How do the writings of Aleksandr Dugin matter? The prominence of his geopolitical codes in Russian foreign policy, 2008–2022

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between the geopolitical writings of Aleksandr Dugin and the official foreign policy discourse of the Russian Federation between 2008 and 2022. Moving beyond anecdotal claims of Dugin as “Putin’s brain,” the study employs qualitative content analysis to derive and compare nine major codes forming a unified geopolitical discourse based on Dugin’s “The Foundations of Geopolitics” (1997) and “The Geopolitics of Russia” (2012) with strategic doctrines and leadership speeches surrounding three landmark events: the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Findings reveal a pattern of selective resonance rather than direct lexical borrowing: Duginian codes such as ‘Multipolarity’, ‘Atlanticism’, and the ‘Civilizational State’ appear consistently in official publications, particularly after 2014, but are translated into a restrained, state-centric register. The salience of Dugin-aligned language increases markedly across the three events, with the 2014 annexation serving as a critical juncture. The study concludes that while Dugin is not a direct policy influencer, his geopolitical codes have become increasingly resonant within the central corpus of Russian foreign policy documents, reflecting an expansion of accepted geopolitical language as state assertiveness has grown.