Mr. Gumilyov’s theories drew many people through the tumultuous 1990s. But Eurasianism was injected directly into the bloodstream of Russian power in a variant developed by self-styled philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. After unsuccessful interventions in post-Soviet politics, Dugin focused on developing his influence where it mattered – with the military and policymakers. With the 1997 publication of his 600-page textbook, sublimely titled “The Foundations of Geopolitics: Russia’s Geopolitical Future,” Eurasianism became central to his mind. political imaginations of strategists.
In the process of adapting Mr. Dugin’s Eurasianism to current conditions, Russia had a new rival – not just Europe, but the entire US-led “Atlantic” world . And his Eurasianism is not anti-imperialist but the opposite: Russia has always been an empire, the Russian people are “imperialists”, and after the 1990s was ravaged by “eternal enemies”, Russia may revive in the next phase of the global war. and become a “world empire”. In terms of civilization, Mr. Dugin emphasized the longstanding connection between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Russian empire. The battle of Orthodoxy against Western Christianity and the decadence of the West can be exploited for the coming geopolitical war.
Eurasian geopolitics, Russian Orthodoxy and traditional values - these goals have shaped Russia under Putin’s leadership. Themes of imperial glory and victimization of the West were propagated throughout the country; in 2017, they were drummed home in the grand exhibition “Russia, My History”. The fair’s flashy displays showcase Gumilyov’s Eurasian philosophy, the sacrificial martyrdom of the Romanov family and the evils the West has inflicted on Russia.
Where did Ukraine take shape in this imperial renaissance? As a hindrance, in the first place. Trubetzkoy argued in his 1927 article “On the Ukraine Question” that Ukrainian culture was “an individualization of the all-Russian culture” and that Ukrainians and Belarusians should adhere to Russians according to the organizing principle of faith. Their common orthodoxy. Mr. Dugin made things more direct in his 1997 text: Ukraine’s sovereignty is a “great danger to the whole of Eurasia.” Full military and political control over the entire northern coast of the Black Sea is an “absolute imperative” of Russia’s geopolitics. Ukraine must become “a purely administrative region of the centralized Russian state.”
Mr. Putin has that message in mind. In 2013, he declared that Eurasia is a main geopolitical region where Russia’s “genetic code” and many of its peoples will be protected against “extremist Western-style liberalism”. In July last year he announced that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people” and in angry On the eve of the invasion, he described Ukraine as a “puppet colony” where the Orthodox Church was under attack and NATO was preparing for an attack on Russia.
This mixture of attitudes – complaints about Western aggression, the emphasis on traditional values over the decadence of individual rights, the assertion of Russia’s obligation to unify Eurasia and Ukraine dependency – has grown in the cauldron of post-imperialist resentment. Now, they inspire Putin’s worldview and inspire his brutal war.
The obvious target is empire. And the line will not be drawn in Ukraine.
