Dugin's Image of Finland

Alexandr Dugin is a Russian political scientist and philosopher, and prominent spokesman for Eurasianism.

Eurasianism developed from Slavophile thinkers such as Nikolai Trubetskoi; they formulated the idea of a Russia which is neither Oriental nor Western. Early Eurasianists believed that the Soviet Union would soon become a new national, non-European and Orthodox Christian community, leaving behind proletarian internationalism and militant atheism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alexander Dugin re-emerged as the leading representative of the redefined Eurasianism. For Dugin, Eurasianism is in particular the geopolitical struggle between the American-led sea-based powers and Eurasian land-based powers; To break the Atlanticist liberalism, according to Dugin, a conservative revolution is needed.

The 56-year old Dugin has served as a professor at the Moscow State University and led its Center for Conservative Studies at the Department of Sociology. Prior to this, he was involved in numerous political groups; In the 80s, Dugin first joined the fascist and anti- Semitic Pamyat: an organisation which criticized Gorbachev's perestroika, warned of the Zionists and the Freemasons, but which was not sufficiently well-developed for Dugin. In the early 90s, he also belonged to the (subsequently banned) National Bolshevik Party. In 1993, Dugin was also involved in writing the founding platform for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, led by Gennadi Zjuganov. Under the influence of Dugin, the platform leaned more to the nationalistic than socialistic.

Over the years Dugin has written on the glorification of Tsarism and Stalinism, as well as esotericism and all sorts of mysticism, combined with Russian nationalism; he is also familiar with the ideas of the traditionalist school, exemplified by René Guénon and Julius Evola. Despite this background, he is now part of the branch of the Russian Orthodox Old Believers, which originated in the 17th century as an opposition movement to reforms of Orthodox liturgy. The Western media likes to label the bearded, melancholy-looking Dugin as a modern Rasputin and the "Kremlin's ideologue." To his credit, Dugin has also won a place on the United States sanctions list and the Ukraine has named him persona non grata.

Dugin has written books on geopolitics, conservative revolution, Putin, Martin Heidegger's philosophy, Christian eschatology and his own Fourth Political Theory (4PT) which, in his view, goes beyond socialism, fascism and Western liberalism. In recent years, Dugin's works have been translated into numerous languages, including English, German, Swedish and French. He also has links to the European New Right, for example the French Nouvelle Droite, whose chief philosopher Alain de Benoist has, like Dugin, written against liberalism, globalization, immigration and American cultural supremacy. Interest in Dugin's ideas is found in many countries especially among the critics of liberalism and America. However, Dugin's Eurasianism imposes certain conditions on supporting nationalism:

Dugin has visited Finland a couple of times to attend Russia activist Johan Bäckman's events in 2014 and 2017. During his visits, Dugin talked about the liberal totalitarianism represented by the EU and NATO, the geopolitical position of Finland, the ongoing information war, and more widely of the Finno-Ugric region, its history and "unique civilization". There is an audio recording entitled "Liberalism has gone grazy" in the archives of the Yle Areena Horisontti program in which journalist Samuli Suonpää interviews Dugin.

In my opinion, Dugin is at his best in his criticism of liberalism. Dugin lambasts liberalism as a nihilistic philosophy which demands freedom from any kind of collective identity, but does not produce any positive change after rejecting tradition. In competition with totalitarian ideologies - communism or fascism - liberalism once seemed to be a tangible and attractive alternative. But when these forms of totalitarianism were overcome, the nihilistic nature of liberalism was revealed: it is not an ideology of positive, but rather of negative freedom, which tries to redefine sexuality and to undermine the cultures and civilizations of entire peoples. Dugin, however, is pleasingly confident that the post-liberal era is about to come.

"The History and World View of Finno-Ugric Civilization" that came out in December 2017 is, to the best of my knowledge, Dugin's first Finnish publication. The book deals with Finns and Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia through their mythologies and shamanistic beliefs. The book also features a preface to a Finnish reader. Previously, a few of Dugin's writings were to be found in Finnish on the 4PT web site, where the book's preface "The Finnish Idea - Thoughts on Finnish Identity and Borders Policy" has also been previously published.

Dugin claims to admire Finnish culture. He considers Finnishness to be an independent and culturally significant "centennial partner of Russia"; for Dugin, Russian culture itself is a combination of Slavicism and Finno-Ugric. But he has also written in a different vein. In his 1997 book, The Foundations of Geopolitics, Finland is referred to as part of the Russian sphere of interest; as part of the Eurasian empire. In this somewhat peculiar book Dugin suggests that Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be donated to Murmansk Oblast. During his visits to Finland, Dugin denied that he would want to make Finland part of Russia again; however, his desire to raise Russia into a mighty role in the multipolar world order is very clear. Dugin has also been influenced by the Belgian politician Jean-François Thiriart, who already in the 1950s envisioned a symbiotic European-Russian empire from Dublin to Vladivostok. At the moment, however, it seems that the only vision coming into being within the EU bears the baleful handwriting of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi.