Free Republic

Vienna, October 21 – Turkish prosecutors have charged that a group of 86 senior military officers, politicians, and activists accused of plotting a coup against the government of that NATO country had close ties to Russian security services, a charge that if true suggests that Moscow is preparing to take extraordinary risks to advance its interests. Today, 46 members of the Ergenekon as the secret organization is known went on trial in Istanbul, an event that has deeply split Turkish society, with pro-government media saying that this group represents a threat to democracy and stability and opposition outlets arguing that...

This summer's lightning war with Georgia and the emerging political crisis in next door Ukraine are happening right on Dugin's schedule. President Dmitry Medvedev's recent foreign-policy manifesto, outlining Russia's claim to its own sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union, might have been penned by Dugin. ... ...Dugin says Moscow will create a new Russian empire over much of former Soviet territory.... "The Americans are openly following the main law of geopolitics: whoever controls Eurasia, controls the world. It's a war against us, open war.... I was a voice in the wilderness about this a few years ago, but...

A decade ago, many of the most influential thinkers in today’s Russia were in the intellectual wilderness. While some sat in pamphlet-littered basements churning out copies of underground ultra-rightwing newspapers with names such as Lightning and Russian Order, others were in jail following failed coups in 1991 and 1993 against the pro-western “occupation regimes” of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.Russia’s intellectual journey since then has been dizzying, as the radical has become mainstream and the hardline position increasingly moderate-sounding, with what were the margins emerging as the political centre.Now, against the backdrop of conflict in Georgia and deteriorating relations with...

Recent developments in Central Asia – with Russian geopolitical influence again rising, while U.S. power in the region wanes – stand to invigorate a long-running debate over the philosophical foundation of the Kremlin’s foreign policy. The turn of events could breathe new life into so-called Eurasianists, who argue that Russia has a unique identity and should thus embark on a development course apart from the West. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, Russian academics and policy-makers have struggled to develop a concept that could guide Russia’s revival. Westernizers and Eurasianists have played prominent roles in the ongoing debate. Eurasianism as...

A Turkish energy ministry official confirmed that the BTC pipeline blast was a terrorist act. But what’s more, Russia’s international politics advisor to the Russian Duma declared the pipeline “dead” and that it would never operate again. An adviser to the Russian parliament also claimed the closed pipeline would not be opened again and declared the line is “dead”. “The world and countries in the region have seen that not NATO, but Russia is the only one who could secure the energy routes,” Alexander Dugin, international politics advisor to the Russia’s Duma, told Turkish Cumhuriyet daily. “In this context, regarding...

A review of Russia in Search of Itself, by James H. Billington For Russia, the last century was one bitter cruelty after another—the Tsar, war, revolution, famine, Stalin, war, Communism. Her people lived under totalitarianism for seven decades, longer than any one else. Something happens to a society under the total state. In time, fear, lies, denunciation, and arrest fray the bonds that hold a healthy society together. In Russia's case, these strains have left it much like an ocean: cold, vast, and swarming with strange creatures. James Billington's Russia in Search of Itself is a wise reflection on Russia's...

Abstract Eurasianism as a concept emerged among Russian émigrés in the 1920s, with the premise that Russia is a unique ethnic blend, primarily of Slavic and Turkic peoples. Its geopolitical implications for Russia include gravitation toward mostly Turkic Central Asia. Alexander Dugin, one of its best-known proponents, believes that the demise of the Soviet Union was simply a tragic incident. The people of the former USSR should again be united in a grand Eurasian empire, with Russia a benign and generous patron, providing its “younger brothers” clients economic largesse and defense, mostly against the predatory USA. The “orange revolutions” and...

Abstract The growing and increasingly politically active Russian Muslims of diverse ethnic backgrounds provide various political models for their relationship with Russians. Some still accept Eurasianism but assume that it is Muslims not Orthodox Russians who should be the “older brothers” in the alliance or, in any case, that the very notion of older and younger brother should be put to an end. The others want complete separation from Russia or at least the minimization of their relationship with it. Finally, others believe in the Islamization of Russia. The models provide a glance at the possible scenarios for Russia's future....

The past two years witnessed a welcome sensitization of the Russian public towards skinhead attacks and ultra-nationalist propaganda. In view of escalating violent attacks and other actions against foreigners, the debate on Russian fascism is currently experiencing a new high in the Russian media. There was a similar debate in the mid-1990s, when the confrontation between President Boris Yeltsin and the “intransigent opposition,” a state of near-civil war in Moscow, the ascent of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the appearance of neo-Nazi parties, and the first Chechen war, gave rise to the notion of a “Weimar Russia.” Even though this construct has made...

What is Eurasianism? Dr. Aleksandr Gelyevitch Dugin, founder of the International Eurasian Movement, attempted to explain the ideological prospects and tendencies for this Russian geopolitical movement -- "not a party," he insisted -- last Wednesday night, at Johns Hopkins' Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Since I had lived in Moscow and Central Asia, and had heard about it, I was very interested to have a chance to meet the primary theoretician of a school of thought that some say is close to that of the Kremlin. The event was hosted by Johns Hopkins professors Fred Starr and...

Ultranationalism among Russian youth and, to a lesser degree, in party politics as well as nascent official activity against xenophobia are receiving increasing attention by Russian and Western observers. Alarmed by the growing number of victims among foreign students, visitors from abroad and immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Americas, the Putin administration has started to take action against escalating skinhead violence. The Kremlin-directed Russian mass media reports now on a daily basis about attacks on foreigners and their—often, still hesitant—persecution by the procuracy. There is also frequent information on various central and local campaigns (concerts, demonstrations, meetings, etc.) to...

Ultranationalism among Russian youth, along with nascent official activity against xenophobia, is receiving increasing attention from Russian and Western observers. Alarmed by the growing number of victims among foreign students, visitors from abroad and immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Americas, the administration of President Vladimir Putin has started to take action against escalating skinhead violence. The Kremlin-directed mass media reports now on a daily basis about attacks on foreigners and the prosecution of offenders. There is also regular information about different campaigns (such as concerts, demonstrations and meetings) to increase tolerance and mutual understanding among youths. The government’s change...

“Ukraine and Russia never co-existed as two independent states. Ukraine has never been a sovereign state. Now we have to learn to perceive it as such”. This is a recent statement of Victor Chernomyrdin, Russian ambassador in Ukraine. It looks like this idée fixe of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary - he voices this opinion of his on a regular basis. Three weeks prior to the Orange Revolution he claimed during his interview with “Izvestiya” correspondent: “Russia always has been an independent state. Ukraine has never been one. Such a country has never existed. It is not our intention to...

One of the worrying results of the March 2006 elections to the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, was that the so-called “Popular Opposition” bloc led by the head of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Natal’ya Mikhailovna Vitrenko (b. 1951), managed to come close to passing the 3% barrier (with 2.93% of the official turnout) and thus almost entered the Rada. Vitrenko is the premier representative of radical anti-Westernism in Ukraine; she has also made herself known with her frequent invectives against Ukrainian politicians whom she does not hesitate to call “natsisty” (Nazis). Both of these circumstances are ironic in as...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Turkey has been pushing for full membership in the European Community for almost 50 years now. And for 50 years Brussels Eurocrats have repeatedly told the Turks they are not quite ready. Brussels has repeatedly told Turkey it still has giant steps to take in order to reach a level of democracy acceptable to the EU. Consecutive Turkish governments were given a long sundry list of action points that had to be implemented before the EU would consider allowing Turkey into the club. Turkey had to meet the Copenhagen Criteria for human rights and free...

MOSCOW – Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say. The group, which started in 2001 with limited goals of promoting cooperation in former Soviet Central Asia, has evolved rapidly toward a regional security bloc and could soon induct new members such as India, Pakistan, and Iran. One initiative that core members Russia and China agree on, experts say, is to squeeze US influence - which peaked after 9/11 - out of the SCO's neighborhood. "Four years...

On October 15 in Moscow, officials from the presidential administration and other Kremlin-connected figures hosted a "Forum on Democracy and Multiculturalism in the Euro-East." The participants included representatives of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Karabakh, activists of pro-Russia parties and associations from several post-Soviet countries, and Moscow figures who -- according to Kremlin consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, speaking at the Forum -- "play a major if often shadowy role in developing Russia's real policy" (Regnum, October 15). Outlining geopolitical challenges and opportunities to Russia, Pavlovsky noted that the United States is focusing its hostile attention on Belarus, "our basic military-political ally."...

WASHINGTON -- One of Russia's leading geopolitical thinkers, Aleksandr Dugin, outlined his vision of a "multipolar" world in a speech in Washington, D.C. on October 5. Dugin advocates the creation of a multipolar world as a means of resisting what he sees as American "unipolarism" as well as American-sponsored globalization. Understanding Dugin's ideas is important because they have gained an important following not just in Russia, but in the Kremlin itself. But while Russians are increasingly attracted to these ideas, they are deeply flawed. Speaking at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, Dugin outlined his multipolar vision....

Until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, Russian influence in Central Asia was beyond dispute. The emergence of independent states from Soviet republics and a succession of paralyzing domestic crises in Russia put an end to the days of diktat. But President Vladimir Putin has made the restoration of Russian influence throughout the former empire a priority in his second term. In a phrase redolent of 19th-century empire-building, Putin stressed in his address to the nation in April 2005 that "the civilizing mission of the Russian nation on the Eurasian continent should continue." Putin's rhetorical flourish came amid...

A review of Russia in Search of Itself by James H. Billington For Russia, the last century was one bitter cruelty after another—the Tsar, war, revolution, famine, Stalin, war, Communism. Her people lived under totalitarianism for seven decades, longer than any one else. Something happens to a society under the total state. In time, fear, lies, denunciation, and arrest fray the bonds that hold a healthy society together. In Russia's case, these strains have left it much like an ocean: cold, vast, and swarming with strange creatures. James Billington's Russia in Search of Itself is a wise reflection on Russia's...