The September-October issue of New Eastern Europe features my article on Aleksandr Dugin. In the wake of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Russia’s subsequent war on Ukraine, Russian political thinker Aleksandr Dugin has become an object of many western analyses of Russia’s foreign policy. Various media have called Dugin “the mad mystic who inspired Russia’s leader” or “Putin’s brain”. Indeed, the man behind Russia’s Neo-Eurasianism has received significant attention and his ideas have evidently entered mainstream political thought. Before the dramatic events in Ukraine, the phenomenon of Aleksandr Dugin and his Neo-Eurasianism remained largely confined to academic explorations of Russian nationalism, and these have always been accompanied by the question of whether Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism was significant enough to warrant so much effort. As early as 2001, Stephen Shenfield wrote in his Russian Fascism that “Dugin’s influence on the Russian elite [remained] limited and highly uneven”. This evaluation seemed fair for the year 2001, but since then the situation has clearly changed. How exactly it has changed and how Dugin’s background has shaped the role he plays in today’s Russian politics are the questions that will be discussed in this article.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:51:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015