Neo-Eurasians Far More Russian Chauvinist than the Originals, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 2 – Whenever a group styles itself or is styled as “neo,” there is always the question as to how much it is like the original from which it is being contrasted. In the case of neo-Eurasianism, Kharun Sidorov says, the new version is far less interested in the non-Russians and far more infused by Russian chauvinism and imperialism.

            Neo-Eurasian leader Aleksandr Dugin, for example, the Prague-based Russian commentator says, talks about the multiple sources of Russian identity as earlier Eurasianists did but favors the liquidation of the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation and the abolishing of Ukraine as an independent state (idelreal.org/a/31268031.html).

            In the neo-Eurasianist manifesto, “New Eurasia, the Noah’s Ark of the 21^st Century,” Dugin and his colleagues suggest that Russia unlike the European Union is the only place where various nations, languages, and cultures can flourish but then outline a program of Russianization and Russificaiton which makes such suggestions a nonsense.

            And the neo-Eurasianists spend more of their time attacking Ukraine and other countries for how they deal with minorities than they do in the discussions about and defenses of how Russia does. And they celebrate Russian nationalist abuses of non-Russians at home while condemning what some might see as far more tolerant policies toward minorities elsewhere.

            As a result, Sidorov says, the only difference between the neo-Eurasianists, on the one hand, and Russian chauvinists and imperialists, on the other, is that the latter are slightly more honest in what they are about. The neo-Eurasians, drawing on their origins, suggest they are defending one thing while in fact they are attacking it and promoting something else.