Coming from a family of Russian military officers, the 60-year-old has had a remarkable journey: from extremist ideology to a prominent Russian thought leader who sees himself at the heart of a “Eurasian” empire that defies Western decadence. What. He is the spiritual originator of the term “Russian world”.
Along the way, this strand incorporates a deep loathing of Ukrainian identities other than Russia.
Dugin helped revive the term “Novorossia” or “New Russia” to include parts of Ukraine before Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the term when declaring Crimea part of Russia in March of the same year. .
Dugin has long had an instinctive distaste for Ukrainians who resist assimilation into Mother Russia. After clashes in Odessa in May 2014 killed dozens of pro-Russian protesters, he said: At levels and in all regions. Armed rebellion against the junta. Not just in the South East.
The following year, Dugin was sanctioned by the United States for “complicit in any action or policy that endangers the peace, security, stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Birth of Eurasianism
Dugin is best known for his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics, which laid out a vision of a Eurasian empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok. The book advocated the instability and sowing of dissent in the United States, a precursor to the disinformation campaign around the 2016 US election.
In one passage, he writes: “Introducing geopolitical anarchy into American domestic activity, fostering separatism of all kinds and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, extremist , racist, sectarian groups, and any other opposition movement that is destabilizing the political process within the United States.”
The book was written at the end of Boris Eristin’s chaotic presidency and became a bestseller in Russia.
John Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said in 2004 that no other book “has had an impact on the Russian military, police and nationalist foreign policy elites” as good as The Foundation. writing.
This book gave Dugin the impetus for an academic career, and for a time he was the head of international relations at the Department of Sociology at Moscow State University.
Gradually, inexorably, Dugin’s views moved from the fringes to the center of the Russian political debate.
In 2011, when Vladimir Putin was prime minister, we started talking about the Eurasian Union. Dugin said Putin needs “ideology, why he needs to come back” for his third term as president.
When Russia began supporting separatists in Donbass in 2014, Dugin was prominent in the Eurasian Youth League, which recruited people with military experience to fight for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
He also maintained a torrent of propaganda through the website Geopolitica, which the US claims he controls. The U.S. Treasury Department earlier this year said it was “a website that serves as a platform for Russian ultranationalists to spread disinformation and propaganda aimed at Western nations and other audiences.”
Geopolitics, for example, claimed this year that the US and NATO are trying to provoke war with Russia to “further terrorize the American people in all sorts of nefarious ways.”
no shortage of enemies
As one of the ideological builders of Russian expansionism, Dugin referred to two “versions” of Putin and wrote the book “Putin vs. Putin”.
He described a “lunar” Putin, who was pragmatic and cautious, and a “solar” Putin, devoted to rebuilding the Eurasian Empire and confronting the West.
“Russia has crossed the Rubicon. I am personally very happy,” he said.
For Dugin, it was essential. The West was using Ukraine to overthrow Russia. “They believe they have a chance to defeat Russia, not because it’s impossible, but by removing it from their global system, crushing it and forcing it to surrender.”
In his view, it was also imperative to “resolutely oppose the junta and Ukrainian Nazism that are exterminating peaceful civilians,” and reject liberalism and U.S. hegemony. .
Dugin certainly has no shortage of enemies within Russia. In a 2019 interview, he said:
Dugin said earlier this year that his fixation with the concept of “Eurasianism” is as strong as it was when he wrote “Foundations.”
“Its center is Russian, and it is open to those who connect their destiny with the destiny of the Russian people.”
For him, the conflict in Ukraine is part of a survival battle between Western laziness and a society built on tradition, hierarchy, and orthodox Christianity.
In Dugin’s world, Russia’s destiny “will not be complete until it unites its East Slavic and Eurasian brothers into one great space. Everything follows from this logic of destiny, and so does Ukraine.” .
Source: www.cnn.com
