Review: Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism

A timely weekend non-fiction book review, in light of everything going on in the World…

Charles Clover. Black Wind, White Snow.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, October 27, 2015. 384 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Do you want to understand what drives the thinking of Putin’s foreign policy outlook especially in light of the consequences of what’s going on in Ukraine?  This book would be an important work you don’t want to miss.  The reason I read this book was to better understand what’s going on in Russia that shapes their foreign policy especially with the war that happened in 2022 with Ukraine after I saw it was quoted frequently from a master’s thesis on Alexander Dugin, Putin’s so called Rasputin.  The subtitle of the book is “The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism.”  The book traces the origin and development of an idea call Euroasianism and while the subtitle is “Nationalism” Eurasianism is Russia’s political outlook that is a hybrid of Russian supremacy blended with a call for the people of the Steppes and former Soviet republics in Russia’s orbit to be one civilization.  Eurasianists would see the heartland of Russia and other Eursasians are in a clash of civilization with Atlantists and coastal and Island base people.

The preface explains a bit of the author’s background in Russia covering decades of current events and even having interviewed key figures in the book such as Alexander Dugin.  An introduction follows that talks about Putin and after that the meat of the book consists of 15 chapters grouped in three parts that traces the ideological genealogical history of how Eurasianism developed.  Part One begins in 1920 where the Bolsheviks have taken over Russia and the “White Russians’ opposing them are crumbling.  In this chaotic scene Prince Nikolay Trubetskoy is evacuated by an American warship on the southern tip of Crimea while on vacation and escapes to Europe.  Trubetskoy along with his friend Roman Jakobson would start the Prague School of structural linguistics but their view of Russian history would lay the ground work for Eurasianism.  Part two looks at Lev Gumilev who popularized Eurasianism within the Soviet Union.  Whereas Trubetskoy and Jakobson were outside Soviet Russia forming their ideology Gumilev lived within the Soviet Union.  Part three then looks at how Eurasianism goes from Gumilev to the next generation especially with a focus on Alexander Dugin towards the end of the book.

The overall sense I get with Eurasianism is how it has appeal to some even though its founders have repudiated it, those who told lies about it have retract it and even then the movement remains.  The movement is driven by conspiracy, inaccurate history of various people group, and false science such as the idea from Gumilev who thinks cosmic rays makes Russians strong.  Plus leaders then and now are caught up with the occultic and occultic symbols.  This movement is so whacky.

It is interesting to note the focus of the book in terms of how much pages are devoted to individuals and era.  While part two seems to have the least chapters compared to the other parts there is one chapter titled “Gulag” that was the longest chapter in the book and has 118 footnotes.  It is incredible how much work the author spent on Gumilev I almost wonder if originally the book was going to be just only on Gumilev’s life and philosophical outlook.  I did wish there was more focus and discussion of our contemporary Alexander Dugin himself.  Still the book gives us a lot of information about Dugin that I didn’t know before.

Even before I read this book Alexander Dugin is super concerning.  I think Dugin became even more concerning after I learned what I learned from the book.  It is ironic that right now in 2022 Russia has argued that they are intervening in Ukraine to denatzify Ukraine.  But it is strange that the architect for much of Putin’s foreign policy outlook is Dugin, a man who since his youth has a fascination with glorifying the Nazis.  Dugin teaches at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military, and his best seller Foundations of Geopolitics is required reading at the academy that train Russian generals.  So we now have decades of Russia’s core generals buying into Dugin’s geopolitical outlook which unfortunately has led these men to see conspiracies and the West as their enemies on the basis of a lot of false history and literally adopted Nazi ideologies.  I think it is fair to say that Eurasianism is influenced by Nazi ideology even more so than the controversy of Critical Race Theory is influenced by Marxism; its just less known by the public.  The influence on Dugin’s geopolitical views include Friedrich Ratzel who coined the term Lebensraum (“living space”) something the Nazis used heavily (234).  Dugin’s book The Fourth Politicla Theory uses the political theory of Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt with land versus sea civilization (239), the geopolitical scholar Karl Haushofer, Nazi advocate of traditionalism Julius Evola and philosopher Martin Heidegger.  It seems the criteria for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine to get rid of Nazis can be turned around as an argument by other countries to say they should invade Russia; note I’m not saying other countries should do that but rather I’m pointing out how Russia does have a log in their eye after all if Russia can invade Ukraine because of the Azov Regiment how much more problematic is a Nazi ideological influence in Russia’s outlook and strategy.  This book was written in 2015 and chillingly notes that Dugin even think Russia should annex Ukraine (238) and that Russia should “kill kill kill” Ukrainians.  Freighting to me is how Dugins’ outlook doesn’t seem to stop with only Ukraine: Dugin sees the need to have Germany ally with Russia against the “Atlantists” (237).

There’s so much more I want to say but in summary there’s a lot more contents than I can discuss in this review.  The book definitely puts Eurasianism in context and also gives us rare information about Dugin that comes from the author’s research and also interview with Dugin.  The discussion about past generation’s Eurasianists also feature the author’s research into previously classified Soviet KGB archives.  There’s so much treasure trove of information.  I recommend this book.