Russia’s Dark Conservatism

The talk discusses the influence of late-Soviet political occultism on contemporary Russian ‘dark conservatism’. She will focus on Moscow’s esoteric underground from the 1960s-1980s and the Iuzhinskii Circle (Iurii Mamleev, Evgenii Golovin, Geydar Dzhemal, Alexander Dugin). This community stood out against the general background of the Soviet underground in its interest in alternative forms of knowledge and the religious and occult traditions of the East and West. According to the doctrine of Russian conservative occulture, there is a direct connection between the world of ideas and politics, and by means of a radical political act, an adept can influence the metaphysical and the sacred dimension.

Speakers:
-Prof. Maria Engström, Professor of Slavic Languages at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University (Sweden)
-Prof. David Martin Jones, Director of Research, Danube Institute