Aleksandr Dugin

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin

File:Дугин. А.Л.jpg
Born	(1962-01-07) 7 January 1962 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Era	contemporary
Region	Russia
Main interests	Sociology, geopolitics, philosophy
Institutions	Moscow State University
Notable ideas	Neo-Eurasianism
Influenced by Julius Evola
Website	www.arcto.ru

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ге́льевич Ду́гин, born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political scientist, traditionalist, and one of the most popular ideologists of the creation of a Eurasian empire that would be against the "North Atlantic interests". He is known for his proximity to fascism, and had close ties to the Kremlin and Russian military. Dugin serves as an adviser to State Duma speaker (and key member of the ruling United Russia party) Sergei Naryshkin.

Head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations of Moscow State University. Director of the Center for Conservative Studies at the Faculty of Sociology MSU.

Dugin was the leading organizer of the National Bolshevik Party, National Bolshevik Front, and Eurasia Party. His political activities are directed toward restoration of the Russian Empire through partitioning of the former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Ukraine, and unification with Russian-speaking territories, especially Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. He is known for the book Foundations of Geopolitics.

Early life and education

Dugin was born in Moscow, into a family of a colonel-general of the Soviet military intelligence and candidate of law Gelij Alexandrovich Dugin and his wife Galina, a doctor and candidate of medicine. In 1979 he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute.

Early career and political views

See also: Foundations of Geopolitics

Dugin worked as a journalist before becoming involved in politics just before the fall of communism. In 1988 he and his friend Geydar Dzhemal joined the nationalist group Pamyat. He helped to write the political program for the newly refounded Communist Party of the Russian Federation under the leadership of Gennady Zyuganov.

In his 1997 article “Fascism – Borderless and Red”, Dugin exclaimed the arrival 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." "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.

Dugin soon began publishing his own journal entitled Elementy which initially began by praising Franco-Belgian Jean-François Thiriart, supporter of a Europe "from Dublin to Vladivostok." Consistently glorifying both Tsarist and Stalinist Russia, Elementy also revealed Dugin's admiration for Julius Evola. Dugin also collaborated with the weekly journal Den (The Day), a bastion of Russian anti-Cosmopolitanism previously directed by Alexander Prokhanov.

Dugin was amongst the earliest members of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and convinced Eduard Limonov to enter the political arena in 1994. A part of hard-line nationalist NBP members, supported by Dugin, split off to form the more right-wing, anti-liberal, anti-left, anti-Kasparov aggressive nationalist organization, National Bolshevik Front. After breaking with Limonov, he became close to Yevgeny Primakov and later to Vladimir Putin's circle.

Formation of the Eurasia Movement

The Eurasia Party, later Eurasia Movement, was officially recognized by the Ministry of Justice on May 31, 2001. The Eurasia Party claims support by some military circles and by leaders of the Orthodox Christian faith in Russia, and the party hopes to play a key role in attempts to resolve the Chechen problem, with the objective of setting the stage for Dugin's dream of a Russian strategic alliance with European and Middle Eastern states, primarily Iran. Dugin's ideas, particularly those on "a Turkic-Slavic alliance in the Eurasian sphere" have recently become popular 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). Dugin also advocates for a Russo-Arab alliance.

“	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 Basics of Geopolitics (1997)

He has criticized the "Euro-Atlantic" involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election as a scheme to create a "cordon sanitaire" around Russia, much like the French and British attempt post-World War I.

Dugin has criticized Putin for the "loss" of Ukraine, and accused his Eurasianism of being "empty." In 2005 he announced the creation of an anti-Orange youth front to fight similar threats to Russia. The Eurasian Youth Union created and sponsored by Dugin was accused of vandalism and extremist activities. The organization was banned in Ukraine by the courts and Alexander Dugin was declared persona non grata due to his anti-Ukrainian activities. He was deported back to Russia when he arrived at Simferopol International Airport in June 2007.

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." Afterwards he said Russia should "not stop at liberating South Ossetia but should move further," and "we have to do something similar in Ukraine."

In March 2014 Dugin envisioned a “Russian spring”, in which Europe would drift away from the US and close ranks with Russia who then would use its new power to help other countries around the world to “break loose of American hegemony”.

Dugin's works

• The United States and the New World Order (debate with Olavo de Carvalho), VIDE Editorial (2012)
• Pop-kultura i znaki vremeni, Amphora (2005)
• Absoliutnaia rodina, Arktogeia-tsentr (1999)
• Tampliery proletariata: natsional-bol'shevizm i initsiatsiia, Arktogeia (1997)
• Osnovy geopolitiki: geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii, Arktogeia (1997)
• Metafizika blagoi vesti: Pravoslavnyi ezoterizm, Arktogeia (1996)
• Misterii Evrazii, Arktogeia (1996)
• Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, Arktogeia (1994)
• Conspirology (in Russian)

See also

• Eurasianism
• Intermediate Region
• Eurasian Youth Union
• Foundations of Geopolitics
• Dimitri Kitsikis

External links

• Eurasianism & the Political Evolution to the Fourth Political Theory (Google You tube) (video).
• Biography, Evrazia.
• International Eurasianist Movement, Evrazia (several languages).
• Arctogaia (in English) (in German) (in Italian).
• Eurasia Movement, Yahoo Geo cities, archived from the original on 2009-10-25.
• Liverant, Yigal (Winter 2009), "The Prophet of the New Russian Empire", Azure.
• Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? (PDF), Wilson Center.
• Eurasia, rivista di studi geopolitici (in Italian)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link).
• http://eurasia.com.ru/english.html
• Will the Russian bear roar again?
• The Fourth Political Theory, SU.