in parentheses refer to the 1997 edition of Dugin’s book.

48 All italics appearing within quotations are those of Dugin.49 In this connection, the following report is of interest.  During a visit to Moscow in May of 2001, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela “indicated that he and Putin share a vision of a world in which power must be more evenly distributed to offset the unipolar influence of the United States, and that his dream of a ‘Bolivaran Federation’ of Caribbean and Latin American nations fits into that scheme.”  Chavez made it clear that he and Putin “would work together to form a strategic alliance against [the] U.S.” (Petroleumworld (May 15, 2001).

 

 

 

50 Dugin, “Interv’yu dlya ‘Ekho Moskvy-Krasnoyarsk’.”

51 Andrei P. Tsygankov, “Hard Line Eurasianism and Russian Contemporary Geopolitical Perspectives,” East

European Quarterly (Fall 1998), pp. 323 and 329.

52 “Geopolitika. Evraziiskii milliard.”

 

53 See Krasnaya zvezda (September 22 and 26, 2001).

54 In Krasnaya zvezda (September 22, 2001).

55 In www.navigator.kz (23 October 2001).

 

 

56 From Dugin’s press conference held at the “Mir novostei” press center in Moscow on 5 October 2001; for the text of Dugin’s comments see: http://arctogaia.com/public/mirnov1.shtml .

57 In www.navigator.kz (October 23, 2001).

58 The polling results were posted by Dugin at www.arctogaia.com on November 26, 2001.

 

 

 

59 In Strana.ru  (January 17, 2002).

60 On the congress, see Eurasia.ru.com (May 13, 2002 and 31 May 31, 2002); APN.ru, (June 3, 2002); and

Interfax.ru,  (June 28, 2002).

 

61 See Eurasia.ru.com  (May 31, 2002).

62 APN.ru  (July 16, 2002).

63 Zvezda.ru (August 29, 2002).

64 Gazeta.ru (July 26, 2002).

65 “Zadacha Putina sozdat’ v Rossii stabil’nyi politicheskii rezhim,” Versiya (3 June 3, 2002).

 

 

66 For a sample, see Argumenty i fakty (April 2, 2003); Versiya, (April 7, 2003); Konservator, (April 11, 2003); Komsomol’skaya Pravda, (April 16, 2003); Izvestiya (April 24, 2003).67 “Rossiya snova sobiraetsya lyubit’ Ameriku do drozhi v kolenyakh!” Stringer-news.ru (April 11, 2003).

68 In www.religio.ru (April 16, 2003).

69 “Kto glavnyi vrag Rossii?” Komsomol’skaya Pravda (May 15, 2003), round-table discussion.

70 Carried by IMA-press in Moscow, (May 25, 2003).

71 On this, see Kreml.org, (July 24, 2003), and glazev.ru (August 4, 2003).72 See “Partiya ‘Evraziya’ voidet v blok Glaz’eva,”  Press-center@evrazia.org, (July 24, 2003).

73 In avtr.ru, (August 5, 2003).

74 Aleksandr Anokhin, “KPRF-2 budet osnovana na religii I levykh ideyakh,” Versiya (April 28, 2003).

75 “Glaz’ev postavil Zyuganovu ul’timatum,” Gazeta.ru (August 11, 2003).

 

 

76 Ol’ga Tropkina, “Glaz’ev snizoshel do Dugina,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, (July 28, 2003).

77 In newizv.ru (August 6, 2003).

78 On August 9, 2003, it was reported that Dugin had met that same day with Glaz’ev.  Dugin confirmed his readiness to support Glaz’ev in the formation of a new bloc and “to present a list of members of the [“Eurasia”] party who would appear on the federal and regional election lists of the bloc that was being formed.” (press- center@evrazia.org [August 9, 2003])