No person embodies the sporadic nature of Russia’s foreign policy better than the Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin. As the Ukrainian crisis evolves into a wider conflict between East and West, Dugin’s philosophical cannon stands poised to fill the ideological vacuum left by the Soviet Union’s demise.

Dugin’s so-called “Fourth Political Theory” fuses fascism and communism, thereby mobilizing anti-liberal radicals on both sides of the political spectrum. His ideology stems from a conservative worldview advanced by the Russian émigré community in the 1920’s called “Eurasianism.”

Although Dugin’s theories may appear to be on the political fringe, he is ensconced to an alarming degree within the Russian political elite. He is a professor at Russia’s flagship Moscow State University, and regularly gives lectures at Interior Ministry (police) academies across the country. He has also acted as an adviser to Putin’s ally Sergei Naryshkin, chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.

With recent studies showing that only nine percent of Russians regard themselves as “European,” and around seventy-one percent sympathize with “Eurasian civilization,” it is clear that the ideological currents Dugin represents are both prominent, and increasingly influential. As an ideologue with government connections, as well as head of the “All-Russian, Political, and Social Movement of Eurasia” – the most prominent Eurasianist movement in the country – what Alexander Dugin thinks and believes is a crucial window of insight into Russia’s current evolving political currents.

Dugin’s theoretical imprints can be seen in Moscow’s cynical exploitation of economic uncertainty, distrust of the EU, homophobia, and growing hostility toward immigration across Europe. Vladimir Putin’s backing of radical movements on the left, such as the Socialist Party in Moldova, and more controversially, the far right, as exemplified by the Kremlin’s nine million euro loan to France’s National Front, is reflective of these policies.

At the heart of Dugin’s political theory is an apocalyptic confrontation between the sea-based “empire” of the United States, and the land-based, Eurasian heartland led by Russia. Dugin’s theory is that sea-based powers are structurally prone to an ideology of liberal individualism, bolstered by global capitalism. In contrast, Eurasia is supposedly centered on community, cultural tradition, and social continuity (conservatism).

As he argues, the maritime powers use individualism to erode social bonds and cultural obligations, thereby undermining Eurasia’s foundations and subjugating land-based powers. This partly explains state-led fears of homosexuality, which are seen as part of a Western conspiracy to undermine a key pillar of Russian society: the Orthodox Church. For Dugin, Russia must expand territorially in order to counteract globalization and construct an insulated, conservative economic union based on a mercantilist, state dominated capitalist structures.

With the ideological pomp surrounding the official inauguration of the Eurasian Economic Union, sponsored by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, on January 1 2015, Eurasianism may grow to become a cohesive political force in the region. As Russia continues to pivot further eastward, Dugin’s crowning achievement may be the construction of a mainstream meta-narrative for Russia’s bold new future, and an ideological foundation for global opposition to the Western liberal order.

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