«Conservative Revolution» à la russe? An Interpretation of Classic Eurasianismin a European Context

In: Journal of modern European history: Zeitschrift für moderne europäische Geschichte = Revue d'histoire européenne contemporaine, Band 15, Heft 1, S. 72-84

Abstract

«Conservative Revolutiony» à la russe? An Interpretation of Classic Eurasianism in a European Context This article explores classic Eurasianism as part of right-wing European intellectual history. Between the two world wars, the Eurasianists shared many ideas with other European right-wing ideologists and in particular with the authors of the German «Conservative Revolution»: anti-liberalism, a hostile attitude towards parliamentarian democracy, anti-capitalism and the anti-individualist idea of an organic whole against the atomisation of society. However, unlike French or British rightwing intellectuals, Eurasianists did not hope to unite Europe on an illiberal basis; what they instead had in mind was overcoming «European» values and institutions in Eurasia, of which they conceived as a separate continent between Europe and Asia. This idea has been revitalised by the Russian Neo-Eurasianist circles around Aleksandr Dugin that have become a central part in European networks of the new Right of the twenty-first century.