Aleksandr Dugin and the ideology of national revival: Geopolitics,Eurasianism and the conservative revolution

This article examines the emergence of Aleksandr Dugin as the leader of the Eurasian Movement and later Party in Russia. For much of the 1990s Dugin was a prominent intellectual among the Russian nationalist‐communist opposition, moving from the position of ideologue of a fringe political party ‐ Edvard Limonov's National Bolsheviks — to advisor to the communist speaker of the State Duma, Gennadiy Seleznev. Dugin's ideology combined an anti‐Western interpretation of geopolitics with mysticism, Aryanism, conspirology, authoritarian statism and Eurasianism. Dugin's expanding set of Internet sites became an ideological empire of a virtual society. In 1999, in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, Dugin saw an opportunity to move from the marginal opposition to the ideologue of the post‐Yeltsin president. In this capacity, Dugin and his Eurasian Movement emerged as prominent supporters of Vladimir Putin, whom Dugin identified as the embodiment of the ‘Eurasian capitalist’ model of statist development. Dugin developed a close working relationship with Gleb Pavlovsky, a spin doctor for Putin's Kremlin. In the aftermath of 11 September and Putin's move towards supporting the United States in the war on terrorism, Dugin has continued his nominal support for the president, even as he has criticized his pro‐Western policies as anti‐Eurasian and a threat to Russian interests.     

British Peace Activism and ‘New’ Diplomacy: Revisiting the 1899 Hague Peace Conference

This analysis provides a re-appraisal of the 1899 Hague Conference by looking more closely at how citizen activists—notably in Britain but also transnationally—used it as a forum through which to press their agenda onto politicians and diplomatists. In so doing, this assembly existed as a stepping-stone between the ‘old’ diplomacy of the nineteenth century and the ‘new’ diplomacy of the twentieth. Peace activists identified and harnessed a growing body of progressive public opinion—on both a domestic and international scale—in the hope of compelling governments to take the necessary steps towards realising their ambitions of peace, disarmament, and international arbitration. Although the tangible outcomes of the 1899 Conference were limited, the precedents it established not only paved the way for further advances in international law, but also facilitated ever closer public and press scrutiny of international affairs into the twentieth century.     

Le Président Nicolas Jannon,les deux éditions du Développement et une vision contre‐révolutionnaire et ‘parlementaire’ de la Constitution traditionnelle de la France

SUMMARY

In this article, Maria Sofia Corciulo analyses the political significance of the period of the Italian Restoration. The author suggests that the revolutions which took place in both Naples and Piedmont in 1820–21 affected the apparently static institutional tranquillity of the ‘restored’ Italy to such an extent that they represent a break from the preceding period—the Five-year Period, during which the Napoleonic institutions had been, anyway, partly retained. The revolutionary action which, as in Spain, was sparked by the military, was characterized by forms of participation and aims that constituted, at least where they could be fully expressed, the beginning of a new historical period, surely overshadowing that of Restoration: the Risorgimento. The Neapolitan Revolution was carried out under the banner of the most democratic principles of those years, as they had been sanctioned by the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812. Although the Italian revolutionaries of 1820–21 were defeated, the principles of the Cadiz Constitution remained vivid in the minds of the patriots, especially Neapolitans, in an intricate sectarian world, where even the participation of the most humble classes was welcome and accepted in the name of the egalitarian principles of the Carboneria. The article suggests that this Revolution spelled the de facto end of the Restoration, even it was to continue to exist de jure, in its limited dynastic sense. This is true not only for the Kingdom of the two Sicilies but also for the other Italian states, because so-called ‘public opinion’ became a reality in this period: the existence of political plots and conspiracies from a rising number of secret societies is clear evidence that Italy's Risorgimento was under way.