Leaving the USSR Behind

The Soviet past divides; the Russian future unites.

Alexander Dugin argues that the USSR embodied both Russophobia and Russian greatness, and that today Russians must move beyond its unresolved legacy to build a sovereign, Orthodox, and creative Great Russia.

How should we relate to the USSR? On the one hand, the Bolsheviks inflicted irreparable harm on the Russian people. Terrible, irreparable harm. This cannot be disputed; their ideology was genuine Russophobia, anti-Christianity, pure Satan.

On the other hand, the elite of the Russian Empire had been Westernizing and Russophobic since the 18th century, since Peter. Utterly slavish, essentially Yeltsin-like. So how could the Russian people fail to rise up against such a Westernized elite? And, of course, rise up they did.

Indeed they rose. But once again under the leadership of the wrong kind of elite. And with the wrong ideology. Again Russophobic.

So what was to be done?

The Russian people grew through communism, through Sovietism, striving towards God and towards the stars. How beautiful and indestructible the Russian people truly are!

In the USSR, there was both the Marxist element and the Russian element. The Russian element was beautiful; the Marxist one was far from beautiful — in fact, altogether ugly. The popular, the folk element in the USSR — that was very important. The Russians wanted to be free. They wanted to abolish the Westernized elites. Today, the Russians still want the same thing. But that, for now, is secondary.

As for the USSR: the balance within it between the Russian and the non-Russian was never resolved. Today, in the Russian Federation, some Russians sigh for the Soviet past (“Stalin, come back!”), while others dream of Empire and demand that Lenin be removed from the Mausoleum.

The very idea of the USSR divides us. What we need is for everything to unite us, Russians. This means that either we must rethink the USSR differently (neither “for” nor “against,” but for the sake of the Russian people), or else not think of it at all and move forward — into the Russian future. If we cannot cope with understanding the USSR in a Russian way (and we cannot), then perhaps it is time to stop trying to understand it. Let us leave it aside for later. Let us build Great Russia, entirely independent of the past. Only into the future. We need the Russia of the future. Beautiful, great, and prosperous. Free and sovereign. Orthodox and of the people. Let us build it.

It is time we begin to create our own culture. To break free of clichés and create. Everything that came before should not hold us back. What has been, has been. We can bring forth something unheard-of. The Russian people are great, mighty, joyful, and capable of many things.

We only need to unbind ourselves. From the West (which today is nothing but a garbage heap), and from what we failed to achieve in the past.

We must rely more on our own strength.

Someone once explained to the leader that autarky is bad. That is a mistake — autarky means the same as sovereignty, self-sufficiency, only in Greek. And sovereignty is good. And autarky is good. We need creative autarky.

(Translated from the Russian)