The National-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: two neo-fascist groupuscules in the post-Soviet political space

Author: Markus Mathyl

Source: Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 36, Number 3, July 01, 2002 , pp. 62-76(15)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Mathyl examines two representatives of the Russian groupuscular right-Arctogaia and the National-Bolskevik Party-and their emergence after the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991, in the context of the radicalization of Russian nationalism that took place during the inter-Russian power struggle of 1992-3. The ideological arsenal of these groups consists principally of a politico-historical reconciliation between western (neo-)fascism and authoritarian nationalist Russian and Soviet traditions, in which those traditions are intensified and synthesized into a new kind of 'national Bolshevism'. The success of neo-fascist groupuscules demonstrates how potentially explosive the fascist diagnosis of the status quo can behaving been preserved virtually intact since 1945-when it meets with a new situation of high political instability and is employed in intensive political propaganda, as was the case in post-perestroika Russia. Following the nationalists' military defeat in October 1993, the Russian groupuscular right attempted both to maintain the revolutionary impetus and, through a variety of cultural-political activities, to contribute to the gradual enlargement of the nationalist-imperialist project, thereby demonstrating its close connection to the New Right and its strategy of struggling for cultural hegemony. Since the end of the 1990s, there has been, within the groupuscular right, both an increasingly apparent ideological transfer from East to West, and evidence of the growing influence of national Bolshevism on western third-positionist groups.

Keywords: antisemitism; Arctogaia; Eurasianism; extreme right; fascism; globalization; groupuscular right; Internet; National-Bolshevik Party; national Bolshevism; neo-fascism; New Right; third positionism