Some conservatives in the West have expressed sympathy for the Russians in their war against Ukraine. This sympathy is hard to justify on the basis of the facts, which are well known: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has the goal of erasing Ukrainian nationality, and that goal has been pursued with great brutality. So how is it that conservatives can sympathize with or defend the Russian position? The brilliant Tatar historian Kamil Galeev has offered this explanation on Twitter:
How were the large animals initially domesticated? I really like the theory that ancient people used the same trick modern hunters use—salt traps. They would give animals salt (which they need badly), so they have to come. Even husbandry has an element of bribe and negotiation. … You need to give people what they want. Now what do they want? That’s usually very simple to understand, they won’t shut up about it. They may express it indirectly through projections though. … Western right wings desire a great Christian conservative power which will save them from the wokes. They dream about it day and night. … they project their need to the nearest available candidate—Vladimir Putin, viewing him as a parental figure.
Putin is aware of these hopes, and he has played up to them by his public criticism of woke ideology. Many conservatives, craving salt, have accepted his portrayal of Russia and the Russian government as a proponent of traditional Christian values against the liberal, anti-Christian West. They see Russia as being fundamentally on the right side, a perception which is reinforced by the fact that their liberal enemies in the West are supporting Ukraine. Hence their attitude to the current war.
One manifestation of such conservative hopes is the deference that some have shown towards the Russian thinker Aleksandr Dugin, whose hard work and fluent English have gained a large audience in the West. Gavin Ashenden, the associate editor of the Catholic Herald, is an example. Ashenden, a former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 2019. Ashenden praised Dugin’s work and condemned the Western press for describing him as a fascist: “It’s astonishing to find this label used even in what used to be the most prestigious of our broadsheets. How did it ever become acceptable to use the term as a form of general, casual abuse without any evidence for it?” The defence of Dugin has also been taken up by Michael Millerman in First Things. Millerman describes Dugin as a “mystical philosopher-king,” “the chief philosophical mastermind of an ideologically coherent alternative to Western political modernity,” who offers a hopeful way forward that fulfills the promise of Heidegger’s thought.
The phrase “ideologically coherent alternative to Western political modernity” captures the essence of Dugin’s appeal to those conservatives who are themselves ideological opponents of Western modernity, and who tend to assume that anyone else who opposes it is somehow an ally. Dugin is certainly an opponent of Western modernity, and his thought is in many ways characteristic of Russian society and intellectual life. His thought is worth examining precisely in order to understand why conservatives are deceived if they consider Putin’s Russia to be ideologically sympathetic or a hopeful phenomenon.
The tradition of Russian occultism
Aleksandr Dugin’s thought and career can be summed up simply. He has devoted his life to the investigation and promotion of Western esotericism and its fusion with Russian nationalism. Most people are mercifully ignorant about Western esotericism, so an account of Dugin must begin with an explanation of his intellectual roots and influences.
These roots are in the rich Russian tradition of esoteric occultist nonsense. After the revolution of 1905, the Tsarist government loosened its control on religious and ideological movements in the Russian Empire. Occultist groups flourished as a result, and they attained significant influence in Russian society. These groups included a section of the Bolshevik party, the ‘God-builders.’ The God-builders were led by Alexander Bogdanov—co-founder, with Lenin, of the Bolshevik party—Maxim Gorky, and Anatoly Lunacharsky. They believed that religious myths, rituals, and symbols were powerful tools that should be reinterpreted in order to promote socialism and the worship of humanity, rather than simply jettisoned. Their project was opposed by Lenin, who was a pure materialist and who won the power struggle in the Party. Bogdanov was driven out of politics and took up research into blood transfusion as a means of prolonging human life. He died as a result of a botched blood transfusion in 1928. Lunacharsky kept a position in the Bolshevik leadership and became the first People’s Commissar for Education in the Soviet Union. He attempted to win occultist support for the Soviet regime. After his death in 1933 (surprisingly, from natural causes), Lunacharsky’s memory was obliterated in the Soviet Union. He was rehabilitated in the 1960s, and a revival of interest in his ideas was accompanied by a surge of enthusiasm for the occult in Soviet society.
Vyacheslav Menzhinskii, head of the OGPU from 1926 to 1934, was the most important Bolshevik with occultist links. Before the Revolution, Menzhinskii was part of the circle around the poet and satanist Mikhail Kuzmin, writing lines expressing views that resemble Dugin’s (‘Not everyone can grasp/The wondrous art of seeing in dreary commandments/Lighthouses only for bold temptations’). He was Stalin’s mentor in the art of devising imaginary conspiracies to justify the extermination of real or potential political opponents, and in staging show trials based on these conspiracies. Stalin depended on Menzhinskii for his seizure of power and his collectivization of agriculture and never doubted his loyalty. Donald Rayfield observes, “Messianic obsessions link Menzhinskii … to Stalin …. Denying God was not enough; they longed to usurp him.” Stalin was not an occultist; the posturing and nonsense involved in the occult was not his style. Where he agreed with Menzhinskii was on the reversal of moral values that is part of the occult. According to this reversal, obedience to the moral law belongs to the mediocre, the contemptible, the subhuman. Respect and honour are due to those who trample on this moral law—the worse their transgressions, the better and more godlike they are. Proud and cruel liars inherit the earth. Stalin’s method of government was based on this philosophy, and it has left a mark on Russia to this day.
Dugin’s own thought is rooted in the occultist movements of the 1960s. This decade saw the foundation of the ‘Yuzhinskii Circle’ by Yuri Mamleev, an occultist and a well-respected literary figure who wrote novels of really striking vileness and obscenity. The Circle was an informal gathering of like-minded intellectuals and artists who gathered around Mamleev and met in his apartment in Yuzhinskii Lane in Moscow. Mamleev engaged the circle in an intensive study of Western esoteric and occultist works. Mamleev was interested in Hindu and Buddhist metaphysics and sought to reconcile the metaphysical positions of Hinduism and Russian Orthodoxy. He adhered to the Gnostic conception of the physical universe as fundamentally evil and depraved. He held that contact with the Divine outside this world can be achieved through extreme behaviour that breaks through into the metaphysical depths. Mamleev led the Yuzhinskii Circle in ceremonies that were supposed to lead to this breakthrough; these involved aberrant sexual rites and the consumption of extraordinary amounts of alcohol. He thought that a spiritual elite of Russian occultists was recovering a Russian occult tradition, thereby constituting Russia as the spiritual centre of the world.
Evgeny Golovin became the main figure in the Circle after Mamleev departed for the U.S. in 1974 and took up a teaching post at Cornell. Golovin was initially seized with enthusiam for René Guénon (1886-1951), a French occultist who believed in a primordial spiritual tradition of non-human origin that underlies all religious practice.
Guénon thought that this supposed primordial tradition, to which he claimed to adhere, was preserved in an esoteric form in Christianity underneath an exoteric disguise. He considered the advent of modernity to be a disaster because of the Enlightenment’s rejection of magic and the occult. Guénon’s thought was baptised ‘Traditionalism,’ a term that in this context is not to be confused with enthusiasm for traditional Christian liturgical celebrations. This primordial tradition, as he presented it, was a mishmash of Hindu and Gnostic ideas. Guénon held that spiritual advance was obtained through initiation into the esoteric tradition of a religion, and that the salvation of human society depended on its being taken over by the initiated elite. He was an important influence on the far-right Romanian Iron Guard of the 1930s and 1940s, and on Mircea Eliade, a zealous member of the Iron Guard in the 1930s and an influential scholar of religion at the University of Chicago from the 1950s onwards. Some elements of Guénon’s thought can be discerned in Eliade’s colleague Leo Strauss. When the Iron Guard was founded in Argentina in the 1960s, it took Eliade (together with Lenin) as one of its inspirations. (The then Fr. Jorge Bergoglio S.J. was close to the Argentinian Iron Guard and assisted it by giving control of the formerly Jesuit Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires to some of its leading members; this illustrates the extent of the appeal of Guénon’s thought.)
Golovin became disgusted with Guénon’s qualified acceptance of Christianity, however, and turned from Guénon to Julius Evola (1898-1974), the Italian fascist and occultist. Evola also believed in a primordial hidden spiritual tradition, but he rejected Christianity because of its promotion of human equality. He instead sought to revive Roman paganism. He fell out with Mussolini in the 1920’s, partly as a result of performing magic rituals to prevent Mussolini from coming to an agreement with the Catholic Church; Mussolini heard of these rituals and was not pleased. After the Second World War, Evola became a major ideological inspiration for Italian right-wing terrorism and for the Hungarian far-right party Jobbik.
Golovin developed a fascination with the völkisch occultists—occultist thinkers and groups linked to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. These included the Thule Society and its founder Rudolf von Sebottendorf; the Ariosophists Guido von List, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, and Karl Maria Wiligut; and the Nazi scholar Hermann Wirth. The Nazi party was founded by two members of the Thule Society, Karl Harrer and Anton Drexler. The Thule Society initially owned the official Nazi paper, the Völkische Beobachter. The Society’s members included the prominent Nazis Rudolf Hess and Hans Frank. Some researchers have claimed that Hitler’s mentor Dietrich Eckart was a member of the Society, but this seems to be incorrect. However, Eckart (to whom Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf) received financial support from the Society at times and shared its general ideology, even if he was not a formal member. Golovin’s interest in the völkisch occultists was sparked by his encounter with Le Matin des magiciens, a novel by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier that introduces a wide range of occultist themes. His enthusiasm for Nazi occultists led Golovin to rename the Yuzhinskii Circle the ‘Black Order of the SS,’ and to name himself Führer of the Order.
Dugin’s occultism
With this background, it becomes possible to return to the figure of Aleksandr Dugin with the proper context. His intellectual and spiritual formation was profoundly occultist, and this formation is central to his thought to this day. He was initiated into the Yuzhinskii Circle in 1980 by Geydar Djemal (1947-2016), who shared leadership of the Circle with Golovin. Djemal was also devoted to Nazi occult ideas and developed Guénon and Evola’s Traditionalism in more extreme directions. He combined this with allegiance to some form of Sufi Islam. He had a prestigious career in various Islamic organizations that earned him, among other things, an honorary doctorate from the University of Capetown.
During the 1980s, Dugin was active in the pro-Nazi wing of the circle led by Djemal. In 1988 he joined ‘Pamyat,’ Dmitri Vasilyev’s nationalist and anti-Semitic organization, and served on its central council. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Vasilyev claimed the title of ‘fascist’ for this organization, and he dismissed Mussolini and Hitler as not being true fascists. Dugin was expelled from the organization for alleged Satanism and other offences.
Despite this, Dugin continued to take part in occultist practices and to affiliate himself with Naziism. In 1991 he tried to take part in the anti-Gorbachev putsch. In 1993, Dugin appeared as the expert commentator in The Secrets of the Century, a television documentary that sympathetically described the occult groups and ideas linked to the Nazi party. From 1994 to 1998 he was active in the National-Bolshevik Party of Eduard Limonov. This party followed the ideology of earlier National Bolsheviks in Germany and the USSR, who sought to combine Nazism with communism. From 1989 to 1993 he travelled extensively in Western Europe to network with fellow rightists. He made contacts with Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, and Jean Thiriart in France and Belgium. De Benoist is the founder of the ‘Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne’ (GRECE), a thinktank for the French ‘Nouvelle Droite.’He is a neopagan who detests Christianity and promotes white nationalism; he and Dugin became close collaborators. In Italy, Dugin forged links with Claudio Mutti, an influential neofascist follower of Evola. Dugin has extensive connections in Romania. They include the politicians Adrian Năstase, the academic Ilie Bădescu, and the artist Eugen Mihăescu. Dugin is part of a European neopagan intellectual and political network that forms a significant part of the European right. He has never slackened his intense tempo of publication and media activity. In 2008 he was appointed to the sociology faculty of Moscow State University, but in 2014 he was dismissed from this post for calling for the genocide of Ukrainians.
Dugin describes himself as an Eurasianist and a Traditionalist. Eurasianism is a geopolitical school of thought founded by Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). Mackinder identified control of the ‘Heartland,’ the northern part of Asia more or less corresponding to the territories of the former Russian Empire, as the key to control of the world. This strategic position results from the development of railways, which made it possible to exploit the Heartland’s resources and central location. Mackinder saw a politically united Heartland as threatening the dominance of the maritime power of Britain. Eurasianism was taken up in Russia by Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), Putin’s favourite thinker, and Lev Gumilyov (1912-1992), who argued that Russia is an Asiatic culture influenced by the Mongol Empire, rather than a European one.
Dugin’s Traditionalism adds occultism to this geopolitical theory. The ultimate source of this addition is The Arctic Home in the Vedas, a book published in 1903 by the Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. It argued that the Aryans originated in the Arctic, at a time when the climate there was warm and pleasant. This claim was taken up by the völkisch occultists, who identified this homeland with Hyperborea, a terrestrial paradise believed by the ancient Greeks to exist in the far north. This view is also found in Guénon and earlier French occultists. Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels named this vanished homeland Arktogäa, and they held it to be the ancestral homeland of the Aryans located at the North Pole and the source of Aryo-Germanic esoteric religion. Rudolf von Sebottendorf named his Thule Society after Thule, the alleged capital of Hyperborea. In 1990 Dugin founded the Historico-Religious Society ‘Arktogeya,’ a publishing house and later an internet presence, which he named after this supposed homeland. Hermann Wirth (1885-1981) also held that the Aryans originated in the Arctic, and sought to recover their original religion and culture, which he considered to be the source of all spiritual wisdom. Wirth founded the Ahnenerbe, the SS institute devoted to supporting Nazi belief in Aryan supremacy. He is one of the most important influences on Dugin’s thought.
Dugin does take an interest in Heidegger, whose formal affiliation with the Nazi Party makes him a sympathetic figure to Dugin. Heidegger’s prestige makes him a valuable reference, and the difficulty and obscurity of his thought permits Dugin to identify his own theses with Heidegger’s ideas without fear of easy contradiction. However, the main components of Dugin’s thought come from the ideas of Mamleev, Guénon, Evola, and the völkisch occultists.
Satanism, Christianity, and Russia
After this extensive consideration of Russian occultism and Dugin’s association with it, it is time to consider briefly the content of Dugin’s own thought. In Dugin’s geopolitics, Russia is identified with both Hyperborea and Mackinder’s Heartland. Russia preserves the original Hyperborean tradition of spiritual insight, and it is the homeland of the spiritual elite of mankind. Mackinder’s maritime powers are the Atlanticist powers of Britain and the U.S., which are the bearers and champions of modernity and oppose Tradition. Russia and the U.S. are thus irreconcilable enemies, and the struggle between them is an eschatological one. Russian victory promises to bring to an end the present age, the Kali Yuga, the worst and most corrupt age in the cycle of time, and to transform this world into the heavenly city. The struggle for this victory will destroy most of the human race, but that is all to the good in Dugin’s view.
It is easy to get lost in Dugin’s voluminous, discursive, and obscure writings, or to dismiss him as completely unhinged. But there is in fact a coherent metaphysical idea that underlies his thought. Dugin supports what he calls ‘manifestationism,’ against creationism, which in this sense has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Manifestationism asserts that there is no sharp line between the divine and the natural world, and it denies the existence of anything entirely non-divine. Creationism holds that the world was created by God out of nothing, and that the distinction between the divine and the non-divine is the distinction between the uncreated cause of all other beings and the entities that are created by that cause ex nihilo. Only the uncreated God can be worshipped; adoring as divine anything other than the creator is the sin of idolatry, according to creationism. Dugin holds that the Old Testament is creationist, but that Christianity rejects creationism. Indeed, according to him Christ’s coming was intended to refute and overthrow creationism. He correctly identifies the Roman Catholic Church as creationist, but he infers from this that it is the enemy of ‘true Christianity.’
Dugin believes the fallen angels were right to refuse the status of purely created beings, since this refusal was justified by manifestationism. Dugin’s enthusiasm for the English occultist Aleister Crowley is connected to this approval of the devil’s point of view. There is a video of Dugin in which he intones excerpts from Crowley’s works in a ceremony held in Crowley’s honour. Dugin has proclaimed his allegiance to the ‘Left-Hand Path’ of occultism, which embraces hatred of the world, immersion in evil, and destruction. His sympathy for the demonic way of looking at things is manifested in his praise of the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo (an “artist of the cosmogonic mystery” according to Dugin), and his favourable attitude to the nuclear obliteration of the United States.
The psychological mechanism behind this outlook is clear. Committing monstrously evil acts opposes God’s will to the greatest possible extent. The perpetrator of these acts considers that such active opposition to God’s will puts him on a level with God, because they involve treating God as a being who is not to be feared or obeyed. This self-exaltation to equality with God is considered by followers of the ‘Left-Hand Path’ to actually confer divinization, to lift the perpetrator above the category of a mere creature.
In 1999 Dugin joined the Old Believers, a religious group that split off from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century out of opposition to liturgical changes introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow. Dugin asserts that the primordial Tradition à la Guénon is found in its truest form in the esoteric Christianity of this group. His supposed Christian allegiance is thus in fact adherence to his manifestationist and occultist ideas, which he claims to be the esoteric faith of the Old Believers.
We may well agree that ‘fascist’ is too sober and restrained a term to capture Dugin’s thought, and to that extent is inaccurate. This conclusion does not offer much reassurance to those concerned about Dugin’s influence.
Dugin’s personal influence in Russia has been exaggerated, but he is nonetheless a prominent figure on the Russian scene. His importance lies in the fact that a person with his ideas was able to become prominent in Russia, and in the wider appeal to Russians of the milieu from which he emerged. This wider appeal is manifested in such phenomena as the Wagner mercenary group. This is a neo-Nazi outfit that was given its name because of its founder’s admiration for the Third Reich, and that favours a revived form of paganism called ‘Rodnovery.’ It glories in its atrocities and takes its instruments of torture as an official symbol. It is well known to be an important element in Russian politics and the Russian military effort.
As we have seen, Dugin’s views are not that original, and his reputation and influence are Russia is less than they are made out to be in the West. But Dugin is unoriginal precisely because his thought is composed of elements taken from a wide and influential Russian intellectual movement. The fact that such views carry weight and find an important audience in Russia reveals a profoundly troubled, damaged, and irrational society. It shows that the image of Russia as supporting ‘traditional values’ is a propaganda fabrication. One can take some comfort from the fact that Putin and the Russian government think there is enough support for these values to justify this propaganda effort, but it is a mistake, to say the least, to believe any of it.
