The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

To Dugin, the most important parts of the show were ones in which he recognized his own influence. There were several points when Ukrainians who remained loyal to Kiev were referred to as "nationalists" and even as Nazis—and Putin pointed out that "such was the historical past of these territories, these lands, and these people." The implication was that the west had been permanently contaminated by the German occupation of 1941-1944. The east, on the other hand, he said, was "connected to Russia at the root, and these are people with something of a different mentality." At the conclusion of the show Putin expanded on the idea of this mentality:

There are certain special characteristics, and I think they have to do with values. I think that a Russian person, or, to speak more broadly, a person of the Russian World, thinks, first, about the fact that man has a moral purpose, a higher moral basis. That is why the Russian person, a person of the Russian World, is focused not so much on his own self. . . .

Putin trailed off and rambled for a bit, revealing to the attentive listener that he had not yet fully assimilated the ideas he was putting forward. But in a few moments he picked up the thread:

These are the deep roots of our patriotism. This is where mass heroism comes from in war, and self-sacrifice in peacetime. This is the origin of mutual aid, and of family values.

The phrase "Russian World" was Dugin's. It was a geographically expansive concept, the vision of a civilization led by Russia. Putin was right to circle around to "family values"—the idea was precisely that the Russian World, whatever its borders, was united by values. The point that Dugin had been making for years was that the very idea of universal human values is misleading: the West's idea of human rights, for example, should not apply to a "traditional-values civilization." One of Dugin's best phrases was, "There is nothing universal about universal human rights."

At another point in the show Putin referred to something that Dugin had been working on for years: making connections with people and organizations that shared the Russian World's values even though they were located in Europe:

I think we are indeed witnessing the process of reevaluating values in European countries. What we call conservative values is starting to gain traction. Take Viktor Orban's victory in Hungary or Marine Le Pen's success in France—she came in third during a municipal election. Similar tendencies are growing in other countries, too. It is obvious, just absolutely obvious.

Absolutely. In the last few years Dugin had revitalized his contacts with the West: he had built bridges with French ultraright activists— ones who were too radical for Le Pen's National Front—and with Hungarians to the right of Orban, as well as many other groups, including ultraconservative European and Israeli Jewish organizations. What united these activists and groups, disparate as they were in conventional political terms, was their political opposition to Brussels and philosophical opposition to modernity.³¹ His work was now effectively recognized by the president. It had attained the status of a national project.

The following day, Dugin was the guest on the country's most popular interview show. He had been interviewed on television many times, but this was a first. The show was run and hosted by Vladimir Posner, a Jew who had once worked in the United States. This was by far the most liberal, pro-Western show on Russian television—and the fact that Dugin was invited meant that he had acquired the kind of political weight that made him an essential, unavoidable guest. The tone of the interview was antagonistic—Dugin even told Posner at one point that he thought that he, Posner, should be banned from television—but it provided a platform for conveying his views to the widest possible audience. Dugin was able to say that the events of the last couple of months—Crimea and, now, a war in eastern Ukraine— constituted a Russian renaissance, a "Russian Spring." "We are starting to feel pride in our country," he went on. "Russians are

beginning to realize that they exist in the world not only as passive objects but as subjects of history. And the more we show that we care about the Russians and Russian speakers outside Russia, the stronger we make our society, the more we emerge from a sleeping state to a state of mobilization. . . . Look at the people who have come from Crimea: this is an entirely different sort of people than our officials or Ukrainian ones. These are people of a new generation, a new brand."

posner: Are you saying that these people are making our nation healthier?

Dugin concurred. Then Posner asked him to expand on a phrase he had seen in Dugin's recent writing: "Greater Russia."