The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia LONDON ARKTOS 2015 C OPYRIGHT © 2015 BY A RKTOS [607534]

ALEXANDER DUGIN
Last War of the World-Island
The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia
LONDON
ARKTOS
2015

C
OPYRIGHT
© 2015
BY
A
RKTOS
M
EDIA
L
TD
.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical),
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher.
First English edition published in 2015 by Arktos Media Ltd. (ISBN 978-1-910524-37-4), originally published as
Geopolitika Rossii
(Moscow: Gaudeamus, 2012).
TRANSLATOR
John Bryant
EDITORS
John B. Morgan
COVER DESIGN
Andreas Nilsson
LAYOUT
Tor Westman
ARKTOS MEDIA LTD.
www.arktos.com

CONTENTS
Editor’s Note
Toward a Geopolitics of Russia’s Future

Theoretical Problems of the Creation of a Fully-Fledged Russian Geopolitics

Geopolitical Apperception

Heartland

Russia as a “Civilization of Land”

The Geopolitical Continuity of the Russian Federation

The Russian Federation and the Geopolitical Map of the World
The Geopolitics of the USSR

The Geopolitical Background of the 1917 Revolution

The Geopolitics of the Civil War

The Geopolitical Balance of Power in the Peace of Versailles

The Geopolitics and Sociology of the Early Stalin Period

The Geopolitics of the Great Patriotic War

The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Great Patriotic War

The Geopolitics of the Yalta World and the Cold War

The Yalta World after the Death of Stalin

Theories of Convergence and Globalism

The Geopolitics of Perestroika

The Geopolitical Significance of the Collapse of the USSR
The Geopolitics of Yeltsin’s Russia and its Sociological Significance

The Great Loss of Rome: The Vision of G. K. Chesterton

The First Stage of the Collapse: The Weakening of Soviet Influence in the Global Leftist Movement

The Second Stage of the Collapse: The End of the Warsaw Pact

The Third Stage of the Collapse: the State Committee on the State of Emergency and the End of the USSR

The Białowieża Forest

The Unipolar Moment

The Geopolitics of the Unipolar World: Center-Periphery

The Geopolitics of the Neoconservatives

The Kozyrev Doctrine

The Contours of Russia’s Collapse

The Establishment of a Russian School of Geopolitics

The Geopolitics of the Political Crises of October 1993

The Change in Yeltsin’s Views after the Conflict with Parliament

The First Chechen Campaign

The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Yeltsin Administration
The Geopolitics of the 2000s: The Phenomenon of Putin

The Structure of the Poles of Force in Chechnya in 1996–1999

The Geopolitics of Islam

The Bombing of Homes in Moscow, the Incursion into Dagestan, and Putin’s Coming to Power

The Second Chechen War

The Geopolitical Significance of Putin’s Reforms

September 11th: Geopolitical Consequences and Putin’s Response

The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis

The Atlanticist Network of Influence in Putin’s Russia

The Post-Soviet Space: Integration

The Geopolitics of the Color Revolutions

The Munich Speech

Operation Medvedev

Saakashvili’s Assault on Tskhinvali and the Russia-Georgian War of 2008

The Reset and the Return to Atlanticism

The Eurasian Union

The Outcomes of the Geopolitics of the 2000s
The Point of Bifurcation in the Geopolitical History of Russia

Editor’s Note
This book was originally published in Russian in 2012. Although the geopolitical situation of Russia has
changed considerably since then, especially as regards the Ukrainian crisis and the subsequent outbreak of
war in eastern Ukraine, Alexander Dugin has made it clear that he stands by his original assessment and
criticism of Putin’s approach, and that only by Russia’s assertion of itself as a land-based regional power in
opposition to the sea-based Atlanticism of the United States and NATO can Russia survive in any genuine
sense.
Footnotes that were added by me are denoted with an “Ed.” following them, and those that were added
by the translator are denoted with “Tr.” Those which were part of the original Russian text have no
notation. Where sources in other languages have been cited, I have attempted to replace them with existing
English-language editions. Citations to works for which I could locate no translation are retained in their
original language. Website addresses for on-line sources were verified as accurate and available during the
period of April and May 2015.
J
OHN
B. M
ORGAN
IV
Budapest, Hungary, May 2015

C
HAPTER
I
Toward a Geopolitics of Russia’s Future
Theoretical Problems of the Creation of a Fully-Fledged Russian Geopolitics
The geopolitics of Russia is not the mere application of a geopolitical arsenal to the Russian government
. In
other words, Russian geopolitics cannot be created from without, as the simple, mechanical application of
“universal” laws to a concrete and well-defined object. The problem is that a Russian geopolitics is possible
only on the basis of a deep study of Russian society, both its present and its past. Before drawing
conclusions about how the Russian government is correlated with territory,
[1]
we should study Russian
society scrupulously and thoroughly in its structural constants and especially trace the formation and
evolution of Russians’ views about the surrounding world; that is, we should study how Russians
understand and interpret the surrounding world and its environment. The problem is not only to learn
about the geographical structure of the Russian territories (contemporary or historical); that is important,
but insufficient. We must clarify how Russian society understood and interpreted the structure of these
territories at different times; what it considered “its own,” what as “alien,” and how the awareness of
borders, cultural, and civilizational identity, and the relationship to those ethnoses and
narodi
[2]
living in
neighboring territories changed. The views of Russian society (on the basis of which the Soviet society and
in our time that of the Russian Federation were formed)
[3]
about territorial space have been insufficiently
studied, and as a result this most important factor in the creation of a full-fledged Russian geopolitics is for
the moment only available to us fragmentally and episodically.
Further, the question of the attitude of Russian society toward political forms and types of government
remains open. If in the Marxist period we were guided by the theory of progress and the shifts of political-
economic blocs, and considered the experience of the Western European countries as “universal,” then
today this reductionist schema is no longer suitable. We must build a new model of Russian sociopolitical
history, study the logic of that history, and propose structural generalities that reflect the peculiarities
characteristic of our society’s relations, at different historical stages, to other governmental and political
systems. And in this case, alas, we have but a few relevant works, since Marxist theories yield notorious
caricatures, based on exaggerations and violence against the historical facts and especially against their
significance. The same is true of the application of liberal Western methods to Russian history and to
Russian society.
These difficulties must not dishearten us. The intuitively obvious moments of Russian social history,
observations about the peculiarities of Russian culture, and the very structure of the geopolitical discipline
can be reference points for the movement toward the creation of a full-fledged Russian geopolitics. Such an

approximate representation of Russian society will be enough to begin with.
Geopolitical Apperception
Classical geopolitics (both Anglo-Saxon and European) gives us some fundamental prompts for the
construction of a Russian geopolitics. We can accept them unreservedly. However, in this case an
important factor interferes, whose significance is great in non-classical physics (both for Einstein and for
Bohr), but even more appreciable in geopolitics: the geopolitical system
depends on the position of the
observer and interpreter
.
[4]

It is not enough to agree with the geopolitical features that classical geopolitics
attributes to Russia; we should accept those features and view our history and our culture as their
confirmation. That is, we should grasp ourselves as products of that geopolitical system. In a word, we
should understand ourselves not as a neutral observer, but as an observer embedded in a historical and
spatial context. This procedure is usually called “geopolitical apperception.”
Geopolitical apperception is the ability to perceive the totality of geopolitical factors consciously, with
an explicit understanding of both our subjective position and the regularities of the structure of what we
perceive.
The notion of a “Russian geopolitician” does not signify only citizenship and a particular sphere of
professional knowledge. It is something much deeper: a Russian geopolitician is an exponent of geopolitical
views and the carrier of historical-social and strategic constants that are historically characteristic of Russian
society (today, that of the Russian Federation). Geopolitics permits two global positions (Mackinder
[5]
calls
them “the seaman’s point of view” and “the landsman’s point of view”). One cannot engage with geopolitics
if one does not acknowledge these positions. He who occupies himself with it first clarifies his own position
and its relation to the geopolitical map of the world. This position is neither geographical nor political
(having to do with one’s citizenship), but
sociocultural,
civilizational, and axiological. It touches the
geopolitician’s own
identity
. In certain cases, it can be changed, but this change is as serious as a change of
one’s religious confession or a radical modification of one’s political opinions.
Heartland
Classical geopolitics proceeds from the fact that
the territory of contemporary Russia, earlier the Soviet
Union (USSR), and still earlier the Russian Empire, is the Heartland;
it is
the land-based (telluric) core of
the entire Eurasian continent.
Mackinder calls this zone “the geographical pivot of history,” from which the
majority of telluric impulses historically issue (from the ancient steppe nomads like the Scythians and
Sarmatians to the imperial center of Russian colonization in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries,
or the Communist expansion during the Soviet period). “Heartland”
[6]
is a typical
geopolitical concept
. It
does not signify belonging to Russia as to its government and does not have an exclusively geographical

meaning. In it we are dealing with a “spatial meaning” (
Raumsinn
, according to F. Ratzel),
[7]
which can
become the heritage of the society placed on this territory. In this case it will be perceived and included in
the social system and will ultimately express itself in political history. Historically, Russians did not
immediately realize the significance of their location and only accepted the baton of tellurocracy
after the
Mongolian conquests of Ghengis Khan
, whose empire was a model of tellurocracy.
But, beginning from the fifteenth century, Russia steadily and sequentially moved toward taking on the
characteristics of the Heartland, which gradually led to the
identification of Russian society with the
civilization of Land, or tellurocracy.
The Heartland is not characteristic of the culture of Eastern Slavs, but
during their historical process, Russians found themselves in this position and adopted a land-based,
continental civilizational mark.
For that reason, Russian geopolitics is by definition the geopolitics of the Heartland; land-based
geopolitics, the geopolitics of Land.
[8]

Because of this, we know from the start that Russian society belongs
to the land-based type. But how Russia became land-based, what stages we traversed along this path, how
this was shown in our understanding of territorial space and the evolution of our spatial representations,
and, on the other hand, how it has been reflected in political forms and political ideologies, remains to be
thoroughly clarified. This puts an
a priori
obligation on Russian geopolitics: it
must
see the world from the
position of the civilization of Land.
Russia as a “Civilization of Land”
Here it makes sense to correlate that which falls under “Heartland” and is the core of “the civilization of
Land” with the political reality of the contemporary Russian Federation in its existing borders.
This correlation itself is exceedingly important: in making it, we correlate Russia in its actual condition
with its unchanging geopolitical
spatial sense
(
Raumsinn
). This juxtaposition gives us a few important
guidelines for the construction of a full-fledged and sound Russian geopolitics for the future.
First, we must think of the contemporary Russian Federation in its current borders as
one of the
moments
of a more extensive historical cycle, during which Eastern-Slavic statehood self-identified as “the
civilization of Land” and became more and more closely identified with the Heartland. This means that
contemporary Russia, considered geopolitically, is not something new; it is not just a government that
appeared twenty-something years ago. It is merely an episode of a long historical process lasting centuries, at
each stage bringing Russia closer and closer to becoming an expression of “the civilization of Land” on a
planetary scale. Formerly, the Eastern-Slavic ethnoses and Kievan Rus
[9]
were only the periphery of the
Orthodox, Eastern Christian civilization and were in the sphere of influence of the Byzantine Empire. This
alone already put Russians into the Eastern pole of Europe.
After the invasion of the Mongolian Horde, Rus was included in the Eurasian geopolitical construct of

the land-based, nomadic empire of Ghengis Khan (later a piece in the West broke off, as the Golden
Horde).
[10]
The fall of Constantinople and the weakening of the Golden Horde made the great Muscovite
Czardom an heir to
two
traditions: the political and religious byzantine one and the traditional Eurasianist
one, which passed to the great Russian princes (and later to the Czars) from the Mongols. From this
moment, the Russians begin to think of themselves as “the Third Rome,” as the carriers of a special type of
civilization, sharply contrasting in all its basic parameters with the Western European, Catholic civilization
of the West. Starting from the fifteenth century, Russians emerged onto the scene of world history as “a
civilization of Land,” and all the fundamental geopolitical force-lines of its foreign policy from then on had
only one goal: the integration of the Heartland, the strengthening of its influence in the zone of Northeast
Eurasia, and the assertion of its identity in the face of a much more aggressive adversary, Western Europe
(from the eighteenth century, Great Britain and, more broadly, the Anglo-Saxon world), which was in the
process of realizing its role as “the civilization of the Sea,” or thalassocracy. In this duel between Russia and
England (and later the United States) there unfolds from then on, from the eighteenth century and until
today, the geopolitical logic of world history, “the great war of continents.”
[11]
This geopolitical meaning remains, on the whole, unchanging in all later stages of Russian history: from
the Muscovite Czardom through the Romanov Russia of Saint Petersburg and the Soviet Union to the
current Russian Federation. From the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, Russia is a planetary pole of the
“civilization of Land,” a
continental
Rome.
The Geopolitical Continuity of the Russian Federation
In all the principal parameters, the Russian Federation is the geopolitical heir to the preceding historical,
political, and social forms that took shape around the territory of the Russian plain: Kievan Rus, the
Golden Horde, the Muscovite Czardom, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. This continuity is not
only territorial, but also historical, social, spiritual, political, and ethnic. From ancient times, the Russian
government began to form in the Heartland, gradually expanding, until it occupied the entire Heartland
and the zones adjoining it.
[12]
The spatial expansion of Russian control over Eurasian territories was
accompanied by a parallel sociological process: the strengthening in Russian society of “land-based” social
arrangements, characteristic of
a civilization of the continental type.
The fundamental features of this
civilization are:
•
conservatism;
•
holism;
•
collective anthropology (the
narod
is more important than the individual);

•
sacrifice;
•
an idealistic orientation;
•
the values of faithfulness, asceticism, honor, and loyalty.
Sociology, following Sombart,
[13]
calls this a “heroic civilization.” According to the sociologist Pitirim
Sorokin,
[14]
it is the ideal sociocultural system.
[15]
This sociological trait was expressed in various political
forms, which had a
common denominator
: the constant reproduction of civilizational constants and basic
values, historically expressed in different ways. The political system of Kievan Rus differs qualitatively from
the politics of the Horde, and that, in turn, from the Muscovite Czardom. After Peter I,
[16]
the political
system sharply changed again, and the October Revolution of 1917 also led to the emergence of a radically
new type of statehood. After the collapse of the USSR there arose on the territory of the Heartland another
government, again differing from the previous ones: today’s Russian Federation.
But throughout Russian political history, all these political forms, which have qualitative differences
and are founded on different and sometimes directly contradictory ideological principles, had a set of
common traits. Everywhere, we see the political expression of the social arrangements characteristic of a
society of the continental, “land-based,” heroic type. These sociological peculiarities emerged in politics
through the phenomenon that the philosopher-Eurasianists of the 1920s
[17]
called “ideocracy.” The
ideational model in the sociocultural sphere, as a general trait of Russian society throughout its history, was
expressed in politics as ideocracy, which also had different ideological forms, but preserved a vertical,
hierarchical, “messianic” structure of government.
The Russian Federation and the Geopolitical Map of the World
After fixing the well-defined geopolitical identity of contemporary Russia, we can move to the next stage.
Taking into account such a geopolitical analysis, we can precisely determine the place of the contemporary
Russian Federation on the
geopolitical
map of the world.
The Russian Federation is in the Heartland. The historical structure of Russian society displays vividly
expressed tellurocratic traits. Without hesitation, we should associate the Russian Federation, too, with a
government of the land-based type, and contemporary Russian society with a mainly holistic society.
The consequences of this geopolitical identification are global in scale. On its basis, we can make a
series of deductions, which must lie at the basis of a consistent and fully-fledged Russian geopolitics of the
future.
1.
Russia’s geopolitical identity, being land-based and tellurocratic, demands strengthening, deepening,
acknowledgement, and development. The substantial side of the policy of affirming political
sovereignty, declared in the early 2000s by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin,

consists in precisely this. Russia’s political sovereignty is imbued with a much deeper significance: it is the
realization of the strategic project for the upkeep of the political-administrative unity of the Heartland
and the (re)creation of the conditions necessary for Russia to act as
the tellurocratic pole on a global
scale
. In strengthening Russia’s sovereignty, we strengthen one of the columns of the world’s geopolitical
architecture; we carry out an operation, much greater in scale than a project of domestic policy
concerning only our immediate neighbors, in the best case. Geopolitically,
the fact that Russia is the
Heartland makes its

sovereignty a planetary problem.
All the powers and states in the world that possess
tellurocratic properties depend on whether Russia will cope with this historic challenge and be able to
preserve and strengthen its sovereignty.
2.
Beyond any ideological preferences, Russia is doomed to conflict with the civilization of the Sea, with
thalassocracy, embodied today in the USA and
the unipolar America-centric world order.
Geopolitical
dualism has nothing in common with the ideological or economic peculiarities of this or that country. A
global geopolitical conflict unfolded between the Russian Empire and the British monarchy, then
between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp. Today, during the age of the democratic republican
arrangement, the same conflict is unfolding between democratic Russia and the bloc of the democratic
countries of NATO treading upon it.
Geopolitical regularities lie deeper than political-ideological
contradictions or similarities.
The discovery of this principal conflict does not automatically mean war
or a direct strategic conflict. Conflict can be understood in different ways. From the position of realism
in international relations, we are talking about a conflict of interests which leads to war only when one
of the sides is sufficiently convinced of the weakness of the other, or when an elite is put at the head of
either state that puts national interests above rational calculation. The conflict can also develop
peacefully, through a system of a general strategic, economic, technological, and diplomatic balance.
Occasionally it can even soften into rivalry and competition, although a forceful resolution can never be
consciously ruled out. In such a situation the question of
geopolitical security
is foremost, and without it
no other factors — modernization, an increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the standard
of living, and so forth — have independent significance. What is the point of our creating a developed
economy if we will lose our geopolitical independence? This is not “bellicose,” but a healthy rational
analysis in a realist spirit; this is
geopolitical realism
.
3.
Geopolitically,
Russia is something more than the Russian Federation in its current administrative
borders.
The Eurasian civilization, established around the Heartland with its core in the Russian
narod
,
is much broader than contemporary Russia. To some degree, practically all the countries of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) belong to it. Onto this
sociological
peculiarity, a
strategic
factor is superimposed: to guarantee its territorial security, Russia must take military control over the
center of the zones attached to it, in the south and the west, and in the sphere of the northern Arctic

Ocean. Moreover, if we consider Russia — a planetary tellurocratic pole, then it becomes apparent that
its direct interests extend throughout the Earth and touch all the continents, seas, and oceans. Hence, it
becomes necessary to elaborate a
global geopolitical strategy
for Russia
,
describing in detail the specific
interests relating to each country and each region.
[1]
“Territory,” “space,”, or “territorial space” is how the Russian word
prostrantsvo
, equivalent to the German
Raum
, is translated
throughout.—Tr.
[2]
Dugin uses the term
narodnik
as synonymous with the German term
Volk
, or peoples.—Ed.
[3]
The author distinguishes between
Russkii
and
Rossiiskii
, which are both used throughout the text. The latter, unlike the former,
usually refers to the notion of belonging to a nation-state, the Russian Federation. The former, on the other hand, refers to the
broader notion of an ethno-social identity. Although there is no effective way to convey this in English, where possible, I
translate the latter with “of the Russian Federation,” and otherwise use the term “Russian.”—Tr.
[4]
Alexander Dugin,
Geopolitics
(Moscow: Academic Project, 2011).
[5]
Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) was an English geographer, and also Director of the London School of Economics. A pioneer
who established geography as an academic discipline, he is also regarded as the father of geopolitics.—Ed.
[6]
Halford Mackinder,
Democratic Ideals and Reality
(Washington: National Defence University Press, 1996).
[7]

Friedrich Ratzel,
Die Erde und das Leben
(Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1902). Ratzel (1844–1904) was a German
geographer and ethnologist who attempted to merge the two disciplines, and is regarded as the first German geopolitical thinker.—
Ed.
[8]
Alexander Dugin,
Foundations of Geopolitics
(Moscow: Arctogaia, 2000)
.
[9]
The Kievan Rus was a Slavic kingdom that emerged in the ninth century, which was comprised of parts of modern-day Russia,
Ukraine, and Belarus. It was the first form of government to appear on the territory of Russia. It was conquered by the Mongols
in the thirteenth century.—Ed.
[10]
The Golden Horde was the name given to the empire that arose in the Slavic regions that were conquered by the Mongolians in
the thirteenth century (after the color of the Mongolians’ tents). This kept the area that later became Russia isolated from
developments in Europe.—Ed.
[11]
Mikhail Leontyev,
The Great Game
(Saint Petersburg: Astrel’, 2008).
[12]
George Vernadsky
A History of Russia
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).
[13]
Werner Sombart (1863–1941) was a German economist and sociologist who was very much opposed to capitalism and
democracy.—Ed.
[14]
Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) was a Russian sociologist who was a Social Revolutionary during the Russian Revolution, and was
opposed to Communism. He left Russia and lived for the remainder of his life in the United States.—Ed.
[15]
Pitirim Sorokin,
Social and Cultural Dynamics
(Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1970).
[16]
Peter I (1672–1725), or Peter the Great, was the first Czar to be called “Emperor of all Russia,” and instituted many reforms
which led to the development of the Russian Empire as it was later known.—Ed.
[17]
Among the Russian émigrés who were living in exile following the Revolution, the idea of Eurasianism was born, which held
that Russia was a distinct civilization from that of Europe, and that the Revolution had been a necessary step in giving rise to a
new Russia that would be freer of Western, modernizing influences.—Ed.

C
HAPTER
II
The Geopolitics of the USSR
The Geopolitical Background of the 1917 Revolution
The end of the Czarist dynasty did not yet signify the end of the First World War for Russia. And although
one of the reasons for the overthrow of the Romanovs was the difficulties of the war and the strain it put on
human resources, the economy, and the whole social infrastructure of Russian society, the forces that came
to power after the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne (the Provisional Government,
[1]
formed
mainly on the basis of the Freemasonry of the Duma
[2]
and bourgeois parties) continued the course of
Russia’s participation in the war on the side of the Triple Entente.
[3]
Geopolitically, this point is decisive. Both Nicholas II and the partisans of the republican, bourgeois-
democratic form of government aligned with him were oriented toward England and France; they strove to
position Russia in the camp of
thalassocratic
states. Domestically, there were irreconcilable contradictions
between the monarchic model and the bourgeois-democratic one, and the escalation of these
contradictions led to the overthrow of the dynasty and the monarchy. But in the geopolitical orientation of
Nicholas II and the Provisional leadership there was, on the contrary,
continuity and succession
— an
orientation toward the civilization of the Sea created an affinity between them. For the Czar this was a
practical choice and for the “Februarists,”
[4]
an ideological one, since England and France were long-
established bourgeois regimes.
On February 25, 1917, by a royal decree, the activity of the Fourth State Duma was suspended. On the
evening of February 27, a Provisional Committee of the State Duma was created whose Chairman was M.
V. Rodzyanko (an Octobrist, and Chairman of the Fourth Duma). The Committee took upon itself the
functions and authority of the supreme power. On March 2, 1917, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated, and
transferred the right of inheritance to the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich,
[5]
who, in turn, declared his
intention on March 3 to adopt supreme authority only after the will of the people expressed itself in the
Constituent Assembly about the final form that the government was to take.
On March 2, 1917 the Provisional Committee of the State Duma formed the first public offices. The
new leadership announced elections in the Constituent Assembly, and a democratic law concerning
elections was adopted; there would be universal, equal, direct, and secret ballots. The old government
organs were abolished. At the head of the Provisional Committee was the Chairman of the Soviet of
Ministers and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Prince G. E. Lvov (former member of the First State Duma
and Chairman of the Main Committee of the All-Russian Zemsky Union). Meanwhile, the Soviet, whose

task was to oversee the actions of the Provisional Government, continued to function. As a consequence,
dual power was established in Russia. The Soviets of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies
[6]
were controlled by
Left-wing parties, which previously remained largely outside the State Duma: Socialist Revolutionaries
[7]
and social democrats
[8]
(Mensheviks
[9]
and Bolsheviks). In foreign policy, the Bolsheviks, led by. Lenin and
Trotsky, successively followed a
pro-German orientation.
This pro-German orientation was based on a few
factors: close cooperation between Bolsheviks and German Marxist Social Democrats, and secret
agreements with the Kaiser’s intelligence agency about material and technical assistance given to the
Bolsheviks. Moreover, the Bolsheviks relied on the disapproval of the war by the broad masses. They based
their propaganda on this, formulating it in the spirit of revolutionary ideology: the solidarity of the working
classes of all countries and the imperial character of war itself, which opposed the interests of the masses.
Hence, the dual power divided between the Provisional Government and the Soviets (who were under the
control of the Bolsheviks from the beginning) in the interval between March and October 1917 reflected
two geopolitical vectors, the pro-English and pro-French one for the Provisional Government, and the pro-
German one for the Bolsheviks. This duality also reveals its significance and its character in those historical
events that are directly connected with the epoch of the Revolution and the Civil War.
On April 18, 1917, the first governmental crisis broke out, ending with the formation of the first
coalition government on May 5, 1917, with the participation of the socialists. Its cause was P. N.
Milyukov’s
[10]
April 18 note addressed to England and France, in which he announced that the Provisional
Government would continue the war to its triumphant end and continue all the international agreements
that had been made by the Czarist government. Here we are dealing with a geopolitical choice that
influenced domestic processes. The decision of the Provisional Government led to popular

indignation,
which spilled over into mass meetings and demonstrations, with demands for a quick end to the war, the
resignation of P. N. Milyukov and A. I. Guchkov,
[11]
and the transfer of power to the Soviets. These
disturbances were organized by the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. P. N. Milyukov and A. I.
Guchkov left the government. On May 5, an agreement was reached between the Provisional Government
and the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet for the creation of a coalition. However, the extreme
Left parties were not unified around a geopolitical policy. The Bolsheviks held more logically to a pro-
German and anti-war line. A part of the Mensheviks and the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries (whose
leaders also often belonged to Masonic organizations, where a pro-French and pro-English orientation
dominated) were inclined to support the Provisional Government, in which the Socialist Revolutionaries
had by then received a few posts.
The first All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies, which took place during
June 3–24, was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, leading them to support

the Provisional Government and to reject the demand of the Bolsheviks to end the war and transfer power
to the Soviets. Then the quick collapse of Russia began. On June 3 a delegation from the Provisional
Government, led by ministers Tereshchenko and Tsereteli, recognized the autonomy of the Ukrainian
Central Rada (UCR).
[12]
Meanwhile, without the approval of the government, a delegation outlined the
geographical limits of the authority of the UCR, including some of the southwestern provinces of Russia.
This provoked the July crisis.
[13]
At the height of the July crisis the Finnish Seim
[14]
proclaimed the
independence of Finland from Russia in its domestic affairs and limited the competence of the Provisional
Government to questions of war and foreign policy. Because of the crisis, a second coalition government
was formed with the Social Revolutionary A. F. Kerensky in charge. Socialist Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks occupied a total of seven posts in this government.
The Social Revolutionary Kerensky, who was also in the group of
Trudoviks
(
narodi
socialists), was a
prominent figure in the Russian Freemasonry of the Duma, a member of the “Little Bear” lodge, and a
secretary of the secret congregative Masonic organization, “The Supreme Soviet of the Great East of the
Peoples of Russia.” Kerensky held to a pro-English orientation and was closely connected to English
Freemasonry. On September 1, 1917, with the goal of opposing the Petrograd Soviet, Kerensky formed a
new organ of power, the Directory (Soviet of Five), which proclaimed Russia a republic and dissolved the
Fourth State Duma. On September 14, 1917, the All-Russian Democratic Conference was opened, which
had to decide the question of the ruling authority, with the participation of all political parties. The
Bolsheviks left it in protest. On September 25, 1917, Kerensky formed the third coalition government. On
the night of October 26, 1917, on behalf of the Soviets, the Bolsheviks, anarchists, and Leftist Socialist
Revolutionaries overthrew the Provisional Government and arrested its members. Kerensky fled.
Significantly, he was helped by English diplomats, in particular Bruce Lockhart,
[15]
and was sent to England,
where, from his very arrival, he was active in English Masonic lodges. Geopolitically, the October Bolshevik
revolution, which different historical schools and representatives of various worldviews evaluate in
different ways today, was special because it signified
an abrupt change in the orientation of Russia’s foreign
policy from a thalassocratic to a tellurocratic one.
Nicholas II and the Masonic-republicans of the Duma
from the Provisional Government had held an Anglo-French orientation and were faithful to the Entente.
The Bolsheviks were unequivocally oriented toward peace with Germany and departure from the Entente.
After the disbandment of the Constituent Assembly,
[16]
where the Bolsheviks did not receive the
support necessary to fully legalize their seizure of authority, authority was transferred to the Council of
Peoples’ Commissars, where the Bolsheviks dominated. Then, the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries were
their allies.
On March 3, 1918, a separate peace agreement between the Bolsheviks and representatives of the
Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) was concluded at Brest-Litovsk,

signifying Russia’s exit from the First World War. According to the terms of the agreement, the
Privislinskie provinces, Ukraine, those provinces with a primarily Belorussian population, the Province of
Estonia, the Province of Courland, the Province of Livonia, the Grand Principality of Finland, the Kars
district, and the Batumsk district on the Caucasus were all torn away from Russia’s West. The Soviet
leadership promised to halt the war with the Ukrainian Central Soviet (Rada) of the Ukrainian People’s
Republic, to demobilize the army and fleet, to remove the Baltic fleet from its bases in Finland and the
Baltic states, to transfer the Black Sea fleet with all its infrastructure to the central states, and to pay out six
million marks in reparations. A territory of 780,000 square kilometers, comprising a population of 56
million people (a third of the population of the Russian Empire), was seized from Soviet Russia. At the
same time, Russia brought all its troops out of the designated areas, while Germany, on the other hand,
brought its troops in and retained control over the Monzundski Archipelago and the Gulf of Riga.
Such was the enormous price that Soviet Russia (in part because it expected an imminent proletarian
revolution in Germany and other European countries) paid for its pro-German orientation.
The Brest treaty was immediately rejected by the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries, a part of whose
leadership was oriented toward France and England from former times. As a sign of protest against the
conditions of the armistice, the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries left the Council of Peoples’ Commissars; at
the Fourth Congress of Soviets, they voted against the Brest treaty. The Social Revolutionary S. D.
Mstislavskii coined the slogan, “No war, so an uprising!” urging the “masses” to “rise up” against the
German-Austrian occupying forces. On July 5, at the Fifth Congress of Soviets, the Leftist Socialist
Revolutionaries again actively came out against the Bolsheviks’ policies, condemning the Brest treaty. On
July 6, the day after the opening of the Congress, two Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries, Yakov Blumkin
[17]
and Nikolai Andreev, officials of the All-Russian Extraordinary Committee (AEC), entered the German
embassy in Moscow following a mandate from the AEC, and Andreev shot and killed the German
ambassador, Mirbach. The goal of the Socialist Revolutionaries was to wreck the agreements with
Germany. On July 30, the Leftist Social Revolutionary, B. M. Donskoi, liquidated the general in command
of the occupying forces, Eichhorn, in Kiev. The leader of the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries, Maria
Spiridonova, was sent to the Fifth Congress of Soviets, where she announced that “the Russian people are
free from Mirbach,” implying that the pro-German line in Soviet Russia was finished. In response, the
Bolsheviks mobilized their forces for the suppression of the “Leftist Social Revolutionary uprising,” and
arrested and executed their leaders. In this there again appeared a distinction in geopolitical orientations:
this time, among the radical Leftist forces that had seized power in Soviet Russia. The Leftist Socialist
Revolutionaries had tried to wreck the pro-German line of the Bolsheviks, but they failed and promptly
disappeared as a political force.
If we gather all these geopolitical elements together, we get the following picture: Nicholas II, the

bourgeois parties and, in part, the Leftist Socialist Revolutionaries (the Freemasons of the Duma)
maintained an orientation toward the Entente, and, as a result, toward thalassocracy; while the Bolsheviks
consistently pursued a policy of cooperation with Germany and other Central European states, and with
Turkey; that is, they came out in favor of tellurocracy. This geopolitical pattern allows us to take a new
look at the dramatic events of Russia’s history during 1917–1918 and predetermines the developments of
the Soviet period.
The Geopolitics of the Civil War
The Civil War broke out in Russia between 1917 and 1923. We will consider its geopolitical aspects.
Although the Civil War was a domestic conflict, in which the citizens of a single government fought,
geopolitics and competing ties with foreign powers played a considerable role in it. What we know about
the players’ geopolitical orientations in the final years of the Czar’s regime and after February and October
1917 already allows us to give a preliminary characterization of the geopolitical processes of the Civil War.
In the Civil War, mainly two political parties fought: the Reds (Bolsheviks) and the Whites.
[18]
As for
the Bolsheviks, their ideological, political, and geopolitical identity was clear. They professed Marxism and
the dictatorship of the proletariat, came out against the bourgeois order of things, and were geopolitically
oriented toward Germany and rigidly opposed to the Entente. From this we immediately see a few
tellurocratic traits:
•
orientation toward Germany (the Brest-Litovsk treaty);
•
rejection of the bourgeois order (capitalism, as we saw, is sociologically associated with thalassocracy);
•
hostility toward the thalassocratic Entente.
We can also say that the Bolsheviks cultivated a “Spartan” style: asceticism, heroism, and devotion to an
idea.
The White movement was not as uniform, ideologically or politically. Both those who continued the
“February” trend (the overwhelming majority) and those who supported a return to the monarchy
participated in it. Moreover, among the supporters of the February Revolution were representatives of
various parties, both Right and bourgeois parties (Kadets,
[19]
Octobrists)
[20]
and Leftists (Socialist
Revolutionaries,

people’s socialists, etc.). Ideologically, the White movement represented many forces,
whose political ideas were diverse. Only one thing united them: a rejection of Bolshevism and Marxism.
The Reds served as a “common enemy.” But as the Bolsheviks in that historical situation represented
tellurocracy
, it is perfectly logical that their adversaries, the Whites, would be oriented in the opposite
direction, toward
thalassocracy
. It happened this way in practice, too, because the White movement as a
whole bet on the Entente and on the support of England and France in the struggle against the Bolsheviks.

This was part of the logic of the Provisional Government’s foreign policy and the policies of the
monarchists, who maintained faithfulness to their allies according to the logic of the final stage of Czarist
rule.
Only a few, small segments of the White movement (in particular the Cossack Ataman
[21]
Krasnov, and
the “northern army,” which had been created by the Germans in October 1918 in Pskov and consisted of
Russian volunteers) maintained a German orientation, but this was a completely marginal phenomenon.
Moreover, if we look at a map of the location of the main territories controlled by the Reds and
Whites during the Civil War, we notice the following pattern: the Reds controlled the inner-continental
zones, the space of the Heartland, while the White armies were arranged along Russia’s periphery, and in
varying degrees in the coastal zones from which came the help of the sea powers and that supported the
White cause politically, economically, militarily, and strategically. In this, too, the Whites followed the
logic of thalassocracy, which considers political and strategic processes from a coastal perspective. The Reds
were in the position of land-based geopolitical powers.
In the era of the Civil War, we see a phenomenon that is highly symbolic and important for geopolitics.
In 1919, the founding father of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, was appointed British High
Commissioner for southern Russia and was sent through Eastern Europe to support the anti-Bolshevist
forces led by General Denikin. This mission allowed Mackinder to give his recommendations about
geopolitics in Eastern Europe to the British government, which laid the foundations for his book,
Democratic Ideals and Reality.
Mackinder called on Great Britain to strengthen its support for the White
armies in the south of Russia and to involve the anti-Bolshevist and anti-Russian regimes of Poland,
Bulgaria, and Romania for this purpose. In his negotiations with Denikin, they were in agreement about the
separation from Russia of the southern and western regions and the South Caucasus, for the creation of a
pro-English buffer state. Mackinder’s analysis of the state of affairs in Russia during the Civil War was
absolutely unequivocal: he saw in the Bolsheviks the forces of the Heartland, destined either to bear a
Communist ideological form or to cede the initiative to Germany. England could allow neither. So
Mackinder offered to support the Whites however he could and to dismember Russia. It is important to
note what countries he tried to establish under the purview of a nominally integral (for that period)
government: Belarus, Ukraine, Yugorussia (under the primary influence of pro-British Poland), Dagestan
(including the entire North Caucasus), Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. These countries were to be a
cordon sanitaire
[22]
between continental Russia and its neighboring regions, Germany in the west, and
Turkey and Iran in the south. Mackinder’s book
Democratic Ideals and Reality
and his note
[23]
to his
friend Lord Curzon
[24]
contain the basic ideas of geopolitics, which Mackinder not only created and
developed theoretically, but also practiced.
The situation on the southern front in 1920 and the weakened armies of Denikin caused Mackinder’s

plan, which he voiced at a meeting of the British government on January 29, 1920, not to be adopted;
England refused to give the Whites full support.
[25]
But Mackinder’s analysis of the general situation, then
hardly evident, proved its brilliance over time. Most English politicians were convinced that the Bolshevik
regime would not last long. Mackinder, on the other hand, using the geopolitical method, clearly foresaw
that Soviet Russia would eventually transform into a powerful continental tellurocratic state. And this is
how it later turned out.
The participation in the White movement of a figure like Mackinder, the founder of geopolitics and
the leading figure of the thalassocratic strategy, definitively confirms the thalassocratic nature of the Whites
on the whole.
No less significant is the fate of another figure, Aleksei Efimovich Vandam (Edrikhin), an outstanding
analyst of international relations, and a strategist who can be easily ranked among the heralds of Russian
Eurasian continental geopolitics. During the Civil War, Edrikhin was in Estonia, which was occupied by
the Germans. The German General Staff commissioned him to form a “Northern Army,” consisting of
anti-Bolshevist forces loyal to the Germans. Vandam is famous for his rigid anti-English and tellurocratic
positions (he participated in military actions in South Africa against the English on the side of the Boers),
and precisely this factor became decisive for the Germans. The “Northern Army” did not develop, because
of Germany’s defeat in the First World War, and Vandam’s mission did not continue. But the fact that this
project involved the participation of an eminent Russian geopolitician is exceedingly symbolic.
In the Civil War, among figures of secondary importance, we meet another individual whose fate was
important for the establishment of geopolitics, Peter Nikolaevich Savitskii. In 1919, Savitskii joined the
volunteer movement of south Russia (“the Denikins”) and was a “comrade” of the Minister of Foreign
Relations in the government of Denikin and Wrangel. In 1919, at the height of the Civil War, Savitskii
wrote a geopolitical text, astonishing in its sagacity, entitled
Outlines of International Relations
,
[26]
where
he announced the following: “One can say with certainty that if the Soviet government had overpowered
Kolchak
[27]
and Denikin, it would have ‘reunited’ the entire space of the former Russian Empire and would
very likely have passed beyond its former borders in its conquests.”
[28]
The article was printed in one of the
periodicals of the Whites and in the person of one of the theoreticians of their international politics.
Savitskii shows unambiguously that the Whites and the Reds have the same geopolitical goals: the
establishment of a powerful continental state, independent from the West, for which both will be
compelled to carry out an essentially identical policy. Later, Savitskii became the main figure of the
Eurasianist movement, which imparted to the intuitions of the continuity of the geopolitical strategy of
land-based states a developed theoretical foundation, becoming the core of the first full-blown Russian
geopolitical school.
[29]

In the Civil War, three stages can be distinguished: the first is from 1917 through November 1918,
when the basic military camps, the Reds and Whites, were formed. This unfolded against the background
of the First World War. The second stage is from November 1918 through March 1920, when the main
battle between the Red Army and the White armies occurred. In March 1920, a radical shift in the Civil
War set in. In this period, an abrupt decrease of military actions from the side of the forces of the Entente
occurred, due to the end of the First World War and the withdrawal of the main contingent of foreign
troops from the territory of Russia. After this, it was chiefly Russians in combat operations. Fighting was
then widespread in Russia. At first, the advance of the Whites was successful, but the initiative passed to the
Reds, who took control of the principal territory of the country.
From March 1920 through October 1922, the third stage occurred, in which the primary struggle was
on the outskirts of the country and no longer constituted an immediate threat to the authority of the
Bolsheviks. After the evacuation in October 1922 of the Far-Eastern Zemskaya Rat’ of General Diterikhs,
the struggle was continued only by the Siberian Volunteer Armed Force of Lieutenant General A. N.
Pepelyaev, which had fought in the Yakutsk region until June 1923, and the Cossack squadron of Army
Sergeant Bologov, which had remained near Nikolsk-Ussuriisk. Soviet authority was finally established in
Kamchatka and Chukchi in 1923. It is significant that all the military actions took place according to the
scheme of
the Red center
(Heartland) against
the White periphery
along the borders of the sea, and that
the remnants of the defeated White troops left Russia by sea.
The outcome of the Civil War was the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks over most of the territory of
the former Russian Empire; the recognition of the independence of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and
Finland; and the creation of the Soviet Union in the territories of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and
trans-Caucasian republics under their control, through an agreement signed on December 30, 1922.
Savitskii’s prediction about Ukraine, Belarus, and the South Caucasus proved accurate: the Bolsheviks did
not grant these territories independence, but included them in the composition of the Soviet state.
It is revealing that in their Caucasian policy, the Reds relied on Kemal Atatürk’s Turkey, carrying out
precisely a
continental
geopolitics on this issue. The eminent military and diplomatic actor, who crossed to
the side of Bolsheviks, General S. I. Aralov,
[30]
the founder of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye
(GRU),
[31]
played a major role in this approach to Turkey and in the reorganization of the strategic balance
of powers in the Caucasus.
The Geopolitical Balance of Power in the Peace of Versailles
The end of the First World War produced a new balance of powers. Russia lost to Germany and Austro-
Hungary, and this loss was fixed by the conditions of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The costs of this treaty were
significant. But as the Bolsheviks had a pro-German orientation, Russia could not exploit the fact that

Germany, in turn, lost to France and England. As a result, on June 28, 1919, a peace treaty was signed in the
Palace of Versailles by the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan on the one side, and
Germany on the other, establishing the international order for the next decade.
The Treaty of Versailles was humiliating for Germany, essentially depriving it of the right to conduct an
independent policy, to have a fully-fledged army, to develop its economy, and to reestablish its influence on
the international stage. Moreover, demands were made on Germany to make significant and extremely
painful territorial concessions. The geopolitics of the Versailles peace focused on the global interests of the
sea states, primarily the British Empire. Essentially, England was recognized almost
de jure
as the sole legal
owner of the world’s oceans. This was a triumph of thalassocracy. Bolshevik Russia was factored out
altogether, and defeated Germany was put in onerous fetters. It is revealing that Halford Mackinder, who,
as we already said, was closely associated with the English Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Curzon,
influenced the architecture of the Versailles treaty. The main task, according to Mackinder, was to prevent
the rise of Bolshevist Russia and Germany and especially to foreclose any future strategic alliance between
them. There was a plan to construct a
cordon sanitaire
out of existing or newly established Eastern
European governments oriented toward England and France that was expected to control and limit
potential Russian-German relations.
The Versailles world was a world of victorious thalassocracy, the grandiose political and military success
of the civilization of the Sea. We should especially underscore that the American delegation to the
Versailles conference, under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, first voiced the new
international strategy of the USA, in which it was asserted that the whole world was the zone of American
interests and in which, essentially, the idea of overtaking England’s initiative as the bastion of sea power was
secured. That is, Admiral Mahan’s
[32]
ideas became the basis for the USA’s strategic course during the
twentieth century, the course it still follows today. The Wilson Doctrine called for an end to American
isolationism and non-interference in the affairs of European states, and for the switch to an active policy on
a planetary scale under the aegis of the sea-based civilization. From this moment, the gradual transfer of the
center of gravity from Britain to the USA began.
This point may be considered the turning point in the geopolitical course of North America: from now
on, the USA stood firmly on the path of a consistent and active thalassocracy and perceived its social
structure (bourgeois democracy, the market society, liberal ideology) as a universal set of global values and
as the ideology and foundation of a planetary hegemony. In the period between the Treaty of Versailles and
the beginning of the Second World War, the shift of the center from England to the USA would be the
principal geopolitical process, proceeding in the context of the civilization of the Sea.
It is at Versailles, at the prompting of a group of American experts and big bankers who attended from
the USA, that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was formed under the leadership of the American

geopolitician Isaiah Bowman,
[33]
destined to become the most important authority in the formation of
American foreign policy on a global scale in the thalassocratic spirit. The systematic establishment of a
school of American geopolitics began precisely at this crucial moment. At the same time, Halford
Mackinder, who was present in the British delegation at the conclusion of the Versailles Treaty, also began
to cooperate with the CFR. Later, Mackinder would publish his works on policy in an influential journal
published by the CFR,
Foreign Affairs
. Thus the foundation was laid for a systematized
geopolitical
Atlanticism
, based on the strategic unity of the two great Anglo-Saxon states, England and the USA. And if
the USA played a subordinate role at Versailles, then the balance of power would slowly shift in its favor,
and the USA would gradually come to the forefront, taking upon itself the function of the bulwark of the
whole marine civilization, and becoming the core of sea power and a global oceanic thalassocratic empire.
The history of German geopolitics, connected with the name and school of Karl Haushofer, also began
at Versailles.
[34]
Haushofer provided an analysis of the results of the Treaty of Versailles in the spirit of
Mackinder’s method, but from the defeated German side. Thus, he came to a geopolitical description of a
model that should have, at least theoretically, led Germany to a future rebirth and to overcome the onerous
conditions of Versailles. For this, Haushofer advanced the idea of a “continental bloc,”
[35]
representing an
alliance of objectively land-based, continental, tellurocratic states: Germany, Russia, and Japan. Thus, a
systematic and developed framework of continental geopolitics was assembled, representing a consistent
and large-scale response to the strategy of the Atlanticists and geopoliticians of the thalassocratic school.
The trauma left by Versailles in German society would later be successfully exploited by the National
Socialists (with whom Haushofer himself collaborated at first). Ultimately, it was precisely the plan of
overcoming the constraints of Versailles that became one of the most important factors in the eventual
Nazi victory in the Reichstag elections of 1933.
The Eurasian movement was formed by Russian émigrés in France after Versailles. It became the source
of the foundations of Russian (Eurasian) geopolitics.
[36]
The Geopolitics and Sociology of the Early Stalin Period
In 1922, Russia received a new name, becoming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. If, at first, the
Bolsheviks related neutrally to the demands of the lesser peoples

of the Russian Empire for independence
and the creation of their own statehood, then a centralist tendency prevailed in the 1920s, called “Stalin’s
National Policy.” The course was gradually taken to establish socialism in one country, which demanded
strengthening Soviet power over the broadest space. For that reason, the Bolsheviks essentially returned to
the Czarist policy of a centripetal orientation and the reinforcement of Russia’s administrative unity. This
time, however, this policy was formulated in entirely new ideological constructs and was founded on
proletarian internationalism, the equality of all peoples, and the class solidarity of all the proletarians of all

nationalities. But its geopolitical essence remained as before: the Bolsheviks gathered the lands of the
former Russian Empire
around the Heartland as a geopolitical core.
Sociologically, this unification
proceeded under anti-bourgeois and “Spartan” slogans and on the basis of a new value system. This course
started to diverge gradually from orthodox Marxism, which had imagined the proletarian revolution
occurring, first, in industrially developed countries, and not in agrarian Russia (Marx himself categorically
excluded this possibility); and, second, in many places at once or over a short time, not only in one country.
Lenin and Trotsky, the major actors of the October Revolution and of the later Bolshevik retention of
power, thought that the revolution could and must be in one country, which was already a certain deviation
from classical Marxism. However, they interpreted this as a temporary historical peculiarity, after which a
series of proletarian revolutions in different countries must follow, first in Germany, then also in England,
France, and elsewhere. The Bolsheviks saw their moment as a transitional one, with the implementation of
a proletarian revolution in one country as the first step in a whole series of revolutions in other countries,
the start of a global process of world revolution. This is why the Bolsheviks agreed so readily to the harsh
terms of the Germans at Brest-Litovsk: it was important for them to secure their position and hold out
until the beginning of the revolution in the European states, which they thought was a matter both certain
and imminent. Thus, Trotsky carried out active Marxist agitation, even attending Brest during the
conclusion of the peace agreement.
Stalin himself, even in May 1924, wrote in his pamphlet
On the Foundations of Leninism
, “To
overthrow the rule of the bourgeois and to install the rule of the proletariat in one country does not yet
mean to secure the full victory of socialism. The main task of socialism, the organization of socialist
production, still remains ahead. Can we resolve this task? Can we achieve the ultimate victory of socialism
in one country without the combined efforts of the proletariat of a few advanced countries? No, it is not
possible. For the ultimate victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of
one country, especially such a peasant country as Russia, is now not enough; for this the efforts of the
proletariat of a few advanced countries is necessary.”
[37]
Trotsky also continued to reason in this spirit.
But everything changed at the end of 1924, when the first contradictions between Trotsky and Stalin
are to be found. Stalin completely denied his own words, despite having written them recently, and
advanced a directly contradictory thesis. In December 1924, in one of his first works,
The October
Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists
,
[38]
a criticism of “Trotskyism,” he asserted that
“socialism can be built in one country.” From this time he began to accuse those who denied the possibility
of building socialism in the USSR without triumphant socialist revolutions in other countries of
capitulation and defeatism. The new theoretical and political attitude towards building socialism in one
country was secured at the Fourteenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) in
December 1925. Later on “the building of socialism in one country” became an axiom of Soviet policy.

After this, hopes for proletarian revolution in other countries receded to a place of secondary
importance, while the strategic tasks of securing the USSR as an independent great power capable of
repelling an attack by the capitalists encircling them was moved to the forefront. With regard to the
specifics of the geopolitical situation of the USSR in the Heartland and the sociological peculiarity of the
“Spartan” style of socialist society, we are then dealing with a finished and full-fledged
tellurocracy
. Soviet
Russia in the Stalin period represents a new version of the great Turanic Eurasian empire,
[39]
the core of the
land-based civilization.
Here we can raise the question: what is responsible for this change to a land-based Eurasian approach
during the Soviet period of history: the content of Communist ideology, or the historical fact that the
proletarian revolution occurred in land-based continental Russia? There is no unequivocal answer.
Trotsky, even while he was still in the USSR and with yet greater persistence after his emigration, advanced
the idea that Stalin’s state “betrayed Communism” and recreated an imperial and great-power bureaucracy
of the Czarist type on a new stage. Thereby, Trotsky tore socialism away from its Eurasian context and
ascribed the peculiarities of the USSR (which he criticized) to a return to a national Russian strategy. A
different point of view characterizes some contemporary Marxists (for instance, Costanzo Preve)
[40]
who
see an internal connection between socialism and continentalism (the civilization of Land) and thereby
consider the victory of socialism in land-based Russia (and later in other land-based, traditional societies:
China, Vietnam, Korea, and so on) not an accident, but a regularity.
In any case, the construction of the USSR after 1924 shows how precise and true were the predictions
of Mackinder and Savitskii, who considered from different points of view the geopolitical future of the
Bolsheviks: the USSR became a powerful expression of the Heartland, while its confrontation with the
capitalist world was a manifestation of the most important and perhaps even culminating phase of the
“great war of continents,” the battle between the land-based Behemoth and the sea-based Leviathan (in
Carl Schmitt’s
[41]
terms). The policy of building socialism in one country and the growth of Soviet
patriotism were essentially the next stage of continental, sovereign empire-building. And it is no accident
that in the 1930s, when Stalin secured his authority, we see the distinct expression of monarchical
tendencies, which constituted the peculiarity of the Russian East and the Muscovite ideology and the main
impetus for the construction of a Russian Empire. Functionally, Stalin was a “Russian Czar,” comparable to
Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible. In its new historical phase, the USSR continued and developed the
geopolitical processes of a land-based civilization on a previously unparalleled scale, and created the state of
Great Turan. The Eurasian great-continental substance is hidden under socialist forms.
The transfer of the capital of Soviet Russia from Saint Petersburg to Moscow by the Bolsheviks on
March 12, 1918, was symbolic. And although this measure was dictated by practical considerations, on the
level of historical parallels it signified a substantial shift toward the Russian East and thus toward the

Moscow canons of land-based geopolitics. The USSR was a new version of the Russian land-based
Czardom, and Stalin was the “Red Czar.” The conception of the Third Rome during the Middle Ages was
paradoxically transformed into the idea of Moscow as the capital of the Third International.
[42]
As a
network of Communist parties and movements oriented toward Soviet Russia, the Third International
became
a geopolitical instrument
for the propagation of land-based, tellurocratic Russian influence
worldwide. In terms of ideology, this was a territorially unbound, international, planetary network. But it
terms of strategy, the Third International fulfilled the function of a geopolitical instrument for the
expansion of the Heartland’s geopolitical zone of influence. The Orthodox messianism of the sixteenth
century was reflected wonderfully in the Bolshevist Communist “messianism” of global revolution with its
core in Moscow, the capital of the Third International.
The Geopolitics of the Great Patriotic War
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, a new geopolitical balance of power took effect in the world. On
one hand, there was the powerful Eurasian great-continental Soviet Union, ruled autocratically by Joseph
Stalin. This is the Heartland, the core of the global continental force.
In the West, two blocs of governments form anew, as at the end of the First World War:
1.
The thalassocratic alliance of England, France and the USA, and the countries of Eastern Europe that
belonged to the
cordon sanitaire
and were under the control of thalassocracy (Poland, Czechoslovakia);
2.
The European continental, tellurocratic states, led by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and by the
countries occupied by them or their allies.
In the East we had Japan, aligned with Germany, underscoring Japan’s tellurocratic orientation. China was
in an exceedingly weakened condition and was to a significant degree controlled by the English.
In such a situation, we can, theoretically, imagine the following alliances that might have come about in
the inexorably approaching war:
1.
A realization of “the continental bloc” along Haushofer’s model.
This proposes an alliance of the USSR
with Nazi Germany and with the other countries of the Axis and Japan. There are specific antecedents
for this in the Germanophilic orientation of the Bolsheviks (the Communist Karl Radek
[43]
and the
German National Bolsheviks
[44]
— in particular, Ernst Niekisch
[45]
— insisted on a union of the Leftist
nationalists and the USSR in an anti-bourgeois, anti-Western, anti-French and anti-English strategic
harmonization),
[46]
in geopolitical analysis and in the fact that both regimes are nominally “socialist” and
“anti-capitalist.” But dogmatic Marxism, Stalin’s internationalism, and Hitler’s racist (anti-Communist
and Judeo-phobic) worldview prevented this. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
[47]
was a step toward such
an alliance. If we admit that it could have taken place, then, most likely, the balance of powers would

have been enough to crush the planetary might of thalassocracy and to take Britain and the USA out of
history for a long time. Objective geopolitics urged the major continental players toward precisely such
an alliance. This objective geopolitics had its conscious and systematic representatives in Germany (the
school of K. Haushofer), but not in Russia. We must notice that in Germany, too, the leaders of
National Socialism listened to Haushofer’s opinion only partially.
2.
An alliance of the Axis countries with the bourgeois-democratic regimes of the West against the USSR.
In this case we would have something analogous to the alignment of forces in the Crimean War,
[48]
when all Europe was consolidated against Russia. The Munich Agreement
[49]
was a step in this direction.
England in part supported Hitler, believing it could weaken the USSR with his help. Here, would have
had a thalassocratic alliance united by common hostility among the thalassocratic countries and
Germany toward Communism and Russia-Eurasia. We could predict that the USSR would be in a
desperate position, lacking foreign allies. The preconditions for a military campaign would have been
not only unfavorable to the USSR, but most likely fatal. Haushofer thought of this possibility, too, and
it cannot be ruled out that the strange flight of Rudolf Hess,
[50]
Haushofer’s teacher, to England after the
start of Anglo-German military clashes was a desperate attempt to arrange an alliance of Germany with
England in the run-up to the inevitable conflict with the USSR.
3.
An alliance of the thalassocratic bourgeois-democratic countries with the continental Eurasian USSR
against the European continentalism of Germany.
This would have been a repeat of the alignment of
forces on the eve of the First World War and a second version of the Entente. Today we know that this
scenario was in fact enacted. This happened primarily because of Hitler’s suicidal adventure, a war on
two fronts against both the West and the East. Ultimately, the winners could only be the countries of
the West, since a conflict of two continental states with each another (like with Napoleon’s invasion)
entailed their mutual weakening.
Thus, the representatives of three geopolitical powers and three ideologies clashed against each other in the
Second World War. The Heartland was represented by Soviet Russia, Stalin, and socialism (Marxism). The
sea power, in the coalition of England, the USA and France, was united under a liberal bourgeois-
democratic ideology. The continental power of Europe (Central Europe) was represented by the Axis
countries (the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and their satellites) and by the ideology of the “Third Way”
(National Socialism, Fascism, and Japanese samurai traditionalism). Irreconcilable and having no common
ideological points of intersection at all, the poles — the USSR and the Western capitalist countries,
representing respectively the Land and Sea — proved a barricade against Central Europe and National
Socialism. This alignment of forces entirely
contradicts
the context and regularities of objective geopolitics.
So it shows the powerful influence of the subjective factor: Hitler’s personal adventurism and the effective

work of anti-German agents in the USSR and anti-Soviet agents in Germany.
The timeline of the Great Patriotic War, which began on June 22, 1941, and ended on May 9, 1945, is
known to every Russian.
The first stage of the war (repeating the story of Napoleon’s invasion) was a relatively successful
blitzkrieg by German troops, leading the German divisions to Moscow by November 1941. By December
1, German troops seized Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, a significant part of the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR),
[51]
and Ukraine, and advanced as deep as 850–1200
kilometers. As the result of fierce resistance, the German armies were stopped in all directions at the end of
November and beginning of December. The attempt to take Moscow failed. During the winter campaign
of 1941–1942, a counter-offensive was carried out in Moscow. The threat to Moscow was removed. Soviet
troops threw the enemy 80–250 kilometers back to the west, completed the liberation of the Moscow and
Tula districts, and liberated many regions of the Klinsky and Melensky districts. On the southern front,
Soviet troops defended the strategically important Crimea.
A change began in the autumn of 1942. On November 19, 1942, the counter-offensive of Soviet
troops began. And from the start of 1943, Soviet troops were moving resolutely westward. The decisive
events of the summer-autumn campaign of 1943 were the Battle of Kursk and the Battle of the Dnieper.
The Red Army advanced 500–1300 kilometers.
From November 28 until December 1, 1943, the Tehran Conference of Stalin, Churchill, and
Roosevelt
[52]
took place, where the major question was the opening of a second front. The Allies agreed
about the fundamental direction of the future world order after the likely defeat of Germany and the Axis
countries.
It is telling that Mackinder published his last geopolitical policy paper, “The Round World and the
Winning of the Peace,” in the American journal
Foreign Affairs
.
[53]
In it, he sketched the general traits and
the structure of the geopolitical balance of power toward which the thalassocratic countries (the USA,
England, France, and others) must strive after the victory over Germany together with such geopolitically
and ideologically troublesome allies as the USSR and Stalin. Again, Mackinder, now in new circumstances,
called for a blockade against the USSR, the containment of its westward movement, and the recreation of a
cordon sanitaire
in Eastern Europe.
The Red Army began the winter campaign of 1943–1944 with a major attack on the right flank of
Ukraine (the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive, December 24, 1943–April 17, 1944). April and May
marked the Crimean Offensive (April 8–May 12). In June 1944, the Western Allies opened a second
front, which worsened Germany’s military position slightly, but did not exert decisive influence on the
balance of powers or the course of the war. In the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, the Red Army
carried out a series of large-scale operations, including the Belarusian, L’vosk-Sandomirsky, Yasso

Kishinevsky, and pre-Baltic campaigns. It completed the liberation of Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states
(except for a few regions of Latvia), and part of Czechoslovakia; it also liberated northern Zapolarye and
the northern areas of Norway. Romania and Bulgaria were forced to capitulate and to declare war on
Germany. In the summer of 1944, Soviet troops marched into Poland. Farther advances by elements of the
Red Army began only in January 1945 with the Eastern Prussian operation, the Vistula-Oder operation,
the Vienna operation, the Königsberg operation, and other operations. During the advance toward the
west, Soviet troops established their control over the enormous space of Eastern Europe.
On April 25, 1945, Soviet troops first met the American troops, who had advanced from the West,
along the Elbe River. On May 2, 1945, the Berlin garrison capitulated. After the capture of Berlin, Soviet
troops carried out the Prague operation, the last strategic operation of the war.
At 10:43 PM Central European time on May 8, 1945, the war in Europe ended with the
unconditional capitulation of Germany’s armed forces. On June 24, a victory parade took place in
Moscow. At the Potsdam Conference held from June until August 1945, an agreement was reached
between the leaders of the USSR, Great Britain, and the USA about the post-war arrangement of Europe.
In this agreement, the countries of the bourgeois West recognized the USSR’s right to maintain control
over Eastern Europe and the possibility of bringing pro-Soviet governments to power there. Moreover,
Prussia passed into the control of the USSR, with its capital, Berlin (the German Democratic Republic was
established there). The territory of Berlin was divided into two sectors; the eastern part was under the
control of the USSR, and the western part was under the control of the troops of the Western Allies and
was united to West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany).
The following European countries were in the zone of high-priority Soviet influence: Poland, Hungary,
Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Albania, at least at
first (it later selected Maoist China as its reference point). Later, in 1955, these countries (except for
Yugoslavia, which took the independent socialist “third way”) also signed the Warsaw Pact, which
proposed the creation of a military bloc, symmetrical to the Western bloc of capitalist countries, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This pact, as a visible military-strategic expression of the bipolar
world, lasted until June 1, 1991.
The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Great Patriotic War
There were many geopolitical outcomes of the Great Patriotic War. The continental European power,
Germany, suffered a crushing defeat, dropping off the stage of world politics for many decades. The land-
based, continental element of European politics was paralyzed for a long time. Moreover, National
Socialism and Fascism were decisively outlawed as ideologies, and the Nuremberg trials passed a sentence
not only on Germany’s political actors, held responsible for crimes against humanity, but on this ideology,

branded as criminal.
Thus, in the world according to the conclusions of the Potsdam Conference, only two geopolitical and
ideological forces remained: the liberal bourgeois-democratic capitalism of the West (with its core in the
USA), as the pole of global thalassocracy, and the socialist, Communist, anti-bourgeois Soviet East (with its
core in the USSR). We moved from a tripolar geopolitical and ideological map to a bipolar organization of
global space.
From February 4 through February 11, 1945, the Yalta Conference, involving Stalin, Churchill, and
Roosevelt, was held, the principles of post-war politics were discussed, and the bipolar structure of the
world was formally fixed. Churchill and Roosevelt represented the Anglo-Saxon world and the American-
English axis, which became a unified, strategic center, the core of Atlantic society and thalassocracy. Only
Stalin spoke on behalf of the USSR as a great global Eurasian empire. This bipolar world order was called
the Yalta World.
Geopolitically, this meant the establishment of
a planetary balance between the global thalassocratic
and capitalist West and the equally global tellurocratic, Communist East, extending far beyond the limits of
the USSR.
Moreover, the third force, represented by the European continental center and the ideology of
“the Third Way,” vanished for good (or at least to the present day).
The Geopolitics of the Yalta World and the Cold War
We should now pause for a geopolitical analysis of the borders between the two worlds (West and East)
that were drawn on the basis of the Yalta Conference and the post-war balance of power. The structure of
borders has a tremendous impact on the general balance of powers. The Belgian geopolitician and political
scientist Jean Thiriart
[54]
first mentioned and analyzed this fact concerning the borders of the Warsaw Pact.
[55]
Thiriart noted that the structure of the borders between the Western and Eastern blocs, passing through
the European space, was exceedingly
advantageous
for the USA and to the same degree
disadvantageous
for
the USSR. This is because the security and defense of land-based borders is an exceedingly difficult,
expensive, and resource-consuming task, especially in the case when the border is not connected to the
presence of normal, natural obstacles such as mountains, river basins, and so forth — all the more so when
we are considering a sociologically homogeneous society (ethnically, culturally, religiously, and so forth) on
both sides of the border. The border between the countries of the Warsaw Pact, a continuation of the
USSR and a continental tellurocracy, and the countries of NATO, the strategic satellites of the USA, was
such a border. By contrast, the USA was safely secured by the oceans that surround its borders, which do
not demand large resources or expenses to defend and permit focus on other strategic problems. In the case
of a conflict with the USSR, the USA would have lost the territory of Western Europe if necessary, but its
own territory was left out of reach. The USSR, however, was forced to defend the borders of the Warsaw

Pact as its own.
This created unequal starting conditions for the victors of the Second World War, giving powerful
strategic superiority to the USA and the NATO bloc. Understanding this, Stalin, and especially Beria,
[56]
who spoke of this more openly, elaborated plans in the early 1950s for the “Finlandization of Europe”; the
creation of a bloc of governments in Eastern and Central Europe that would be neutral toward the USSR
and NATO. This would allow a different structuring of borders. The wider this “neutral” European zone
would be, the more comfortable European borders would be for Russia. At the end of the 1960s, Jean
Thiriart predicted the inevitable collapse of the USSR, should the structure of borders in Europe remain
unchanged. But he also proposed another scenario: the creation of a “Euro-Soviet empire from Vladivostok
to Dublin”;
[57]
a broadening of the borders of the Warsaw bloc to the shores of the Atlantic. Anyway, the
task consisted in
changing the structure of borders.
Although it took time after the partition of Europe
between the USA and USSR, it was precisely this geopolitical factor that made itself felt in a manner
catastrophic for the Eastern bloc.
Returning to the post-war period and the formation of the Yalta World, we should offer a geopolitical
analysis of the “Cold War.” Two years after the victory over Hitler, relations between the victors of the
Second World War began to worsen rapidly. Here, objective geopolitics made itself felt: the alliance of the
Western thalassocratic democracies and the socialist Soviet tellurocracy was so unnatural, both
geopolitically and ideologically, that a conflict was lying in wait in these relations from the start.
The “Cold War” began in 1947, when the American diplomat George F. Kennan
[58]
published a text in
Foreign Affairs
calling for the
containment
of the USSR. Kennan, a follower of Mackinder, the American
geopolitician Nicholas Spykman, and Robert Strausz-Hupé,
[59]
elaborated a model of a configuration of
global zones, controlled by the USA, that would inevitably and steadily lead America to the domination of
Eurasia. The strangulation of the USSR in the inner-continental space of Eurasia and the restriction and
blockade of Soviet influence worldwide were part of this strategy. The main strategy consisted in
enclosing
the coastal zone (Rimland) within itself, under the control of the USA in the space of Eurasia, from
Western Europe through the Middle East and Central Asia to the Far East, India, and Indo-China. Japan,
occupied by the USA, was already a fulcrum for American naval strategy.
The USSR reacted to this strategy and, in turn, tried to break the control of the USA and NATO over
the coastal zone (Rimland). Evidence of this reaction can be seen in the harsh confrontation that occurred
during the time of Vietnam, the Korean War, and the Chinese Revolution, actively supported by the
USSR. Moreover, the USSR supported socialist tendencies in the Islamic world, in particular “Arab
socialism,”
[60]
and gave support to pro-Soviet Communist parties in Western Europe. The great war of the
civilization of the Sea and the civilization of Land was also carried to other continents, Africa and Latin

America. In Africa this involved Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Mozambique (afro-Communism); in
Latin America, it was Cuba and the powerful Communist movements in Chile, Argentina, Peru,
Venezuela, and elsewhere.
The factor of nuclear weapons was of tremendous importance in the “Cold War.” The USA’s new
weapon, successfully deployed in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seemed to give them a decisive
advantage in a future confrontation with the USSR. Stalin focused his efforts on getting the same weapon
for the USSR. Here, the allies of the USSR in the Communist networks across the world played an
important role. The ideological commitment of Leftist sympathizers essentially made them a network of
agents of influence and portals for gathering information in the interests of the civilization of Land. Thus,
vital information about nuclear weapons was obtained from an American scientist, the nuclear physicist
Theodore Hall,
[61]
through a network of Soviet agents. In tandem with Soviet research, a Soviet nuclear
bomb was quickly and successfully constructed, levelling the technological abilities of the two superpowers.
By the 1950s, the geopolitical picture of the bipolar world, a planetary expression of Mackinder’s
geopolitical map, was fixed in its basic characteristics. The Heartland and the civilization of Land were
represented by the USSR, the countries of the Warsaw Pact, and the socialist regimes sometimes far from
the USSR. This was the Soviet superpower and its zone of influence. Land reached its
historical maximum
and a previously unthinkable scope and scale of influence. Eurasia became a world empire, spreading the
networks of its influence on a global scale.
The other superpower, the USA, also became the center of a global hegemony. The NATO bloc and
the capitalist countries worldwide sided with it. Between these two planetary powers, “the great war of
continents” was enacted from then on, formed ideologically as the opposition between
capitalism and
Communism.
Thalassocracy was identified with the bourgeois-capitalist model and with the market society
(of the Athenian, Carthaginian type); tellurocracy with the socialist society of the Spartan-Roman type. All
the major players were distributed along these two poles. Those who wavered in the selection of their
geopolitical and ideological orientation cheered the “Non-Aligned Movement.” But this Movement did
not represent a fully-fledged third pole, nor did it work out any kind of independent ideological platform
or geopolitical strategy. Rather, these countries were “no man’s lands” or neutral territories, where
representatives of the Eastern and Western blocs operated with equal success.
The bipolar world aimed at in the Potsdam Conference and fixed at the Yalta Conference became the
basic model of international relations for a few decades, from the 1950s until 1991; until the end of the
USSR.
The Yalta World after the Death of Stalin
Stalin was a classic figure in the tradition of the great-continental leader, exactly suited for both the scale of

the geopolitical tasks standing before Russia in the twentieth century and for the sociological constants of
Eurasian tellurocractic sociology, oriented toward hierarchical, vertical, “heroic,” and “Spartan” values. It is
difficult to say whether he was thoroughly familiar with the ideas of the Eurasianists and the National
Bolsheviks and whether he had a precise notion of geopolitical patterns. Anyhow, a precise and distinct
logic is visible in his foreign policy. Each action was directed toward strengthening the power of the
civilization of Land, expanding the Soviet government’s zone of influence, and defending strategic interests.
During his rule, a consistent Eurasian geopolitical policy was consciously implemented. A few of his
associates differed strongly by their clear understanding of the patterns of international processes, closely
associated with the geopolitical context; in particular, Vyacheslav Molotov,
[62]
Beria, and others. It seems
that after Stalin’s death and Beria’s removal from power, the Soviet leadership’s geopolitical self-
consciousness weakened abruptly. They continued to act within the framework of the bipolar world and
tried to secure the Soviet pole and, as much as possible, use all US oversights to strengthen pro-Soviet
tendencies throughout the world. However, Soviet foreign policy then became reactive, secondary, and, in
the most cases, defensive.
It is important that during Khrushchev’s rule and afterwards, Soviet leaders lost their concern with the
condition of European borders. If this problem concerned Stalin and Beria, it seems that afterward, Soviet
leaders forgot it, prioritizing other questions.
Under Khrushchev, the Caribbean crisis broke out, caused by the Cuban Revolution. On the whole,
this revolution was a symmetrical response to the geopolitical Atlanticism of the USA in Eurasia: as
America tried to place their military bases close to the territory of the USSR in the coastal zone of the
Eurasian mainland, so Castro’s Cuba, escaping the control of the USA and carrying out a proletarian
revolution, logically transformed into a strategic base of Soviet presence near the USA. Thus, when the
USSR decided to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962, this was entirely natural, especially
when one considers the placement of medium-range “Jupiter” rockets in Turkey by the USA in 1961,
directly threatening cities in the western Soviet Union, rockets that could reach Moscow and the major
industrial centers.
When an American U2 spy plane discovered P-12 medium-range Soviet missiles in the outskirts of San
Cristóbal, supposedly equipped with nuclear warheads, the “Cold War” nearly developed into a nuclear
conflict between the two superpowers. At first President Kennedy decided to begin a massive
bombardment of Cuba, but it became apparent that the Soviet missiles were in combat readiness and ready
for an attack on the USA. After intense negotiations, the USSR was obligated to dismantle its missiles for
US guarantees to renounce any interventions on the island.
Geopolitically, the Cuban Missile Crisis signified the culmination of the great war of continents: a
point of such tension that a global nuclear war was the most likely outcome. The aftermath of the crisis

resulted in both superpowers following the path of deténte, afraid of the nuclear destruction of humanity.
[63]
In its domestic policy, Khrushchev’s era was marked by the dethronement of Stalin’s cult of personality
and by the criticism of his style of leadership. This phenomenon received the name “the thaw.” In this
period, the dissident movement began to form in the USSR, and its representatives adopted a pro-Western
position and started to criticize socialism and the “totalitarian” Soviet society. It is important to emphasize
that geopolitically, most dissidents considered Western society and capitalism
a model for imitation
and
Soviet society
an object of criticism
, which allows us to characterize them as carriers of the Atlanticist,
thalassocratic principle. Among the dissidents were also patriotic, nationally oriented personalities (the
academic Igor Shafarevich,
[64]
U. Osipov, G. Shimonov, and so on), but overall they were the minority.
In foreign policy, Khrushchev lost an important ally in Maoist China, whose leadership responded very
unfavorably to the dethronement of the cult of Stalin and his political policy in general. On the whole,
Khrushchev’s foreign policy repeated the main force-lines of the USSR’s traditional policy.
After Khrushchev’s dismissal from the office of General Secretary, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
[65]
came to
power for two decades. The policies of this period were distinguished by conservatism and the absence of
change. On one hand, a return to Stalinism did not occur, but the harsh criticism of his cult of personality
was cut back, too. Khrushchev’s thaw was also ended, and the dissident movement was subjected to serious
pressure by the KGB and its use of punitive psychiatry. In foreign policy, Brezhnev sought to elude direct
confrontation with the West.
But in 1965, the USA invaded Vietnam to support the capitalist and pro-Western regime of South
Vietnam, which had its capital in Saigon. Opposing it was a pro-Soviet political system in North Vietnam,
established even earlier (in 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the creation of the independent Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, from which a war conducted by the French tore away the southern part, dividing the
country in two), with its capital in Hanoi. China came out on the side of the Vietcong (North Vietnam).
The USSR, too, gave Hanoi significant support. On April 30, 1975, the Communists lifted their banner
over the Palace of Independence in Saigon.
Geopolitically, this was a typical battle between thalassocracy and tellurocracy for control over the
coastal zone (Rimland). The Americans tried to establish their influence there; pro-Soviet forces strove to
free themselves from this influence in favor of the continental USSR. The failure of American intervention
was a major tactical victory for the USSR. The Soviet bloc emerged from this episode of the great war of
continents as the conqueror.
The situation in Afghanistan, where Soviet troops had to intervene in 1979, turned out differently. By
this time, the domestic political atmosphere in the USSR had qualitatively worsened: apathy and
indifference dominated Soviet society. The ideological clichés of socialism and Marxism, repeated

endlessly, started to lose their meaning; stagnation and indifference ascended the throne. The totalitarian
elements of the Soviet system became grotesque. The lack of intense repressions, which stopped after
Stalin’s time, did not lead to the rise of creativity or the mobilization of dynamic energies, but only
weakened the populace. Narrow-minded and consumerist motives began to prevail in society. The cultural
sphere degraded abruptly. In this context, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan to provide assistance to the
Soviet-oriented leadership of Taraki.
[66]
On April 27, 1978, the April Revolution began in Afghanistan, as
a result of which the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan came to power. In September 1979 a
coup
d’etat
occurred, during which Hafizullah Amin
[67]
came to power, oriented toward closer relations with the
USA. Soviet troops entered Kabul and stormed Amin’s palace, destroying him and his associates. The pro-
Soviet leader Babrak Karmal
[68]
was brought to power. Soon, opposition to Karmal’s regime expanded
throughout the country, led by the representatives of various Islamic groups, primarily, fundamentalists.
There, too, the “Al-Qaeda” of Osama bin Laden was formed and later became famous. By the logic of
objective geopolitics, once the USSR stood behind Karmal, the leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) appeared behind his opponents, the Islamists. In particular, the major American geopolitician
Zbigniew Brzezinski,
[69]
the direct successor to the geopolitical, thalassocratic policy of Mackinder and
Spykman, provided support to the Islamic
mujahideen
in Afghanistan. In April 1980, the US Congress
openly authorized “direct and open support” for the Afghan opposition.
Like the Korean and the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War was a typical confrontation of
tellurocracy and thalassocracy in a fight for influence over the coastal zone. The territory of Afghanistan
does not have any warm-water ports, but it closely adjoins the borders of the USSR and was for that reason
strategically important for the entire strategy of the containment of the USSR, on which the strategy of the
USA was based during the entire “Cold War.” At the end of the nineteenth century and start of the
twentieth, Afghanistan was already becoming a stumbling block for Russian-British relations, and a very
important element of the “Great Game.”
[70]
The outstanding Russian strategist Andrei Snesarev
[71]
wrote
about the strategic significance of Afghanistan for the Russian Empire.
[72]
Brezhnev, during whose reign a definite stability and conservatism reigned in the USSR, died in 1982,
at the very height of the Afghanistan War, in which Soviet troops suffered serious losses, but overall
remained in control of the situation. In his place came the former head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov.
[73]
His
short rule (he died in 1984) did not leave a considerable mark. Konstantin Chernenko
[74]
took his place,
but died in 1985, without having had time to designate his own policy.
In general, from the death of Stalin to the death of Chernenko, the Soviet leadership worked within the
bipolar model of the world that took shape as a result of the Second World War. This period marked the
positional confrontation of the civilization of Land (the Eastern bloc) with the civilization of the Sea (the

Western bloc) on a previously unprecedented global scale, when the zone of this game was almost the
entire Earth.
Theories of Convergence and Globalism
To understand the events of the 1980s that took place in the USSR and the world, it is necessary to turn
our attention to a group of theories that appeared in the West in the 1970s and that had a tremendous
influence on the following course of events. Theories of convergence began to be formulated in the 1950s
and 1960s among sociologists and economists (Pitirim Sorokin, James Gilbert, Raymond Aron, Jan
Tinbergen, and others). They claimed that, according to the measure of technological development, the
capitalist and socialist systems would in time draw closer and closer together. In capitalist societies, they
held, the role of central planning in technological processes was increasing; in the socialist economy, small
private ownership structures were beginning to appear (for instance, in the countries of Eastern Europe).
Supporters of this theory thought that competition between the two global systems would eventually have
to yield to a general, integrated system of a mixed type, part capitalist and part socialist.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis and in the period of deténte in the relations between the two blocs,
these theories acquired a practical significance, as they established a common canvas for drawing together
socialist countries and capitalist ones.
Parallel to this development, a few organizations arose in the West that put before themselves the task
of a
global
comprehension of the problems facing humanity without taking stock of its division into East
and West, capitalism and socialism. Thus in 1968, the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei
[75]
and the
eminent scientist Alexander King
[76]
founded the Club of Rome, an organization uniting the
representatives of the global political, financial, cultural, and scientific elite, which placed before itself the
task of a global analysis of world problems. Soviet scientists were also drawn into the Club of Rome (in
particular, the academic Dzhermen Gvishiani,
[77]
the director of the Institute of Systems Analysis of the
Russian Academy of Sciences).
[78]
A global view of humanity and the project of establishing a “world government” also drove the
conceptual strategy of such influential organizations as the American Council on Foreign Relations and the
international “Trilateral Commission,” founded on this basis. These organizations tried to establish special
relations with the Soviet political leadership, proposing a consolidation of efforts for further deténte and
the resolution of problems common to mankind.
It is important to pay attention to the “Trilateral Commission.” This organization, founded by the
CFR under the aegis of David Rockefeller and the eminent political scientists and geopoliticians Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, united the representatives of three geopolitical zones — America, Europe,
and Japan — considered the three centers of the capitalist system, the civilization of the Sea. The task of

this organization, whose activity was surrounded by a veil of secrecy, consisted in coordinating the efforts of
the leading capitalist countries for victory in the “Cold War,” and isolating the USSR and its allies from all
sides: from the West (Europe), from the East (Japan), and from the south (the allies of the USA and
NATO among the Middle Eastern and Asian regimes). But the “Trilateral Commission” did not only use
the tactic of head-on confrontation; it also tried to seduce the adversary into dialogue. So, at the end of the
1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the representatives of this organization began offering assistance to
China in the production of a new, liberal economic policy, and made a sizeable investment in its economy
to support its development, despite its Communist regime. This was done with the goal of further tearing
China away from the USSR and strengthening its own influence in the Far East, to the detriment of Soviet
influence. It is very characteristic that this globalist club was founded primarily on the model of the CFR,
the structure that had pioneered the rapid development of geopolitics in the USA already at the time of
Versailles, and with which the founder of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, had worked closely in the last
years of his life. The idea of uniting the three principle cores of the capitalist world into a single,
coordinated center had already been expressed during the creation of the CFR at Versailles. At that time
the discussion was about the organization of a corresponding structure in Europe, particularly in England,
where the Royal Institute of Strategic Studies (Chatham House)
[79]
was to fulfill this function (and this was
realized), and of the creation of an “Institute of Pacific Studies” (this was not). Projects about the global
governance of the world in the interests of the civilization of the Sea, therefore, started to form in the
1920s, in parallel with the new geopolitical course of Woodrow Wilson. The first organizational
subdivisions were formed to assist in the realization of these projects. We see a new branch of similar
initiatives in the 1970s in the creation of the “Trilateral Commission.”
Geopolitically, and with an eye to the fact that it was a question of the deep opposition of the
civilization of Land against the civilization of the Sea, the aspiration to draw the capitalist and socialist
systems together (to reconcile Land and Sea) on an economic, ideological, and practical level was an
exceedingly contradictory strategy, which had three theoretically possible explanations:
1.
Either it was the cunning of the civilization of the Sea to put the watchfulness of the civilization of Land
to sleep and to compel the USSR to make ideological and other concessions to the West;
2.
or it was a large-scale special operation of Soviet Communist groups of influence in Western countries,
striving to weaken the civilization of the Sea and to unobtrusively compel it to recognize the same set of
values as the civilization of Land (socialism, centralized planning);
3.
or it was a sincere wish to bring to a close “the great war of continents” and to unite Land and Sea in an
unprecedented and unimaginable synthesis.
In the first case, the strategy of convergence was intended to weaken the USSR and, possibly, bring about its

fall. In the second, it was to have hastened the prospects of world revolution and the fall of the capitalist
system (the ascent to power of Leftist forces). In the third, it was meant to bring about the appearance of a
new utopian ideology, based on a complete overcoming of geopolitics and its dual symmetry.
Today we know perfectly well how the interest in this theory and these institutions ended for the
USSR, but in the 1960s and 1970s, both the supporters and the opponents of convergence could only guess
at its actual content and at the results that would come when it would be carried out.
Beginning in the 1970s, theories of globalization began to take shape, based on predictions about the
unification of humanity into a single social system (One World) with a common statehood (World State)
and world leadership (World Government). But the concrete structure and principles on which this “one
world” would have to be based remained approximate, as the outcome of the “Cold War” was still
undecided. This could have been world capitalism (the victory of the civilization of the Sea), world
socialism (the victory of the civilization of Land and the success of the world revolution), or some kind of
mixed variant (the theory of convergence and the marginal, humanistic projects being carried out in the
spirit of the Club of Rome, based on foresight about “the limits of growth,” ecology, pacifism, predictions
of the exhaustibility of natural resources, and so on).
The Geopolitics of Perestroika
Until 1985, the attitude in the USSR toward the idea of drawing closer to the West was generally skeptical.
This only changed slightly under Andropov. On his instructions, a group of Soviet scientists and academic
institutes were given the task of cooperating with globalist structures (the Club of Rome, the CFR, the
Trilateral Commission, and others). Overall, however, the principal foreign policy aims of the USSR
remained unchanged during the entire stretch from Stalin to Chernenko.
Changes in the USSR began with Gorbachev’s assumption of the office of General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He took office against the backdrop of the Afghanistan War, which
was more and more developing into a deadlock. From his first steps in the office of General Secretary,
Gorbachev encountered major problems. The social, economic, political, and ideological car began to stall.
Soviet society was in a state of apathy. The Marxist worldview had lost its appeal and only continued to be
broadcast by inertia. A growing percentage of the urban intelligentsia became increasingly attracted to
Western culture and wished for “Western” standards. The outskirts of the nation lost its potential for
modernization, and in some places the reverse processes of anti-modernization began; nationalist
sentiments flared up, and so on. The arms race and the necessity of constantly competing with a rather
dynamically developing capitalist system exhausted the economy. To an even greater extent, discontent in
the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, where the appeal of the Western capitalist lifestyle was felt even
more keenly, reached an apex, while the prestige of the USSR gradually fell. In these conditions, Gorbachev

had to make a decision about the future strategy of the USSR and of the entire Eastern bloc.
And he did make it. The decision was to adopt as a foundation, in a difficult situation,
the theories of
convergence and the propositions of the globalist groups and to begin drawing closer to the Western world
through one-sided concessions.
Most likely, Gorbachev and his advisors expected symmetrical actions from
the West: the West should have responded to each of Gorbachev’s concessions with analogous movements
in favor of the USSR. This algorithm was inherent in the foundations of the policy of perestroika. In
domestic policy, this meant the abandonment of the strict ideological Marxist dictatorship, the relaxation
of restrictions of non-Marxist philosophical and scientific theories, the cessation of pressure on religious
institutions (primarily the Russian Orthodox Church), a broadening of permissible interpretations of
Soviet history, a policy of the creation of small private enterprises (cooperatives), and the freer association
of citizens with shared political and ideological interests. In this sense, perestroika was a chain of steps
directed toward the adoption of democracy, parliamentism, the market, “
glasnost
,” and the expansion of
zones of civic freedom. This was a movement
away from the socialist model of society and toward a
bourgeois-democratic and capitalist model
. But at first this movement was gradual and remained in a
social-democratic framework; democratization and liberalism were combined with the preservation of the
party model of the administration of the country, a strict vertical and planned economy, and the control of
the party agencies and special services that administered sociopolitical processes.
However, in other countries of the Eastern bloc, and on the periphery of the USSR itself, these
transformations were perceived as a manifestation of weakness and as unilateral concessions to the West.
This conclusion was confirmed by Gorbachev’s decision to finally remove all Soviet military forces from
Afghanistan in 1989, by his vacillations over the series of democratic revolutions that unfolded throughout
Eastern Europe, and by his inconsistent policies toward to the allied republics: Estonia, Lithuania and
Latvia, and Georgia and Armenia, the first republics involved in the establishment of independent
statehood.
Against this background, the West took up a well-defined position: while they encouraged Gorbachev
and his reforms in word only and extolled his fateful undertaking, no symmetrical step was taken in favor of
the USSR; not the smallest concession was made in any area to Soviet political, strategic, and economic
interests. So, by 1991 Gorbachev’s policies led to the gigantic, planetary system of Soviet influence being
brought down
, while the vacuum of control was quickly filled by the second pole, the USA and NATO.
And if in the first stages of perestroika it was still possible to consider it as a special maneuver in the “Cold
War” (like the plan for the “Finlandization of Europe,” worked out by Beria; Gorbachev himself spoke of a
“Common European House”)
[80]
then by the end of the 1980s it became clear that we were dealing with a
case of direct and one-sided
capitulation
.
Gorbachev agreed to remove all Soviet troops from the German Democratic Republic, disbanded the

Warsaw Pact, recognized the legitimacy of the new bourgeois governments in the countries of Eastern
Europe, and moved to meet the aspirations of the Soviet republics to receive a large degree of sovereignty
and independence and to revise the agreement underlying the formation of the USSR on new terms. More
and more, Gorbachev also rejected the social-democratic line, opening a path for direct bourgeois-capitalist
reforms in the economy. In a word, Gorbachev’s reforms amounted to
recognition of the defeat of the
USSR in its confrontation with the West and the USA.
Geopolitically, perestroika is not only a repudiation of the ideological confrontation with the capitalist
world, but also a complete contradiction of Russia’s entire historical path as a Eurasian, great-continental
formation, as the Heartland, and as the civilization of Land. This was the undermining of Eurasia from
within; the voluntary self-destruction of one of the poles of the world system; a pole that had not arisen
only in the Soviet period, but which had taken shape over centuries and millennia according to the natural
logic of geopolitical history and the rules of objective geopolitics. Gorbachev took the position of
Westernism, which quickly led to the collapse of the global structure and to a new version of the Time of
Troubles.
[81]
Instead of Eurasianism, Atlanticism was adopted; in place of the civilization of Land and its
sociological set of values was placed the normatives of the civilization of the Sea, which were contrary to it
in all respects. If we compare the geopolitical significance of these reforms with other periods in Russian
history, we cannot escape the feeling that they are something unprecedented.
The Time of Troubles in Russian history did not last long, and was followed by periods of new,
sovereign rebirth. Even the most frightening dissensions preserved this or that integrating political center,
which became in time a pole for a new centralization of the Russian lands. And even the Russian
Westernizers, oriented toward Europe, adopted ideas and mores, technologies, and skills along with
European customs, used to reinforce the might of the Russian state, to secure its borders, and to assert its
national interests. Thus, the Westernizer Peter or the pro-German Catherine II,
[82]
with all their
enthusiasm for Europe, increased the territory of Russia and achieved new military victories for it. Even the
Bolsheviks, obsessed by the idea of world revolution and having agreed willingly to the fettering terms of
the Brest-Litovsk world, began in a short period to strengthen the Soviet Union, returning its outskirts in
the west and the south under the rule of Moscow. The case of Gorbachev is an absolute exception in
Russian geopolitical history. This history did not know such betrayal even in its worst periods. Not only was
the socialist system destroyed; the Heartland was destroyed from within.
The Geopolitical Significance of the Collapse of the USSR
Because of the collapse of the USSR,
the Yalta World came to its logical end.
This means that the bipolar
model ended.
One pole ended its own existence.
Now, one could say with certainty that the theory of
convergence was
the cunning of the civilization of the Sea.
This cunning conceived an action and brought

victory to thalassocracy in the “Cold War.” No convergence occurred in practice, and according to the
extent of the one-sided concessions from the side of the USSR, the West only strengthened its capitalist and
liberal ideology, expanding its influence farther and farther throughout the ideological vacuum that had
formed. Coupled with this, NATO’s zone of control also expanded. Thus, at first almost all the countries
of Eastern Europe joined NATO (Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland,
Slovenia, Croatia), and later the former republics of the USSR (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia). This means that
the structure of the world after the “Cold War”
preserved one of its poles,
the civilization of the Sea, the
West, Leviathan, Carthage: the bourgeois-democratic bloc with its center in the USA.
The end of the bipolar world meant, therefore, the victory of one of its poles and its strengthening at
the expense of the loser. One of the poles vanished, while the other remained and became the natural
dominating structure of the entire global geopolitical system. This victory of the civilization of the Sea over
the civilization of the Land constitutes the essence of globalization. From now on, the world was global and
unipolar. Sociologically, globalization is the planetary spreading of a single model
of Western bourgeois-
democratic, liberal, market society,
the society of merchants;
thalassocracy.
The USA is the center and core
of the reality of this (now global) bourgeois-democratic thalassocracy. Democratization, Westernization,
Americanization, and globalism essentially represent various aspects of
the total attack by the civilization of
the Sea,
the hegemony of the Sea. This was the result of the planetary duel that was the primary factor in
international politics throughout the twentieth century. During Khrushchev’s rule, the Soviet version of
tellurocracy suffered a colossal catastrophe, and its territorial zones separating the Heartland from the
warm seas came under the control of the sea power to a significant degree. That is how we should
understand both the expansion of NATO in the East at the expense of the former socialist countries and
allied republics and the later increase of Western influence in the post-Soviet space.
The collapse of the USSR put an end to the Soviet era of Russia’s geopolitics. This drama ended with
such a severe defeat that there is no analogue to it in Russia’s preceding history; not even when it fell into
complete dependence on the Mongols, and even that was compensated for by integration into a
tellurocratic political model. In the present case, we see the awesome victory of the principal enemies of all
tellurocracy, with the crippling defeat of Rome and the triumph of the new Carthage.
[1]
The Provisional Government arose in the aftermath of the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March 1917, and was intended to
organize the elections that would lead to the formation of a new government. It was made up of a coalition of many different
parties. Following the Bolshevik revolution in October, it was abolished.—Ed.
[2]
However, the most populous lodge of the Great East of Russia’s Peoples (a Masonic lodge in Czarist Russia—Ed.) in 1912–1916 was
undoubtedly the Duma lodge, “the Rose,” which the Masonic deputies of the Fourth State Duma joined in 1912. It was opened on
November 15, 1912. Its principle difference from the Third Duma consisted in the explicit decrease of the center (the number of
Octobrists in the Duma was sharply reduced: instead of 120, only 98 remained, while the number of Rightists grew to 185from 148;
and the number of Leftists, members of the Constitutional Democratic Party (known as Kadets—Ed.) and progressives increased
from 98 to 107).
[3]
The Triple Entente was an alliance between the United Kingdom, France, and Russia that was established in 1907.—Ed.
[4]
Those who supported the Provisional Government that was established following the February Revolution of 1917.—Ed.

[5]
Michael Alexandrovich (1878–1918) was a prince who was second in line to the throne of the Czar. Following the abdication of
Nicholas II, Alexandrovich was selected to succeed him over the Czar’s own son, Alexei, as the latter was regarded as being too ill to
rule. He refused to accept the throne, however. This did not win him any favors from the Bolsheviks, who murdered him in 1918.—
Ed.
[6]
These councils were established following the February Revolution to maintain order until elections could be held, and to determine
the nature and composition of the new government.—Ed.
[7]
The Socialist Revolutionaries were socialists, but not Marxists. They were one of the major parties in Russia at the time of the
Revolution.—Ed.
[8]
Both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were offshoots of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Following the departure of
the Mensheviks, it became a Bolshevik organization, eventually becoming the Communist Party of the USSR.—Ed.
[9]
The Mensheviks had undergone a split with the Bolsheviks in 1904 over matters of ideology and membership in the Party.
Thereafter they were a Communist opposition party, viewed as having been more moderate than the Bolsheviks.—Ed.
[10]
Pavel Milyukov (1859–1943) was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government.—Ed.
[11]
Alexander Guchkov (1862–1936) was the Minister of War in the Provisional Government.—Ed.
[12]
The UCR was the council that assumed power in Ukraine following the February Revolution in Russia with the intention of
securing Ukrainian independence. It was declared illegal by the Soviets in December 1917.—Ed.
[13]
Between July 3 and 7, soldiers and workers in Petrograd, backed by the Bolsheviks, held demonstrations against the Provisional
Government. The government, accusing the demonstrators of fomenting a coup and suppressed it using military force, leading to a
temporary setback for the Bolsheviks.—Ed.
[14]
The Seim was the Finnish popular assembly.—Ed.
[15]
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart (1887–1970) was the British Consul-General at the time of the Russian Revolution. On behalf
of his superiors in London, and in conjunction with the Secret Intelligence Service, he attempted to persuade the Bolsheviks to
remain in the war against Germany, but was unsuccessful. After a series of covert attempts to influence the course of the Revolution,
in 1918, with the secret agent Sidney Reilly, he attempted to have Lenin assassinated and the Bolsheviks overthrown, becoming
known as the “Lockhart Plot.” It failed, although Lockhart was later allowed to leave Russia in a prisoner exchange.—Ed.
[16]
The All Russian Constituent Assembly was formed as the result of an election held in November 1917. When it became clear that
the number of representatives from the Socialist Revolutionaries would outnumber the Bolsheviks in the Assembly by a wide
margin, they began casting doubt on the validity of the Assembly, and it was only allowed to meet for one session in January 1918
before it was dissolved.—Ed.
[17]
Yakov Blumkin (1898–1929) was the head of the Cheka’s (the revolutionary secret police) counter-intelligence operations at the
time. He was forgiven by the Bolsheviks for having participated I the SR coup, and later worked as an assassin and a secret agent.
Dispatched to help foment revolutionary subversion against the British in the Middle East, his Oriental adventures made him
famous. He later befriended Trotsky, After Trotsky’s exile from the USSR, he acted as a courier for Trotsky’s messages; when this
was discovered, he was executed on Stalin’s orders.—Ed.
[18]
The White movement was a coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces, including monarchists, socialists, conservatives, democrats and
others who wanted to overthrow the Bolsheviks. It received support from the émigrés and from Western governments. The
movement was named after the color of the uniforms of the Czarist army.—Ed.
[19]
The Kadets were the members of the Constitutional Democratic Party, which favored democratic reforms and a constitutional
monarchy.—Ed.
[20]
The Octobrists, or the Union of October 17, was a centrist party that supported constitutional monarchy in Russia in accordance
with Nicholas II’s October Manifesto, issued in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1905.—Ed.
[21]
A Cossack leader.—Ed.
[22]
French: “quarantine line,” applied to the newly-independent states between the USSR and Europe in the hope that they could serve
as a bulwark against the spread of Communism.—Ed.
[23]
Brian Blouet,“Sir Halford Mackinder as British High Commissioner to South Russia 1919–1920,”
Geographical Journal
142 (1976),
pp. 228–236.
[24]
George Curzon (1859–1925) was a British politician particularly concerned about countering the influence of Russia in Central
Asia. He served as Viceroy of colonial India, and was Foreign Secretary at the time that Mackinder was in Russia.—Ed.
[25]
Ibid.
[26]
Petr Savitskii,
Outlines of International Relations
(Krasnodar, 1919);
The Continent Eurasia
(Moscow: Agraf, 1997), pp. 382–398.
[27]
Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920) was appointed as Supreme Commander of the White forces in 1918, a position he held
until his execution by the Bolsheviks in 1920.—Ed.
[28]
Ibid., p. 390.

[29]
Alexander Dugin,
Foundations of Geopolitics
(Moscow: Arctogaia, 2000).
[30]
Semyon Aralov,
Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat

1922–1923
(Moscow: Institute of International Relations,1960).
[31]
The military intelligence arm of the Red Army.—Ed.
[32]
Alfred Mahan (1840–1914), in his strategic writings, emphasized sea power above all else in military matters, and called for the
modernization of the American Navy. His ideas were very influential, both at home and in Europe.—Ed.
[33]
Isaiah Bowman (1878–1950) was an advisor to Woodrow Wilson at Versailles, and was later a territorial advisor to the U.S.
Department of State during the Second World War.—Ed.
[34]
Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) was a German General who helped to establish geopolitics as a discipline in Germany. A friend of
Rudolf Hess, His ideas were influential on the development of the international strategy of the Nazis, although he himself was never
a supporter of the Nazis, his wife being half-Jewish, and Haushofer himself was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp
following the assassination attempt against Hitler in 1944, and his son was executed.—Ed.
[35]
Karl Haushofer,
Der Kontinentalblock: Mitteleurope, Eurasien, Japan
(Berlin: Eher, 1941); Alexander Dugin,
The Foundations of
Geopolitics
(Moscow: Arctogaia, 2000), pp. 825–836.
[36]
Petr Savitskii, “The Geographical and Geopolitical Foundations of Eurasianism,”

in
Twentieth-Century Classics of Geopolitics
(Moscow: AST Publishing, 2003); Petr Savitskii,
The Continent Eurasia
(Moscow: Agraf, 1997)
,
pp. 295–303.
[37]
Joseph Stalin,
On the Foundations of Leninism
, in Joseph Stalin,
Essays
, vol. 6 (Moscow: State Publisher of Political Literature,
1948). English translation:
Foundations of Leninism
(New York: International Publishers, 1939).
[38]
Joseph Stalin, ‘The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists,’ in Joseph Stalin,
Essays
, vol. 6. English
translation:
Problems of Leninism
(Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976).
[39]
The term Turanic refers to those peoples of Central Asia who were united by the Uraltaic group of languages. The Avars, who were
a Turanic group of nomadic warriors, established a sizeable empire that spanned large areas of Central Asia and Eastern Europe
from the sixth until the ninth century, known as the Great Turan.—Ed.
[40]
Costanzo Preve,
Filosofia e Geopolitica
(Parma: Edizioni all’insegna del Veltro, 2005).
[41]
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was an important German jurist who wrote about political science, geopolitics and constitutional law.
He was part of the Conservative Revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. He also briefly supported the National Socialists at
the beginning of their regime, although they later turned against him. He remains highly influential in the fields of law and
philosophy. He introduces the terms Leviathan and Behemoth in his book,
Land and Sea
(Washington: Plutarch Press, 1997).—Ed.
[42]
The Third Communist International, or Comintern as it was known, was established in Moscow 1919 with the intention of
fomenting Communist revolutions throughout the world, its ultimate aim being the establishment of global Communism. It
replaced the Second International, which had collapsed under the pressures of the First World War. It was dissolved in 1943 on the
grounds that the problems of revolution in each nation around the world were too complex to be handled centrally.—Ed.
[43]
Karl Radek (1885–1939) was a Polish Jew who was active in Marxist and Communist circles in Poland, Germany and Russia over
the course of his life. In December 1918 he went to Germany, at the behest of the Bolsheviks, and aided efforts to foment a
Communist revolution there. Radek was sympathetic to the activities of the Nazis and other Right-wing groups during his time
there. He later returned to Russia and became an enemy of Stalin, and died as a prisoner in a labor camp.—Ed.
[44]
National Bolshevik ideology emerged in Germany after the First World War as an attempt to synthesise Communism and
nationalism. It was formulated by some of the participants in Germany’s Conservative Revolution, such as Ernst Jünger and Ernst
Niekisch.—Ed.
[45]
Ernst Niekisch (1889–1967) was a German politician who was initially a Communist, but by the 1920s sought to merge
Communism with nationalism. He published a journal,
Widerstand
(Resistance), and applied the term National Bolshevik to
himself and his followers. He rejected National Socialism as insufficiently socialist, and was imprisoned by them in 1937, and
became blind. Upon his release in 1945, he supported the Soviet Union and moved to East Germany, but became disillusioned by the
Soviets’ treatment of workers and returned to the West in 1953.—Ed.
[46]
Mikhail Agursky,
The Ideology of National-Bolshevism
(Moscow: Algorithm, 2003).
[47]
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the respective foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, was an
agreement between the two powers in which the Soviets pledged not to get involved in any European conflict, while the Germans
agreed to forego an alliance with Japan, which was then at war with the Soviets. Its provisions also divided Eastern Europe into zones
of future German and Soviet control, paving the way for the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland that began the Second World
War. It was signed on 23 August 1939.—Ed.
[48]
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and the empires of Britain, France, and Turkey, as well as Italy, between
1853 and 1856 to halt Russia’s expansion into the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Russia was defeated.—Ed.
[49]
The Munich Agreement was concluded in September 1938 between Germany, Britain, France and Italy, allowing Germany to seize
control of large portions of Czechoslovakia.—Ed.
[50]
Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) had held the position of Deputy
Führer
since 1933, effectively being the most powerful man in the

National Socialist hierarchy after Hitler himself. Concerned that Germany would be faced with a war on two fronts following the
imminent invasion of the USSR, Hess flew to Scotland on 10 May 1941 in the hope of conducting peace negotiations with the
British. Upon arrival, he was arrested and remained imprisoned for the rest of his life. Hitler denied any foreknowledge of Hess’
flight and condemned it, although some historians have alleged that it may have been sanctioned by both Hitler and the British
government as part of a secret negotiation that failed.—Ed.
[51]
This Republic was the largest and most central of the various Soviet republics comprising the USSR, and included the territory of
Russia itself.—Ed.
[52]
The Tehran Conference was the first of several conferences when the leaders of the major Allied powers met.—Ed.
[53]
Halford Mackinder, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,”
Foreign Affairs
(1943), no. 21.
[54]
Jean Thiriart (1922–1992) was a Belgian nationalist with strong Leftist and Third World sympathies. Opposed to both the United
States and the Soviet Union, he founded a movement, Jeune Europe, which sought to liberate Europe from both by cooperating with
nationalist and Communist revolutionaries in the Third World. Late in life, he came to see himself as a National Bolshevik.—Ed.
[55]
Jean Thiriart,
Un Empire de quatre cents millions d’hommes, l’Europe
(Nantes: Avatar Editions, 2007). English edition forthcoming
from Arktos.—Ed.
[56]
Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) was a Soviet politician who was in charge of the NKVD (secret police) from 1938, during the Great
Purge, until 1946, and was then Deputy Premier. He was tried and executed for treason shortly after Stalin’s death.—Ed.
[57]
Jean Thiriart
, Euro-Soviet Empire
. This book was never completed and never published. Claudio Mutti’s biography of Thiriart,
which includes a discussion of the uncompleted project, is online at
http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/the-struggle-of-jean-
thiriart/13850/
.
[58]
George F. Kennan (1904–2005) was an American diplomat whose views were highly influential upon America’s geopolitical
strategy towards the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War.—Ed.
[59]
Robert Stausz-Hupé (1904–2002) was an American diplomat who was regarded as a hard-liner during the Cold War.—Ed.
[60]
Arab socialism is a form of socialism that emerged in the Arab world in the 1940s, which combines socialism with pan-Arab
nationalism. Some exemplary Arab socialist regimes have been that of Nasser in Egypt, and the Ba’athist regimes of Iraq and Syria.—
Ed.
[61]
Theodore Hall (1925–1999), along with the British scientist Klaus Fuchs, worked on the Manhattan Project, and passed atomic
secrets to the Soviets. Although he was questioned by the FBI, no definitive proof of his subversion was discovered until decades
later.—Ed.
[62]
Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) was a leading Bolshevik from before the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. He most
famously served as the Soviet Union’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939–1949 and again from 1953–1956. He spearheaded the
USSR’s treaty with the Third Reich in 1939. He defended the policies of the Stalinist era until his death,—Ed.
[63]
Détente refers to the period of the lessening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, which began in the late
1960s and continued through the 1970s, marked by an increased willingness of both parties to compromise in order to preserve
peace.—Ed.
[64]
Igor Shafarevich (b. 1923) is a mathematician, also known for a book he published in 1980,
The Socialist Phenomenon
, which
claimed that socialism was inherently anti-individualistic and nihilistic. In 1982 he wrote a book called Russophobia, in which he
claimed that elites with values different from those of the cultures they inhabit come to power and initiate reforms in nations, saying
that the Jews occupied this role in the Russian Revolution.—Ed.
[65]
Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death. His tenure, especially the latter part of it,
marked a period of increasing economic and social stagnation and increasing Soviet aggression in foreign affairs.—Ed.
[66]
Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917–1979) was a socialist who was President of Afghanistan from April 1978, when he came to power
following a coup, until he was deposed and murdered, which was one of the catalysts for the subsequent Soviet occupation.—Ed.
[67]
Hafizullah Amin (1929–1979), although a Communist, attempted to orient Afghanistan away from the Soviet Union. The Soviets,
alarmed by this, sent in troops and accused Amin of being a CIA agent. He was killed in the subsequent fighting.—Ed.
[68]
Babrak Karmal (1929–1996) was President of Afghanistan from the end of 1979 until 1986.—Ed.
[69]
Zbigniew Brzezinski (b. 1928) was the National Security Advisor during the Carter administration. He was a hawk on the Soviet
Union and began to move the United States away from the policy of détente with the Soviets that it had been following.—Ed.
[70]
The Great Game refers to the competition between the British and Russian empires for influence in Afghanistan, which continued
from the early nineteenth until the early twentieth century.—Ed.
[71]
Andrei Sensarev (1865–1937) was a Russian general who volunteered for the Red Army during the Russian Revolution. Having
earlier served throughout the Middle East and Asia, he became the head of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow following his
military career.—Ed.
[72]
Andrei Snesarev,
Afghanistan: Preparing for the Bolshevik Incursion into Afghanistan and Attack on India, 1919–20
(Helion &
Company, 2014).

[73]
Yuri Andropov (1914–1984) was a Communist from his teenage years and, as ambassador to Hungary, helped to crush the 1956
revolution there. He was appointed head of the KGB in 1967, and assisted the violent suppression of the Prague Spring uprising, and
became a member of the Politburo in 1973. He worked for the suppression of Soviet dissidents abroad and was also the main
proponent of the intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. He became General Secretary in November 1982 but only held the position
for 15 months, prior to his death.—Ed.
[74]
Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) was a lifelong Communist who had been a member of the Central Committee since 1965.—
Ed.
[75]
Aurelio Peccei (1908–1984) had worked for the Italian automotive company Fiat since the 1930s, and also became President of the
Italian office supply company Olivetti in 1964. During the Fascist period he was involved in opposition activities. Peccei was also
instrumental in integrating the findings of the 1972 study
Limits to Growth
, which held that a growing world population and
dwindling resources would eventually lead to a civilizational collapse, into the Club of Rome’s outlook.—Ed.
[76]
Alexander King (1909–2007) was a British chemist who helped to found the sustainable development movement.—Ed.
[77]
Alexander Shevyakin,
The Mystery of the Death of the USSR
(Moscow: Veche, 2004).
[78]
Founded in 1976 as a branch of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) under the Club of Rome; the main
subdivision of the IIASA was in Vienna.
[79]
Chatham House is a non-profit, non-governmental organization founded in 1920 for the scientific study of international affairs
that emerged from discussions at the Versailles peace conference. It established the Chatham House Rule, which states that
participants in one of their events can freely discuss their seminars, but that they cannot identify the speakers or reproduce the
statements exactly, in order to allow speakers to feel free to be more frank.—Ed.
[80]
In a speech he gave in Prague in April 1987, Gorbachev in which he called for a pan-European mentality that would transcend the
political divisions which then divided the Continent.—Ed.
[81]
The Time of Troubles refers to a period between 1598 and 1613 which saw one of the worst famines in Russian history, as well as
political instability, disputes over the throne, and invasion and occupation of Russian lands by the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth.—Ed.
[82]
Catherine II (1729–1796) was Empress of the Russian Empire and presided over what came to be known as the Golden Age of
Russian history. She was victorious in many wars and expanded the territory of the Empire greatly. A student of the French
philosophers, she advocated for many of the ideals of the Enlightenment.—Ed.

The demarcation of political forces in the Duma intensified, and with it the hopes of the government for the creation of a pro-
government majority in it collapsed. From year to year, the Fourth State Duma became ever more opposed to the leadership, and
what’s more, criticism of it was heard not only on the Left but also on the Right.
The Octobrist M. V. Rodzianko became the chairman of the Fourth State Duma.
There were at least 23 Freemasons in the Fourth State Duma: V. A. Vinogradov, N. K. Volkov, I. P. Demidov, A. M. Kolyubakin,
N. V. Nekrasov, A. A. Orlov-Davidov, V. A. Stepanov, F. F. Kokoshin, K. K. Chernosvitov, A. I. Shingarev, F. A. Golovin, D. N.
Grigorovich-Barsky, N. P. Vasilenko, F. R. Steinheil, A. N. Bokeikhanov, A. A. Svechin, E. P. Gegechkori, M. I. Skobelev, N. C.
Chkheidze, A. I. Chkhenkeli, I. N Efremov, A. I. Konovalov, and A. F. Kerensky. All of them, as has already been noted, were
members of the Duma lodge, “the Rose.” The progressive, I. N. Efremov, directed it.
The decisive condition for admission into the Duma lodge was not the deputy’s party affiliation, as is customary in Duma
factions, but precisely his organizational affiliation to one of the Masonic lodges.
“In the Fourth State Duma,” testified former Freemason L. A. Velikhov, “I entered the so-called Masonic association, into which
entered the representatives from the Leftist progressives (Efremov), theLeftist Kadets (Nekrasov, Volkov, Stepanov), the
trudoviks
(Kerensky), Social Democrats (Chkheidze, Skobelev) and which set as its aim a bloc of all the Duma’s opposition parties for the
overthrow of the autocracy.” From the Kadets, besides the aforementioned L. A. Velikhov, Volkov, Nekrasov and Stepanov, V. A.
Vinogradov, I. P. Demidov, A. M. Kolyubakin, A. A. Orlov-Davidov and V. A. Stepanov also entered. From the Mensheviks, E. P.
Gegechkori, M. I. Skobelev, N. C. Chkheidze, A. I. Chkhenkeli; from the progressives, I. N. Efremov and A. I. Konovalov; and from
the
trudoviks
, A. F. Kerensky.
Aleksei Serkov,
The History of Russian Freemasonry 1845–1945
(Saint Petersburg: Novikoff Publishing, 2000).

C
HAPTER
III
The Geopolitics of Yeltsin’s Russia and its Sociological
Significance
The Great Loss of Rome: The Vision of G. K. Chesterton
Geopolitically, the disintegration of the USSR signified an event of colossal importance, affecting the entire
structure of the global geopolitical map. According to its geopolitical features, the confrontation of the
West and East, the capitalist camp and the socialist one, was the peak of the deep process of the great war of
continents, a planetary duel between the civilization of Land and the civilization of the Sea, raised to the
highest degree of intensity. All preceding history led to the tense apogee of this battle, which reached its
qualitative resolution in 1991.
Now, with the death of the USSR, the collapse of the civilization of Land
was realized, the bulwark of tellurocracy fell, and the Heartland received a fatal blow.
To understand the meaning of this pivotal moment of world history, we should recall what the English
writer G. K. Chesterton said in his work
The Everlasting Man
[1]
about the meaning of the victory of Rome
in the series of Punic Wars
[2]
against Carthage. With slight abridgement, we will narrate this episode, which
reflects the essence of the geopolitical understanding of world history.
The Punic Wars once looked as if they would never end; it is not easy to say when they ever began. The Greeks and the Sicilians
had already been fighting vaguely on the European side against the African city. Carthage had defeated Greece and conquered
Sicily. Carthage had also planted herself firmly in Spain; between Spain and Sicily the Latin city was contained and would have
been crushed; if the Romans had been of the sort to be easily crushed. Yet the interest of the story really consists in the fact that
Rome was crushed. If there had not been certain moral elements alongside material elements, the story would have ended where
Carthage certainly thought it had ended. It is common enough to blame Rome for not making peace. But it was a true popular
instinct that there could be no peace with that sort of people. It is common enough to blame the Roman for his
Delenda est
Carthago
; Carthage must be destroyed. It is commoner to forget that, to all appearance, Rome itself was destroyed. […] Carthage
was an aristocracy, as are most of such mercantile states. The pressure of the rich on the poor was impersonal and irresistible. For
such aristocracies never permit personal government, which is perhaps why this one was envious of personal talent. But genius can
arise anywhere, even in a governing class. As if to make the world’s supreme test as terrible as possible, it was ordained that one of
the great houses of Carthage should produce a man who came out of those gilded palaces with all the energy and originality of
Napoleon coming from nowhere. At the worst crisis of the war Rome learned that Italy itself, by a military miracle, was invaded
from the North. Hannibal, the Grace of Baal as his name ran in his own tongue, had dragged a ponderous chain of armaments
over the starry solitudes of the Alps and pointed south to the city that he had been pledged by all his dreadful gods to destroy. […]
The Roman augurs and scribes who said in that hour that it brought forth unearthly prodigies, that a child was born with the
head of an elephant or that stars fell like hailstones, had a far more philosophical grasp of what had happened than the modern
historian who can see nothing in it but a success of strategy concluding a rivalry in commerce. Something far different was felt
there and then, as it is always felt by those who experience a foreign atmosphere entering theirs like fog or a foul stench. It was no
mere military defeat, and certainly no mere mercantile rivalry, that filled the Roman imagination with such hideous omens of
nature herself becoming unnatural. It was Moloch upon the mountain of the Latins, looking with his appalling face across the
plain; it was Baal who trampled the vineyards with his feet of stone; it was the voice of Tanit the invisible, behind her trailing veils,

whispering of the love that is more horrible than hate. The burning of the Italian cornfields and the ruin of the Italian vines were
something more than real; they were allegorical. They were the destruction of domestic and fruitful things, the withering of what
was human before that inhumanity that is far beyond the human thing called cruelty […] The war of the gods and demons seemed
already to have ended; the gods were dead. The eagles were lost; the legions were broken; nothing remained in Rome but honor
and the cold courage of despair.One thing still threatened Carthage: Carthage itself. There remained the inner working of an
element strong in all successful commercial states, and the presence of a spirit that we know. There was still the solid sense and
shrewdness of the men who manage big enterprises; there was still the advice of the best financial experts; there was still business
government; there was still the broad and sane outlook of practical men of affairs, and in these things could the Romans hope. As
the war trailed on to what seemed its tragic end, there grew gradually a faint and strange possibility that even now they might not
hope in vain. The plain businessmen of Carthage, thinking as such men do of living and dying races, saw clearly that Rome was
not only dying but dead. The war was over; it was obviously hopeless for the Italian city to resist any longer and inconceivable
that anybody should resist when it was hopeless. Under these circumstances, another set of broad, sound business principles had to
be considered. Wars were waged with money, and so cost money; perhaps they felt in their hearts, as do so many of their kind, that
after all war must be a little wicked because it costs money. The time had now come for peace, and still more for economy. The
messages sent by Hannibal periodically asking for reinforcements were a ridiculous anachronism; there were much more
important things to attend to now. It might be true that some consul or other had made a last dash to the Metaurus, had killed
Hannibal’s brother and flung his head, with Latin fury, into Hannibal’s camp. Mad actions of that sort showed how utterly
hopeless the Latins felt about their cause. But even excitable Latins could not be so mad to cling to a lost cause forever. So argued
the best financial experts and tossed aside more and more letters, full of rather queer alarmist reports. So argued and acted the
great Carthaginian Empire. That meaningless prejudice, the curse of commercial states, that stupidity is somehow practical and
that genius is somehow futile, led them to starve and abandon that great artist in the school of arms, whom the gods had given
them in vain.
Why do men entertain this queer idea that what is sordid must always overthrow what is magnanimous; that there is some dim
connection between brains and brutality, or that it does not matter if a man is dull if he is also mean? Why do they vaguely think
of all chivalry as sentiment and all sentiment as weakness? They do it because they are, like all men, primarily inspired by religion.
For them, as for all men, the first fact is their notion of the nature of things; their idea about what world they are living in. And it is
their faith that the only ultimate thing is fear and therefore that the very heart of the world is evil. They believe death is stronger
than life, and therefore dead things must be stronger than living things; whether those dead things are gold and iron and
machinery or rocks and rivers and forces of nature. It may sound fanciful to say that men we meet at tea-tables or talk with at
garden-parties are secretly worshippers of Baal or Moloch. But this kind of commercial mind has its own cosmic vision, and it is
the vision of Carthage. It has in it the brutal blunder of the ruin of Carthage. The Punic power fell because there is in this
materialism a mad indifference to real thought. By disbelieving in the soul, it comes to disbelieving in the mind. Being too
practical to be moral, it denies what every practical soldier calls the moral of an army. It fancies that money will fight when men
will no longer fight. So it was with the Punic merchant princes. Their religion was a religion of despair, even when their practical
fortunes were hopeful. How could they understand that the Romans could hope even when their fortunes were hopeless? Their
religion was a religion of force and fear; how could they understand that men can still despise fear even when they submit to force?
Their philosophy of the world had weariness in its very heart; above all they were weary of warfare; how should they understand
those who still wage war even when they are weary of it? In a word, how should they understand the mind of man, who had so
long bowed before mindless things, money and brute force and gods who had the hearts of beasts? They awoke suddenly to the
news that the embers they had disdained too much even to tread out were flames again; that Hasdrubal was defeated, that
Hannibal was outnumbered, that Scipio had carried the war into Spain; that he had carried it into Africa. Before the gates of the
golden city Hannibal fought his last fight for it and lost, and Carthage fell as nothing has fallen since Satan. The name of the New
City remains only as a name. There is no stone of it left on the sand. Another war was indeed waged before the final destruction:
but the destruction was final. Only men digging in its deep foundation centuries after found a heap of hundreds of little skeletons,
the holy relics of that religion. For Carthage fell because she was faithful to her own philosophy and had carried to its logical
conclusion her vision of the universe. Moloch had eaten his children.
The gods had risen again, and the demons had been defeated after all. But they had been defeated by the defeated, and almost

defeated by the dead. Nobody understands the romance of Rome, and why she rose afterwards to a representative leadership that
seemed almost fated and fundamentally natural. Who does not keep in mind the agony of horror and humiliation through which
she had continued to testify to the sanity that is the soul of Europe? She came to stand alone amid an empire because she had once
stood alone amid ruin and waste. After that all men knew in their hearts that she had been representative of mankind, even when
she was rejected of men. And there fell on her the shadow from a shining and still invisible light and the burden of things to be. It is
not for us to guess in what manner or moment the mercy of God might have rescued the world, but it is certain that the struggle
which established Christendom would have been very different if there had been an empire of Carthage instead of an empire of
Rome. We have to thank the patience of the Punic Wars if, in after ages, divine things descended at least upon human things and
not inhuman. Europe evolved into its own vices and its own impotence… but the worst it evolved into was not like what it had
escaped. Can any man in his senses compare the great wooden doll, which the children expected to eat a little of the dinner, with
the great idol, which would have been expected to eat the children? That is the measure of how far the world went astray,
compared to how far it might have gone astray. If the Romans were ruthless, they were so toward an enemy and not merely a rival.
They remembered not trade routes and regulations, but the faces of sneering men, and they hated the hateful soul of Carthage… If,
after all these ages, we are in some sense at peace with paganism, and can think more kindly of our fathers, it is well to remember
what was and might have been. For this reason alone we can take lightly the load of antiquity and need not shudder at a nymph
on a stone fountain or a cupid on a valentine. Laughter and sadness link us with things long past and remembered without
dishonor, and we can see not altogether without tenderness the twilight sinking around the Sabine farm and hear the household
gods rejoice when Catullus comes home to Sirmio.
Deleta est Carthago
.
[3]
In 1991, something
directly contrary
to the historic victory of Rome over Carthage occurred. Plunged into
dust more than two thousand years ago, civilization took revenge. This time Rome fell (the Third Rome),
and Carthage won a victory. The course of world history was reversed. All those cruel words that
Chesterton directed against Carthage are perfectly applicable to those who won a victory in the “Cold
War.”
Mercantile civilization prevailed over a heroic, ascetic, and Spartan civilization.
The putrid spirit of
plutocracy proved stronger than the perplexed and confused “Romans” of socialism, who had lost their
vigilance. Significantly, Chesterton ties Rome’s victory over Carthage to such events unique to Christianity
as the birth of Christ in the Roman Empire, a land civilization. By this logic, only the Antichrist could have
been born in a sea civilization.
The First Stage of the Collapse: The Weakening of Soviet Influence in the Global Leftist Movement
The collapse of the USSR proceeded in a few stages. The first stage was characterized by a weakening of the
influence of the USSR in foreign countries: in Africa, Latin America, the Far East, and Western Europe
(where, under the banner of “Eurocommunism,” a reorientation of Leftist and Communist parties away
from the Soviet Union to petty-bourgeois and specifically European political realities had begun). This had
already begun in the 1970s and reached its apogee in the 1980s. In this period, the propaganda campaign
against the denunciation of “Stalin’s repressions” and the totalitarian Soviet regime reached its peak, and
even Leftist political circles preferred to acquiesce in this criticism to remain politically correct. In the
1980s, especially after Gorbachev came to power, Moscow not only did not try to oppose something to
these tendencies, but adopted them and began to gradually repeat the criticisms of Stalinism and, later, of
Leninism, undermining the foundations of Soviet historical self-consciousness. Instead of strengthening its

influence in the global Leftist movement according to its geopolitical interests, the USSR adopted those
propaganda clichés that had been implanted into this movement by the pro-capitalist, bourgeois powers
interested only in weakening the land civilization and strengthening the sea civilization.
The representatives of the Fourth International,
[4]
the Trotskyists, played a special role in this. Already
being radical opponents of Stalin and his policy of building socialism in one country from the 1920s and
1930s, Trotskyites made the USSR their main enemy, and in this fight with the USSR they joined in
solidarity with any powers they could, including those they considered their “class enemies.” Hatred toward
the USSR and Stalin became the main feature of Trotskyism and led many of its representatives to side with
the liberal camp, and to join the ranks of the more consistent and radical Atlanticists.
[5]
These groups
contributed heavily to tearing the international Left and, more importantly, the Communist movement,
away from the USSR, beginning in the 1970s.
Because of these processes, the USSR’s network of influence in countries outside direct Soviet control
was undermined, weakened, and partially removed from the coordinating control of Moscow.
In other instances the same effect was produced by the inflexible policies of the USSR toward various
ideological forces in the countries of the Third World (in particular, in Africa and the Islamic countries)
where there was real opposition to American and Western European influence, but where no
preconditions for a full-fledged socialist movement existed historically. One of the clear instances was
Afghanistan, where the USSR made a bet only on the Communists, ignoring the many national and
religious groups which, under different conditions, could have been allies of the USSR in their rejection of
Americanism and liberal capitalism. Thus, toward the end of the 1980s, the outer zone of Soviet influence
in the world began to gradually fall to pieces.
Geopolitically, this
undermined the global structure of the influence of the Heartland,
which in the
epoch of the “Cold War” succeeded in transferring its fight with the civilization of the Sea to the periphery
of the Eurasian mainland, or altogether beyond its borders.
The Second Stage of the Collapse: The End of the Warsaw Pact
Anti-Soviet “revolutions” in the countries of Eastern Europe, which culminated in the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact and
the liquidation of the socialist camp,
were the second stage. This was a colossal blow
along the nearest zone of the USSR’s strategic defenses. The loss of Eastern Europe was a nightmare that
had haunted even Stalin and Beria, who had recognized the vulnerability of the structure of the European
borders. The way Gorbachev’s surrender of Eastern Europe proceeded was
the worst
possible scenario.
Soviet troops were hastily removed from there, and, on a wave of anti-Sovietism, the vacated space was
quickly filled by NATO troops, bourgeois ideology, and capitalist economics.
The Sea seized that which
escaped from the control of the Land.
Carthage united to its zone of influence the territories from which

Rome was expelled. Mackinder wrote, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the
Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
[6]
After 1989,
the “civilization of the sea” began to control Eastern Europe. Mackinder’s project, inherited by the
subsequent generation of Anglo-Saxon geopoliticians, all the way to Brzezinski, was put into practice.
Having lost Eastern Europe, the USSR lost its most important zone of defense and took a colossal
geopolitical blow. What is more, this blow was not compensated by anything and was not justified by
anything. The Soviet media of that period presented the events in Eastern Europe as the “victory of
democracy,” paralysing the will to self-preservation and healthy rationality in the USSR itself: our obvious
defeat was portrayed as the “victory of progress,” and so forth. In this situation, the blame for which rests
with Gorbachev and his circle, all the preconditions ripened for the final stage in this series of disasters, the
dissolution of the USSR itself.
The Third Stage of the Collapse: the State Committee on the State of Emergency and the End of the
USSR
This dissolution was evidently planned for June 1990, when the majority of Soviet Republics in the USSR,
including the RSFSR, proclaimed their sovereignty. But if all other Soviet republics put autonomy from the
center and the possibility of moving toward statehood into their concepts of sovereignty, the sovereignty of
Russia had a more ambiguous meaning, as it proposed autonomy from the center of the government whose
core was Russia. It meant Russia’s declaration of liberation from itself. This gesture was based on a domestic
policy struggle between the leadership of the RSFSR, led by Yeltsin, and the leadership of the USSR, led by
Gorbachev. But the fate of the government itself was put at stake in this opposition.
By June 1991, it became clear that the process of granting autonomy to the Soviet republics was gaining
momentum, and their leaders raised the question of signing a new Union treaty, which would have
converted them into independent and sovereign governments. Using the formal mechanisms of the
Constitution of the USSR, the heads of the Soviet republics, while deciding their domestic policy goals,
strove to use the weakness and blindness of the Union’s center for their own interests.
The summer of 1991 passed in preparation for the denouement. It came on August 19, 1991, when a
group of high-ranking Soviet leaders — the Vice-President of the USSR, G. I. Yanayev; the Minister of
Defense, D. T. Yazov; the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, V. A. Kryuchkov; the Minister of Internal
Affairs of the USSR, B. K. Pugo; the Prime Minister of the USSR, V. S. Pavlov, and others — executed a
coup
for the prevention of the dissolution of the USSR.
This event entered history under the name of “the
1991 August Coup.” Gorbachev was placed under house arrest at his Crimean dacha in Foros, where he
was vacationing. The leadership of the RSFSR was put under siege in the Parliament (the “White House”).
Geopolitically, the group that had performed the coup
was acting in the interests of the Heartland
and

attempted to prevent the collapse of the USSR, which was becoming inevitable given the continuation of
the policies of Gorbachev and his circle, and of Yeltsin, despite the quarrels between them. Gorbachev did
not make any effective efforts to preserve the USSR, and Yeltsin did all he could to get his share of power in
the country, risking its complete fragmentation. In other words, the actions of the conspirators were
geopolitically warranted and politically justified.
The series of catastrophes suffered by the Soviet ideology,
government, and geopolitical system, and the absence of any effective policies of opposition whatsoever
from the side of the legally designated power, forced them to take extreme measures. However, the high-
ranking bureaucrats who had seized power lacked the spirit, mind, and will to bring the matter they had
begun to its end; they wavered, fearing to take abrupt, repressive measures against their opponents, and lost.
Three days after August 19, 1991, it became evident that the rebellion of the conservatives who had tried to
save the USSR had failed. Gorbachev returned to Moscow, and the conspirators were arrested. But from
then on,
de facto
power in the country and in its capital was transferred to Yeltsin and his circle, while
Gorbachev’s role remained nominal. To finally secure his successes in the struggle for power, only one thing
remained for Yeltsin to do: dethrone Gorbachev once and for all. For that, it was necessary to dissolve the
USSR itself.
The Białowie
ż
a Forest
Under the influence of his advisors (G. Burbulis, S. Shakhrai, S. Stankevich), Yeltsin went for this. On
December 8, 1991, an agreement for the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States was signed by
the heads of the RSFSR, the Republic of Belarus, and Ukraine in the Białowieża Forest, which meant the
end of the existence of the USSR as a unified government. Thus, another geopolitical zone, established
throughout many centuries of Russian history around the core of the Heartland, was lost.
This event continued the series of earlier events and signified a radical “geopolitical catastrophe” (this
expression for the characteristics of the events of 1991 was used by Putin). Without any opposition or
geopolitical compensation whatsoever, the Soviet government was divided into seventeen independent
governments, now lacking a single, supranational leadership. Thus, a government that had withstood so
many serious shocks — from the yoke of the Time of Troubles to the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil
War — ended its existence. If earlier Russia had also suffered territorial loses comparable to those which
occurred in 1991, they were compensated for by acquisitions in other areas, or they lasted for only a short
while. From the time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin we can observe an absolutely new historical stage, when the
leadership of Russia not only stopped increasing its territory or its zones of influence, but reduced them,
radically, on a large scale, and irreversibly. Every Czar or General Secretary had increased the space of the
Heartland’s influence. The first to deviate from this rule was Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin
continued his policies. The fabricated structure of the CIS was an instrument of “civilizational divorce,”

and did not carry even a hint of general leadership or potential for the integration of former republics.
This was how the second dream of Mackinder, who had proposed the separation of the territory of
Russia into several governments, including those that were a result of Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s reforms,
such as the Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, and
Azerbaijan, was put into practice. Yugorussia and Dagestan (which included all the Northern Caucasus)
had also figured on Mackinder’s map. But in its main features, the thalassocratic project of the
redistribution of Russia’s structure in favor of the sea power was realized
by the hands of Russia’s
“democratic” leadership.
It is significant that the victory of the civilization of the Sea was this time so convincing and deep that it
was not only limited by the seizure of new strategic territories, which had been let out from the control of
the civilization of Land and placed under the control of the civilization of the Sea (the countries of
NATO). A “sea” ideology, or the influence of Carthage, had spread also to Russia itself, which accepted
entirely
the system of values of the victors
in the “Cold War.”
Geopolitical capitulation was accompanied
by civilizational and ideological capitulation:
bourgeois democracy, liberalism, the market economy,
parliamentarism, and the ideology of the rights of man were proclaimed to be the dominant principles of
the “new Russia.” Carthage penetrated the Heartland. And if we consider the deep significance that
Chesterton had given to the outcome of the Punic Wars, the basis of all the historical generalizations of all
geopoliticians, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of these geopolitical events. In this period, a
colossal blow was brought upon the civilization of Land, the consequences of which have predetermined
the general distribution of powers in the world
until today.
The Unipolar Moment
The collapse of the USSR and the entire Soviet planetary geopolitical structure meant a cardinal change of
the entire global map. This was the end of the Yalta system and
the conclusion of the bipolar world.
In such
a situation the Heartland, as the core of the civilization of Land, ceased to be an equal participant (half) of
the world system and drastically lost its former positions. Instead of a bipolar world, the era of a
unipolar
world began. The American analyst and specialist in the sphere of international relations, Charles
Krauthammer, wrote in the influential American journal
Foreign Affairs
, “It has been assumed that the old
bipolar world would beget a multipolar world with power dispersed to new centers in Japan, Germany
(and/or ‘Europe’), China, and a diminished Soviet Union / Russia. . […] All three of these assumptions are
mistaken. The immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar. It is unipolar. The center of world
power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its Western allies.”
[7]
The new architecture of international relations,
built on the sole dominance of the USA,
replaced the
previous
bipolarity.
This meant, first, that the general structure of the bipolar world was preserved, but
one

of the two poles simultaneously withdrew.
The socialist camp and its military-strategic expression, the
Warsaw Pact, were disbanded at the end of the 1980s; in 1991 the Soviet Union was disbanded. But the
capitalist camp, which rallied around the USA, the military NATO bloc, and the bourgeois-capitalist
ideology (which dominated in the West) during the “Cold War,”
was preserved in its entirety.
However the
Soviet leaders in Gorbachev’s era might have tried to present themselves as developing a new system of
international relations “upholding the interests of the USSR,” an impartial analysis shows unequivocally
that the West defeated the East; the USA defeated the USSR; the capitalist system defeated the socialist
one; the market economy defeated the planned economy.
In the Yalta world there were two supports for the architecture of international relations, alongside a
complicated system of checks. In the new unipolar world only one authority remained: the USA and its
allies. From now on, they acted both as prosecutor and judge, and even as the executor of punishment, in all
contested questions of international life. NATO was not dissolved; on the contrary, the former countries
of the socialist camp of Eastern Europe, and later also the Baltic countries, were integrated with it at an
accelerated pace. NATO expanded to the East, and the failed socialist system was replaced not by some
“third” alternative (for which the architects of perestroika had hoped), but the classical, and at times coarse
and brutal, “good old” capitalism.
The Geopolitics of the Unipolar World: Center-Periphery
The geopolitics of the unipolar world has one peculiarity. The West-East axis, which prevailed in the
ideological confrontation of the era of the Yalta World, was replaced by the model of
Center-Periphery.
From now on, the USA and the countries of Western Europe (the members of NATO) were placed at the
center of the world, and everyone else on the periphery. This symmetry of core/outskirts replaces the
symmetry of two poles. The dualism of the Yalta World, concentrated and strictly formalized both
geopolitically and ideologically, is replaced by more decentralized and heterogeneous rays, issuing from the
core of unipolarity and extending to the global outskirts (earlier called the Third World). The victors of
the “Cold War” are from now on placed at the center, and around them, in concentric circles, all the rest
are distributed according to the degree of their strategic, political, economic, and cultural proximity to the
center. The neighboring circle practically belongs to the center: Europe, the other countries of NATO, and
Japan. Furthermore, the rapidly developing capitalist, democratic countries are allies of the USA, or at least
neutral. Finally, at a distant orbit are the weakly developed countries undergoing the first stage of
modernization and Westernization, preserving definite archaic traits, but frequently possessing a stagnant
economy and a rudimentary or “illiberal” democracy. This geometrical configuration of the world took
shape in the 1990s to replace the Yalta system.
In his book
The Triumph of the West
, J. M. Roberts wrote the following about this: “[T]he ‘success’ of

our [Western, American—AD] civilisation does not have to be discussed in such [i.e., moral—Tr.] terms.
It is a matter of simple historical effectiveness. Almost all the master principles and ideas now reshaping the
modern world emanate from the West; they have spread round the globe and other civilizations have
crumbled before them. To acknowledge that, by itself, tells us nothing about whether the outcome is good
or bad, admirable or deplorable. It only registers that this is the age of the first world civilisation and it is
the civilisation of the West.”
[8]
And then: “I doubt whether an abstraction so general as ‘civilisation’ can meaningfully have words like
‘good’ and ‘bad’ attached to it. It remains true that western civilization has knowingly and unknowingly
forced other civilisations to concessions such as they had never before had to make to any external force.”
[9]
It is important in Roberts’ work that he tries to separate
the fact from its moral evaluation.
Western
civilization, meaning bourgeois liberal ideology, its value system, and the related set of sociopolitical norms
(parliamentary democracy, the free market, human rights, the separation of powers, the independence of
the press, etc.) defeated
all civilizational alternatives
on a planetary scale
.
Just as only one of two geopolitical
poles survived via a modification of the opposition along the symmetry of West-East according to the
model of Center-Periphery, in the sphere of ideology, instead of two competing paradigmatic and
sociopolitical systems there remained
only one,
which acquired global scope. Ideologically, this can be
formulated thus: liberal democracy (the paradigmatic core) and everything else (the paradigmatic
periphery).
The Geopolitics of the Neoconservatives
The victory of the West in the “Cold War,” which resulted in unipolarity and the triumph of Western
civilization, was interpreted in different ways in the USA itself. We encounter one kind of interpretation in
the ideological movement of the American neoconservatives, followers of the philosopher Leo Strauss,
thought of in the USA as a far-Right school of conservatism.
[10]
The neoconservatives reasoned in terms of
“force,” “enemy,” “domination,” and so on. But this means that, according to their view, to maintain control
over society, an external threat is always needed. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it was
necessary to replace it with another. This became Islam. The neoconservatives have called for an increase in
America’s military budget “for the defense of America’s role as the global fulcrum.” The theory of
American primacy leaves no opportunities for a multipolar world. Through the durable establishment of
its own laws far and wide, a dominant power can preserve its ruling position over the world. This is called
“global hegemony,” which the neoconservatives themselves propose to call a “benevolent hegemony.”
[11]
The neoconservatives first became an influential force in American political life in the 1980s, and their
influence peaked after the election of George W. Bush in 2000. The neoconservatives interpreted this
unipolar moment in terms of “empire.” From their point of view, the USA proceeded systematically

throughout its history toward global hegemony, and when the last global competitor (the USSR, and the
socialist camp with it) fell, it attained its initial goal and logically took the reins of world government. In
August 1996, neoconservatives Kristol and Kagan
[12]
published an article in
Foreign Affairs,
in which they
wrote: “Today when the evil empire is perhaps already defeated, American must strive to carry out the best
American leadership, inasmuch as earlier America did not have such a golden chance to spread democracy
and the free market beyond its borders. America’s earlier position was not as good as it is today. Thus, the
corresponding goal of the United States must be the defense of this superiority to the best of its powers and
over the longest period possible.”
[13]
One of the other theorists of neoconservatism, Laurence Vance, wrote concerning this idea, “Nothing,
however, compares to the U.S. global empire. What makes U.S. hegemony unique is that it consists, not of
control over great land masses or population centers, but of a global presence unlike that of any other
country in history. […]The U. S. global empire — an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus,
Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George V would be proud of.”
[14]
This
understanding of the new architecture of the world and of the system of international relations in terms of
a global American empire could not fail to influence the methods by which America’s strategic plans were
implemented. Intoxicated by victory, the Americans began at times to conduct themselves
unceremoniously. The neoconservatives openly praised American hegemony.
[15]
They elevated the liberal-
capitalist ideology to the status of an
indisputable dogma
, and they proclaimed American supremacy and
the American empire to be the ideal political system and the optimal arrangement of the new system of
international relations.
The neoconservatives imparted a rather aggressive style to American policy in the 1990s. In identifying
the national interests of the USA with “the good” for all humanity, they provoked strong opposition and a
wave of protests both in America
[16]
and in other parts of the world.
The Kozyrev Doctrine
The sudden collapse of the Soviet system and the penetration of the influence of thalassocracy deep into
Russia itself exerted a colossal influence upon the structure of the world. In the first years of Boris Yeltsin’s
administration (1991–1993), all political processes inside the Russian Federation proceeded in the
thalassocratic spirit. In that period, the so-called “Kozyrev Doctrine” was maintained in foreign policy,
named after Yeltsin’s Minster of Foreign Affairs.
The “Kozyrev Doctrine” held that unipolarity was
an accomplished fact
, that the dominance of the
USA in the world should be recognized as a given, and that under such conditions only one thing remained
for Russia (as the most important of the post-Soviet nations) to do: to integrate itself with the West-centric
world by attaining a position of as much influence and importance as possible, to the maximum extent that

the economic, strategic, and social resources of the Russian Federation could permit. This recognition was
accompanied by the
moral
approval of the end of the bipolar world and by a resolute
condemnation
of the
preceding bipolarity and of the entire ideology, policy, and geopolitics of the Soviet period. Kozyrev
admitted: in the “Cold War” the West did not merely win by force, having proved more stable and
powerful; it was also historically
right.
After that, it remained for Russia only to recognize this right of the
victor and to join in solidarity with him, both in business and in morals.
In practice, this meant
the recognition of the legitimacy of the American vision of the world and
consent to build Russia’s foreign policy in correspondence with the general strategic policy of the USA,
adapting to it and only then pursuing its own national interests. Kozyrev accepted the rules of the game of
the unipolar world as
proper,
and proceeded from this assumption when establishing the priorities and
goals of Russia’s foreign policy. In relation to the post-Soviet space, this entailed Moscow’s renunciation of
any efforts whatsoever to reestablish its influence in neighboring countries, to move to a bipolar dynamic of
relations with them, and to support the individual movements of the CIS countries toward gradual
integration with the West and globalization. Such an attitude toward the USA and the West, which held
sway in Russia in the early 1990s, meant direct
capitulation
before the adversary and the recognition of his
right and his victory, both factually and morally. In a certain sense, this meant the start of the establishment
of
foreign control of the country
by the representatives of the pole that had become global. In the first
Yeltsin administration, Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar
[17]
formed a group of economic reformers, in which
Anatoly Chubais
[18]
played an active role, who were led by a group of American experts under the
leadership of Jeffrey Sachs.
[19]
They insisted on shock therapy and the accelerated transfer of Russia’s entire
economy to the ultraliberal railway. This led to catastrophic consequences: the impoverishment of the
population, the devaluation of the economy, the complete decline of industry, the privatization of basic
profitable enterprises, and the rise of new oligarchs who had seized key positions in the country by illegal
means.
Geopolitically, this period can be thought of as
the flooding of the Land,
or the establishment of direct
control over the Heartland by the sea power. This was a time of unprecedented success for the Atlanticists;
they had not only surrounded Russia with a dense ring of states loyal to the civilization of the Sea, they had
also penetrated deep inside the country, spreading their networks to encompass the majority of the
significant administrative, political, economic, media, informational, and even military structures, which
had either been corrupted by the new oligarchs or directly infiltrated by Atlanticist agents of influence with
the approval of the democratic reformers then in power.
The Contours of Russia’s Collapse
Yeltsin came to power on a wave of attempts by various administrative groups in Russia itself to achieve

autonomy. Thus, the former autonomous republics automatically received the status of national republics
after the RSFSR’s declaration of sovereignty, and they hurried to add a clause about their sovereignty to
their constitutions, repeating the logic of the USSR and obviously expecting in the final stages to declare
their exit from the composition of Russia as soon as a good opportunity presented itself. In his battle with
Gorbachev and his attempt to seize and secure power, Yeltsin not only reacted favorably to this, but also
actively contributed to this process. His statement made in Ufa on August 6, 1990, entered history: “Take
as much sovereignty as you can swallow.” This was unambiguously clear, and already from the 1990s the
national republics in the composition of the RSFSR, and later the Russian Federation, started to hastily give
their declared sovereignty real meaning. Essentially, a stormy
construction of autonomous national
statehood
began, with all its characteristic signs: one’s own national language, an educational program,
economic independence, political autonomy, and so on. A few republics prescribed norms in their
constitutions that, besides sovereignty, contained all the attributes of an independent government. This was
the case with Tartarstan, Bashkiria, Komi, Yakutia (Sakha), Chechnya, and so on. In particular, in the
Constitution of the Republic of Sakha, adopted on April 27, 1992, this Republic was declared “a sovereign,
democratic, and juridical government, founded on a
narod
’s right to self-determination.” The Constitution
included all the attributes of a sovereign government: a national language, the introduction of a national
currency, a treasury supplying its negotiability, and its own army; it also established a visa requirement for
citizens of other republics in the Russian Federation. The constitutions of a few other republics were put
together in the same spirit.
The general tendency from the end of the 1990s consisted in the continuation of the growing extent of
this declared sovereignty and the insistence that the federal center respect it.
The national policy of the Russian Federation was put together in this spirit. Its contours were
established by Ramzan Abdulatipov,
[20]
Valery Tishkov,
[21]
and others, who justified the need for a gradual
transition from a federal system to a confederation and then to a complete separation of the national
republics (or, at least, a few of them) into independent governments.
Thus, the last part of Mackinder’s plan concerning the partition of Russia, proposing the separation of
the Northern Caucasus (Dagestan) and Yugorussia, became entirely realistic in this period.
Mackinder also called Eastern Siberia “Lenaland” and did not exclude the possibility of its eventual
integration with the USA’s sphere of influence.
[22]
He also mentioned in passing the creation of a few
independent governments in the Volga region. Later, Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined analogous plans for the
dismemberment of Russia in his works published in
Foreign Affairs
.
[23]
After the collapse of the outer
regions of the Heartland at the start of the 1990s, it became evident that it was then the Russian
Federation’s turn. Moreover, the representatives of the reformer democrats then in power had a favorable
attitude toward these processes on the whole, drawing up even their domestic policies in accordance with

the interests of the civilization of the Sea.
The Establishment of a Russian School of Geopolitics
After 1991 and the end of the USSR, a Russian school of geopolitics began to develop in Russia. The first
geopolitical texts (“Continent Russia,” “
The
Subconsciousness of Eurasia,” etc.) were published.
[24]
In the
newspaper
Day
, the article “The Great War of Continents” was published, where the principles of the
geopolitical method were set forth in journalistic form. Beginning in 1992, the theoretical journal
Elements
was published regularly. It contained a section entitled “Geopolitical Notebooks” and made
available the works of classical geopoliticians and more topical geopolitical commentaries. Thus, a fully-
fledged
Russian geopolitical school of a neo-Eurasianist orientation
took shape, continuing the traditions
of the Slavophiles, Eurasianists, and other Russian geopoliticians, but also taking into account the
significant groundwork made in this discipline throughout the twentieth century in the Anglo-Saxon and
German schools, and also in France in the 1970s (the school of Yves Lacoste).
[25]
In this same period, the prominent European geopoliticians Jean Thiriart, Alain de Benoist, Robert
Steuckers, Carlo Terracciano, Claudio Mutti, and others visited Russia, delivering lectures and seminars
and familiarizing the Russian public with the principles of the geopolitical method and its terminology.
The historical situation allowed for the summarization of historical experience in the development of this
discipline and for the laying down of the foundations of a fully-fledged geopolitical school. In the early
1990s, instruction in geopolitics began at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian
Federation (under the instructions of the future Minister of Defense, I. Rodionov, in the Department of
Strategy, then led by Lieutenant General H. P. Kolokotov),
[26]
where its principal ideas were also formed
and published somewhat later in the textbook,
Foundations of Geopolitics
.
[27]
By 1993, the basic notions of geopolitics and Eurasianism became well-known to a certain circle of
political scientists, strategists, and military analysts, and later the significance of the geopolitical analysis of
unfolding events became an integral part of the interpretation of the historical moment in which Russia
found itself. The specific character of the geopolitical method is responsible for the fact that this discipline
was first disseminated in patriotic circles which opposed the regime of Yeltsin and the “Young Reformers,”
which gave it a certain political orientation. Incidentally, it was this perspective that all previous generations
of geopoliticians, formulating their views concurrently with their active participation in the depths of
historical processes, never departed from and did not try to leave.
Thus, the neo-Eurasianists, who had gathered around the journal
Elements
and the newspaper
Day
,
became the ideological inspiration behind the unification of the diverse forces of Rightists, Leftists, and
nationalists against Yeltsin and his ultraliberal, Atlanticist circle on geopolitical grounds.

The Geopolitics of the Political Crises of October 1993
The Russian leadership was distinctly divided by 1993. Part of the political leadership moved to become
Yeltsin’s opposition, in particular Vice President A. Rutskoy, as well as the head of the Supreme Soviet of
the RSFSR, R. Khasbulatov, and the majority of the deputies who had been supporters of Yeltsin in 1991,
but who had been disappointed by his later policies. This division, besides emerging from personal conflicts
among some of those involved, also had some geopolitical basis. Around Yeltsin was a core of advisors from
the group of Young Reformers of an ultraliberal orientation (Y. Gaidar, A. Chubais, B. Nemtsov, I.
Khakamada, A. Kozyrev, etc.) and oligarchs (B. Berezovsky, V. Gusinsky, etc.). They urged Yeltsin toward
closer relations with the USA and the West, toward the development of Atlanticist geopolitics, and toward
complete compliance with the directives coming from the civilization of the Sea. In foreign policy, this was
expressed in unconditional support for all American undertakings (“the Kozyrev doctrine”). In economics
there was the implementation of ultraliberal reforms and monetarism (Y. Gaidar, A. Chubais).
Domestically, it occurred as democratization, Westernization, and the liquidation of socialist and socially-
oriented institutions. In the question of the national republics, it had a favorable attitude toward the
strengthening of their sovereignty. In all senses, the core that had rallied around Yeltsin and was urging him
to continue moving in this direction was marked by the whole set of features of geopolitical Atlanticism,
and was a striking representative of thalassocracy both in politics (domestic and foreign) and in the sphere
of paradigmatic values. The general model of Yeltsin’s rule was oligarchical and represented the interests of
a few influential oligarchical clans, who had argued among themselves for influence over a short-sighted
“democratic monarch,” who swiftly ruined himself with drink and badly misunderstood the situation. In
this manner, the 1993 crisis had a geopolitical focus: on Yeltsin’s side were the agents of influence of the
civilization of the Sea; on the side of the opposition (the Supreme Soviet) were the supporters of the
civilization of Land.
The most dramatic moments of this confrontation in domestic politics were the events of September
and October 1993, which ended in the shelling of the Supreme Soviet by military units entrusted to Yeltsin
on October 4. Essentially, this was a brief flash of
civil war
, where two geopolitical forces collided: the
supporters of the civilization of the Sea and foreign domination and the supporters of the civilization of
Land, the restoration of Russia’s sovereignty, the preservation of its integrity, and a return to the
tellurocratic model of values (the supporters of the Supreme Soviet). As is well-known, the former
triumphed over the latter. In the course of dramatic opposition and bitter resistance, the armed forces,
under Yeltsin’s control, took the building of the Supreme Soviet by storm, crushed the power of its
defenders, and dismantled the Parliament, arresting all the leading personalities of the opposition.
Yeltsin’s adversaries represented various political and ideological tendencies: both Left-Communist and
Right-nationalist, and there was also a significant flank of democrats disappointed in Yeltsin. They were all

united by a rejection of the general thrust of policy and, correspondingly, Atlanticism. The newspaper
Day
became the opposition’s ideological center, published by the patriotic publicist Alexander Prokhanov. It is
revealing that in one way or another all the most significant figures of the anti-Yeltsin opposition spoke out
in favor of Eurasianism in 1993: R. Khasbulatov, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, V. Zorkin,
and Vice President A. Rutskoy, to say nothing of Yeltsin’s more radical opponents: Communists,
nationalists, and supporters of Orthodox monarchy.
The Change in Yeltsin’s Views after the Conflict with Parliament
After this outcome, a decisive victory for Yeltsin and his circle, measures were taken to impart a degree of
legitimacy to the consequences of the upheaval. A constitution copied from Western models was hastily
adopted, and elections were conducted under the strict supervision of the authorities in the State Duma.
But despite their efforts, the authorities did not receive much support from the population, which gave its
voice to a populist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
[28]
who espoused nationalist and patriotic rhetoric, and to the
even more oppositional anti-liberal leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady
Zyuganov.
[29]
The position of Yeltsin and his supporters was then such that, theoretically, they could have
carried out whatever policy they wished, including being done with the opposition and its leaders once and
for all, since it had suffered a crushing defeat and lost the will to resistance (and they had been arrested or
had squandered the faith of their supporters). Although the opposition once again had a majority in the
elected Duma, the new Constitution, which had secured the model of a presidential republic and given
extraordinary powers to the President, allowed the ruling authorities to implement practically any policy
without having to reckon with anything.
At that moment, however, Yeltsin made a decision, the meaning of which was
not to force the issue of
previous Atlanticist policies
, nor to finish off the opposition (its leaders were soon released under an
amnesty), but to correct the pro-Western course, while putting the brakes on Russia’s collapse. It is difficult
to say with certainty what inspired this decision. It is possible that one of the factors was the stronger
influence of powerful actors close to Yeltsin (A. Korzhakov, M. Barsukov, etc.) whose significance grew in
the critical period of the military operation against the Parliament in October 1993, and who differed
subjectively in their vaguely patriotic worldviews (rather widespread among the Russian special services by a
tradition rooted in the history of the USSR). In any case, after his victory over the opposition, Yeltsin
decided to correct his reforms. The personnel changes were highly significant: instead of the ultraliberal
Westernizer Y. Gaidar, he appointed the pragmatic “red director” V. Chernomyrdin;
[30]
instead of the
Atlanticist A. Kozyrev, the moderate “patriot” and cautious “Eurasian” Y. Primakov, a specialist on the East
and a foreign intelligence official.
The “Primakov Doctrine,” as opposed to the “Kozyrev Doctrine,” consisted of trying to defend Russia’s

national interests within the limits of what was possible under the conditions of the unipolar world, and
also preserving ties with traditional allies and slipping out from under the control of the American diktat.
This was a serious contrast in comparison to Kozyrev’s unambiguously Atlanticist position.
All this, however, did not mean that Yeltsin rejected his former course entirely. It continued, and many
key figures who were responsible for the execution of the Atlanticist line in Russian politics remained in
their positions and retained their influence; additionally, significant levers of power were kept in the hands
of oligarchs. But the rhythm of the Atlanticist reforms slowed substantially. Yeltsin began to brake reforms
in this vein.
The critical moment was the Chechen campaign.
The First Chechen Campaign
In the framework of the general process of the sovereignization of the national republics in the early 1990s,
various nationalist movements arose in Chechen-Ingush, one of which was the “All-National Congress of
the Chechen People” created in 1990, having as its goal Chechnya’s exit from the composition of the USSR
and the establishment of an independent Chechen state. A former general of the Soviet Air Forces,
Dzhokhar Dudayev, was its head. On June 8, 1991, at the second session, Dudayev, the national leader of
the Chechen Republic, proclaimed the independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. After the
defeat of the State Committee on the State of Emergency,
[31]
Dudayev and his supporters seized the
building of the Supreme Soviet of Chechnya, and after the fall of the USSR, Dudayev announced that
Chechnya was seceding from the Russian Federation. The separatists held an election, which Dudayev won,
but Moscow did not recognize them. At that point what was essentially an armed confrontation began, and
the separatists sped up the creation of their own armed forces. At the same time, in the spirit of the general
orientation of the democratic reformers in favor of the acquisition of sovereignty, strange things began to
happen: in June 1992 the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Pavel Grachev, gave orders to give
half the arms and ammunition in the Republic to the supporters of Dudayev. We cannot exclude the
possibility of corruption, which would have been quite in the spirit of the economic and social processes of
that time.
The victory of the separatists in Grozny led to the collapse of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic and to the declaration of a separate Ingushetian Republic within the structure of Russia.
In that period, Chechnya became
de facto
independent, but
de jure
it was a government not recognized by
any country. The Republic had the symbols of statehood (a flag, a coat of arms, a hymn) and the organs of
power (a president, parliament, and lay courts). Even after this, when Dudayev stopped paying taxes into
the general budget of the Federation and forbade employees of the Russian Special Services entry into the
Republic, the federal center continued to transfer funds from the budget to Chechnya. In 1993, 11.5

billion roubles were earmarked for Chechnya. Russian oil continued to enter Chechnya until 1994, but it
was not paid for and was resold abroad. These processes fit very well into the logic of the early 1990s.
Preparation by one of the republics for the exit from Russia corresponded to the plan of the Atlanticists
and those under their influence in the Russian leadership, and explained the fact that many political powers
and influential media outlets (belonging to the oligarchs) in effect either closed their eyes to what was
happening or supported the actions of the Chechen regime as a precedent for the other national republics.
Thus, the last part of Mackinder’s plan, the fragmentation of Russia and the creation of a state in the
Northern Caucasus independent of Moscow, began to be implemented. This also aroused the support of
Chechen separatists by the West and a group of pro-Western regimes in the Arab world. Beginning in the
summer of 1994, combat operations began between troops loyal to Dudayev and forces of the oppositional
Provisional Council of the Chechen Republic, which had taken a pro-Russian position. By winter it
became clear that the opposition did not have the strength to cope with the separatists, and on December 1
the Russian Air Forces struck the airfields of Kalinovskaya and Khankala and put all the aircraft under the
control of the separatists out of operation. On December 11, 1994, Yeltsin signed Decree No. 2169, “On
Measures to Ensure Law, Order and General Security in the Territories of the Chechen Republic.” The
introduction of federal troops began after this. In the first weeks of the war, Russian troops were able to
occupy the northern regions of Chechnya practically without resistance. On December 31, 1994, the
assault on Grozny began. It resulted in colossal losses for the federal forces and lasted not just a few days, as
had been planned, but a few months; only on March 6, 1995, did a troop of Chechen militants under the
command of Shamil Basayev
[32]
retreat from Chernorech’ye, the last region of Grozny still controlled by
the separatists. Only then did the city finally come under the control of Russian forces.
After the assault on Grozny, the main task for the Russian troops became the establishment of control
over the flatland regions of the rebellious republic. By April 1995, the troops occupied almost the entire
flatland territory of Chechnya, and the separatists resorted to subversive guerrilla operations.
On June 14, 1995, a group of 195 Chechen fighters under Shamil Basayev’s command drove into the
territory of the Stavropol Krai by truck and occupied the hospital in Budyonnovsk, taking hostages. After
this terrorist act, the first round of talks took place in Grozny from June 19 to 22 between the Russian
Federation and the separatists, at which an agreement was reached for a moratorium on military operations
for an indefinite period. Overall, however, it was not observed. On January 9, 1996, a contingent of 256
fighters under the command of Salman Raduyev,
Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, and K
hunkar-Pasha Israpilov
executed a raid on the city of Kizlyar, where terrorists obliterated a group of military targets, and then
seized the hospital and maternity home.
On March 6, 1996, a few contingents of fighters attacked Grozny from various directions, as it was still
controlled by Russian troops, but were unable to take it. On April 21, 1996, federal troops were successful

in eliminating Dzhokhar Dudayev in a missile attack.
On August 6, 1996, contingents of Chechen separatists again attacked Grozny. This time the Russian
garrison could not hold the city. Simultaneously with the assault on Grozny, separatists also seized the cities
of Gudermes and Argun.
On August 31, 1996, truce agreements were signed in the city of Khasavyurt by the representatives of
Russia (Alexander Lebed, the Chairman of the Security Council) and Ichkeria (Aslan Maskhadov). On the
basis of these agreements, all Russian troops were withdrawn from Chechnya, and the determination of the
Republic’s status was postponed until December 31, 2001. Essentially, this was
the capitulation of Moscow
before the separatists.
The federal authority painted the picture that it could not resolve the situation by
force and that it was compelled to follow the insurgents’ lead.
From the moment the Khasavyurt Accord was concluded to the start of the Second Chechen War in
1999, Chechnya existed as a practically autonomous government, not directed from Moscow, for a second
time.
It is important to emphasize that the most consistent liberal-democratic forces in Russia itself and the
media under their control occupied an ambiguous position during the Chechen campaign, often depicting
the separatists in a positive light as “freedom fighters” and the federal troops as “Russian colonialists.”
Corrupt bureaucrats, certain commanders, and oligarchic clans worked closely with the separatists and the
criminal network of the Chechen diaspora in Russia itself to extract material and financial gain from the
bloody tragedies. Quite often this brought irreparable damage to the military operations. At any moment,
an order could come from above to stop a successful operation when it was becoming dangerous for the
fighters. At the same time, the West rendered active political and social support to the separatists.
Mercenaries from the Arab countries who came to Chechnya, as later became clear, were working for the
CIA or British MI6.
[33]
From a geopolitical point of view, this is entirely natural: the secession of Chechnya and the rise of a
government independent from Moscow would have signified a move into the final stage of the Atlanticist
plan for the fragmentation of Russia and the formation of new, independent governments on its territory
(along the model of the collapse of the USSR). Chechnya was the acid test for all other potential separatists.
And the fate of Russia — or more precisely, what was left of it — depended entirely on the fate of the
Chechen campaign. From the fact that the Chechen campaign began at all, we see the vague will of Yeltsin
not to allow Russia’s disintegration. And although this campaign was led very badly, irresolutely, and
without forethought, with enormous and often futile losses on both sides, the fact that Moscow resisted
Russia’s disintegration had a tremendous significance. At that moment, many of Yeltsin’s supporters from
the camp of the Atlanticists moved into his opposition, being dissatisfied that he was not carrying out the
general plan of the civilization of the Sea, or, at least, was slowing its realization. By 1996, this opposition

became rather influential, and only the efforts of the well-known political engineer S. Kurginyan, working
closely with B. Berezovsky and V. Gusinsky, led to the result that the oligarchs concluded a pact between
themselves for the “conditional” support of Yeltsin in the elections. This was because of their fear of the
possible and, under the conditions of the time, probable victory of the candidate of the Communist Party
of the Russian Federation, Zyuganov. This phenomenon is known as “The Reign of the Seven Bankers”
[34]
by an analogy with the “Reign of the Seven Boyars,” an epoch of the Russian Time of Troubles at the start
of the seventeenth century. In any event, Yeltsin did not side with the Atlanticists entirely. But on the eve of
the 1996 presidential elections, Yeltsin made a new sharp turn, discharging the patriotic members of the
top brass from their posts (A. Korzhakov, M. Barsukov, etc.), and promoted the Atlanticist and ultraliberal
A. Chubais. As a result of this demarche, the Khasavyurt Accord was soon concluded, which rendered all
the losses suffered during the years of the First Chechen War null and put the situation back to the way it
had been before the war. The separatists again came to control Grozny and most of Chechnya, which had
been won by federal troops with such effort and with so much blood. Afterwards, they had every reason to
expect that, under pressure from the West, Moscow would eventually be compelled to recognize the
independence of the rebellious Republic. This would have meant the end of Russia.
The Geopolitical Outcomes of the Yeltsin Administration
We will briefly describe the main geopolitical outcomes of the reign of Boris Yeltsin, the first President of
the Russian Federation. Overall, they can be characterized as the ruin of national interests; significant
weakening of the country; surrender of strategic positions; direct pandering to the accelerated
establishment of foreign rule over Russia; and destructive reforms in the economy, the results of which
were the impoverishment of the population, the appearance of a new class of oligarchs, corrupt officials
and their social service staff, and the destruction of the entire social infrastructure of society. This period
can be compared only with the blackest cycles of Russian history: with the peak of the appanage
fragmentation preceding the Mongolian conquests,
[35]
with the Time of Troubles, with the occupation of
Rus by Polish and Swedish armies, and with the events of 1917, which led to the collapse of the Russian
Empire and the Civil War. And as always, just as in these similar circumstances,
a geopolitical orientation to
the West
prevailed, with the establishment of
an oligarchic regime
founded on the supposed omnipotence
of competing groups in the political elite. However, Russia’s losses during the Yeltsin administration —
territorial losses (the fall of the USSR), the social and industrial catastrophe, the coming to power of
corrupt, criminal elements and agents of American influence — all this was unprecedented and unheard of
in its scale and duration, and the passive reaction of the population to it.
The 1990s were a monstrous
geopolitical catastrophe for Russia.
Russian was transformed from a pole of the bipolar world and the
civilization of Land, spreading its influence over half the planet into corrupt, disintegrating, second-rate

state, swiftly losing its authority in the international arena and verging on collapse.
Of course, we cannot blame Yeltsin alone for this. His course was prepared by Gorbachev and his
reforms and by a broad group of pro-Western agents of influence, supporters of liberal reforms, or simply
by very incompetent, corrupt, and ignorant actors. But you also cannot absolve him from blame. Without
this personality, who was only dimly aware of the true significance of the events that had unfolded around
him and hardly understood what he himself was doing and where he was heading, it is doubtful whether the
reformers could have done their destructive, subversive actions so successfully, dealing the country such a
colossal blow.
After the shelling of the Supreme Soviet in October 1993, Yeltsin still made a certain correction in the
general logic of his rule; he did not set out to destroy the opposition and slightly softened his destructive
and suicidal policy, introducing a set of patriotic features into it. The fact that he ordered the Chechen
campaign and did not accept Dudayev’s ultimatum unconditionally, despite the urgings of the liberals and
Atlanticists in his circle, already indicates that he preserved some residual view of the value of the territorial
integrity of the government. In this he relied on his intuition; we must give him credit that he managed to
withstand the pressure and lingered on the edge of the abyss rather than falling in headfirst. And, although
in 1996 he returned anew to the Atlanticist model and entered into the Khasavyurt Accord with the
separatists, cancelling with the stroke of a pen all the previous military successes of the federal forces, by the
end of the 1990s he had demonstrated again that he could not be included unreservedly in the category of
Russia’s destroyers. He appointed as his successor Vladimir Putin, who, beginning in 2000, would
implement a completely different geopolitical policy. After turning power over to Putin, Yeltsin entrusted
to him the fate of his own place in Russia’s history as well. And it may be that this became his geopolitical
testament.
We will consider the significance of this testament in the next chapter.
[1]
G. K. Chesterton,
The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).
[2]
The Punic Wars were three conflicts fought between Rome and Carthage between 264 to 146 BC. As the two powers were the
greatest in the region at the time, the wars were fought on a scale seldom seen in the ancient world.—Ed.
[3]
“Carthage is destroyed.” The preceding passage is from
The Everlasting Man
, in
The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
, vol. 2, pp.
277–282. —Ed.
[4]
The Fourth International was established in Paris in 1938 to propagate the ideas of Trotsky and his followers in opposition to
Stalinism. It still exists today.—Ed.
[5]
We see this in the fate of a political scientist like James Burnham and also, even more evidently, in the history of the ideological
tendency of contemporary American neoconservatives, who evolved from radical Trotskyism to ultra-liberalism, imperialism, and
undisguised capitalist hegemony.
[6]
Halford Mackinder,
Democratic Ideals and Reality
, p. 106.
[7]
Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,”
Foreign Affairs
, vol. 70, No. 1 (1990/1991), pp. 23–33.
[8]
J. M. Roberts,
The Triumph of the West: The Origin, Rise, and Legacy of Western Civilization
(Boston: Little Brown, 1985), p. 41.
[9]
Ibid.
[10]
Shadia B. Drury,
Leo Strauss and the American Right
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
[11]
Gary Dorrien, “Benevolent Global Hegemony: William Kristol and the Politics of American Empire,”
Logos
vol. 3, No. 2 (2004)
.

[12]
William Kristol (b. 1952) is one of the leading American neoconservatives, being the founder of the neoconservative journal, The

Weekly Standard, and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which was the leading neoconservative think tank
between 1997 and 2006. Robert Kagan (b. 1958) was also co-founder of the Project, and is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations.—Ed.
[13]
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy
,”

Foreign Affairs
vol. 75, No. 4 (1996), pp. 18–32.
[The quote in Dugin’s text does not match the original English text exactly, but is more of a summary of the spirit of the argument.
—Tr.]
[14]
Laurence Vance, “The Burden of Empire,” available at www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5876.htm.
[15]
Kristol and Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.”
[16]
Shadia B. Drury,
Leo Strauss and the American Right
.
[17]
Yegor Gaidar (1956–2009) was Acting Prime Minister of Russia during the second half of 1992, and was the leader of many of the
economic reforms which rapidly transitioned Russia away from Communism (‘shock therapy’). He was held responsible by many
Russians for the economic hardships of the 1990s.—Ed.
[18]
Anatoly Chubais (b. 1955) is a Russian economist who spearheaded the privatisation of the Russian economy in the early 1990s.—
Ed.
[19]
M. N. Poltoranin,
Authority as an Explosive: The Heritage of Czar Boris
(Moscow: Eksmo, 2010).
[20]
Ramzan Abdulatipov,
The Science of Federalism [Federology]
, (Saint Petersburg: Pitr, 2004). (Abdulatipov [b. 1946] is a Dagestani
who was Chairman of the Chamber of Nationalities of the RSFSR from 1990 until 1993. Since 2013 he has been Head of the
Republic of Dagestan.—Ed.)
[21]
Valery Tishkov (b. 1941) is a Russian ethnologist who was the chairman of the State Committee of the RSFSR on nationalities in
1992.—Ed.
[22]
Halford Mackinder, ‘The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,’
Foreign Affairs
21 (1943), pp. 595–605.
[23]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia,” in
Foreign Affairs
(September/October 1997).
[24]
Alexander Dugin,
The Mysteries of Eurasia
(Moscow: Arctogaia, 1991), Chapters 1 and 2.
[25]
Yves Lacoste (b. 1929) has written many works pertaining to geopolitics, and is the head of the French Institute for Geopolitics.—
Ed.
[26]
N. P. Kolokotov and N. G. Popov,
Problems of Strategy and of the Operative Art
(Moscow: The Military Academy of the General
Staff of the Armed Forces, 1993).
[27]
Alexander Dugin,
Foundations of Geopolitics
.
[28]
Vladimir Zhirinovsky (b. 1946) is the leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia,
which he founded in 1990 as one of the first
opposition parties allowed in the Soviet Union. An extreme nationalist of the populist variety, Zhirinovsky has long been known for his
provocative statements and outrageous actions, which resonate with the frustrations of some Russian voters.—Ed.
[29]
Gennady Zyuganov (b. 1944) has been the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) since its
foundation. The CPRF was founded in 1993 as a successor to the banned Communist Party of the USSR. It has attempted to
formulate a new form of Communism with a more nationalist bent.—Ed.
[30]
Viktor Chernomyrdin (1938–2010) founded Gazprom, which is the state-owned natural gas
company, and was Deputy Prime
Minister for energy resources from 1992 until 1998.—Ed.
[31]
This was the name that the officials who led the coup attempt against Gorbachev in August 1991 used for their group.—Ed.
[32]
Shamil Basayev (1965–2006) was the leader of the radical Islamist faction of the Chechen guerrillas. He fought in both Chechen
wars, and also fought against the Georgian government in the early 1990s.—Ed.
[33]
Aukai Collins,
My Jihad: The True Story of an American Mujahid’s Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden’s Training Camps to
Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA
(Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002).
[34]
This was Boris Berezovsky (LogoVaz), Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Rosprom Group, Menatep), Mikhail Fridman (Alfa Group), Pyotr
Aven (Alfa Group), Vladimir Gusinsky (Most Group), Vladimir Potanin (UNEXIM Bank), and Alexander Smolensky (SBS-Agro,
Bank Stolichny). The term “Reign of the Seven Bankers” [смибанкирщина] was coined by the journalist A. Fadin. A. Fadin, “The
Reign of the Seven Bankers as a New-Russian Variant of the Reign of the Seven Boyars,” in
General Newspaper
, November 14, 1996.
[35]
In the eleventh century, an appanage system was established in Kievan Rus, in which power was transferred to the eldest member of
the royal dynasty rather than from father to son, This led to a great deal of infighting over the next four centuries, which led to the
fragmentation and weakening of the state, and culminated in the invasion of Russia by the Mongols.—Ed.

C
HAPTER
IV
The Geopolitics of the 2000s: The Phenomenon of
Putin
The Structure of the Poles of Force in Chechnya in 1996–1999
After the Khasavyurt Accord, Chechen separatists had an opportunity to rebuild their power structures
and consolidate their power over the entire territory of the Chechen Republic. Gradually, three competing
tendencies arose among them:
1.
Moderate circles of a national-democratic orientation, given priority support by the West and
attempting to play by Western rules (A. Maskhadov, A. Zakayev, and others);
2.
Representatives of national-traditionalist Islam, oriented toward
teips
[1]
and
wirds
[2]
(A. Kadyrov, K. A.
Noukhayev, and others);
3.
Radical Wahhabis,
[3]
who considered themselves a part of the global network of Islamic
fundamentalism, fighting for the establishment of a global Islamic state (S. Basayev, M. Udugov, the
“Black Khattab,” and others).
Geopolitically, all three forces were oriented in various directions: the national-democrats, to Atlanticism;
the traditionalists, to the local population and its foundations; the Wahhabis, to the global network of
radical fundamentalists.
The Geopolitics of Islam
Radical Islam experienced a rebirth in the 1970s, when American and British intelligence agencies started
to use it to oppose socialist and pro-Soviet tendencies in the Islamic world and, in particular, in
Afghanistan. Thus, Zbigniew Brzezinski began training the Islamic radicals and, in particular, the
representatives of Al-Qaeda in the military training camps of the anti-Soviet
mujahideen
. Up to a point,
Islamic fundamentalism thus fulfilled the function of a regional
instrument in the hands of the Atlanticists.
Geopolitically, the Islamic world itself belongs mostly to the coastal zone (Rimland), which makes it a
zone of the opposition of two powers: the Land and the Sea.
In this “coastal zone,” two contrary
orientations meet: orientation toward the West and orientation toward the East. During the “Cold War,”
the representatives of liberal Islam and the radical fundamentalists (in particular, the Wahhabis and
Salafists,
[4]
who prevailed in Saudi Arabia, a reliable regional partner of the USA in the Middle East) were
sea-directed. The regimes oriented toward socialism and the USSR, such as the countries of Islamic

socialism or the “Ba’athists” (the Pan-Arab Party, which stands for the unification of all Arab governments
into a unified political formation) were land-directed. After the Shi’ite revolution of 1979, Iran became a
special case, when the radical Shi’ites, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, took the place of the pro-American
Shah. Iran’s position was strictly “coastal”: the Iranian slogan “neither East nor West, only the Islamic
Republic” meant a rejection of closer relations with both the capitalist West and the socialist East.
But after the collapse of the USSR and the global, pro-Soviet geopolitical network, radical Islam
forfeited its main geopolitical function to the Atlanticists. Meanwhile, it gathered momentum, and its
American and British curators were unable to reduce it to nothing. Ties with Atlanticism were often
preserved; however, the Wahabbi-Salafist circles gradually gained autonomy and became an influential and
independent force. Since the main enemy, the USSR, no longer existed, Islamic fundamentalists began to
gradually carry out local attacks on their former patrons, the USA. In the case of Chechnya, Wahhabism,
spread there from the end of the 1980s until the end of the 1990s as an independent and influential force,
fulfilled a classic function by serving the interests of the civilization of the Sea in its aspiration to weaken the
civilization of Land as much as possible and to dismember Russia. That is why the alliance of the national
democrats of Maskhadov
[5]
with the Wahhabi circles ultimately shared a common geopolitical
denominator: both objectively played into the hands of the Atlanticists.
The Bombing of Homes in Moscow, the Incursion into Dagestan, and Putin’s Coming to Power
The Wahhabi pole started to form in Chechnya at the end of the 1980s, and from the beginning it was not
limited to the territory of Chechnya. Moreover, the center of the spread of Wahhabism was initially
neighboring Dagestan. One of the representatives of the first Dagestani Wahhabis was Bagaudin Kebedov,
who had already established close contacts with the mercenary Arab Salafist, Khattab
[6]
(who later proved
to have close ties to the CIA) and the Chechen Field Commanders during the First Chechen War. In
Grozny in April 1998, with the participation of Kebedov and his supporters, a constitutional convention
of the “Congress of the
Narodi
of Ichkeria and Dagestan” (CNID) was held, the leader of which was
Shamil Basayev. Its main task was “the liberation of the Muslim Caucasus from the imperialist Russian
yoke” (an altogether Atlanticist thesis). Under the aegis of the CNID, paramilitary units were created,
including the “Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade,” which Khattab commanded. Wahhabis began
to create an armed underground in Dagestan, and by 1999 their influence became critically high. In 1999,
Kebedov’s fighters began to penetrate Dagestan in small groups and established military bases and arms
depots in hard-to-reach, mountainous hamlets. After his travels to Dagestan, the Prime Minister of the
Russian Federation, S. Stepashin, was so impressed by the influence of the Wahhabis that he desperately
exclaimed, “Russia, it seems, has lost Dagestan.”
On August 7, 1999, subdivisions of the “Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade” of Basayev and

Khattab, 400–500 fighters, entered the Botlikhsky region of Dagestan without difficulty and seized a
group of villages (Ansalta, Rakhata, Tando, Shodroda, and Godoberi) after announcing the beginning of
the operation “Imam Ghazi Mohammed.” With difficulty, federal troops and local armed militias were
able to recapture a few towns by the end of August. In response, early September 1999 (4–16), these
Wahhabi circles blew up a series of residential complexes in Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk. These
terrorist attacks were planned and carried out by the representatives of the illegal paramilitary “Islamic
Institute of the Caucusus,” Shamil Basayev, Emir al-Khattab, and Abu Umarov. 307 people died and more
than 1,700 people were injured in these attacks.
On September 5, 1999, contingents of Chechen fighters under the command of Basayev and Khattab
again entered Dagestan. These operations were given the name “Imam Gamzat-Bek.”
This was the decisive, critical moment in recent Russian history. Separatist Chechnya, which had
received breathing space after the Khasavyurt Accord, became the source for the spread of an active
separatism under the Wahhabi banner all over the Northern Caucasus, especially in Dagestan. Things were
aggravated by the uncertainty and wavering of the federal center, at the head of which stood the hopelessly
ill Boris Yeltsin, who now barely understood the world around him, immersed in an environment of pro-
Western agents of influence blocking any sovereign initiative. This vacillation allowed the militants to carry
out daring attacks and to conduct terrorism far beyond the borders of Chechnya, invading the territory of
Dagestan and bombing houses in Russian cities, Moscow in particular. This was the critical line which
could have signified the start of Russia’s headlong collapse. Russia seemed to be about to disappear as a
geopolitical whole
. If the daring acts of the Wahhabis were successful, other Islamic regions, and behind
them, many other territories in the Russian Federation, would promptly follow the example of the North
Caucasian republics.
In this period, Yeltsin began to recognize the gravity of his situation and that of the corrupt, oligarchic,
and pro-Western elite that surrounded him (“the Seven”). He looked feverishly for a successor, but
understood in time that Sergei Stepashin, appointed Prime Minister of Russia from May until August
1999, was not capable of coping with things. At that moment he chose in favor of the then little-known
bureaucrat, the former Deputy to the Mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin, the leader of the Federal Security Service (FSB). In August 1999, Yeltsin,
unexpectedly for many, appointed Putin as Acting Prime Minister and as his successor to the post of
President of the Russian Federation. This choice cardinally changed Russia’s fate and became the point at
which a sharp change was made in its geopolitical course. Putin came to power when seemingly nothing
could stop Russia’s fall into the abyss.
Once he assumed office, Putin turned his primary attention immediately to Chechnya and the war
blazing in Dagestan. Thus began the Second Chechen War.

The Second Chechen War
The invasion of Dagestan and the attacks on residential complexes occurred during the first days of Putin’s
administration. Things became critical, and Putin had to make a fundamental gesture: either to accept the
tendencies gathering strength as proper and inevitable, or to attempt to change matters and turn back the
course of events. This moment had a colossal geopolitical significance for the whole history of Russia.
Putin chose in favor of restoring Russia’s territorial integrity
and took this path firmly and without
wavering (in complete contrast with Yeltsin’s manner of rule).
In the middle of September, Putin decided to conduct a military operation to destroy the Chechen
militants. On September 18, Chechnya’s borders were blockaded by Russian troops. On September 23, at
Putin’s bidding, Russia’s President, now Boris Yeltsin, signed a decree “On Measures to Improve the
Efficiency of Counter-Terrorism Operations in the North Caucasus Region of the Russian Federation,”
which created military units in the North Caucasus to carry out counter-terrorism operations. On
September 23, Russian troops began a large-scale bombardment of Grozny and its outskirts, and on
September 30 they entered the territory of Chechnya. Thus began the Second Chechen War.
In this campaign the Kremlin based itself on two principles. The first was the radical destruction of all
separatist paramilitaries and the suppression of all hotbeds of resistance, with the goal of establishing
control over the territory of Chechnya and returning it to the Russian administrative zone. The second was
“the Chechenization of the conflict”: to win over the forces minimally connected to the foreign Atlanticist
centers of control to its own side (in 2000, the former supporter of the separatists, the Chief Mufti of
Chechnya, the traditionalist Akhmad Kadyrov, became the head of the administration of Chechnya, and
was loyal to Russia). The radical separatists responded to this strategy by appealing for help from foreign
mercenaries and the West. Indirectly, this undermined their position among the majority of the Chechen
population, strangers to the imported Wahhabi ideology and to liberal-democratic Western values.
We see that Putin’s policy in the Second Chechen War had a clearly Eurasian, land-based geopolitical
character and logically opposed the forces striving to weaken centripetal tendencies and to dismember
Russia. From now on, this was the main vector of Putin’s policy. This sharply differed from Yeltsin’s course
and was at the basis of the fast-growing popularity of the new Russian leader. We see this in Moscow’s
unyielding will to return Chechnya to Russian control (on September 27, Putin categorically rejected the
possibility of a meeting between himself and the leader of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, explaining
that, “There will be no meetings to allow the militants to lick their wounds”). We also see it in the absence
of influence of Western agents on the situation (to whom Putin would not listen), in Putin’s taking account
of geopolitical factors, in the readiness to oppose the West’s pressure, and in the skillful employment of
various political, ideological, and geopolitical tendencies in the internal centers of influence and authority.
All these factors together led to the total success of this strategy. Russian troops entered Chechnya both

from the North and from the side of Ingushetia, and gradually liberated one population center after
another from the militants. The brothers, Field Commander Yamadayev and the Mufti of Chechnya,
Akhmad Kadyrov, surrendered the vital strategic center of Gudermes on November 11 without a fight.
On December 26, the battle for Grozny began, ending in the capture of the city only in February 2000.
After this the gradual liberation of the entire remaining territory of Chechnya from the separatists
followed; first the flatlands, then the mountainous regions. On February 29, 2000 the first Deputy
Commander of the united group of federal forces, Colonel General Gennady Troshev, announced the end
of full-scale military operations in Chechnya, although this was probably a symbolic gesture: battles
continued in many regions of Chechnya for a long time thereafter.
On March 20, on the eve of the presidential elections, Vladimir Putin visited Chechnya, at that time
under the control of the federal forces. And on April 20, the First Deputy Commander of the General
Staff, Colonel General Valery Manilov, announced the end of the military element of the counter-
terrorism operation in Chechnya and the shift to special operations.
In Grozny on May 9, at the “Dynamo” stadium, where a parade was taking place in honor of Victory
Day,
[7]
a powerful explosion took place, killing the President of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov. Afterwards,
the separatists continued to carry out sporadic attacks around Chechnya and beyond its borders.
On March 8, 2005, during an FSB special operation in Tolstoy-Yurt, the unrecognized “President” of
the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, was annihilated, and on June 10, 2006, one of the
terrorist leaders, Shamil Basayev, was killed.
In 2007 the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov, became the leader of Chechnya at age 30,
carrying on his father’s policies.
The geopolitical results of the Second Chechen War were the shutdown of the extreme form of
separatist trends in the North Caucasus, the preservation of Russia’s territorial integrity, the destruction of
the Chechen separatists’ major bases of power, and the establishment of the federal government’s control
over the entire territory of the Russian Federation.
In practice, this was the turning point of Russia’s post-Soviet history. From the end of the 1980s until
the start of the Second Chechen War and the appointment of Vladimir Putin, Russia was steadily
losing
its
geopolitical positions, ceding one geopolitical position after another, until it nearly led to the fall of the
Russian Federation itself. The First Chechen War put the brakes on this process, but did not make it
irreversible. The conclusion of the Khasavyurt Accord rendered all previous efforts null and again made
the death of Russia as a government a real prospect. Basayev and Khattab’s attacks on Dagestan and the
attacks on homes in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk meant the imminent and inevitable collapse of
the government. In such a situation, the new political leader, Putin, took a firm position, directed toward
stopping this destructive chain of geopolitical catastrophes, managing to overcome the deepest crisis,

reestablish lost positions, and thereby open a new page in Russia’s geopolitical history.
The Geopolitical Significance of Putin’s Reforms
Other steps taken by Putin during his first two terms as President between 2000 and 2004 were generally
marked by the same sovereign, Eurasian spirit. This approach, clearly followed in the Second Chechen
War, was developed and consolidated in a series of reforms that changed the political, ideological, and
geopolitical course along which the country had been moving under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The main
symbolic acts in Putin’s reforms, endowed with clear geopolitical content, were the following:
1.
Censure of the policy taken in the 1990s toward the de-sovereignization of Russia and the virtual
introduction of foreign rule, with a corresponding proclamation of sovereignty as contemporary
Russia’s highest value;
2.
The strengthening of the shaken territorial unity of the Russian Federation through a series of measures,
including firm military actions against the Chechen separatists, the consolidation of Moscow’s position
in the North Caucasus on the whole, and the introduction of seven Federal Districts with the goal of
excluding separatist attempts anywhere in Russia; the elimination of the concept of “sovereignty” in the
legislative acts of subjects of the Federation and national republics, and the transition to a system of
appointing the heads of the Federation’s subjects instead of the old model of electing them (this measure
was introduced after the tragic events in Beslan, when middle school children became hostages of the
terrorists).
3.
The banishment of the most odious oligarchs, who had been virtually all-powerful in the 1990s, out of
the country (B. Berezovsky, V. Gusinsky, L. Nevzlin) and the criminal persecution of others for the
crimes they committed (M. Khodorkovsky, P. Lebedev, etc.); the nationalization of several large raw-
materials monopolies, while compelling the oligarchs to play the game according to the government’s
rules by recognizing the legitimacy of the policy of strengthening Russia’s sovereignty;
4.
A frank and often impartial dialogue with the USA and the West, with a condemnation of double
standards, American hegemony and the unipolar world, contrasted with an orientation toward
multipolarity and a cooperation with all forces (in particular, with continental Europe) interested in
opposing American hegemony;
5.
A change in the information policy of the major national media, which used to broadcast the views of
their oligarchic owners, but were now called on to take government interests into account;
6.
A reconsideration of the nihilistic attitude toward Russian history that then prevailed, based on the
uncritical acceptance of the Western liberal-democratic approach, through inculcating respect for and
deference toward Russian history’s most significant landmarks and figures (in particular, the
establishment of the new holiday, November 4, The Day of National

Unity, in honor of the liberation

of Moscow from Polish-Lithuanian occupation by the Second People’s

Militia);
7.
Support for the processes of integration in the post-Soviet space and the commencement of Russia’s
operations in the countries of the CIS; also the formation or resuscitation of integrating structures, such
as the “Eurasian Economic Community,” the “Collective Security Treaty Organization,” the “Common
Economic Space,” etc.;
8.
The normalization of party life by prohibiting oligarchic structures from political lobbying on behalf of
their private and corporate interests using the parliamentary parties;
9.
The elaboration of a consolidated government policy in the sphere of energy resources, which
transformed Russia into a mighty energy state capable of influencing economic processes in the
neighboring regions of Europe and Asia; plans for laying gas and oil pipelines to the West and the East
became a visible expression of the energy geopolitics of the new Russia, repeating the main force-lines of
classical geopolitics on a new level.
These reforms elicited stiff resistance from the forces oriented toward the West and the civilization of the
Sea in the era of Yeltsin and Gorbachev which comprised, either consciously or unconsciously,
a network
of agents of influence of thalassocracy,
carriers of the liberal-democratic worldview and global-capitalist
tendencies. This resistance to Putin’s course was manifest in opposition from the Right-wing parties
(Yabloko, Pravoe Delo); in the appearance of a new, radical opposition of the ultraliberal and openly pro-
American kind, sponsored by the USA and Western funds (“Dissenters”); in the intense anti-Russian
actions of the oligarchs who had been removed from power; in pressure from the USA and the West on the
Kremlin to prevent the development of this trend; in the active resistance to the strategy of the Russian
Federation in the CIS on the side of pro-Western, pro-American forces, such as the “Orange Revolution”
in Ukraine, the “Rose Revolution” in Tbilisi, Moldova’s anti-Russian policy, and so forth.
Putin and his policy expressed the geopolitical, sociological, and ideological tendencies corresponding,
mostly, to the main features of the
civilization of Land and to the constants of Russian geopolitical history.
If the actions of Gorbachev and Yeltsin were in glaring
conflict
with the trajectory of Russian geopolitics,
then Putin’s rule, on the contrary, restored Russia’s traditional path, returning it to its customary
continental, tellurocratic orbit. Thus, with Putin, the Heartland got a new historic opportunity, and the
process of establishing a unipolar world hit a real obstacle. It became clear that despite all the weakness and
confusion, Russia-Eurasia did not ultimately disappear from the geopolitical map of the world and is still,
though in a reduced condition,
the core of an alternative civilization,
the civilization of Land.
September 11th: Geopolitical Consequences and Putin’s Response
If Putin took on a tellurocratic spirit, which became the most noteworthy feature of his rule, then in the
details he often departed from this policy.

The first such deviation became apparent after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when New
York and Washington were subjected to unprecedented attacks by Islamic radicals (as the commission that
studied the rationale and perpetrators of the attack concluded). Putin decided to support the USA and
rendered diplomatic and political aid for the ensuing invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by American
forces. The forces of the Northern Alliance, then fighting the Taliban, were in close contact with the
Russian intelligence services, and when NATO invaded Afghanistan, Russia acted as a liaison with the
occupying forces, which became one of the factors contributing to the rapid overthrow of the Taliban.
Putin probably calculated that the radical Islam of the Afghan Taliban was a substantial threat to
Russia and the countries of Central Asia in the Russian zone of influence, and that an American invasion in
such a situation would be a blow against those forces that had caused Russia such unpleasantness.
Moreover, in his support for Bush, who had announced a “crusade” against international terrorism, Putin
strove to undermine the system of political, diplomatic, informational, and economic support that had
been coming to the separatists of Chechnya and the North Caucasus from the West; previously, in
supporting the Chechen militants, the Americans had been aiding those forces that had brought their own
country so painful a blow. Thus, closer relations with the USA and, correspondingly, with the Atlanticist
pole had a practical character for Putin, and he did not abrogate his fundamental orientation toward
tellurocracy. However, one cannot but notice a serious contradiction in such a tactic: approving the
American occupation of Afghanistan, Russia was left with, instead of only one hostile force (the radical
Islamists) on the southern frontiers of its strategic zone of influence, also another, more serious one in the
form of US military bases. This was the direct presence in Russia’s areas of influence of its primary strategic
opponents on the geopolitical map of the world. If Russia strove to build an alternative multipolar system
against the unipolar world, it should never have allowed the deployment of a US military contingent in
immediate proximity to its southern borders and to the borders of the countries of Central Asia that are
allied with Russia.
The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis
After receiving support from Russia, the USA next invaded and occupied Iraq as well, for no reason
whatsoever, which evoked a natural protest from Russia, France, and Germany. This anti-American
coalition received the name “the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis,” and in a short time it seemed that the creation
of a
European-Eurasian multipolar bloc
was occurring, aimed at the containment of unipolar American
hegemony. This prospect worried the Americans a great deal, so they promptly undertook a series of efforts
directed at tearing this coalition down as quickly as possible. The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis represented an
outline of a tellurocratic alliance,
recalling the earlier Eurasian projects of the European geopolitical
continentalists such as Jean Thiriart, with his “Euro-Soviet Empire from Vladivostok to Dublin,” or Alain

de Benoist, who had called for an alliance of continental Europe with Russia.
Anyhow, the invasion of Iraq showed that the USA acts only in its own interests and was not planning
to take Russia into consideration, despite Russia’s concessions in Afghanistan. Moreover, Washington
never ended its support for the Chechen and Caucasian separatists, and Zbigniew Brzezinski explained
rather cynically that only those who fight with the USA should be reckoned among “international
terrorists,” while those who weaken the competitors and adversaries of the USA (in particular, the
fundamentalists of the North Caucasus) must be excluded from this category and equated with “freedom
fighters.”
If we assess the balance of Putin’s demarche according to his closer relations with the USA, we can say
that overall it produced ambiguous results and was most likely a geopolitical error. Russia won almost
nothing from this, but lost the clarity and consistency of its tellurocratic policy, which had been emphasized
so clearly and sharply by the first acts of Putin’s reforms immediately after his coming to power. Against the
general background of the tellurocratic strategy, this was neither a justifiable nor effective retreat from that
policy. It is telling that the representatives of Eurasian Russian geopolitics then cautioned Putin against his
policy toward the USA,
[8]
predicting the course of events that indeed took place a short time later. Thus, in
the context of Putin’s tellurocratic geopolitics, elements that reject its logic appear, suggesting that even
after Putin came to power, the network of Atlanticist agents was preserved in Russia. Despite having lost its
leading position and undivided influence over the highest political authorities as was the case in the era of
Gorbachev and Yeltsin, it yet retains significant positions and resources. After September 11, many Russian
experts actively supported Putin and his decisions, and that same group of experts strongly condemned his
initiative to create a “Paris-Berlin-Moscow” axis during the American-British invasion of Iraq. The fact that
such experts retained their influence in Russia and received an open platform for the expression of their
positions in the federal media confirmed this suspicion. Despite the abrupt change of course from a
thalassocratic one, leading to a quick death, to a tellurocratic one oriented toward the rebirth of the
civilization of Land and the position of the Heartland, it became clear after the events of September 11,
2001, and Moscow’s response to them, that amidst these radical geopolitical reforms, the fight for influence
over the Russian government had not ended, and Putin’s reforms could deviate from the projected path.
The Atlanticist Network of Influence in Putin’s Russia
The abrupt change of course of Russian policy during Putin’s rule, following a vector that was the opposite
of the one that had preceded it, was nevertheless not fixed, neither in Russia’s strategic doctrine, nor in the
government’s ideological programs and manifestos, nor in the specification of national interests and the
methods of their realization, nor in thesystematic increase in Russia’s geopolitical, economic, and political
might. Putin normalized the situation and ended the most destructive and catastrophic phenomena. This

was the meaning of his mission. But there was no real project for Russia’s future geopolitical development,
and no Eurasian agreement was worked out during the two terms of his presidency. Everything was limited
by practical steps, directed toward controlling the most destructive processes without an orderly and
consistent civilizational plan. Putin adapted himself to the situation, striving at every opportunity to
strengthen Russia’s position, but if no such situations turned up, he focused his attention on the resolution
of purely technical problems.
Thus the specific
practical-technical style
of his administration was worked out. The general line of
development of his policy was directed
along a Eurasian, land-based, tellurocratic vector
, and this
predetermined the primary substance of his reforms. But this line did not receive a conceptual and
theoretical formulation. Instead, the policy was carried out entirely by technical political methods; often
one thing was proclaimed, while in practice something entirely different was done. Official discourse
contained deliberate or accidental contradictions and appeals to a thalassocratic system of values; liberalism
and Westernism were alternated with patriotism, tellurocracy, and the affirmation of the values and
uniqueness of Russian civilization. Overall, this produced an eclectic atmosphere, and all sharp corners
were avoided by means of confusing public relations campaigns. It is common to tie this style of
contradiction, of purely technical and vacuous policy, to the Kremlin’s main ideologue during Putin’s reign,
Vladislav Surkov.
[9]
Surkov took strict care that in almost every political declaration, appeals to
incompatible values and sociological, political, and geopolitical models were preserved. There were appeals
to statehood and liberalism, to the West and to Russian uniqueness, to hierarchical authority and to
democratization, to sovereignty and to globalization, to a multipolar world and to a unipolar one, to
Atlanticism and to Eurasianism. All the while, none of these orientations was supposed to have any greater
validity than its opposite.
The pool of experts at the Kremlin was preserved unchanged from the 1990s and represented the
prevalence of liberal and pro-Western, pro-American analysts, and were often also the West’s direct agents
of influence. It is revealing that, from the end of 2002, the journal
Russia in Global Affairs
started to
circulate, openly declaring that it was a subsidiary publication of the American journal
Foreign Affairs
,
published by the Council on Foreign Relations, the center for the elaboration of the Atlanticist,
thalassocratic, and globalist strategy. During Putin’s presidency, this journal was not only published
officially and openly, detailing the main geopolitical and strategic projects of the USA for the unipolar
organization of the world, it also included on its editorial committee the following exceedingly influential
and high-placed figures: A. L. Adamishin, the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of the Russian
Federation; A. G. Arbatov, the Director of the Center of International Security of IMEMO; A. G.
Vishnevsky, the Director of the Center for Demography and Human Ecology of the Institute of Economic
Forecasting; A. D. Zhukova, First Deputy Chairperson of the Russian Federation; S. B. Ivanov, once

secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, later Minister of Defense and First Deputy
Prime Minister; S. A. Karaganov, who was curator of the publication and Chairman of the Presidium of
the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (created as an affiliate of the CFR in Russia in 1991); A. A.
Kokoshin, a distinguished figure of “United Russia”; Y. I. Kuz’minov, chancellor of the State University
Higher School of Economics; S. V. Lavrov, Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, an excellent and
plenipotentiary ambassador of the Russian Federation; V. P. Lukin, Commission of the Russian Federation
for Human Rights; F. A. Luk’yanova, the editor-in-chief of the journal
Russia in Global Affairs
; V. A. May,
the chancellor of the Academy of the
Narodni
Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation;
V. A. Nikonov, the President of the “Policy” and “Russian World” foundations; V. V. Posner, the President
of the Academy of Russian Television; S. E. Prikhod’ko, assistant to the President of the Russian
Federation; V. A. Ryzhkov, former Deputy and eminent member of the liberal opposition; A. V.
Torkunov, chancellor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations; I. M. Khakamada, a
politician of the ultra-liberal opposition; and I. J. Jurgens, Director of the Institute of Contemporary
Development, as well as Vice-President and Executive Secretary of the Russian Union of Industrialists and
Entrepreneurs (Employers) and others.
It is difficult to imagine that such highly placed actors — among whom we also see the President’s
counsellor on foreign policy, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, highly placed officials of the special services,
and elite managers from the scientific community — did not know the nature of the editorial board of the
organ they had chosen to join. Consequently, this group, which united those closest to Putin with ardent
members of the opposition, was consciously formed on a pro-American, thalassocratic, liberal, globalist,
and Atlanticist basis. After this, it is not surprising that Putin’s Eurasian and tellurocratic policy did not
receive a fitting and consistent formulation: the American network of agents of influence, which reached to
the heights of Russia’s authorities, immediately extinguished any attempt to develop Putin’s actions to the
level of a system or to fix its logic as a program, project, doctrine, or strategy.
And again, the manager responsible for domestic policy in the President’s administration, Vladislav
Surkov, played the key role in ensuring that no serious steps toward the creation of such a strategy took
place, and were instead replaced by empty tricks of political manipulation. Being very experienced in such
techniques and understanding how information and image strategies work, he single-handedly established a
political system in Russia in which everything was knowingly based on postmodern paradoxes, on the
conscious entanglement of all political forces, and on hybrid crosses of patriotic elements with liberal-
Western ones.
We can raise the question: were Surkov and the highly placed Russian bureaucrats of the first tier
acting independently when they supported Atlanticism and the consistent sabotage of the development of a
real strategy? Instead, there were only caricatures and vapid public relations events in the spirit of Strategy

2020
[10]
or the pompous and pointless forums held under the aegis of “United Russia.”
[11]
Or did Putin
consciously veil his reforms behind the smokescreen of an endless sequence of pointless and contradictory
pronouncements and actions, confusing both his enemies and his friends? We cannot answer this question
today, since time must pass for many things to become clear. We cannot rule out that this was his policy for
the disinformation of the adversary (Atlanticism, the USA, globalism) and had been intended to divert
attention while he latently undertook a series of concrete steps directed toward securing Russia’s might,
accumulating its resources, and consolidating its energy management and major economic policies. But we
are probably dealing with a case of the planned sabotage of Putin’s Eurasian initiatives by Atlanticism’s
agents of influence, retained at the upper levels of power and at the head of the highest institutions of
learning from the time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, when orientation toward the West and to the unipolar
world was the official policy of the Russian government.
The fact that Putin’s strategy did not receive its proper formulation, while the influence of the pro-
American, liberal, thalassocratic networks were not ended and were preserved in full measure during
Putin’s rule, should be stated as an empirical fact and an important circumstance in the general geopolitical
evaluation of his governance.
Besides the editorial committee of the journal
Russia in Global Affairs,
the most influential experts of
an openly Atlanticist persuasion (in part overlapping the membership of its editorial committee) made up
the basis of the intellectual club “Valdai,”
[12]
with whom Putin, and later his successor, Medvedev, regularly
met. The peculiarity of this group is that American and European experts were included side by side with
Russian agents of influence, including a group of figures who had a direct and manifest relation to
American intelligence agencies; in particular, A. Cohen,
[13]
A. Kuchins,
[14]
C. Kupchan,
[15]
and F. Hill.
[16]
The Post-Soviet Space: Integration
In the period of Putin’s rule, the geopolitical situation of the post-Soviet space intensified. Here we see two
opposed tendencies.
On one hand, with Putin’s coming to power, the processes of integrating the group of CIS countries
with Russia’s center began on different levels simultaneously:
•
economically: the creation of a Eurasian Economic Community (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus,
Tadzhikistan, and Kirghizia), the “Common Economic Space” (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, with
Ukraine being invited), and Customs Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus);
•
militarily and strategically: the “Social Contract on Collective Security” (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus,
Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia, and Armenia).
Moreover, we should mention the more avant-garde project of political integration along the model of the

European Union, advanced by the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
[17]
already in 1994, but
completely rejected by the pro-Western Russian elite at that time. This project received the name of the
“Eurasian Union.” This project was not openly supported by Putin until the fall of 2011, but the idea of
closer relations between the countries of the post-Soviet space was not rejected by Putin even before then.
If the post-Soviet space in previous stages (the former USSR, and before that of the Russian Empire) was
transformed in only one area — namely, toward a weakening and destruction of those forces that united
these parts of a formerly single whole — then after Putin’s coming to power, the opposite initiatives were
also clearly emphasized: integration, closer relations, the strengthening of coordination, and so on.
There were two more organizations of an integrational kind: the Union State of Russia and Belarus
[18]
and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),
[19]
into which China and the countries of the Eurasian
Economic Community entered, beside Russia. From the beginning, Putin’s relations with Belarus and its
President, A. G. Lukashenko, did not come together, and therefore this integrational initiative did not
develop in the proper way, remaining in that nominal condition in which it was announced in Yeltsin’s
time. This can be regarded as another sign of the inconsistency of Putin’s implementation of the Eurasian
policy, for which the alliance with Belarus and the prospective political unification with it would be a
logical and necessary step (Russia would receive access to Western territories, strategically necessary for the
conduct of its European policy, which Russian leaders at all stages of our geopolitical history understood
perfectly well, from Ivan III
[20]
to Stalin).
As concerns the SCO, Putin, on the contrary, undertook a series of steps toward an intensification of a
strategic partnership with China in regional questions, including a series of small-scale, but symbolically
significant military exercises. The alliance with China was built wholly on multipolar logic and was
unambiguously oriented to indicating a possible way to create strategic opposition to the unipolar world
and American hegemony.
The Geopolitics of the Color Revolutions
In the same period, opposite geopolitical tendencies, “color revolutions,” began to unfold intensely. Their
meaning consisted in bringing to power openly anti-Russian, pro-Western, and often nationalistic political
forces in the countries of the CIS, and thereby finally tearing these countries away from Russia, to frustrate
integration, and in the long term to include them in NATO as occurred in the Baltic countries. The
peculiarity of these revolutions was that they were all aimed at bringing about closer relations of the
countries in which they occurred with the USA and the West, and they followed the method of “non-
violent resistance,”
[21]
which American strategists had elaborated in the framework of the “Freedom
House” project.
[22]
This was carried out through subversive measures and the organization of revolutions

that had been executed in the Third World under the direction of the CIA.
In November 2003, the “Rose Revolution” happened in Georgia, where the evasive Eduard
Shevardnadze, who had been wavering between the West and Moscow, was replaced by the strictly pro-
Western, radically Atlanticist, and pro-American politician Mikhail Saakashvili. An active role in the
events of the “Rose Revolution” was played by the youth organization Kmara (literally “Enough!”), which
acted in accordance with the ideas of the primary theoretician of analogous networks of protest
organizations, Gene Sharp, and with the methods of “Freedom House.” These techniques had already been
tested in other places; in particular in Yugoslavia during the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, using the
pro-Western Serbian youth organization Otpor.
After coming to power, Saakashvili headed immediately for a swift deviation from Russia and for closer
relations with the USA and NATO. He set about actively sabotaging any initiatives for integrating into the
framework of the CIS and attempted to revive the essentially anti-Russian unification of the governments
of the CIS with the GUAM bloc: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. Saakashvili’s circle
consisted mainly of advisors who had received their education abroad and were not historically connected
to the Soviet experience. After this time, Georgia stood in the avant-garde of the Atlanticist strategy in the
post-Soviet space and took an active role in the opposition to Eurasianist tendencies. Putin and his policy
became Georgia’s main adversaries. Later, this spilled over into the events of August 2008, when it became
the Russia-Georgian War.
In December 2004, in a similar scenario, the “Orange Revolution” happened in Ukraine. Elections
were held, in a race between the protégé of Kuchma,
[23]
who followed an ambivalent policy between the
West and Russia; V. Yanukovich;
[24]
and the entirely pro-Western and strictly anti-Russian nationalist
politicians, V. Yushchenko
[25]
and Y. Timoshenko.
[26]
The forces were approximately even, and the
outcome was decided by the mobilization of the masses and particularly by those youths who supported the
“orange” cause through massive demonstrations, organized along Gene Sharp’s model. The youth
movement Pora
[27]
played an important role in these processes. After Yushchenko’s victory, Ukraine took a
firm anti-Russian position, started to actively counteract any Russian initiatives, began an attack on the use
of the Russian language, and began to rewrite history, representing Ukrainians as a “people

colonized by
Russians.” Geopolitically, Orange Ukraine became the conductor of a distinctly Atlanticist, thalassocratic
policy, directed against Russia, Eurasianism, tellurocracy, and integration, and durable ties were established
between the two most active Atlanticists in the post-Soviet space, Saakashvili and Yushchenko. Geopolitical
projects for the formation of a Baltic-Black Sea community arose, which, theoretically, comprised the
countries of the Baltic, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and the countries of Eastern Europe, Poland, and
Hungary, who are, like the Baltic countries, members of NATO. This was a project for the establishment
of a
cordon sanitaire
between Russia and Europe, built in accordance with the maps of the classical

thalassocratic geopoliticians.
The positions of the other members of GUAM — Moldova and Azerbaijan — were not as radical and
were largely dictated by local problems: Moscow’s support for the mutinous Trans-Dniester Republic,
which had announced its independence from Moldova in 1991, and the military collaboration between
Russia and Armenia, that shared insoluble antagonisms with Azerbaijan over the occupation of Karabakh.
The entire picture of the post-Soviet space in Putin’s era was characterized by the transparent and distinct
opposition of the civilization of Land (embodied in Russia and its allies) and the civilization of the Sea
(embodied in the GUAM countries, led by Georgia and Ukraine). The Heartland strove to expand its
sphere of influence in the CIS through processes of integration, while the USA strove through its satellites
to limit the spread of Russian influence in this zone and to lock Russia within its own borders, and to
gradually integrate the new countries surrounding it into NATO.
The battle between Eurasianism and Atlanticism within the post-Soviet space and the integrational
processes of the CIS, on one hand, and the color revolutions on the other, was so evident that it is unlikely
that any sober-minded Atlanticist could fail to understand what was put into action there. But the might of
the Atlanticist networks of influence in Russia itself again made itself known: there was no broad social
understanding of the processes taking place. Experts commented on particulars and details, losing sight of
the most important aspects and consciously creating a distorted picture of events. Moreover, Putin’s
actions, aimed at deciding the problems of integration, were either suppressed or criticized, while candid
Russophobia, which ruled in Georgia or Ukraine, was overlooked or reinterpreted neutrally.
The Russian media and the community of experts not only did not help Putin conduct his Eurasian
campaign but, more often, prevented him from carrying it out. This was yet another paradox of Putin’s
period of rule.
The Munich Speech
Putin moved closer to the formulation of his geopolitical views in a consistent and non-contradictory way
only toward the end of his second presidential term in 2007. His famous speech at the Munich Conference
on Security Policy in 2007 became this formulation, although it was rather approximate and emotional. In
this speech, Putin criticized the unipolar arrangement of the contemporary world system and described his
vision of Russia’s role in the contemporary world, considering present realities and threats. In contrast with
the majority of his often evasive and internally inconsistent declarations, this speech, which has been called
the “Munich speech,” was distinguished by consistency and clarity. Putin seemed to break through the veil
of the ambiguous and evasive postmodern demagoguery of the Atlanticist experts or of Surkov, which
differentiated this speech from the majority of his previous programmatic statements. The main points of
the Munich speech can be reduced to the following excerpts from it:

1.
“For the contemporary world, the unipolar model is not only unacceptable, but altogether impossible.”
2.
“One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the
economic, political, cultural, and educational policies it imposes on other nations. “
3.
“The sole mechanism for decision making about the use of military force as a last resort can only be the
UN Charter.”
4.
“NATO advances its frontline forces to our state borders, but we, strictly fulfilling our agreement, do
not react to these actions at all.”
5.
“What happened to those assurances given by our Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact?”
6.
“With one hand ‘charitable aid’ is given, but with the other, not only is economic backwardness
preserved, but a profit is also collected.”
7.
“An attempt is being made to transform the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) into a vulgar instrument for guaranteeing the foreign policy interests of one or a group of
countries against those of other countries.”
8.
“Russia is a country with a history of more than a thousand years, and it has practically always enjoyed
the privilege of conducting an independent foreign policy. We are not about to change this tradition
today.”
[28]
The Munich speech could well be taken as a fully-fledged strategic directive. The first point openly rejects
the unipolar world order; it challenges the existing state of affairs and contests the world system that took
shape after the fall of the USSR. This is quite a revolutionary statement, which can be regarded as the loud
voice of the Heartland. In the second point, we are talking about a direct critique of the USA’s policy as the
hegemon of the thalassocratic strategy on a world scale and the censure of their supranational, aggressive
activities. Both points, the first and the second, comprise a platform for a consistent and well-founded anti-
Americanism.
The third point is a proposal for a return to the Yalta model, expressed in the era of bipolarity by the
UN. This was a “protective” response to the numerous appeals by the Americans to reform the UN or to
repudiate its structure altogether as failing to correspond to the new balance of power, calling for its
replacement by a new organization led by the USA and its vassals (similar to Mackinder’s project of a
“league of democracies”).
[29]
In the fourth point, Putin unambiguously criticizes the spread of NATO to the East, interpreting this
process in the only possible way (from the point of view of Russia’s national interests and responsible
geopolitical analysis). Putin makes it clear that he is not a victim of the “liberal-democratic” demagoguery
that tries to cover up the expansion of the West, and that he looks at things soberly.
The fifth point accuses the West of not fulfilling the promises it made to Gorbachev when he

unilaterally cut short the Soviet military presence in Europe. That is, he faults thalassocracy for playing by
the logic of double standards during the 1980s.
The sixth point condemns the economic strategy of the Western countries in the Third World, which,
with the help of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, ruins developing countries under
the guise of economic aid and subordinates them to their own political and economic domination.
[30]
Essentially, this is a call to the Third World to seek an alternative to existing liberal politics.
In the seventh point, Putin indicates that various European structures (in particular, the OSCE) do not
serve European interests, but are instruments of the USA’s aggressive policy and exert pressure on Russia in
the political, energy, and economic spheres, contradicting the interests of the European countries
themselves.
Quintessential is the eighth point, which declares that Russia is a great world power that intends from
now to conduct an
independent, self-reliant policy
and is ready to return to its traditional function as the
core of the “civilization of Land” and a bastion of tellurocracy. Putin essentially announced that the idea
that history has ended and that the Sea has at last conquered the Land is premature; the Land still exists, it is
present, and it is ready to make itself loudly known.
The reaction to Putin’s Munich speech in the West and the USA was extremely negative. The majority
of Atlanticists and experts began to speak of a renewal of the “Cold War.” Putin showed that he realizes
that
the great war of continents has not ceased
and that today we are only in its next stage. After this, many
Western strategists finally began to see Putin as the embodiment of a geopolitical adversary and the
traditional image of the “Russian enemy,” which had formed during the history of the geopolitical
confrontation between Sea and Land.
After such a frank proclamation of his position on an international level, it was logical to suppose that
Vladimir Putin, discarding his masks, would give a systematic character to these declarations, put them at
the basis of his future strategy, ground a foreign policy doctrine on that foundation, and apply its main
principles to the sphere of domestic policy. But nothing of the sort occurred. In Russia itself, people did
not speak of the Munich speech for long. No significant discussions or debates were held. It did not affect
the position of the Atlanticist networks at all, and it did not lead to any consistent national policy.
We can only guess why so striking a declaration was quickly stifled by technical, bureaucratic routine.
If we grant that Putin spoke sincerely and deliberately in his Munich speech, then, in contrast with how
little resonance his words received in Russia itself and how little they affected domestic and foreign policy,
we must think that he is a continentalist, a Eurasianist, and a supporter of strong governmental authority,
but among a dense ring of Atlanticist, American agents of influence, effectively sabotaging those of his
serious initiatives which might harm their overseas masters.

Operation Medvedev
This ambiguity in Putin’s geopolitical policy, continental and tellurocratic overall, but also containing
contradictions in the form of influential units of the Atlanticist network at the highest levels of
government, was shown in Putin’s choice of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in March 2008. On one
hand, Medvedev was a constant colleague of Putin in the various stages of his political career, and this alone
should have ensured the similarity of their political and geopolitical attitudes. On the other hand,
Medvedev’s political image was openly liberal and pro-Western. This combination created an internal
contradiction between tellurocracy and thalassocracy that was much more acute and salient than in the
political line of Putin himself. In advancing Medvedev as his successor, Putin further accented the
inconsistency of Russia’s position in the world. Medvedev’s Westernism and liberalism were not only
obvious, but were also emphasized in every way possible from the moment that he was finally named as the
presidential candidate from “Putin’s party.”
Already on the eve of his selection, Medvedev entrusted the elaboration of the main strategy of his
foreign and domestic policy to the Institute of Russia’s Contemporary Development (INSOR). This
Institute had been established by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and was an
organization uniting Russia’s most influential and richest oligarchs under the leadership of the ultraliberal
and unambiguously pro-American public figures I. Yurgens
[31]
and E. Gontmakher,
[32]
famous for their
criticisms of Putin from an Atlanticist position; Medvedev himself became the head of the Board of
Trustees of INSOR.
If we compare Putin’s main strategy with the projects of INSOR, then we receive a complete and
radical contradiction, aggravated by the INSOR ideologues’ open criticisms of Putin and his policies. After
Medvedev took office on November 15, 2008, he visited the headquarters of the CFR in New York,
[33]
an
unprecedented event for a leader of Russia, providing evidence of the active Atlanticist, globalist, and
hegemonic position of this influential organization.
It is significant that, through the authorized representative of the CFR, the oligarch Mikhail
Fridman
[34]
(one of the members of the “Seven Bankers” of 1996), the Vice Premier of the Russian
Federation, Sergei Ivanov, also established close ties with the CFR, speaking twice at it, on January 13,
2005
[35]
and again on April 4, 2011;
[36]
Ivanov was earlier regarded as a possible successor to Putin, as was
Medvedev.
It is obvious that Putin consciously sanctioned this relation with the headquarters of Atlanticism and its
most avant-garde, advanced structures and clearly understood the significance of the liberalism and
Westernism of his successor. Putin, who consistently carried out a policy of strengthening Russian
sovereignty and outlined his foreign policy in his Munich speech, also deliberately demonstrated a certain
loyalty to Atlanticist projects. He not only kept the vast network of thalassocracy’s agents of influence in

place, but also made it clear through his choice of successor (including also S. B. Ivanov) that he was ready
to implement a political line utterly different from the one that he has declared.
And again, it is not difficult to guess the reasons behind such a double game and its actual geopolitical
purpose. However, when a man with nominally Atlanticist, globalist, and liberal attitudes and views
becomes the leader of a country, and this happens solely thanks to Putin and his will, this transcends the
possibility of Western influence and becomes something simply inexplicable for a figure such as Putin.
The solution to such a tactical approach was given at the United Russia party conference on September
24, 2011, when Medvedev announced that he was not running for a second term and proposed that Putin
run again for President. Geopolitically, the picture was cleared up, and “Operation Medvedev” proved
nothing other than an attempt to distract the West and win time for Putin’s legal return to the presidential
seat. And during Medvedev’s rule, no critical concessions were made to Atlanticism, despite many
declarations and a series of purely symbolic steps.
Saakashvili’s Assault on Tskhinvali and the Russia-Georgian War of 2008
The Russia-Georgian War in August 2008 was an extremely important geopolitical event. Two of
Georgia’s administrative zones with a mixed population, where Ossetians predominated in South Ossetia
and Abkhazians in Abkhazia, declared themselves to be politically autonomous regions. After the
announcement that Georgia was giving up its membership in the USSR on April 9, 1991, they disagreed
with this decision and, in turn, decided to forgo their membership in Georgia. Georgia did not agree with
this and began military operations to keep Abkhazia and South Ossetia within its borders.
Georgian troops invaded Abkhazia in 1992 after Shevardnadze came to power and the previous
President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was overthrown. In the first stage, they were successful in seizing Sukhumi
and advancing all the way to Gagra. But later, relying on volunteers from the Republic of the Northern
Caucasus and military, economic and diplomatic aid from Russia, the Abkhazians managed to reestablish
control over Sukhumi by the end of 1993 and to fight off the Georgians. Meanwhile, the Georgians
retained control over the territories of the Kodori Valley, which the Abkhazians considered a part of
Abkhazia. Overall, this situation was preserved unchanged until August 2008.
Throughout 1991, South Ossetia was an arena for military operations. On January 19, 1992, there was
a referendum on the question of “government independence and/or unification with North Ossetia” in
South Ossetia. A majority of the participants in the referendum supported this proposal. After a lull,
military operations in South Ossetia resumed in the spring of 1992, brought about by a
coup d’etat
and a
civil war in Georgia. Under pressure from Russia, Georgia began negotiations, which ended on June 24,
1992, with the signing of the Sochi Agreement on the Principles of the Settlement of the Conflict. On July
14, 1992, there was a cease-fire, and the Mixed Peacekeeping Forces (SSPM) were introduced into the

conflict zone to separate the opposing sides. After 1992 and until 2008, South Ossetia was a
de facto
independent government and had its own constitution and government symbols. The Georgian authorities
considered it, as before, to be administrative unit, the Tskhinvali region.
Geopolitically, Abkhazia and South Ossetia were pro-Russian and anti-Georgian, which, because of
Georgia’s Atlanticist orientation, implied their Eurasian, continental, land-based and
tellurocratic
policy.
When Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in 2003 on a wave of nationalist sentiments, it intensified the
antagonisms between Tbilisi, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia even more, as Saakashvili’s radical Atlanticism
was openly leading to an escalation with the pro-Russian orientation of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali.
Saakashvili’s promise to his constituency was to reestablish the territorial integrity of Georgia and remove
the pro-Russian enclaves on its territory. In this, Saakashvili relied on economic and military aid from the
USA and NATO countries.
For five years, the Georgian side actively prepared for new military actions and began an operation to
seize South Ossetia on August 7, 2008. On the night of August 8, rocket fire on Tskhinvali began from
“Grad” launchers, and Georgian troops began their assault on the city using tanks. The same day, they seized
the city and began to exterminate the population. Georgian troops also shelled a contingent of Russian
peacekeepers, causing significant casualties. According to international precepts, this meant that Georgia
had declared war on Russia through the conduct of military operations against the regular armed forces of a
foreign state.
In response, Moscow led a military contingent into South Ossetia on September 8 through the Roki
tunnel, and on September 9 Russian troops approached Tskhinvali, engaged the Georgian troops and began
to liberate both the city and the entirety of South Ossetia from the Georgian occupation.
Simultaneously, Russian troops entered the territory of the Kodori Valley and destroyed the Georgians’
military bases there.
Finding themselves at war with Georgia, Russian troops started to advance to Tbilisi, the capital of
Georgia, but after marching deep into the territory of their enemy, they later retreated and returned to the
borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Afterwards, Dmitry Medvedev explained that the cessation of this
incursion into Georgia, which had every chance of ending in Russia’s victory, was his personal achievement.
On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the
borders then existing.
Thereby, in practice after Medvedev’s coming to power, Russia continued to follow Putin’s policy of
strengthening Russia’s sovereignty when it was seriously tested by an encounter with an attack by Atlanticist
forces within tellurocratic Russia’s zone of strategic influence. Russian forces even went beyond the borders
of the Russian Federation proper for the first time since the fall of the USSR without fearing Western
pressure or threats from the USA.

It is revealing that the entire Atlanticist network of agents in Russia during that period opposed this
turn of events in unison, and insisted on Russia’s non-interference in the Georgia-Ossetia conflict. They
later took all possible actions to prevent Moscow’s recognition of the independence of these countries.
The events of August 2008 were a tense moment in the great war of continents, when the forces of the
civilization of the Sea (standing behind Saakashvili) and the civilization of Land (Russia and the Republics
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia) collided in a tough confrontation; this time, the civilization of Land scored
an unambiguous victory. This victory had a significant military dimension, since the Georgian troops were
defeated despite being fitted with the latest NATO equipment and having American instructors. Besides
that, this was a political and diplomatic victory: Russia was successful in avoiding confrontation with the
West and in preventing the rise of a harsh anti-Russian coalition. Lastly, the victory was informational, as
the Russian media (in radical contrast with the First Chechen War) synchronously transmitted a state-
patriotic, pro-Ossetian position, shared by a majority of the population.
Thus, the recently selected President Dmitry Medvedev showed himself to be a politician in the face of
a harsh challenge from the Atlanticist powers, putting into practice (and not by words) an unambiguously
tellurocratic decision
in a difficult situation, based solely on an adequate appraisal of Russian interests. This
development seemed to illuminate Putin’s true strategy: under the guise of a liberal and pro-Western
course of Russian politics, Putin’s strategy for strengthening Russia’s sovereignty and asserting its
geopolitical interests in the post-Soviet space was retained.
It is significant that the Atlanticist lobby, called into full combat readiness during this affair, failed to
exert the slightest influence on the decisions of the President, the Premier, and the leaders of the armed
forces (if we do not count Medvedev’s refusal to seize Tbilisi, the expedience of which could be interpreted
in different ways).
The Reset and the Return to Atlanticism
But after August 2008, the events of which should logically have led to a renewal of confrontation with the
West, entirely different processes began in Russia’s foreign policy. Medvedev announced a policy of closer
relations with the West and especially with the USA, a policy of modernizing and Westernizing Russian
society, and a policy of deepening liberal reforms. This policy was supported by President Barack Obama.
Although it evoked indignation in the USA and in the West, the Russia-Georgia war did not become a
serious argument in favor of beginning a new phase in the anti-Russian campaign. Everyone in the USA
understood that Russia had won a tactical victory, but for whatever reasons they went on to soften the
situation and did not sharply raise the temperature of the confrontation.
In this period the process began that received the name “reset” in the international press, signifying
closer relations between Russia and the USA after a period of cooling connected with the Putin era. The

“reset” proposed the harmonization of both countries’ regional interests and the implementation of
common operations when both had similar regional aims. In practice this was expressed in the following
ways:
•
Russia’s support for US and NATO military operations in Afghanistan;
•
the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) for the reduction of strategic arms;
•
Russia’s cancellation of the delivery of certain kinds of armaments to Iran;
•
Russia’s support for US and NATO policies in the Arab world (in particular, the renunciation of its
veto in the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, which led to US and NATO military intervention
into the country and the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime).
Besides these steps, which overall gave some concrete advantages to the USA and practically nothing to
Russia, there were no serious movements in Russian-American relations during Medvedev’s presidency.
The USA continued to expand its anti-ballistic missile defense program in Europe, despite Russia’s protests,
changing its plans only because of the results of the negotiations with the directly affected countries in
Eastern Europe. Moreover, the USA put parts of its anti-ballistic missile defense systems in Turkey, close to
the Russian border.
Meanwhile, in the opinion of Putin and Russia’s military leadership, the entire European anti-ballistic
missile system theoretically had as its goal only an anti-Russian strategic program for the restraint of Russia
and could, under certain circumstances, serve offensive purposes. Not only did the “reset” not stop
American initiatives of European anti-ballistic missile defense; it did not even slow them.
A geopolitical analysis of the “reset” can be reduced to the following: without a common enemy (a
third force) for the civilization of the Sea, which pretends to be global, and since the civilization of Land
finds itself in a reduced and weakened condition,
there are not and cannot be any common, serious
strategic aims.
Under these conditions, given the asymmetrical nature of their power-related, economic, and
military relations, a search for the points of contact can lead objectively only to the further
one-sided
process of Russia’s de-sovereignization
, as happened in the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and to the
curtailment of that course that Putin emphasized during his rule. Judging by certain declarations, the
projects of Medvedev’s INSOR, and the information-management of the “reset” in the Russian media, the
entire content of this process could be understood in precisely this way. And perhaps Western strategists
had this attitude toward it, while delays in fulfilling irreversible steps favoring the West were due to the fact
that the new President had “not yet freed himself entirely from the influence of Putin, who brought him to
power.” It was true, as March 2012 approached, that more and more Atlanticist analysts began to express
doubts about the seriousness of the intentions of Medvedev and his pro-American, ultraliberal circle, and
about his independence. Voices were heard suggesting that Medvedev’s presidency was nothing other than a

means to gain time before the inevitable and straightforward confrontation, which would become
inescapable if Putin were to return to power. But the hope that the Russian President-reformer might
remain for a second term kept the West from exerting more serious pressure on Russia. According to some
sources,
[37]
American Vice President Joe Biden, during his visit to Moscow in the spring of 2011, tried to
interfere in Russia’s domestic policies by openly calling on Putin not to run for another term, warning of a
“color revolution” similar to those that had occurred in the Arab world in 2011.
If we turn our attention away from this formal perspective of American pressure on Russia and the
apparent readiness of Russia under Medvedev to take irreversible actions in this direction, which would
have sharply broken with Putin’s course, were not undertaken. Overall, all the steps toward the USA and
NATO that Medvedev made had a purely declarative character or affected only the secondary aspects of
the complete strategy. Russia’s losses during this period were insignificant and incomparable with those that
the country incurred under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
After Putin’s decision to return to the Kremlin and Medvedev’s own support for this decision, no
doubts remained for anyone that this had been a tactical move.
The Eurasian Union
Putin’s programmatic text, “The Eurasian Union: A Path to Success and Prosperity,” published in the
newspaper
Izvestia
on October 3, 2011, was extremely significant. In this text, Putin declared a landmark
in the integration of the post-Soviet space, first on an economic level, and then on a political one (about
which, it is true, he only hints).
Beyond economic integration, Putin described a higher — geopolitical and political — aim: the future
creation on the space of Northern Eurasia of a new, supranational organization, built on civilizational
commonality. As the European Union, uniting countries and societies related to European civilization,
began with the “European Coal and Steel Community” to gradually develop into a new supra-
governmental organization, so too would the Eurasian Union take on a supranational character, declared
by Putin to be a long-term, historic goal.
The idea of a Eurasian Union was worked out in two countries simultaneously in the early 1990s: in
Kazakhstan by President N. A. Nazarbayev
[38]
and in Russia by the Eurasian Movement.
[39]
In Moscow in
1994, Nazarbayev voiced the idea of this project of the political integration of the post-Soviet space, and
even proposed the development of a constitution for a Eurasian Union similar to that of the European
Union. And, for its part, the idea of a Eurasian Union was actively elaborated by the Eurasian Movement in
Russia, continuing in the line of the first Russian Eurasianists, who had laid the foundations for this
political philosophy. The creation of a Eurasian Union became the principal historic, political, and
ideological aim of the Russian Eurasianists, as this project embodied all the primary values, ideals, and

horizons of Eurasianism as a complete political philosophy.
Thus Putin, turning his attention to the Eurasian Union, emphasized a political idea imbued with deep
political and geopolitical significance. The Eurasian Union, as the concrete embodiment of the Eurasian
project, contains three levels at once: the planetary, the regional, and the domestic.
1.
On a planetary scale, we are talking about the establishment, in the place of a unipolar or “nonpolar”
(global) world, of a multipolar model, where only a powerful, integrated regional organization can be a
whole (exceeding even the largest states by its scale and economic, military-strategic, and energy
potential).
2.
On a regional scale, we are talking about the creation of an integrated organization capable of being a
pole of a multipolar world. In the West, the European Union can act as such a project of integration.
For Russia, this means the integration of the post-Soviet space into a single strategic bloc.
3.
Domestically, Eurasianism means the assertion of strategic centralism, rejecting even the suggestion of
the presence of prototypes of national statehood in the subjects of the Federation. It also implies a
broad program for strengthening the cultural, linguistic, and social identities of those ethnoses that
comprise Russia’s traditional composition.
Putin repeatedly spoke of multipolarity in his assessments of the international situation. Putin started to
speak about the necessity of distinguishing the “nation” (a political formation) from the “ethnos” in
domestic policy in the spring of 2011, which means that the Eurasian model was adopted at this time.
[40]
Thus, Eurasianism can be taken as Putin’s general strategy for the future, and the unambiguous
conclusion follows from this that the strategy of Russia’s return to its geopolitical, continental function as
the Heartland will be clarified, consolidated, and carried out.
The Outcomes of the Geopolitics of the 2000s
Today it is difficult to predict precisely how the geopolitical situation will unfold over the next few years,
while the general assessment of Putin’s geopolitical line will depend on this in many ways. If Putin is
successful in securing the position of Russia’s sovereignty and begins an effective policy of creating a
multipolar world in all its concurrent directions and, even more importantly, irreversibly re-establishing
Russia’s strategic role in the global context, his success will affect not only the future, but also our
assessment of the true significance of the recent past from the year 2000 until today.
For now, we can state that
Russia has not yet passed the point of no return,
and through some
circumstance or another, Putin’s course can prove to be both what it looks like today and what Putin
himself gave utterance to in his Munich speech. Or it can prove to be something entirely different, a
wavering or temporary deceleration along the path of strengthening American hegemony and a unipolar
world at the cost of the civilization of Land and the ultimate weakening and destruction of Russia itself.

For now, the question remains: how are we to understand all of Putin’s geopolitically ambiguous and
inconsistent actions? This includes both the strengthening of sovereignty and the preservation of
Atlanticism’s network of influential agents; the confrontation with the USA and the call to reject
unipolarity, while supporting American projects in Afghanistan (and Russia’s elimination from the Arab
world and the processes occurring there); closer relations with countries oriented toward multipolarity
(China, Brazil, Iran), and the “reset.” Which of these will prove dominant? Which is merely a tactical
maneuver and disinformation? Under the current circumstances, this question cannot receive an
unambiguous answer, and geopolitical analysis in this case cannot be entirely reliable, since the most
important processes are unfolding around us now, and no one today can speak with certainty about their
true significance and substance.
The geopolitical cycle that Putin began in the autumn of 1999 immediately after he came to power is as
yet unfinished. In its main characteristics, it is a movement in an entirely different direction from the vector
of Russian geopolitics during the second half of the 1980s until the end of the 1990s (the Gorbachev-
Yeltsin era). Putin decelerated the movement, which was by inertia leading inevitably to Russia’s complete
weakening and its ultimate geopolitical destruction. He also began the complicated maneuvers necessary to
reverse this trend. But this maneuver has not been brought to its logical end. The historical fate of the
government and the civilization of Land as the whole — the Heartland, Russia-Eurasia — remains open.
[1]
A
teip
refers to a clan in the Chechen and Ingush regions.—Ed.
[2]
A
wird
, in Sufism (mystical Islam) is a subdivision of a
tariqa
, or a school or order of Sufism.—Ed.
[3]
Wahhabism is an extremely strict, literal interpretation of Sunni Islam. Many militant jihadis around the world claim to follow its
teachings, or an ideology derived from it.—Ed.
[4]
Salafism is a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni theology.—Ed.
[5]
Aslan Maskhadov (1951–2005) was a leader and military commander of the Chechen independence movement and was the third
President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.—Ed.
[6]
Ibn al-Khattab (1969–2002) was a Saudi-born jihadi who fought against the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and later
received training in Al Qaeda camps there. He went to Chechnya in 1995 and fought against the Russians in both wars, and also in
the Dagestan War. He was assassinated by the FSB in March 2002.—Ed.
[7]
May 9 is the date that Russia and the other former Soviet republics celebrate their victory over Germany in the Second World War,
when Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Soviet Union went into effect.—Ed.
[8]

The Geopolitics of Terror: A Collection of Materials by the Eurasian Movement Devoted to Analyzing the Terrorist Attacks in New
York on September 11, 2001
(Moscow, 2002).
[9]
Vladislav Surkov (b. 1964) was First Deputy of the Presidential Administration from 1999 until 2011, and is regarded as the chief
ideologue and architect of the Russian political system as it exists today.—Ed.
[10]
A long-term plan for Russia’s economic development.—Ed.
[11]
United Russia is currently the largest political party in Russia, and is the party of Putin.—Ed.
[12]
The Valdai International Discussion Club was founded in 2004 to provide a forum for international experts to gather and discuss
the future of Russia.—Ed.
[13]
A senior researcher at the American “Heritage Foundation,” specializing in the study of Russia, Eurasia, and international energy
security.
[14]
Director of the Russian-Eurasian program and a senior researcher at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace USA.
[15]
Director of the Europe and Eurasia section of the “Eurasia Group.”
[16]
Heads the “Russian section” of the National Intelligence Council.
[17]
Nursultan Nazarbayev (b. 1940) has been the President of Kazakhstan since 1989.—Ed.

[18]
The Union State is a commonwealth that was formed between Russia and Belarus in 1996. While Russia has attempted to
strengthen the Union, Belarus has remained resistant, fearing for its independence. Discussion of the Union State has been subsumed
into Russia’s larger project of a Eurasian Union for the region.—Ed.
[19]
The SCO was formed in 2001 as a military and economic alliance between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan.—Ed.
[20]
Ivan III (1440–1505) ended Mongol rule over Russia and tripled the size of Russia’s territory. He was called “the gatherer of the
Russian lands.”—Ed.
[21]
Gene Sharp,
From Dictatorship to Democracy: The Strategy and Tactics of Liberation
(Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 1994).
[22]
Freedom House is an American non-governmental organization that was founded in 1941. Its stated goal is to spread democratic
ideals throughout the world. It receives funding from the US government, and many countries have accused it of interfering with
their internal affairs, claiming that Freedom House has links to the State Department and the CIA.
[23]
Leonid Kuchma (b. 1938) was President of Ukraine from 1994 until 2005. He sought a balanced approach to Ukrainian foreign
relations that would include relations with both the EU and the CIS.—Ed.
[24]
Viktor Yanukovich (b. 1950) initially won the 2004 election, but widespread allegations of election fraud led to the Orange
Revolution, and Yuschchenko became President instead. He was elected in 2010, but was overthrown by the Euromaidan revolution
in February 2014 following his announcement of his plan to abandon integration with the EU in favor of closer economic relations
with the CIS.—Ed.
[25]
Viktor Yuschchenko (b. 1954) was President of Ukraine from 2005 until 2010. Following an assassination attempt which nearly
killed him, he was brought to power following the Orange Revolution.—Ed.
[26]
Yulia Timoshenko (b. 1960) was one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution and served twice as Prime Minister of Ukraine,
subsequently.—Ed.
[27]
A. Alexandrov, M. Murashkin, S. Kara-Murza, and S. Telegin,
The Export of Revolution: Saakashvili, Yushchenko
(Moscow:
Algorithm, 2005).
[28]
Vladimir Putin, “Statement and Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy,” at
archive.kremlin.ru/appears/2007/02/10/1737_type63374type63376type63377type63381type82634_118097.shtml
[29]
John McCain, “America Must Be a Good Role Model,” in
Financial Times
(March 18, 2008).
[30]
John Perkins,
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
(San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004).
[31]
Igor Yurgens (b. 1952) is Vice President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) and is Chairman of the
Institute of Contemporary Development, and has been called the ‘voice of the oligarchs’.—Ed.
[32]
Yevgeny Gontmakher (b. 1953) was the Vice President of the RUIE and is currently the Deputy Director of the Institute of World
Economics and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences.—Ed.
[33]
www.cfr.org/us-strategy-and-politics/conversation-dmitry-medvedev-video/p17779
[34]
Mikhail Fridman (b. 1964) was one of the founders of the Alfa Group, one of the largest consortiums in post-Soviet Russia. In 2014
Forbes estimated him to be the second wealthiest person in Russia.—Ed.
[35]

www.cfr.org/global-governance/world-21st-century-addressing-new-threats-challenges-video/p8742
, www.cfr.org/russian-
fed/world-21st-century-addressing-new-threats-challenges/p7611
[36]
www.cfr.org/russian-fed/conversation-sergey-b-ivanov-video/p24578
[37]
“Biden tried to dissuade Putin from participating in the election,”
Newsland
, Sofia Sardzevaldze, 3 Dec 2011,
www.newsland.ru/news/detail/id/653351/
[38]
Alexander Dugin,
Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Eurasian Mission
(Moscow: Eurasia Publishing, 2004).
[39]

The Eurasian Mission: Policy Papers of the International Eurasian Movement
(Moscow, 2005). [English edition:
Eurasian Mission:
An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism
(London: Arktos, 2014). The Eurasian Movement is Alexander Dugin’s own organization.—
Ed.].
[40]
Alexander Dugin,
Ethnosociology
(Moscow: Academic Project, 2011).

C
HAPTER
V
The Point of Bifurcation in the Geopolitical History of
Russia
To complete our summary of Russia’s geopolitical history, we can present its general results.
First, the spatial logic of the history of Russian statehood is unambiguously revealed. This logic can be
summarized as
expansion to the natural borders of northeast Eurasia, Turan, with the prospect of
extending its zone of influence beyond its boundaries, perhaps on a planetary scale.
This is the main
conclusion that we can draw from a consideration of all periods of Russian political history, from the
emergence of Kievan Rus up to today’s Russian Federation and the post-Soviet space.
Initially, Rus was formed in western Turan, where the imperial forms of other Eurasian peoples had
existed, including Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Turks, and Goths. From the Kievan center, an integration
of concentric circles on all sides occured, leading to the
first embodiment
of the Russian state, whose outer
limits circumscribed the resplendent campaigns of Svyatoslav.
[1]
Later, this geopolitical form was
strengthened and slightly altered, losing control over some territories and gaining it over others.
Then, this exemplary form was crushed in the Appanage principality (
udel’nie kniazhestva
), and a
wearisome fight for the throne of the Grand Duchy of Moscow
[2]
began, in the course of which there
gradually took shape
two poles of attraction: the Eastern
(the Rostov-Suzdal, later the Vladimir-Suzdal,
principality) and the
Western
(Galicia and Volhynia).
After the Mongolian conquests, Rus lost its independence and represented mostly the
eastern part
,
where the Grand Duchy throne was fixed. On the other hand, integration with the “Golden Horde” put
Rus in the gigantic and genuinely continental Turanic empire, the civilization of Land in all its geopolitical
and sociological dimensions. If Turanic influence was previously spread through the Eastern-Slavic tribes,
now the experience of Turanic statehood was grafted onto the political organism that had formed and was
capable of learning the lesson of the Eurasian empire and becoming a new imperial center.
Western Rus was drawn into the orbit of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and this predetermined its
fate, especially after the Krevsk Union of 1385.
[3]
In the fifteenth century, after the collapse of the Horde, Muscovite Rus began the slow path not only to
reestablish the Kievan state, but also to integrate all Turan, which had been embodied in a new and this
time Russian version of integrated Eurasia, around her core, the continental Heartland. From now on,
Russian geopolitical history finally sets upon the path of a Eurasian vector and a completed tellurocracy,
and proceeds toward the establishment of a world-scale civilization of Land.

In all the following stages, from the fifteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, Rus
continued its spiral expansion across the continent’s natural borders. Sometimes the territory of Rus
contracted for a short period, but only to expand again in the next stage. Thus beat the geopolitical heart of
the Heartland, pushing its power, its population, its troops, and other forms of influence to the outer edges
of Eurasia, all the way to the coastal zone (Rimland). The living, beating, and growing heart of the world’s
land-based empire predetermines Rus-Russia’s path toward the establishment of a world power and one of
the two global poles of the world.
Under various ideologies and political systems, Russia moved toward world dominance, having firmly
embarked on the path of establishing control over Eurasia from within and from the position of the center
of the inner continent. From the end of the eighteenth century, it collided in its expansion with the British
Empire, the embodiment of the global civilization of the Sea. In the twentieth century, this confrontation
led smoothly, on an entirely new ideological level, into the twentieth century to a confrontation with the
next global maritime pole, the USA. In the Soviet period,
the great war of continents
reached its apogee:
the influence of the civilization of Land as the USSR extended far beyond the borders of the Russian
Empire and beyond the borders of the Eurasian continent into Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Precisely
this vector of continental, and later global, expansion, carried out in the name of the Heartland,
tellurocracy, and the civilization of Land, is the “spatial meaning” (
Raumsinn
) of Russian history.
All
intermediate stages and all historical fluctuations and oscillations along this path were nothing other than
the rotation of real historical events around a central geopolitical channel: retreats, roundabout maneuvers,
and delays do not change the principal vector of Russian history.
Through this analysis of Russia’s geopolitics, we can geopolitically assess today’s state of affairs and
mark out the vector of its geopolitical future.
It is clear that Russia’s geopolitical position after Gorbachev’s reforms, the collapse of the USSR, and
the period of Yeltsin’s rule is an almost catastrophic
step backwards
and a failure of the geopolitical matrix
which was moving throughout the previous stages, without exception, toward spatial expansion. From the
end of the 1980s, Russia started to swiftly lose its positions in the global space of the world, positions it had
conquered with such difficulty and through so many deaths across many generations of the Russian people.
The losses we suffered at this time are not comparable with the Time of Troubles or with the results of the
Brest-Litovsk treaty. Even the campaigns of Napoleon and Hitler, which brought countless deaths, were
short, and territorial losses were swiftly restored and recovered, and sometimes even resulted in territorial
gains. The uniqueness of today’s geopolitical cycle lies precisely in this: it has lasted unusually long (for
Russian history), its losses have not been compensated for by any acquisitions, and the catastrophic paralysis
of the state’s self-consciousness is not counterbalanced by any striking personalities, adequate leaders, or
successful operations. This engenders a well-founded anxiety about the condition in which Russia finds

itself today and apprehension over its future. The most dispassionate and impartial analysis of Russia’s
geopolitics shows that
today’s position is a pathology
, a deviation from its natural, undeniable historical
trajectory. We can consider the Mongolian invasions the sole analogy, resulting in its loss of independence
for two centuries, but even that was compensated for by the fact that during this period Russia imbued the
experience of Eurasian continental tellurocracy, a lesson it learned well and later used to establish global
power. It is amazing how Gorbachev and his circle incompetently lost the “Cold War,” not to mention how
the naïve (not to say half-witted) reformers of the Yeltsin period were gladdened by the collapse of the
USSR and the de-sovereignization of Russia, even allowing the establishment of foreign, Atlanticist control
over the country, particularly if we compare this to the steady growth of territorial increases that occurred
in the times of practically all the Czars without exception, and in all the cycles of the Soviet era. In the
general ranks of Russian potentates, the names of Gorbachev and Yeltsin can only stand alongside the
names of Yaropolk,
[4]
False Dmitry,
[5]
Shuysky,
[6]
or Kerensky. Their personalities and their politics were a
complete and unmitigated
failure.
The normalization of Russia’s natural historical vector only occurred with Putin’s coming to power,
when the process of collapse, and thereby Russia’s ultimate death, was stopped or at least postponed. But
the contradictions of the Putin era and especially the period of Medvedev’s rule, sometimes reminiscent in
certain ways of the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, does not allow us to be sure that the recurrent trouble is
behind and that Russia has entered its natural, continental Eurasian orbit again. We want to believe in this,
but, alas, there are not yet enough grounds for such belief: all Putin’s geopolitical reforms, positive in the
highest degree, have one exceedingly important shortcoming:
they are not irreversible.
They have not
passed the point of no return. They can anytime undergo the destructive processes that prevailed at the end
of the Soviet era and in the democratic 1990s.
Russia’s geopolitical future is questionable today, because its geopolitical present is debatable. In Russia
itself, a hidden confrontation occurs among the political elite between the new Westernism (Atlanticism)
and gravitation toward the constants of Russian history (which necessarily gives us Eurasianism). We can
draw a few conclusions from this about coming geopolitical processes.
The duration of this deep geopolitical crisis, drawn out longer than all previous ones, and its
insurmountability up to today, indicates that the geopolitical construct of the Heartland finds itself in a
confused state, reflected not only in strategy and foreign policy, but also in the quality of the elite and in the
overall condition of society.
Consequently, serious and perhaps extraordinary efforts across many spheres are needed to get out of
this situation, including social and ideological
mobilization.
But this, in its turn, demands a strong-willed
and energetic personality at the head of government, a new type of ruling elite and a new form of ideology.
Only in this case will the main geopolitical vector of Russian history be extended into the future.

If we grant that this will happen presently, we can guess that Russia will take the lead in building a
multipolar world and will embark on the creation of a versatile system of global alliances. These will be
aimed at undermining American hegemony, and Russia will emerge anew as a planetary power in the
organization of a concrete multipolar model on principally new foundations, proposing a broad pluralism
of civilizations, values, economic structures, and so forth. In this case, Russia’s influence will grow rapidly,
and the basic vector of its development toward being a world power will be renewed. Precisely such a
scenario can be placed at the basis of a non-contradictory geopolitical doctrine for Russia, which can be
called on to provide it with a plan to remain faithful to its historical and civilizational ambitions in the
future and its “spatial meaning.”
But we cannot rule out that events will unfold according to a different script and that the protracted
crisis will continue. In this case, Russia’s sovereignty will again weaken, its territorial integrity will be
questioned, and the processes of the degeneration of the ruling elite and the depressed condition of the
broad masses will corrode society from within. In tandem with effective policies carried out by the
civilization of the Sea and its networks of influence in Russia, this could lead to the most destructive
consequences. In this case, it will be pointless to speak of Russian geopolitics.
In our society, some support the view that this time, Russia need not have global or imperial ambitions,
thinking that the country is in no condition to allow this; but they also agree that it must not fall apart and
degrade, as in the previous stage. Supporters of this point of view, however, do not take into account that in
contemporary circumstances, to try to preserve our sovereignty at today’s level while not making any
attempt to expand and strengthen it cannot succeed for long, since the USA and the civilization of the Sea
have already overtaken Russia for the most part. When the separation between the two becomes critical,
the forces of Atlanticism will not hesitate to strike a decisive blow against their primary adversary in the
great war of continents. All discussions that claim that the West no longer views Russia as a rival and is only
concerned with the “Islamic threat” or with the growth of China’s potential are nothing but a diversionary
tactic, and weapons in an information war. Every American strategist who received a good education
cannot fail to understand the laws of geopolitics; cannot fail to know Mahan, Mackinder, Spykman, and
Bowman, and cannot ignore Brzezinski or Kissinger.
The American elite are perfectly aware of their
Atlanticist nature
and remember the important formula of the geopoliticians about how to achieve global
dominance: “Who rules Eurasia rules the whole world.” Therefore, geopolitically, it is unfounded and
empty to hope that Russia will be able to preserve itself in the reduced and regional form in which it now
exists, after repudiating mobilization, a new round of expansion, and any participation in world-historical
processes on behalf of the civilization of Land (expressed today in the principle of multipolarity). In this is
the meaning of the entirely fitting formula, “Russia will either be great or will not be at all.”
[7]
Russia will
not be able to become a “normal” country by inertia and without effort.
If it will not begin a new cycle of

ascension, it will be helped in entering a new round of decline.
And if this happens, then it will be
impossible to say on what stage the recurrent cycle of fall, crisis, and catastrophe will end. We cannot rule
out the disappearance of our country from the map; after all, the great war of continents is the genuine
form of war, in which the price of defeat is disappearance. We should not concentrate too much on this
gloomy prospect, since the future is open and largely depends on efforts undertaken today. As the Italian
writer and political thinker Curzio Malaparte said, “Nothing is lost until everything is lost.”
[8]
Therefore,
we should look toward the future with reasonable optimism and create this great-continental Eurasian
future for Russia with our own hands.
[1]
Svyatoslav I was the Grand Prince of Kiev from 945 until 972, who conquered wide swaths of land and defeated several rival
kingdoms in the Slavic territories.—Ed.
[2]
The Grand Duchy of Moscow was established in 1283 and lasted until 1587, being the predecessor of the Czardom of Russia.—Ed.
[3]
The Krevsk Union brought about the unification of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kingdom of Poland.—Ed.
[4]
Yaropolk Izyaslavich was the King of Rus from 1076 and 1078. He was accused of negligence and the people of Kiev revolted against
him when he was a prince.—Ed.
[5]
‘False Dmitry’ is the name applied to a number of pretenders to the throne of Russia during the Time of Troubles, who claimed to
be descendants of Ivan the Terrible.—Ed.
[6]
Princes Ivan and Andrey Shuysky ruled Rus during Ivan the Terrible’s youth. They were regarded as arrogant and incompetent
rulers. Andrey was eventually thrown into a cell with hungry dogs, which devoured him.—Ed.
[7]
Alexander Dugin,
Russian Thing
(Moscow: Arctogaia, 2001). (Putin also reportedly said this at a conference on Ukrainian
integration into the CIS in 2003.—Ed.)
[8]
This is a paraphrase of a statement that occurs in Malaparte’s book,
Coup d’Etat: The Technique of Revolution
(New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1932).—Ed.

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