DARIA DUGINA AND ALEXANDER DUGIN: ASSASINATION?


“The Secret Will Be Revealed. Vote for Alekandr Dugin.” From the Archives of the State Historical Library.
“The Secret Will Be Revealed. Vote for Alekandr Dugin.” From the Archives of the State Historical Library.
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DARIA DUGINA

Daria Dugina, 29, a political analyst and commentator, working for the Kremlin-funded media, such as RT (Russia Today,) Tsargrad TV channel and more, was killed in a car explosion in near Moscow on August 20, 2022. Her father, Alexander Dugin, nicknamed "Putin's brain" and known to be the Kremlin ideologist, was supposed to be in the same car but changed his decision at the last moment. The Russian authorities opened a criminal case “on murder.”

Both Daria Dugina and Alexander Dugin were placed on the U.S. and U.K. sanctions for disinformation leading to the threat to the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine. They both called for violence and murder of Ukrainians since at least 2014.

ALEXANDER DUGIN

Alexander Dugin’s influence is well-covered. Journalists and academics study his theories, document his ties to the far-right and radical left in the West, and investigate his alleged involvement with the French, Italian, and the EU Parliamentary elections of 2017–2019. Activists protest his ultra-nationalistic slogans.

The subject of this article is the history of Alexander Dugin’s lifelong ties with the Soviet and Russian security services (the GRU, KGB, FSB) and the top Russian military and government officials, called siloviki. 

“THE DAWN IN BOOTS”

On March 28, 2000, a day after Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer and the head of FSB, won the presidential elections of the Russian Federation, Dugin published an article The Dawn in Boots (referring to the iconic boots worn by Cheka, the early Bolshevik secret services.) In it, he sang dithyrambs to the KGB — the future “backbone of the Eurasian Renaissance” — and the “Ruler.” Mixing emotive language of agitprop and Soviet bureaucratic jargon characteristic of his style, Dugin outlined the main goal for the “KGB of the future:” “the implementation of the Eurasian project.” The main “vectors” included:

  • “Countering American hegemony on a global scale in all strategic areas (including economics, politics, culture, computer science, etc.);
  • Recreation of a powerful Eurasian sovereign state on the basis of the Russian Federation and the strategic integration of the CIS countries;
  • creating a structure of economic, military, and political alliances with other great powers of Eurasia (the concept of the Eurasian Military Partnership);
  • the mobilization development of the Russian economy in the framework of a wide ‘trade/customs union’;
  • political stabilization of Russia, the transition to Eurasian bipartisanship, the marginalization of extremism in the economic, national, and social spheres;
  • implementation of the new doctrine of national security and defence doctrine.”

By 2019, it is clear that Dugin’s views at the very least coincided with the aspirations of the “solar KGB.” “The real KGB of a marvellous continental scale, the ghost of which frightened the West, its government, its peoples once,” “a heroic, maximally all-powerful, all-knowing and all-wise KGB” and “a special service of the new type, Total Intelligence” was to carry on “legitimate, not entirely legitimate and completely illegitimate activities” for “the implementation of the great war of the continents.”

FATHERS AND SONS

Russian journalist Vladimir Abarinov wrote in his article Occult Personality (Grani, 2014) that it was important, “probably, that Dugin’s father was a general of the GRU General Staff. And although some claim that Lt. Gen. Geli Dugin left the family when his son was three years old, their relationship continued.”

Dugin’s father, Geli Alexandrovich Dugin (1935–1998), reportedly was a Lieutenant General of the GRU, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, the largest foreign intelligence agency.) However, despite the multiple reports confirmed by Alexandr Dugin himself, there are no official records online.

“Dugin has been vague in various interviews about his father’s profession. He told me and others that Geli was a general in military intelligence (the GRU.) But when pressed, he admitted he didn’t actually know for a fact what he did. ‘At the end of his life he worked for the customs police, but where he worked before that — he did not tell me. That I do not really know.’ Dugin’s friends, however, are adamant that his father must have been someone of rank within the Soviet system… According to Dugin’s close friend and collaborator Gaidar Dzhemal, Geli Dugin had, on more than one occasion, intervened from a high-ranking position in the Soviet state to get his son out of trouble. Dzhemal said that Geli was Dugin’s ‘get out of jail free’ card, which allowed his son to regularly violate the orthodoxies of Soviet life and get away with it,” writes Charles Clover, a former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, in his detailed review of Eurasianism Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. (Yale University Press, 2016, p. 156.) Notably, Dzhemal’s own family belonged to the KGB and high-rank party echelons: his paternal grandfather was an NKVD department head and later chairman of the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan Soviet Republic; his maternal grandfather was a senior party leader.

According to archive documents, Geli Dugin worked as the head of the department of the technical means of customs control at the Russian Customs Academy, a federal educational institution, established only in 1993. There, he co-authored several textbooks on сustoms сontrol, including such topics as the basic organization of customs control of radioactive materials and anti-smuggling. His research included the role of vehicles in customs crimes, technical devices in customs control, etc. According to Dugin, “Geli was transferred to the customs service after his son’s detention in 1983 by the KGB.” (Charles Clover, Ibid., p. 157.) Another friend, Igor Dudinsky (also a son of a high-ranking family), remembered that Dugin “appeared to live at a dacha belonging to his uncle in the Higher Party School dacha compound.” (Charles Clover, Ibid., p.157.)

AN INFORMER

In December 1983, Dugin played a guitar concert in Moscow at the studio of Gennady Dobrov, performing under the pseudonym Hans Sievers (after a Nazi Wolfram Sievers, The Director of Institute for Military Scientific Research which conducted extensive experiments using human subjects; sentenced to death during Nuremberg Trials for crimes against humanity.) At this stage a hater of the USSR, Dugin sang “Fuck the Damned Sovdep[Soviet Union]” “Not long afterwards, as Dugin recalls, a group of plainclothes KGB officers appeared at the door of his family’s flat.” (Charles Clover, Ibid., p. 161.) The apartment was searched and Dugin was arrested. A manuscript entrusted to him by a friend of Igor Dudinsky was confiscated.

During the interrogation at Lubyanka, Dugin gave away the identity of the man who entrusted the archive to him. The man was fired from the Ministry of Information and had to work as a lift operator. According to Dugin, his father then was transferred from GRU to customs control. (Charles Clover, Ibid, p. 161)

“MEMORY” — A FASCIST GROUP RUN BY THE KGB

In 1986, Dugin and Dzhemal joined an organization called Pamyat (Memory.) The head of Pamyat, Dmitry Vasilyev, was a KGB informant, with a code nickname Vandal. Dugin said in an interview with Clover that there were KGB people around all the time. (Charles Clover, Ibid., p.163.) “I am sure that people in Pamyat were agents working for the KGB. They just could not have been anything else,” said Dugin. This knowledge did not prevent Dugin and Dzhemal from staying in Pamyat. They were excommunicated in 1988 after an internal conflict with Vasilyev.

HUNDRED THOUSAND BOOKS?

In 1989, Dugin published two books, The Way of Absolute and The Metaphysics of the Gospel. He later explained that he funded his extensive travelling in Europe from 1989–1992 with the revenues from the sales. Considering the major economic crisis — there was no food in the stores in 1991 — the claims of selling 100,000 copies of obscure books do not sound credible to an eyewitness. (Charles Clover, Ibid, p.174) In addition, trips abroad required obtaining a special “foreign passport” and the chances of the citizens on the KGB record receiving such a document at the time were minimal, especially for multiple trips. If permission to travel was granted, it came with certain responsibilities.

According to Andreas Umland’s article Aleksandr Dugin’s transformation from a lunatic fringe figure into a mainstream political publicist, 1980–1998: A case study in the rise of late and post-Soviet Russian fascism in Eurasian Studies, “during a visit to Western Europe in 1989, Dugin met a number of ultra-nationalist European publicists including the Frenchman Alain de Benoist, the Belgian Jean-François Thiriart, and Italian Claudio Mutti.”

THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

In 1990, Dugin and Dudinsky published the magazine Continent Russia, funded by the central committee of the Communist Party. “They were in so much agony, the Central Committee. They were looking for any sort of alternative, the idea. They knew they were finished. They were willing to work with anyone, cooperate with anyone,” said Dugin in his interview with Clover. (Charles Clover, Ibid, p. 173.)

“THE NIGHTINGALE OF THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE SOVIET ARMY”

In December 1990, Dugin joined the editorial board of Den’ (later Zavtra), an ultra-nationalist weekly, founded and edited by Aleksandr Prokhanov, a writer with known ties Communist party and the military, and funded by the Ministry of Defence, headed by Dmitry Yazov, one of the leaders of the August Coup 1991. Den’ played an active role in preparing and supporting the Coup. (Charles Clover, Ibid., p. 199.) Prokhanov is also the founder of the nationalist think tank, Izborsky Club, connected to the military elite and the General Staff of the Soviet Army. Interestingly, Vladimir Medinsky, currently the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, is known to attend the meetings.

“I SIDED WITH THE COMMUNISTS”

In August 1991, during the coup d’état attempt, aka August Coup, when a small group of the KGB generals and siloviki made an attempt to restore the USSR, Dugin, according to his own words, “sided with the [coup leaders] realizing that the preservation of the great union is much more important than other, minor, private problems… There are two ideologies — socialism and capitalism. I chose socialism, sided with the communists.” The list of the August Coup group included such hardliners as Gennady Yanayev, the first and only Vice President of the USSR, Vladimir Kryuchkov, the Head of the KGB, Dmitry Yazov, Minister of Defence, Boris Pugo, Minister of Interior, and Oleg Baklanov, Member of the CPSU Central Committee among others.

“CLOSE TO THE MILITARY MEN”

According to Clover, “Prokhanov secured Dugin a teaching position at the Academy of General Staff,” the premier officer-training establishment for the Soviet (now Russian) army, where he trained officers ranked colonel and above from 1992 until 1995. Under the supervision of General Igor Rodionov, Prokhanov’s friend, Dugin “became an adjunct professor and began as a guest lecturer in the department of strategy, under General Nikolay Klokotov.” (Charles Clover, Ibid.p 201.) “Dugin said he wasn’t paid a salary or given an ID badge as he recalls; instead, he was picked up for his lectures and dropped off home again in military cars. After the lectures they will all go out to eat and drink, staying up late into the night discussing matters.”

In 1991–1992, following up on the multiple European trips allegedly funded by his book sales and described in full detail and at length in Anton Shekhovtsov’s article Alexander Dugin and the West European New Right, 1989–1994 (Eurasianism and the European Far Right, edited by Marlene Laruelle, Lexington Books, London, 2015), Dugin “attempted to form an alliance between certain leaders of the European New Right and several department heads and professors at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces,” by inviting the New Right leaders to Moscow on paid trips.

The subject of discussion was the formation of an anti-US “continental bloc” of Russia, Germany, and France. Dugin was “obviously very close to the military men”, said Alain de Benoist, one of the leaders of the European far-right, in an interview, according to John B.Dunlop’s major study in Stanford The Europe Center.

In April 1992, a round table, called “European Security Issues and Possible Ways of Russia’s and Europe’s Development” (Shekhovtsov, i=Ibid., p. 43) held on the premises of the Academy included General Nikolay Klokotov, the Head of the Academy’s Strategy Department; Head of the academy’s department of military history; Alain de Benoist; and other far-right members. Another panel discussion, according to Shekhovtsov, took place in the Den’s office.

Clover writes that in March 1993, de Benoist “received a paid air ticket in the mail, then a visa… He was met in the airport by an official government car…” and met by Dugin at the Academy. “Dugin stopped by the generals’ offices…there were seven generals in all… It dawned on de Benoist that in order to lecture at the Academy, security clearance, background checks and high-level connections were all required. If Dugin were a simple dilettante, he would not even be permitted in the Academy’s car park. His association with the generals had to be more than just a casual one.” (Charles Clover, Ibid, p. 203)

“MAGIC OF HITLER” ON THE FEDERAL TV CHANNEL

In 1993, Dugin produced a four-part series Secrets of the Century, including Magic of Hitler on Channel One, the Russian main TV channel, as well as channel four. The show was a mix of classified materials on the occult interests of the Third Reich and the scandal brought Dugin out of obscurity. The show was shut down. Despite a well-spread rumour that Dugin’s father gave him access to the secret KGB archives, there is no evidence to this claim. His co-author Yuri Vorobievsky wrote that the access was approved by the state-run channel administration and provided a copy of the official letter from the TV channel, signed by the director. The fact that Dugin was allowed to appear on air on a state-run channel with such a controversial subject led to many speculations in the press on the subject of his government connections.

“COME VOTE — OR I WILL KILL YOU”

“The Secret Will Be Revealed.” Dugin and Kuryokhin. 1995. Live debates.

In 1995, Dugin participated in the State Duma elections. During the live debates on Leningrad TV, he said, “Two words about myself: I am Russian. I am 33. My father is in the military, my mother is a doctor… My beliefs: I am a patriot… My campaign is based on three principles: I am a supporter of socialism…an empire… and complete freedom.” The election campaign failed: Dugin received 0.85% of the votes, ending up in 14th place (out of 17.) A popular St.Petersburg musician Sergey Kuryokhin participated in the campaign, joking at the end of his speech: “And to the young people — come vote, or I will kill you.” Kuryokhin was a popular and charismatic underground personality, known for his provocations and pranks, such as his famous gig “Lenin is a Mushroom.”

MILITARY ACADEMY OF THE GENERAL STAFF

In 1996, Igor Rodionov, the commander of the General Staff Academy, was appointed the Russian Defense Minister.

In 1997, Dugin wrote his major book Foundations of Geopolitics, which appears to have been written with the assistance of General Nikolai Klokotov of the General Staff Academy, who served as an official consultant to the project. Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, head of the International Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, also may have served as an adviser.” The book was recommended for publishing by Moscow State University, approved as the official textbook for higher educational institutions, and is currently used as a textbook in the Russian state military schools.

According to Umland, Jacob Kipp reported concerning the publication of the first edition of Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997: “When I was in Moscow in June, the Dugin book was a topic of hot discussion among military and civilian analysts at a wide range of institutes, including the Academy of State Management, and in the [presidential administration] offices at Staraya ploshchad’ [Old Square].”

During the same period, Dugin also worked for the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense’s magazine Orientiry (Landmarks.)

RUSSIAN GOLD, GOVERNMENT, AND THE BANDITS

Dugin’s second wife, Natalya Melentieva, was the head of the analytical department of Russian Gold, and Dugin and his close collaborator/friend Valery Korovin (National Bolshevik Party, Eurasian Youth Union) worked as analysts, preparing information for the Administration of President. In the spirit of the time (labelled “wild 90s” for a reason,) the founder and president of Russian Gold, Alexander Tarantsev, controlled two large open-air markets in Moscow, was associated with the Orekhovskaya and Medvedkovskaya organized criminal groups and, in 2008, accused of contract killings in the testimony of three convicted hitmen. Other accusations included tax evasion and — considering Dugin’s father’s speciality, ironically — smuggling

From 1998–1999, Dugin was also an advisor on geopolitics to Gennady Seleznev, a major player in Russian politics and a State Duma Speaker, served as the chairman of the Advisory Council for National Security Council under the Chairman of the State Duma, in addition to still teaching at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Army.

In 1999, Tarantsev financed a new edition of Foundations of Geopolitics. The same year, copies of the Foundations and Our Way (the title is a reference to Evrasian magazine of the 1920s) were distributed to all participants of the St.Petersburg Economic Forum. The fusion of organized crime, “buzinez” and political elite/secret services is the mark of the “wild 90s.” Eurasianism, “patriotism” and “traditionalism” became major trends in the 2000s. Together, they formed a unique Putin’s Russia cocktail.

“WE ARE RULED BY NO ONE BUT BANDITS”

In autumn 2000, Dugin was introduced to Putin. (Clover, p. 255)

In 2001, Dugin co-founded and chaired a political party Evrazia with Petr Suslov, a veteran of the KGB special services, who “served in the structures of the KGB … in a unit which conducted special operations abroad.” “Dugin says today that Suslov had described himself as ‘a sort of state envoy to the organized crime world,’ who was tired of the stress and wanted ‘to get out of such work.’ The allegations of Suslov’s criminal links did not particularly trouble Dugin, however. He told me in an interview, ‘Who are our political leaders after all? We are ruled by no one but bandits… Do you think Putin and Medvedev are any different? No matter where you go, bandits here bandits there. It’s that type of country.’” (Charles Clover, Ibid., p. 259.)

Suslov also interviewed Clover, saying, “I represented the special services. The people I worked with were interested in Eurasianism from a pragmatic point of view… We are not great idealists. We approach this from a practical perspective.” (Clover, Ibid, p.262)

Writing for the Gleb Pavlovskii-sponsored website, SMI.ru, journalist Grigorii Osterman commented: “[Petr] Suslov himself enjoys broad connections within the leadership of the FSB (there exists information that he is an external employee of the central apparatus of the FSB), as well as in the Presidential Administration, bodies to which the leader of ‘Eurasia,’ Dugin, also has entree.”

According to Artyom Kruglov, the editor of the Putinism site and a Radio Svoboda analyst, “Alexander Litvinenko mentioned Suslov as one of the coordinators of assassinations in the 90s — he picked up killers among the Chechens and veterans of the Chechen wars from the Russian Armed Forces and worked with Nukhayev who was involved in the murder of Paul Khlebnikov.”

THE ORIGINAL EURASIANISM

In the 1920s, a stellar group of Russian emigre philosophers, linguists and philologists, such as prince Nikolai Trubetskoy, Roman Jakobson, and Lev Karsavin, produced a theory of Eurasianism. After the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviet secret services carried out a major secret operation. OGPU/NKVD (later the KGB, then FSB) infiltrated the Eurasia group. Eleven volumes of investigative cases of the “Russian National Party,” stored under the number Р-28879 in the central archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation in Moscow, contain information on the Soviet secret services infiltrating the movement, wrote Fedor Ashnin and Vladimir Alpatov in Eurasianism in the Mirror of the OGPU-NKVD-KGB (Bulletin of Eurasia — Acts Eurasica, 1996). Archival materials expose the connection of the members of Eurasia with the secret services. Soviet secret services used the Eurasians as their agents abroad while punishing the Soviet citizens for any contact with Eurasians back home. An infamous Operation Trust led to many Gulag and death sentences and inspired a TV series in the 1960s but was all but forgotten by the general public by the 90s.

The idealistic doctrine of Eurasianism only resurfaced again — this time in its occult-like version — after the collapse of the USSR, partially due to the popularity of the ideas an anthropologist Lev Gumilyov, the son of great Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilyov (accused of participation in the conspiracy and executed by the NKVD) and partially because the secret services, once again, had an interest in it.

NEO-EURASIANISM: EVRAZIA

Dugin’s Evrasia was supported by a part of the staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. The movement had 50 regional branches and about 2000 activists. Dugin organized a nationalistic forum on the premises of the KGB veterans club; the board included Vladislav Revsky, the chairman of the club and an ex-KGB officer with 10 years of experience in Vympel, a special operations unit attached to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, in the KGB special forces. In his address to the founding congress of Evrasia, Dugin expressed his gratitude to “the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation,” for its assistance, before thanking the Moscow Patriarchate, the Central Spiritual Administration for the Muslims of Russia, and other organizations.

Financial support for the movement was provided through regional organizations of the KGB/GRU veterans. Other types of support included “necessary” connections, assistance, and access to classified information.

INTERNATIONAL EVRASIA MOVEMENT

By 2003, Dugin’s party had branched out to form the International Evrasia Movement, registered by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation at an official ceremony. Its first convention took place at the President Hotel in Moscow, with security provided by the Federal Security service reporting directly to Putin. According to investigative journalist Marina Latysheva, the main function of Evrazia was the preparation of analytical reports on foreign policy for the Administration of the President.

In 2003–2004, Dugin became the Chairman of the Council of the International Evrasian Movement (IEM), presiding over several high-level government officials, such as Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation; the Head of the Department of Political Parties and Social Movements of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation; Minister of Culture of Russia; members of the Federation Council, Chairman of the International Committee of the Council of the Federation, and Alexander Torshin, Vice Speaker of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, as per the former and current Evrasian Movement websites.

Dugin also served as the chairman of the International Evrasian Movement executive committee. Mikhail Gagloev, the Vice-chairman, the owner/shareholder of Tempbank, with reported connections to the secret services, was later sanctioned by the US for its role in the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The bank was closed in 2017 due to bankruptcy. At the time of revocation of the license, the supervisory board of Tempbank included Andrei Dubinyak , a former deputy chairman of the board of Bank of Support of the Armed Forces and Defense Industry; Leonid Reshetnikov, Lieutenant-General, former head of the Information and Analytical Department of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, currently a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense headed by Sergei Shoigu and Alexander Babakov, State Duma Deputy.

Mikhail Leontyev, an associate of Dugin, who moved from prominent media personality to the role of spokesman and VP for Russian state oil company, Rosneft, and, allegedly one of Putin’s favourite journalists, was a founding member. Leonytev was picked for his Rosneft position by its CEO Igor Sechin, one of Putin’s closest allies, a long-time friend and the KGB colleague from Leningrad, and reportedly the most powerful person in the Kremlin after Putin. Dugin allegedly has ties with Sechin and, in 2014, wrote that “Sechin, Sergey Ivanov, the Minister of Defense, the army and GRU” were ready to accept his Eurasian theory.

Another close supporter of Eurasianism theory and Dugin is Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer from Leningrad who served as Director of the FSB (Federal Security Service, the main successor organization to the Soviet KGB) from 1999 to 2008, and he has been Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, a consultative body of the President that works out his decisions on national security affairs, since 2008.

The movement was also supported by several leading Russian Orthodox Church priests, including father Vsevolod Chaplin, the right hand of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, allegedly a former KGB officer.

RETURN TO THE FEDERAL TV CHANNEL

In 2003, Dugin returned to the government-funded main TV Channel One, co-featuring with Marat Gelman, the Channel’s Deputy General Manager, responsible for implementing the Kremlin’s views and close to Vladislav Surkov, Deputy Prime Minister, who also worked with Dugin on several Kremlin-backed political initiatives. Dugin was also on the channel’s managing committee. Marat Gelman, a political analyst, and strategist at the time authored a book Russian Method on the role of mass media in the formation of the collective consciousness, and the mass media nature and foundation of terrorism (terrorism as a reality show,) “the conflict of civilization” as the major force driving terrorism (Duginist geopolitical ideas) and the journalistic techniques for the coverage of the above.

IN SEARCH OF GRAAL, IN HITLER’S STEPS

In 2004, Dugin attended a forum on the Greek island of Rhodes organized by the Center of National Glory, a group whose board of trustees included the highest rank state officials close to Putin, such as Sergei Ivanov, the Minister of Defense and a former KGB officer, Viktor Cherkesov, head of the State Drug Control Agency and Georgy Poltavchenko, the president’s plenipotentiaries in the North-Western and Central federal districts; Vladimir Kozhin, the President’s Administration Manager; and Vladimir Yakunin, the first Vice-President of Russian Railways at the time.

Vladimir Yakunin, also a former KGB general and a former head of state corporation Russian Railways, sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role as Putin’s confidant, deserves special attention. He owns a dacha in the same complex as Putin on the shores of lake Komsomolskoe. Yakunin is currently the head of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (DOC-RI) established in Berlin in 2016 and named the “instrument of Moscow’s hybrid warfare” against the West. Coincidentally, Yakunin is also a former boss of the husband of Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer implicated in the Trump tower scandal and indicted by the Special Council Mueller’s probe. He is an editor and publisher of two anthologies by Dugin published by his think tank, the Centre for Analysis of Problems and Public Governance. In his book Russian School of Geopolitics, Yakunin quoted Dugin eight times.

CONCLUSION

It is clear why Dugin might have needed the KGB. Apart from a family tradition, the secret services offer security, career growth, prestige, and financial perks.

But why would the KGB need Dugin? Apart from the same reason the NKVD needed Eurasianism of the 1920s — infiltrating and manipulating a movement — it is the idea of an enemy, the idea of eternal struggle, the very idea without which the organization loses its raison d’être. 

To stay in power, Putin needs an enemy. Dugin delivers the narrative of struggle. When the USSR fell and took communism vs imperialism antagonism with it, the void quickly filled with “the great conflict of nations.” The result is the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

In other countries, Dugin would be a cult leader, a charlatan. In a country that is a cult, charlatans are leaders, and the line between farce and tragedy fades away.

(Writing by Zarina Zabrisky, editing by Klaudia Fior)

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