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Eurasianism

The geopolitical-philosophical current arguing that Eurasia constitutes a distinct civilization with its own telos, irreducible to both European liberalism and Asian traditions. Classical Eurasianism (Savitsky, Trubetzkoy, 1920s) was primarily geographic and linguistic; Neo-Eurasianism (Dugin, from the 1990s) adds explicit esoteric, Traditionalist, and geopolitical dimensions. The philosophical current most directly engaged with initiatic tradition as political ideology.

perplexity
Traditions
Russian political philosophyTraditionalismGeopoliticsRussian Orthodoxy
Related Entries
Perennial PhilosophySacred GeographyCounter-InitiationAlexander Gelievich DuginVladimir Sergeyevich SolovyovJulius EvolaRené Guénon
Opposing Concepts
Western liberalismAmerican universalismRussian WesternismMarxist internationalism

Project Thesis Role

Eurasianism is the project's primary case study in what happens when esoteric and initiatic categories are translated into geopolitical ideology — when the Traditionalist diagnosis of modernity becomes not merely a cultural critique but a political program with concrete implications for how states act. Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism explicitly draws on Guénon, Evola, and the concept of *logos* (in a specifically Heideggerian-Schmittian sense) while generating a political program the project neither endorses nor dismisses. It belongs to the 'Esoteric State' track and is the concept that makes that track's questions precise.

Relations

concept_embodiment→Alexander Gelievich Dugin

Referenced By

Perennial PhilosophyCounter-InitiationSacred GeographyRené GuénonJulius EvolaVladimir Sergeyevich SolovyovAlexander Gelievich Dugin

Eurasianism

Definition

Eurasianism is a Russian intellectual tradition that argues Eurasia — the continental heartland stretching from Central Europe through Central Asia to the Pacific — constitutes a distinct civilizational unit with its own cultural, spiritual, and geopolitical logic, irreducible to either the European West or the Asian East. The tradition has two distinct phases that share the name but differ significantly in content and emphasis: Classical Eurasianism (1920s-1930s), centered on émigré Russian intellectuals primarily responding to the Bolshevik revolution; and Neo-Eurasianism (from the 1990s), associated primarily with Alexander Dugin, which integrates the classical geographic and cultural analysis with Traditionalism, Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, geopolitics (Mackinder's heartland theory), and explicit esoteric-initiatic elements.

Classical Eurasianism, as developed by Nikolai Trubetzkoy (linguist), Pyotr Savitsky (geographer), and Georgi Florovsky (theologian, who later recanted), argued that Russia was neither European nor Asian but Eurasian — a distinct world whose cultural forms (Orthodox Christianity, collective orientation, relationship to the steppe) were shaped by its specific geography and had their own validity independent of European cultural norms. The movement was intellectually serious, politically ambiguous (it developed relationships with both monarchists and the early Soviet state), and ultimately fragmented by the late 1930s.

Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism, developed from the 1990s onward in a series of major works (The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), The Fourth Political Theory (2009), and the 24-volume Noomakhia project (2014-2018)), represents a qualitatively different project. Dugin drew on Guénon's Traditionalism and Evola's solar-heroic initiatic categories, on Heidegger's Dasein and Logos analysis, on Carl Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction and geopolitical theory, and on Russian Orthodox mystical theology to produce a synthesis that is simultaneously a civilizational analysis, a political ideology, a metaphysics of logos-forms, and an implicit initiatic program. The Noomakhia — which attempts a complete philosophical topology of human civilizations in terms of their dominant logos (solar-Apollonian-differentiated vs. lunar-Dionysian-participatory vs. the dark chthonic logos of Cybele) — is the most ambitious synthesis of esoteric, philosophical, and civilizational analysis in contemporary Russian thought.

Historical Development

Classical Eurasianism emerged directly from the trauma of the Russian Revolution. Russian émigré intellectuals in Prague, Paris, and Belgrade attempted to make sense of the catastrophe and to articulate what Russia was if it was neither Western liberal nor Soviet. Trubetzkoy's Europe and Mankind (1920) argued that European cultural imperialism — the assumption that European cultural forms represented the universal standard for human civilization — was the ideological foundation for colonialism and needed to be replaced by a genuine pluralism of civilizational forms. This argument, which was structurally similar to what Spengler was developing simultaneously in Germany, provided the cultural-philosophical basis for the Eurasian claim to civilizational distinctiveness.

Pyotr Savitsky developed the geographic dimension: Eurasia, as the continental heartland, possessed a specific "geo-sophical" quality — a relationship between land, climate, and cultural form — that shaped the civilizations that inhabited it. This geographic-cultural determinism was combined with a religious dimension: Russian Orthodoxy was not merely a variant of Western Christianity but expressed a specifically Eurasian relationship to the sacred — more communal, more liturgical, less rationalist.

Dugin's transformation of Eurasianism added what the classical tradition lacked: the explicit engagement with Western esoteric and Traditionalist sources (Guénon, Evola); the application of Heidegger's Being-analysis to civilizational forms; the incorporation of Schmitt's geopolitical categories; and the claim that the conflict between "Atlanticist" (American-liberal) and "Eurasianist" civilizational forms was not merely political but metaphysical — a conflict between different understandings of logos, of the relationship between being and thinking, of what the human person is.

Key Distinctions

Classical vs. Neo-Eurasianism: Classical Eurasianism was a cultural-geographic analysis by émigré intellectuals with political ambiguity but not explicit geopolitical program. Neo-Eurasianism is an explicit political program drawing on and transforming the classical framework with significant additions. The project engages both but must maintain the distinction.

Eurasianism vs. Slavophilism: The 19th century Slavophile movement (Khomyakov, Aksakov, Kireevsky) argued for the spiritual superiority of Russian collective culture over Western individualism. Eurasianism extends this beyond the Slavic world to a broader Eurasian civilizational claim. Both share the anti-Western orientation; Eurasianism is geographically and analytically more ambitious.

The Project's Stance on Dugin: The editorial guidance's principle applies: the project engages Dugin because the Noomakhia's analysis of civilizational logos-forms is genuinely original philosophical work — no other contemporary thinker has attempted anything comparable in scale or ambition. The project does not endorse his political program, his geopolitical alliances, or the political consequences of his thought. The geologist-with-a-flawed-map principle applies here as strongly as it does with Evola.

Project Role

Eurasianism is the concept that makes the project's "Esoteric State" track possible: it provides the intellectual framework for analyzing how esoteric and initiatic categories can be translated into political ideology and civilizational analysis. The track asks: when the Traditionalist diagnosis of modernity becomes a basis for state action, what does it produce? Dugin's Russia-inflected answer to that question — and the consequences of his influence on Russian political culture — is the track's primary case study. The concept requires engagement because it is real, consequential, and involves exactly the intellectual materials (Guénon, Evola, Heidegger, Orthodox mysticism) that the project takes seriously in other contexts.

Primary Sources

  • Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Europe and Mankind (1920): Classical Eurasianism's founding statement.
  • Alexander Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory (2009; trans. 2012): The most accessible summary of Neo-Eurasianist political philosophy.
  • Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia: Wars of the Mind (24 vols., 2014-2018): The complete philosophical synthesis — available in Russian; portions translated.
  • Marlène Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (2008): The best Western scholarly analysis of both classical and Neo-Eurasianism.

Agent Research Notes

[AGENT: perplexity | DATE: 2026-03-22] Dugin's influence on the Putin government has been the subject of conflicting assessments: some scholars treat him as a significant ideological influence on Russian foreign policy; others argue he is more marginal than Western media suggests. The project should be clear about this empirical uncertainty while engaging his ideas on their own philosophical terms. Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn's "Putin's Brain" article in Foreign Affairs (2014) and Charles Clover's Black Wind, White Snow (2016) provide useful context.

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