DUGIN, ALEKSANDR GELYEVICH

(1962– )

   Political philosopher and geopolitician. Born into a military family on 7 January 1962, Dugin studied at the Moscow Aviation Institute before taking a job in the KGB archives. During the late Soviet period, he worked as a journalist and joined the anti-Semitic party Pamyat. In the first years of Russian independence, he served as an advisor to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation before becoming the chief ideologue for the National Bolshevik Party.He also served as the chief geopolitical advisor to Gennady Seleznev, the speaker of the State Duma at the turn of the millennium. By the end of the 1990s, he declared himself independent from political parties and offered his services as a one-man think tank for the authorities, though he later established the anti-globalization, radical centrist Eurasia Party in 2002. Dugin represents the premier intellectual force behind contemporary Russian neo-Eurasianism and is the leading theoretician of the Russian far right (though many in Russia view him as a dangerous eccentric). He advocates a “conservative revolution,” intended to overturn post-Enlightenment ideals embedded in Russian politics and society. He sees no contradiction between Russian dominance and minority nationalism, and contends that only through a restoration of a liberal Russian empire in Eurasia, including the former Eastern Bloc, can world stability be achieved. Reminiscent of the writings of British geographer Halford Mackinder, who theorized the “heartland” theory of world politics, Dugin’s geopolitical vision supports a Berlin-Moscow-Tehran-Tokyo axis in opposition to the United States, China, Great Britain, and Turkey. He has zealously supported the Eurasian Economic Community and other schemes to integrate Russia with the former Soviet republics. His main theoretical work is The Fundamentals of Geopolitics (Osnovy Geopolitiki), published in 2000.