A former university professor and confidante of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently gave an interview to Hungarian Alfahír, a Jobbik-affiliated online news outlet. Aleksandr Dugin outlined his extraordinary vision of merging Central and East European countries into one big conglomerate as well as offering a rare criticism of Putin. After falling out of favor with the Russian leadership, Dugin has travelled the world promoting his Eurasian theory within radical right-wing circles.
Interviewed by Adrienn Szaniszló, a Jobbik member who served as a volunteer election observer in the Russian separatist region of Donetsk, Dugin discussed ideas from his influential book The Foundations of Geopolitics. When asked what Hungary’s role would be in his plan to establish a “cordon sanitaire” between Western Europe and his proposed Eurasia (effectively Greater Russia), Dugin proposed that Hungary should lose its national sovereignty alongside most of the Central European countries to form a greater, regional empire.
“I truly believe that the era of nation states is no more. There are far more ethnic groups than nations, and national boundaries therefore will always remain unfair. This is why the time has come again to forge new empires. This could either be one empire, the Western US empire, or multiple ones. This is the question we have to decide and seek answers for. If more than one empire would come along, then one of those would be European and another Eurasian. Countries of a future “cordon sanitaire” in Eastern Europe are expected to build up their very own Great Eastern Europe exploiting its dual superposition. But even in such an empire, I would not leave room for nationalism. If, say, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, the Volinski oblast and Austria would be one conglomerate, then it would gather all ethnic Hungarians in one state and their ethnic status before the treaty of Trianon would be automatically restored.”
The Treaty of Trianon (1920) stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and a third of its ethnic Hungarian population, with 5 million ethnic Hungarians becoming citizens of the new countries of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, as well as Austria, Ukraine and a territorially expanded Romania. Trianon and the matter of Hungarians living in the “near abroad” have been sensitive topics for the Hungarian right wing ever since. Dugin effectively proposes to reunite the former crown lands of Hungary in a kind of eastern European super state. Soviet premier Joseph Stalin reportedly made a similar offer to regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy in 1940, which the latter turned down.
Dugin openly criticizes Putin as being “too slow” as well as “indecisive” in what Dugin describes as the mission of reconquest of Russia’s eastern neighbor.
“The politics of taking Crimea and Novorossiya (meaning Eastern Ukraine) is right but the processes following that slowed down and this is not a good development. Let’s not forget that up to this point, Russia treated Ukraine like it would treat anyone else, we let Ukraine act freely, only holding up contact through the gas pipeline and private discussions. In fact not a single decision is made these days in connection with Ukraine, the daze in Moscow concerning this issue is complete and so there is nothing here to evaluate. The Minsk talks were a total failure and I am unable to tell what will happen after that. It seems that the tool of timing is now in the hands of the Americans, and as soon as they manage to push Kiev towards a final offensive, this will be over. For this they have to make sure that the Kremlin will not react in any way. Without this the risk would be too high, but as soon as they feel that they keep Moscow under control using their underground network, they will proceed with a decisive strike.”
The Russian philosopher also praised Jobbik leader Gábor Vona as a “man with a realistic horizon of philosophy and geopolitics.” He expressed that the far-right Hungarian party is a “great hope” in European politics.
Even though Dugin is now being ostracized from Putin’s inner circle, his ideas are reflected in the thinking of the Russian elite, as well as a textbook in many of its educational insitutions. His philosophy of “Eurasianism”, the thought saying that a global and powerful Eurasian Empire under Russian domination is the ultimate objective of Russian political efforts, is generally accepted on the Russian political scene. Dugin was one of the masterminds behind the continuous Russian “false flag” offensive, during which the country annexed Crimea and later supported Russian separatist military offensives in Eastern Ukraine resulting in a regional war there.
Hungary reportedly remains under pressure from Russia through both its economic deals and political connections with the Orbán government. In the meantime it has been revealed that the Jobbik party has even closer ties to the Kremlin. In October 2014, Index.hu broke the story of how Béla Kovács, a Jobbik MEP, was linked to Russian secret services through his Russian wife. Kovács was one of the early financial sponsors of Jobbik and has accompanied Vona on several trips to Moscow.
Referenced in this article:
http://alfahir.hu/birodalom_epul_a_nyugattal_szemben
http://index.hu/belfold/2014/09/28/a_glorious_match_made_in_russia/
http://www.4pt.su/en/content/aleksandr-dugin%E2%80%99s-foundations-geopolitics