The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism As Blowback
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University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2018 The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism as Blowback Grant Scott Fellows University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the International Relations Commons, Political Theory Commons, and the Soviet and Post- Soviet Studies Commons Recommended Citation Fellows, Grant Scott, "The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism as Blowback" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1516. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1516 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin’s Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism as Blowback A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies University of Denver In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Grant S. Fellows November 2018 Advisor: Alan Gilbert © by Grant S. Fellows 2018 All Rights Reserved Author: Grant S. Fellows Title: The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin’s Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism as Blowback Advisor: Alan Gilbert Degree Date: November 2018 ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of Aleksandr Dugin’s The Foundations of Geopolitics, of which I have translated important sections into English and these are included as an appendix. Despite the importance of Foundations of Geopolitics to Russian strategic thought there has not been a translated edition published in English. This work was published in 1997 and has been quite influential for Russian political and military leadership. I strive to provide context for the setting in which Foundations of Geopolitics was created through an analysis of the social and political conditions that existed in Russia while the text was being written, as well as how and why it came to achieve such influence. This is followed by an analysis of the text itself. Finally, I examine the ways in which the strategic precepts offered by Dugin in Foundations of Geopolitics have been adopted and employed by the Kremlin in foreign and domestic policy. Additionally, I reveal the direct and indirect links connecting Dugin and his fascist Neo-Eurasianist ideology to the leaders and ideologues of fascist, far-right, xenophobic, and often racist movements. This has created a network of like-minded movements advocating for the reclamation of a traditional identity domestically, but looking to Moscow for international leadership and guidance in foreign policy. The origins of these developments can be traced back to Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I must thank my thesis advisor, Distinguished Professor Alan Gilbert, who initially inspired me to write on this topic and provided invaluable help and advice throughout the writing process, as well as constant encouragement and support. I would also like to thank Distinguished Professor Haider Khan and my committee chair Professor Frédérique Chevillot for their patience and assistance. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude. Professor Laura Kline at Wayne State University, helped inspire my love of the Russian language and its literature and I thank her as well. Finally, I owe my grandparents Milton and Eunice Ring, my parents Liz and Neil, my siblings Jill, Matt, and Emma, as well as my extended family a heartfelt thank you. I would not have been able to do this without you. My friends Alex, Ben, Greg, Lizzie, Nikhil, Nick, Peter, Rahul, Ryan, Shawn, Tess, and Zach have all helped me get here in ways great and small and I am beyond grateful for their moral support and good advice. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Biography of Dugin Prior to the Collapse of the Soviet Union ................ 8 Chapter 3: Bespredel (Lawlessness) 1989-1999 ............................................................ 20 Chapter 4: Biography of Dugin after the Collapse of the Soviet Union ................... 30 Chapter 5: Eurasianists versus Atlanticists ................................................................. 38 Conservative Revolutionaries ........................................................................... 41 Petr Savitsky and Original Eurasianism .......................................................... 50 Chapter 6: Pan-Slavism and the Origins of Eurasianism .......................................... 56 Chapter 7: “A Path to the North,” The Frontier Thesis, and Lessons from the Talassocracy .................................................................................................................. 64 Chapter 8: Dugin on “The Jewish Question” .............................................................. 68 Chapter 9: Dugin’s Road to Influence ......................................................................... 72 Chapter 10: Blowback and Neo-Eurasianism .............................................................. 88 Chapter 11: Inspiration Worldwide and Kremlin Grand Strategy ............................ 103 Chapter 12: Conclusion and What Comes After Putin? ............................................ 119 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 126 Appendix: Translation of Selected Sections of Foundations of Geopolitics ............ 136 Section 1: Friedrich Ratzel: The State as a Physical Organism ....................... 136 Section 2: Rudolf Kjellen and Fredrick Neumann “Middle Europe” .............. 143 Section 3: Halford Mackinder: The Geographical Pivot of History ................ 147 Section 4: Alfred Mahan and “Sea Power” ........................................................ 156 Section 5: Vidal de la Blache— “France vs. Germany” .................................... 162 Section 6: Nicholas Spykman “A Revision of Mackinder, the Rimland’s Centrality” ........................................................................................................... 166 Section 7: Karl Haushofer— “the Continental Bloc” ....................................... 172 section 8: Carl Schmitt—“The Behemoth versus the Leviathan” ................... 178 Section 9: Petr Nikolayevich Savitsky—“Eurasia—the Middle of the Earth” 188 Section 10: Geopolitics as an Instrument of National Politics ........................ 199 iv Part 2, Section 3: Globalism .............................................................................. 206 Part 4: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, Section 4: The Redistribution of the World .................................................................................................................. 219 Part 5: The Interior Geopolitics of Russia, Section 5: The Threat of the West ............................................................................................................................ 223 Part 6: Eurasian Analysis, Section 3: Geopolitical Problems of the Near Abroad ................................................................................................................ 229 Book 2, Part 5: The Khazarian Question ......................................................... 232 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Dugin at a Meeting of the National Bolshevik Party, 1996, Moscow ............ 1 Figure 2: Anti- Immigration Facebook Ad .................................................................. 83 Figure 3: Islamophobic Facebook Ad ........................................................................... 91 Figure 4: Facebook Ad Appealing to Confederate Sympathizers ............................. 83 Figure 5: Anti-Black Lives Matter Movement Facebook Ad ...................................... 91 Figure 6: Facebook Ad Supporting Bernie Sanders ................................................... 92 Figure 7: Pro-Black Panthers Facebook Ad ................................................................ 92 vi Chapter 1: Introduction «Рукописи не горят» (Manuscripts Don’t Burn) -Mikhail Bulgakov from The Master and Margarita Figure 11 1 From Anton Shekohvtsov’s blog: http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.com/2015/01/aleksandr- dugin-and-syriza-connection.html 1 Over the past twenty years, the star of Aleksandr Dugin has rapidly ascended; he has gone from obscurity to serving as a shadowy advisor to Russian political figures and taking the position of the leading ideologues of neo-fascism, not just in Russia, but globally. Dugin has given his ideological framework several names, ‘Eurasianism,’ ‘Fourth Political Theory,’ and ‘National Bolshevism;’ however, these differences are strictly superficial and the ideological principles he espouses in The Fourth Political Theory (2009) are consistent with those from his seminal work, The Foundations of Geopolitics (1998). Foundations of Geopolitics remains untranslated in English, but I have translated important sections to help rectify this. According to John Dunlop, a leading scholar of the Russian far-right: There probably has not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period that has exerted an influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign