Anton Shekhovtsov: The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin's Worldview

8/8/2019 Anton Shekhovtsov: The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin's Wor

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 9, No. 4, 491506, December 2008

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/08/040491-16 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14690760802436142

The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism:

Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugins Worldview1

ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV

Sevastopol National Technical University

ABSTRACT Applying Roger Griffins methodological approach to generic fascism, thearticle analyses individual socio-political, cultural and esoteric themes within Duginsdoctrine, treating them as elements of a larger integral concept of rebirth that constitutesthe core of Neo-Eurasianism. The article highlights the highly syncretic nature of thisideological core, a direct result of the mazeway resynthesis that has conditioned Duginsworldview. It argues that this process has been necessitated by his self-appointed task ofenvisioning a new stage of history beyond Russias present decadent and liminoid situa-tion, one that he sees only coming about as the result of a geopolitical revolution. Thevariant of Eurasionism that results has the function of a political religion containing a

powerful palingenetic thrust towards a new Russia and new West. In conclusion, it issuggested that the new order aspired to by Dugin could only be realised by establishing atotalitarian regime.

You are famed, he said, for being able to burn a rose to ashes and makeit emerge again, by the magic of your art. Let me witness that prodigy.I ask that of you, and in return I will offer up my entire life.2

The phrase cited in the epigraph to this article belongs to Johannes Grisebach, adoubting would-be disciple of Paracelsus, who asked for a miracle in order to

believe in the great magical powers of alchemy. This fictional story, narrated by

the brilliant Jorge Luis Borges, ended in disappointment for the unaccomplishedpupil, as Paracelsus refused both to accept Grisebachs lifelong service and toshow him magic tricks. The miracle that Grisebach was begging to be revealed isarguably one of the most famous alchemic acts, which is known as the palingene-sis of a rose. This magische Operation, to use Paracelsus mother tongue, was

beautifully portrayed by the British scholar Isaac Disraeli in his grand work onphilosophy, politics and literature:

These philosophers having burnt a flower, by calcination disengaged thesalts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical

mixture acted on it, till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish andCorrespondence address: Kafedra filosofii i sotsialnykh nauk, Sevastopol National Technical University,Studgorodok, Sevastopol, 99053, Ukraine. Email: [email protected]


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change in the social status of a person is accompanied by a rite of passage thatconsists of three distinct phases: (1) separation, i.e. withdrawal of a person fromher/his group; (2) liminality, or the liminal phase, when the persons status isundetermined, unstable, neither the old nor the new one; (3) incorporation of theperson into her/his new group. This rite of passage is required not for the sake of

the individual, but for the collective society to regenerate itself in a ritualisedcyclic process of births, weddings and deaths.17 The liminal phase can be seen asthe most important in the ritual, as it is exactly the state when persons nourishthemselves with metaphysical energy unavailable in normal phases of reality,and thus refuel society with transcendence on their symbolic return to it.18

Turner and Bloch distinguished two types of transitional phases: the liminal stateand the liminoid one. If the liminal state refers to an individual who performs arite of passage in a process of restoring the society, the liminoid transition refersto the revolutionary transformation of the society itself, which undergoes a crisissufficiently profound to prevent it from perpetuating and regenerating itself

through its own symbolic and ritual resources.19

Thus the liminal phase isfollowed by individuals acquisition of new statuses in the same old society torestore its status quo, while the liminoid phase supports the annulment of the oldsocial contract and demolition of the status quo to give way to a new society.

The conclusion of a new social contract can be considered an adaptation ofsociety to the liminoid conditions of a profound crisis. Once the liminoidality ofthese conditions is perceived by a given community, its collective Weltanschauung or, in Anthony Wallaces terms,20 mazeway undergoes a radical change. Thecommunity begets a prophet, i.e. an individual who devises the form andcontent of the new society to be realised beyond the liminoid conditions. As theprophet cannot create a new order from zero, he or she syncretises differentideological components drawn both from traditional and neogenic symbolicalapparatuses, and perceived both from liminal and liminoid situations into anew mazeway to impose it on the community. This reaggregation of healthyelements of the past and novel inventions of the present is called a mazewayresynthesis,21 which is our third auxiliary concept. It means a process of recom-

bining different and even incompatible elements into a new Weltanschauung as away of an innovative adaptation to the liminoid conditions on the communitysrevolutionary path to the socio-economical and cultural palingenesis supposed toresult in the establishment of a new order.

Exploring Aleksandr Dugins mazeway is not an easy task due to the nature of

the intertwined palingenetic ideas permeating through Neo-Eurasian doctrine,and includes a wide scale of resynthesised renewal ideas ranging from purelythe socio-political and ideological to the esoteric and integral Traditionalist. ThisBabylonian confusion seems to be a result of Dugins lack of differentiation

between the sphere of human knowledge and obscurantism: Many people keeptelling me [], why politics and metaphysics are required to be mixed. I believethat the subjects we deal with are not just metaphysical, individual, mystical, orpolitical.22 The consistency of this labyrinth map is as complex as it is mislead-ing, to the extent that such a sophisticated scholar as A. James Gregor, who fails torecognise the fascist nature of the doctrine in question, asserts that Dugins ideas

run the gamut from the occult to absurd, and suggests accepting Dugins fascismonly if he is equally termed as a mystic, an occultist, a Sufi wiseman, a Samurai,and a neo-Eurasian, a new socialist, and a conservative revolutionary.23

The weakness of Gregors approach consists in his isolation of the individual


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The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism 495

themes exploited by Dugin who, however, does not see them as isolated butas reinforcing each other in the process of creating a new ideological synthesis.Obviously, no Samurai themes would have been present in his works if it hadnot been for Yukio Mishima, a Japanese right-wing militarist and the LastSamurai who unsuccessfully attempted a fascist coup dtat in Japan in 1970. That

is also the case of the other terms that Gregor sarcastically applies to Dugin. Forexample, it seems obvious that Dugins (perfunctory and largely pretentious)interest in Sufism can be traced back less to the original integral Traditionalistteaching of the French Sufi Ren Gunon than to its re-interpretation (some wouldsay, distortion) by Julius Evola and the Nouvelle Droite who, like Dugin, used it forformulating ideologies that, in one way or another, have been classified asfascist.24 Equally, Dugins grasp of conservative revolutionary themes needs to beseen against the background of Ernst Jngers soldierly vlkisch nationalism or thelegacy of Armin Mohlers conceptual framework [which] acknowledge[d] thatNazism was an integral part of the C[onservative] R[evolution]25 something

admitted by Dugin himself.26

One could add to Gregors labels that Dugin may bea psychologist or historian of religions and refer to Dugins eulogies for CarlJung, once president of the Nazi-dominated International General Medical Societyfor Psychotherapy, and Mircea Eliade, whose biographys well-known dark sideincludes him being a minor ideologue of the interwar Romanian fascist Legion ofArchangel Michael. Gregors eloquent irony and Dugins persistent amalgam-ation of the seemingly discordant spheres of politics and metaphysics prompt mehere, first, to analyse individual palingenetic ideas that form a larger secularpalingenetic myth. I shall distinguish for heuristic purposes only between thepolitical and metaphysical palingenetic ideas of Dugin, highlighting different sub-currents in each. This approach is not meant to isolate different palingenetic ideas,

but to identify their common underlying message.

The Socio-political Rebirth of Russia

According to Eduard Limonov, in a 1997 lecture called The Philosophic Russianand delivered before the members of National Bolshevik Party, Dugin arguedthat by means of laborious self-perfection a new type of man must be created: aphilosophic Russian, who would then be able to commence a revolution.27

Dugins new type of man thesis had a special connotation, far removed frompiety and devotion nouns that might come to mind upon hearing the phrase

self-perfection. The nature of the new mankind is thoroughly revealed inDugins most important book to date, Osnovy geopolitiki [Foundations of Geopoli-tics],28 which ran into four editions from 1997 until 2000. In fact, it became soinfluential that its second edition included an afterword by General LieutenantNikolai Klokotov, former head of the General Staff Academy of the Russianarmed forces. Grounded upon the legacy of such imperialist geopolitical theoristsas Alfred Mahan, Friedrich Ratzel, Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer andNicholas Spykman,29 the book both explores and exploits the issue of geopolitics.If Limonov highlighted the self-perfection way of transition to the new type ofmankind, Osnovy geopolitiki outlined a more pragmatic political and ideological

strategy that would affect the whole world. We will not dwell here on the booksultranationalist theme, although the focus on political palingenetic ideas willinevitably touch upon the ultranationalist issues, as it is the cultural-ethniccommunity that is to be revived or renewed.


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In Osnovy geopolitiki, Dugin linked geopolitical thought with the political level,as was once done by Adolf Hitlers main geopolitical thinker, Haushofer.Obviously, Dugins work did not deal with the Nazi geopolitical paradigm but aRussia-oriented one. The main geopolitical enemy is also different: the US and thewhole Atlanticist World Island are now the Fiend, in classic Manichean tradi-

tion. Thus, the planet is roughly divided into three large spaces: the World Island(principally the United States and the UK), Eurasia (predominantly CentralEurope, Russia, and Asia), and the Rimland (the states between the World Islandand Eurasia). These ideas are not Dugins but can be traced to imperialist geopo-litical theoreticians. He seems to be a follower of a narrow trend in geopolitics,namely the fascist geopolitics of Haushofer30 and the Nouvelle Droite. Dugin juxta-poses two Orders: the U.S.-dominated, homogenizing New World Orderagainst the Russia-oriented New Eurasian Order. Based upon the NouvelleDroites peculiar new racism,31 Eurasia according to Dugin is to undergo anorganic cultural-ethnic process so that Russians shall live in their own national

reality, and there shall also be national realities for Tatars, Chechens, Armenians,and the rest.32 The Russian nation perceived in a wide sense identifyingRussians with Eurasians is portrayed as immersed in a decadent historicalphase, and Dugin offers a way of treating the problem:

For the Russian people to survive in these hard circumstances, for theRussian nations demographics to rise, for the improvement of its severecondition in the ethnic, biological and spiritual sense, it is necessary toappeal to the most radical forms of Russian nationalism [italics in original].Without it, no technical or economical measures will yield any results.33

The quote clearly shows that Dugin perceives Russia not in a liminal situationthat through modernising reforms could have been followed by socio-politicalrecovery, but rather in a liminoid one conditioned by the crisis, which is soprofound that the traditional rite of passage (reforms) is considered invalid.While rejecting the idea of the nation state with regard to Eurasian organicculturalethnic communities, including the Russian one, Dugin states that theonly way to escape the liminoid phase is [n]ot a path of socio-political evolution,

but a path of a geopolitical Revolution.34

The idea of a geopolitical Revolution, or palingenesis, aimed at helping theRussian nation out of its severe ethnic, biological and spiritual state, is undoubt-

edly a novel concept within geopolitical theory or rather, it does not belong to thegeopolitical sphere at all. This idea can be seen as a cluster of Dugins restructuredmazeway and the core element of his political ideology outlined in Osnovy geopoli-tiki. Russia, in his view, is to be reborn in the form of an empire, which will establisha New Eurasian Order in order to oppose the Far Western reign of the dead.35

Political or geopolitical revolutionary transformation should be, according toDugin, paralleled by economic transformation. Already the 2001 programme ofthe Eurasia movement mentioned the political and economic sides of theprojected empire. The programme promoted the idea of Eurasian centrism, arather confusing notion that mixes social justice and social economy and the

value conservatism and cultural traditionalism of the conservative revolution.36

That notion can be termed as a combination of left-wing economic ideas withright-wing policy foundations. If the latter is supposed to be implemented ina revolutionary way, so is the left-wing economy, as Dugin sees socialism as an


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entire essence of anarcho-primitivism, implying that its only healthy element isthe idea of an abolition of the liminoid conditions of modernity, diagnosed asabnormal and malignant, to be followed by the immediate coming of a newGolden Age, regardless of the political or cultural content of this new world.Dugin is not the only extreme right ideologist interested in Zerzans legacy. For

instance, there was a short discussion entitled Evola and Zerzan on moderncivilisation in the Internet forum Stormfront White Nationalist Community.43

Moreover, the first issue of the radical Traditionalist magazine Tyr: Myth Culture Tradition featured a review of Zerzans Running on Emptiness: The Pathol-ogy of Civilization written by American journalist Michael Moynihan,44 who alsohappens to be the leader of the countercultural music band Blood Axis.

Exploiting Metaphysics

The first distinctly socio-political organisation Aleksandr Dugin joined before he

engaged in politics was the historical-patriotic association Pamyat, known for itsBlack-Hundred-like anti-Semitism.45 Before this affiliation to Pamyat, his world-view had been shaped by esoteric and metaphysical teachings he was introducedto while a member of the Yuzhinskiy circle or, in the words of one of itsformer members, the intellectual schizoid underground.46 This circle wasformed in the 1960s around the Russian writer and poet Yuri Mamleyev, whoresided in two rooms of a shared apartment on Yuzhinskiy Lane in centralMoscow. Mamleyev turned his quarters into an illegal literary salon where avolatile number of Soviet non-conformist artists, samizdat writers, poets and anti-system intellectuals met for discussions that could have been corpus delicti againstthose involved. The Yuzhinskiy circle was evidently anti-Soviet, but it stayedlargely apolitical prior to Mamleyevs emigration to the United States in 1974.47

A few years after his departure, a large faction of the circle fell under the influ-ence of the mystical writer, poet and translator Yevgeniy Golovin. When Dugin

joined the circle in 1980, he became associated with this very faction. In the circle,Golovin was progressively propagating occultism, esotericism, the integralTraditionalist works of Ren Gunon and other authors and, later, ConservativeRevolutionary and fascist classics.48 Golovins faction was characterised by aphilosophy of denial of the surrounding reality as something evil, hostile, errone-ous and artificial.49 As soon as the modern world was diagnosed as chaotic anddecadent, his followers started asking themselves when exactly the humanity had

strayed from God, and what needed to be done to return to the Golden age.50The combination of the radical rejection of the modern world and the eschatologi-cal expectations that were typical of the Yuzhinskiy circle under the influence ofGolovin led his followers to long for changing reality in a true palingenetic sense.As one commentator put it, [Golovins] disciples [] thought seriously aboutthe transformation of this sinful world. If not us, then who is destined to opposethe global chaos? they asked.51 Due to the fact that Dugins affiliation with theYuzhinskiy circle was the first time he participated in a movement thatperceived the liminoidality of the present, we can assume that it was within thismovement that Dugin was encouraged in his own mazeway resynthesis, which

he would impose on his followers and fellow-travellers in subsequent years.The projected renewal of the modern world required political activism and,following Golovins advice, Dugin joined Pamyat and tried to change its courseto that of Traditionalism as he saw it. Yet Dugin was soon denounced by


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Pamyats leader as a Zionist and expelled.52 Although Dugin failed to change theideological course of this organisation let alone to transform the modern world he never gave up exploiting Traditionalist and occult thesauri for his politicalcause. Here we shall discuss two currents of metaphysical teachings, namelyintegral Traditionalism (or Perennialism) and the occult doctrines of Aleister

Crowley and his successors, which are recombined in Dugins mazeway andconstitute a considerable discursive element in his ideology.The American-Egyptian scholar Mark Sedgwick is perhaps the most important

advocate of interpreting the Dugin phenomenon in the light of the integralTraditionalism of the works of Ren Gunon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, FrithjofSchuon, and other philosophers. In his Against the Modern World, subtitled in aconspiratorial-theoretical manner as Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual Historyof the Twentieth Century, Sedgwick argued that Dugins Neo-Eurasianism is aform of Traditionalism, although he failed to sufficiently substantiate his identi-fication of Neo-Eurasianism with Traditionalism. Sedgwicks point of view is

indicative of Dugins extensive use of the Perennialist thesaurus and imagery.Dugin, however, interprets integral Traditionalism not in its original, contempla-tion-oriented sense. Instead, he uses Julius Evolas activist approach to exploitthe doctrine for political aims. Again, the concept of palingenesis, doubtlesslycentral to Perennialism, seems to be a major factor behind Dugins attraction toTraditionalism, which he considered worthy of being an element in a newlyinvented worldview.

Perennialist authors believe that there was once a golden era, called Satya Yugain Hindu religious tradition, which is now long gone as already three further eras(or Yugas) have succeeded it. If the world of Satya Yuga is ideal, its perfectiondeclines when it is superseded by other eras, Treta Yuga and then Dvapara Yuga.The perfection of life and the world is almost completely absent during the lastera, Kali Yuga (literally, age of vice). Perennialists argue that we live in this era ofdecadence and decay. Nevertheless, there is nothing lost for the world as, giventhe cyclic nature of the succession of eras, a new Satya Yuga, a golden age, willdefinitely come. As the Yugas are seen as succeeding each other in a normalcosmological process, the phase of Kali Yuga can be considered as liminal.

The integral Traditionalist doctrine, however, differs from the Hindu religioustradition, as the Perennialists also believe that the golden age was marked by atranscendental unity of religions reflected in the idea of a Primordial Traditionof divine origin. As the perfection of the eras declined, the unity of religions was

also affected, and their transcendental essence can now only be found in theirmystic sub-currents such as, for example, in Islamic Sufism. The mission of inte-gral Traditionalists is to reveal the elements of the Primordial Tradition inmodern and mostly monotheistic religions.53

Dugin uses the Perennialist apparatus for different purposes, and, by doingso, distorts integral Traditionalism. For instance, he tends to identify centralPerennialist concepts with specific socio-political and economical phenomena.Therefore, Kali Yuga is equated with materialism, democracy, equality, marketeconomy, humanism, and progress,54 while the New Eurasian Order estab-lished by new men i.e. the church of the last times55 is identified with the

golden age:

Already in the twentieth century, some supposedly modern ideologiesimplicitly appealed to the idea of cyclic time, which implies degradation


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to be succeeded by a new golden age. The most striking ideologies of thiskind were National Socialism and Bolshevism. The capitalist bourgeoisregime was perceived as the pinnacle of degradation, and the red and

brown romantics set off brilliant prospects of a New World and therenewal of the golden age. The active pessimism of the radicals directed

the masses to achieve two objectives: The destruction of the degenerated(old) mankind and the creation of an ultimately new heavenly civiliza-tion. Behind the Bolshevik and Nazi purges and bloodshed, there werehidden mystical motives. This was not an excess of sadism, brutality orinhumanity. The elites were just confident: Man is indeed degraded!The evening hours are inexorably approaching the twilight, but in thewomb of darkness, there is a New Dawn ripening: The new world.56

For Dugin, Kali Yuga is not a liminal but rather a liminoid situation that one justcannot accept and contemplatively resign to, but should be terminated here and

now at whatever human cost. Taking into account the perversion of the teachingsof the integral Traditionalist school which are a mazeway resynthesis them-selves it is only logical that Perennialists doubted that Gunon would recogn-ise himself at all in Dugins violent exhortations.57 Dugin in a way analogous toEvola utilises the Perennialist doctrine, or rather its palingenetic themes, inorder to corroborate his own fascist ideology. Traditionalist themes become inte-grated into a reaggregated secular palingenetic myth, made up of different andeven discordant ideas of rebirth and renewal.

If the integral Traditionalist philosophy is distorted and manipulated byDugin, the teachings of Crowley are used in a more curious manner. While claim-ing to be an Orthodox Christian (an Old Believer), Dugin approvingly refers tothe legacy of the British occultist, who once proclaimed himself To MegaTherion (Greek, the Great Beast) and is considered one of the most importantauthors of modern Satanism. This oddity, however, does not mean indiscrimi-nateness on the part of Dubin. On the contrary, the consistency of his agendaclicks into place if the reason behind his references to Crowleys doctrine isrevealed. Dugin wrote two essays on Crowley58 and tried to explain why theGreat Beasts ideas are significant to the builders of the New Eurasian Order. Inthese essays, Crowley was presented as a conservative revolutionary whopromoted ideas of renewal of the modern world:

[Between the aeons of Osiris and Horus], there is a special period, thetempest of equinoxes. This is the epoch of the triumph of chaos, anarchy,revolutions, wars, and catastrophes. These waves of horror are necessaryto wash away the remnants of the old order and clear the space for thenew one. According to Crowleys doctrine, the tempest of equinoxes is apositive moment, which should be celebrated, expedited, and used by allthe votaries of the aeon of Horus. This is why Crowley himselfsupported all the subversive trends in politics Communism, Nazism,anarchism and extreme liberation nationalism (especially the Irish one).59

In fact, Crowleys political positions are little known.60

We can only conjecturewhether Dugin is aware of the fact that Crowleys Irish separatist disguise servedhim well during World War I to win the favour of German secret service agents,as the Great Beast was a MI-6 agent for the greater part of his life. 61 However, it


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is evident that Dugin deliberately associated the palingenetic themes in the occultdoctrine themes that were obviously not central to it with Crowleys virtualsupport of subversive trends in politics. What can be highlighted in the quoteabove is a thesis that the liminoid conditions should be celebrated by those whostrive for the birth of a new order, and the votaries of palingenesis should become

agents aggravating the perceived crisis to put an end to the old order.Occult symbolism plays another important role in Dugins ideological imagery.The eight-arrow star that became an official symbol of Dugins organisation hadfirst appeared on the cover of Osnovy geopolitiki, posited in the centre of theoutline map of Eurasia. Misleadingly identified by Ingram as a swastika,62 thissymbol is a modified Star of Chaos63 and can be presumed to refer to ChaosMagick, an occult doctrine based on the writings of Crowley, Austin OsmanSpare and Peter Carroll.64 It seems appropriate to consider Chaos Magick itself aproduct of mazeway resynthesis, as the practitioners of chaos magic openlyadmit that for them, worldviews, theories, beliefs, opinions, habits and even

personalities are tools that may be chosen arbitrarily in order to understand ormanipulate the world they see and create around themselves.65 The Star ofChaos is one of the symbolic tools adopted from Michael Moorcocks fantasy

books and popularised through role-playing games, especially the Warhammer40K series.66

Though there is a slight difference between the common Star of Chaos and theNeo-Eurasian symbol (the former being usually depicted in a round form whilethe latter is squared), this difference does not prejudice the direct cognation of thetwo symbols, as to cite Crowleys most famous work, The Book of the Law,undoubtedly familiar to Dugin the circle squared in its failure is a key also.67

The symbolism concerned with the occult teachings of Crowley and the ChaosMagick movement constitutes an important element in the style and imagery ofDugins doctrine.68 Thus, Crowley terms the key, which is a squared circle, asAbrahadabra and assigns the number 418 as the numerical value of the word. Inan essay on the late Russian musical genius Sergey Kuryokhin, Dugin wrote:

The new aeon will be cruel and paradoxical. The age of a crowned child,an acquisition of runes, and a cosmic rampage of the Superhuman.Slaves shall serve and suffer.

The renewal of archaic sacredness, the newest and, at the same time, the

oldest synthetic super-art is an important moment of the eschatologicaldrama, of the tempest of equinoxes.

In his Book of the Law, Crowley argued that only those who know thevalue of number 418 can proceed into the new aeon [].69

It is hardly a coincidence that an account on Kuryokhins rock concert organ-ised in support of Dugins 1995 election campaign was titled Koldovstvo 418

proshlo udachno [The Sorcery of 418 has been a success],70 as Dugin and hisfollowers interpret the number 418 in its implicitly palingenetic sense. Dugins

Chaos Magick can be interpreted in the same sense and referred to the perceivedliminoid conditions of modernity, as for him, chaos magic is a ritual practiceassociated with the change of the aeons.71 These occult symbolic nodes, i.e. thenumber 418 and the word Abrahadabra72 as well as the focus on Chaos Magick,


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point to the relevance of interpreting the official symbol (i.e. the Star of Chaos73)of Dugins Neo-Eurasian organisations as a graphic representation of the palinge-netic idea that the liminoidality of the present phase of history should bemaximised and brought to the boiling point by those who believe that this phasewill be immediately followed by the establishment of a new order. Seen from this

perspective, Dugins Neo-Eurasian organisations must be or rather are intendedto be the agents of both the deterioration of the liminoid conditions and thesocio-political-cultural palingenesis in order to establish the New EurasianOrder.

Conclusion

The palingenetic ideas of different nature be they the socio-political andeconomical rebirth of Russia as a Eurasian empire, modernitys transformationinto the New Heavenly Community, or the eschatological embrace of the

tempest of equinoxes as a premise of the new aeon of Horus which Duginresorts to in numerous books, articles, proclamations and speeches, serve him intwo distinct ways. First, they are used to engage new followers. Being psycholog-ical archetypes, the rite of passage and the myth of rebirth are powerful instru-ments of mobilisation of those who perceive the liminoidality of a situational orexistential disenchantment with the quotidien. The diversity of palingeneticthemes referred to by Dugin allows him to have high-ranking politicians, avariety of philosophers, scores of university students, as well as numerous avant-garde artists and musicians at the Neo-Eurasian amen corner. Each group canenjoy a (mostly illusory) possibility of incarnating its own and special myth ofrebirth by contributing to Dugins political cause. In contrast to Borgess Paracel-sus, Dugin does promise them that.

Second, all the palingenetic themes employed by Dugin are recombined andreaggregated in his worldview in the process of mazeway resynthesis, condi-tioned by the perception that the socio-political crisis, which Dugins motherland(be it Russia or the whole Eurasia) supposedly faces, is not a liminal situationthat can be overcome by traditional means of reforms but rather a liminoid statethat the society can only escape in a revolutionary way. The synthesis of differ-ent ideas of renewal reinforce directly or indirectly a larger secular palinge-netic myth of Neo-Eurasianism. Lying at the core of Dugins worldview thismyth functions as a discursive basis, on which the organic culturalethnic

community is sacralised and comes to be seen as a mythologised historicalsubject. Thus Dugin breaks off with the secular interpretation of the objectivereality, and turns his socio-political worldview into a political religion. In itsterms, Eurasia is the ultimate spiritual value that once endangered by aperceived decadent state must be saved at whatever cost through a geopoliti-cal revolution which would establish the New Eurasian Order. To realise thisaim, Dugins doctrine requires an embodiment in a political regime that wouldtotally subordinate the society to the value(s) of the political religion. Thisimplies that the realisation of the Neo-Eurasian project is only possible under atotalitarian regime.

Our focus on various ideas of renewal and rebirth aimed at conveying the inte-gral consistency of Dugins doctrine seen as a variety of fascism. In conclusion, itmight be worth adding that Dugins Neo-Eurasianism can be interpreted asfascist not only within the analytical framework of Roger Griffin or the academics


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who subscribe to the new consensus in fascist studies,74 but also according to themodel of fascism, constructed by Dugin himself:

Fascism this is nationalism yet not any nationalism, but a revolutionary,rebellious, romantic, idealistic [form of nationalism] appealing to a great

myth and transcendental idea, trying to put into practice the ImpossibleDream, to give birth to a society of the hero and Superhuman, to changeand transform the world.75

Notes

1. This article is based on a paper presented at the 1st ICCEES Regional Europe Congress, held on 24 August 2007, in Berlin, Germany. My thanks go to Andreas Umland, who organised the panel TheRussian Extreme Right II: The Nature of Alexander Dugins Ideology and helpfully commented onthe draft of this article. I am also grateful to Roger Griffin, whose methodological advice wasextremely useful. Last but not least, Matthew Feldman provided important support, and Ana BelnSoage was very kind to do proof-reading. Any mistakes, however, are solely my own.

2. Jorge Luis Borges, Borges: Collected Fictions (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p.500.3. Isaac Disraeli,A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature: Consisting of Researches in Literary, Biograph-

ical, and Political History; of Critical and Philosophical Inquiries; and of Secret History (London: JohnMurray, 1824), Vol. III, p.16. More on palingenesis and alchemy see Franois Secret, Palingenesis,Alchemy and Metempsychosis in Renaissance Medicine,Ambix 26/2 (1979), pp.8192.

4. To list but a few: Andreas Umland, Der Neoeurasismus des Aleksandr Dugin. Zur Rolle desintegralen Traditionalismus und der Orthodoxie fr die russische Neue Rechte, in M. Jgerand J. Link (eds), Macht Religion Politik. Zur Renaissance religiser Praktiken und Mentalitten(Edition DISS., Vol. 11) (Mnster: Unrast, 2006), pp.14157; idem, Kulturhegemoniale Strategiender russischen extremen Rechten, sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Politikwissenschaft 33/4 (2004),pp.43754; Alexander Hllwerth, Das sakrale eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin. Eine Diskur-sanalyse zum postsowjetischen russischen Rechtsextremismus (Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and

Society, Vol. 59) (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2007); Alan Ingram, Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet Russia, Political Geography 20/8 (2001), pp.102951; Markus Mathyl, TheNational-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: Two Neo-Fascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Politi-cal Space, Patterns of Prejudice 36/3 (2002), pp.6276; Marlene Laruelle, Aleksandr Dugin: ARussian Version of the European Radical Right? Kennan Institute Occasional Paper, no. 294 (2006);Stephen Shenfield, Dugin, Limonov, and the National-Bolshevik Party, in Stephen Shenfield,Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (Armonk: M.E. Sharp, 2001), pp.190219.

5. Ingram (note 4), p.1034.6. Paradorn Rangsimaporn, Interpretations of Eurasianism: Justifying Russias Role in East Asia,

Europe-Asia Studies 58/3 (2006), p.381.7. On fascism as a political religion see Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); idem, Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e

totalitarismi (Rome: Laterza, 2001); idem, The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretationsand Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism, Totalitarian Movementsand Political Religions 1/1 (2000), pp.1855; idem, Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion:Definitions and Critical Reflections on Criticism of an Interpretation, Totalitarian Movements andPolitical Religions 5/3 (2004), pp.32675.

8. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1991), p.26.9. Roger Griffin, Fascism, in Maryanne Cline Horowitz (ed.), New Dictionary of the History of Ideas

(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 2005), Vol. 2, p.795.10. On the palingenetic myth in religious traditions see first and foremost Mircea Eliade, The Myth of

the Eternal Return, or Cosmos and History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954).11. See Roger Griffin, The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of Totali-

tarian Regimes in Inter-War Europe, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3/3 (2002),pp.2443.

12. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.112.13. Ibid., p.112. In the early twemtieth century context of fascist totalitarianism, whose underlying

driving force was mobilising a secular myth of palingenesis (see note 7), this late 18th centurythesis can be insightfully referred to Hanna Arendts famous phrase: Only the mob and the elite


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504 A. Shekhovtsov

can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totali-tarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1973), p.341). See more on Kants views on palingenesis inHoward Williams, Metamorphosis or Palingenesis? Political Change in Kant, Review of Politics,63/4 (2001), pp.693722.

14. Griffin (note 8), p.36, italics in original.15. Williams (note 13), p.700.

16. Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). See, in particular, Chapter 4 (A Primordialist Definition ofModernism).

17. Ibid., pp.102104.18. Ibid., p.104.19. Ibid., pp.104105.20. Anthony Wallace, Mazeway Resynthesis. A Biocultural Theory of Religious Inspiration, Trans-

actions of the New York Academy of Sciences 18/7 (1956), pp.62638; idem, Revitalization Move-ments,American Anthropologist 58/2 (1956), pp.26481.

21. Griffin (note 16), pp.105106, 108.22. Aleksandr Dugin, Ugroza gomunkula, in Aleksandr Dugin, Filosofiya traditsionalizma (Moscow:

Arktogeya-tsentr, 2002), p.622.23. A. James Gregor, Once again on fascism, classification, and Aleksandr Dugin, in Roger Griffin,

Werner Loh and Andreas Umland (eds), Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An InternationalDebate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right (Soviet and Post-SovietPolitics and Society, Vol. 35) (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2006), p.496.

24. The issue of Dugins instrumentalist use of integral Traditionalist themes will be extensivelydealt with in Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland, Is Dugin a Traditionalist? PerennialPhilosophy and Neo-Eurasianisn, The Russian Review, forthcoming. On Evola see ThomasSheehan, Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist, Social Research48/1 (1981), pp.4573; Richard Drake, Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the RadicalRight in Contemporary Italy, in Peter Merkl (ed.), Political Violence and Terror:Motifs and Motiva-tions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), pp.6189. On the Nouvelle Droite seeTamir Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Roger Griffin,Between Metapolitics and Apoliteia: The Nouvelle Droites Strategy for Conserving the Fascist

Vision in the Interregnum, Modern & Contemporary France 8/1 (2000), pp.3553; AlbertoSpektorowski, The New Right: Ethno-regionalism, Ethno-pluralism and the Emergence of aNeo-fascist Third Way, Journal of Political Ideologies 8/1 (2003), pp.11130. On Dugins fascismsee Andreas Umland, Fashist li doktor Dugin? Nekotorye otvety Aleksandra Gelyevicha,Forum.msk.ru, 20 July (2007), available at: http://forum.msk.ru/material/society/365031.html(last assessed 9 January 2008).

25. Griffin (note 24), p.39.26. See Aleksandr Dugin, Konservativnaya revolyutsiya (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1994).27. Eduard Limonov,Moya politicheskaya biografiya (Moscow: Amfora, 2002), pp.1423.28. Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe buduschee Rossii. Myslit Prostranstvom

(Moscow: Arktogeya-tsentr, 2000).29. On imperialist geopolitics see Gearid Tuathail, Imperialist Geopolitics, in Gearid

Tuathail, Simon Dalby and Paul Routledge (eds), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge, 1998),pp.1543.30. On Haushofers geopolitical thought see Holger H. Herwig, Geopolitik: Haushofer, Hitler and

Lebensraum, Journal of Strategic Studies 22/23 (1999), pp.21841; Gnter Wolkersdorfer, KarlHaushofer and Geopolitics The History of a German Mythos, Geopolitics 4/3 (1999), pp.14560.

31. On new racism see Viktor Shnirelman, Rasizm: vchera i segodnya, Pro et Contra 9/2 (2005),pp.4165; idem, Ksenofobiya, vovy rasizm i puti ikh preodoleniya, Gumanitarnaya mysl yugaRossii 1 (2005), pp.619. On the link between new racism and the Nouvelle Droite see Pierre-AndrTaguieff, The New Cultural Racism in France, Telos 83 (1990), pp.10922; idem, From Race toCulture: The New Rights View of European Identity, Telos 989 (19934), pp.99125.

32. Dugin (note 28), p.258.33. Ibid., p.259.

34. Ibid., p.212.35. Aleksandr Dugins speech at the Imperial March, April 08, 2007, Moscow.36. Programma Obschestvenno-politicheskogo Dvizheniya Evraziya, available at: http://

eurasia.com.ru/programma.html (last assessed 29 July 2007).37. Aleksandr Dugin, Zagadka sotsializma, Elementy 4 (2000), pp.1415.


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38. Roger Griffin, Fascisms new faces (and new facelessness) in the post-fascist epoch, in RogerGriffin et al. (eds) (note 23), pp.578.

39. Aleksandr Dugin, Evolyutsiya paradigmalnykh osnovaniy nauki (Moscow: Arktogeya-tsentr, 2002),p.346.

40. Aleksandr Dugin: Nastoyashchiy postmodern!, Dugins interview for philosophic miscellanyDiskurs-Pi, available at: http://www.arcto.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=922

(last assessed 29 July 2007).41. For John Zerzans main philosophic theses see his first collection of essays, Elements of Refusal(Seattle, WA: Left Bank Books, 1988).

42. See more on Ted Kaczynski in Ron Arnold, Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature: The Worldof the Unabomber (Bellevue: Free Enterprise Press, 1997).

43. Evola and Zerzan on modern civilisation, available at: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92056 (last assessed 29 July 2007).

44. Michael Moynihan, Review of Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization by John Zerzan,Tyr: MythCultureTradition 1 (2002), pp.209216.

45. On Pamyat see William Korey, Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism(Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995); Walter Laqueur, Black Hundred: The Rise of theExtreme Right in Russia (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Howard Spier, Soviet Anti-SemitismUnchained: The Rise of the Historical and Patriotic Association, Pamyat, in Robert Owen Freed-man (ed.), Soviet Jewry in the 1980s: The Politics of Anti-Semitism and Emigration and the Dynamics ofResettlement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), pp.517; John Garrard, A Pamyat Mani-festo: Introductory Note and Translation, Nationalities Papers 19/2 (1991), pp.13445; John B.Dunlop, Pamiat as a Social Movement, Nationalities Papers 18/2 (1990), pp.227.

46. Grigoriy Nekhoroshev, Muedzin pod krasmym flagom, Nezavisimaya gazeta 12 (2001), availableat: http://faces.ng.ru/figures/1999-11-12/5_muedjin.html (last assessed 29 July 2007).

47. By his own account, Mamleyev decided to emigrate due to the threat of criminal persecution forsending a manuscript to a foreign publisher without the knowledge of the authorities. See Nevi-dimy mir eto fakt, Knizhnoe obozrenie 50 (2006), available at: http://www.tvkultura.ru/news.html?id=133546&cid=50 (last assessed 29 July 2007).

48. Apparently, it was under Golovins influence that Dugin translated Evolas Pagan Imperialism intoRussian in 1981 and then tried to circulate it via samizdat. Later it was published by Dugins own

publishing house, see: Yulius Evola, Yazycheskiy imperializm (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1994).49. Nekhoroshev (note 46).50. Ibid.51. Aleksey Chelnokov, Melkie i krupnye besy iz shizoidnogo podpolya, Litsa, August 07 (1999),

available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20000711142329/http://www.nns.ru/persons/jemal_1.html (last assessed 29 July 2007).

52. Aleksandr Sherman, Vstupim v realnost stol udivitelnuyu, chto malo ne pokazhetsya. Inter-vyu s Aleksandrom Duginym, Zhurnal.Ru 2 (1999), available at: http://www.zhurnal.ru/5/duginsh.htm (last assessed 29 July 2007).

53. On Perennialist thought see Harry Oldmeadow, Traditionalism : Religion in the Light of the PerennialPhilosophy (Colombo: Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 2000); William W. Jr Quinn, TheOnly Tradition (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997); Frithjof Schuon, De lunit

transcendante des religions (Paris: Gallimard, 1948).54. Aleksandr Dugin, Yulius Evola: Volshebny put intensivnosti, available at: http://arcto.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1100 (last assessed 29 July 2007).

55. Aleksandr Dugin, My tserkov poslednikh vremyon, Zavtra 1 (1998), p.8.56. Aleksandr Dugin, Klyanus predvechernim vremenem, in Aleksandr Dugin, Tampliery proletari-

ata: Natsional-bolshevizm i initsiatsiya (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997), p.139.57. Arthur Versluis, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the

Twentieth Century by Mark Sedgwick, Esoterica VIII (2006), p.186. See also Xavier Accart, Againstthe Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century by MarkSedgwick,Aries 6/1 (2006), pp.98105; Michael Fitzgerald, Against the Modern World: Traditional-ism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century by Mark Sedgwick, Vincit OmniaVeritas 1/2 (2005), pp.90104.

58. Aleksandr Dugin, Chelovek s sokolinym klyuvom (Alister Krouli), in Dugin (note 56),pp.16976; idem, Uchenie zverya, Mily Angel 3 (2000), available at: http://angel.org.ru/3/crowley.html (last assessed 10 January 2008).

59. Dugin, Chelovek s sokolinym klyuvom (note 58), p.173.60. Marco Pasi,Aleister Crowley und die Versuchung der Politik (Graz: Ares Verlag, 2006).


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61. On Crowleys connections with the British counterintelligence service see Richard B. Spence,Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley and British Intelligence in America, 19141918, InternationalJournal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 13/3 (2000), pp.35971; idem, Secret Agent 666:AleisterCrowley, British Intelligence and the Occult (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2008).

62. Ingram (note 4), p.1038.63. For the images of the Star of Chaos see Wikipedia contributors, Symbol of Chaos, Wikipedia,

The Free Encyclopedia, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Symbol_of_Chaos&oldid=178585894 (last assessed 29 July 2007).64. The British artist, Austin Osman Spare, was a pupil of Crowley and a member of one of his many

orders. Though Spare never wrote of Chaos Magick, his own magic doctrine, Zos Kia Cultus, hada strong influence upon this occult teaching that seems to have been officially born with thepublication of the second edition of Peter Carrolls Liber Null (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null (Keighley:Morton Press, 1981)), where the term was used for the first time. Dugin fallaciously linked ChaosMagick directly to Crowley in Part 6 (Magiya Khaosa) of his Tampliery proletariata (see note 56),although Chaos Magick doctrine was invented a few decades after Crowleys death.

65. Thelemapedia contributors, Chaos Magick, Thelemapedia, The Encyclopedia of Thelema & Magick,available at: http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Chaos_Magick (last assessed 10 January2008). Versluis confirms the same message: Chaos magic draws freely from whatever traditionsor ideas seem useful to it, from science fiction and quantum physics to Crowleys writings orTibetan Buddhism. See Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esoteri-cism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), p.141.

66. See, for example, Wikipedia contributors, Black Legion (Warhammer 40,000), Wikipedia, TheFree Encyclopedia, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_Legion_%28Warhammer_40%2C000%29&oldid=179367491 (last assessed 25 December 2007).

67. Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1976), p.47.68. Here we face another interesting issue that was termed by, among others, Roger Eatwell as the

distinction of the esoteric and exoteric ideological appeals of the radical right: The former refers tothe ideological nature of discussion among converts, or in closed circles. The latter refers more towhat it is considered wise to say in public. See Roger Eatwell, Towards a New Model of GenericFascism,Journal of Theoretical Politics 4/2 (1992), p.174. In public, Dugins followers prefer to calltheir symbol the golden star of Genghis Khan. See http://www.russia3.ru/lubitevraziycev?

PHPSESSID=5102c77ee0856aa52bfad68 (last assessed 29 July 2007).69. Aleksandr Dugin, 418 masok subekta (esse o Sergee Kuryokhine), in Aleksandr Dugin,

Russkaya veshch. Ocherki natsionalnoy filosofii (Moscow: Arktogeya-tsentr, 2001), Vol. 2, p.193.70. A. Frontov, Koldovstvo 418 proshlo udachno, Limonka 24 (1995), p.3.71. Aleksandr Dugin, Slepye fleitisty Azatota, available at: http://www.my.arcto.ru/public/

konsrev/chaos.htm (last assessed 10 January 2008).72. Note 9 to the Russian translation of Crowleys Book of the Law, published in one of Dugins

miscellanies, states that the word Abrahadabra is a word of the new aeon, the aeon of Horus.See Alister Krouli, Kniga zakona, Mily Angel 3 (2000), available at: http://arcto.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=386 (last assessed 10 January 2008).

73. Revealingly, the cover of the recently published collection of essays by Troy Southgate, Tradition &Revolution, also features a Star of Chaos, but in its classical, radiant pattern. See Troy Southgate,

Tradition & Revolution: Collected Writings of Troy Southgate (rhus: Integral Tradition Publishing,2007). Southgate calls himself a National-Anarchist, and is usually considered a New Rightthinker and the leader of various fascist groupuscules, including the British Eurasian Movement,an official Neo-Eurasian mission to the UK. See Graham D. Macklin, Co-opting the CounterCulture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction, Patterns of Prejudice 39/3 (2005),pp.30126; Roger Griffin, From Slime Mould to Rhizome: An Introduction to the GroupuscularRight, Patterns of Prejudice 37/1 (2003), pp.2750.

74. See Roger Griffin (ed.), International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus (London:Arnold, 1998).

75. Aleksandr Dugin, Fashizm bezgranichny i krasny, available at: http://www.my.arcto.ru/public/templars/arbeiter.htm#fash (last assessed 29 July 2007). Translated into English byAndreas Umland and published in Roger Griffin et al. (eds), (note 23), pp.505510.

Documents

Anton Shekhovtsov: The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin's Worldview