The winning philosophy

Meaningful internal reforms must logically begin in Russia. This is required by the SMO, which, in the extreme, has aggravated the contradictions with the West - with the entire modern Western civilisation. Today anyone can see that it’s no longer safe to simply use the norms, methods, concepts, products of this civilisation. The West spreads its ideology along with its technologies, permeating all spheres of life. If we recognise ourselves as part of Western civilisation, we should voluntarily accept this total colonisation and even enjoy it (as in the 1990s), but in the case of the current confrontation - which is fatal! - this attitude is unacceptable. Many westerners and liberals became fully aware of this and left Russia at the very moment when the break with western civilisation had become irreversible; the situation became irreversible on 24 February 2022, and even two days earlier - at the time of the recognition of the independence of the DPR and LPR - on 22 February 2022.

In principle, everyone has the right to make a civilised choice between loyalty and betrayal. Liberalism is losing in Russia and liberals are consistent as they leave. It’s more complicated with those who are still here. I am referring to those Westerners and liberals who still share the basic norms of modern Western civilisation, but for some reason continue to remain in Russia despite the gap that has already formed between Russia and the West; they are the main obstacle to genuine and meaningful patriotic reforms.

Reforms are inevitable because Russia finds itself not only cut off from the West, but essentially at war with it. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the USSR had a sufficient number of important strategic enterprises created by Nazi Germany, and relations between the USSR and the Third Reich were not particularly hostile; but after 22 June 1945, the situation obviously changed radically. Under these circumstances, the continuation of co-operation with the Germans - legitimate and encouraged before the war - took on a completely different meaning. Exactly the same thing happened after 22 February 2022: those who continued to remain within the paradigm of the hostile - liberal-fascist - civilisation with which we were at war, found themselves outside the ideological space that had clearly emerged with the start of the Second World War.

In the meantime, the presence of Germany on the eve of the Second World War in the USSR was identified, while the presence of the liberal-fascist Russophobic West on the eve of the SMO was almost total. Western methodological technologies, norms, know-how and, to some extent, values permeate our entire society. This is what requires a radical overhaul. But who will achieve it? The people who were formed during perestroika? The liberal and criminal 1990s? The people of the 1980s and 1990s who were formed and educated in the 2000s? All these periods were fundamentally influenced by liberalism as an ideology, as a paradigm, as a fundamental and global position in philosophy, science, politics, education, culture, technology, economics, media, even fashion and everyday life. Contemporary Russia knows only the inertial vestiges of the Soviet paradigm and everything else is pure liberal Westernism.

There is simply no alternative paradigm, at least none in power or among the elites, at the level where the current confrontation of civilisations should take place.

Today we oppose the West as civilisation against 'the' civilisation, and we have to outline what kind of civilisation we are otherwise no military, political and economic success will help us and everything will be reversible, the trend will change and everything will collapse. I am not even talking about the need to explain to the Ukrainians that from now on they will be within our zone of influence or directly in Russia, who are we after all? At the moment there is only the inertia of Soviet memory ('grandma with the flag'), Western Nazi propaganda ('vatniki', 'occupiers'), our - for now only initial - military successes and... the complete confusion of the local population. Here the voice of Russian civilisation should be heard. Clearly, distinctly, convincingly, and its noises should be heard in Ukraine, Eurasia and the world at large. This is not only desirable, it is vital, just as ammunition, missiles, helicopters and bulletproof vests are needed at the front.

The most logical place to begin reforms is in philosophy. It is necessary to form the staff of the Russian Logos, either on the basis of some existing institution (after all, today no humanitarian institution does, cannot or will do this - liberalism and Occidentalism still dominate everywhere), or in the form of something fundamentally new. Hegel said that the greatness of a nation begins with the creation of a great philosophy. He said it and he also did it. This is exactly what Russian philosophers need today, not a vague, off-the-cuff agreement with the SMO. We need a new Russian philosophy. Russian in its content, in its essence.

Therefore, the reform of all other branches of humanitarian knowledge and natural sciences should start from this paradigm. Sociology, psychology, anthropology, culturology, as well as economics, and even physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are based on philosophy, are derivatives of it. Scientists often forget this, but listen to how the Western synonym for PhD sounds: any of the humanities and natural sciences! - Ph.D. - Philosophy Doctor. If you are not a philosopher, then you are at best an apprentice, not a scientist (doctor is the Latin word for 'scholar', 'learned').

It is here that the most important internal battle for the initiation of civilising reforms in Russia itself (as well as in the whole space of our expansion, the whole area of our influence) will take place: the battle for Russian philosophy.

Right here there is a clearly modelled pole of the internal enemy. These are the representatives of the liberal paradigm, from analytical philosophy to post-modernism to cognitivists and transhumanists, who maniacally insist on reducing man to a machine. I am not even talking about liberal and progressive liberals, advocates of the totalitarian concept of an 'open society', feminism, queer studies and queer culture, raised on fraternity scholarship. This is a pure 'fifth column', something akin to the banned Azov battalion in Russia.

The portrait of the philosophical enemy of the Russian Idea, Russian civilisation, is very easy to trace. It is not simply a matter of links with Western scientific and intelligence centres (which are often quite close concepts), but also of adherence to a number of rather formalisable attitudes:

- belief in the universality of modern Western civilisation (Eurocentrism, civilisation racism),
- hyper-materialism, through to deep ecology and object-oriented ontology,
- methodological and ethical individualism - hence gender philosophy (as a social option) and, at the limit, transhumanism,
- techno-progressivism, the development of artificial intelligence and 'thinking' neural networks,
- hatred for classical theologies, spiritual Tradition, the philosophy of eternity,
- denial or ironic ridicule of identity,
- anti-essentialism, etc...

It is a kind of 'philosophical Ukraine', scattered in almost every scientific and academic institution that has any relation to philosophy or basic scientific epistemes. These are signs of philosophical Russophobia, since the Russian Idea is built on the basis of directly opposing principles.

- The identity of Russian civilisation (Slavophiles, Danilovists, Eurasians),
- the placing of spirit before matter,
- commonality, collegiality - a collectivist anthropology,
- a profound humanism,
- devotion to tradition,
- the careful preservation of identity, nationality,
- belief in the spiritual nature of the essence of things, etc.

Those who set the tone for contemporary Russian philosophy vehemently defend liberal attitudes and equally vehemently reject Russian ones. This is a powerful bastion of liberal Nazism in Russia.

It’s this point of the enemy's firing range, this height, that must be conquered in the next phase, and the liberal Nazis defend themselves against philosophy with the same ferocity as Azov or the desperate Ukrainian terrorists of Popasna. They wage information wars, write denunciations about patriots and use all the levers of corruption and apparatus influence.

Now it is appropriate to recall a small story - personal, but very revealing - about my dismissal from the MSU in the summer of 2014 (note the date) [Ed. Dugin in 2014 was removed from his professorship at Moscow State University at the moment the 'Russian spring' in the Donbass failed]. From 2008 to 2014, at the Department of Sociology at Moscow State University, together with the rector and founder of the department, Vladimir Ivanovich Dobrenkov, we organised an active Centre for Conservative Studies, where we dealt with precisely this: the development of an epistemological paradigm of Russian civilisation. We did not hesitate to support the Russian Spring. In response, however, we received a scathing petition from... Ukrainian philosophers (promoted by Kiev Nazi Sergey Datsyuk) calling for the "expulsion of Dobrenkov and me from Moscow State University" the strangest thing - but at the time not very strange - is that the MSU leadership did just that. Dobrenkov was removed as rector and I, frankly, left on my own, even though it seemed like a dismissal. I was also offered to stay, but on humiliating conditions. Of course, it was not Sadovnichy, who had previously been quite courteous and open, who approved my appointment as head of the department and went through all the voting procedures of the MSU Academic Council. But then something happened: the Russian Spring was put on hold and the issue of the Russian world, Russian civilisation and the Russian Logos was completely removed from the agenda; however, this is symbolic: the promoters of the abolition of the Centre for Conservative Studies at Moscow State University were Ukrainian nationalists, theorists and practitioners of the Russian genocide in the Donbass and eastern Ukraine as a whole, exactly those with whom we are at war now.

This is how liberal nationalism penetrated inside Russia. Or rather, it penetrated a long time ago, but that’s how its mechanisms work. A complaint comes from Kiev, someone within the administration supports it, and another initiative to deploy the Russian Idea collapses. Of course, you cannot stop me: over the years I have written 24 volumes of 'Noomachia', and the last three are dedicated to the Russian Logos, but the institutionalisation of the Russian Idea has been delayed again. My example, of course, is not an isolated one. Something similar has been experienced by all or most thinkers and theorists committed to justifying the identity of Russian civilisation. It is a philosophical war, a fierce and well-organised opposition to the Russian Idea, supervised from abroad, but carried out by local liberals or mere functionaries, who passively follow fashions, trends and a well-organised information strategy of direct agents of influence.

We are now at the point where the institutionalisation of Russian discourse is necessary. Everyone has seen in our information war how controllable and manipulable the moods and processes of society are. The most serious clashes occur at the level of paradigms and epistemes. He who controls knowledge, wrote Michel Foucault, has the real power. True power is power over people's minds and souls.

Philosophy is the most important front line, the consequences of which are far greater than the news from Ukraine, which every Russian is so eagerly searching for wondering how the soldiers are doing, which new lines have been seized, or whether the enemy has faltered. Herein lies the main obstacle to our victory.

We need a philosophy of victory. Without it, everything will be in vain and all our successes will easily turn into defeats.

All true reforms must begin in the realm of the Spirit. And since news from the front has to be sought in the news - well, what about the Institute of Philosophy? Still standing? Has it already surrendered?

Translation by Lorenzo Maria Pacini