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The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Marlène Laruelle
Marlène Laruelle*
Affiliation:
Centre d'Etudes Orientales, France, [email protected]
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Extract

The Eurasianist ideology is coming back on the Russian political and intellectual scene but also among the Turkic and Muslim elites in the Russian Federation and in Kazakhstan. The political, economic, social and identity difficulties of the transition invite Russians and other post-Soviet citizens to think about their relations with Europe and about the relevance of taking the West as a model. In this context of destabilization, Eurasianism proposes a geopolitical solution for the post-Soviet space. It presupposes the existence of a third continent between East and West, called “Eurasia,” and supports the idea of an organic unity of cultures born in this zone of symbiosis between Russian, Turkic, Muslim and even Chinese worlds. Neo-Eurasianism is the main ideology born among the different Russian conservative movements in the 1990s. Its theories are very little known, but the idea of an entity called Eurasia, regrouping the center of the old continent in which Russia would be “at home,” is more and more rife. It attracted many intellectuals and politicians in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Eurasianism was a way to explain the “disaster.”

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 115 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. See M. Laruelle, L'idéologie eurasiste russe ou comment penser l'empire (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999).Google Scholar

2. About this topic, see M. Laruelle, “Alexandre Dugin: esquisse d'un eurasisme d'extrěme droite en Russie post-soviétique,” Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest, No. 3, 2001, pp. 59–78; “L'Empire après l'Empire: le néo-eurasisme russe”, Cahiers du monde russe, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2001, pp. 71–94.Google Scholar

3. For example the “Clamart schism” movement, which has published for one-and-a-half years the Marxist weekly Evraziya. Google Scholar

4. Evraziistvo. Opyt sistematicheskogo izlozheniia [Eurasianism. Essay of a Systematic Analysis] (Paris: Evraziiskoe knigoizdatel'stvo, 1926), p. 402.Google Scholar

5. It has become for example the name of a section about the former Soviet republics in the daily Moskovskie Novosti. Google Scholar

6. He names this movement “Aziyatsvo” in order to differentiate it from the strictly Russian Eurasianism.Google Scholar

7. Ksenia Mialo very often expresses concern about Eurasianism, in which she sees the death of Russia through its dilution among the other republics: owing to its demographic weakness, Russia could no longer support an empire: an empire would take from Russia more than it would give.Google Scholar

8. His most well-known books are: Etnogenez i biosfera zemli [Ethnogenesis and Biosphere of the Earth] (Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1990); Ritmy Evrazii. Epokhi i civilizatsii [Rhythms of Eurasia. Epochs and Civilizations] (Moscow: Progress, 1993); Chernaya legenda. Druzia i nedrugi Velikoj stepi [The Black Legend. Friends and Enemies of the Great Steppe] (Moscow: Progress, 1994).Google Scholar

9. “Passionarity,” “ethnogenesis,” “subethnos,” “superethnos,” etc. About this topic, see M. Laruelle, “Lev N. Gumilev (1912–1992): biologisme et eurasisme en Russie,” Revue des études slaves, Nos 1–2, 2000, pp. 163–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. To my knowledge, there is no sociological survey about this topic.Google Scholar

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28. About classical Eurasianist historiography, see C. J. Halperin, “G. Vernadsky, Eurasianism, the Mongols and Russia,” Slavic Review, Vol. 41, No. 3, 1982, pp. 477–493; “Russia and the Steppe,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte (Berlin Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universität in Berlin, 1985), pp. 55–194; G. V. Vernadsky, Drevniaia Rus’ [The Antique Rus] (Moscow: AGRAF, 1997); Mongoly i Rus’ [The Mongols and Rus] (Moscow: AGRAF, 1997).Google Scholar

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31. A. S. Panarin, “Paradoksy evropeizma v sovremennoi Rossii,” Rossiia i musulmanskii mir, No. 2, 1997, pp. 5–14 and No. 3, 1997, p. 16.Google Scholar

32. Dugin is rejected by the other Eurasianist movements, especially by Panarin's one; they refuse to be assimilated into the same ideology. According to Panarin, Dugin's geopolitics is a pagan and not a Christian theory; it conceives the state as like an isolated and selfish organism. These presuppositions are strictly opposed to Panarin's “civilizational consciousness:” each state has its own place in a Christian international society; the individual submits to community through ideas and values and not through blood; the Russian Empire is the result of history and moral principles.Google Scholar

33. A. Dugin, Giperboreiskaia teoriia. Opyt ariosofskogo issledovaniia (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1993); Konservativnaia revoliutsiia (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1993); Misterii Evrazii (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1996); Metafizika blagoï vesti: pravoslavnii ezoterism (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1996); Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997).Google Scholar

34. This book very quickly sold out and was in its fourth edition in 2000.Google Scholar

35. F. Thorn, “Eurasisme et néo-eurasisme,” Commentaires, No. 66, 1994, p. 304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Ziuganov, Herald Tribune, 2 February 1996.Google Scholar

37. Cf. D. Tchernov, “Prevyshe vsego. Rossiiskie fundamentalisty obediniaiutsia dlia podderzhki vlasti,” Vesti, 25 April 2001, p. 4.Google Scholar

38. See the website of the Eurasian Party, İwww.eurasia.com.rur̊; G. Nekoroshev, “Evraziitsy reshili operet'sia na V. Putina,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 24 April 2001, p. 2; D. Radyshevsky, “Soiuz ravvinov s kazakami,” Moskovskie novosti, 10 April 2001, p. 13.Google Scholar

39. See the manifesto of Dugin's movement: İwww.arctogaia.comr̊.Google Scholar

40. A. Umland, Towards an Uncivil Society? Contextualizing the Recent Decline of Extremely Right-Wing Parties in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2002), p. 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. About the new right in France, see P.-A. Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle droite. Jalons d'une analyse critique (Paris: Descartes & Cie, 1994).Google Scholar

42. Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle droite, p. 311.Google Scholar

43. Dugin, Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 54.Google Scholar

44. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 12.Google Scholar

45. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 5.Google Scholar

46. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 253.Google Scholar

47. Dugin's theory about the common origin of the American and Atlantide civilizations is presented in Misterii Evrazii, especially p. 46.Google Scholar

48. Which would be the reply to the sea principle: Britain in Europe, China in Asia, Turkey in the Muslim world.Google Scholar

49. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 247.Google Scholar

50. However, Dugin accepts separatism for all the cultural areas he considers non-Russian: he suggests for example giving up the Kuril Islands to Japan and the Kaliningrad region to Germany, but wants to get the Balkans into the Russian sphere.Google Scholar

51. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 251.Google Scholar

52. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 341.Google Scholar

53. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 251.Google Scholar

54. See his book Metafizika blagoi vesti. Google Scholar

55. Dugin, Misterii Evrazii, 1996, p. 2.Google Scholar

56. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, p. 190.Google Scholar

57. As can be read in a chapter in Misterii Evrazii called “Across Siberia to Myself.” Dugin, Misterii Evrazii, p. 33.Google Scholar

58. Dugin, Misterii Evrazii, 1996, p. 78.Google Scholar

59. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 1997, p. 255.Google Scholar

60. About this topic, see N. Goodrick-Clarcke, The Occult Roots of Nazism. Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (New York: New York University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

61. Dugin, Giperboreiskaia teoria, 1993, p. 5.Google Scholar

62. “The world of Judaica is hostile to us … The Indo-European elite must now take up a titanic challenge: we must understand those who are different from us not only on a cultural, national, political plan, but also on a metaphysical plan. In this case, understanding does not mean forgiving but overcoming.” Dugin, Konservativnaia revoliutsiia, p. 248.Google Scholar

63. The first Eurasianist theoreticians believed in the Jews’ Eurasian nature. According to them, the Jews were not a European or Middle-Eastern people but a Eurasian one. The history of the Khazar khanate, based in the steppe in the eighth-tenth centuries symbolized the Eurasian destiny of the Jews. The Eurasianist movement stressed the Jews’ religious nature and the Russians’ and expected a fusion of Judaism into Orthodoxy.Google Scholar

64. All the Eurasianists who returned to the Soviet Union died during the massive purges at the end of the 1930s; P. N. Savicky, who stayed in Prague, was sent to the Stalinian Gulag from 1945 to 1956 and then to Czechoslovakian Communist prisons; the philosopher L. P. Karsavin, professor in Kaunas, was arrested during the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states; Prince N. S. Troubetzkoy was affected by Nazi pressures on Vienna University and died in 1938 after a Gestapo search in his flat.Google Scholar