Russian Nationalism Today: The Views Of Alexander Dugin

Contemporary Review, July, 2001 by Dmitry Shlapentokh

I looked at his eyes once again. No, he was not the man I had expected to see. He was not what I would call a true believer. I have not read many of his books, but I have read most of his articles in Zavtra. There are several pages in the newspaper, actually a newspaper within the paper, that publishes Dugin's work along with that of similar folk. Many of these articles, including those of Dugin, are written in a semi-mystical language that emphasizes that the Orthodox civilization of Russia/Eurasia will collide inevitably with the West. A grand explosion, presumably nuclear, will be the final outcome of this confrontation. In these articles Dugin's hatred of the West is so intense that he regards the flames of mutual self-destruction as a better alternative to that of existence of the West. According to these articles, one could assume that Dugin was a true believer, a fanatic of the cause who cannot think rationally and look at himself and his ideas from the outside. I know some people with this frame of m ind in Russia. One of them was Svetlana Semenova, the leading specialist on the extravagant Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov (d. 1903). Fedorov's ideas were bizarre, or at least they were out of tune with anything that Western philosophy had ever proposed. He believed that the goal of mankind is the physical resurrection of the dead. He thought that this would be possible when humanity would abandon such follies as sex, which, he believed, was an essential aspect of Western civilization. As soon as the West would forsake its sexual drive, focus on the love of its dead ancestors, and unite around Russia, the grand project of the resurrection of the dead could be started. Then humanity's resurrected and immortal ancestors could be resettled all over the universe.

Semenova and her extravagant husband, the philosopher Gachev, took Fedorov's project at its face value. Any critical statement or, God forbid, joke about the project, caused her intense pain. She is a good example of the sort of true believers who can still be found in Russia and who have discarded the practical implications of their goals.

And I expected Dugin to follow this line of thought and preach to me passionately about a grand, cataclysmic event, the nuclear confrontation of the West and Russia in a final Armageddon of self-destruction. I expected to find a possessed fanatic, yet this was not the case. He elaborated confidently and rationally on the reasons why a confrontation between Russia and the West was inevitable. Unexpectedly, he denounced Zavtra and the red-to-browns, with whom he supposedly should be in agreement.

He said: 'I agree with you that Communists and Zavtra have no future. Zavtra's calls for uprising are hysterical and pathetic. Who would listen to them? The Communists are also at a dead end', he added. 'There are two problems here. To start with, despite all of their screaming, they are no longer truly the opposition. They have become part of the establishment, and if they would win they would act practically in the same way as the present day regime. Nothing radical could be expected. And secondly, they are Moscow-centered and anti-Semites. Their plan is to resurrect the old Soviet or Russian tsarist empire, the highly centralized bureaucratic body with Russians as a dominant ethnic group. No one would follow them. Their plan is a road to failure'. Then Dugin used a phrase, a familiar quote, that was uttered exactly 80 years ago by an ex-White officer, who was discussing Russia's future on the eve of the Bolshevik victory. Salvation will not come from this side, not from the side of the opposition.