DUGIN, ALEXANDER GELEVICH

(b. 1962), head of the Russian sociopolitical movement Eurasia; editor of the journal Elementy ; and a leading proponent of geopolitics and Eurasianism with a strong Anti-Western, anti-Atlantic bias.

In the late 1970s Dugin entered the Moscow Aviation Institute but was expelled during his second year for what he described as "intensive activities." He joined the circles associated with a Russian nationalist movement of the 1980s and at the end of the 1980s was a member of the Central Council of the national-patriotic front "Pamyat" (Memory), then led by Dmitry Vasiliev. With the end of the Soviet Union, Dugin emerged as the chief ideologue of the writer Edvard Limonov's National-Bolshevik Party, a fringe movement that cultivated political ties with alienated youths. Dugin also became a major figure in the "Red-Brown" opposition to the Yeltsin administration. He joined the editorial board of Alexander Prokhanov's Den (Day) and then Zavtra (Tomorrow) after 1993. Dugin's writings combine mystical, conspiratorial, geopolitical, and Eurasian themes and draw heavily on the notion of a conservative revolution. This ideology emphasizes the Eurasian roots of Russian messianism and its fundamental antagonism with Westernism and globalism, and outlines the way in which Russia can go about creating an alternative to the Western "New World Order." This alternative is totalitarian in its essentials. Drawing heavily upon German geopolitical theory and Lev Gumilev's Eurasianism, Dugin outlined his own position in Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia (1997). In 1999 Dugin campaigned actively for the victory of a presidential candidate who would embrace his ideas of an anti-Western Eurasianism and supported Vladimir Putin as the "ideal ruler for the present period." Working closely with Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin's spin doctor, Dugin actively developed an Internet empire of connections to disseminate his message. In the wake of Putin's alliance with the United States in the war against terrorism, Dugin has called into question the president's commitment to Eurasianism and rejoined the opposition. Dugin has been particularly adept at exploiting the Internet to spread his message through a wide range of media.

See also: gumilev, lev nikolayevich; nationalism in the soviet union

bibliography

Shenfield, Steven D. (2001). Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Yasmann, Victor. (2001). "The Rise of the Eurasians." RFE/RL Security Watch 2 (17):1.

Jacob W. Kipp