보편제국, 근대의 초극 혹은 귀환: 알렉산드르 두긴과 유라시아 지정학

After the Cold War, Russia"s geopolitics emerged as closely linked to the Eurasian Empire. In this regard, Aleksander Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics (1997) provides some of very interesting points. In this book, Dugin, a leading thinker on the right wing of Russian conservatism in the post-Soviet era, provides a political and philosophical barometer of Russia’s ideological strategy as well as the implications of the Ukraine-Russia war. This is exemplified by the fact that he views post-Soviet global history in terms of Confrontations of Civilizations and recasts it in the context of the history of political thought around the New Universality. The Empire is at the center of this, depicted as a political entity that would take a new historical initiative by uniting the Eurasian continent against the United States. According to Dugin, the Eurasian Empire is a new universal empire that is de-authoritarian and de-centered. However, when we analyze his theory of empire in detail, we find that it is more akin to the return of the Modern nation-state. This is confirmed by the conceptual structure of Empire, how it is realized, and the dynamics of its operation. It is questionable whether the universality of Eurasia is not a methodological ploy for the preservation and maintenance of the Russian nation-state. By analyzing Dugin"s theory of Empire, this article aims to explore the future of Russian thought on the horizon of Post-Modernity and to forecast its direction.