Only When Russian Generation that Rose to Power in 1990s Passes from the Scene Will Russia Develop, Dugin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 11 – Only when the generation that rose to power and wealth in the 1990s passes from the scene, an event that in the nature of things cannot be too far in the future, will Russia have the chance to develop in new ways because the current generation in power is incapable of replicating itself in the next generation, Aleksandr Dugin says.

            The influential Eurasianist writer says that the experiences of the 1990s when people felt hopelessness, anger and poverty and concluded that any means were justified in overcoming such feelings formed the current Russian elite but also condemned Russia to a catastrophe under its rule (geopolitica.ru/article/rossiyskaya-elita-neizbezhnost-katastrofy).

            The current elite is “something pathological,” and its “typical figures are those who emerged from the corrupt bureaucracy and the criminal world and were often agents of influence for the West,” Dugin argues. “With the rise of Putin, much was changed,” he says, “but the elite remained what it had been.”

            “This elite could not change itself and didn’t want to,” he continues. Having achieved power, it simply wanted to keep everything in place, although of course some members wanted to take what other members of the elite had or steal more from the population, given that none of them were constrained by any moral principles.

            “Today, it is clear to almost everyone,” Dugin says, “that with such an elite, Russia is condemned. It has exhausted all its resources” and social lifts that might have renewed it have been blocked. Consequently, it will stand its ground until mortality forces it to cede power to others.

            According to the Eurasianist, “it would have been natural in such a situation to transfer power and the resources they had gathered to their direct physical descendants. But here we encounter a problem: the habits thanks to which the existing ruling group broke through to power are impossible to transfer.”

            The children of the elite grew up in entirely different circumstances and typically have very different values, values so different that it even happens that their parents view them as potential traitors to the existing order of things just as the elite views anyone who challenges its primacy, Dugin writes.

            At the same time, “the children of the Russian elite are overwhelmingly psycho-social cripples. Most often, they are not capable even of preserving the wealth and position seized by their fathers” let alone develop the system in such a way that Russia would have any chance of progress.

            The children are “paralyzed;” they lack “the will to power” their fathers had. And so they can’t succeed as a class. But because the parental generation is the way it is, there is no one else; and that means that when the members of that earlier generation do in fact die, there will not be anyone ready to take their place.

            “While the generation of the 1990s is alive,” Dugin suggests, there won’t be any future. “Eveerything will begin only when this troubled wave disappears into oblivion.” Then it is possible but of course not inevitable that new people will come to power who will be capable of leading Russia into the future.