All I can say is that I’m so greatful that my family left Russia!
Good insight, thanks for the post.
A.S. Panarin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for example, calls for a “United States of Eurasia,” in which Orthodox Christianity and Islam would form a popular front against Western secularism and individualism. Activist Alexander Dugin dreams of an anti-Atlantic axis of Berlin, Tokyo, and Tehran, each led by “charismatic theocrats.” Politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky threatens to restore Alaska to Russia and spread radioactive waste across Germany. (One of his campaign slogans was “A man for every woman and a cheap bottle of vodka for every man.”) This January, he called on the Russian government to ban Jewish organizations, which, he explained, amount to “nothing less than Satanism.”
Eurasianism is an eccentric and bigoted movement, but Billington insists on taking it seriously. Most Westerners, however, dismiss the clownish Zhirinovsky. This would be a lot easier if he did not command Russia’s third-largest party, which doubled its vote in the December 2003 elections. Dugin, for his part, directs Russia’s burgeoning nationalist movement. Eurasianism boasts of disciples in the highest echelons of the Russian military and security services. The question of Russia is really the question of how authoritarian it will become.
Fascism has once again invaded Russia, this time without the aid of an army. It seems inconceivable in the land that lost 20 million of its own to Nazism, yet walls in Moscow are defiled with swastikas. Skinheads carry out hundreds of attacks annually against minorities—one Moscow rights-group estimates skinhead ranks at 50,000—and the number of attacks rises by a third every year. Meanwhile, in Russia’s parliament, a thriving Red-Brown alliance unites those nostalgic for departed glory and order. Marxist theory was always an overlay, but nationalism is not. According to Billington, the appeal of the new xenophobia has yet to peak.”
Well gosh, who can hardly wait for that?
It is interesting that during WWII the Japanese (surreptitously, Japan and the USSR were not at war) sponsored anti-Communist fascist movements in the USSR. They saw fascism as the political idology most likely to be able to overcome Communism.