Political party in Russia
The Eurasia Party (Russian: Партия «Евразия»; Partiya «Yevraziya») is a National Bolshevik Russian political party. It was registered by the Ministry of Justice on 21 June 2002, approximately one year after the pan-Russian Eurasia Movement was established by Aleksandr Dugin.
History and origins
Often seen to be a form of National Bolshevism, one of the basic ideas that underpin Eurasian theories is that Moscow, Berlin and Paris form a natural geopolitical axis because a line or axis from Moscow to Berlin will pass through the vicinity of Paris if extended. Dugin and his Eurasia Party foresee an eternal world conflict between land and sea, between the United States and Russia. He believes: "In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland (Russia), remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution". According to Dugin's book The Basics of Geopolitics (1997): "The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilisational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union". The party has been deemed neo-fascist by critics,[4] a label Dugin denies.[5]
The Eurasia Party was founded by Dugin shortly before George W. Bush's visit to Russia at the end of May 2002. The party hopes to play a key role in attempts to resolve the Chechen problem, with the objective of setting the stage for Dugin's dream of a Russian strategic alliance with European and Middle Eastern states, primarily Iran and states like Germany.
Eurasia Movement
The Eurasia Party is affiliated with the Eurasia Movement, a National Bolshevik Russian political movement founded in 2001 by the political scientist Aleksandr Dugin.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
The movement follows the neo-Eurasian ideology, which adopts an eclectic mixture of Russian patriotism, Orthodox faith, anti-modernism, and even some Bolshevik ideas. It opposes "American" values such as liberalism, capitalism, and modernism.[12]
Alexander Dugin, an exponent of neo-Eurasianism, initially followed the ideology of National Bolshevism. Expanding out of National Bolshevism, he brought into the existing ideology of Eurasianism the idea of a "third position" (a combination of capitalism and socialism), geopolitics (Eurasia as a tellurocracy, opposing the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy of the United States and NATO) and Russian conservatism and Stalinism (the Soviet Union as a major Eurasian power). In Dugin's works, Eurasian concepts and provisions are intertwined with the concepts of European New Right. Researchers note that in the formulation of philosophical problems and political projects, he significantly deviates from classical Eurasianism, which is presented in his numerous works very selectively, eclectically. In Dugin's version of neo-Eurasianism , the Russian ethnos is considered "the most priority Eurasian ethnos", which must fulfill the civilizational mission of forming a Eurasian empire that will occupy the entire continent. The main threat is declared by the United States and the Anglo-Saxon world in general under a "neo-liberal" ideology he calls "Atlanticism". His most preferred form of government is a Russian dictatorship and a totalitarian state with complete ideological control over society. In the 1990s, Dugin criticized Italian fascism and German Nazism as "not enough fascist" and accused China of anti-Russian subversion. In subsequent years, he abandoned direct apology for fascism and called for collaboration with China, and began to refer to his positions as being from the traditions of the conservative revolution and National Bolshevism. However, researchers typically refer to neo-Eurasianism (also known Fourth Political Theory and Duginism) as a form of fascism.
Ideology
Dugin states that the Eurasia Party is developing the foundations for an entirely new political ideology, the Fourth Political Theory, which integrates and supersedes liberal democracy, Marxism, and fascism.[2] In this theory, the main subject of politics is not individualism, class struggle, or nation, but rather Dasein (existence itself).[13] According to Dugin, his aim is to take elements from all three, 'neutralise and decontaminate' negative aspects such as racism (in the case of fascism) and incorporate them into this new ideology. He refers to this ideology as a 'timeless, non-modern theory' valid for all time.
Dugin views liberalism as having 'defeated all its competitors'. He refers to the derision of the past by liberals and the modern concept of 'progress' as being seriously flawed, going so far as to describe it as racism and even 'moral genocide against the past'.[2]
From the three other political theories, he discards the aspects he finds unacceptable and highlights what he sees as the positive qualities. He combines them to form a new political theory based on the 'ethnos', describing this as ‘the greatest value of the Fourth Political Theory as a cultural phenomenon; as a community of language, religious belief, daily life, and of sharing resources and efforts; as an organic entity’.[2]
