Last war of the world-island : the geopolitics of contemporary Russia

Alexander Dugin traces the geopolitical development of Russia from its origins in Kievan Rus and the Russian Empire, through the peak of its global influence during the Soviet era, and finally to the current presidency of Vladimir Putin. Dugin sees Russia as the primary geopolitical pole of the land-based civilizations of the world, forever destined to be in conflict with the sea-based civilizations. At one time the pole of the seafaring civilizations was the British Empire; today it is represented by the United States and its NATO allies. Russia can only fulfill its geopolitical mission by remaining in opposition to the sea powers. Today, according to Dugin, this conflict is not only geopolitical in scope, but also ideological: Russia is the primary representative and defender of traditional values and idealism, whereas the West stands for the values of liberalism and the market-driven society. Whereas Russia began to lose sight of its mission during the 1990s and threatened to succumb to domination by the Western powers, Dugin believes that Putin has begun to correct its course and return Russia to her proper place. But the struggle is far from over: while progress has been made, Russia remains torn between its traditional nature and the temptations of globalism and Westernization, and its enemies undermine it at every turn. Dugin makes the case that it is only by remaining true to the Eurasian path that Russia can survive and flourish in any genuine sense – otherwise it will be reduced to a servile and secondary place in the world, and the forces of liberalism will dominate the world, unopposed. Alexander Dugin (b. 1962) is one of the best-known writers and political commentators in post-Soviet Russia, having been active in politics there since the 1980s. In addition to the many books he has authored on political, philosophical, and spiritual topics, he is the leader of the International Eurasia Movement, which he founded. For more than a decade, he has been an advisor to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin on geopolitical matters, and was head of the Department of Sociology at Moscow State University. Arktos has also published his books, The Fourth Political Theory (2012), Putin vs Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right (2014), and Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism (2014). Editor’s Note 6 Toward a Geopolitics of Russia’s Future 7 Theoretical Problems of the Creation of a Fully-Fledged Russian Geopolitics 7 Geopolitical Apperception 8 Heartland 8 Russia as a “Civilization of Land” 9 The Geopolitical Continuity of the Russian Federation 10 The Russian Federation and the Geopolitical Map of the World 11 The Geopolitics of the USSR 14 The Geopolitical Background of the 1917 Revolution 14 The Geopolitics of the Civil War 18 The Geopolitical Balance of Power in the Peace of Versailles 21 The Geopolitics and Sociology of the Early Stalin Period 23 The Geopolitics of the Great Patriotic War 26 The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Great Patriotic War 29 The Geopolitics of the Yalta World and the Cold War 30 The Yalta World after the Death of Stalin 32 Theories of Convergence and Globalism 36 The Geopolitics of Perestroika 38 The Geopolitical Significance of the Collapse of the USSR 40 The Geopolitics of Yeltsin’s Russia and its Sociological Significance 47 The Great Loss of Rome: The Vision of G. K. Chesterton 47 The First Stage of the Collapse: The Weakening of Soviet Influence in the Global Leftist Movement 49 The Second Stage of the Collapse: The End of the Warsaw Pact 50 The Third Stage of the Collapse: the State Committee on the State of Emergency and the End of the USSR 51 The Białowieża Forest 52 The Unipolar Moment 53 The Geopolitics of the Unipolar World: Center-Periphery 54 The Geopolitics of the Neoconservatives 55 The Kozyrev Doctrine 56 The Contours of Russia’s Collapse 57 The Establishment of a Russian School of Geopolitics 59 The Geopolitics of the Political Crises of October 1993 60 The Change in Yeltsin’s Views after the Conflict with Parliament 61 The First Chechen Campaign 62 The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Yeltsin Administration 65 The Geopolitics of the 2000s: The Phenomenon of Putin 68 The Structure of the Poles of Force in Chechnya in 1996–1999 68 The Geopolitics of Islam 68 The Bombing of Homes in Moscow, the Incursion into Dagestan, and Putin’s Coming to Power 69 The Second Chechen War 71 The Geopolitical Significance of Putin’s Reforms 73 September 11th: Geopolitical Consequences and Putin’s Response 74 The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis 75 The Atlanticist Network of Influence in Putin’s Russia 76 The Post-Soviet Space: Integration 79 The Geopolitics of the Color Revolutions 80 The Munich Speech 82 Operation Medvedev 85 Saakashvili’s Assault on Tskhinvali and the Russia-Georgian War of 2008 86 The Reset and the Return to Atlanticism 88 The Eurasian Union 90 The Outcomes of the Geopolitics of the 2000s 91 The Point of Bifurcation in the Geopolitical History of Russia 94