Dugin’s apocalypticism: Western or Russian?

Abstract This essay historically contextualizes Aleksandr Dugin as an apocalyptic thinker by considering his interpretation of Western history as dominated by an apocalyptic desire for destruction. Exploring this interpretation of Western history through several key figures from the ancient and modern eras (Thucydides, Plato, Augustine, and Hitler), it concludes that Dugin’s apocalypticism hopes to overcome the destructive apocalypticism of Western history in a “new” beginning led by Russia for the sake of “preserving” Russia’s supposedly distinctive cultural-linguistic identity as an anti-Western, “Dionysian” culture of “openness” and “inclusivity” in contrast to the Apollonian, imperial culture of “closure” and “exclusivity” found in the United States. However, Dugin’s claim to want to preserve Russia’s putative openness is belied by his exclusion of certain ways of thinking and being, most notably Epicureanism and most violently Ukrainian nationalism. Dugin condemns Epicureanism as the basis of crass American hedonism, and he supports Vladimir Putin’s violent assertion of Russian nationalism on Ukraine.