Alexander Dugin, Bishop Tikhon, and President Putin

There has been much discussion about how much influence Alexander Dugin really has in the Kremlin. A partial answer is provided by a new article by Michael Hagemeister, “Der ‘Nördliche Katechon’ – ‘Neobyzantismus’ und ’politischer Hesychasmus’ im postsowjetischen Russland” (The Northern Katechon: Neo-Byzantinism and political Hesychasm in Post-Sovet Russia), Erfurter Vorträge zur Kulturgeschichte des Orthodoxen Christentums 15 (2016), pp. 5-36.

Dugin is not Hagemeister’s main topic. This is Bishop Tikhon, Georgy Shevkunov, who is visibly very close to President Putin, and may well be the president’s confessor. The article describes Tikhon’s influence and examines the ideologies that he represents, notably Neo-Byzantinism and political Hesychasm, which Hagemeister traces back to Gelian Prochorov in the mid 1960s.

Political Hesychasm, especially, is easily compatible with Traditionalism, as it sees modernity and the Renaissance in very much the same way as Tradiitonalism does. Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism thus fits very comfortably with two wider and possibly more powerful currents, and the views of the influential Bishop Tikhon. Whatever Dugin’s own influence in the Kremlin, then, others with very similar views clearly have significant influence there.

My thanks to Birgit Menzel for bringing this article to my attention.