Aleksandr Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism: The New Right à la Russe

Abstract

Russian political thinker and, by his own words, geopolitician, Aleksandr Dugin, represents a comparatively new trend in the radical Russian nationalist thought. In the course of the 1990s, he introduced his own doctrine that was called Neo-Eurasianism. Despite the supposed reference to the interwar political movement of Eurasianists, Dugin's Neo-Eurasian nationalism was rooted in the political and cultural philosophy of the European New Right. Neo-Eurasianism is based on a quasi-geopolitical theory that juxtaposes the ‘Atlanticist New World Order’ (principally the US and the UK) against the Russia-oriented ‘New Eurasian Order’. According to Dugin, the ‘Atlanticist Order’ is a homogenizing force that dilutes national and cultural diversity that is a core value for Eurasia. Taken for granted, Eurasia is perceived to suffer from a ‘severe ethnic, biological and spiritual’ crisis and is to undergo an ‘organic cultural-ethnic process’ under the leadership of Russia that will secure the preservation of Eurasian nations and their cultural traditions. Neo-Eurasianism, sacralized by Dugin and his followers in the form of a political religion, provides a clear break from narrow nationalism toward the New Right ethopluralist model. Many Neo-Eurasian themes find a broad response among Russian high-ranking politicians, philosophers, scores of university students, as well as numerous avant-garde artists and musicians. Already by the end of the 1990s, Neo-Eurasianism took on a respectable, academic guise and was drawn in to ‘scientifically’ support some anti-American and anti-British rhetoric of the Russian government.