--- title: "Aleksandr Dugin: The 21st-Century Rasputin Behind Russia's War" description: "In the course of modern history, when one country, state, or empire chooses to wage war upon someone, it often does so with some ideological basis behind it — something intended to justify or add legitimacy to the decision to invade, even if only a token or dishonest one. The justification could be historical disagreements over territory and land division. Other times, it may be portrayed as a tactical or pre-emptive attack intended to curtail the ability of the enemy to wage war upon them. Other times still, the reason may be the supposed mistreatment of a minority by the state being targeted — in other words, a protectionist intervention to alleviate suffering at the hands of the host state. The Russian war in Ukraine has been justified by the invading state and its executor-in-chief for practically all of the above, including a historical claim to the Crimean peninsula, the supposed infringement by Ukraine upon Russian speakers' rights, and the perceived security risk posed by Ukraine as a proxy for NATO. But behind this creative kaleidoscope of reasons for the invasion, some suggest that there is, in fact, one ideologue whose dictums are the actual driving force behind Russia's warmongering over the past two decades — a man seen to be Putin's consigliere, or a figure playing the modern Rasputin to the modern-day Russian Tsar, and whose whims are those which underpin the Russian state's actions. That man is Aleksandr Dugin.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- Dugin's 1997 book The Foundations of Geopolitics became compulsory reading at the Academy of the General Staff of Russia's armed forces.\n- Dugin co-founded the National Bolshevik Party in 1993 with Eduard Limonov, Yegor Letov, and Sergei Kurikhin before leaving in 1997.\n- Putin's use of the term 'Novorossiya' in 2014 to describe eastern Ukraine is widely attributed to Dugin's influence from his 2009 book.\n- Putin's 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians is seen as derived from Dugin's ideological framework and preceded the full-scale invasion by six months.\n- Dugin's daughter Darya Dugina was killed by a car bomb on 20 August 2022 near Moscow in an attack widely believed to have targeted Dugin himself.\n\n## From Anti-Communist Dissident to 'Putin's Brain'\n\nDespite operating largely in the wings of the Russian political machine, Aleksandr Dugin, to scholars of Russian geopolitical strategy in the past few years, is a well-known and much-documented figure. Dugin was born to a highly ranked military family in Moscow in 1962. From a young age, he exhibited a keen interest in philosophy, mysticism, and radical political theories. In the 1970s, he attended the Moscow Aviation Institute for some time before being expelled, supposedly for his embrace of anti-communist ideas. He first began to rise to prominence as an opponent of the communist system in its twilight years in the 1980s, after having become involved in various dissident movements that opposed the Soviet regime. These movements were often intellectual circles where like-minded individuals — an assortment of poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians — could share their criticisms of the system and discuss alternative political and philosophical ideas. One group Dugin reportedly became associated with was the Yužinski Circle, which was interested in the study of European and Oriental mysticism, black magic, and the occult. The Circle operated in secrecy due to the risk of persecution by the KGB and other state security apparatuses, and Dugin's involvement in such environments exposed him to an emerging blend of anti-communist and distinctly Russian nationalist literature, much of which was nonetheless banned in the Soviet Union. This environment fostered Dugin's evolving sentiments and his interest in radical political ideologies. During this time, in Moscow, Dugin also rubbed shoulders with Eduard Limonov, a controversial novelist, poet, and libertine. In 1993, the pair founded what became known as the National Bolshevik Party, or NBP, alongside rock musicians Yegor Letov and Sergei Kurikhin. The NBP was a political youth organisation which combined Russian ultranationalism and anti-Western sentiment with left-wing patriotism and elements of punk and other subcultures. It was described by Radio Free Europe as employing a \"bizarre mixture of totalitarian and fascist symbols, geopolitical dogma, and national-patriotic demagoguery.\" Dugin and his followers left the organisation in 1997, while Limonov continued to serve as founding leader until the NBP ultimately fell foul of Russian authorities and was outright banned in 2007. Although their alliance was short-lived, the period represented a cornerstone in Dugin's later ideas, and further sharpened his ideological stance against communism.\n\n## The Rise of Neo-Eurasianism and The Foundations of Geopolitics\n\nIt was also in the 1990s that Dugin became a prominent advocate of Eurasianism, something which would become the core of his ideological framework. In essence, Eurasianism dictated that Russia could not be understood as either a Western or oriental culture and should instead be understood as a separate civilisation entirely. The theory traced its origins to the period following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, being rolled out largely through the writing of the émigré writer Nikolai Trubetzkoy in the 1920s. Trubetzkoy sought to portray Russia as an elaborate mix of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol, and other Asian origins, and an antidote to the West, which he considered decadent and of which he was bitterly critical. He called on Russian intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe, while emphasising the \"legacy of Genghis Khan\" to create a great continent-spanning Russian-Eurasian state. Fast forward to the 1990s, and Dugin's ideas on Eurasianism, termed as neo-Eurasianism, were put forward in a 1997 book he authored called The Foundations of Geopolitics. This became a lauded work in Russia and compulsory reading in the Academy of the General Staff of the country's armed forces for some time thereafter. For Dugin, neo-Eurasianism was not just a geopolitical strategy that advocated an expansive and powerful Russian state as advocated by Trubetzkoy, but also a cultural and pseudo-spiritual mission. He believes in the revival of traditional values and the rejection of Western liberalism, which he sees as immoral and corrupting. This includes a strong emphasis on Orthodox Christianity, authoritarian governance, and the complete rejection of globalism and cosmopolitanism. The pseudoreligious element in Dugin's withering criticism of the West is present in his writing: he describes the West as the \"kingdom of the Antichrist,\" and its rise as the \"fact of the Apocalypse.\" Despite its large variety of very extreme positions, the popularity of The Foundations of Geopolitics — especially in the final years of Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the Smuta of the 1990s — propelled him to prominence and allowed him access to the esteemed position of Head of the Sociology Department at Moscow State University, this despite having very few actual academic credentials other than his various publications. Ultimately, Dugin's ideas would also find a home in the mind of an ambitious political figure who was fast rising to dominate Russian politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s and who, it is said, would later use his ideas as a dictum upon which to base his strategic decisions. That person is, of course, Vladimir Putin.\n\n## Dugin's Complex Relationship with Putin and the Fourth Political Theory\n\nAleksandr Dugin's relationship with the Russian dictator is rather complex. Although Dugin is often portrayed as a significant influence on Putin's geopolitical strategy, particularly in Western media, Dugin and Putin are rarely seen publicly interacting. Still, the former's suspected close ties and influence over Putin have resulted in some comparing him to the 19th-century monk and mystic Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, well-known and despised for his alleged influence over the Romanovs, the Tsarist family which ruled Russia for centuries until their overthrow in 1917. Dugin and Putin share a lot of precise ideological affinities, particularly in their opposition to Western liberalism and their vision of a strong, assertive Russia. In the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, Putin made use of the term 'Novorossiya' to describe the easternmost regions of Ukraine, making use of an old historical Russian imperial concept which portrayed the regions as an extension of Russian land. It is thought that this term, which had been largely discarded before the start of the war and later returned largely to disuse as the war progressed, had been brought back into vogue largely by Dugin, who made frequent use of it in his 2009 book and throughout 2014. Dugin's ideas resonate with many in the Russian elite and have found an audience among many nationalists and conservative thinkers. This ideological alignment has helped to create an atmosphere in which Putin's actions, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine, can be justified within the framework of Eurasianism. A large part of Dugin's visions in this regard is encapsulated by what he calls the Fourth Political Theory, put forward in a book of the same name published in 2009. In it, Dugin characterised contemporary world history as a struggle between three competing political ideologies: Communism, Liberalism, and Fascism. According to Dugin, Fascism and Communism failed and were overcome by Liberalism, which he declared to now be the dominant political order in most of the world. Liberalism, for Dugin, was an extension of the American political, social, and economic system — one of decadence and moral decline — which aimed to suck the entire world into its orbit. He further described the traditional Left-Right paradigm as effectively meaningless and that the liberal order represented a moral degeneracy disguised under the cloak of 'progress,' which individual civilisations must make great efforts to counter. To do so, Dugin wrote that a fourth political theory was necessary, one which would help countries to avert the pull of Western liberalism and act as a counterbalance to American-led interference. Despite this, Dugin's text offers only a very vague vision of what this Fourth Political Theory should look like, focusing instead on the degeneracy of the liberal system as he saw it. A central underlying element of Dugin's positions stemmed from two landmark books on political theory from the 1990s: Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Fukuyama had claimed that with the collapse of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc and the earlier demise of Fascism after World War II, Liberal Democracy had triumphed as the dominant political system and that it was the one which best conformed to human instinct. Huntington, in a highly controversial but widely cited work, claimed that civilisations — separated by a combination of religion, language, history, and other elements of culture — would continue to fight one another for supremacy. Dugin largely rejected Fukuyama's conclusion, arguing historical trends and evidence from recent political struggles supported Huntington's concept of the inevitable conflict between civilisations and that this was something which had become sped up by the collapse of the Communist system rather than ending it. Dugin's book offered a very subjective take on contemporary European history, somewhat resembling Vladimir Putin's meandering account of the course of European history during his infamous interview with Tucker Carlson in 2024. Moreover, Dugin specifically highlighted certain select countries as steadfastly upholding their own individual civilisation and 'human values,' including China, Venezuela, and Iran — countries not only accused of gross human rights violations but also allies and strategic partners of Russia.\n\n## Far-Right Ties and the Ideological Foundations of Russia's War on Ukraine\n\nThe Fourth Political Theory was published only one year after Russia invaded Georgia in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, during the course of which Dugin had visited the Russian-backed breakaway states over which the invasion had been carried out. Given its themes, the book became seen by many as an endorsement of Russian influence strategy secured through violent means, and a justification of military intervention to previously Russian-aligned countries as a means to deter them from ever seriously considering leaving its orbit. Separately, Dugin also received notoriety for his close ties to far-right figures in Europe and elsewhere, links which would have appeared to stand at great odds with the positions outlined in his text, which ostensibly rejected Fascism as a spent and defeated ideology. According to OpenDemocracy, Dugin had celebrated the rebirth of what he called 'fascist fascism' in the 1990s and had praised Reynhard Heydrich — a key figure of the Holocaust — for being a 'convinced Eurasian.' In both The Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory, Dugin spoke glowingly of figures associated with the European New Right, such as controversial French philosopher Alain de Benoist, and he also wrote in defence of cultural figures such as Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, a French entertainer convicted on several occasions of antisemitism but who Dugin characterised instead as a victim of 'institutionalised left-liberal anti-racism.' Dugin's stance on the reintegration of post-Soviet states under the Russian umbrella — in some ways a continuation of the forced assimilation carried out on minority populations during the Soviet period — has remained relatively consistent throughout his work, pausing only to de-emphasise Communism as a channel with which to achieve this. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin made the following statement with regard to Ukraine: \"Ukraine as an independent state with territorial ambitions poses a huge threat to the whole of Eurasia, and without solving the Ukrainian problem at all it makes no sense to talk about continental geopolitics. Strategically, Ukraine should be strictly a projection of Moscow to the south and west.\" His rejection of Ukraine's right to sovereignty was one of the relatively few consistent themes in his work, and his positions included an increasingly virulent line on its independence, on which he stated in 2014: \"Ukraine has to be either vanished from Earth and rebuilt from scratch or people need to get it. I think kill, kill and kill. No more talk anymore. It is my opinion as a professor.\" Furthermore, Dugin claimed that the West was using Ukraine as a pawn to defeat Russia, and that its evolving ties with the West were nothing more than a cynical play by the United States to expand its influence at Russia's expense, stating that Ukraine had no geopolitical meaning, geographic uniqueness, or ethnic exclusiveness, and emphasising its close link to elements of Russian identity instead. It is Dugin's positions which are seen by many as being the origin behind the 2021 essay which appeared on Vladimir Putin's official presidential website, entitled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. This essay is seen as the blueprint for the subsequent full-scale ground invasion of Ukraine, an event which began only six months after the essay was published.\n\n## The Car Bomb Assassination and the Death of Darya Dugina\n\nIn the immediate aftermath of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dugin displayed an even darker view on the conflict. In a twenty-two-minute lecture, he declared that Fukuyama's theory on liberal democracy was completely wrong, that Huntington's theory on the clash of civilisations was completely right, and that the Russian invasion was necessary as the only option to prove Huntington's position correct. He continued that the war with Ukraine was an inevitability, that this was a means for Russia to reassert its sovereignty, and that this sovereignty was something Putin had been trying for twenty years to accomplish through peaceful means. Dugin played a direct role in some areas of the Russian invasion, both by signing up volunteers to fight alongside Russian-backed separatists through his Eurasian Youth Union, and by writing regular texts in support of the war on the online blog Geopolitica, available in eighteen languages and offering a highly subjective take on the war, ostensibly targeted towards an international audience. But with all his sabre-rattling and the prominent positions he occupied both in the lead-up to and in the wake of the full-scale invasion, it was not long before the public attention which had to some extent escaped him outside of Russia would be brought to an end — in bloody fashion on the twentieth of August 2022, six months after the beginning of the invasion, in a small village near Moscow. On the evening in question, Dugin was returning from an art festival with an entourage of family and friends when a car bomb exploded, ripping his vehicle to pieces. Dugin had decided to switch cars at the last moment, meaning that the bomb — for which he was most likely the intended target — did not harm him, but it instantly killed the person who had been travelling in the car in his place: Dugin's twenty-nine-year-old daughter Darya. Darya Dugina was a media figure and political commentator who had been an advocate for both her father's Eurasianist ideas and the continuation of the war in Ukraine, with some media outlets speculating that she might even have been the target of the attack alongside her father. Responsibility for the attack was contested, with many suspecting Ukrainian involvement — although this was something Ukraine was quick to deny. The Russian security service, the Federal Security Bureau, claimed that responsibility lay with a Ukrainian citizen and sympathiser of Ukraine's Azov regiment, who had managed to flee across the border into Estonia — something Estonia and Ukraine alike equally refuted. Others placed the blame elsewhere, with Ilya Ponomaryov, a fugitive Russian MP and ally of Ukraine, claiming the attack was the work of the National Republican Army, an alleged group of Russian dissidents opposed to Putin. It was even claimed that the attack was orchestrated by enemies of Dugin within the Russian political establishment, especially those dissatisfied with the level of influence he exerted over Putin. Vlad Vexler, a political analyst, further cast doubt on the responsibility of Ukraine for the attack, reasoning that if Ukraine had the capability and resources to infiltrate Russia and carry out such an assassination only to do away with Darya Dugina, this would be akin to \"carrying out an armed robbery only to steal a Haddock.\"\n\n## Aftermath, Doubling Down, and the Limits of Influence\n\nThe killing of Darya Dugina elicited a strong response from Russian authorities and nationalist groups, with many viewing it as a direct attack on the ideological vanguard of Russian nationalism. The event also heightened security concerns among elites in Russia who publicly supported the war, especially in the wake of a string of such attacks which eliminated several notable figures on Russia's own soil, including war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, former submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, and one-time Ukrainian MP Illia Kyva. For many in the West who until that point had not heard of Aleksandr Dugin, the event was also shocking and drew attention due to his prominent family connections and the political implications of his daughter's death. The event and the potential motivations behind it catapulted him into the spotlight, as myriad Western and non-Western media outlets reported on and analysed the attack and its ramifications. For his part, since the attack, Dugin himself doubled down upon his central ideas. At his daughter's memorial service, Dugin claimed that the front of the war had reached Russia, seemingly implicitly calling on Russians to take up the mantle of the war effort to defend their own personal interests and those of the state. Dugin called for renewed vigour in Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that his daughter had laid down her life on the altar of Russian victory. In his 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Dugin continued his diatribe against the West, arguing that it had placed the individual at the centre of its worldview at great cost to community, family, and the state, amidst a series of other attacks on transgenderism, neo-liberalism, and Artificial Intelligence. He also reiterated his assessment of Putin as a defender of traditional values, and stated his belief in Russophobia as being at the heart of the \"hatred of Putin.\" As with many elements of the Russian war, the future for Russia and for the actors involved in dictating it appears unclear. Aleksandr Dugin remains a key and shadowy figure in Russian political thought, whose advocacy of Eurasianism provides a cultural and ideological foundation for those who support a strong, independent Russia opposed to Western influence. While his direct influence on Vladimir Putin may be limited, his ideas contribute to the broader ideological context in which Russian policy is formulated and understood. In many ways, Dugin's positions seem significantly more hardline even than Putin himself, advocating a terrible war against Ukraine. However, this is also something which could prove his undoing. To appear to portray Vladimir Putin as not going far enough in the conflict would be very risky business indeed, something which Dugin has flirted with on several occasions. If there is something that Putin has quite decisively proven in the past, it is his readiness to do away with former allies if they fail to toe the line of his authority, something perhaps best shown by the demise of Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023. In addition, Dugin is not shy of enemies externally, and not even his standing in Russia is grounded in rock-solid foundations. Dugin left his professorship at Moscow State University in 2014 under rather obscure circumstances — many have claimed that this was due to the outrage and revulsion generated by his infamous 'kill, kill, and kill' statements regarding Ukraine. If this is so, it would indicate that even the 21st-century Rasputin, much as his predecessor, is — to some degree at least — not entirely above domestic scrutiny and attack. And in the murky world of the Russian political sphere, it is perhaps only with a strong circle behind you that political — or indeed physical — survival is secure.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is Dugin's concept of neo-Eurasianism?\n\nNeo-Eurasianism holds that Russia cannot be understood as either a Western or an oriental culture but must be seen as a separate civilisation entirely, combining Turkic, Slavic, Mongol, and other Asian origins. Dugin built on earlier Eurasianist theory to add a cultural and pseudo-spiritual mission: the revival of traditional values, Orthodox Christianity, and authoritarian governance as an antidote to Western liberalism, which he describes as the \"kingdom of the Antichrist.\"\n\n### What is the Fourth Political Theory and how does it relate to Russia's foreign policy?\n\nIn his 2009 book of the same name, Dugin argued that Communism and Fascism had both been defeated by Liberalism, which he identified as the dominant American-led global order. He called for a fourth theory to help civilisations resist this liberal pull. Critics and analysts see the book as an ideological justification for Russia's use of military force to keep post-Soviet states within its orbit, written only a year after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.\n\n### How is Dugin connected to Vladimir Putin?\n\nDugin and Putin are rarely seen interacting publicly, yet they share close ideological affinities. Putin's 2014 use of the historical term 'Novorossiya' to describe eastern Ukraine is widely attributed to Dugin's writings, and Putin's 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians—viewed as the blueprint for the full-scale invasion—is seen as derived from Dugin's framework. Dugin is often compared to Rasputin for the influence he is believed to exert over Russia's leadership.\n\n### Who was Darya Dugina and how did she die?\n\nDarya Dugina was Dugin's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, a media figure and political commentator who advocated for her father's Eurasianist ideas and the continuation of the war in Ukraine. On 20 August 2022, a car bomb destroyed her vehicle near Moscow; Dugin had switched cars at the last moment, and Darya was killed in his place. Responsibility was contested, with Russian authorities blaming a Ukrainian citizen while Ukraine and Estonia both denied involvement.\n\n### What are Dugin's stated views on Ukraine?\n\nDugin has consistently rejected Ukraine's right to sovereignty. In The Foundations of Geopolitics he wrote that Ukraine as an independent state posed \"a huge threat to the whole of Eurasia\" and should be \"strictly a projection of Moscow.\" In 2014 he stated that Ukraine had to be \"either vanished from Earth and rebuilt from scratch\" and called for killing. He also claimed the West was cynically using Ukraine as a pawn to expand American influence at Russia's expense.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Alexander Dugin: A 21st-Century Rasputin?](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/alexander-dugin-a-21st-century-rasputin)\n- [Russia May Be Planning a False-Flag Attack Against NATO.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/russia-may-be-planning-a-false-flag-attack-against-nato)\n- [Can NATO Beat Russia Without the United States? An Arsenal Analysis.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/can-nato-beat-russia-without-the-united-states-an-arsenal-analysis)\n- [Moldova Could Save Europe: A Radical Plan to Deter Russian Expansion](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/geopolitics/moldova-could-save-europe-radical-plan-deter-russian-expansion)\n- [This Is Ukraine’s Moment of Truth.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/this-is-ukraines-moment-of-truth)\n\n## Sources\n1. \n2. \n3. \n4. \n5. \n6. \n7. \n8. \n9. \n10. \n11. \n12. \n13. \n14. \n15. \n16. \n17. \n18. \n19. \n20. \n21. \n22. \n\n[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/23/who-is-russian-ultranationalist-alexander-dugin\n[2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/21/europe/alexander-dugin-russia-profile-intl/index.html\n[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/alexander-dugin-who-putin-ally-apparent-car-bombing-target\n[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/daughter-ultra-nationalist-russian-ideologue-killed-suspected-car-bomb-attack-2022-08-21/\n[5]: https://www.brusselstimes.com/276842/kremlin-ideologue-calls-on-russians-to-triumph-after-daughters-death\n[6]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-sbu-killed-fugitive-ukrainian-lawmaker-russia-source-2023-12-06/\n[7]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62643274\n[8]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/22/moscow-says-ukraine-behind-killing-of-darya-dugina\n[9]: https://www.rferl.org/a/1058689.html\n[10]: https://www.maieutiek.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/The-Fourth-Political-Theory.pdf\n[11]: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/as-ukraine-marks-its-independence-russias-war-now-haunts-the-streets-of-moscow/\n[12]: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-28/putin-ultranationalism-ideology-russia-ukraine\n[13]: https://www.maieutiek.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Foundations-of-Geopolitics.pdf\n[14]: https://youtu.be/wvQhk_gkiog?si=P_d8GvDI1QEDWimP\n[15]: https://youtu.be/y-Zk7K9Un2U?si=FIYreM9-U95moRO3\n[16]: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/who-is-alexander-dugin/\n[17]: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/donbaspropaganda\n[18]: https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-02-26/how-to-justify-a-war-putins-arguments-for-invading-ukraine.html#\n[19]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-eurasianism.html\n[20]: https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2015/05/why-the-kremlin-is-shutting-down-the-novorossiya-project?lang=en¢er=russia-eurasia\n[21]: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/death-russian-ultranationalist\n[22]: https://khpg.org/en/1404029911\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/aleksandr-dugin-21st-century-rasputin-russia-war.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/aleksandr-dugin-21st-century-rasputin-russia-war datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/EqkiTEYzRH0/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: a99533115ae712435ecb9b79faba8751df2fd52c074d3ea5902272de46d6f11d tokens: 7555 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/aleksandr-dugin-21st-century-rasputin-russia-war.md.summary.md --- In the course of modern history, when one country, state, or empire chooses to wage war upon someone, it often does so with some ideological basis behind it — something intended to justify or add legitimacy to the decision to invade, even if only a token or dishonest one. The justification could be historical disagreements over territory and land division. Other times, it may be portrayed as a tactical or pre-emptive attack intended to curtail the ability of the enemy to wage war upon them. Other times still, the reason may be the supposed mistreatment of a minority by the state being targeted — in other words, a protectionist intervention to alleviate suffering at the hands of the host state. The Russian war in Ukraine has been justified by the invading state and its executor-in-chief for practically all of the above, including a historical claim to the Crimean peninsula, the supposed infringement by Ukraine upon Russian speakers' rights, and the perceived security risk posed by Ukraine as a proxy for NATO. But behind this creative kaleidoscope of reasons for the invasion, some suggest that there is, in fact, one ideologue whose dictums are the actual driving force behind Russia's warmongering over the past two decades — a man seen to be Putin's consigliere, or a figure playing the modern Rasputin to the modern-day Russian Tsar, and whose whims are those which underpin the Russian state's actions. That man is Aleksandr Dugin. ## Key Takeaways - Dugin's 1997 book The Foundations of Geopolitics became compulsory reading at the Academy of the General Staff of Russia's armed forces. - Dugin co-founded the National Bolshevik Party in 1993 with Eduard Limonov, Yegor Letov, and Sergei Kurikhin before leaving in 1997. - Putin's use of the term 'Novorossiya' in 2014 to describe eastern Ukraine is widely attributed to Dugin's influence from his 2009 book. - Putin's 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians is seen as derived from Dugin's ideological framework and preceded the full-scale invasion by six months. - Dugin's daughter Darya Dugina was killed by a car bomb on 20 August 2022 near Moscow in an attack widely believed to have targeted Dugin himself. ## From Anti-Communist Dissident to 'Putin's Brain' Despite operating largely in the wings of the Russian political machine, Aleksandr Dugin, to scholars of Russian geopolitical strategy in the past few years, is a well-known and much-documented figure. Dugin was born to a highly ranked military family in Moscow in 1962. From a young age, he exhibited a keen interest in philosophy, mysticism, and radical political theories. In the 1970s, he attended the Moscow Aviation Institute for some time before being expelled, supposedly for his embrace of anti-communist ideas. He first began to rise to prominence as an opponent of the communist system in its twilight years in the 1980s, after having become involved in various dissident movements that opposed the Soviet regime. These movements were often intellectual circles where like-minded individuals — an assortment of poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians — could share their criticisms of the system and discuss alternative political and philosophical ideas. One group Dugin reportedly became associated with was the Yužinski Circle, which was interested in the study of European and Oriental mysticism, black magic, and the occult. The Circle operated in secrecy due to the risk of persecution by the KGB and other state security apparatuses, and Dugin's involvement in such environments exposed him to an emerging blend of anti-communist and distinctly Russian nationalist literature, much of which was nonetheless banned in the Soviet Union. This environment fostered Dugin's evolving sentiments and his interest in radical political ideologies. During this time, in Moscow, Dugin also rubbed shoulders with Eduard Limonov, a controversial novelist, poet, and libertine. In 1993, the pair founded what became known as the National Bolshevik Party, or NBP, alongside rock musicians Yegor Letov and Sergei Kurikhin. The NBP was a political youth organisation which combined Russian ultranationalism and anti-Western sentiment with left-wing patriotism and elements of punk and other subcultures. It was described by Radio Free Europe as employing a "bizarre mixture of totalitarian and fascist symbols, geopolitical dogma, and national-patriotic demagoguery." Dugin and his followers left the organisation in 1997, while Limonov continued to serve as founding leader until the NBP ultimately fell foul of Russian authorities and was outright banned in 2007. Although their alliance was short-lived, the period represented a cornerstone in Dugin's later ideas, and further sharpened his ideological stance against communism. ## The Rise of Neo-Eurasianism and The Foundations of Geopolitics It was also in the 1990s that Dugin became a prominent advocate of Eurasianism, something which would become the core of his ideological framework. In essence, Eurasianism dictated that Russia could not be understood as either a Western or oriental culture and should instead be understood as a separate civilisation entirely. The theory traced its origins to the period following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, being rolled out largely through the writing of the émigré writer Nikolai Trubetzkoy in the 1920s. Trubetzkoy sought to portray Russia as an elaborate mix of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol, and other Asian origins, and an antidote to the West, which he considered decadent and of which he was bitterly critical. He called on Russian intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe, while emphasising the "legacy of Genghis Khan" to create a great continent-spanning Russian-Eurasian state. Fast forward to the 1990s, and Dugin's ideas on Eurasianism, termed as neo-Eurasianism, were put forward in a 1997 book he authored called The Foundations of Geopolitics. This became a lauded work in Russia and compulsory reading in the Academy of the General Staff of the country's armed forces for some time thereafter. For Dugin, neo-Eurasianism was not just a geopolitical strategy that advocated an expansive and powerful Russian state as advocated by Trubetzkoy, but also a cultural and pseudo-spiritual mission. He believes in the revival of traditional values and the rejection of Western liberalism, which he sees as immoral and corrupting. This includes a strong emphasis on Orthodox Christianity, authoritarian governance, and the complete rejection of globalism and cosmopolitanism. The pseudoreligious element in Dugin's withering criticism of the West is present in his writing: he describes the West as the "kingdom of the Antichrist," and its rise as the "fact of the Apocalypse." Despite its large variety of very extreme positions, the popularity of The Foundations of Geopolitics — especially in the final years of Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the Smuta of the 1990s — propelled him to prominence and allowed him access to the esteemed position of Head of the Sociology Department at Moscow State University, this despite having very few actual academic credentials other than his various publications. Ultimately, Dugin's ideas would also find a home in the mind of an ambitious political figure who was fast rising to dominate Russian politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s and who, it is said, would later use his ideas as a dictum upon which to base his strategic decisions. That person is, of course, Vladimir Putin. ## Dugin's Complex Relationship with Putin and the Fourth Political Theory Aleksandr Dugin's relationship with the Russian dictator is rather complex. Although Dugin is often portrayed as a significant influence on Putin's geopolitical strategy, particularly in Western media, Dugin and Putin are rarely seen publicly interacting. Still, the former's suspected close ties and influence over Putin have resulted in some comparing him to the 19th-century monk and mystic Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, well-known and despised for his alleged influence over the Romanovs, the Tsarist family which ruled Russia for centuries until their overthrow in 1917. Dugin and Putin share a lot of precise ideological affinities, particularly in their opposition to Western liberalism and their vision of a strong, assertive Russia. In the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, Putin made use of the term 'Novorossiya' to describe the easternmost regions of Ukraine, making use of an old historical Russian imperial concept which portrayed the regions as an extension of Russian land. It is thought that this term, which had been largely discarded before the start of the war and later returned largely to disuse as the war progressed, had been brought back into vogue largely by Dugin, who made frequent use of it in his 2009 book and throughout 2014. Dugin's ideas resonate with many in the Russian elite and have found an audience among many nationalists and conservative thinkers. This ideological alignment has helped to create an atmosphere in which Putin's actions, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine, can be justified within the framework of Eurasianism. A large part of Dugin's visions in this regard is encapsulated by what he calls the Fourth Political Theory, put forward in a book of the same name published in 2009. In it, Dugin characterised contemporary world history as a struggle between three competing political ideologies: Communism, Liberalism, and Fascism. According to Dugin, Fascism and Communism failed and were overcome by Liberalism, which he declared to now be the dominant political order in most of the world. Liberalism, for Dugin, was an extension of the American political, social, and economic system — one of decadence and moral decline — which aimed to suck the entire world into its orbit. He further described the traditional Left-Right paradigm as effectively meaningless and that the liberal order represented a moral degeneracy disguised under the cloak of 'progress,' which individual civilisations must make great efforts to counter. To do so, Dugin wrote that a fourth political theory was necessary, one which would help countries to avert the pull of Western liberalism and act as a counterbalance to American-led interference. Despite this, Dugin's text offers only a very vague vision of what this Fourth Political Theory should look like, focusing instead on the degeneracy of the liberal system as he saw it. A central underlying element of Dugin's positions stemmed from two landmark books on political theory from the 1990s: Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Fukuyama had claimed that with the collapse of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc and the earlier demise of Fascism after World War II, Liberal Democracy had triumphed as the dominant political system and that it was the one which best conformed to human instinct. Huntington, in a highly controversial but widely cited work, claimed that civilisations — separated by a combination of religion, language, history, and other elements of culture — would continue to fight one another for supremacy. Dugin largely rejected Fukuyama's conclusion, arguing historical trends and evidence from recent political struggles supported Huntington's concept of the inevitable conflict between civilisations and that this was something which had become sped up by the collapse of the Communist system rather than ending it. Dugin's book offered a very subjective take on contemporary European history, somewhat resembling Vladimir Putin's meandering account of the course of European history during his infamous interview with Tucker Carlson in 2024. Moreover, Dugin specifically highlighted certain select countries as steadfastly upholding their own individual civilisation and 'human values,' including China, Venezuela, and Iran — countries not only accused of gross human rights violations but also allies and strategic partners of Russia. ## Far-Right Ties and the Ideological Foundations of Russia's War on Ukraine The Fourth Political Theory was published only one year after Russia invaded Georgia in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, during the course of which Dugin had visited the Russian-backed breakaway states over which the invasion had been carried out. Given its themes, the book became seen by many as an endorsement of Russian influence strategy secured through violent means, and a justification of military intervention to previously Russian-aligned countries as a means to deter them from ever seriously considering leaving its orbit. Separately, Dugin also received notoriety for his close ties to far-right figures in Europe and elsewhere, links which would have appeared to stand at great odds with the positions outlined in his text, which ostensibly rejected Fascism as a spent and defeated ideology. According to OpenDemocracy, Dugin had celebrated the rebirth of what he called 'fascist fascism' in the 1990s and had praised Reynhard Heydrich — a key figure of the Holocaust — for being a 'convinced Eurasian.' In both The Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory, Dugin spoke glowingly of figures associated with the European New Right, such as controversial French philosopher Alain de Benoist, and he also wrote in defence of cultural figures such as Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, a French entertainer convicted on several occasions of antisemitism but who Dugin characterised instead as a victim of 'institutionalised left-liberal anti-racism.' Dugin's stance on the reintegration of post-Soviet states under the Russian umbrella — in some ways a continuation of the forced assimilation carried out on minority populations during the Soviet period — has remained relatively consistent throughout his work, pausing only to de-emphasise Communism as a channel with which to achieve this. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin made the following statement with regard to Ukraine: "Ukraine as an independent state with territorial ambitions poses a huge threat to the whole of Eurasia, and without solving the Ukrainian problem at all it makes no sense to talk about continental geopolitics. Strategically, Ukraine should be strictly a projection of Moscow to the south and west." His rejection of Ukraine's right to sovereignty was one of the relatively few consistent themes in his work, and his positions included an increasingly virulent line on its independence, on which he stated in 2014: "Ukraine has to be either vanished from Earth and rebuilt from scratch or people need to get it. I think kill, kill and kill. No more talk anymore. It is my opinion as a professor." Furthermore, Dugin claimed that the West was using Ukraine as a pawn to defeat Russia, and that its evolving ties with the West were nothing more than a cynical play by the United States to expand its influence at Russia's expense, stating that Ukraine had no geopolitical meaning, geographic uniqueness, or ethnic exclusiveness, and emphasising its close link to elements of Russian identity instead. It is Dugin's positions which are seen by many as being the origin behind the 2021 essay which appeared on Vladimir Putin's official presidential website, entitled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. This essay is seen as the blueprint for the subsequent full-scale ground invasion of Ukraine, an event which began only six months after the essay was published. ## The Car Bomb Assassination and the Death of Darya Dugina In the immediate aftermath of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dugin displayed an even darker view on the conflict. In a twenty-two-minute lecture, he declared that Fukuyama's theory on liberal democracy was completely wrong, that Huntington's theory on the clash of civilisations was completely right, and that the Russian invasion was necessary as the only option to prove Huntington's position correct. He continued that the war with Ukraine was an inevitability, that this was a means for Russia to reassert its sovereignty, and that this sovereignty was something Putin had been trying for twenty years to accomplish through peaceful means. Dugin played a direct role in some areas of the Russian invasion, both by signing up volunteers to fight alongside Russian-backed separatists through his Eurasian Youth Union, and by writing regular texts in support of the war on the online blog Geopolitica, available in eighteen languages and offering a highly subjective take on the war, ostensibly targeted towards an international audience. But with all his sabre-rattling and the prominent positions he occupied both in the lead-up to and in the wake of the full-scale invasion, it was not long before the public attention which had to some extent escaped him outside of Russia would be brought to an end — in bloody fashion on the twentieth of August 2022, six months after the beginning of the invasion, in a small village near Moscow. On the evening in question, Dugin was returning from an art festival with an entourage of family and friends when a car bomb exploded, ripping his vehicle to pieces. Dugin had decided to switch cars at the last moment, meaning that the bomb — for which he was most likely the intended target — did not harm him, but it instantly killed the person who had been travelling in the car in his place: Dugin's twenty-nine-year-old daughter Darya. Darya Dugina was a media figure and political commentator who had been an advocate for both her father's Eurasianist ideas and the continuation of the war in Ukraine, with some media outlets speculating that she might even have been the target of the attack alongside her father. Responsibility for the attack was contested, with many suspecting Ukrainian involvement — although this was something Ukraine was quick to deny. The Russian security service, the Federal Security Bureau, claimed that responsibility lay with a Ukrainian citizen and sympathiser of Ukraine's Azov regiment, who had managed to flee across the border into Estonia — something Estonia and Ukraine alike equally refuted. Others placed the blame elsewhere, with Ilya Ponomaryov, a fugitive Russian MP and ally of Ukraine, claiming the attack was the work of the National Republican Army, an alleged group of Russian dissidents opposed to Putin. It was even claimed that the attack was orchestrated by enemies of Dugin within the Russian political establishment, especially those dissatisfied with the level of influence he exerted over Putin. Vlad Vexler, a political analyst, further cast doubt on the responsibility of Ukraine for the attack, reasoning that if Ukraine had the capability and resources to infiltrate Russia and carry out such an assassination only to do away with Darya Dugina, this would be akin to "carrying out an armed robbery only to steal a Haddock." ## Aftermath, Doubling Down, and the Limits of Influence The killing of Darya Dugina elicited a strong response from Russian authorities and nationalist groups, with many viewing it as a direct attack on the ideological vanguard of Russian nationalism. The event also heightened security concerns among elites in Russia who publicly supported the war, especially in the wake of a string of such attacks which eliminated several notable figures on Russia's own soil, including war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, former submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, and one-time Ukrainian MP Illia Kyva. For many in the West who until that point had not heard of Aleksandr Dugin, the event was also shocking and drew attention due to his prominent family connections and the political implications of his daughter's death. The event and the potential motivations behind it catapulted him into the spotlight, as myriad Western and non-Western media outlets reported on and analysed the attack and its ramifications. For his part, since the attack, Dugin himself doubled down upon his central ideas. At his daughter's memorial service, Dugin claimed that the front of the war had reached Russia, seemingly implicitly calling on Russians to take up the mantle of the war effort to defend their own personal interests and those of the state. Dugin called for renewed vigour in Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that his daughter had laid down her life on the altar of Russian victory. In his 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Dugin continued his diatribe against the West, arguing that it had placed the individual at the centre of its worldview at great cost to community, family, and the state, amidst a series of other attacks on transgenderism, neo-liberalism, and Artificial Intelligence. He also reiterated his assessment of Putin as a defender of traditional values, and stated his belief in Russophobia as being at the heart of the "hatred of Putin." As with many elements of the Russian war, the future for Russia and for the actors involved in dictating it appears unclear. Aleksandr Dugin remains a key and shadowy figure in Russian political thought, whose advocacy of Eurasianism provides a cultural and ideological foundation for those who support a strong, independent Russia opposed to Western influence. While his direct influence on Vladimir Putin may be limited, his ideas contribute to the broader ideological context in which Russian policy is formulated and understood. In many ways, Dugin's positions seem significantly more hardline even than Putin himself, advocating a terrible war against Ukraine. However, this is also something which could prove his undoing. To appear to portray Vladimir Putin as not going far enough in the conflict would be very risky business indeed, something which Dugin has flirted with on several occasions. If there is something that Putin has quite decisively proven in the past, it is his readiness to do away with former allies if they fail to toe the line of his authority, something perhaps best shown by the demise of Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023. In addition, Dugin is not shy of enemies externally, and not even his standing in Russia is grounded in rock-solid foundations. Dugin left his professorship at Moscow State University in 2014 under rather obscure circumstances — many have claimed that this was due to the outrage and revulsion generated by his infamous 'kill, kill, and kill' statements regarding Ukraine. If this is so, it would indicate that even the 21st-century Rasputin, much as his predecessor, is — to some degree at least — not entirely above domestic scrutiny and attack. And in the murky world of the Russian political sphere, it is perhaps only with a strong circle behind you that political — or indeed physical — survival is secure. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Dugin's concept of neo-Eurasianism? Neo-Eurasianism holds that Russia cannot be understood as either a Western or an oriental culture but must be seen as a separate civilisation entirely, combining Turkic, Slavic, Mongol, and other Asian origins. Dugin built on earlier Eurasianist theory to add a cultural and pseudo-spiritual mission: the revival of traditional values, Orthodox Christianity, and authoritarian governance as an antidote to Western liberalism, which he describes as the "kingdom of the Antichrist." ### What is the Fourth Political Theory and how does it relate to Russia's foreign policy? In his 2009 book of the same name, Dugin argued that Communism and Fascism had both been defeated by Liberalism, which he identified as the dominant American-led global order. He called for a fourth theory to help civilisations resist this liberal pull. Critics and analysts see the book as an ideological justification for Russia's use of military force to keep post-Soviet states within its orbit, written only a year after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. ### How is Dugin connected to Vladimir Putin? Dugin and Putin are rarely seen interacting publicly, yet they share close ideological affinities. Putin's 2014 use of the historical term 'Novorossiya' to describe eastern Ukraine is widely attributed to Dugin's writings, and Putin's 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians—viewed as the blueprint for the full-scale invasion—is seen as derived from Dugin's framework. Dugin is often compared to Rasputin for the influence he is believed to exert over Russia's leadership. ### Who was Darya Dugina and how did she die? Darya Dugina was Dugin's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, a media figure and political commentator who advocated for her father's Eurasianist ideas and the continuation of the war in Ukraine. On 20 August 2022, a car bomb destroyed her vehicle near Moscow; Dugin had switched cars at the last moment, and Darya was killed in his place. Responsibility was contested, with Russian authorities blaming a Ukrainian citizen while Ukraine and Estonia both denied involvement. ### What are Dugin's stated views on Ukraine? Dugin has consistently rejected Ukraine's right to sovereignty. In The Foundations of Geopolitics he wrote that Ukraine as an independent state posed "a huge threat to the whole of Eurasia" and should be "strictly a projection of Moscow." In 2014 he stated that Ukraine had to be "either vanished from Earth and rebuilt from scratch" and called for killing. He also claimed the West was cynically using Ukraine as a pawn to expand American influence at Russia's expense. ## Related Coverage - [Alexander Dugin: A 21st-Century Rasputin?](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/alexander-dugin-a-21st-century-rasputin) - [Russia May Be Planning a False-Flag Attack Against NATO.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/russia-may-be-planning-a-false-flag-attack-against-nato) - [Can NATO Beat Russia Without the United States? An Arsenal Analysis.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/can-nato-beat-russia-without-the-united-states-an-arsenal-analysis) - [Moldova Could Save Europe: A Radical Plan to Deter Russian Expansion](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/geopolitics/moldova-could-save-europe-radical-plan-deter-russian-expansion) - [This Is Ukraine’s Moment of Truth.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/this-is-ukraines-moment-of-truth) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 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