"The geopolitical thought of Alexander Dugin" by Dr. Leszek Sykulski is simply a fresh Polish position devoted to the individual and work of a loud Russian intellectual.
Leszek Sykulski made a synthetic description of Russian ideas, starting with a private and political life story, through geopolitical, ideological, philosophical concepts until the assessment of the contemporary political situation with a large emphasis on the function and place of Poland. The book is supplemented by an annex in the form of an interview conducted by Dr. Sykulski with the protagonist of the book.
Presented in the first chapter full of ideas and political sharp curves résumés Dugin to all who remember the past of intellectual peregrination of opponents of the fresh order in 1990 appears rather familiar. The fresh paradigm that was tried in the ideological layer at that time was best characterized by Francis Fukuyama's work entitled "The End of History". It was possibly the most unfortunate and even insane title in the past of political literature. On the another hand, the sign of the coming times was the contrast between the designation he gained and the absurdity of the title thesis. This meant that we entered a dangerous time of intellectual and political chaos. At that time, Dugin’s political elections were well in harmony with the climate of the era. National Bolshevikism, esoterism, and even occultism, matrimony to a later associate in the lesbian movement, in order to become a marcher by an institution titled a student, father, and an Orthodox old man after a youthful period of storm and pressure. In the background there are more or little discreet contacts with secret services ranging from the father of an officer through colleges where he defended his doctorate, obscure sources of remuneration, until as the author suggests to usage Dugin's explanation in information wars or in reflective politics, that is, in controlling masses by draining into people's minds and subconsciouss of appropriately formulated historical-ideo codes.
The second thread scrolls throughout the book Sykulski, which about Moscow as the perfect center in which fresh ideas are forged, writes with clear reserve, unless ironically.
However, this does not change the fact that Dugin's thoughts are referred to in the book in a reliable and transparent way. Despite indicated eclecticism, they actually supply a reasonably systematic documentation of what has been in independent information circulation for years and even decades as anti-globalism or anti-system. So there is not only a proposal for a fresh geopolitical division of the planet with maps of peculiar political – civilizational spaces, but besides a imagination of a three-sector economy in the spirit of the 3rd way, with local currencies and banks, the explanation of the alleged pandemic as a means to introduce totalitarianism according to the large Reset, is the criticism of the cult of technology and dehumanization, is the request to end the division into left and right and the praise of integral populism as political tasks. If we halt there, it would be a directory of postulates which can be found in writings of specified different authors as e.g. Adam Doboszyński, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher or even Teodor Kaczyński (Unabomber).
Dugin set himself the task of giving all of these legitimate demands a coherent idea-building. Richard M. Weaver seems to repeat that “Ideas have consequences”. In this case, it is the origin of evil seen in the present planet by inactive medieval philosophical nominalism and negation of the reality of general beings, which in effect leads to Western simple materialism and the fall of humanity. Hence most likely a individual choice of conventional religion or more mostly return to Tradition just by large T. Leszek Sykulski besides devotes quite a few space to Dugin's relationships with doctrine Martin Heideger and the criticism of technology and the call of man to be, not only to exist. Here comes a similarity to the conclusions presented by Krzysztof Karoń in his search for the current crisis, but the thought comes first of all to Fyodor Dostoevsky with the celebrated “if God is not there, then everything is allowed”. In fact, almost all the search for the causes of the crisis leads to this conclusion today. Whether Dugin’s analysis of the causes of the fall is correct and whether it will aid to overcome it is simply a subject for separate consideration.
Although the title of the book may propose something else, Leszek Sykulski considers Dugin primarily an ideologist, to a lesser degree a geopoliticist who adheres to the hard principles of this field as science. Nevertheless, the Russian concepts in this area besides devote a separate chapter. Dugin is in this part a supporter of classical, but in Siculski's opinion the already outspoken division into civilizations of the sea and land, and above all a believer or even a co-creator of Eurasianism as a key doctrine designed to give a more coherent form to continental anti-civilization – political against the top enemy of the sea civilization of America or the wider West. In this passage, Sikulski points excessive hopes connected with China as an alternate to civilization, pointing to their totalitarian impulses standing in opposition to another demands of the Russian thinker.
From the Polish point of view, these fragments of the book are very interesting, which mention to the place Dugin admits Poland and wider Central and east Europe. The views of the Russian thinker on this issue evolved. In 1998, first, Dugin gave 2 interviews to Polish authors. Grzegorz Górny from Frondy then and 21 years later to the author himself. From the beginning, adequate brutal constatation of the inability of the independent existence of Poland and this part of Europe as an area tormented by an irrefutable contradiction between Slavicism and Western Catholicism, to call on Poland over 2 decades later to be Polish. The Russian praises of doctrine Józef Hoene-WrońskiUnfortunately, 1 of the co-creators of the terrible messianism for Poland has not been developed. However, the thought of Central Europe itself as a separate region of civilization is surely worthy of attention, and reading these considerations we feel regret that the Russian philosopher pays more attention to it than the contemporary Polish thought dominated by the openly false dogma that Poland belongs to the West in all respect and that there is no better alternate for Poland from the West.
Meanwhile, Dugin's proposal to replace the flank or cordon sanitary with a belt of states and nations that are neither east nor west seems to fit much better with the concept of inter-mortar than its caricature versions proposed by the Compradorian elites ruling in Warsaw today, whose being Poland is invariably associated with following orders from 1 or another embassy. In this sense, even the instrumental function of the concept of Dugin in Russian politics suggested by Sikulski should not be taken with outrage, but as a sensible rooted in past and geography a political proposition modus vivendi. It would besides be interesting to accept the function of Russia as a watchman of the conventional order of the gendarme and to resign by Poland from playing a figure prone to martyrdom of the eternal militant for “our freedom and yours”, although Dugin does not mention the latter, alternatively falling into rather emotional praise of romanticist Polishness.
Whether the Dutch attempts to make theoretical bases of opposition against Anglo-Saxon globalism will win is, of course, a separate issue. In the War of Minds (this is simply a translation of the title created by Dugin of the multivolume cycle Noomachia) The Russian has already lost a daughter murdered in a bandit assassination, which shows that on the another side of these struggles are those who take the anticipation seriously. He himself evidently besides treats his own creation, and even his own life as a service to a greater work or mission.
The book besides contains a list of websites and a comprehensive bibliography in 2 alphabets and is besides a very useful compendium of cognition about the work of a large intellectual. Alexander Dugin appears in it as an ambiguous figure, in his somewhat feverish talk very Russian, as if looking for a desperate intellectual way to save the planet in the face of the impending catastrophe. Leszek Sikulski managed to keep a balance and cleric distance towards the hero, and specified a sober look with a hint of skepticism is very essential in our warm and full of intellectual traps of times.
Olaf Swolkień
Leszek Sykulski, “Political thought of Alexander Dugin”, Polish Geostrategic Society 2024, p. 236.
Think Poland, No. 3-4 (19-26.01.2025)
