“Fyodor Lukyanov—editor-in-chief of the journal *Russia in Global Affairs* and research director of the Valdai Club—stated at the beginning of the year that, even if the "Ukraine question" were to be resolved, a massive complex of problems would nonetheless persist in Russia’s relationship with the West. According to Lukyanov, the current conflict—situated within the context of weakening international rules and institutions—effectively transports us back to the 17th and 18th centuries, a period when Russia established its place in the world and defined its optimal borders. This was a lengthy process, and military strength served as the decisive instrument in achieving it.
Although it remains unclear whether Russia will succeed in expanding its sphere of influence, the militarization of society is being actively advanced within the educational system. The humanities and social sciences now teach that obedience to those in power constitutes a citizen’s primary duty, and that Western concepts—such as the emancipation of the individual—lead only to ruin. Alexander Dugin—the intellectual architect of an apocalyptic struggle between Russia and the West, who heads the Ivan Ilyin School of Politics at the Moscow University for the Humanities and extols the conflict in Ukraine—has long advocated for a return to a "radiant" Middle Ages. Dugin—a well-read autodidact with a passion for anti-modern, occult thinkers such as René Guénon and Julius Evola, as well as Heidegger—has just published a textbook spanning nearly 900 pages for a discipline of his own invention: "Western Studies" (*Westernologija*). In this work, he declares the Western Enlightenment and Renaissance—movements that paved the way for liberalism, gender politics, and transhumanism—to be the absolute embodiment of evil.
Coherent arguments and rigorous analysis are not Dugin’s forte; instead, he favors a darkly ominous rhetoric in which references to the metaphysical primarily depict the vertical of authority and demonstrate to the addressee his own insignificance. The "Guru of Eurasianism" specifically instrumentalizes the contemplative Eastern Church prayer practice of Hesychasm for political ends, deriving from it an authoritarian, anti-European, state-religious system characterized by sacralized power.
Dugin’s associates constitute a group of so-called "Z-philosophers"—named after the "Z" symbol associated with the Russian campaign in Ukraine—who call for mobilization against the West and define the entirety of their country’s civic and cultural life as a "home front" intended to support the military operation. One such figure is Vladimir Varava—listed as an expert at Dugin’s Ilyin School—who last year published a book on the Soviet writer Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) titled *The Russian Soldier Is Sacred to Me*, categorized under the genre "Philosophy of War." Platonov’s major works—such as the novels *Chevengur* and *The Foundation Pit*—simultaneously embody both the utopian hopes of the Soviet socialist project and its dystopian realization; for this reason, they could not be published until the *Perestroika* era in the late 1980s.
Varava now rejects the conventional interpretation of this literary classic as a "debunker" of the Soviet state; instead—drawing upon Platonov’s short stories from the Second World War era—he reinterprets him as a crypto-Orthodox advocate for the self-sacrifice of Soviet soldiers, arguing that such sacrifice guarantees the immortality of their people. Consequently, he characterizes the victory as a "Soviet Easter." In a similar vein, President Putin recently—during the Orthodox Christmas celebrations—likened Russian soldiers to Christ the Savior. Varava draws a direct line from German fascism—which he traces back to the rationalism of Immanuel Kant and which he deems destined for destruction—to the contemporary "fascist" arrogance of the neoliberal West. He contrasts the sinful Western individual—who lives solely for his own pleasure—with the "simple," poor, fatalistic, and politically de-subjectified Russian of the common people, whom the West allegedly seeks to destroy.
This book forms part of the "Great Russian Rectification of Names"—a project spearheaded by "Z-philosophers"—which draws upon the Confucian concept that names must be brought into alignment with reality. In a collection of essays bearing this title, Varava rails against an obsession with comfort, an oblivion to true Being, and the taboo surrounding war in the liberal West; against this, he posits Russia’s objective: to "save" the world through war.
Vitaly Darensky—who teaches in Russian Luhansk—characterizes an independent Ukraine as a project of the "Golden Billion" and condemns Ukrainian language policy as a "linguocultural" genocide against Russians. Meanwhile, the Eurasianist Anatoly Chernyaev enumerates the "false" concepts from which Russian thought must be decolonized—beginning with "ethic” of violence prevention and the theory of just war to ecological ethics—because they all served to weaken Russia’s state sovereignty.
Of more lasting impact is the intellectual training system known as "Methodology," which has its roots in the late Soviet era. Its creator, the philosopher Georgi Shchedrovitsky (1929–1994), viewed human thought as a form of programmable software and developed group exercises designed to boost the efficiency of political and economic officials. Shchedrovitsky believed that all social processes were constructible—independent of material reality—and in 1989, he declared that he saw no future for human society other than a totalitarian form of organization.
His most prominent disciples are Sergei Kiriyenko—the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, who was once an ardent proponent of reform—and the political technologist Timofey Sergeyev, a campaign strategist who previously advised Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych. Sergeyev—who in April 2022 called for the extermination of the Ukrainian nation—had already claimed in 2021 (a year before the launch of evens in Ukraine) that by aspiring to join the EU, Ukraine had effectively sworn a Nazi oath; for, he argued, a large segment of its population perceived "Europeanness" as a marker of racial superiority.
In the 1990s, Methodologists worked on behalf of reform-minded politicians. A prominent figure in this movement is the philosopher and political technologist Alexei Chadayev, who worked for Boris Nemtsov in the late 1990s but now teaches at the Moscow School of Management while simultaneously developing combat drones. Chadayev, who positions himself as a conservative, argues that war is not primarily about destroying people, but rather about destroying the opposing subject—its will and its worldview. Just as Soviet Russia surrendered its subjectivity at the end of the Cold War, he contends, Ukraine’s subjectivity must now be broken. For this reason he speaks of "cognitive warfare."
With the cynical scorn of a self-styled superior intellectual, Chadayev explains on his Telegram channel that Jeffrey Epstein’s den of iniquity held such an irresistible allure for the Western elite precisely because, despite their wealth and influence, they possess no *real* power; for true power, he asserts, is demonstrated by the ability to send vast numbers of people to their deaths—much as the North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un did on Russia’s behalf, a country the philosopher recently visited. He rails against the feminist maxim "my body belongs to me," arguing that the individual is merely a product of society, which holds legitimate claims upon him. Furthermore, in a weekly video roundtable discussion—titled *Purity of Understanding* (*Chistota ponimaniya*) and available on YouTube—he and his like-minded associates analyze the situation on the "cognitive front."
In a January broadcast titled "Philosophical Forces," Chadayev, political technologist Sergei Uralov, and political philosopher Pavel Shchelin concurred that the EU—under the leadership of Merz and von der Leyen—constitutes a new *Reich* (they used the German word); the fact that it presents itself cunningly—cloaked in velvet gloves, soft power, and LGBT rhetoric—does nothing to alter this reality.
According to their assessment, no one there speaks of democracy anymore; rather, "superhumans" dominate the "subhumans" of Eastern Europe (again, employing the German terms).
“And Russians who rejected their state’s policies could, at best—after an act of slandering their homeland and expressing contrition—hope to be rewarded with the status of such a subhuman.”” [1]
1. Kognitive Krieger. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 10 Feb 2026: 11. KERSTIN HOLM
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