Inside "Putin's Brain": The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin

by Michael Millerman

“Millerman has insight into Putin at a philosophical level.” -Christopher Rufo, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute

“Putin’s Brain,” "Putin’s Rasputin,” “The Most Dangerous Philosopher in the World.” Those are some of intriguing phrases used to describe the Russian philosopher, ideologue, and activist, Alexander Dugin, whose words seems to predict, and shape, Russia’s destiny on the world stage. Now, you can now go beyond the headlines into the heart of Dugin’s understanding of politics and philosophy, to grapple with his challenge to the West.

Inside "Putin's Brain" is the first book-length study of Dugin as a political philosopher, written by a scholar of political philosophy and Dugin's leading English translator. You'll be introduced to a side of Dugin that is rarely studied but that he considers the deepest foundation of his outlook on Russia and the world. Get the philosophical keys that unlock the mystery of the Eurasian challenge to the West. This collection of essays written over the last ten years discusses Dugin's fourth political theory, his populism, the influence of Heidegger and Plato on his thought, the contours of his Eurasianism, and much more. Inside "Putin's Brain" isn't only a study of the philosophical dimension of contemporary Russian ideology. It represents a thoughtful inquiry into the meaning of political philosophy today and its prospects for our possibly post-liberal future.

MICHAEL MILLERMAN is also the author of Beginning with Heidegger.

"You may disagree with something Millerman writes about Dugin, but you cannot ignore him. He is the leading English-language interpreter of Dugin's thought..." -Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, author of War for The Rise of the Populist Right and the Return of Traditionalism

"Given the tectonic shifts in global geo-politics and the intense intellectual ferment on the right in recent times, it could not be more timely for those with a serious interest in political philosophy to become exposed to and absorbed in the work of the Russian thinker Alexander Dugin." -Colin D. Pearce, Clemson University

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Russia

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Matthew Englett · Rating 1 out of 5]

At the very end of this book I think I may have figured it out. This book is the author’s phd dissertation with a great name slapped on it. I still don’t know whether Dugin’s fourth rail of politics includes a nation’s right to have free and fair elections. I’m guessing that might be a no.

[Bardon Kaldian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Putin’s “thoughts” are- if he is sincere – these:

Russia is neither “white” nor non-white. He doesn’t think in these categories. For instance, he’s constantly drumming against Western imperialism, which he thinks began with the Age of Exploration.

His chief devil is not very well defined, but it seems to be a combination of Western Christianity (Catholicism & Protestantism) & now, perhaps, Anglo-Saxonistan which is, in his fantasies, dominated by WASPs. It is not clear how he treats other Europeans, but his image of the West is confusing- it seems that “West” is a combination of Poles, French, Germans & Swedes, Russia’s historical invaders; on the other hand, he easily switches between centuries & mixes the 17th C with the 21st C.

Putin’s narrative is also contradictory. It is not clear whether historical invaders of Russia (Poles, French, Germans) are now the threatening & potentially Russia-conquering West, or just puppets of the global WASP power. Anyway, all Western Christians, from the Portuguese to the English, are racists. Putin’s version of the contemporary world is that “good guys” are "colored races" (China, India, Africa, blacks in the US,..). Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean).

As far as religious culture goes, Western Christianity is the enemy. It is only Eastern, Orthodox Christianity that he thinks of “defending”. Also, his reinterpretation of history is laughable: he states that historical “friends”, buddies in Russia are Eastern Orthodox, Jews and Muslims (with a smattering of Buddhists).

For anyone who knows anything about the history of Russia- this is absurd. Before Communism, Jews and Muslims were considered irreconcilable aliens & enemies. He’s lying about trivial facts.

Then, his fantasies about WASPs, now, have nothing to do with reality. He fantasizes that tranny, gay & Globohomo ideology is basically WASPy, or “white” tool for domination over colored races, Russia & a sword wielded by US “whites” to conquer the world & to exploit it.

Globohomo ideology is, in his definition, the invention of globalist Anglo-Saxonists to subdue Africans, Asians & other coloreds- and, of course, Russia, which is a natural ally of the East and South.

His world-view is simply idiotic.

Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical European identity.


As far as Dugin goes, he is one of those people who get carried away with grandiose, ill-defined schemes; who lack a capability for serious critical thinking; whose world-view is a goulash of indigestible and contradictory ideas; who is basically a marginal figure who has, due to confluence of circumstances, achieved prominence way beyond his actual achievements, let alone influence.

Having read many of his sources (Evola, Guenon, Schmitt, Eliade, Spengler, Heidegger, …), I can say, with certainty- these people are reactionary fantasists when it comes to life & politics. Some are scholars of genius -Eliade, who, when it comes to society & politics turns instantly into infantile blabbermouth; Evola is an interesting thinker in 2-3 books, but remains a completely bonkers popularizer of a subjectively interpreted theosophists’ theory of “races”; Heidegger’s mystique is rooted in his links with Nazism (Nazism is sexy), but his influence on phenomenology & existentialism- which was real- waned as these movements disintegrated – after the countercultural 60s, when wider audience could read complex & nuanced metaphysical works, East & West & which dwarfed everything Heidegger had ever written, making him a rather miserable epigone of philosophia perennis…

I could go on & on, but it’s futile.

Dugin, as well as most of his sources, shares emotional attachment to Fascist myth. Fascism is, essentially, a cartoon & disfigured vulgar ideological interpretation of mysteries of re-birth. High traditional, archetypal cults of rebirth one can find in Greek initiation mysteries (and elsewhere, but these are the most developed & richest in content); lower, or more down-to-earth examples are warrior cults like Germanic Maennerbunde, which Himmler & SS tried to imitate and renew.

And here lies the difference between Greek initiates & modern Fascist ideologues. Greeks thought that anyone is potentially a god in human clothing & the whole business of initiatory drama is to inflame the divine spark and transform the initiate into a godlike human. So they longed for human-superhuman life. On the other hand, Fascists & their confused sympathizers were disgusted with the ordinary, humdrum reality of modern life which they saw as nothing but corruption and wanted to return to some mythic, archaic & superior order which in reality never existed. What the (quasi)Fascist mind desires is a combination of will to power, abhorrence of “progress” & strong fixation on the mythical past which existed only in their skulls.

In short, Fascists are basically Romantics who have not matured & have remained stuck in a world-view of a mythized past, strongly colored by will to dominate & create a new world that is, in their mind, current realization of an uncorrupted blissful past. Such Romanticism is, of course, impervious to critical analysis & historical investigation- for them, the future is the golden archaic age.

Dugin is a typical mental mess. He not only idealizes, but completely fabricates & misinterprets Russian history & civilization; he unsuccessfully tries to heal his own weaknesses by adoration of power & a cartoon concept of his own nation- supremely capable & deserving to rule the world (or most of it), at least in his mind- without taking into account what the real, empirical world is about; which & where values of different civilizations lie; what do modern people of various cultures actually want…

Putin has absorbed & remade some of these ideas. It is wrong to think of his world-views just in terms of (geo)politics & power politics. What he spouts in his speeches is some kind of sincere belief, a grotesque religion.

To paraphrase a Polish philosopher: all this delusional adoration of power & domination has shown to be, as is the case with similar delusions, a farcical side of human bondage.

[Scott Holstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 -- a bit redundant and overly simplistic, but then it covers a great deal many in the west don't know, so it's likely a decent intro to Dugin for many westerners and thus, of value. Recommended for those unfamiliar with Dugin, Eurasianism, Tradititonalism, etc.

[Knecht René · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall: interesting book, but probably not the best first entry into Dugin. It works best if you already read The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory, Political Platonism, and especially Dugin’s own work on Heidegger.

For obvious geopolitical reasons, it is an interesting book but what I found most valuable is not “Putin” as such, but the deeper insight in Dugin’s Heideggerian framework. Dugin wrote one of the better books on Heidegger, starting from the middle periode, the so called turn (Kehre) and which spirit you can detect in all his philosophical and political thinking.

Interesting are the discussed differences between Left Heideggerianism (HL) and Right Heideggerianism (HR). (cf. page 147, ff)

HL tends to politicize Heidegger through the “space between”:the constitutive difference between the ontic and the ontological, and the way politics emerges from this structural gap.
==> HL sees the emancipation potential in Heideggers thinking
----
HR, by contrast, is focused oin the fundamental-ontological register of Seyn and the Seyn-event, where the decisive issue is not difference as such but the event in which beyng “shows itself.”

==> Dugin belongs to this second camp (HR): Heidegger matters for him because he promises an “other beginning” (inceptional thinking) that could create a new destiny of Logos.

The book offers clarification of Dugin’s often-misunderstood relationship to “the West.” Millerman shows that Dugin’s target is not Western culture as such, but modernity and liberalism as political philosophy. Interesting to mention is that Dugin describes the West as his “spiritual and intellectual motherland,” provided we are not talking about its liberal dimension.

What is the link with Russia/Putin?
In this Heideggerian architecture Dugin moves from Dasein to Daseins: not one generic Dasein, but a plurality of Daseins corresponding to peoples (Volk/Narod), each with its own historical task, its own Ereignis (Event). In this sense, multipolarity is not merely geopolitical, it is grounded in an ontological claim about the plurality of existential structures.

For a detailed understanding of the Russian/Eurasion Dasein’s you can also read:
'Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida, Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political' (Millerman)

These Heideggerian insights are key to understanding how Dugin’s philosophical machinery is constructed and why it can be mobilized both as a critique of modernity and as a justification for a radically anti-liberal political project.
==> At the same time, they deepen our understanding of Heidegger.

It also gives us (Western Europeans or Americans, in particular) a clearer sense of where we ourselves are coming from. For that reason, we need the radical Other. It is very difficult to become aware of our own Western Dasein while dwelling within it, just as a fish is not conscious of the water in which it swims.

In this sense I can appreciate this book.

[Emile Greenbank · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book turned out to be very different than what I expected from the tacky cover. First of all this book is not as accessible as it makes itself out to be as you need a solid grasp of Heidegger to understand most of it. It also feels like the author deliberately makes the thoughts presented by Dugin more complex than what they actually are, in order to confer it the intellectual credibility it lacks (a technique often utilised by the man himself). Secondly, this book is not at all an attempt at explaining the nature of Dugin's political philosophy, but rather a mediocre and lazily constructed rebuttal to the consensus that Dugin's ideology is a variant of neo-fascism that includes eurasian thought to adapt to the russian context. The author is quite proud of "not falling into the trap of relegating Dugin's thought to fascism like so many other analysts", but rather analysing it on it's own terms. Being completely uncritical of those terms does not make you understand Dugin's ideology any better, it just makes you intellectually complacent to his arguments, and when you adopt this framing in your analysis, it makes you complicit in his propaganda. You'd hope a doctor in political science would take into account the fact that neo-fascists seldom declare themselves as such and wouldn't blindly relay the claim that wanting a return to tradition through the constitution of an expantionist state led by a chosen people isn't a brand new idea just because that people isn't racially defined.

Overall this book is a poor ressource for anyone who wants to understand Dugin's overstated influence on modern russian political discourse. I would much rather recommend Marlène Laruelle's work on the topic, even though the author of this book desperately tries to undermine it's credibility, of which he is very obviously envious.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millerman gives the reader a good intro to Dugin's fourth political theory as well as his philosophical and political influences. He talks about the narod as a political subject, Russia as a civilization, the difference between Russia and the West, and Eurasianism. Dugin has ideas that are too complex to write off as simple "fascism" or "racism". He does a good job combating those types of reductive narratives, using a Strauss inspired analysis of different cultures and ancient philosophy. It's not trying to tie Dugin and the Krmelin as an obvious couple, but he underscores the rhetoric Putin uses with the Eurasian union and the creation of a new civilisational pole. That said, the book is only an intro, and Millerman encourages the reader to engage with Heidegger, Russian thought, and other resources to understand the philosophy of Dugin better. Personally, the last chapter about Heidegger went over my head, and some of the justification for the study of Dugin was long-winded. Millerman appeals to an academic crowd who tried to prevent his study, so some respect is warranted. Is Dugin the Russian Rasputin? No. He's a philosopher, political activist, and geopolitical analyst. Studying other cultures and ideas, like those in Russia, is much more productive than simple name calling or stereotypes. Overall, this text is a great intro to Dugin and Eurasianism. Maybe the Heideggerian references and language are a bit confusing for those who are new to philosophy.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have preferred a bit more political philosophy, and bit less Heidegger, but them's the breaks; this is a collection of articles, not a fully fleshed out book. Since there's not much readable stuff out there about a guy who may or may not actually be quite important, we're left with Millerman, who does a reasonable job of criticizing weak-livered socialist liberals like me, and explaining Dugin, all without losing his mind. We disagree, Mr. Millerman. But I thank you for your service.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside "Putin's Brain": The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin is a book written by Michael Millerman, a political scientist and expert on Russian politics. The book is a study of the political philosophy of Alexander Dugin, a Russian political theorist and ideologue who has been influential in shaping the ideology of the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin.

In Inside "Putin's Brain", Millerman examines the ideas and influences that have shaped Dugin's political thought, including traditionalist and nationalist ideas, and the ways in which these ideas have been incorporated into the ideology of the Russian state. He also looks at the role that Dugin has played in shaping Russian foreign policy and the ways in which his ideas have been received and debated in Russia and internationally.

Overall, Inside "Putin's Brain" is a detailed and informative study of the political philosophy of Alexander Dugin and its influence on Russian politics, and provides important insights into the ways in which ideology shapes the actions of the Russian state.

GPT