Darya Dugina Parents: Who Is Alexander Dugin?

Darya Dugina, the daughter of influential, ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin was killed by a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday August 2o, 2022.

According to the press service of the Russian Investigative Committee, as reported by the Russian state news agency TASS, Dugina died at the scene after “an explosive device, presumably installed in the Toyota Land Cruiser, went off on a public road and the car caught fire” at around 9.00 p.m. local time on Saturday, near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy.

Dugina’s father Alexander Dugin is a Russian author and ideologue. He has been credited with being the architect or “spiritual guide” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Dugin’s influence within the Russian government and on Russian president Vladimir Putin is disputed, with Dugin sometimes being referred to as “Putin’s brain”, responsible for shaping Russian foreign policy, while others contend that Dugin’s influence within the government is limited and has been greatly exaggerated, an impression given by correlations between his work and Russian foreign policy.

Dugin was born into a military family and he was an anti-communist dissident during the 1980s and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he co-founded the National Bolshevik Party with Eduard Limonov, a party which espoused National Bolshevism, which he later left.

In 1997, Dugin published Foundations of Geopolitics where he outlined his worldview, calling for Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and conquest, and to challenge the rival Atlanticist “empire” led by the United States.

Dugin continued to further develop his ideology of neo-Eurasianism, founding the Eurasia Party in 2002 and writing further books including The Fourth Political Theory (2009).

Dugin also served as an advisor to the State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov, and a leading member of the ruling United Russia party, Sergey Naryshkin.

Dugin was the head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow State University from 2009 to 2014. He lost the position due to backlash over comments regarding clashes in Ukraine.