Russian Nationalism Today: The Views Of Alexander Dugin

Contemporary Review, July, 2001 by Dmitry Shlapentokh

Revolutionaries as Counter-Revolutionaries

In 1919 when Russia was in the midst of the Civil War, developments in the country in many ways followed the present day scenario. The only difference was that they were much more rapid and catastrophic. In February 1917, the Imperial Government had collapsed almost over night, with practically no resistance. In a similar way the Communist regime ended in 1991. In both of these cases, the events were celebrated as the beginning of a new era, an era of happiness and ideal democracy. After both events, it was believed that Russia would enter the family of Western democracy, and that success in all directions would follow. In the case of the February Revolution, it was believed that the Russian army would defeat the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in the First World War. It was also believed that the economic problems in the country would be fixed.

This same feeling was shared by the majority of those who witnessed the anti-Communist revolution and the collapse of the USSR that had followed the end of the communist regime. They dreamed that the new post-Communist Russia would enter a period of economic prosperity, and at the same time, the international standing of the new Russia could be upheld and Russia would be seen as an equal among the Western nations. All of these hopes were crushed soon enough. Both in 1917 and in 1991 the economy entered a speedy decline and the state disintegrated while the spread of crime and other asocial problems provided a great push toward anarchy. 1917 was different from 1991 in one perspective: this disintegration, the push for anarchy, was much stronger, and Russia had a civil war.

For quite a few historians, the reason why the Red Bolsheviks defeated their opponents, the Whites, was clear. The Whites represented the landlords and capitalists, the middle class which lost during the revolution most of its riches. While this was undoubtedly true for quite a few of the Whites, many others confronted the Bolsheviks for quite a different reason. Quite a few of them, especially the officers who represented the military elite, hated the Bolsheviks because they saw them as giving short shrift to the state. These Whites saw the Bolsheviks as the people who had incited the soldiers to desert, thus opening the road for advancing Germans. They also blamed the Bolsheviks for inciting the local separatism that had led to the disintegration of the Russian empire. It was not a concern for their material interests, but a desire to preserve Russia as united and indivisible, to restore the country to its previous glory, that pushed many of them to oppose the Bolsheviks, yet it was the Bolsheviks who won the Civil War and united Russia and actually fulfilled the dreams of Nationalistic-minded Whites.

At the same time it is the present day Communist-Nationalists, such as Zyuganov, who bemoan the lack of a mighty Russian state and dream of resurrecting the USSR, and paradoxically enough, play the role of the Whites of the Civil War. I thought over all of this when Dugin repeated, Salvation will not come from this side, not from the side of the opposition. 'Why'? I asked him.