'The Communist Party Russian Federation is a party of left-wing Eurasianism’: Dugin

Quote from Timothy Fitzpatrick on May 17, 2025, 18:42

CPRF and Eurasianism

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August 26, 2003
A. Dugin

The author's hesitation about the advisability of writing this article.

I hesitated for a long time whether to write an article about the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. My attitude to this party and its leaders is very complicated. This is not something indifferent and detached - I treat many ideas, political requirements and historical assessments with deep sympathy, I sincerely share them. On the other hand, I can't get rid of the deep irritation that leaders, clerators, CPRF activists instill in me. A strange mixture of deep sympathy with sharp dislike... This is not only my personal attitude - something like this is vaguely felt by many and many... Let's try to figure it out.

The CPRF is not the ideological successor of the CPSU.

The ideological platform of the current CPRF has not yet been seriously understood by anyone.

On the one hand, we see that the CPRF declares itself the heir to the CPSU, claims continuity (both theoretical and organizational) with the ruling (and only) party of the Soviet period. Such direct continuity seems to imply the continuity of ideological theoretical heritage. That is, we have the right to assume that the ideological basis of the CPRF is the development of the main political and ideological positions of the version of Marxism that developed in the USSR by the end of the 80s.

And if so, we expect from the CPRF orthodox Marxist reflections on the causes of the collapse of the USSR, an appropriate assessment of the world situation, a clear explanation of what the fundamental theoretical and practical mistakes of the CPSU, the former ruling party, which created and strengthened the continental structure of the USSR and disappeared from the historical arena overnight, leaving after all the grandiose intellectual, industrial, administrative, military-strategic and social heritage - a pension haze and a couple of hysterical newspapers, and a "red deacon" with an empty pot on the Anpilov truck...

There are no such reflections, we will look for them in vain. In this matter, instead of real continuity, there is a veiled (but no less radical) gap. The given explanations - why did this happen after all? - amaze with their absurdity or direct belonging to a completely alien ideological and theoretical context. Everything is explained either by a "conspiracy", or "penetration into the party of alien - including "racial" - elements", or "a successful operation of American special services", or "national separatism of the republics", or "betrayal", or "Gorbachev's Satanism", or "Russophobia". There is no adequate class, socio-economic, Marxist analysis in side . There is no question of classes, "proletariat", "labor peasantry", "capital cycles" at all.

Until the last minute of its existence, the CPSU (and its last Russian incarnation of the RCP) followed the classic Soviet discourse with an interspersion of cautious social democracy in the Gorbachev period. That is, Soviet ideology, as it existed historically, varies from revolutionary Bolshevism (Leninism) through socialist statehood (Stalinism) to easy (and incomplete) reform of the main Marxist doctrines in a social-democratic key (Gorbachev). Soviet Marxism - the "successor" of which the CPRF declares itself - can only be called something that belongs to this cycle, which has clear stages and a completely unambiguous characteristic - what can be included here and what cannot. In the main program and theoretical documents of the CPRF, nothing like this remains completely unclear, the successor of which specific stage of Soviet history the CPRF is, how it assesses each of them, what analysis it gives to the logic of the development of Soviet Marxism and Soviet statehood.

What does this observation mean? The fact that the ideological continuity of the CPRF in relation to the CPSU is absolutely unfounded and essentially fictitious. There is no such continuity, which generally ignores the continuity of ideological, political and economic discourse. In the ideological and political sense, the CPRF is something absolutely new, which does not flow from the main line of development of Soviet Marxism, which was an unconditional and orthodox platform of the CPSU.

We will not make judgments now as to whether it is good or bad. We are just revealing a blatant inconsistency: the CPRF asserts the thesis of its "continuity", although it does not exist close.

The CPRF is not a left-wing party.

In the current ideological platform of the CPRF there are elements that cannot be attributed not only to orthodox Marxism - both Soviet and Western - but even to the general, broadly understood spectrum of left-wing ideologies. There are a number of distinct positions, constantly and persistently voiced by the leaders of the CPRF, in particular, Gennady Zyuganov, which completely do not fit into the left ideological framework. For example, the CPRF proclaims statehood, power, loyalty to moral foundations, national roots, religious value system, Orthodoxy as the highest values.

In a political sense, in any party system, this block of theses characterizes right-wing, conservative parties and movements - republican or even extreme right-wing. Since in the texts of prominent ideologues of the CPRF there are always hidden and sometimes explicit hints at the ethnic or racial origin of a particular political or state figure, and the peripheral layer of the CPRF is generally characterized by frank anti-Semitism and even racism in combination with Orthodox-monarchical sentiments, it can be concluded that the dominance of extreme right-wing elements.

The historical analysis of the ideologues of the CPRF operates mainly with geopolitical formulas, where the terms "Atlanticism", "Eurasianism", "globalism", "globalism", "Russian civilization", "spatial constants", "conservative revolution", etc. prevail. Such a model of political analysis is generally completely original and is not found in either left-wing or right-wing political parties.

But the righteose of the CPRF does not end with politics. The strangest thing is that the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation G. Zyuganov constantly in the general flow of externally left-wing rhetoric - about "social protection" and "revision of the results of privatization" - mentions in one breath a strange phrase - "strangled with taxes", i.e. advocates a tax reduction (for which the CPRF faction in the State Duma regularly and consistently votes). There is already a blatant contradiction here, since no - even the most extravagant - left-wing party in any country in the world ever votes for tax reduction under any circumstances. This, on the contrary, is the main demand of all liberal parties - i.e. economically "right". No matter how strong the confusion between the "right" and the "left" is in certain cases, the last and most reliable criterion is the issue of taxes. This is an absolute criterion: "right" always and in all circumstances - for reducing taxes, "left" always and in all circumstances - for raising them. It is difficult to imagine an "Orthodox Marxist", but it is unthinkable to imagine a "left" champion of tax reduction.

So, in the program and practice of the CPRF there are conservative, extreme right-wing and even liberal elements as constants.

In this case, it is impossible to talk not only about the continuity of the CPRF in relation to the CPSU, but even about its belonging to the category of left-wing parties.

It turns out that the CPRF is something completely special, unique, extravagant and unusual, which appeared quite recently and is based on a special ideological platform that cannot be classified.

The electoral secret of the CPRF success.

At the same time, despite the shocking ideological mess, we can state that the CPRF has steady support among the broad masses of modern Russia. Moreover, special attention should be paid to the fact that all political parties and movements that tried to put forward more consistent and rational ideas, partially present in the worldview of the CPRF, suffered a crushing defeat.

The direct heirs of different stages of the actual Soviet ideology - the parties of Shenin, Anpilov, Tulkin, Umalatova and many others - who consistently and consistently recreate Leninism, Stalinism, Brezhnevism, etc. in their programs and ideological platforms, do not enjoy any support of the population, despite the fact that there is theoretical logic and consistency in their doctrines. The situation is even more deplorable with the social democrats, who inherit the main political trends of the Gorbachev period - the parties of G. Kh. Popov, A.N. Yakovlev, I. Rybkin, etc. - persistently occupying the last places in the electoral lists. The situation of outright nationalists, racists, Orthodox-monarchical and anti-Semitic blocs, which invariably fail, is no better.

We have to state that the extravagant and contradictory ideological construction of the CPRF is supported by huge masses of the population, and all logical and consistent ideological models brought to the level of minimal consistency and rational consistency are stubbornly rejected.

Of course, many will write this circumstance on political technologies and successful election companies. But that's clearly not the case. A group of moody slanty-tongued with unattractive dreary faces of full-length officials, in an ugly frame, muttering something indistinctly about "oligarchs", walking down the street with carnations, unappetizingly exposing fattened bellies, languishly dancing in some provincial puddle with frightened old women... Is it a p-ar? No, it's not a pi-ar, it's some kind of horror, it can only scare or put you to sleep. Any schizophrenic against this background instantly becomes a newsmaker: an example is Shandybin, and among the people such witty idiots are the sea, every second plumber or gasman is a hundred shandybins, any of them would revive the Duma by many orders of magnitude. After all, it's not PR...

So the secret is in something else.

Who was behind the "change of the milestones"?

It seems to me that today we should shed light on some ideological details of the history of the formation of the CPRF with what it is now. This is most directly related to the author of these lines.

I met Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov in 1991. We were introduced to each other by Alexander Prokhanov. Zyuganov was then a major party official with conservative (in the sense of anti-reformist) sympathies. He didn't express any ideas, he felt quite calm and confident. A typical Soviet apparatus without characteristic details.

...his well-being changed dramatically after the coup. Now he was sitting in the reception room of the newspaper "Day" with a worried face, his calmness was shaken by an unpleasant shadow of uncertainty in the future. This crack in well-being - there has just been a batch, a car, a device, a system, and suddenly there is nothing - Prokhanov actively used it.

Prokhanov is an aesthete of the late Soviet decomposition, a former participant of the schizoid "yuzhinsky" circle, he made a choice of triumphant, excessive service to the spirit of late Sovietism, became a singer of the Brezhnev period, but something of the Yuzhinsky period remained in him. In the era of reforms, this deeply hidden side of his soul in Soviet times manifested itself with a new force in Prokhanov figurative journalism - Mamleev's heroes were recharged Germans and Chubais, Khakamads and Grefs, Chernomyrdins and Berezovsky. This is, of course, social and tasteless kitsch, but today it's time for kitsch, and you won't surprise anyone with it - you might think that everything else is not kitsch...

So, to the correct bleached apparatus Zyuganov, who was suddenly left without a device - like a disabled person without legs - Prokhanov began to diligently insert the products of his visions into the freed time and place in the brain. But where did he get them from, being a typical product of the not very educated, but strongly drinking late Soviet writing environment? In other words, one, even full of hallucinations, void is not able to fill another - sterile, but steacidately decided to regain what was lost at any cost.

This time - since 1991 - intensive contacts of Prokhanov and Zyuganov with the author of these lines begin. Several explanations should be made here: since the early 80s, I have been developing a special ideology with a narrow group of like-minded people, which is most accurately defined as "neo-Eurasianism". It was a unique combination of classical Eurasian ideas with the theories of the "third way", "conservative revolution", theories of the European "new right". Geopolitics and its methods played an important place in this ideology. This ideology initially had nothing to do with Sovietism, sharply rejected all varieties of Marxism, was distinguished by an emphasized national-conservative and religious-traditionalist orientation. It was positioned at the same distance from both communism (socialism) and Western liberal democracy. It was state, religious, imperial and national, but at the same time anti-Western and anti-Soviet.

In this direction, a huge, methodical work was carried out to find and translate the classics of this ideology, publish their works, apply certain methods to the analysis of national history. The main conceptual tools were the analysis of "paradigms", "history of religions", "geopolitics", "conspiracy theory", "racial research", etc. By the end of the 80s, the ideological corpus of "neo-Eurasianism" had acquired a more or less complete form. He became the main core of the many materials, interviews, translations and publications that I brought to the newspaper "Day" to Prokhanov. Many articles were written under pseudonyms, others - on behalf of fictional authors and historical figures, some materials were once regularly published by the agency "Day-Continent", both Russian and European "neoconservative" generals and politicians participated in the round tables.

Of course, in addition to this line in the "Day" there were a hundred votes of writers-soil workers, meaningless patriotic politicians from the Federal Tax Service, the Russian Federation, the Supreme Council, various extravagant "academics of the sun", violent anti-Semites and silent Orthodox. In some single line, the dog chorus of dissent collected by Prokhanov, of course, did not form - from most of the regulars of the patriotic edition of that period today there are puddles of swollen sentences... Another thing is the persistent and consistently affirmed "neo-Eurasian ideology". At that moment - even, probably, without a clear awareness of Prokhanov himself - it was she who became the axis of what ex-apparatus Zyuganov needed. Prokhanov irradiated Zyuganov by the main, I - periodically. But in the end, at the turning point of the transition from the former and banned CPSU to the new CPRF, this influence turned out to be decisive (in an ideological sense).

And the very uncertainty of Zyuganov's person played a crucial role in this matter. He is an indistinct person, thinking through the thought hard, reluctantly. He doesn't trust ideas, intuitively tries to get around them. But at the same time, he sensitively listens to the conjuncture - and the uniqueness of the "Day" of that period was to bring out, activate, warm up, provoke this conjuncture, these unconscious strata of the population. It was indeed an organ of the "Eurasian awakening", while "Soviet Russia" only put to sleep with its monotonous indignation, while focusing on the diluted version of the main themes of the "Day".

At a critical moment of ideological choice, Zyuganov bet on "neo-Eurasian populism", the general contours of which were described and formulated by me and my colleagues in the newspaper "Day". And it was at this stage that the idea platform of the CPRF was formed. If the key of Eurasian (and especially neo-Eurasian ideology) is applied to the decryption of this platform, everything falls into place.

In fact, it is well known that "Eurasianism" was historically predominantly right-wing, conservative, traditionalist, imperial and powerful, but at the same time there was also its left-wing version - the so-called "national-Bolshevism". Russian "National Bolsheviks" (Ustryalov, "Smeno-Wekhovtsy") were Russian conservative nationalists with Eurasian views, who, however, perceived the Bolshevik regime as a new paradoxical expression of Russian nationalism and imperialism. In other words, it was an imperial-conservative and completely non-Bolshevik interpretation of Bolshevism (although positive, with reservations).

This left-wing Eurasianism ("national-Bolshevism") became clear and acceptable to me exactly at the moment of the collapse of the USSR; in the face of Western liberal democracy, I, yesterday's anti-communist, said "yes" to the just collapsed Sovietism, recognizing the rightness of the left-wing Eurasians, whom I previously did not understand and rejected. At the same moment - but based rather from the conjuncture than from beliefs - Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov took a symmetrical step, saying (or rather, showing) "yes" to Eurasianism. However, this "yes", this sharp "change of milestones" from communism to conservative imperial nationalism (based on the ideas of "conservative revolution" and "third way") was carried out by Zyuganov quietly and secretly, perhaps even secretly from himself, from the closest comrades. Externally, continuity was declared. And it really was - but only in terms of form, remaining party hardware structures, "connections, passwords and attendance". The ideas were completely new and unprecedented for the Marxist context, unthinkable for him.

The CPRF is a party of left-wing Eurasianism.

Now everything is falling into place. Illogical and even absurd moments are completely clarified. Zyuganov, as the leader of the CPRF, with maximum efficiency for the party and himself, used several heterogeneous elements: nostalgia of the older generation for the "bright Soviet past", party and hardware connections and structures (this contingent was not told anything about Eurasianism, but, on the contrary, only about "continuity" was said) and the vague, unconscious "Eurasianism" of Russians, their patriotic, power, conservative, soil preferences, their civilizational and cultural code, which surfaced and exposed after the rigid totalitarian Marxist dogma dissipated (Zyuganov's speeches and texts from the openly "Eurasian" arsenal are addressed to this category - recall at least his "Geography of Victory", with the subtitle "Fundamentals of Russian Geopolitics", written off in the main features and without references from my textbook "Fundamentals of Geopolitics"). And it was this overlapping of two ideologically different realities, but synthesized in Eurasianism (especially in its left-wing version), became the basis of the incredible success of the CPRF during the 90s - especially considering that this time the "communists" (or rather, the "left-wing Eurasians") themselves were victims of totalitarian ideological persecution by Western liberals.

Thus, the CPRF of Zyuganov is not a communist, socialist, not nationalist, but a left-Eurasian party. With this attitude to it, everything becomes logical and understandable. If we explore the CPRF, following the formal theses of its leaders, we will be hopelessly confused from the very beginning.

The personality of the CPRF leader.

Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov is criticized today by everyone and from different sides. Razable communists cannot be impressed by his Eurasian demarche, it is indeed a fundamental divorce from Marxism. The newly appeared nationalists and right-wing conservatives do not understand his appeals to communism. Ideological critics criticize him for opportunism. "Centrists" - with a complete absence of vertebrae - on the contrary, reproach him for being radical. For Western liberals, it is generally a "heave of hell".

In fact, as always in such cases, sins and virtues grow from one root - the weak features of a person (and politics) are the reverse side of his strengths. Zyuganov bet on non-articulated, implied, elusive, ambiguous left-Eurasian populism. And it is he - this populism - that was (and partly remains) demanded by the political situation of the Russian 90s. Zyuganov's indistinctness is not his disadvantage, it is rather a derivative of the general vagility of the whole society. While there is the LDPR and United Russia - as extreme cases of political delusion, in the first case, political nemity, in the second - for Zyuganov everything is not lost yet. It is more vague than many, but also clearer than many - one might think that the supreme power itself is clearly aware of what to do and where to go... Zyuganov at least has a vector. This vector, however, is not his. He borrowed it from Eurasianism, but this is secondary. So far, it's secondary. And it will be secondary for some time if the political and ideological distribution in society remains as it is.

And only at the next stage of the political history of Russia will we all need something more consistent and more articulated, something clear and consistent, based not just on the conjuncture and intuition, not just on populism, but on a meaningful and full-fledged project, on a strong will, on a clear and coherent theory, on a clear method and honed organization.

The CPRF electorate is the Eurasian electorate, more precisely, the left-Eurasian electorate. There is also a right-wing Eurasian electorate, and there is a Eurasian center. I think that, alas, there will be no order in this matter for some time, and the Russians will vote with any of their bodies, but not with their heads. But this is our Russian right to vote for what we want.

The CPRF is very serious, but Eurasianism is even more serious, broader, deeper, more thorough, and fresh. The CPRF has prospects, but sooner or later the limitations of this model will be revealed.

In the form in which the CPRF exists today, it will not come to power in the country. Never. It's not her task, not her profile, not her goal. He does his best today. And the balance is generally positive. Some people lament in vain that she takes someone else's place. Yes, it takes. But if you are stronger, come and throw Zyuganov off the stand. And if you are not capable, then do not whine and do not whine. Politics is the business of strong and determined men.

And yet, I deeply doubt that the CPRF can be split, transformed into some even paler and inexpressive "social democracy". Much paler... The CPRF will leave when we feel the wind of another historical cycle. When the true horror begins, and we seriously realize that Atlanticism and globalism have doomed us to death, and that you can't get away with spells here anymore. But together with the CPRF, all the others will have to leave - all those temporary workers who naively believe in the mantra: "we came seriously and for a long time". Many will be gone tomorrow. And the CPRF will still hold out.

I am convinced that Eurasianism has a huge political future. And the time will come for Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov to hand over the ideological loan issued at a critical moment to the box office of ideologies. But it is important to prepare a reliable and serious, thorough and lively, young and effective shift before that. And then it will happen painlessly. And we will sincerely thank him for his excellent and faithful service to the people and the Fatherland.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20040625214852/http://kprf.ru/dugin/ideas/19532.shtml