The Evil Empire – Part 2

Dugin, Putinism, & the United States

Jun 12, 2022

What is Putinism?

Putinism, according to Anne Applebaum, believes:

At the most fundamental level…that the rulers of the state must exert careful control over the life of the nation. Events cannot be allowed just to happen, they must be controlled and manipulated. By the same token, markets cannot be genuinely open, elections cannot be unpredictable and the modern equivalent of the Soviet dissidents – the small groups of activists who oppose centralized Kremlin rule – must be carefully controlled through legal pressure, public propaganda and, if necessary, carefully targeted violence.

– Anne Applebaum, “Putinism: The Ideology,” Strategic Update, London School of Economics and Political Science, February 2013

Putinism’s foundionalist (Eurasianist/Rashist) bent towards foreign policy and authoritarian style of dation is in the political philosophical thought of Alexander Dugin, Vladislav Surkov, and Ivan Ilyin, and the governing philosophy of Joseph Stalin and Yuri Andropov.

Characterized by a natomestic governance, Putinism finds its roots in Dugin’s philosophical works (Foundations of Geopolitics[1997] & The Fourth Political Theory[2012]).

On a side note, Foundations of Geopolitics has not been translated into an English edition and I will rely on articles and research into Dugin for understanding. For the purpose of this article, we will focus mainly on Dugin as he seems to combine Surkov and Ilyin into a full political theory and rationale for Putin. My main source is this amazingly sourced and researched article from Dr. John B. Dunlop written in Demokratizatsiya in 2004 during the phenomenal rise of Putin and the changing Russian narrative of the world.

Aleksander Dugin – A (very) Brief History

Born in 1962, Dugin was a child of the late Soviet Union who was born during the end of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” but was truly raised in the post-Khrushchev years of Brezhnev & Andropov, whose leadership brought nuclear parity with the United States and the acknowledgement of the USSR as a “superpower.” During this time, Dugin became more interested in mysticism and found a mix between it with pagan and fascist thought. Dugin’s worldview was a return to Tradition (not in the way the Eastern Orthodox describe) but to a world of leadership by the sword with a strong man leadership.

In the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dugin became more of a known political figure while pushing more and more neo-fascist ideals through several self-founded journals and taking on a lecturing role within the Soviet military. He pushed an extreme Eurasianist view of the world, which according to Dunlop, was a competing and major viewpoint within the Soviet Military since the last days of Stalin. Dugin’s rise to the spotlight and more influential positions seem to mirror the ascent of Putin to head of Russia. Dugin published his foundational book “Foundations of Geopolitics” in 1997 and it quickly became a ‘must read’ for Russian leadership, both civilian and military.

A Revived Empire – Russia and It’s People

“The West knows little or nothing at all about the real history of Russia. Sometime they think that the Soviet Union was purely a communist creation and the States as Ukraine, Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan were independent before the USSR and conquered by Bolsheviks or forced into Soviet State…the fact is they never existed as such and represented but administrative districts without any political or historical meaning inside Russian Empire as well as inside USSR. These countries were created in their present borders artificially only after the collapse of USSR and as the result of such collapse.”
Alexander Dugin, “

Dugin’s writing is, as you will see, filled with a bent towards fascism and a deep hatred of “Atlanticism” or mainly sea-faring nations, which include Great Britain and the United States. Dugin’s view of the world is one that should be dominated by a new Eurasian empire with Russia as it’s head, which stretches from coast-to-coast. Dugin believes, according to Wayne Allensworth as quoted in Dunlop’s paper:

Dugin’s geopolitics are mystical and occult in nature, the shape of world civilizations and the clashing vectors of historical development being portrayed as spiritual forces beyond man’s comprehension
Wayne Allensworth, “The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization & Post-Communist Russia, p.249

Dugin’s beliefs in the ‘supernatural’ are less in tune with a traditional Orthodox Christian viewpoint, and more in line with the fanaticism we see common in right-wing evangelicalism here in the United States and abroad. Part of his appeal to many Westerners, it seems, is this semi-religious viewpoint of spirituality and the desire for a “return” to a more ideal time of civilization. As Dugin writes, in order for a nationalist (Eurasianist) feeling to take place in Russia:

Russians should realize they are Orthodox in the first place; Russians in the second place; and only in the third place, People…The Nation is everything; the individual is nothing
Dugin, “The Foundations of Geopolitics,” 255, 257

This use of religion combined with a hawkish nationalistic foreign policy focused on Empire building, which without would, “signify the end of the Russian people as a historical reality…Such a repudiation would be tantamount to national suicide” (Dugin, 197) creates the ingredients for a revived Russian Imperial House ruled by the Church-State. Dugin does not believe that those countries formed from the former Soviet Union, except Armenia, are artificial constructs of politics and not actual states.

A New Order – Russia vs. The West

For Dugin, the West (Atlanticism) is the enemy and it’s main goal, and only aim, is to destroy the traditional Russia. Whereas the Western liberal values put the individual as the center of political thought, the Eurasianist thought is the State, with as Evengii Ikhlov, a Russian journalist quoted in Dunlop’s paper:

[Eurasianism] offers the following: an authoritarian-charismatic (autocratic) model; selfless and ascetical serving of the regime as the highest form of valor (the messianic great power syndrome); the agreement of ethnic and religious minorities to play a subordinate role; and imperial xenophobia

What is there to do with the United States? Dugin writes:

[T]here must be placed one fundamental principle–“a common enemy”…[a] negation of Atlanticism, a repudiation of the strategic control of the United States, and the rejection of the supremacy of economic, liberal market values (Dugin, 216)

Dugin holds “the geopolitical defeat of the U.S ” (Dugin, 260) as the primary goal of Russia with focusing all its energy and fury, short of a hot war, in pursuit of that goal.

An important passage is on the need for sowing dissent and disorder in the United States. With the rise of violent extremism within our own borders, this highlights how Russia can (and is most likely) sowing dissent.

This whole portion from Dunlop’s paper needs to be read multiple times:

All levels of geopolitical pressure,” Dugin insists, “must be activated simultaneously.” Within the United States itself, there is a need for the Russian special services and their allies “to provoke all forms of instability and separatism within the borders of the United States (it is possible to make use of the political forces of Afro-American racists).”
“It is especially important,” Dugin adds, “to introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements– extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.”
Dunlop, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics,” 8

Putin’s Playbook

Putin and the leadership of the Russia have continued to push Dugin as the foundation of current Russian political thought but also have used his thoughts and work as a playbook for his confrontation with the West. In the next post, we will explore Dugin’s thoughts on existing alliances, an error of thinking on the East, and the Ukraine Question as fundamental to Russia and Eurasianist aims.