Alexey Beliayev-Guintovt: "The empire in spite of everything". How Eurasianism is changing the world

You are an adept of grand style. What is that? How does it fit into the postmodern?

The grand style denies the postmodern in every possible way. The grand style is the unity of the generating landscape with the destiny of the people. It is its acme, the peak of its self-perception, its self-realization and spiritual mission. The total negation of this is postmodern, that is, the negation of any unifying principle, of the state, of faith, of gender and, ultimately, of belonging to the same human species.

How did you manage to mutually coexist in these conditions?

Learned, focused, suffered setbacks and occasional successes. Miraculously survived to this day. In the course of this magical journey I have found teachers, supporters, a vocation, faith in tomorrow and, above all, an eschatological optimism.

You say you are the only red artist from Dublin to Vladivostok. What does this mean?

The red project is a great style that visited our nation and our civilization in the mid-20th century. It left traces like Hubert Robert's paintings: small people, shepherds and their goats scattered among the ruins of temples and colossal statues. Reassembling, perhaps on different bases, the remaining fragments of the grand style - this is the task, this is the demand for time and space. This is why I talk so often about space, because I have long and consistently been a Eurasian, and we attach great, if not dominant, importance to the shaping landscape.

What does Russian space say?

First, it is dimensionless. This is not a quantitative feature at all, but a qualitative one. The people generated by this space walk, they do not take a walk, they do not flutter in the European sense of the word, but they walk, they are in motion. They are blessed enchanted wanderers on their way to infinity, or Cossacks in search of benevolence, or expeditionary forces sent to the borders of the empire to expand it as much as possible. Our people are in the landscape that has been given to them. It is magical from the start, as it was, is and will be, and this is also a qualitative feature. These two properties - the absence of dimensions and a given magic - require the unprecedented. Heydar Dzhemal devoted a study to this foreordination in the fate of Russia. He has shown that our space is destined for revolution.

In 2008 you won the Kandinsky Prize for your painting “Brothers and Sisters”. This led the liberal public to call you a fascist and make you an outlaw. What will happen to liberal culture now? Our country grew from the liberal project. Do you have any hope of defeating the artifact of storytelling?

What should be considered a victory? Transformation is necessary from top to bottom. Most of my fellow citizens perceived the liberation of Ukraine as the liberation of a small Russia. It will become a great one after reunification. This is how I understood what was happening: abolition of borders and a moratorium on private property. Ukraine is an opportunity to purify oneself, to finally and irrevocably raise the question of destiny. Not a country, but a whole civilization - Russian, Orthodox and Eurasian. Tradition and social justice is the imagined ideal of a great nation. How it will be, I try to imagine it in my plastic fantasies.

The bases of the Eurasian project according to Dugin are the following: "a new strategic partnership with the eastern hemisphere, mobilizing economic development". Is that exactly what's happening now?

Mobilization is a request for time and space. Nothing seems excessive anymore. Up to armies of workers and wages in the form of reinforced rations. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? The gravitation of the masses of northeastern Eurasia towards the collision, towards asceticism is irrevocable. Proof of this is the phenomenal success of the Soviet Union. The numerical codes of these victories could be enumerated indefinitely, but the mystery of socialism cannot be explained by numbers. It was born here, it lives here, it will surely come back. I am not speaking of a dogmatic and Marxian socialism, but of an organic and communal socialism inherent in the Orthodox and Islamic masses of our compatriots.

The Soviet project was linked to the concept of "delayed happiness". Is Russia ready now?

Once explained, this project is capable of doing a miracle. The question is when, who and how will he endeavor to explain it. The International Eurasian Movement led by Aleksandr Dugin has been presenting various current and at the same time timeless ways of carrying out the great project for more than 30 years. Social justice and fidelity to tradition are always at its core. The people are irrevocable, men and women are guaranteed to remain men and women, faith is irrevocable. Russia is the territory of salvation. Since the time of Ivan the Terrible, everyone has been given such an opportunity - in the course of life, to have time to realize the main thing, but such a project is guaranteed to come into conflict with the hegemony of the liberal West. Now again the question is: to be or not to be. Due to the degree of siege, the West appears to be ready to venture into the unprecedented. Well, we are ready for the same.

Eurasia of the golden age: what is it?

The golden age of Eurasia does not live in time but in the space of overcoming death. Once a people has emerged, it must not disappear from history. It's here once and for all. The sequence of history in liberal understanding is as follows: ethnos, i.e. a sum of tribes, then a nation, then a community of individuals, passport holders, then a civil society as an extreme degree of individualism and the end of the world. The Eurasian thinks in an inverted perspective, while not denying technological advances. Our world is roughly described by Ivan Efremov.

During the war in South Ossetia you wrote: «For the first time in my conscious life I agree with almost everything about the policies pursued by our country». Is there this confluence of people and power now?

Yes, of course. With the arrival of Vladimir Putin, the people and the authorities met. But I personally and all of us would like so much more. The overwhelming majority of our compatriots voted for the preservation of the Soviet Union in 1991. And I'm sure that after 30 years, the statistics will be more or less the same. Yes, the events of the past few days require an entirely different intensity of attention and the next degree of clarity in the statements of the country's leadership. The project must be presented, it is impossible to live without it from now on. Its essence and its declared goal is the establishment of the inviolable frontiers of our civilization, a planned economy and a new partnership in Eurasia, Africa, Latin America.

I talk to a huge number of foreigners every day on social networks and they all think about the same thing. They still expect something from us. We cannot deceive these expectations.

What relationship does the imperial project have with democracy? Is it Greece? Rome?

The ancient Greek perspective opposed the monarchy to tyranny, the aristocracy to the oligarchy and the politeia to democracy. Democracy for Plato is the worst thing that can happen to society. Empire is organically inherent to us who live here. His disappearance is perceived as a great cosmic catastrophe. Empire or death!

How will it be politically?

A hedgehog-shaped empire, in the words of Kuryokhin. Kind and affectionate with his and bristling with needles to the enemy, the West.

In the ancient conception, tyranny is good for war, but democracy is good for peace.

There is no question about this, but times are different and so are polis and demos. The word democracy is the same, but the content has changed.

What is Dugin's Fourth Political Theory?

As I understood it, it is the organic existence of the people as a tree, the growth, the meaningful living in history. A people is a unit of thought. Plato's eidos exists first, outside and apart of man. The man lives his short life, he seems to have ideas. But this is not entirely true. Ideas, eidos were and will remain after him. The purpose of human life is to have time to become a palladin of these eidos , a knight of the Spirit.

The empire should be hierarchical, authoritarian and totalitarian.

Totalitarian is a word from the enemy's arsenal, even if the concept of totus - universal - does not contain any negative meaning. The empire has a purpose and a meaning, a destination; it is in constant movement within itself, aware of the infinity of the imperial logos, and it moves outwards, striving to save, to come to the aid of countless other peoples. Empire always comes from above.

Since 2014, you have often visited the Donbass. Because?

Since 1991, our movement has not recognized the existence of Ukraine. We knew in advance that Ukraine could only be the anti-Russia. The first thing that was banned in 2005 after Zlyushchenko's usurpation of power in Ukraine was the Eurasian International Movement. Many of ours ended up in prison, many disappeared without a trace.
At the end of May 2014, my comrades and I found ourselves with Alexander Borodai, then Prime Minister of the DNR, at the epicenter of events. He declared a state of emergency in Donetsk in our presence on May 25, 2014, and an hour later Kiev responded in kind. The next day, the airport was stormed. This is what happened. Our entire movement was actively involved in what was happening - shaping the aims and objectives of the Russian Spring project, transporting volunteers, providing humanitarian aid. At one point I was asked to present a plastic image of the Novorossiya project. For three hours, I answered questions from specialists in various fields. We started from the premise that this is a dream territory, a republic of philosophers. Thought to the philosophers, power to the warriors. In the early years I often visited the Donbass, I was a war correspondent, delivering humanitarian aid. I have visited Donetsk all year round, and one thing that has remained constant is its bombardment.

Is Novorossiya close to its ideal?

Novorossiya is a trigger. Once the trigger is pulled, everything will be transformed. It was not successful then. Current events are an irrevocable attempt. It is again a question of whether our civilization exists or not. If it fails, it can be technically erased without a trace. The example of Serbia shows how the Logos of the people is eradicated. Removing cultural and historical representation from networks is now a question of technique. Thus, by equating Soviet symbols with Nazi ones, the enemy is irrevocably removing from the networks our cinema, art and any evidence of our existence that contains Soviet symbols. With the same technical ease, it is possible to swear at us and persecute those who deny it.

And in case of victory?

On February 24, at 9 am, I experienced a take-off effect. I was lifted off the ground. Suddenly everything we had dreamed of, whispered, spoken aloud for so long, understood and not understood, began to come true. All together, in all directions. A thousandth of what was happening before February 24 was unimaginable. And people came to me happy and amazed, enthusiastic. Army people, civilians, organizations, parties, individuals, the capital, the suburbs, foreigners. The unprecedented has arrived.
Since January of this year, I have seen what is happening as a potential Russian-Chinese interaction, an awakening of the East, the Novorossi-Taibei project, where the commonwealth of Russia and China becomes the new flagship of a renewed humanity. Sovereignty, tradition, socialism, sustainable development, peace policy - this allows nations to take part in this project. India, Iran, Pakistan, the Middle East, the Pacific region - everything is in motion. One could endlessly enumerate the successes of China's current reference civilization and the progressive nature of its development, in contrast to the civilization of the West, in crisis and obsessed with resentment, the territory of Cybele.

What is the point of the special operation in Ukraine?

A wonderful word was uttered by Ramzan Kadyrov: de-Sheytanisation. Denazification, de-oligarchization, demilitarization are all consequences. But the key idea is de-sheitanization.

How do you see the role of the Eurasian International Movement at the moment?

We are always in favor of making the situation irreversible. Irreversibly illiberal. There is the solar Vladimir Putin, who I am sure he is capable of transforming reality beyond recognition, if only on the basis of what he has ventured to do. But there is a lunar Vladimir Putin that coexists with a mysterious solar image. We have all seen the influence of lunar Putin on solar Putin: just when something begins and then immediately ends. Now it can't be like that anymore. In the same sentence can no longer insert meanings that are mutually exclusive.
But what he conceived, prepared and, above all, created is unthinkable! He negotiated for months with the West, with his representatives, already knowing that nothing they were discussing would be implemented, and he didn't let it slip! This is the resistance of an intelligence officer, this is a long will, I respect that. I wish he'd carried through everything that followed with the same kind of immeasurable resistance. We only have one request for him now - more, faster, farther, stronger, and now multiply that by one hundred. This is what the whole world is waiting for from him.

What will be the future of Ukraine?

When we say Ukraine, it is not very clear what it is, where and when, but when we say Ukrainian SSR is clear that it is in time and space. At the very least we need the liberation of the whole territory, of the civil and military administrations. For this, however, liberators must carry the long-awaited and clear meanings. I believe that in the near future something will happen that will awaken the sleepers from their deadly slumber.

The West has parasitized the image of democracy for a long time. What can we bring to Ukraine?

At this moment almost nothing, except the liberation from the fake Nazis. Yes, a native Russian language, a native story. But this is not enough. In 2000, Alexander Dugin brought a detailed Eurasian project to Vladimir Putin and the latter accepted it. In a way, all that is happening is implementing him, but he is a hundred times, if not a thousand times slower than we would like him to be. However, television has long spoken the language of geopolitics, that is, the continental language of Dugin. One hundred books by Alexander Dugin have been published and his works have been translated into 50 languages. He has met many significant people of our time. Spiritual leaders and presidents are among them. But why this imperial oddity, that geopolitics and A. G. Dugin be separate, I do not understand. No significant public office was offered him, no ministry, no university...

Who are your allies in Russia right now?

All people of good will. Eurasianism today is a socio-political movement, a sum of interactions, as far as an informal association of people is possible. There is no formal structure. But I am sure that the majority of Russians, when asked whether they are European, Eurasian or Asian, will choose the second option. Choosing between socialism and capitalism, the great majority will choose socialism. "Liberal values" or tradition - the answer is obvious. There is no longer even a need for formal unification. The television speaks our language, which has been increasingly Russian by the day for decades. It seems obvious now, but not that long ago. I remember that in 1999, in the midst of the bombing of Serbia, in a political program, when a woman in the government was asked who she felt sympathy for, for Serbs or Albanians, she replied: «for the Albanians because they have a nice mustache». Now it is impossible. A huge explanatory work has been done, but at the same time there is not a single Eurasian institution active and meaningful. There is not even a single chair of geopolitics. This is partly reminiscent of Stalin's time. After all, Stalin did not make almost a single geopolitical mistake, and there were no geopolitical institutions, even the very word geopolitics was punished. There is no geopolitics, and geopolitics is flawless - all of which is a paradox. It is not clear why this has survived to this day.

Now 82% of Russians support the president of the country. Don't you think that we are witnessing something like pantomime?

It's an imperial secret. In 2014, something unimaginable happened in Donetsk. You rub your eyes and do not understand how this can happen. On the evening of May 25, the then Prime Minister of the DPR Alexander Borodai came with us to the Donetsk Regional State Administration and simply read out 10 points about the special situation of the DPR. I somehow immediately thought that we were talking about the beginning of the third world war. And it was so casual. Only a few cameras worked. He finished reading and said, let's go eat. And we went. It was so strange to see the world, the whole world hanging on the thinnest wire that could be.
The next day there was an assault on the airport, which ended in our complete defeat. The Russian spring began with a catastrophe. And further in this range between a huge catastrophe and a small one, everything existed until recently. Just now there was something huge, immense, invincible, and suddenly everything turns into small and defeated. Yes, the enemy will be defeated and victory will be ours. But it's so weird.

Don't you think that now there is a very high demand for military operations to become truly popular?

Yes, I see it. And on both sides. The enemy, in the absence of authoritative power, has a grassroots impulse. But we have everything from above. As I get older, I think more and more, is this really the only way the empire can do it? Perhaps at all times there have been astonished people like me who have noticed the same strange desire to extinguish the popular impulse? So the empire both wins and loses. It only wins imperially. As soon as a grassroots initiative appears, it is immediately erased. The gap between impulse, freedom, freedom and the imperial tax is the secret of Russian history, perhaps the main secret.

But are you for the empire in spite of everything?

Yes, I am for the empire, anytime, anywhere. I'm talking about how bizarre, how inexplicable it can appear in combat circumstances. There is a mystery here.