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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July 2022 75
language, which promoted a virulent German
nationalism and an antisemitism which inspired Hitler.
Nietzsche claimed that with the death of God came
the deification of reason but this has proved nugatory
and, according to the New Right of Europe and Russia,
modern man stands on an abyss rather than the ‘end of
history’ utopia which liberal democracy had promised.
What Vladimir Putin’s book collection shows is a
remarkable similarity to Hitler’s.
This contradicts the almost universal analysis which
sees Bolshevism as the nemesis of Nazism.
The reality is that Putinism is far more aligned to a
type of ‘Christian authoritarianism’, incorporating some
tenets of fascism, than any concept of socialism or
liberalism.
The twentieth century saw Bolshevism and Nazism
as opposites. The idea, however, that they could be
melded, spurred the thought of Putin’s greatest
influence: Alexander Dugin.
For Dugin (born 1969) follows the
view of French sociologist Jean
Baudrillard in seeing the poverty of
historicism and also of the ‘end of
history’ schema. History didn’t end in
the 1990s as predicted by Fukuyama.
In ‘The Illusion of the End’ Baudrillard
(1929-2007) gives a fascinating
debunking of the Marxist view of
historical progression: history is ending,
he claims, but only because it has lost
its meaning.
In fact, Russia must set itself against
the liberal world, rather than be
absorbed into it. It is this exceptionalism
that illuminates the view from the
I
t was Walter Benjamin who said that you could
judge a man by the books he kept.
Books are the concrete things, like music, which
embody the poetic souls of nations. They paint
pictures of a nation’s history and culture.
The ‘West’ sees itself as animated by the post
-Enlightenment codifying of ‘reason’, of scientific logic,
of empiricism.
The beliefs of Kant and the concept of individual
rights via Locke and Mill dominate modern European
states and institutions. The market, the individual and
not tradition or community become the hallmarks of
liberal democracy.
Hitler kept books by Friedrich Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer and the German nationalist Fichte.
Hitler used the Nietzschean phrases of “master race”
and “will to power” in the 1934 party rally, famously
filmed by Leni Riefenstahl in that dark, Teutonic
cinematic masterpiece.
He also inherited Nietzsche’s walking
stick after a visit to the Nietzsche archive
in Weimar.
Schopenhauer is quoted in ‘Mein
Kampf’ where he describes Jews as the
“great masters of lies”.
However, the links from Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer to Nazism are
tenuous; Nietzsche despised anti-
semitism for example.
More in tone with Hitler’s philosophy
was Johann Gottlieb Fichte who, in his
‘Speeches to the German Nation’ in
1808 called for a ‘”Volkskrieg”, or
people’s war. Fichte’s claim of German
exceptionalism, of the superior German
When Russian
troops entered
Ukraine in 2014,
all of Russia’s
governors and
high-ranking
officials were sent
a copy of Ilyin’s
‘Our Tasks’
By Brian Patrick Bolger
PUTIN’S LIBRARY:
Inside the Mind
of the World’s
Most Dangerous
Autocrat
INTERNATIONAL
76 July2022
Putinism is far
more aligned to a
type of ‘Christian
authoritarianism’,
incorporating
some tenets of
fascism, than
any concept
of socialism or
liberalism
Russian right.
Dugin, in his book ‘The Fourth Political Theory’
argues that:
“There are no stages and epochs, but only pre-
concepts and concepts. In modern society time is seen
as irreversible, progressive and unidirectional.
But this is not necessarily true inside societies that
do not accept modernity”.
Dugin quotes Berdyaev’s concept of the ‘New Middle
Ages’ in which liberalism ends and is replaced by a
return to a civilisation based on spirit and mysticism.
The Fourth Political Theory is a concept which
replaces the three ‘ideologies’ of the twentieth century
— liberalism, communism and fascism.
Dugin’s ‘National Bolshevism’ combines aspects of
both communism and fascism.
Although liberals, such as Fukuyama, heralded the
‘end of ideologies’, the modern world disputes this.
Liberalism, argues the New Right, is just another
ideology itself — seen in the values and prescriptive
policies of globalised markets, woke cultural values,
compulsory ‘human rights,’ and the vaulted position of
the ‘individual’.
But certainly, the greatest part of Dugin’s thought to
influence Putin is his geopolitical thinking.
Dugin espouses the concept of ‘Eurasianism’: a belief
in the independent entity separated from both Europe
and Asia and encompassing the Russian speaking and
also Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union.
War is played out in the Ukraine invasion, in the
militancy of the expansionist Russian Federation. The
Eurasian expansion stands alone whilst the ‘NATO
threat’ is used as a ‘simulacrum’ for justification.
It comes as no surprise that Dugin’s earlier book ‘The
Basics of Geopolitics’ sits in pride of place on Putin’s
book shelf, essential reading also for the Russian
military, the Federal Security Service and nervous
oligarchs.
Putin is also an admirer of the White, anti-communist,
emigre Philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), a Russian
nationalist who saw the Bolshevik revolution as a
tragedy, and held a view of the citizen as the holder of
rights and responsibilities.
The citizen, likewise, does not choose his nationality;
Ilyin considered the idea of an independent Ukraine as
a wound to the body of greater Russia.
When Russian troops entered Ukraine in 2014, all of
Russia’s governors and high-ranking ocials were sent
a copy of Ilyin’s ‘Our Tasks’ which imagines a prototype
post-Bolshevik legal regime.
Ilyin speaks of a ‘National dictator’; politics is total
and embodied in the leader.
This is one of the Right’s enduring themes, as outlined
in ‘The View from the Right’ by Alain de Benoist which
considers that the liberal democratic world has
abandoned ‘Politics’ and ‘Power’. This depoliticisation
of society means the weakening of the state and the
proliferation of myriad third-party groups which
ultimately weaken the state.
In the philosophy of Ilyin and Dugin is the myth of a
virtuous Russia under attack from outside, from Jews,
and from Ukraine as part of an indivisible Greater Russia.
They speak of Russia, like Spengler spoke of cultures,
as a living organism.
The Russian Orthodox Church is also loaded into this
corruption of truth.
Men like Heidegger in Nazi Germany and Ilyin in
Russia, saw themselves as surrogate ‘Philosopher
Kings’, driving history along.
These Philosophers were flattered by the deference,
the flattery of the leader.
But for Putin and Hitler the dialectic works the
opposite to how the Philosopher believes it to be.
Rather than the gargantuan State being guided and
spiritually enriched by the noble thinker; the Russian
kleptocracy uses the Philosopher to justify crime, to give
an image of respectability to the banal and the brutal,
often betraying the meanings of their philosophers.
Hegel, in one of his most famous quotes, said that
“The Owl of Minerva only takes flight in the dusk” —
meaning that philosophical ideas are only learnt in
hindsight, ‘after’ history has played itself out on the
world historical stage.
Philosophers are akin to the Priests who survive the
nuclear apocalypse in ‘A Canticle for Liebowitz’, Walter
Miller’s dystopian science fiction novel. Forced to take
shelter in a Cistercian monastery they save the books of
the previous civilisation from the chaos surrounding
them, hoping that, out of the darkness, their ideas may
be used once more in the cyclical ebbing and flowing of
civilisations.
Though philosophy is often usurped, Putin still
needs more of it, particularly that which would divert
him from solipsism, on his bookshelves, and less
violence on his mind.
Brian Patrick Bolger has taught Political Philosophy and
Applied Linguistics in Universities across Europe. His
new book, ‘Coronavirus and the Strange Death of Truth’
is available now in the UK and US.
Putin with Muse, Dugin
Bookshelves, Ukrine
