Carl Schmitt’s 5 Lessons for Russia - Alexander Dugin

Carl Schmitt’s 5 Lessons for Russia - Alexander Dugin

From The Conservative Revolution (Moscow, Arktogeya: 1994), The Russian Thing Vol. 1 (2001), and The Philosophy of War (2004) – Article written in 1991, first published in the journal Nash Sovremennik in 1992

The famous German jurist Carl Schmitt is considered to be a classic of modern law. Some call him the “modern Machiavelli” for his lack of sentimental moralism and humanist rhetoric in his analysis of political reality. Carl Schmitt believed that, in determining legal issues, it is first and foremost important to give a clear and realistic outline of political and social processes and refrain from utopianism, well-wishing, and a priori imperatives and dogma. Today, the scholarly and juridical legacy of Carl Schmitt make up a necessary element of juridical education at Western universities. For Russia as well, Schmitt’s creativity is of special interest and particular importance since he took interest in the critical situations of modern political life. Undoubtedly, his analysis of law and the political context of jurisprudence can help us to understand more clearly and deeply what exactly is happening in our society and Russia.

Lesson #1: Politics above all else

The main principle of Carl Schmitt’s philosophy of law was the idea of the unconditional primacy of political principles over criteria of social existence. It is politics that organized and predetermined the strategy of internal economic factors and their increasing pressure in the modern world. Schmitt explains this in the following way: “The fact that economic contradictions have now become political contradictions…only shows that, like every other human activity, economics travels a path that inevitably leads to political expression” [1]. The meaning of such an allegation employed by Schmitt, understood as a solid historical and sociological argument, ultimately boils down to what can be defined as the theory of “collective historical idealism.” In this theory, the subject is not the individual or economic laws developing substance, but a concrete, historically and socially distinguished people which maintains, with its special, dynamic will – endowed with its own law – its socio-economic existence, qualitative unity, and the organic and spiritual continuity of its traditions in different forms and at different stages. In Schmitt’s understanding, the political sphere represents the embodiment of the will of the people expressed in various forms related to both the legal, economic, and socio-political levels.

Such a definition of politics stands at odds with the mechanistic, universalist models of societal structure which have predominated Western jurisprudence and legal philosophy since the era of the Enlightenment. Schmitt’s political sphere is directly associated with two factors which the mechanistic doctrines are inclined to ignore: the historical specificities of a people endowed with a special quality of will, and the historical particularity of a given society, state, tradition, and past which, in Schmitt’s opinion, finds concentration in its political manifestation. Thus, Schmitt’s assertion of the primacy of politics introduced qualitative, organic characteristics into legal philosophy and political science which are obviously not included in the one-dimensional schemes of “progressives”, whether of the liberal-capitalist or Marxist-socialist persuasion.

Schmitt’s theory thus considered politics to be an “organic” phenomenon “rooted” in “soil.”

Russia and the Russian people need such an understanding of politics in order to sufficiently govern their own destiny and refrain from once again, like seven decades ago, becoming a hostage of an anti-national, reductionist ideology that ignores the will of the people, its past, its qualitative unity, and the spiritual meaning of its historical path.

Lesson #2: Let there always be enemies; let there always be friends

In his book The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt expresses an extraordinarily important truth: “A people exists politically only if it forms an independent political community and contrasts itself to other political communities for the sake of preserving its own understanding of its specific community.” Although this point of view completely disagrees with the humanistic demagogy characteristic of Marxism and liberal-democratic theories, all of world history, including the real history (not the official one) of Marxist and liberal-democratic states, shows that such a fact is indeed true in practice, even if the utopian, post-Enlightenment conscience is incapable of recognizing it. In reality, the political division between “ours” and “not ours” exists in all political regimes and in all nations. Without this distinction, not a single state, people, or nation would be able to preserve its own face, follow its own path, and have its own history.

Soberly analyzing the demagogic assertion of anti-humanism, the “inhumanity” of such an opposition, and the division into “ours” and “not ours”, Carl Schmitt notes: “If one begins to act in the name of all humanity, on behalf of abstract humanism, in practice this means that this actor denies all possible opponents the claim to having human qualities at all, thus declaring himself to be beyond humanity and beyond law, and therefore potentially threatens a war which would be waged to the most terrifying and inhumane limits.” Strikingly enough, these lines were written in 1934, long before the Americans’ terroristic invasion of Panama or bombardment of Iraq. In addition, the GULAG and its victims were still not quite known in the West. In this view, it is not the realistic recognition of the qualitative specifics of a people’s political existence, which always presupposes the division into “ours” and “not ours”, that leads to the most terrifying consequences, but rather the striving for total universalization and the cramming of nations and states into the cells of the utopian ideas of a “united and uniform humanity” devoid of any organic or historical differences.

Beginning with these prerequisites, Carl Schmitt developed the theory of “total war” and “restricted war,” so-called “wars of form” in which total war is the consequence of universalist, utopian ideology which denies the natural cultural, historical, state, and national differences between peoples. Such a war actually threatens the destruction of humanity. As Carl Schmitt believed, extremist humanism is the direct path towards such a war which implies the involvement not only of militaries, but also civilian populations in a conflict. This, in the end, is the most terrible evil. “Wars of form,” on the other hand, are inevitable because of the differences between peoples and their indestructible cultures. “Wars of form” involve the participation of professional soldiers, and can be regulated by the defined legal rules of Europe that once bore the name Jus Publicum Europeum (European Common Law). Such wars, accordingly, represent a lesser evil whose inevitability’s theoretical recognition can protect peoples in advance from a “totalized” conflict and “total war.” On this note, it would be appropriate to quote the famous paradox posed by Shigalev in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, who says “Proceeding from absolute freedom, I arrive at absolute slavery.” Paraphrasing this truth and applying it to the ideas of Carl Schmitt, it can be said that the supporters of radical humanism “proceeding from total peace, arrive at total war.” With all due consideration, we have the opportunity to see Shigalev’s remarks’ in all of Soviet history. If Carl Schmitt’s precautions are not taken into account, it will be significantly more difficult to realize their truth, since there will be no one left to testify that he was right – there will be nothing left of mankind.

Now on to the final important point in the distinction between “ours” and “not ours”, that of “enemies” and “friends.” Schmitt believed that the centrality of this pair for the political being of a nation is valuable as within this choice is decided a deep existential problem. Julien Freud, a disciple of Schmitt, formulated this thesis in the following way: “The enemy-friend duality lends politics an existential dimension since the theoretically implied possibility of war raises the problem and choice of life and death in this framework” [2].

The jurist and politician, judging in terms of “enemy” and “friend” with a clear consciousness of the meaning of this choice, thus operate with the same existential categories which lend decisions, actions, and statements the qualities of reality, responsibility, and seriousness that all utopian humanist abstractions lack in transforming the drama of life and death into a war in one-dimensional chimerical decor. A terrible illustration of this was the coverage of the Iraqi conflict by Western mass media. Americans followed the deaths of Iraqi women, children, and the elderly on television as if they were watching Star Wars computer games. The ideas of the New World Order, the foundations of which were laid during this war, are supreme manifestations of how terrible and dramatic events are when deprived of any existential content.

The “enemy” – “friend” pair is both an external and internal political necessity for the existence of a politically complete society, and should be coldly accepted and conscious. Otherwise, everyone becomes an “enemy” and no one is a “friend.” This is the political imperative of history.

Lesson #3: The politics of “exceptional circumstances” and the Decision

One of the most brilliant aspects of Carl Schmitt’s ideas was the principle of “exceptional circumstances” (in German Ernstfall, literally “serious case”) elevated to the rank of a political-legal category. According to Schmitt, legal norms describe only normal socio-political reality flowing uniformly and continuously without interruptions. Only in such purely normal situations does the concept of “law” as understood by jurists apply to a full extent. There exist, of course, regulations of “extraordinary situations,” but these regulations are most often of all determined on the basis of criteria derived from a normal political situation. Classical jurisprudence, in Schmitt’s opinion, tends to absolutize the criteria of a normal station when considering the history of society as a legally constituted uniform process. The most complete expression of this point of view is Kelsen’s “pure theory of law.” Carl Schmitt, however, sees this absolutization of a “legal approach” and “rule of law” as an equally utopian mechanism and naive universalism produced by the Enlightenment with its rationalist myths. Behind the absolutization of law hides an attempt to “close history” and deprive it of its creative, passionate pattern, its political content, and historical peoples. On the basis of this analysis, Carl Schmitt posits a particular theory of “exceptional circumstances,” or Ernstfall.

Ernstfall is the point at which a political decision is made in a situation which can no longer be regulated by conventional legal norms. Decision-making in exceptional circumstances involves the convergence of a number of diverse, organic factors relating both to tradition, the historical past, cultural constants, as well as spontaneous expressions, heroic overcoming, passionate impulses, and the sudden manifestation of deep existential energies. The True Decision (the very term “decision” was a key concept of Schmitt’s juridical doctrine) is made in precisely such a circumstance where legal and social norms are “disrupted” and those that describe the natural course of political processes and which begin to act in the case of an “emergency citation” or “socio-political catastrophe” are no longer applicable. “Exceptional circumstances” means not merely a catastrophe, but the positioning of a people and its political organism in front of a problem, appealing to a people’s historical essence, its core, and its secret nature which makes this people what it is. Therefore, the Decision politically taken in such a situation is a spontaneous expression of the deep will of the people responding to a global, existential, or historic challenge (here one can compare the views of Schmitt to those of Spengler, Toynbee, and other conservative revolutionaries with whom Carl Schmitt had close personal ties).

In the French school of law, Carl Schmitt’s followers have developed the special term “décisionisme” from the French décision (German Entscheidung). Decisionism puts the main emphasis on “exceptional circumstances” since it is in this instance that the nation, the people, actualizes its past and determines its future in a dramatic concentration of the present moment in which three qualitative characteristics of time merge, i.e., the power of the source from which the people came forth in history, the people’s will facing the future and affirming the here and now where the timeless “I” is revealed and the people takes responsibility into its own hands to the greatest extent, and self-identity.

Developing his theory of Ernstfall and Entscheidung, Carl Schmitt also showed that the affirmation of all judicial and social norms happens during precisely such periods of “exceptional circumstances” and is primordially based on the both spontaneous and predetermined decision. The intermittent moment of the singular expression of will bears later on the basis of the constant norms which exist up until the emergence of new “exceptional circumstances.” This in fact perfectly illustrates the contradiction inherent to the ideas of those radical supporters of the “rule of law”: they knowingly or unknowingly ignore the fact that the appeal to the necessity of establishing the “rule of law” itself is a decision based on none other than the political will of a given group. In some sense, this imperative is put forth arbitrarily and not as some kind of inevitable, fatal necessity. Therefore, the acceptance or denial of the “rule of law” and in general the acceptance or denial of this or that legal model must concur with the will of the particular people or state to whom the proposal or expression of will is addressed. Supporters of the “rule of law” implicitly strive to create or utilize “exceptional circumstances” for the implementation of their concept, but the insidiousness of such an approach and hypocrisy and inconsistency in method can quite naturally draw a popular reaction, the result of which could very well appear as another, alternative decision. Moreover, it is all the more likely that this decision would lead to the establishment of a different legal reality than the one sought after by universalists.

The concept of the Decision in the super-legal sense as well as very nature of the Decision itself accords with the theory of “direct power” and “indirect power” (potestas directa and potestas indirecta). In Schmitt’s specific context, the Decision is made not only in instances of “direct power” (the power of kings, emperors, presidents, etc.) but also under the conditions of “indirect power”, examples of which can be religious, cultural, or ideological organizations which influence the history of a people and state not so clearly as the decisions of rulers, but which, nevertheless, are much deeper and formidable in operation. Schmitt believes that “indirect power” is thus not always negative, but, on the other hand, he merely implicitly alludes to the fact that a decision contrary to the will of the people is most often adopted and implemented by such means of “indirect power.” In his book Political Theology and its later addition Political Theology II, he examines the logic of the functioning of these two types of authority in states and nations.

The theory of “exceptional circumstances” and the theme of the Decision (Entscheidung) tied to it are of paramount importance for us today, as it is precisely at such a point in the history of our people and state that we now find ourselves, where “exceptional circumstances” have become the natural state of the nation and not only the political future of our people, but also the comprehension and essential confirmation of our past, now depend on the Decision. If the will of the people affirms itself and the people’s national choice in this dramatic moment, can clearly define “ours” and “others”, identify friends and enemies, and wrest political self-assertion from history, then the Decision of the Russian state and Russian people will be its own, historic, existential decision that will put a stamp of loyalty on millennia of spiritual “people-building” and “empire-building”. This means that our future will be Russian. If others make the decision, i.e., the supporters of the “common human approach,” “universalism,” and “egalitarianism,” which since the death of Marxism represent the only direct heirs to the utopian and mechanistic ideology of the Enlightenment, then not only will the future be “not Russian”, it will be “all-human” and thus be “no future” (from the standpoint of the being of the people, state, and nation). Our past will lose its meaning and the drama of great Russian history will turn into a silly farce on the way to Mondialism and complete cultural leveling into “universal humanity,” i.e., the “hell of absolute legal reality.”

Lesson #4: The imperatives of a Great Space

Carl Schmitt also touched on the geopolitical aspect of social issues. The most important of his ideas in this sphere is the notion of “Great Space” (Grossraum) which would later come to be considered by numerous European economists, jurists, geopoliticians, and strategists. The conceptual meaning of “Great Space” in Carl Schmitt’s analytical perspective lies in the delineation of geographical regions within which the variations of the political self-manifestation of specific peoples and states included in this region can be conjoined to achieve harmonious and consistent generalization expressed in a “Great Geopolitical Union.” Schmitt’s point of departure was the question of the American Monroe Doctrine encompassing the economic and strategic integration of American powers within the natural borders of the New World. Given that Eurasia represents a much more diverse conglomerate of ethni, states, and cultures, Schmitt posited that it was thus worth speaking of not so much total continental integration as the establishment of several large geopolitical entities, each of which should be governed by a flexible super-state. This is in principle analogous to Jus Publicum Europeaum or the Holly Alliance proposed to Europe by Russian Emperor Alexander I.

In Carl Schmitt’s opinion, a “Great Space” organized into a flexible political structure of the federal imperial type would compensate for various national, ethnic and state wills and serve as a kind of impartial arbiter or regulator of possible local conflicts, “wars of form.” Schmitt emphasized that “Great Spaces”, in order to be organic and natural formations, would necessarily have to represent land territories, i.e., tellurocratic entities, continental masses. In his famous book The Nomos of the Earth, he traced the history of continental, political macro-entities, the path of their integration, and the logic of their gradual establishment as empires. Carl Schmitt noticed that parallel to the existence of spiritual constants in the fate of a people, i.e., constants embodying the spiritual essence of a people, there also exist geopolitical constants of “Large Spaces” which gravitate towards new restoration with intervals of several centuries or even millennia. In this sense, geopolitical macro-entities are stabile when their integrating principle is not rigid and abstractly recreated, but flexible, organic, and according with the Decision of the peoples, their will, and their passionate energy capable of involving them in a unified tellurocratic bloc with their cultural, geopolitical, or state neighbors.

The doctrine of “Great Spaces” (Grossraum) was established by Carl Schmiit not only as an analysis of historical trends in the continent’s history, but also as a project for future unification which Schmitt considered not only possible, but desirable and even necessary in a certain sense. Julien Freund summarized Schmitt’s ideas on future Grossraum in the following terms: “The organization of this new space will not require any scientific competence, or cultural or technical preparation insofar as it arises as a result of political will, the ethos of which transforms the guise of international law. Once this ‘Great Space’ is unified, then the most important thing of all will be the strength of its ‘radiation’” [3].

Thus, Carl Schmitt’s idea of “Great Space” also possesses a spontaneous, existential, and volitional dimension as does the fundamental subject of history in its understanding, i.e., the people as a political unit. Following the geopoliticians Mackinder and Kjellen, Schmitt juxtaposed thalassocratic empires (Phoenicia, England, the US, etc.) to the tellurocratic empires (the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs, the Russian Empire, etc.). In his point of view, the harmonious and organic organization of a space is possible only in the case of tellurocratic empires, and Continental Law can only be applied to them. Thalassocracy, moving beyond the borders of its Island and initiating naval expansion, enters into conflict with tellurocracies and, according to geopolitical logic, begins to diplomatically, economically, and militaristically undermine the foundations of the continental “Great Spaces.” Thus, in the perspective of continental “Great Spaces,” Schmitt once again returns to the concepts of the “enemy-friend” and “ours-not ours” pairs, only this time on a planetary macro-level. The will of the continental empires, the “Great Spaces”, is revealed in the confrontation between continental macro-interests and the macro-interests from overseas. “Sea” thus challenges “Land,” and by way of responding to this challenge, “Land” most often returns to its deep continental self-consciousness.

As a side note, we will illustrate the theory of Grassraum with two examples. In the late 18th – early 19th century, the US’ territory was divided between several Old World countries. The Far West, Louisiana, belonged to the Spanish and later the French; the South belonged to Mexico; the North to England, and so on. In this situation, Europe represented a tellurocratic power for the US preventing the geopolitical and strategic unification of the New World on the military, economic, and diplomatic levels. After the US obtained independence, it gradually began to more and more aggressively impose its geopolitical will upon the Old World, which logically led to the weakening of continental unity of the European “Great Space.” Therefore, in the geopolitical history of “Great Spaces,” there are no absolute tellurocratic or absolute thalassocratic powers. Roles can changes, but continental logic remains constant.

Summarizing Carl Schmitt’s theory of “Great Spaces” with regards to the situation in today’s Russia, we can say that the separation and disintegration of the “Great Space” once called the USSR contradicts the continental logic of Eurasia, since the peoples inhabiting our lands lost the opportunity  to appeal to the [Soviet] superpower arbiter capable of regulating or containing potential and actual conflicts. But, on the other hand, the rejection of the overly rigid and inflexible Marxist demagogy raised to the level of state ideology can lead and will lead if allowed to a spontaneous, passionate restoration of the Eastern Eurasian Bloc, since such a reconstruction accords with all the organic, native ethni of the Russian imperial space. Moreover, it is most likely that the restoration of a Federal Empire, a “Great Space” encompassing the Eastern part of the mainland, would seize by means of its “radiation of power” those additional territories which are rapidly losing their ethno-state identities in the critical and unnatural geopolitical situation prevailing since the collapse of the USSR. On the other hand, the continental thinking of the genius German jurist allows us to distinguish between “ours” and “not ours” on the  continental level.

Awareness of the natural and to a certain extent inevitable confrontation between tellurocratic and thalassocratic powers offers the harbingers and creators of a new Great Space a clear understanding of the “enemy” facing Europe, Russia, and Asia that is the United States of America along with its thalassocratic island ally, England. Once again returning from the macro-level of the planet to the level of the social structure of the Russian state, it thus follows that the question should be posed: does a hidden thalassocratic lobby not stand behind the desire to influence the Russian Decision of problems in a “universalist” vein which can exert its influence through both “direct” and “indirect” power?

Lesson #5: “Militant peace” and the teleology of the partisan

At the end of his life (he died on April 7th, 1985), Carl Schmitt devoted special attention to the negative outcome of history which, indeed, is quite possible if the unrealistic doctrines of radical humanists, universalists, utopians, and the supporters of “common human values”, centered around the gigantic symbolic potential of the thalassocratic power that is the USA, achieve global predominance and become the ideological foundation of a new world dictatorship – the dictatorship of a “mechanistic utopia.” Schmitt believed that the modern course of history is inevitably moving towards what he called “total war.”

According to Schmitt, the logic of the “totalitarianization” of planetary relations on the strategic, military, and diplomatic levels is based on the following key points. Beginning with a certain point in history, or more precisely the epoch of the French Revolution and the independence of the United States of America, a maximal withdrawal from the historical, judicial, national, and geopolitical constants which previously guaranteed organic harmony on the planet and served the “Nomos of the Earth” was initiated.

On a legal level, an artificial and atomizing, quantitative concept of “individual rights” (which later became the famous theory of “human rights”) began to develop which replaced the organic concept of “rights of the people”, “rights of the state,” etc. In Schmitt’s opinion, the employment of the individual and the individual factor in isolation from the nation, tradition, culture, profession, family, etc. as an autonomous judicial category meant the onset of the “decay of law” and its transformation into a utopian, egalitarian chimera contrary to the organic laws from the history of peoples and states, regimes, territories, and unions.

On the national level, organic federal imperial principles came to be replaced with two opposing yet equally artificial conceptions: the Jacobin idea of the “nation-state” and the Communist theory of the complete withering away of the state and the onset of total internationalism. Those empires which preserved remnants of traditional, organic structures, such as Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, etc., rapidly began to be destroyed under the influence of both external and internal factors. Finally, on the geopolitical level, the thalassocratic factor intensified to such a degree that a profound destabilization of legal relationships in the sphere of “Great Spaces” took place. Let us note that Schmitt considered “Sea” as a space to be much less amenable to legal delineation and arrangement than “Land.”

The global spread of legal and geopolitical disharmony was accompanied by the progressive deviation of dominant political and ideological conceptions from reality and their becoming increasingly chimerical, illusory and ultimately hypocritical. The more that the “universal world” was spoken off, the more worse became wars and conflicts. The more “humane” that slogans became, the more inhuman became social reality. It is this process that Carl Schmitt called the beginning of the “militant peace,” i.e., a state in which there is neither war nor peace in the traditional sense. Today’s looming “totality” which Carl Schmitt warned of has come to be called Mondialism. “Militant peace” has received its complete expression in the theory of the American New World Order which in its movement towards “total peace” is clearly leading the planet towards a new “total war.”

Carl Schmitt considered the development of cosmic space to be the most important geopolitical event symbolizing a further degree of departure from the legitimate ordering of space, as the cosmos is even less amenable to “organization” then maritime space. The development of aviation was also a step towards the “totalization” of war according to Schmitt, with space exploration beginning the process of final illegitimate “totalitarianization.”

Parallel to pushing the planet to such maritime, aerial, and even cosmic monstrosity, Carl Schmitt, who was always interested in more global categories, the smallest of which was the “political unity of the people,” came to be drawn to a new figure in history, the figure of the “partisan,” the study of whom Schmitt devoted his final book to, The Theory of the Partisan. Schmitt saw in this small fighter against larger forces some kind of symbol of the last resistance of tellurocracy on the part of its last defenders. The partisan is, undoubtedly, a modern figure. He, as other modern political types, is divorced from tradition and lives beyond the Jus Publicum. The Partisan breaks all rules of warfare in his struggle. He is not a soldier, but a civilian using terrorist methods which would, in a non-wartime situation, be equated with hard-core criminal offenses akin to terrorism. Nevertheless, it is the Partisan who, according to Carl Schmitt, embodies “faithfulness to Land.” The Partisan is, put simply, an illegitimate response to the masked, illegitimate challenge of modern “law.” The extraordinariness of the situation and the constant thickening of “militant peace” (or “pacifist war,” which is one and the same) draw the small defender of soil, history, people, nation, and the ideas of the source of his paradoxical justification. The strategic efficiency of the Partisan and his methods are, according to Schmitt, the paradoxical compensation of the begun or beginning “total war” against a “total enemy.”

It is perhaps this lesson of Carl Schmitt, who himself drew much from Russian history, Russian military strategy, and Russian political doctrine including analyses of the works of Lenin and Stalin, that is most intimately understandable for Russians. The Partisan is an integral character in Russian history who always appears when the will of the Russian political establishment and deep will of the Russian people itself is deviated from to a maximum extent. Turmoil and guerrilla warfare in Russian history have always had a purely political, compensatory character aimed at correcting the nation’s course when its political leadership is increasingly alienated from the people. In Russia, partisans won the wars that the government lost, overthrew the non-Russian traditions of economic systems, and corrected the geopolitical mistakes of its leaders. Russians have always possessed a fine sense of when illegitimacy or organic injustice is inherent to this or that doctrine emerging through this or that character. In some sense, Russia is a gigantic Partisan Empire operating outside the law and driven by the great intuition of Earth, the Continent, that “Great, Very Great Space” that is the historical territory of our people.

At the present time, as the gap between the will of the nation and the will of the establishment in Russia (which represents exclusively the “rule of law” according to the universalist model) is threateningly large and as the wind of thalassocracy is intensifying the ordering of “militant peace” in the country and gradually becoming an extreme form of “total war,” perhaps this figure of the Russian Partisan will show us the path to the Russian Future through the extreme form of resistance, the stepping over of artificial boundaries and legal norms which do not accord with the true canons of Russian Law.

A more detailed assimilation of Carl Schmitt’s fifth lesson means taking up the Sacred Practice of defending Land.

Final remarks

Finally, the sixth, unscheduled lesson of Carl Schmitt can be called an example of what the leader of the European New Right, Alain de Benoist, calls “political imagination” or “ideological creativity.” The geniality of the German jurist lies in that he not only felt the “field lines” of history but also heeded the mysterious voice of essence, even though it is often hidden behind the bland, empty phenomena of the complex and dynamic modern world. We Russians should learn from Teutonic stiffness in setting our bottomless and overvalued institutions into clear intellectual formulas, clear ideological projects, and convincing and compelling theories.

This is necessary especially today because we live in “exceptional circumstances” on the threshold of a Decision so important that our nation has perhaps never seen the likes of it. The true national elite has no right to leave its people without an ideology which would explain not only what it feels and thinks, but what it doesn’t feel and think, and what has even been kept secret from itself and devoutly worshipped for thousands of years. If we do not ideologically arm the state, which “not ours” could temporarily snatch from us, then we must necessarily, without fail ideologically arm the Russian Partisan who is awakening today to fulfill his continental mission in what are now “Anglicizing” Riga and Vilnius, the “blackening” Caucasus, “yellowing” Central Asia, “Polonizing” Ukraine, and “black-eyed” Tartary.

Russia is a Great Space whose Great Idea is carried by her people in its gigantic, continental Eurasian soil. If a German genius serves our Awakening, then in doing so the Teutons have earned themselves a privileged place among the “friends of Great Russia” and will become “ours”, “Asians,” “Huns,” and “Scythians” like us – the natives of the Great Forest and Great Steppes.

Footnotes:

[1] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, p.127

[2] Julien Freund, “Les lignes de force de la pensée politique de Carl Schmitt”, Nouvelle Ecole  No. 44

[3] Ibid.

Carl Schmitt’s 5 Lessons for Russia - Alexander Dugin

From The Conservative Revolution (Moscow, Arktogeya: 1994), The Russian Thing Vol. 1 (2001), and The Philosophy of War (2004) – Article written in 1991, first published in the journal Nash Sovremennik in 1992

The famous German jurist Carl Schmitt is considered to be a classic of modern law. Some call him the “modern Machiavelli” for his lack of sentimental moralism and humanist rhetoric in his analysis of political reality. Carl Schmitt believed that, in determining legal issues, it is first and foremost important to give a clear and realistic outline of political and social processes and refrain from utopianism, well-wishing, and a priori imperatives and dogma. Today, the scholarly and juridical legacy of Carl Schmitt make up a necessary element of juridical education at Western universities. For Russia as well, Schmitt’s creativity is of special interest and particular importance since he took interest in the critical situations of modern political life. Undoubtedly, his analysis of law and the political context of jurisprudence can help us to understand more clearly and deeply what exactly is happening in our society and Russia.

Lesson #1: Politics above all else

The main principle of Carl Schmitt’s philosophy of law was the idea of the unconditional primacy of political principles over criteria of social existence. It is politics that organized and predetermined the strategy of internal economic factors and their increasing pressure in the modern world. Schmitt explains this in the following way: “The fact that economic contradictions have now become political contradictions…only shows that, like every other human activity, economics travels a path that inevitably leads to political expression” [1]. The meaning of such an allegation employed by Schmitt, understood as a solid historical and sociological argument, ultimately boils down to what can be defined as the theory of “collective historical idealism.” In this theory, the subject is not the individual or economic laws developing substance, but a concrete, historically and socially distinguished people which maintains, with its special, dynamic will – endowed with its own law – its socio-economic existence, qualitative unity, and the organic and spiritual continuity of its traditions in different forms and at different stages. In Schmitt’s understanding, the political sphere represents the embodiment of the will of the people expressed in various forms related to both the legal, economic, and socio-political levels.

Such a definition of politics stands at odds with the mechanistic, universalist models of societal structure which have predominated Western jurisprudence and legal philosophy since the era of the Enlightenment. Schmitt’s political sphere is directly associated with two factors which the mechanistic doctrines are inclined to ignore: the historical specificities of a people endowed with a special quality of will, and the historical particularity of a given society, state, tradition, and past which, in Schmitt’s opinion, finds concentration in its political manifestation. Thus, Schmitt’s assertion of the primacy of politics introduced qualitative, organic characteristics into legal philosophy and political science which are obviously not included in the one-dimensional schemes of “progressives”, whether of the liberal-capitalist or Marxist-socialist persuasion.

Schmitt’s theory thus considered politics to be an “organic” phenomenon “rooted” in “soil.”

Russia and the Russian people need such an understanding of politics in order to sufficiently govern their own destiny and refrain from once again, like seven decades ago, becoming a hostage of an anti-national, reductionist ideology that ignores the will of the people, its past, its qualitative unity, and the spiritual meaning of its historical path.

Lesson #2: Let there always be enemies; let there always be friends

In his book The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt expresses an extraordinarily important truth: “A people exists politically only if it forms an independent political community and contrasts itself to other political communities for the sake of preserving its own understanding of its specific community.” Although this point of view completely disagrees with the humanistic demagogy characteristic of Marxism and liberal-democratic theories, all of world history, including the real history (not the official one) of Marxist and liberal-democratic states, shows that such a fact is indeed true in practice, even if the utopian, post-Enlightenment conscience is incapable of recognizing it. In reality, the political division between “ours” and “not ours” exists in all political regimes and in all nations. Without this distinction, not a single state, people, or nation would be able to preserve its own face, follow its own path, and have its own history.

Soberly analyzing the demagogic assertion of anti-humanism, the “inhumanity” of such an opposition, and the division into “ours” and “not ours”, Carl Schmitt notes: “If one begins to act in the name of all humanity, on behalf of abstract humanism, in practice this means that this actor denies all possible opponents the claim to having human qualities at all, thus declaring himself to be beyond humanity and beyond law, and therefore potentially threatens a war which would be waged to the most terrifying and inhumane limits.” Strikingly enough, these lines were written in 1934, long before the Americans’ terroristic invasion of Panama or bombardment of Iraq. In addition, the GULAG and its victims were still not quite known in the West. In this view, it is not the realistic recognition of the qualitative specifics of a people’s political existence, which always presupposes the division into “ours” and “not ours”, that leads to the most terrifying consequences, but rather the striving for total universalization and the cramming of nations and states into the cells of the utopian ideas of a “united and uniform humanity” devoid of any organic or historical differences.

Beginning with these prerequisites, Carl Schmitt developed the theory of “total war” and “restricted war,” so-called “wars of form” in which total war is the consequence of universalist, utopian ideology which denies the natural cultural, historical, state, and national differences between peoples. Such a war actually threatens the destruction of humanity. As Carl Schmitt believed, extremist humanism is the direct path towards such a war which implies the involvement not only of militaries, but also civilian populations in a conflict. This, in the end, is the most terrible evil. “Wars of form,” on the other hand, are inevitable because of the differences between peoples and their indestructible cultures. “Wars of form” involve the participation of professional soldiers, and can be regulated by the defined legal rules of Europe that once bore the name Jus Publicum Europeum (European Common Law). Such wars, accordingly, represent a lesser evil whose inevitability’s theoretical recognition can protect peoples in advance from a “totalized” conflict and “total war.” On this note, it would be appropriate to quote the famous paradox posed by Shigalev in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, who says “Proceeding from absolute freedom, I arrive at absolute slavery.” Paraphrasing this truth and applying it to the ideas of Carl Schmitt, it can be said that the supporters of radical humanism “proceeding from total peace, arrive at total war.” With all due consideration, we have the opportunity to see Shigalev’s remarks’ in all of Soviet history. If Carl Schmitt’s precautions are not taken into account, it will be significantly more difficult to realize their truth, since there will be no one left to testify that he was right – there will be nothing left of mankind.

Now on to the final important point in the distinction between “ours” and “not ours”, that of “enemies” and “friends.” Schmitt believed that the centrality of this pair for the political being of a nation is valuable as within this choice is decided a deep existential problem. Julien Freud, a disciple of Schmitt, formulated this thesis in the following way: “The enemy-friend duality lends politics an existential dimension since the theoretically implied possibility of war raises the problem and choice of life and death in this framework” [2].

The jurist and politician, judging in terms of “enemy” and “friend” with a clear consciousness of the meaning of this choice, thus operate with the same existential categories which lend decisions, actions, and statements the qualities of reality, responsibility, and seriousness that all utopian humanist abstractions lack in transforming the drama of life and death into a war in one-dimensional chimerical decor. A terrible illustration of this was the coverage of the Iraqi conflict by Western mass media. Americans followed the deaths of Iraqi women, children, and the elderly on television as if they were watching Star Wars computer games. The ideas of the New World Order, the foundations of which were laid during this war, are supreme manifestations of how terrible and dramatic events are when deprived of any existential content.

The “enemy” – “friend” pair is both an external and internal political necessity for the existence of a politically complete society, and should be coldly accepted and conscious. Otherwise, everyone becomes an “enemy” and no one is a “friend.” This is the political imperative of history.

Lesson #3: The politics of “exceptional circumstances” and the Decision

One of the most brilliant aspects of Carl Schmitt’s ideas was the principle of “exceptional circumstances” (in German Ernstfall, literally “serious case”) elevated to the rank of a political-legal category. According to Schmitt, legal norms describe only normal socio-political reality flowing uniformly and continuously without interruptions. Only in such purely normal situations does the concept of “law” as understood by jurists apply to a full extent. There exist, of course, regulations of “extraordinary situations,” but these regulations are most often of all determined on the basis of criteria derived from a normal political situation. Classical jurisprudence, in Schmitt’s opinion, tends to absolutize the criteria of a normal station when considering the history of society as a legally constituted uniform process. The most complete expression of this point of view is Kelsen’s “pure theory of law.” Carl Schmitt, however, sees this absolutization of a “legal approach” and “rule of law” as an equally utopian mechanism and naive universalism produced by the Enlightenment with its rationalist myths. Behind the absolutization of law hides an attempt to “close history” and deprive it of its creative, passionate pattern, its political content, and historical peoples. On the basis of this analysis, Carl Schmitt posits a particular theory of “exceptional circumstances,” or Ernstfall.

Ernstfall is the point at which a political decision is made in a situation which can no longer be regulated by conventional legal norms. Decision-making in exceptional circumstances involves the convergence of a number of diverse, organic factors relating both to tradition, the historical past, cultural constants, as well as spontaneous expressions, heroic overcoming, passionate impulses, and the sudden manifestation of deep existential energies. The True Decision (the very term “decision” was a key concept of Schmitt’s juridical doctrine) is made in precisely such a circumstance where legal and social norms are “disrupted” and those that describe the natural course of political processes and which begin to act in the case of an “emergency citation” or “socio-political catastrophe” are no longer applicable. “Exceptional circumstances” means not merely a catastrophe, but the positioning of a people and its political organism in front of a problem, appealing to a people’s historical essence, its core, and its secret nature which makes this people what it is. Therefore, the Decision politically taken in such a situation is a spontaneous expression of the deep will of the people responding to a global, existential, or historic challenge (here one can compare the views of Schmitt to those of Spengler, Toynbee, and other conservative revolutionaries with whom Carl Schmitt had close personal ties).

In the French school of law, Carl Schmitt’s followers have developed the special term “décisionisme” from the French décision (German Entscheidung). Decisionism puts the main emphasis on “exceptional circumstances” since it is in this instance that the nation, the people, actualizes its past and determines its future in a dramatic concentration of the present moment in which three qualitative characteristics of time merge, i.e., the power of the source from which the people came forth in history, the people’s will facing the future and affirming the here and now where the timeless “I” is revealed and the people takes responsibility into its own hands to the greatest extent, and self-identity.

Developing his theory of Ernstfall and Entscheidung, Carl Schmitt also showed that the affirmation of all judicial and social norms happens during precisely such periods of “exceptional circumstances” and is primordially based on the both spontaneous and predetermined decision. The intermittent moment of the singular expression of will bears later on the basis of the constant norms which exist up until the emergence of new “exceptional circumstances.” This in fact perfectly illustrates the contradiction inherent to the ideas of those radical supporters of the “rule of law”: they knowingly or unknowingly ignore the fact that the appeal to the necessity of establishing the “rule of law” itself is a decision based on none other than the political will of a given group. In some sense, this imperative is put forth arbitrarily and not as some kind of inevitable, fatal necessity. Therefore, the acceptance or denial of the “rule of law” and in general the acceptance or denial of this or that legal model must concur with the will of the particular people or state to whom the proposal or expression of will is addressed. Supporters of the “rule of law” implicitly strive to create or utilize “exceptional circumstances” for the implementation of their concept, but the insidiousness of such an approach and hypocrisy and inconsistency in method can quite naturally draw a popular reaction, the result of which could very well appear as another, alternative decision. Moreover, it is all the more likely that this decision would lead to the establishment of a different legal reality than the one sought after by universalists.

The concept of the Decision in the super-legal sense as well as very nature of the Decision itself accords with the theory of “direct power” and “indirect power” (potestas directa and potestas indirecta). In Schmitt’s specific context, the Decision is made not only in instances of “direct power” (the power of kings, emperors, presidents, etc.) but also under the conditions of “indirect power”, examples of which can be religious, cultural, or ideological organizations which influence the history of a people and state not so clearly as the decisions of rulers, but which, nevertheless, are much deeper and formidable in operation. Schmitt believes that “indirect power” is thus not always negative, but, on the other hand, he merely implicitly alludes to the fact that a decision contrary to the will of the people is most often adopted and implemented by such means of “indirect power.” In his book Political Theology and its later addition Political Theology II, he examines the logic of the functioning of these two types of authority in states and nations.

The theory of “exceptional circumstances” and the theme of the Decision (Entscheidung) tied to it are of paramount importance for us today, as it is precisely at such a point in the history of our people and state that we now find ourselves, where “exceptional circumstances” have become the natural state of the nation and not only the political future of our people, but also the comprehension and essential confirmation of our past, now depend on the Decision. If the will of the people affirms itself and the people’s national choice in this dramatic moment, can clearly define “ours” and “others”, identify friends and enemies, and wrest political self-assertion from history, then the Decision of the Russian state and Russian people will be its own, historic, existential decision that will put a stamp of loyalty on millennia of spiritual “people-building” and “empire-building”. This means that our future will be Russian. If others make the decision, i.e., the supporters of the “common human approach,” “universalism,” and “egalitarianism,” which since the death of Marxism represent the only direct heirs to the utopian and mechanistic ideology of the Enlightenment, then not only will the future be “not Russian”, it will be “all-human” and thus be “no future” (from the standpoint of the being of the people, state, and nation). Our past will lose its meaning and the drama of great Russian history will turn into a silly farce on the way to Mondialism and complete cultural leveling into “universal humanity,” i.e., the “hell of absolute legal reality.”

Lesson #4: The imperatives of a Great Space

Carl Schmitt also touched on the geopolitical aspect of social issues. The most important of his ideas in this sphere is the notion of “Great Space” (Grossraum) which would later come to be considered by numerous European economists, jurists, geopoliticians, and strategists. The conceptual meaning of “Great Space” in Carl Schmitt’s analytical perspective lies in the delineation of geographical regions within which the variations of the political self-manifestation of specific peoples and states included in this region can be conjoined to achieve harmonious and consistent generalization expressed in a “Great Geopolitical Union.” Schmitt’s point of departure was the question of the American Monroe Doctrine encompassing the economic and strategic integration of American powers within the natural borders of the New World. Given that Eurasia represents a much more diverse conglomerate of ethni, states, and cultures, Schmitt posited that it was thus worth speaking of not so much total continental integration as the establishment of several large geopolitical entities, each of which should be governed by a flexible super-state. This is in principle analogous to Jus Publicum Europeaum or the Holly Alliance proposed to Europe by Russian Emperor Alexander I.

In Carl Schmitt’s opinion, a “Great Space” organized into a flexible political structure of the federal imperial type would compensate for various national, ethnic and state wills and serve as a kind of impartial arbiter or regulator of possible local conflicts, “wars of form.” Schmitt emphasized that “Great Spaces”, in order to be organic and natural formations, would necessarily have to represent land territories, i.e., tellurocratic entities, continental masses. In his famous book The Nomos of the Earth, he traced the history of continental, political macro-entities, the path of their integration, and the logic of their gradual establishment as empires. Carl Schmitt noticed that parallel to the existence of spiritual constants in the fate of a people, i.e., constants embodying the spiritual essence of a people, there also exist geopolitical constants of “Large Spaces” which gravitate towards new restoration with intervals of several centuries or even millennia. In this sense, geopolitical macro-entities are stabile when their integrating principle is not rigid and abstractly recreated, but flexible, organic, and according with the Decision of the peoples, their will, and their passionate energy capable of involving them in a unified tellurocratic bloc with their cultural, geopolitical, or state neighbors.

The doctrine of “Great Spaces” (Grossraum) was established by Carl Schmiit not only as an analysis of historical trends in the continent’s history, but also as a project for future unification which Schmitt considered not only possible, but desirable and even necessary in a certain sense. Julien Freund summarized Schmitt’s ideas on future Grossraum in the following terms: “The organization of this new space will not require any scientific competence, or cultural or technical preparation insofar as it arises as a result of political will, the ethos of which transforms the guise of international law. Once this ‘Great Space’ is unified, then the most important thing of all will be the strength of its ‘radiation’” [3].

Thus, Carl Schmitt’s idea of “Great Space” also possesses a spontaneous, existential, and volitional dimension as does the fundamental subject of history in its understanding, i.e., the people as a political unit. Following the geopoliticians Mackinder and Kjellen, Schmitt juxtaposed thalassocratic empires (Phoenicia, England, the US, etc.) to the tellurocratic empires (the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs, the Russian Empire, etc.). In his point of view, the harmonious and organic organization of a space is possible only in the case of tellurocratic empires, and Continental Law can only be applied to them. Thalassocracy, moving beyond the borders of its Island and initiating naval expansion, enters into conflict with tellurocracies and, according to geopolitical logic, begins to diplomatically, economically, and militaristically undermine the foundations of the continental “Great Spaces.” Thus, in the perspective of continental “Great Spaces,” Schmitt once again returns to the concepts of the “enemy-friend” and “ours-not ours” pairs, only this time on a planetary macro-level. The will of the continental empires, the “Great Spaces”, is revealed in the confrontation between continental macro-interests and the macro-interests from overseas. “Sea” thus challenges “Land,” and by way of responding to this challenge, “Land” most often returns to its deep continental self-consciousness.

As a side note, we will illustrate the theory of Grassraum with two examples. In the late 18th – early 19th century, the US’ territory was divided between several Old World countries. The Far West, Louisiana, belonged to the Spanish and later the French; the South belonged to Mexico; the North to England, and so on. In this situation, Europe represented a tellurocratic power for the US preventing the geopolitical and strategic unification of the New World on the military, economic, and diplomatic levels. After the US obtained independence, it gradually began to more and more aggressively impose its geopolitical will upon the Old World, which logically led to the weakening of continental unity of the European “Great Space.” Therefore, in the geopolitical history of “Great Spaces,” there are no absolute tellurocratic or absolute thalassocratic powers. Roles can changes, but continental logic remains constant.

Summarizing Carl Schmitt’s theory of “Great Spaces” with regards to the situation in today’s Russia, we can say that the separation and disintegration of the “Great Space” once called the USSR contradicts the continental logic of Eurasia, since the peoples inhabiting our lands lost the opportunity  to appeal to the [Soviet] superpower arbiter capable of regulating or containing potential and actual conflicts. But, on the other hand, the rejection of the overly rigid and inflexible Marxist demagogy raised to the level of state ideology can lead and will lead if allowed to a spontaneous, passionate restoration of the Eastern Eurasian Bloc, since such a reconstruction accords with all the organic, native ethni of the Russian imperial space. Moreover, it is most likely that the restoration of a Federal Empire, a “Great Space” encompassing the Eastern part of the mainland, would seize by means of its “radiation of power” those additional territories which are rapidly losing their ethno-state identities in the critical and unnatural geopolitical situation prevailing since the collapse of the USSR. On the other hand, the continental thinking of the genius German jurist allows us to distinguish between “ours” and “not ours” on the  continental level.

Awareness of the natural and to a certain extent inevitable confrontation between tellurocratic and thalassocratic powers offers the harbingers and creators of a new Great Space a clear understanding of the “enemy” facing Europe, Russia, and Asia that is the United States of America along with its thalassocratic island ally, England. Once again returning from the macro-level of the planet to the level of the social structure of the Russian state, it thus follows that the question should be posed: does a hidden thalassocratic lobby not stand behind the desire to influence the Russian Decision of problems in a “universalist” vein which can exert its influence through both “direct” and “indirect” power?

Lesson #5: “Militant peace” and the teleology of the partisan

At the end of his life (he died on April 7th, 1985), Carl Schmitt devoted special attention to the negative outcome of history which, indeed, is quite possible if the unrealistic doctrines of radical humanists, universalists, utopians, and the supporters of “common human values”, centered around the gigantic symbolic potential of the thalassocratic power that is the USA, achieve global predominance and become the ideological foundation of a new world dictatorship – the dictatorship of a “mechanistic utopia.” Schmitt believed that the modern course of history is inevitably moving towards what he called “total war.”

According to Schmitt, the logic of the “totalitarianization” of planetary relations on the strategic, military, and diplomatic levels is based on the following key points. Beginning with a certain point in history, or more precisely the epoch of the French Revolution and the independence of the United States of America, a maximal withdrawal from the historical, judicial, national, and geopolitical constants which previously guaranteed organic harmony on the planet and served the “Nomos of the Earth” was initiated.

On a legal level, an artificial and atomizing, quantitative concept of “individual rights” (which later became the famous theory of “human rights”) began to develop which replaced the organic concept of “rights of the people”, “rights of the state,” etc. In Schmitt’s opinion, the employment of the individual and the individual factor in isolation from the nation, tradition, culture, profession, family, etc. as an autonomous judicial category meant the onset of the “decay of law” and its transformation into a utopian, egalitarian chimera contrary to the organic laws from the history of peoples and states, regimes, territories, and unions.

On the national level, organic federal imperial principles came to be replaced with two opposing yet equally artificial conceptions: the Jacobin idea of the “nation-state” and the Communist theory of the complete withering away of the state and the onset of total internationalism. Those empires which preserved remnants of traditional, organic structures, such as Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, etc., rapidly began to be destroyed under the influence of both external and internal factors. Finally, on the geopolitical level, the thalassocratic factor intensified to such a degree that a profound destabilization of legal relationships in the sphere of “Great Spaces” took place. Let us note that Schmitt considered “Sea” as a space to be much less amenable to legal delineation and arrangement than “Land.”

The global spread of legal and geopolitical disharmony was accompanied by the progressive deviation of dominant political and ideological conceptions from reality and their becoming increasingly chimerical, illusory and ultimately hypocritical. The more that the “universal world” was spoken off, the more worse became wars and conflicts. The more “humane” that slogans became, the more inhuman became social reality. It is this process that Carl Schmitt called the beginning of the “militant peace,” i.e., a state in which there is neither war nor peace in the traditional sense. Today’s looming “totality” which Carl Schmitt warned of has come to be called Mondialism. “Militant peace” has received its complete expression in the theory of the American New World Order which in its movement towards “total peace” is clearly leading the planet towards a new “total war.”

Carl Schmitt considered the development of cosmic space to be the most important geopolitical event symbolizing a further degree of departure from the legitimate ordering of space, as the cosmos is even less amenable to “organization” then maritime space. The development of aviation was also a step towards the “totalization” of war according to Schmitt, with space exploration beginning the process of final illegitimate “totalitarianization.”

Parallel to pushing the planet to such maritime, aerial, and even cosmic monstrosity, Carl Schmitt, who was always interested in more global categories, the smallest of which was the “political unity of the people,” came to be drawn to a new figure in history, the figure of the “partisan,” the study of whom Schmitt devoted his final book to, The Theory of the Partisan. Schmitt saw in this small fighter against larger forces some kind of symbol of the last resistance of tellurocracy on the part of its last defenders. The partisan is, undoubtedly, a modern figure. He, as other modern political types, is divorced from tradition and lives beyond the Jus Publicum. The Partisan breaks all rules of warfare in his struggle. He is not a soldier, but a civilian using terrorist methods which would, in a non-wartime situation, be equated with hard-core criminal offenses akin to terrorism. Nevertheless, it is the Partisan who, according to Carl Schmitt, embodies “faithfulness to Land.” The Partisan is, put simply, an illegitimate response to the masked, illegitimate challenge of modern “law.” The extraordinariness of the situation and the constant thickening of “militant peace” (or “pacifist war,” which is one and the same) draw the small defender of soil, history, people, nation, and the ideas of the source of his paradoxical justification. The strategic efficiency of the Partisan and his methods are, according to Schmitt, the paradoxical compensation of the begun or beginning “total war” against a “total enemy.”

It is perhaps this lesson of Carl Schmitt, who himself drew much from Russian history, Russian military strategy, and Russian political doctrine including analyses of the works of Lenin and Stalin, that is most intimately understandable for Russians. The Partisan is an integral character in Russian history who always appears when the will of the Russian political establishment and deep will of the Russian people itself is deviated from to a maximum extent. Turmoil and guerrilla warfare in Russian history have always had a purely political, compensatory character aimed at correcting the nation’s course when its political leadership is increasingly alienated from the people. In Russia, partisans won the wars that the government lost, overthrew the non-Russian traditions of economic systems, and corrected the geopolitical mistakes of its leaders. Russians have always possessed a fine sense of when illegitimacy or organic injustice is inherent to this or that doctrine emerging through this or that character. In some sense, Russia is a gigantic Partisan Empire operating outside the law and driven by the great intuition of Earth, the Continent, that “Great, Very Great Space” that is the historical territory of our people.

At the present time, as the gap between the will of the nation and the will of the establishment in Russia (which represents exclusively the “rule of law” according to the universalist model) is threateningly large and as the wind of thalassocracy is intensifying the ordering of “militant peace” in the country and gradually becoming an extreme form of “total war,” perhaps this figure of the Russian Partisan will show us the path to the Russian Future through the extreme form of resistance, the stepping over of artificial boundaries and legal norms which do not accord with the true canons of Russian Law.

A more detailed assimilation of Carl Schmitt’s fifth lesson means taking up the Sacred Practice of defending Land.

Final remarks

Finally, the sixth, unscheduled lesson of Carl Schmitt can be called an example of what the leader of the European New Right, Alain de Benoist, calls “political imagination” or “ideological creativity.” The geniality of the German jurist lies in that he not only felt the “field lines” of history but also heeded the mysterious voice of essence, even though it is often hidden behind the bland, empty phenomena of the complex and dynamic modern world. We Russians should learn from Teutonic stiffness in setting our bottomless and overvalued institutions into clear intellectual formulas, clear ideological projects, and convincing and compelling theories.

This is necessary especially today because we live in “exceptional circumstances” on the threshold of a Decision so important that our nation has perhaps never seen the likes of it. The true national elite has no right to leave its people without an ideology which would explain not only what it feels and thinks, but what it doesn’t feel and think, and what has even been kept secret from itself and devoutly worshipped for thousands of years. If we do not ideologically arm the state, which “not ours” could temporarily snatch from us, then we must necessarily, without fail ideologically arm the Russian Partisan who is awakening today to fulfill his continental mission in what are now “Anglicizing” Riga and Vilnius, the “blackening” Caucasus, “yellowing” Central Asia, “Polonizing” Ukraine, and “black-eyed” Tartary.

Russia is a Great Space whose Great Idea is carried by her people in its gigantic, continental Eurasian soil. If a German genius serves our Awakening, then in doing so the Teutons have earned themselves a privileged place among the “friends of Great Russia” and will become “ours”, “Asians,” “Huns,” and “Scythians” like us – the natives of the Great Forest and Great Steppes.

Footnotes:

[1] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, p.127

[2] Julien Freund, “Les lignes de force de la pensée politique de Carl Schmitt”, Nouvelle Ecole  No. 44

[3] Ibid.