Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an influential yet surprisingly little-known twentieth century anti-modernist movement. Involving a number of important, yet often secret, religious groups in the West and Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and religious studies in the United States.

Emerging from the 'discovery' in the West of non-Western religious writings, at a time in the nineteeth century when progressive intellectuals had lost faith in the ability of Christianity to deliver religious and spiritual truth, it was fuelled by the widespread religious scepticism that followed World War I. It found its voice in Rene Guenon, a French writer who rejected modernity as a dark age, and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the fundamental truth uniting all the world's religions.

Mark Sedgwick reveals how this pervasive intellectual movement helped shape major events in twentieth century religious life, politics and scholarship - all the while remaining invisible to outsiders.

Chapter twelve starts with the discovery of Traditionalism by a group of Soviet dissidents including Gaydar Jamal (1947- ) and Alexander Dugin, and considers Jamal's and Dugin's first involvement in Russian politics during Perestroika.

• After explaining the contribution of Traditionalism to Dugin's ideology of Neo-Eurasianism, the chapter discusses Dugin's political ventures. Whilst Dugin was active in the (not very serious) National Bolshevik Party, his Neo-Eurasianism cemented the "red-to-brown" alliance between the remains of the Communist Party and the "Patriots."
• Dugin then founded a potentially more important group, the Eurasia Movement, a Kremlin-aligned think tank.
• The chapter ends with a discussion of Neo-Eurasianism in Israel .

Further reading

• Stephen D. Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, and Movements . New York : M. E. Sharpe, 2000.
• Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-91 . Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Yaacov Ro'i, Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies . London : Frank Cass, 1995.

Suggested websites

• National Bolshevik Party
  • Main site (in Russian)
  • English-language site
• Arctogaia
  • Main site (in Russian)
  • English-language site
• Eurasian Party (multilingual)
• Analytical Group MAOF (in Russian; Israeli)
• Search the Catalog of Contemporary Traditionalism for "Russian" language

Other resources

• Babel Fish (translates Russian, after a fashion)
• Addenda
• Errata
• Additional notes to chapter 12
• See articles by Marlène Laruelle,
  • «Le néo-eurasisme russe» Cahiers du Monde russe , 42/1. 2001 ( abstract in English)
  • «Alexandre Dugin : Esquisse d'un eurasisme d'extrême-droite en Russie pest-soviétique» Revue d'études comparatives EST/OUEST Septembre 2001 ( abstract in English)