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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKRECOReligion Compass1749-81711749-8171© 2009 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd15810.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.xApril 200900697???716???Original ArticleAleksandr Dugin’s Neo-EurasianismAnton Shekhovtsov
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism: The New
Right à la Russe1
Anton Shekhovtsov*
Sevastopol National Technical University
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 spir-
itual’ 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.
All animals are equal.
But some animals are more equal than others.2
Introduction
In August 2008 Russian troops intervened in the armed conflict between
Georgia and the separatist self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia, and
Russian society found itself increasingly affected by the almost Soviet-like
propaganda espoused by the right-wing newsmakers backed by the state.
A quasi-religious mantra, ‘Tanks to Tbilisi’, was introduced into the Russian
mass media by Aleksandr Dugin, Doctor of Political Science and a leader
698 Anton Shekhovtsov
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
of the International Eurasian Movement, and widely publicised by radio,
TV and press. ‘“Tanks to Tbilisi!” – this is a voice of our national history’.3
‘Those, who do not second the “Tanks to Tbilisi!”, are not Russians. [. . .]
“Tanks to Tbilisi!” – that’s what should be written on every Russian’s
forehead’ (Figure 1).4 It was Dugin who first referred to the Georgian
military’s actions ‘against’ South Ossetians as ‘genocide’, long before this
became the Russian government’s official line of reasoning.5 A month
after the tragic events in both South Ossetia and ‘core Georgia’,6 a Financial
Times article correctly asserted that ‘against the backdrop of conflict in
Georgia and deteriorating relations with the west, Russia’s ultra-nationalist
thinkers [were] starting to exert unprecedented influence’.7 However,
reducing Dugin’s doctrine, Neo-Eurasianism, to Russian ultranationalism as
advanced by other right-wingers mentioned in the Financial Times piece,
would be a simplification. As we shall argue in this article, Dugin’s
Neo-Eurasianism implies a very specific type of nationalism, namely the
nationalism of the New Right, and can itself be considered a Russian version
of the broad pan-European movement called the European New Right.
Ideas Matter
The notion of the New Right is doubtlessly one of the most ambiguous
terms in contemporary social and political sciences. Predominantly limited
to the Europeanised world, the New Right has at least two major national
or, rather, cross-national manifestations. The first references to this concept
can be found in The New American Right8 and The Radical Right,9 1955 and
1963, respectively. These two edited volumes by contemporary US sociologists’
and historians’ essays focused on the conservative political movement and
Fig. 1. Dr. Aleksandr Dugin with a Kalashnikov in front of a tank of the South Ossetian
insurgent army. June 2008, South Ossetia.
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 699
considered the New Right ‘as mainly the right-wing radicals of McCa-
rthyism and of Midwest neo-populist Republicanism’.10 The notion soon
received a wider interpretation in the US academic world and was extended
so as to cover the Heritage Foundation, a political think tank founded by
the recently deceased Paul Weyrich; the Moral Majority, a Christian
political movement that counted Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
among its most prominent members; and also US President Ronald Reagan’s
social and economic policies. In fact, it was generally a combination of
socially conservative and economically liberal policies that was ascribed to
the US New Right, and, thus defined, the notion crossed the Atlantic
ocean to identify UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies.11
Another major manifestation of the New Right – the one we will focus
on in this article – is associated with the originally French, though
subsequently cross-national network of think tanks, journals, and conferences,
labeled the ‘Nouvelle Droite’ in 1979.12 The entity itself surfaced in 1968
– on the eve of the May uprisings – with the creation of the principal
French New Right think tank Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la
civilisation européenne (GRECE, Group for Research and Studies on
European Civilisation) founded by journalists, writers, university professors,
and other intellectuals, of whom Alain de Benoist, Pierre Vial, and
Jean-Claude Valla were most prominent. In the course of the 1970s the
Nouvelle Droite school13 evolved, its relationships with foreign right-wing
intellectuals extended, and by the end of the decade – with the formation
of the German Neue Rechte (1972),14 Italian Nuova Destra (1974),15 and
Belgian Nieuw Recht (1979)16 – one could already speak of the European
New Right (ENR)17 as a distinctive metapolitical cross-national network.
Its international nature was further enforced in the course of the 1980–
1990s when the New Right ‘nodes’ appeared in the UK (Michael
Walker’s journal The Scorpion and later the New Right group led by Troy
Southgate and Jonothon Boulter), Spain (José Javier Esparza’s journal
Hespérides), Romania (Bogdan Radulescu’s journal Maiastra), and some
other European countries.18
Despite the fact that all of the ‘nodes’ that make up the broad ENR
network are self-sufficient and have individual doctrines, they share
common ideological origins19 and are characterised by the same set of
distinctive features, which allows the scholars to assign these ‘nodes’ to a
common school of thought that contrasts with the neoconservative
Anglo-American manifestations of the New Right. The first feature is
that the ENR is inherently opposed to individualism, multiculturalism,
and egalitarianism. According to the ENR thinkers, these liberal democratic
policies are the causes for the alleged contemporary crisis of the Europeanised
world. Instead of them, the ENR longs to revive and revitalise Europe
by implementing the principles of a hierarchically structured organic
community and ethno-pluralism in a new post-liberal order. The second
feature is the ENR’s extensive adoption of the late Italian communist
700 Anton Shekhovtsov
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Antonio Gramsci’s doctrine on cultural hegemony.20 This doctrine is
based on the concept that a revolution can only be successful if based on
the cultural domination over a given society by implanting certain
ideological messages through newspapers, conferences, and higher educa-
tion. The ENR’s ‘right-wing Gramscism’ – together with the adoption
of specific New Left ideas, especially its sophisticated anti-capitalist
rhetoric, as well as regionalist and ecological stances – has certainly been
a novel strategic move to veil its fascist agenda in post-war Europe.21 Having
abandoned both the milieu of immediate revolutionary, but extremely
marginal fascist groups, and the sphere of parliamentary contestation, to
which radical right-wing populist parties adhere, the ENR preferred to
‘focus on the battle for minds’,22 thus choosing the way of ‘metapolitical
fascism’. The fascist nature of the ENR, however, is disputed by some
scholars who argue that the ENR thinkers have moved beyond fascism
and the older revolutionary right-wing project toward ‘a unique post-modern
ideological synthesis’.23
Aleksandr Dugin’s ‘Historico-philosophical centre EON (Aeon)’,
established in 1988 and transformed into ‘Historico-Religious Association
Arktogeia (Northern land)’ in 1991, became a Russian ‘node’ of the broad
ENR network. (The late Graham Smith referred to ‘the Eurasianist New
Right’.24) In 1991, Dugin launched his first journal, Milyi Angel (Sweet
angel) that featured an essay by the Italian New Rightist Claudio Mutti,
interviews with the ENR authors Philippe Baillet and Jean-Pierre Laurant,
as well as articles on and by René Guénon and Julius Evola, who are
considered important sources of inspiration for the ENR. In 1992, Dugin
launched another journal Elementy (Elements), the title of which directly
referred to the ENR publications, namely French Éléments,25 Italian
Elementi, and German Elemente. Published between 1992 and 1998, each
of the nine issues of Elementy featured articles of the thinkers or intellectuals
closely associated with this metapolitical network. Also in 1992, two
GRECE’s major authors, Alain de Benoist and Robert Steuckers, visited
Moscow on Dugin’s invitation to take part in a panel discussion at the
office of the right-wing Soviet-nostalgic newspaper Den’ (Day), for which
Dugin worked as a journalist. The discussion was also attended by the
Den’s editor-in-chief Aleksandr Prokhanov and the leader of Russian
communists Gennadiy Zyuganov. The early 1990s were the epoch of the
so-called ‘red-brown alliance’ characterised by a practical integration of
the Russian radical right and radical left. Thus, it was only natural for the
Russian communists (or rather national-communists) to take heightened
interest in the ideas of the ENR that used to exploit the left-wing critique
of capitalism and bourgeois liberalism. De Benoist was disappointed with
his visit to Moscow as, in his own words, he was ‘disturbed by the crude
imperialism and Jacobinism of the vast majority of the so-called “patriots”’,
some of whom ‘thought about nothing but the restoration of the old
Russian domination over Eastern and even Central European countries’.26
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 701
The disappointment resulted in the rupture of relations with Dugin, who
nonetheless continued to list GRECE as a ‘Eurasian’ mission to France.
In 2005, Dugin was invited to participate at an inaugural meeting of
the British New Right group organised by Troy Southgate, a former
British National Front activist and currently a self-confessed New Rightist.27
Later that year, in Antwerp and Brussels, Dugin participated in two
conferences organised by the journal TeKoS, closely associated with
Synergies Européennes (Figure 2). During his 2005 trip to Europe, Dugin
met and interviewed another ENR thinker, Jean Parvulesco and de
Benoist, thus apparently overcoming the 12-year rupture between him and
the latter. The interviews were partially shown in one of the episodes of
Dugin’s TV-show Vekhi (Landmarks), anchored at the Russian Orthodox
channel Spas (the title of the Christian Orthodox festivals). The episode
was dedicated to the issue of national identity in Europe, and Dugin addressed
the issue exclusively to the ENR thinkers, presented to the audience as
the ‘European intellectual and political elite’, while de Benoist was
described as a ‘prominent European intellectual’ and a ‘leader of the New
Right that unites the best minds of all European states’.28 In September
2008, Aleksandr Dugin – now a Professor in Sociology at Moscow State
University (MSU), a distinguished academic institution in Russia – established
the Centre for Conservative Research (CCR) at the MSU’s Faculty of
Sociology. As early as November 2008 de Benoist, the first guest speaker
at the CCR, delivered a lecture to MSU students and academic staff.
Penetrating the educational sectors is of great importance in the context
Fig. 2. Aleksandr Dugin makes his speech at the Te Ko S colloquium ‘Welk Europa morgen?’
[What Europe tomorrow?]. The red symbol is an official emblem of both GRECE and TeK oS .
November 11, 2005, Antwerp, Belgium.
702 Anton Shekhovtsov
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of the ENR’s ‘battle for minds’ metapolitical strategy, as the universities,
institutes, and colleges give specific opportunities to the ENR, so they can
exert direct influence upon those who will be forming public opinion and
govern countries in future.
The doctrine of Neo-Eurasianism29 propagated by Dugin, as well as his
‘path from a marginal extremist to an ideologue of the post-Soviet academic
and political elite’ – to cite the title of one of the articles30 – is well
researched,31 while the fascist nature of Dugin’s ideology is widely discussed.32
This study, however, focuses on a subject that is rarely subjected to
thorough analysis, namely the phenomenon of the New Right version of
ultranationalism that constitutes – together with the concept of the socio-
political rebirth of the ‘cultural-ethnic community’33 – a compound core
of Neo-Eurasianism. Methodologically, the study is based on the approach
elaborated by Roger Griffin who defines generic fascism as follows:
A revolutionary species of political modernism [. . .] whose mission is to combat
the allegedly degenerative forces of contemporary history (decadence) by
bringing about an alternative modernity and temporality (a ‘new order’ and a
‘new era’) based on the rebirth, or palingenesis, of the nation.34
This approach advances the conceptual framework of a certain ‘new
consensus’ in fascist studies35 and allows it to transcend the boundaries
of the research field by considering fascism, modernism, and political
religions. It is also important that the approach is applicable both to the
interwar and post-war epochs: As Griffin’s concept of generic fascism is
developed on the middle, theoretical, rung of the ladder of the abstraction,36
it is possible to go down the ladder to the lowest, empirical, rung to
analyze appropriate time- or country-specific ideological features of a
movement, party or network.
From the Right to Difference to Ethno-cultural Ghettos
It is seemingly difficult to apply the concept of a nation to the ENR, as the
thinkers associated with this network certify (or glorify?) the irrevocable
death of a nation-state. As de Benoist assumes, ‘[t]he idea of the nation-state,
which reigned in Europe from the Peace of Westphalia until the first half
of the 20th century, is today reaching its end’.37 However, it is possible to
surmount this conceptual contradiction in this study as Griffin’s approach
implies an organic conception of the nation that is not necessarily equated
with the nation-state or its existing boundaries, and which is indebted
to modern notion of the sovereignty of the ‘people’ as a discrete supra-
individual historical entity and actor.38
By repudiating the ‘modernist’ idea of the nation-state, or a political
union of the nation-states (i.e., the European Union), the ENR thinkers
propose a seemingly ‘post-modernist’ concept of ‘a decentralized federation
of organic, ethno-cultural identities that portray the deep “historical”
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 703
spirit of cultural Europe’.39 The concept itself is a result of the ultimately
modernist, or rather alternative modernist, re-synthesis of the older notion
of organic nationalism that holds that ‘nations and their characters are
organisms that can be easily ascertained by their cultural differentiae’ and
‘that the members of nations may, and frequently have, lost their national
self-consciousness along with their independence’, while ‘the duty of
nationalists is to restore that self-consciousness and independence to the
“reawakened” organic nation’.40 The re-synthesised nature of the ENR’s
concept of an organic nation incorporates the New Left’s ideas of political
regionalism, thus shifting the emphasis from an organic nation to a federation
of organic nations, or mythologized ‘ethnie[s] as homogeneous historical
or ethnic communit[ies]’.41
Dugin fully agrees with the ENR concept of organic nations, and
defines the ‘etnos’ (Russian word for the ‘ethnie’) as an ‘immediate identity
of an individual of the traditional society, from which he [sic!] draws
everything – language, customs, psychological and cultural attitudes, life
programme, and system of age-related and social identifications’.42 Thus,
according to Dugin, the etnosy are ‘principal values and subjects of human
history’, which ‘live in reconciliation with natural organic cycles, wave-like
mutation, etc.’.43
As Dugin believes the nature of an ethnic community to be superior
to, and deeper than, that of a state, Neo-Eurasianism refutes the idea of a
modern nation-state, even the Russian one, and promotes the concept of
a ‘Eurasian empire’ built on the principles of ‘Eurasian federalism’.
According to the concept, all the political units of this ‘empire’ should be
established in accordance with cultural, historical, and ethnic identifications
rather than simple administrative division.44
In the 1980s the ENR, especially the Nouvelle Droite, took a ‘cultural
turn’ and its thinkers began highlighting the cultural essence of an ethnie.
The ‘turn’ allowed them to distance themselves from a biological conception
of ethnicity by using the notion of a culture as a euphemism for an ethnie.
World cultures or cultural identities, seen as ‘historic’, ‘rooted’, ‘authentic’,
or ‘traditional’, became the most important and valuable entities for the
ENR. Yet as sovereign peoples may be deprived of their culture, there is
a need to preserve and protect cultural authenticity by any means. It is
significant to note that the contemporary ENR perceive their own ethnic
community, or rather a European national community and culture, as
suffering a decadent phase that should be surmounted by reviving,
reinvigorating, and restoring the spiritual substance of the community.
Therefore, this way of ‘preserving’ the cultural authenticity is hardly related
to conservative thinking as the European community should be rejuvenated
to create history rather than be kept as a historical museum piece.
The Neo-Eurasianist doctrine does not stress culture and cultural identity
as prominently as the ideological constructs of its French counterparts.
Dugin does speak of cultural authenticity but, in his view, culture is
704 Anton Shekhovtsov
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only one – even if very important – of the manifestations of an ethnic
community, an ethnie. This peculiarity of Neo-Eurasianism is rooted in
Dugin’s adoption of the Soviet ethnologist and anthropologist Lev Gumilev’s
theory of ethnogenesis.45 Since the 1970s, Gumilev’s pseudoscientific ‘research’
on ethnic communities became increasingly influential in the academic
circles of the Soviet Union. He virtually legitimised the racist discourse
within allegedly internationalist Soviet science. According to Gumilev’s
theory of ethnogenesis, etnos is a biologised organic community – with its
life-energy determined by the forces from outer space – subject to certain
irresistible laws of historical development, as it passes the stages of the rise,
climax, and convolution. Dugin unequivocally perceives his own, Russian,
ethnic community as in the state of decline. He believes the Russian nation
is going through a phase of dilapidation stemming from its alienation from its
mystical essence. In his judgement, the improvement of the Russian people’s
severe ‘condition in the ethnic, biological and spiritual sense’ means
appealing to a Russian nationalism defined in cultural ethnic terms.46
If the cultural (and therefore ethnic) identity is seen by the ENR as
the most important and valuable entity, then it is logical to assume that
the ENR’s principal enemy is a force perceived as being opposed to the
preservation and rejuvenation of world’s unique national communities.
Thus, the radical rejection of multiculturalism (the liberal project) and
internationalism (the socialist/communist project) are inherent to the
ultranationalist core of the ENR’s world-view. The movement’s ideologists
believe that ‘homogenizing’ and ‘assimilationist’ practices (first of all,
miscegenation) associated with these concepts dilute the differences
between cultures and turn them into one universal culture. Multiculturalism
and internationalism do not remain abstract in the ENR’s world-view: if
the relevance of the USSR-promoted internationalism (at least officially)
dramatically decreased after the fall of the Soviet Empire, multiculturalism
is still embodied by the “Great Melting Pot” of the US. The Anglo-
American world in general is viewed as synonymous with materialist
decadence, with a world where ‘cultural diversity, human solidarity, and
spirituality are obliterated in the march towards Americanization and the
final victory of the homo oeconomicus’.47
At this point Neo-Eurasianist doctrine completely concurs with the
ENR’s world-view. Dugin sees today’s globalisation as a process, in which
the Western (first of all, Anglo-Saxon, American) cultural approaches
become universal, while different socio-political, ethnic, religious, and
cultural aspects are often violently or artificially reduced to a single
pattern.48 Within the terms of Neo-Eurasianism, the globalisation and
universalism of the Western liberal model led to the decomposition of
ethnic communities into autonomous individuals – the process that in
turn leads to total mixing of races and peoples, as well as a birth of a new
cosmopolitan human. The American multicultural society is hence
understood as a purposeful blurring of ethno-cultural differences:
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 705
The levelling of economic and political models on a planetary scale assumes
the establishment of a single cultural stereotype. It is reasonable to suggest that
the modelling of this stereotype shall be done by those forces and poles, which
come to be sponsors and guardians of the whole globalisation process. The
American way of life, clichés of Americanized ersatz culture transmitted via
global media shall supplant local cultural projects, adjusting the historically
established diversity to one-dimensional preset patterns.49
In his most important book, Osnovy geopolitiki [Foundations of geopolitics],
Dugin – ‘a sort of mouthpiece and ideologue’ of ‘the demonization of
Western values’50 – has geopolitically grounded Neo-Eurasianist aversion
to the US and the Anglo-Saxon world in general. According to the
imperialist geopolitical theories to which he adheres,51 the planet is
roughly divided into three large spaces: the World Island (principally the
US and the UK), Eurasia (predominantly Central Europe, Russia, and
Asia), and the Rimland (the states between the World Island and Eurasia).
According to the Neo-Eurasianist doctrine, there is a perennial irresolvable
confrontation between the ‘Sea power’ associated with the US dominated
‘homogenizing New World Order’ and the ‘Land power’ of the
Russia-oriented ‘New Eurasian Order’ which resists globalisation and ethno-
cultural universalisation. In classic Manichean tradition, Dugin demonises
the US and the whole Atlanticist ‘World Island’ as a ‘reign of Antichrist’.52
The propagators of both a decentralised federal Europe (‘a Europe of a
hundred flags’53) and the Eurasian empire of ethno-cultural regions assume
the Third World states that allegedly embody the rooted traditional
communities to be their natural allies in a battle against the ‘homogenizing
New World Order’. According to de Benoist, the cultural ‘diversity is the
wealth of the world’,54 and the ENR promote the idea of anthropological
culturalism in their ‘struggle against the hegemony of certain standardising
imperialisms and against the elimination of minority or dominated
civilizations’.55 Here the ENR imitate – in a rather twisted way – the
democratic call for the right of all peoples and cultures to be different. As
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms, ‘all
peoples contribute to the diversity and richness of civilizations and
cultures, which constitute the common heritage of humankind’, while
‘recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves
different, and to be respected as such’.56 The ENR turn this right into an
imperative, so ‘exclusion is given a place of honour’.57 Now,
‘[t]he right to difference’ changed from being a means of defending oppressed
minorities and their ‘cultural rights’ into an instrument for legitimating the
most extreme appeals for the self-defence of a ‘threatened’ national (and/or
European) identity.58
As a result, the ENR tend to support cultural-ethnic pluralism of the
world rather than cultural pluralism (multiculturalism) of a given society
or community. The ENR demonstrate pro-Third World solidarity, but
706 Anton Shekhovtsov
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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
eventually the ENR’s respect for other indigenous cultural and/or national
communities is a way of legitimising European exclusionism and rejection
of miscegenation (for a graphic representation of this thesis see Figure 3).
This kind of legitimisation was required to maintain respectability as
the tragic developments of the twentieth century discredited biological
racism and it was ‘no longer possible to speak publicly of perceived
difference through the language of the “old racism” ’.59 Therefore, the
ENR claim the insurmountable difference not in biological or ethnic
terms but rather in terms of culture, while – in a politically correct
manner – rejecting the idea of the hierarchy of cultures. However, the
main thrust of the ENR is of European identity, and their ideal is ‘a
federal Europe’ made up of ‘homogeneous ethnic-cultural communities’.60
As the name suggests, Neo-Eurasianism refers to Eurasia rather than
Europe. Dugin advances the idea of ‘positive ethnic pluralism’, a project
focused on keeping a positive or at least zero sum demographic balance to
prevent the disappearance of Eurasian ethnic communities. It is precisely
the idea of this project that explains the need for a politically divided
Eurasia to give way to a federal Eurasian empire led spiritually by the
Russian Federation. All political frontiers are expected to be abolished in
favor of new ‘natural, organic, ethnic borders’. Dugin asserts that these
borders do not imply the political domination of one ethnic community
over another, however, they inherently lead to the appearance of
ethno-cultural ghettos. In the terms of Neo-Eurasianism, this is called an
‘organic cultural-ethnic process’ intended to create individual ‘national
realities’ for the Russians, as well as for Tatars, Chechens, Armenians,
and the rest.62
Fig. 3. PC desktop wallpaper available for download at GRECE’s website.61 The image appar-
ently depicts a border between the federal ‘New Europe’ and the rest of the world.
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 707
Although he claims that Neo-Eurasianist ethnic differentialism excludes
mixophobia and sometimes ethnic mixing is an inevitable and positive
process,63 Dugin stresses that the Russian nation is in need of keeping its
ethnic identity and that there should be special legal regulations to secure
preservation of the Russian nation’s ethnic identity within the supranational
Eurasian empire.64 Apparently, these legal regulations are the ‘norms of
ethno-cultural hygiene’ that Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianist order is actively
promoting the introduction of.65 As Spektorowski insightfully remarked
with regard to the ENR in general, though equally relevant to the
Neo-Eurasianist doctrine specifically, the idea behind the New Rightist
federalism is ‘an exclusionary national-socialist Europe’, ‘the proper field
for the emergence of a new type of totalitarianism relying upon a
European version of the “politics of identity” ’.66
It is thus evident that Neo-Eurasianist interpretations of ‘the right of
all peoples to be different’ is not so much a means of defending the
ethnic-cultural peculiarities of Eurasian peoples, but rather ‘an instrument
for legitimating the most extreme appeals for the self-defence’ of a
Russian ethnic identity perceived to be in decline. This idea is perhaps
best and most laconically articulated by Dugin himself: ‘The will of any
people is sacred. The will of Russian people is sacred a hundredfold’.67 In
other words, though all animals are equal, some animals are indeed more
equal than others.
Conclusion
In this article, Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism is analyzed through the
perspective of the ultranationalism manifested by the European New
Right, a broad metapolitical network of think-tanks, journals, colloquiums,
and various cultural projects. As a well-known newsmaker and popular
political commentator, Dugin has a significant influence upon public
opinion in Russia and is pushing it in a right-wing direction. However,
the question of whether Dugin’s ideas have a direct influence on the
Russian authorities remains unanswered. We are inclined to agree with
Shlapentokh’s observation that
[i]t would be naïve to assume that Putin or any member of his inner circle
begins his day by reading Dugin’s most recent publication the way Soviet
officials of the past began their day by reading Pravda.68
Beyond any doubt, there are reasons to think otherwise. In 1999, Dugin
was appointed a special advisor to the contemporary Duma speaker
Gennadiy Seleznev who publicly suggested that Dugin’s geopolitical
doctrine be made a part of Russians school curriculum.69 From 1999 to
2003, Dugin was a leading figure in the Centre of Geopolitical Expertise
– the expert consultation board of national security established under
Seleznev. Most recently, the political commentator Ivan Demidov, who
708 Anton Shekhovtsov
© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.x
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once stated that it were high time to implement Dugin’s ideas70 was
appointed a Director of the Ideological Directorate of the Political
Department of Edinaya Rossiya’s (United Russia, the virtually monopolistic
political party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) Central Executive
Committee.71 This notwithstanding, there is no evidence that the Kremlin
follows the Neo-Eurasianist doctrine. However, to immediately influence
the Russian authorities per se is hardly its chief aim. Since the ENR’s
strategy is ‘a long-term project to win hearts and minds’,72 Neo-Eurasianists
stress – wholly in agreement with the ‘right-wing Gramscism’ – the
importance of developing radical right-wing culture within Russian
society, particularly, through higher education. As Capoccia argued,
‘democracy can be [. . .] “defended” by strategies with long-term goals,
such as those aiming at promoting a democratic culture through education,
or democratic propaganda’, most importantly ‘in the present context of
the “protection and promotion” of democracy in newly democratizing
states’.73 Apparently, the Russian New Right led by Aleksandr Dugin,
Professor of Sociology at Moscow State University, is perfectly aware of
the fact that fascism can be ‘defended’ the same way.
Short Biography
Anton Shekhovtsov finished Sevastopol National Technical University
(Sevastopol, Ukraine) in 2000 and acquired a Specialist degree in English
language and literature study. Currently he is a third-year PhD student in
Political Science at Sevastopol National Technical University. In his thesis
he analyzes new radical right-wing parties in Europe. His academic interests
include but are not limited to new radical right-wing parties in Europe,
the European New Right, varieties of interwar European fascism,
(re)sacralization of politics. He has authored papers in these areas for
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Politologychnyy visnyk, and Naukovyi
visnyk ‘Gileya’. He is also a co-author of a Russian-language book Radical
Russian Nationalism (Moscow 2009) that deals with the contemporary
Russian radical right-wing parties, organisations, and groupuscules.
Notes
*Correspondence address: Anton Shekhovtsov, Philosophy and Social Sciences, Sevastopol
National Technical University, Studgorodok, Sevastopol, 99053, Ukraine. E-mail: anton.
shekhovtsov@gmail.com
1 This article is based on a paper presented at the interdisciplinary postgraduate conference ‘The
Russian National Idea’, held on June 6–7, 2008, in St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford,
Oxford, UK. My thanks go to the conference conveners Victoria Donovan and Robert Harris.
I am also grateful to Tudor Georgescu who was very kind to do proof-reading. Any mistakes,
however, are solely my own.
2 George Orwell, Animal Farm (New York: Knopf, 1993), 88.
3 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘The End of Compromises – Tanks to Tbilisi!’, Evrazia.org, August 10, 2008
(http://evrazia.org/article.php?id=571#english).
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Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 709
4 ‘Tretya mirovaya nachalas’. Aleksandr Dugin prizyvaet srazhat’sya’, Russia.ru, August 9, 2008
(http://www.russia.ru/video/dugin3mir/).
5 See (or listen) ‘Osoboe mnenie s Aleksandrom Duginym’, Echo of Moscow, August 08, 2008
(http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/532383-echo/).
6 The ‘core Georgia’ term became widespread in August 2008 and meant Georgia without
South Ossetia and a second separatist province of Abkhazia.
7 Charles Clover, ‘Invasion’s ideologues: Ultra-nationalists Join the Russian Mainstream’, Finan-
cial Times, September 8, 2008 (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4e3712f4-7dc6-11dd-bdbd-
000077b07658.html). Besides Dugin, the article focuses on other Russian right-wingers like
Dmitriy Rogozin, Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, and Aleksandr Prokhanov.
8 Daniel Bell (ed.), The New American Right (New York: Criterion Books, 1955).
9 Daniel Bell (ed.), The Radical Right. The New American Right, Expanded and Updated (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1963).
10 Peter Viereck, ‘The Philosophical “New Conservatism” – 1962’, in Daniel Bell (ed.), The
Radical Right, 155.
11 On the American and British neoconservative New Right see Sara Diamond, Roads to
Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford
Press, 1995), especially Part II: ‘The Rise of the New Right, 1965–1979’, 109–202; Chip
Berlet, Matthew Nemiroff Lyons, ‘From Old Right to New Right: Godless Communism, Civil
Rights, and Secular Humanism’, in Chip Berlet, Matthew Nemiroff Lyons, Right-Wing Populism
in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 199–227; Jonathan Martin
Kolkey, The New Right, 1960–1968: With Epilogue, 1969–1980 (Lanham, New York and
London: University Press of America, 1983); Norman P. Barry, The New Right (London and
New York: Croom Helm, 1987); Desmond S. King, The New Right: Politics, Markets and
Citizenship (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1987); Mark Hayes, The New Right in Britain:
An Introduction to Theory and Practice (London and Boulder: Pluto Press, 1994).
12 Le Figaro Magazine founder and GRECE member Louis Pauwels referred to the ‘nouvelle
droite’ in his France Soir article on March 29, 1979, so as to contrast this trend to the ‘bourgeois,
conservative, and reactionary right’. See Tamir Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone?
(Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), 84–85.
13 On the French Nouvelle Droite see Roger Griffin, ‘Between Metapolitics and Apoliteia: The
Nouvelle Droite’s Strategy for Conserving the Fascist Vision in the “Interregnum” ’, Modern &
Contemporary France 8/1 (2000): 35–53; idem, ‘Plus ça change! The Fascist Pedigree of the
Nouvelle Droite’, in Edward J. Arnold (ed.), The Development of the Radical Right in France: From
Boulanger to Le Pen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 217–252; Pierre-André Taguieff, Sur la
Nouvelle Droite: jalons d’une analyse critique (Paris: Descartes & Cie, 1994); idem, ‘The New
Cultural Racism in France’, Telos 83 (1990): 109–122; idem, ‘From Race to Culture: The New
Right’s View of European Identity’, Telo s 98–99 (1993–4): 99–125; Anne-Marie Duranton-
Crabol, Visages de la Nouvelle droite: Le GRECE et son histoire (Paris: Presses de la Fondation
nationale des sciences politiques, 1988).
14 This year Siegfried Pöhlmann, a Deputy Chairman of Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands
(NPD, National Democratic Party of Germany), founded the Aktion Neue Rechte (Action New
Right) after his failure to become a leader of NPD. See Rainer Benthin, Die Neue Rechte in
Deutschland und ihr Einfluß auf den politischen Diskurs der Gegenwart (Frankfurt am Main: Lang,
1996), 28. There’s regrettably little research on the Neue Rechte available in English. The first
point of reference is Roger Woods, Germany’s New Right as Culture and Politics (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). In German see, first and foremost, Armin Pfahl-
Tr au gh be r , Konservative Revolution und Neue Rechte: Rechtsextremistische Intellektuelle gegen den
demokratischen Verfassungsstaat (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1998); Benthin, Die Neue Rechte in
Deutschland; Wolfgang Gessenharter, Kippt die Republik? Die Neue Rechte und ihre Unterstützung
durch Politik und Medien (Munchen: Knaur, 1994). See also the web-site of Junge Freiheit (Young
freedom), an important newspaper of the Neue Rechte (http://www.junge-freiheit.de), and its
archive (http://www.jf-archiv.de).
15 Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone?, 145. On the Italian Nuova Destra see Franco
Ferraresi, Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996); Roger Griffin, ‘The Blend of Literary and Historical Fantasy in the
710 Anton Shekhovtsov
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Italian New Right’, Literature and History 11/1 (1985): 101–124; Marco Revelli, ‘La nuova
destra’, in Franco Ferraresi (ed.), La destra radicale: una ricerca (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1984), 119–
187; Piermario Bologna, Michele Calandri and Emma Mana (eds), Nuova destra e cultura
reazionaria negli anni ottanta (Cuneo: Istituto storico della Resistenza in Cuneo e provincia, 1983).
16 By 1993 the Belgian Nieuw Recht was mostly associated with Te KoS (from Dutch Te kste n ,
Kommentaren en Studies), a journal founded in 1979 by Luc Pauwels and published by Delta
Stichting (see http://delta-stichting.blogspot.com). Another major Belgian ‘node’ was enabled
in 1993, when Robert Steuckers left GRECE and founded his think tank Synergies Européennes
(European Synergies).
17 The pan-European phenomenon remains heavily under-researched. Before 2007, there were
only two monographs on the ENR available in English, see Tomislav Sunic, Against Democracy
and Equality: The European New Right (New York: Peter Lang, 1990) and Michael O’Meara,
New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Bloomington: 1stBooks, 2004),
but, ironically, both books were written by ENR adherents. For an unbiased, comprehensive
studyof the phenomenon see Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone? See also Roger Griffin,
‘Interregnum or Endgame? The Radical Right in the “Post-fascist” Era’, Journal of Political
Ideologies 5/2 (2000): 163–178; Alberto Spektorowski, ‘The New Right: Ethno-regionalism,
Ethno-pluralism and the Emergence of a Neo-fascist “Third Way”’, Journal of Political Ideologies
8/1 (2003): 111–130.
18 Concerned readers can check the links section at the GRECE’s web-site (http://www.grece-fr.net/
liens/_liens.php) to evaluate the broadness of the ENR network.
19 On the ideological origins of the ENR see Matthew Feldman, ‘Between Geist and Zeitgeist:
Martin Heidegger as Ideologue of “Metapolitical Fascism” ’, Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions 6/2 (2005): 175–198; Thomas Sheehan, ‘Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius
Evola and Alain de Benoist’, Social Research 48/1 (1981): 45–73; Richard Drake, ‘Julius Evola
and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy’, in Peter Merkl (ed.),
Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1986), 61–89; Pfahl-Traughber, Konservative Revolution und Neue Rechte.
20 On Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony see Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and
Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980); Kate A.F. Crehan, Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002).
21 On the fascist nature of the ENR see Griffin, ‘Between Metapolitics and Apoliteia’; idem,
‘Plus ça change!’; Richard Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism:
From Nietzsche to Postmodernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 256–277; James
G. Shields, The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen (London and New York:
Routledge, 2007), 143–157; Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from
Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists (London and New York:
Routledge, 1997), 210–216.
22 Roger Griffin, ‘Introduction’, in Cyprian Blamires and Paul Jackson (eds), Wor ld Fas cis m: A
Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 23.
23 Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone?, 134. For this scholarly position, besides
Bar-On’s research, see Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle Droite; Duranton-Crabol, Visages de la
Nouvelle droite.
24 Graham Smith, ‘The Masks of Proteus: Russia, Geopolitical Shift and the New Eurasianism’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24/4 (1999): 483.
25 The full title of the French journal is Éléments pour la civilisation européenne (Elements for
European civilisation), while the full title of the Russian journal is Elementy – evraziyskoe
obozrenie (Elements – Eurasian review).
26 ‘Three Interviews with Alan de Benoist’, Telos 98–99 (1993–1994): 209–210.
27 On Troy Southgate see Graham D. Macklin, ‘Co-opting the Counter Culture: Troy
Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction’, Patterns of Prejudice 39/3 (2005): 301–326.
Southgate is also an editor of the New Right journal Synthesis: Journal du Cercle de la Rose Noire
(Journal of the circle of the black rose) (www.rosenoire.org) and a prolific musician, whose
possibilities of propaganda thus surmount the materialist realm of books, journal articles and
discussions.
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Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 711
28 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Puteshestvie po intellektual’noy Evrope – poiski otvetov na zhiznennye
voprosy’, Evrazia.org, November 22, 2005 (http://www.evrazia.org/modules.php?name=
News&file=print&sid=2760). Concerned readers can also watch the episode (http://
large.evrazia.org/Veni_17.wmv). The description itself and de Benoist’s appearance at the
Christian Orthodox TV-channel were all the more surprising since he used to vehemently
attack ‘Judeo-Christianity’ and demand it to give way to pre-Christian European pagan beliefs.
29 Despite the name, Neo-Eurasianism has a limited relation to Eurasianism, the interwar
Russian émigré movement. On the historical brand of Eurasianism see Vladimir Makarov, ‘Pax
Rossica: The History of the Eurasianist Movement and the Fate of the Eurasianists’, Russian
Studies in Philosophy 47/1 (2008): 40–63; SLawomir Mazurek, ‘Russian Eurasianism – Historiosophy
and Ideology’, Studies in East European Thought 54/1–2 (2002): 105–123; Dmitry Shlapentokh,
‘Eurasianism – Past and Present’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30/2 (1997): 129–151.
30 Andreas Umland, ‘Formirovanie fashistskogo “neoevraziiskogo” intellektual’nogo dvizheniya
v Rossii: Put’ Aleksandra Dugina ot marginal’nogo ekstremista do ideologa postsovetskoi
akademicheskoi i politicheskoi elity, 1989–2001 gg.’, Ab Imperio 3 (2003): 289–204.
31 Andreas Umland, Post-Soviet ‘Uncivil Society’ and the Rise of Aleksandr Dugin: A Case Study of
the Extraparliamentary Radical Right in Contemporary Russia. Unpublished dissertation submitted
to the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Cambridge for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy, 2007; idem., ‘Der “Neoeurasismus” des Aleksandr Dugin. Zur Rolle
des integralen Traditionalismus und der Orthodoxie für die russische “Neue Rechte” ’, in M.
Jäger and J. Link (eds), Macht – Religion – Politik. Zur Renaissance religiöser Praktiken und Men-
talitäten (Edition DISS., Vol. 11) (Münster: Unrast, 2006), 141–157; idem, ‘Kulturhegemoniale
Strategien der russischen extremen Rechten’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 33/
4 (2004): 437–454; idem, ‘Formirovanie fashistskogo “neoevraziiskogo” intellektual’nogo
dvizheniya v Rossii’; Marlene Laruelle, Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European
Radical Right? Kennan Institute Occasional Paper, no. 294 (2006); Dmitry Shlapentokh, ‘Dugin
Eurasianism: A Window on the Minds of the Russian Elite or an Intellectual Ploy?’, Studies in
East European Thought 59/3 (2007): 215–236; Alexander Höllwerth, Das sakrale eurasische
Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin. Eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen russischen Rechtsextremismus
(Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 59) (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2007).
32 Anton Shekhovtsov, ‘The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth
in Aleksandr Dugin’s Worldview’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9/4 (2008): 491–
506; Andreas Umland, ‘Dugin kein Faschist? Eine Erwiderung an Professor A. James Gregor’,
‘Secondary Debate on Aleksandr Dugin’, in Roger Griffin, Werner Loh and Andreas Umland
(eds), Fascism Past and Present, West and East. An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the
Comparative Study of the Extreme Right (Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 35)
(Stuttgart/Hannover: ibidem, 2006), 459–499; Stephen Shenfield, ‘Dugin, Limonov, and the
National-Bolshevik Party’, in Stephen Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements
(Armonk: M.E. Sharp, 2001), 190–219; Markus Mathyl, ‘The National-Bolshevik Party and
Arctogaia: Two Neo-Fascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Political Space’, Patterns of Prejudice
36/3 (2002): 62–76; Alan Ingram, ‘Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet
Russia’, Political Geography 20/8 (2001): 1029–1051.
33 The issue of the rebirth, or palingenesis, of the ‘cultural-ethnic community’ in relation to
Dugin’s ideology is extensively dealt with in Shekhovtsov, ‘The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian
Neo-Eurasianism’.
34 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 181.
35 See Roger Griffin (ed.), International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus (London:
Arnold, 1998).
36 On the ladder of abstraction see Giovanni Sartori, ‘Concept Misinformation in Comparative
Politics’, American Political Science Review 64/4 (1970): 1033–1053.
37 Alain de Benoist, ‘What is Sovereignty?’, Tel o s 116 (1999): 115 (http://www.alaindebenoist.com/
pdf/what_is_sovereignty.pdf).
38 Roger Griffin, ‘Grey Cats, Blue Cows, and Wide Awake Groundhogs: Notes towards
the Development of a “Deliberative Ethos” ’, in Roger Griffin et al. (eds), Fascism Past and
Present, 428.
712 Anton Shekhovtsov
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39 Spektorowski, ‘The New Right’: 123.
40 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations
and Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 146.
41 Griffin, ‘Plus ça change’, 243. Italics in original.
42 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Evolyutsiya sotsialnykh identichnostey pri perekhode k paradigme postmoderna’,
Evrazia.org, October 06, 2004 (http://www.evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=arti-
cle&sid=1979).
43 ‘Programma OPOD “Evraziya” ’, Evrazia.org, April 21, 2001 (http://www.evrazia.org/mod-
ules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=40).
44 ‘Programma OPOD “Evraziya” ’.
45 On Lev Gumilev’s theories see Victor Shnirel’man, The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual
Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the
Study of Antisemitism, 2002); idem., ‘Lev Gumilev: or “passionarnogo napryzheniya” do
“nesovmestimosti kul’tur”’, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 3 (2006): 8–21; Victor Yasmann, ‘Red Religion:
An Ideology of Neo-Messianic Russian Fundamentalism’, Demokratizatsiya 1/2 (1993): 20–38
(http://www.demokratizatsiya.org/Dem%20Archives/DEM%2001-02%20yasmann.pdf); Galya
Krasteva, ‘The Criticism towards the West and the Future of Russia-Eurasia’, The Eurasian
Politician 4 (2003) (http://users.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2003/galya.htm).
46 Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe buduschee Rossii. Myslit’ Prostranstvom
(Moscow: Arktogeya-tsentr, 2000), 259, 255.
47 Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone?, 109.
48 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Evraziyskaya ideya v kachestvennom prostranstve’, Evrazia.org, http://
evrazia.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1904.
49 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Evraziyskiy put’ kak natsonal’naya ideya’ (http://www.evrazia.org/
modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=849).
50 Leonid Luks, ‘ “Weimar Russia?” Notes on a Controversial Concept’, Russian Social Science
Review 49/6 (2008): 34.
51 On imperialist geopolitics see Gearóid Ó Tuathail, ‘Imperialist Geopolitics’, in Gearóid Ó
Tuathail, Simon Dalby and Paul Routledge (eds), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge,
1998), 15–43.
52 Aleksandr Dugin’s speech at the Imperial March in Moscow on May 01, 2007 (http://
www.baznica.info/pagesid-3956.html).
53 See Jean-Adolphe Fouéré, L’Europe aux cent drapeaux. Essai pour servir à la construction de l’Europe
(Paris: Presses d’Europe, 1968). A title of the book by the Breton nationalist and ideologue of
European federalism Jean-Adolphe Fouéré became one of the major slogans of the ENR.
54 Alain de Benoist, Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines. 5ième éd. (Paris:
Copernic, 1979), 25.
55 Etienne Balibar, ‘Is There a “New Racism”?’, in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein,
Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 21–22.
56 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (New York: United Nations,
2008), 1–2 (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf).
57 Taguieff, ‘From Race to Culture’: 124.
58 Ibid.
59 Ralph D. Grillo, ‘Cultural Essentialism and Cultural Anxiety’, Anthropological Theory 3/2
(2003): 163.
60 Griffin, ‘Plus ça change’, 222.
61‘Fonds d’écran, illustrations’, Nouvelle Droite – GRECE (http://www.grece-fr.net/galerie/
_galerie.php#fonds).
62 Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 258.
63 ‘Programma OPOD “Evraziya” ’.
64 Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 251.
65 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Prishel konets Evropy’, APN Kazakhstan, November 14, 2005, http://
www.apn.kz/publications/article53.htm. An interesting parallel can be drawn between the
Neo-Eurasianist concept of a federation and the project of British National-Anarchists (a
‘school’ within the British New Right led by Troy Southgate), the self-confessed ‘racial separatists’:
‘[W]e wish to see a positive downward trend whereby all bureaucratic concepts such as the UN,
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Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism 713
NATO, the EU, the World Bank, and even nation-states like England and Germany are
eradicated and consequently replaced by autonomous village-communities’. While these
communities may be established along the lines of common traditional culture, ethnicity or
religion, the British National Anarchists long for the communities to avoid ‘racial miscegenation’
that ‘endangers mankind in the same way that hunting and pollution threaten both the
environment and the animal kingdom’. See ‘What is National Anarchism?’, Folk & Faith (http://
www.folkandfaith.com/articles/anarchy.shtml).
66 Spektorowski, ‘The New Right’: 127.
67 Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Organicheskaya demokratiya’, in Aleksandr Dugin, Konservativnaya revolyutsiya
(Moscow: Arktogeya, 1994) (http://arctogaia.com/public/konsrev/demo.htm).
68 Shlapentokh, ‘Dugin Eurasianism’: 221. See also Matthew Schmidt, ‘Is Putin Pursuing a
Policy of Eurasianism?’, Demokratizatsiya 13/1 (2005): 87–100.
69 Ivan Kurilla, ‘Geopolitika i kommunizm’, Russkiy zhurnal. Obrazovanie, February 23, 1999
(http://old.russ.ru/journal/edu/99-02-23/kuril.htm).
70 ‘Ivan Demidov: Russkomu narodu neobkhodimo postavit’ sebe tsel’’, Evrazia.org, November
04, 2007 (http://evrazia.org/article.php?id=164).
71 See Andreas Umland, ‘Moscow’s New Chief Ideologist: Ivan Demidov’, Global Politician,
March 25, 2008 (http://www.globalpolitician.com/24333-russia).
72 Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone?, 7.
73 Giovanni Capoccia, ‘Defence of Democracy against the Extreme Right in Inter-war Europe:
A Past Still Present?’, in Roger Eatwell and Cas Mudde (eds), Western Democracies and the New
Extreme Right Challenge (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 104.
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