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Russian Literature 106 (2019) 79–108

www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

THE GOTHIC FUTURE OF EURASIA

DINA KHAPAEVA

dina.khapaeva@modlangs.gatech.edu
Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract
This article addresses the relations between contemporary post-Soviet Gothic and
radical conservative projects regarding the social structure of Russian society. The
author demonstrates that the Gothic imposes a language and aesthetic that resonate
not only with post-Soviet fiction but also with the neo-Eurasian dream of a New
Russian Middle Ages. Neo-Eurasian ideology becomes a potent tool for subverting
the concepts of democracy and citizenship in Russia, offering, to the same extent
as the post-Soviet vampire novel, a caste utopia as Russia’s future. The relations
between the Gothic and historical memory are another important focus of this
article.
Keywords Neo-Eurasianism: Post-Soviet Fiction; Gothic Aesthetic; Historical
Memory; Gothic Monsters; the New Russian Middle Ages

Introduction

At first glance, what could be more unlike the postmodern Gothic, popu-
lated by vampires, zombies, and werewolves, than the political fantasies of
extreme Russian nationalists? Neo-Eurasian ideologists1 condemn all West-
ern influences on Russian culture and advocate a return to a “golden Mus-
covite past” that is also referred to as the “New Russian Middle Ages”. Yet

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ruslit.2019.06.005
0304-3479/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
80 Dina Khapaeva

I advance here the hypothesis that the popularity of contemporary Gothic

monsters is largely conditioned by their role in communicating more recent
ideas about humanity and society, in Russia and beyond, and that these
ideas are reminiscent of a radical conservative ideology. The main focus of
this article is to analyze how creative fiction, on the one hand, and political
texts, on the other, supply a new Gothic framework and how Gothic tropes
inform and legitimize the radical conservative projects of a future Russian
society. I argue that the contemporary post-Soviet Gothic, which features
vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc. as its protagonists, is essentially a
caste utopia that places humans at the bottom of the imagined social
hierarchy. By examining the attitudes towards people and the social projects
expressed in writings influenced by neo-Eurasian ideas, I demonstrate that
neo-Eurasian ideology has become a potent tool for subverting notions of
democracy and citizenship in Russia. The relations between the Gothic and
historical memory represent another important dimension of this article.
The concept of the Gothic Aesthetic therefore provides a theoretical
framework for my analysis. There is a settled tradition of applying the
concept of the Gothic genre to Russian and Soviet literature and culture.
The influence of Western Gothic genres on the works of several nineteenth-
century Russian writers such as Vasilii Zhukovskii, Aleksandr Pushkin and,
arguably, Nikolai Gogol’ and Fedor Dostoevskii prompted the interpretation
of their writings through the prism of that genre. 2 Jeffrey Brooks (2013: 24-
62) has applied this concept in highlighting changing attitudes to violence in
the Russian prerevolutionary culture. As regards the Soviet era, Eric Nai-
man (1997) employed the notion of the Gothic in relation to Soviet culture
in his book Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology, in
which he mainly addresses Soviet sexuality. 3 Post-Soviet culture was also
interpreted through the prism of the Gothic in my book, Gothic Society:
Morphology of a Nightmare (2007), where two concepts – Gothic society
and the Gothic Aesthetic – were introduced to describe the realities of
Putin’s Russia.4
There are several reasons to prefer here the concept of the Gothic
Aesthetic over the more familiar notion of a “Gothic genre”: the combi-
nation of the terms “Gothic” and “genre” renders the concept imprecise and
difficult to use as an analytical tool. While the Gothic novel was rather
easily distinguishable from other literary genres by its emphasis on images
of death and destruction, monstrous and supernatural forces, explorations of
the dark side of the human psyche, and a protest against rationality, 5 the
contemporary Gothic can no longer claim all these features to itself, since
many other genres have also coopted those characteristics. Attesting that
contemporary Gothic narratives feature worlds “infested with psychic and
social decay” where “violence, rape and breakdown are the key motifs”,
David Punter acknowledges the difficulties of isolating Gothic narratives
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 81

from “the surrounding culture”, accentuates the problems involved in

distinguishing between horror and the Gothic in contemporary culture, and
considers indeterminacy of meaning as the contemporary Gothic’s
distinctive feature (1996: 1-3, 146).6 Fear may be also characterized as the
essential feature of the contemporary Gothic (Louis Gross 1989), which
makes it even harder to differentiate it from the horror genre. Fred Botting
adds that the Gothic spreads like a disease, “infecting” other genres (1996:
1, 3). In this broad, even pathological, interpretation, the Gothic appears as
an all-embracing concept. As far as the concept of genre is concerned,
Hayden White convincingly demonstrates that we live in an age of genre
fusion that creates considerable difficulties for productive use of this
concept as an analytical tool.7 Besides, the application of the concept is
limited to the domain of fiction or other arts. The notion of an aesthetic
trend free of these limitations offers a better instrument to trace the mutual
influence of particular elements of fiction or cinematographic works and
their political and cultural context.8
In my interpretation, the concept of the Gothic Aesthetic displays two
main features. No matter how horrifying a thriller or how violent or super-
natural the context of a fictional work may be, if the protagonists and narra-
tors of these texts are people and not murderous monsters, and if their
actions in the plot and the artistic devices employed are not determined by
the aim of immersing the audience in a nightmare trance,9 they do not fit
into the category of the Gothic Aesthetic.10 This concept allows the texts
discussed here to be examined on two levels.
First, this concept scrutinizes monster-centered narratives from the
viewpoint of anthropoFentrism. Unlike the widespread interpretation of
vampires, zombies,11 and other murderous monsters as a metaphor for
oppression of various kinds, I emphasize that these protagonists epitomize a
disregard for anthropoFentrism and mark a changing perception of
humanity.12 René Girard (1986: 33) arguably pioneered the interpretation of
the monster as scapegoat. The works of Gilles Deleuze, and Pierre-Félix
Guattari (2004: 266),13 proposed to read monsters and especially vampires
as embodying the radical criticism of capitalism. Readings of vampires as
symbolizing a marginalized Other – the victims of political oppression, of
gender intolerance, racial or ethnic discrimination or economic inequality –
prevail in cultural studies.14 Contrary to its original intent, which was to
advocate for cultural and political tolerance, the concept of the Other in
these studies may be enlisted to normalize murderous monsters.15 Critics
now actually sympathize with the zombie’s need to “feed” on people. 16
These interpretations blind critics to the antihumanistic significance of
monsters as cultural representations, in that it is expected to empathize with
the vampire, the zombie, the cannibal, and the serial killer rather than with
their victims and to identify with them not only against unjust institutions
82 Dina Khapaeva

and political, racial, or economic oppression but also against humankind in

general.
The concept of the Gothic Aesthetic is well equipped to analyze the
role that images of Gothic monsters play in the important shift in the
perception of human beings that occurred in popular culture during the late
1980s to early 1990s.17 Their narrative function, which changed from that of
evil secondary characters to that of idealized protagonists and narrators,
brought them, rather than human beings, to the center of the audience’s and
their creators’ attention.18 This modifies the ideological implications of the
image of the monster. By murdering and preying on human characters,
monsters exemplify a radical rejection of anthropoFentrism. The concept of
the Gothic Aesthetic specifies how this shift promotes premodern ways of
thinking about society.
Narratives inflected by the Gothic Aesthetic may also be interpreted
as an expression of changes in historical memory. In the post-Soviet so-
ciety, the collective denial of Soviet crimes and rampant re-Stalinization (a
memory politics that involves the rehabilitation of Stalin and his regime)
constitutes a selective historical amnesia, in which a heroic post-Soviet
narrative supplants the memory of Stalinism.19 The narratives of the Gothic
Aesthetic provide the language and the figurative means to normalize the
post-Soviet regime and its antidemocratic social projects.20 Gothic monsters
may, however, be interpreted as expressions of historical memory well
beyond the post-Soviet context.
I devote special attention to Sergei Lukianenko’s Novyi dozor (New
Watch, 2013) and Viktor Pelevin’s Betman-Apollo (Batman-Apollo, 2013).
These cult novels by popular post-Soviet writers were chosen because, des-
pite their creators’ opposing political views (Lukianenko is an enthusiastic
Putinist, Pelevin is a critic of the Putin regime), they describe the imaginary
social structure of post-Soviet society in similar ways.
I also examine the anonymous pamphlet Proekt Rossiia (Project
Russia, 2005), which bears a strong resemblance to the neo-Eurasian vision
of the future of Russian society. The fact that Eksmo – Russia’s largest
publishing house – ran 1,000,000 copies of this pamphlet in 2009 speaks to
its resonance in Russia. Several texts by Aleksandr Dugin, the leader and an
ideologist of the Eurasia movement, and Mikhail Iuriev, a member of the
Political Council of Eurasia, provide another important source for exploring
the ideological narrative of neo-Eurasianism.

The New Vampire Watch of Post-Soviet Gothic Fiction

Let us now consider how the social structure is presented in Sergei

Lukianenko’s New Watch (2013). New Watch is narrated by the vampire
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 83

Anton (as are the others in the Watch series) and like them, revolves around
an apocalyptic motif. The Twilight (Sumrak) – a magical substance that
gives powers to vampires and other nonhuman creatures – wants to ruin
Russia (2013: 324).21 Anton’s daughter, Nadia, can destroy the Twilight,
and if she does, magic will disappear and vampires and other nonhumans
will become simple mortals. Anton fears this future for himself and for his
daughter: he would rather die than allow his daughter to be so degraded
(368). In his nightmares, he sees her as an ordinary young woman, a human
without magical powers: “I hated the dream in which Nadia shouted at me
with loathing: ‘Papa, what have you done to us?’” (“мне очень не
нравится приснившийся мне сон – про Надю, которая с ненавистью
кричит: ‘Папа, что ты сделал с нами?’”; 315). Nightmares undistin-
guishable from literary reality, magic undistinguishable from nightmares
make this and other Lukianenko texts a perfect example of the Gothic
Aesthetic.
The vampires are tellingly called the Others and consider themselves
“representatives of a superior race” (“predstavitel’ vysshei rasy”), because
this is “who they are” (293). The gap separating humans and the Others is
racial: people cannot become Others by education or through the power of
will. Even if vampires are sometimes born of humans, their magic is innate.
The rigid hierarchy of the Others is also racial: they are divided into
“lower” and “higher”. Others according to the innate strength of their magic
(330).22 Monsters are presented as a socially advanced and aesthetically
idealized species that is separated from humans by an unbridgeable
biological, ontological, and aesthetic gap. Frequently, these idealized
monsters exhibit an undeniable resemblance to the Russian mafia or the
KGB (or FSB), and are even romanticized as “spies working in a foreign
country” (“разведчика-нелегала, заброшенного в чужую страну”; 84). In
New Watch, people are referred to as a “herd” (stado”; 291), while
vampires are their “shepherds” (“pastukhi”; 373). The vampires’ attitudes
toward people are described as follows: “I like people and I wish them well.
But I do not idealize them. And since they behave like livestock, I treat
them accordingly” (“Я людей люблю, я им добра желаю. Но не идеа-
лизирию. И раз они себя ведут как скот”; 294, 299). Even the vampire
protagonist, who is unusually well-disposed to humans, needs to remind
himself constantly that humans are not completely equivalent to beasts
(330). Humanity is also defined as “a human vegetable garden” (“ogoro-
dom-chelovechestvom”) for the Twilight. The Watch society is undoubtedly
one of castes.
One theme that runs through all Lukianenko’s Watch novels is that
human interests and well-being are not a consideration for vampires, their
omnipotent rulers. This is how vampire Anton explains it to a neophyte in
New Watch: “You are not human. You are an Other. Humans’ troubles and
84 Dina Khapaeva

problems have nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with
them” (“Ты – не человек. Ты – Иной. Это не лучше и не хуже […] это
иначе. Беду и проблемы людей тебя отныне не касаются, а ты – не
касаешься их”; 83).23 Vampires belong to a domain of the “sensational and
powerful that humans can never experience” (“чему-то прекрасному,
захватывающему […] чего им никогда не дано испытать”; 67). People
are “shadows and vapor” (“par i chelovecheskie teni”) to the vampire, who
scarcely notices this inferior species unless he is hungry. 24 The Others are
further divided into Dark and Light according to their dietary preferences.
Dark vampires drink human blood and gain strength from people’s negative
emotions, while Light vampires “collect human happiness” (333). But they
are still united in their common fight against humans (341). Humans are
randomly assigned as food; killing them to provide vampire food is just part
of the bureaucratic routine in Lukianenko’s universe. In New Watch, a
vampire’s murder of a girl, “not yet fifteen”, is shown in naturalistic detail:
after her blood has been sucked out, her body is simply thrown into the
Moscow River (272-273). The protagonist explains to his young comrade
that even if this particular girl had been spared, the vampires would have
issued a “license” to kill someone else (280). In Night Watch, a serial killer
becomes the judge, the highest authority in this imagined universe and an
impeccably positive character.

Social Vampirism: A Neo-Eurasian Caste Society

Lukianenko’s fictional world reveals interesting parallels with neo-Eurasian

declarations concerning the structure of the future Russian society. Russian
historical messianism is a cornerstone of neo-Eurasianism. This ideology
proclaims Russia a self-sufficient civilization of a higher order than the
West (Dugin 2014b). The restoration of empire is an asserted goal of neo-
Eurasian doctrine, which declares the West to be Russia’s primordial
enemy: when the Devil was cast out from heaven, the West is where he fell
(2015b). The annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine are perceived as
a new crusade against Satan, their goal being to “return our holy shrines”
(“vozvrashchat’ nashi sviatyni”, ibid.). These geopolitical ambitions go
hand in hand with several important changes in Russian domestic policy
and a new social organization. The neo-Eurasianists propose to return to
Russia’s pre-Petrine past, which, echoing the title of Nicolas Berdiaev’s
book Novoe Srednevekov’e (1924), they call the New Middle Ages. Russia
is to restore a theocratic monarchy and a return to a monarchical order
entailing a society of estates.
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 85

Below, Dugin insists that the caste systems on which a society of

estates is built are best suited to human nature, in that they reflect a basic
“caste inequality of souls” (“kastovoe neravenstvo dush”):

Ancient states and sociopolitical systems were built upon the caste
principle. This presupposes a doctrine according to which the inner
nature of people differs. There are godlike souls and earthly souls (the
latter being animalistic and demonic). The caste system reflects the
nature of souls, which people cannot alter in their lifetime. Belonging
to caste is dictated by fate. Normal society should be built in such a
way as to have people of a godlike nature on top (the elite) and people
of animalistic or demonic nature at the bottom (the masses). (Dugin
2014a) 25

(Древнейшие государства и социально-политические системы

строились на принципе каст. Под этим принципом следует
понимать учение о том, что внутренняя природа разных людей
качественно различается: есть божественные души и души
земные (звериные, демонические). Каста отражает именно эту
природу души, изменить которую человек при жизни не в
состоянии. Каста фатальна. Нормальное общество в этом пони-
мании должно строиться таким образом, чтобы люди божест-
венной природы были вверху (элита), а люди земной (звериной,
демонической) природы – внизу (массы).)

A future Russian society should be based on the following principle:

“Estates also presuppose that people differ by nature, hence, there are high
and low estates. But one can change one’s social status if a member of a
lower estate performs a heroic deed” (ibid.). Dugin asserts that “tsar-
philosophers and hero-warriors” should dominate Russian society (ibid.).26
Other devotees of neo-Eurasianism expressly agree that there is not and can
never be equality among people (Dalmatova 2008). For them, the values of
the Enlightenment and democracy are part of a “masonic plot” and alien to
“the Russian soul”. Despite the ongoing debate about the fascist origins of
the neo-Eurasian ideology, which I will discuss below, remarkably little
attention has been devoted to the role that a caste society plays in these
views.
Since the mid-2000s, the neo-Eurasian movement has enjoyed con-
siderable political support.27 For example, Putin has called Eurasianism a
significant part of Russian ideology and a founding principle of the Eur-
asian Union (Edinaia Rossiia 2012).28 The neo-Eurasian discourse has been
openly proclaimed by Russia’s official news agency RIA-Novosti a “new
ideology [...] representing Russia as a country-civilization” (Lepekhin
2012). An indication of the political significance of this neomedieval turn
86 Dina Khapaeva

may be seen in the fact that on 5 May 2018, the main slogan of the major
anti-Putin protest organized by Aleksei Navalnyi was formulated in neome-
dieval terms: “He is not our tsar!” (“On nam ne tsar’”)29

Vampires and the Neo-Eurasian Social Order

Neo-Eurasian ideology is strongly reflected in several of Lukianenko’s

novels. His male protagonist in the Watch series, a vampire, takes pride in
the uniqueness of Russia, making statements that echo neo-Eurasian
geopolitics: “I live in Russia, which is neither Europe nor Asia” (2013:
238).30 Lukianenko’s heroine, a witch, reiterates the neo-Eurasian imperial
discourse in discussion with a vampire:

Let me remind you of what makes you proud of our history. These are
military victories, conquests of new territories and the conquest of
space; great factories and power stations; a powerful military and a
great culture, St. Petersburg and Baikonur, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy,
nuclear weapons and the Bolshoi Opera Theater, DneproGES and
BAM, all of which, Antoshka, was created under tyrants and
dictators! (210)

(А ну-ка, вспомни, чем из истории нашей страны ты можешь

гордиться? Военными победами? Присоединением территорий?
Полетами в космос? Заводами и электростанциями? Могучей
армией и всемирно известной культурой? Так все оно, Антошка,
сотворено при тиранах и диктаторах! Санкт-Петербург и Бай-
конур, Чайковский и Толстой, ядерное оружие и Большой театр,
Днепрогэс и БАМ.)

Peter the Great is, however, mentioned only once in the novel, when he is
blamed for bringing tobacco to Russia (2013: 378).
In Lukianenko’s vampire universe, death is certainly one of the
central themes, for “someone’s life is always someone else’s death” (214).
Dugin also relates the neomedieval social hierarchy to the centrality of
death in the social organization:

Lords rule in a society where death is at the center of public attention.

Slaves are granted political rights only when death is ignored and
exiled to the periphery of public life. While death remains at the
center of public attention, we have a society ruled by the wise and by
heroes, the philosophers, and the warriors. This is a caste society or
society of estates (2014а)
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 87

(Господин правит в обществах, где смерть в центре внимания.

Раб получает политические права только там, где смерть вы-
носится за скобки, удаляется на периферию. Пока смерть
остаeтся в поле зрения общества, мы имеем дело с правлением
мудрецов и героев, философов и воинов. Это кастовое общество
или сословное.)

Lukianenko’s heroes think that human society is balanced between

weakness, which means the death of the country, on the one hand, and
cruelty, which means life, on the other (2013: 211). Political, social, and
economic equality is as impossible in Lukianenko’s vampiric universe as it
is in the neo-Eurasian ideology. According to his vampire protagonist,
democracy cannot change people. It has only given them the freedom to
hate one another (232). Lukianenko praises dictatorship as the only way to
achieve “efficient public transportation, order and public safety, politeness
and good healthcare” (“четко работающий транспорт, порядок и без-
опасность на улицах, вежливые люди и хорошая медицина – это все
достижения диктатуры”; 209). His protagonists also assert that pain and
terror are the best ways to deal with crowds (286). And even if vampires
disregard humans, they severely punish those among them who challenge
the existing political regime (337). A neophyte vampire who wants to “re-
moralize” (“remoralizirovat’”) the Kremlin and overthrow the current
regime is beaten by a superior Other. Finally, vampires function in a
manner that calls compellingly to mind the Russian police or the FSB (337-
339). Lukianenko’s vampires treat humans as cattle – or as GULAG
inmates – because “there is no reason to respect humans” (“так что
уважать людей пока не за что”; 292) and the way humans are ruled by
vampires closely resembles the Soviet prison camp regime.31
Terror as a form of governance is strongly supported by neo-
Eurasianists; they declare that the neooprichnina – a revival of Ivan the
Terrible’s notorious reign of terror – is a cherished Russian national tra-
dition that underpins the “authoritarian monarchy”.32 Neo-Eurasian dis-
course further glorifies Stalin as “the true Soviet Russian tsar […], an
absolute monarch”, who “expresses the spirit of Soviet society and the
Soviet people” (“Cталин вяражал дух советского народа, советского
общества”). According to this view, the fact that his Stalin’s great empire
was built at great human cost is irrelevant, because “all great historical
achievements are built on blood anyway” (“Но без этого [...] ничего
построить в истории невозможно, и соответственно, платят за это, увы,
кровью”; Dugin 2013b).33 One reason why Dugin is so fond of terror is
rooted in his fascination with fascism, which he romanticizes in his book
Templars of the Proletariat:
88 Dina Khapaeva

Fascism is a nationalism but not just any nationalism; it is a re-

volutionary, romantic, idealistic nationalism, which connects with the
Great Myth and the Transcendent Idea, to embody the Impossible
Dream, to give birth to a society of heroes and supermen, to transform
and recreate the world. […] The fascist idea of culture calls for a
radical denial of humanism, of the “all too human mentality” that
represents the essence of the intelligentsia. The fascist hates the in-
telligentsia as a social type […]. The fascist likes what is simultane-
ously bestial, superhuman, and angelic. He loves ice and tragedy; he
does not like warmth and comfort… (1997)34

(Фашизм – это национализм, но национализм не какой-нибудь, а

революционный, мятежный, романтический, идеалистический,
апеллирующий к великому мифу и трансцендентной идее, стре-
мящийся воплотить в реальности Невозможную Мечту, родить
общество героя и Сверхчеловека, преобразовать и преобразить
мир. [...] И наконец, фашистский взгляд на культуру соот-
ветствует радикальному отказу от гуманистической, "слишком
человеческой" ментальности, т. е. от того, что составляет суть
"интеллигенции". Фашист ненавидит интеллигента как вид. [...]
Фашист любит зверское, сверхчеловеческое и ангелическое од-
новременно. Он любит холод и трагедию, он не любит тепла и
комфорта.)

Prior to discovering the Eurasian ideology of Russian émigrés, Dugin,

a National-Bolshevik in the 1990s and until April 2001, when he establish-
ed the Eurasia movement, had considered a rigid social hierarchy the
necessary foundation for a new fascist state: “The essence of fascism
consists in creating a new social hierarchy, which is built upon natural, or-
ganic, clear principles: honor, self-respect, heroism, and courage” (“Сущ-
ность фашизма – новая иерархия, новая аристократия. Новизма со-
строит как раз в том, что иерархия строится на естественных, органич-
ных, ясных принципах – достоинство, честь, мужество, героизм”;
ibid.).35
Dugin and Lukianenko are, moreover, notorious for their anti-Ukrai-
nian statements and share similar views about the annexation of Crimea and
the war in Ukraine.36 For example, Lukianenko also forbade the translation
of his novels into Ukrainian and publishes articles on “Ukrainian fascism”
on the TsentrAziia website, which is owned and managed by Vitalii Khliu-
pin, editor of the website Eurasia in 1998 to 2000.
Lukianenko’s fiction and the neo-Eurasian ideology share one more
Gothic trope – an obsession with apocalyptic motifs.37 As in Lukianenko’s
New Watch and Night Watch, in neo-Eurasian writings (and, as we will see,
in Project Russia), apocalypse is a recurrent theme: “The axis of the end of
time penetrates us. It makes irrelevant the national history that has already
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 89

happened and highlights what represents our national essence: the singular
moment of the Second Coming” (“Линия Конца Времен проходит сквозь
нас. Именно она ‘девальвирует’ уже свершившуюся национальную
историю как нечто ничтожное и незначимое по сравнению с тем, что
составляет нашу национальную сущность, по сравнению с великим и
единственным мигом Второго Пришествия”), proclaims Dugin. He
considers “the destruction of humanity […] a reasonable solution” because,
sounding a lot like the vampire Anton, he states that “in its present form,
humanity is disgusting” (И здесь даже уничтожение человечества,
возможно, могло бы бать разумным решением. Потому что в своем
нынешнем состоянии оно омерзительно”). And for him the main reason
for this disgust with humanity lies in people’s “unwillingness to create a
hierarchical society” (“Perestaem stroit’ ierarkhicheskie obshchestva”;
2011). Dugin conceives the primordial struggle between Russia and the
USA as “a fight of light and darkness, God and Devil” (2015b). The idea
that the Devil resides in the US, where he is to be hunted down by the
Russian Emperor, is also expressed in Mikhail Iuriev’s novel, Third
Empire: Becoming Russia (2006), which has been retrospectively called
“the Kremlin’s favorite book” for its “predictions” (or soon-to-be-
implemented political advice?) on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and
military intervention in Ukraine (Snegovaia 2014). Yet, apocalypse is a
good thing because in the end it will serve Russia’s glory: “Our nation will
be the tsars and servants of the Second Coming after it passes through the
fire of Apocalypse” (“Второго Пришествия, царями и слугами которого
наша избранная нация станет пройдя свкозь апокалиптический огонь”;
Dugin 1994).38 How different is this from Putin’s statement at the annual
Valdai Club discussion on 18 October 2018: “The aggressor should know
that our revenge is inevitable […] We [Russians – D.Kh.] would be victims
and martyrs and go to heaven, while they would simply die. Because they
don’t even have time to repent” (“Но тогда агрессор все равно должен
знать, что возмездие неизбежно […]. А мы – жертвы агрессии, и мы
как мученики попадем в рай, а они просто сдохнут, потому что даже
раскаяться не успеют”; BBC 2018).
Recently, Dugin himself appears to have developed a taste for the
contemporary Gothic, with its specifically folkloric and medieval overtones.
One symptom of this could be his story of a Russian boy being effectively
crucified by Ukrainian solders, which was published first on his Facebook
and later was featured in a prime-time report on Russia’s official news
network, Channel One. In this connection, Dugin called on his compatriots
to “kill, kill, kill [Ukrainians]” in retaliation. 39 Dmitrii Bykov compares this
story to the Beilis Affair in which, in the midst of Russia’s 1911 pogroms, a
hoax about a Russian boy tortured to death by Jews resulted in a sensational
90 Dina Khapaeva

trial by jury that ended in the libeled and entirely innocent Beilis being fully
acquitted (Bykov 2014).

The Parody of Neo-Eurasian Vampirism in Pelevin’s Gothic Fiction

The fact that Viktor Pelevin pays so much attention to the social structure of
vampire society indicates how important he considers it to the vampire
saga. Pelevin’s novel Batman-Apollo continues the plot of his previous
novel, Empire V, which was published in 2006. Both stories are narrated by
Rama, a neophyte vampire, and both texts employ devices that make the
literary reality of these novels completely undistinguishable from
nightmare. Rama has many bad dreams, which lure Pelevin’s reader into the
nightmare trance that makes this novel an excellent example of the Gothic
Aesthetic.
As in Pelevin’s Empire V, the vampires in Batman-Apollo “breed
humans like livestock” to be “milked” (2013: 17). Vampires even compare
cities to dairy farms (2013: 380). Only humans, because of their higher
sensitivity, can generate enough suffering to produce “the red liquid” or
“bablos” needed to feed the vampires. The vampires have accordingly
created “glamour and discourse”, two categories that roughly correspond to
aesthetics/art and philosophy/ideology, in order to conceal from humans
their true destiny and to manipulate humanity in their own interests. The
Vampire Emperor even predicts that people will forever be food for
vampires (398). Yet people still idealize vampires, in a manner that Pelevin
subjects to scathing criticism:
For some strange reason people tend to idealize vampires. We are
portrayed as refined stylists, solemn romantics, pensive dreamers –
always with a great deal of sympathy. Vampires are played by attract-
ive actors; pop stars are delighted to impersonate them in music
videos. In the West and in the East, no celebrity finds it shameful to
play a vampire. It really is peculiar – child molesters and violators of
tombs are much closer to the average man than we vampires are. Yet
there is no sympathy for them in the human arts. But vampires are
indulged with compassion, understanding and love […].

(По какой-то странной причине люди были склонны идеали-

зировать вампиров. Нас изображали тонкими стилистами, мрач-
ными романтиками, задумчивыми мечтателями – всегда с боль-
шой дозой симпатии. Вампиров играли привлекательные актеры;
в клипах их с удовольствием изображали поп-звезды. На Западе
и на Востоке селебритиз не видели в роли вампира ничего
зазорного. Это действительно было странно – растлители мало-
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 91

летних и осквернители могил стояли куда ближе к среднему

человеку, чем мы, но никакой симпатии человеческое искусство
к ним не проявляло. А на вампиров изливался просто фонтан
сочувственного понимания и любви… [2006: 163])40
In Pelevin’s narrative, much as in Lukianenko’s, vampires predict an up-
coming apocalypse. This catastrophe, which vampires will survive, will
destroy most of human culture, to the point that the remaining sources about
our times “will be comparable to what we would have known about Ancient
Rome if all that remained had been reduced to two Pompeian cellars”
(“примерно как сохранилось бы от Рима, если бы под пеплом уцелело
только два-три помпеиских подвала”; 2013: 189). “Vampires are not
interested in human history” (“Но вампирам не очень интересна история
людей”; 189), nor are they concerned about the disintegration of human
culture. To emphasize the utter degradation of humankind in the vampire’s
eyes, Batman-Apollo explicitly calls the vampire rule over humans a
“cosmic concentration camp” (“космическим концлагерем”; 288).41
At the same time, the organization of vampire society in Batman-
Apollo could be considered a sly parody of certain neo-Eurasian ideas,
especially that of autocratic monarchy. 42 The Great Bat, who reigns auto-
cratically over the national vampire community, has her own court and is
worshiped as a goddess. Vampire clans are organized in national subsets
matching the divides of the contemporary political map (2013: 18). At the
top of the social hierarchy is the Batman – or, rather, Batman/Batwoman, a
hermaphroditic demigod who governs all the vampire communities in North
America and lives on a nuclear submarine (383). Pelevin also mocks the
religious dogmas cherished by neo-Eurasians (366-374): the Great Vampire
is the origin and beginning of everything, and whereas all humans are slaves
to vampires, all vampires serve the Great Vampire: “Vampires are different
from humans only because vampires are the humans’ warders, but warders
and prisoners are made from the same substance. This substance, Rama, is
the Great Vampire. We all serve him. And we cannot complain about it be-
cause without him we would not exist at all” (“Вампиры отличаются от
людей только тем, что они надзиратели – но и надзиратель, и заклю-
ченный сделаны из одного и того же теста. Это тесто, Рама, и есть
Великий Вампир. Мы все трудимся на него. И не можем ни в чем его
обвинить, потому что без него нас не было бы вообще”; 360).
Beyond the embedded parody of neo-Eurasian ideology, Pelevin
addresses neo-Eurasianism directly in his text.43 Rama discusses various
philosophical questions with his mentor, an older and better educated vam-
pire, and this is how the old vampire rebuffs neo-Eurasian ideas about
Russia in the chapter mockingly titled “The Shield of the Motherland”
(“Shchit rodiny”):
92 Dina Khapaeva

The Russian mind is a European mind lost forever among latrine pits
and police boxes without any hope for salvation. […] We are the
unique and only heirs to all the best achievements of mankind […]
plunged into a bottomless, pitch-dark frozen asshole. [...] The Russian
mind is characterized by a feeling of inferiority, which denigrates
everything that happens in Russia as compared with something
happening elsewhere. And this feature of Russian mind, Rama, is
what makes its destiny especially unbearable [as compared to that of
the rest of humanity]. (316-318)

(Русский ум – это европейский ум, затерянный между выгребных

ям и полицейских будок без всякой надежды на спасение. [...] мы
уникальные и единственные наследники всего ценного и вели-
кого, созданного человечеством. [...] Опущенный в бездонную и
беспросветную ледяную жопу. [...] Для российского сознания
характерно ощущение неполноценности и омраченности всего
происходящего в России по сравнению с происходящим где-то
там. Но это, Рама, просто одна из черт русского ума, делающих
его судьбу особенно невыносимой.)

Having described the Russian mind as habitually looking at a “rising dawn

of future happiness in Europe” through “this wrinkly porthole in which it
has been bred to live”, the wise old vampire plays the balalaika and con-
cludes:

What seems to be the meaningless and dastardly suffering of Russian

life is, in fact, a shield of the motherland created by the tireless efforts
of many generations to protect the Russian mind from understanding
that human life is just suffering deprived of any sense or meaning.
[…] Be proud, Rama, of being Russian, a Russian vampire…
“It is dreary to live in this darkness,” I whispered. “And horrify-
ing”. (319)

(То, что кажется бессмысленно-подлым страданием русской жиз-

ни – и есть созданный усилиями множества поколений Щит
Родины, не дающий русскому уму понять, что человеческая
жизнь сама по себе есть страдание, полностью лишенное смысла.
[...] Гордись, Рама, что ты русский. Русский вампир…
– Скучно жить в этой тьме, – прошептал я. – И страшно.)

All the major dogmas of neo-Eurasianism – Russian exceptionalism,

the view of Russia as a non-Western country, its spiritual (Orthodox)
superiority compared to the West, the neo-Eurasian ambition to restore
Russia to its status as a world empire after the failure of the communist
experiment, and even the sermon in which Putin opined that “our Mother-
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 93

land needs to be protected” by a “nuclear shield”44 – are satirized in Pele-

vin’s text. The vampires’ social structure even spoofs the neo-Eurasian
dream of autocracy and a society of estates ruled by terror (428-429).
The rule of vampires could also be interpreted as Pelevin’s Gothic
metaphor for the unfair and unjust social organization of post-Soviet Russia.
Ever since his Sacred Book of the Shapeshifter (2005), Pelevin has con-
sistently characterized the Putin regime as “a primitive society with pro-
found traces of bloodsucking feudalism” (2005: 226). In Batman-Apollo,
vampires instigate a protest movement that bears an undeniable resem-
blance to the protests of 2011 to 2012, and, as in Lukianenko’s novel, they
act to re-establish a political regime more congenial to them. Even the
Batman, the cruel and selfish vampire emperor, pities Russians for the way
they are ruled:

You came from a wild northern country, which is being run as if the
last three hundred years of progress never occurred. […] Usually, we
do not intervene in the affairs of the sovereign […] how would you
say it in Russian? […] batdoms. But even we cannot stand this
situation any longer. Even humans have some rights. Looking at what
is happening in Russia, I am discharging the M5 substance [equi-
valent to the human suffering on which vampires feed – D.K.] myself!
(2013: 411)

(Ты приехал из дикой северной страны, которая управляется так,

словно не было последних трехсот лет прогресса. […] Мы не
вмешиваемся без крайней необходимости в дела суверенных...
Как это по-русски... batdoms. Но и терпеть подобное долго мы не
в силах. Даже у людей есть некоторые права. Глядя на то, что
творится в России, я сам начинаю выделять агрегат “М5”.)

Lukianenko’s exploitation of the vampire sagas’ commercial success

and Pelevin’s ironic parody of the vampire narrative, each in their own way,
reveal the potent contemporary conception of the post-Soviet future as that
of a neomedieval society, in which humans are downgraded to a lower caste
by their masters, the Gothic monsters.

A Political Pamphlet and Gothic Politics

Another example that demonstrates how Gothic metaphors penetrate post-

Soviet political thinking is the use of Gothic tropes in the political pamphlet
Project Russia (2005). The parallels between Gothic fiction and this treatise
are chilling indeed. The pamphlet’s ideological message is announced in
apocalyptic terms: the West, and more precisely, the USA, – wants to
94 Dina Khapaeva

“destroy the world”, especially Russia. According to the pamphlet, the en-
tire Russian nation should unite itself in the face of this danger around an
autocratic regime and become a society of estates. The authors of this
project share all the main dogmas of neo-Eurasianism discussed above – the
recreation of the Soviet Empire and the autocratic monarchy, animosity to
the West and liberal democracy, and a specific vision of Russia’s future
social structure. These parallels are so numerous and so explicit that one can
state with confidence that this project was either written under the influence
of neo-Eurasianism or in close collaboration with Dugin and/or Iuriev.
Iuriev also authored a political pamphlet titled Fortress Russia in 2004, in
which he couched neo-Eurasianism’s core ideas – Russian imperialism,
isolationism and the rejection of Western democracy – as political advice
for Putin. Like Dugin and Iuriev, the authors of Project Russia were also
attracted by the metaphor of society as a human body (which was a popular
way of representing the social hierarchy during the Middle Ages) and
supplied a Gothic description of the future Russian society.
This society is portrayed as a digestive system where “people at the
bottom” of the social hierarchy become a “source of energy” for the elite. In
their turn, the “masses” are to “consume the energy products secreted by the
elite” because this energy is “native, their own”. The authors explain that
“the organic society [of Ancient Rus – D.K.] developed in this way”, and
according to them, it is how post-Soviet Russia should also be. The only
explanation for why Russia abandoned this idyllic existence was Peter the
Great’s “dark arts”: “Our Russia was bewitched.”
These are not, however, the only Gothic metaphors that the anony-
mous authors employ to speak about Russia’s future society. The new
vocabulary used by writers of vampire-centered fiction and vampire fans –
the lexicon that designates citizens as “prey” – has entered their thinking as
well. They discuss society in terms of the “consumers” and the “con-
sumed”:

Free warriors who consider themselves servants of God become

princes, fathers of the people. They protect the humble folk for the
sake of God’s commandments. […] Warriors who do not believe in
God become servants of their lust. To satisfy their desires, they op-
press the humble folk and become selfish predators. The humble folk
seek to be protected by the fathers – princes – and this is how princes
gain their power and political weight. Predators cannot gain such
power because they cannot unite due to a lack of trust. (2005: 10)

([с]вободные воины, определившие себя как рабы Бога, пре-

вращаются в князей, отцов народа. Защищать слабых им предпи-
сывают заповеди Бога. Воины, не знающие Бога, оказываются
рабами страсти. Чтобы удовлетворить свое “хочу”, они обижают
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 95

слабых и превращаются в хищников-эгоистов. В поисках защиты

от хищников слабые бегут к отцам. Вокруг князей образуется
масса, которая структурируется и превращается в силу. Хищники
же не могут обрести такую силу. Они не могут объединиться
даже друг с другом, потому что объединение требует доверия. В
итоге силой, направляющей общество, оказываются князья.)

To the authors of Project Russia, a patriarchal society based on a strict

social hierarchy is the only desirable future: “As adults protect children
from cold and hunger, so the honest elite should protect the people from
predators” (“Как детей от холода и голода защищают взрослые, так
народ от хищников должна защищать честная элита”; 130).
Similar Gothic metaphors have also penetrated the discourse of Rus-
sian high officials. For example, in his article published by the official
Kremlin newspaper, Rossiiskaia gazeta, Valerii Zor’kin, chair of the Con-
stitutional Court, speaks of the situation in Russia in these terms:

[O]ur citizens would be divided into predators who feel at home in the
criminal jungles, and an “inferior caste”, who would see no role for
themselves other than as prey to and food for the predators. The
predators will form a closed social elite while the “walking beef-
steaks” will form the major part of society. The gap separating them
will be constantly growing. (2010)

(Ибо граждане наши тогда поделятся на хищников, вольготно

чувствующих себя в криминальных джунглях, и “недочелове-
ков”, понимающих, что они просто пища для этих хищников.
Хищники будут составлять меньшинство, “ходячие бифштексы”
– большинство. Пропасть между большинством и меньшинством
будет постоянно нарастать.)

Of course, Zor’kin speaks about these “predators” in negative terms but still
the expression “walking beefsteaks”, as the Chair of the Constitutional
Court labels his fellow-citizens, indicates how prevalent and well esta-
blished these Gothic metaphors are. In using language that expresses
profound contempt for Russia’s citizens, Zor’kin is not inventing or
innovating: he is simply regurgitating what has become the grand narrative
of neo-Eurasian ideologists, on one hand, and the vernacular of popular
culture, on the other. He knows better than anyone that the attitude toward
Russian citizens as “walking beefsteaks” and an “inferior caste” un-
fortunately goes far deeper than words.45 In another publication, he even
speaks approvingly of slavery (2014). The fact that neo-medieval and
Gothic allusions have been adopted as the most popular way of describing
96 Dina Khapaeva

contemporary Russia by both critics and supporters of Putin’s regime may

be seen as an indicator of a change in the way the future organization of
society is being imagined.

The Gothic and Historical Memory

The rising popularity of the Gothic in post-Soviet culture is also related to

the evolution of historical memory in Russia (Khapaeva 2007: 36-38, 93-
106; 2009: 359-394). Over the last ten years, re-Stalinization has entered the
mainstream of the Russian Federation’s memory politics, making the nor-
malization of the Soviet experience the order of the day (Khapaeva 2016:
61-73). This process has been paralleled by the aggressive propaganda of
social inequality and neomedieval social organization. 46 Yet, despite its
specificity, the contemporary post-Soviet Gothic does not exist in isolation:
it follows the mainstream of Western Gothic fiction. Local Russian pro-
duction cannot compete with Hollywood, and, with the exception of writers
such as Pelevin or Lukianenko, the majority of Russian contributions to this
global genre are not being translated into other languages. Russian readers
and viewers consume the same Anglo-American vampire sagas as the rest
of the world, and Russian fan communities are organized and function
according to the same principles as their American counterparts. Thus, the
question arises: how does the contemporary Gothic relate to historical
memory, independently of the post-Soviet context?
To answer this question, let us examine the historical representations
that have been linked to the image of the vampire in European and
American cultures. Since the 1970s, coming to terms with the Holocaust –
the twentieth century’s greatest historical trauma – has generated, aside
from productions such as the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978), the block-
buster movie Schindler’s List (1993), and numerous documentaries,47
another trend directly related to the memory of the Holocaust, in which
images of vampires, zombies, and werewolves have been used to denote
negative attitudes toward fascism and to condemn the totalitarian regime. 48
In 1970, Hans Geissendorfer created a German film adaptation of Dracula,
in which he used vampirism as a metaphor for Nazism. 49 Werner Herzog’s
remake of Nosferatu (1979) can also be read as an allusion to Nazism. 50
This trend of portraying the Nazis as vampires, werewolves, or zombies
persisted through the 1980s and the 1990s,51 at which time these attitudes
toward fascism joined the mainstream emphasis on the memory of the
victims in Western democratic countries. From the time of the English
Gothic novel to the 1980s, Gothic monsters incarnated the human prota-
gonists’ horror and loathing and archaic forms of social violence, and the
depictions of the Nazis as Gothic monsters is firmly rooted in this tradition.
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 97

However, since the late 1990s, this interpretation of Gothic monsters has
been gradually marginalized in popular culture, for all that the rapproche-
ment between fascism and Gothic monsters continued into the 2000s. 52
Today, a new image of the monster has come to dominate popular culture
on an international scale. The mainstream “commercial” vampire sagas –
for example, Stephenie Meyer’s novel Twilight (2005) and its three sequels,
and the movie series The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, a novel
series by L.J. Smith (1991-1992) and the subsequent TV series written and
produced by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec (2009) – feature homicidal
monsters as superior to people in every possible respect. They have become
an undeniable ideal.
In order to explain this shift, let me advance the following hypothesis.
The Memory Boom – the upsurge of historical memory in the West in the
1970s – may have been conditioned by a coming to terms with the Holo-
caust and by humanistic memory, 53 but this was not a homogeneous move-
ment. Even though the dominant political critique of totalitarian regimes
insisted upon the value of human life, human rights, and human dignity, the
Memory Boom may have also revived the hidden memories of those who
sympathized – and continue to sympathize – with totalitarian regimes but
have been afraid to openly acknowledge their views. Could the inhibited
“memories of the perpetrators”, overpowered by the dominant political
culture in Western democracies, have been channeled into images of
idolized murderous monsters, laying the groundwork for a shift in the
cultural paradigm for representations of monsters in the late 1980s? The
current idealization of monsters who prior to becoming cult heroes of
popular culture were considered an appropriate metaphor for Nazis could
well be seen as a sign of rising support for antidemocratic social and
political projects.
The emergence in the 1970s and 1980s of the victim-centered histori-
cal memory (Michel 2011: 663-684) in Western Europe and the US sup-
pressed but did not destroy the clandestine memory of the perpetrators. Saul
Freedlander and Susan Sontag amply demonstrated a growing, albeit
hidden, aestheticization of the Nazi regime, which could be regarded as a
manifestation of the historical memory of large groups of people who
perceived fascism as an image of a positive past (a past that seems to some
a radiant future) and who sympathize with totalitarian regimes, inducing
nostalgia and “collective phantasies” about a society that was actually ruled
by terror.54 The rising popularity of far-right or neofascist movements and
parties across the world, especially in the new millennium, can be inter-
preted as an indication of the active role that the memory of the perpetrators
continues to play in the contemporary world.55
The post-Soviet case clearly offers an extreme example of this
evolution. The post-Soviet Gothic reflects the proliferation of denigrating
98 Dina Khapaeva

attitudes toward people and democracy propagated by the neo-Eurasian

movement, on one hand, and by the rehabilitation of the memory of Stalin-
ism, on the other. The deep disillusionment with humanistic values evi-
denced by the popularity of murderous Gothic monsters may be the most
important ideological message they carry. In all likelihood, this very mess-
age is what conditions their unprecedented popularity.

NOTES

1
The term “Eurasianism” emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and
was conceptualized by Lev Karsavin, Petr Savitslii, Nikolai Trubetzkoi, and
later by Lev Gumilev. On Eurasianism among Russian emigres, see Laqueur
(2015). On the “Evraziia” movement, see Shekhovtsov (2009: 697-716).
2
On the influence of the Gothic novel on nineteenth-century Russian
literature, see Vatsuro (2002).
3
For a psychoanalytical interpretation of Soviet prose and its Gothic themes,
see Kaganovsky (2008).
4
On the concept of the Gothic Aesthetic see Khapaeva (2013b; 2009).
5
On the Gothic novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Punter
(1996); Botting (1996); Haggerty (1989); Ellis (2000); and Grunenberg
(1997).
6
See also Lloyd-Smith and Punter (2000). On the particularities of Gothic
genre, see Miles (2002) and Garrett (2003).
7
See Hayden White’s criticism (2003a: 367-368; 2003b: 598, 600) of the
essentialist approach to genre (Farrell 2003; and especially Pavel 2003:
202). The anti-essentialist trend in genre theory initiated by Russian forma-
lists, on the one hand, and Mikhail Bakhtin, on the other, was further
developed by Jacques Derrida (1980: 55-81) and Tzvetan Todorov (1973).
8
In this article, I limit myself to fiction and political writings, and will not
discuss how neo-Eurasian ideas are reflected in the context of the con-
temporary graphic arts.
9
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have noted the link between “the nightmare
confessional mode” and the Gothic genre but did not develop the concept
further (2000: 314).
10
On the Gothic Aesthetic and nightmares, see Khapaeva (2013b: 209-232).
11
The image of the zombie has multiple interpretations. It has been viewed,
for example, as a representation of historical anxieties relating to the leg-
acies of World War II, including both the Holocaust and Hiroshima/
Nagasaki (Christie 2011: 84, 93). For the interpretation of zombies in
deconstruction, see Lauro and Embry 2008: 85-108, and Zani and Meaux
(2011: 98-115).
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 99

12
Elsewhere (Khapaeva 2011: 112-134; 2017: 116-120) I further discuss the
evolution of various interpretations of monsters through the lens of
DQWKURSRFHQWULVP.
13
On Deleuze and Guattari’s uses of the vampire metaphor, see Butler (2010:
6). For ghosts, see Derrida (1994: 155).
14
See, for example, Dyer (1988: 47-72); Creed (1993); Bernardi (2008);
Hallab (2009: 33); Twitchell (1981); Day (2006); Kirby and Gaither (2005:
263-82). On the vampire as a protest symbol against the West’s cannibalistic
and vampiric capitalism, see Haraway (1997: 214-215).
15
See Gilmore (2002; Kearney (2003); and Beville (2013: 8, 13).
16
Christie (2011: 79).
17
For a detailed analysis of this shift see Khapaeva (2017: 81-125).
18
Philip Simpson was arguably the first to notice this transition in the twen-
tieth-century Gothic Aesthetic (2000: 34). However, he did not acknowledge
its cultural significance.
19
On post-Soviet memory politics, see Koposov (2018).
20
These reflections were developed in Khapaeva (2007). The view that post-
Soviet fictional monsters are related to the trauma of the Soviet terror was
proposed by Dashevskii (2004). As any discussion of the relations between
trauma and post-Soviet memory largely extends beyond the scope of my
article, I would like to mention here only that the current massive support
for the rehabilitation of Stalin, Stalinism, and the imperial ideology in
Putin’s Russia seems to considerably limit the applicability of the concept of
trauma to post-Soviet historical memory. For more on the role of monsters
in post-Soviet fiction, see Lipovetsky (2008: 457-530).
21
Here and elsewhere, unless specified otherwise, translations from the
Russian are my own – D.K.
22
Although it would be certainly an overstatement to read into Lukianenko’s
texts any distinctive philosophical influences – such as Nietzsche, for ex-
ample – Pelevin mocks this idea of the vampire as a new popculture super-
man in the subtitle to his novel V-Empire. The Story of a True Superman
(2006).
23
The same attitudes are expressed in Lukianenko’s first novel, Night Watch:
“That was all fake too, an illusion, just one facet of the world, the only one
accessible to human beings. I was glad I wasn’t one of them” (2006: 16).
24
Even if a vampire may sometimes try to think of people with more respect,
this requires serious effort on his part (Lukianenko 2013: 303).
25
Dugin expresses this same idea in numerous publications, including Dugin
(2009; 2014a; and 2015a).
26
This rhetoric is reminiscent of nineteenth-century German occultists, the
forerunners of fascism and the heroes of Dugin’s youth. On German
occultists, see Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 218).
27
Its leaders, as well as some other representatives of extreme nationalism
“who opposed Yeltsin during his presidency have become part of the
ideological establishment under Putin’s regime” (Kozhevnikova 2005: 82).
100 Dina Khapaeva

28
See also http://eurasia.com.ru/putin2012.html (retrieved 29 December
2018). Dugin allegedlyintroduced Putin to the ultra-nationalist, pro-fascist
philosopher Ivan Il’in (1883-1954). On the role of Il’in in Putin’s ideology,
see Snyder (2018), and Barbashin and Thoburn (2015). On neo-Eurasian
ideology as “politically correct discourse” under Putin, see Laruelle (2008:
222).
29
https://meduza.io/news/2018/05/05/v-moskve-na-pushkinskoy-ploschadi-
zaderzhali-alekseya-
navalnogo?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=share_fb&utm_camp
aign=share (retrieved 29 December 2018).
30
This should not be regarded as a reference to Chaadaev’s First Philo-
sophical Letter, in which Chaadaev, rather than praising “the uniqueness of
Russia” actually considers its isolation from Western civilization the source
of Russia’s troubles: “C’est une des choses les plus déplorables de notre
singulière civilisation, que les vérités les plus triviales ailleurs et même chez
les peuples bien moins avancés que nous sous certains rapports, nous
sommes encore à les découvrir. C’est que nous n’avons jamais marché avec
les autres peuples; nous n'appartenons à aucune des grandes familles du
genre humain; nous ne sommes ni de l’Occident ni de l’Orient, et nous
n’avons les traditions ni de l’un ni de l’autre. Placés comme en dehors des
temps, l’éducation universelle du genre humain ne nous a pas atteints”
(1991: 89).
31
This interpretation, originally proposed in my Gothic Society (Khapaeva
2007: 36-39), is further developed in Khapaeva (2009: 359-394; 2012: 97-
102).
32
On terror and the oprichnina in neo-Eurasian ideology and writings, see
Khapaeva (2018).
33
For the essential interpretations of the image of Ivan the Terrible in Soviet
and post-Soviet Russia, see Platt (2011).
34
Dugin (1994) describes the Third Reich as a possible “third model” of
development.
35
On Dugin’s fascist views, see Ingram (2001) and Griffin, Roger, Loh,
Werner, Umland, Andreas (2006). Distinguishing his views from fascism,
Marlene Laruelle writes: “To classify a thought as ‘Fascist’ does not, then,
mean to predict that it will take power and endanger human lives, nor to
categorize it in a discriminatory manner that would deny it the right to be
analyzed. This terminology merely points to an adherence to a specific
intellectual tradition. Intellectual fascism shares with the other currents of
the ‘extreme right’ a Romantic heroism (a cult of the leader, the army, and
physical effort, and the indoctrination of the young), but distinguishes itself
from them by its revolutionary and pro-socialist aspects, as well as by its
attraction to futurism and esotericism.[…] Dugin’s ideas share many
features of this original fascism, as he is expecting a cultural revolution
aiming to create a ‘New Man’. It cannot, however, be equated with fascism
if that is understood to designate the contemporary racist extreme right, a
 The Gothic Future of Eurasia 101

designation that is moreover historically and conceptually incorrect” (2006:

15). See also Laruelle 2006: 14.
36
On the division of Ukraine, see Dugin (2013a; 2015a). See also Newman
(2014); Lukianenko (2015); and http://gordonua.com/news/culture/Fantast-
Lukyanenko-Ukraina-otnyne-proklyataya-na-tri-pokoleniya-zemlya-
11267.html (retrieved 29 December 2018).
37
For an analysis of eschatological motifs in the late Soviet nationalist dis-
course, see Mark Lipovetsky’s article in this issue (2019: 61-77).
38
As Eliot Borenstein puts it: “The Russian apocalypse […] depends on the
outside world’s continued existence as the source of evil” (2016):
http://plotsagainstrussia.org/eb7nyuedu/2016/5/20/all-apocalypse-is-local
(retrieved December 29, 2018).
39
http://gordonua.com/news/separatism/v-socsetyah-razoblachili-svidetelnicu-
raspyatiya-malchika-iz-slavyanska-31487.html (retrieved 29 December
2018).
40
Vampires also possess “superior intelligence” (Pelevin 2013: 109, 110), and
they are also the “only true aristocracy in the world” (137).
41
Pelevin’s Empire V also contains numerous comparisons between the con-
ditions humans experience under vampire rule and those of a concentration
camp.
42
In contrast to Lukianenko, who exploits the popularity of the vampire saga
and whose fiction provides an example of what one may call the post-Soviet
“commercial Gothic,” Pelevin satirizes the vampire narrative. On Pelevin’s
narrative as parody, see Livers (2010: 477-503). For an interpretation of
Pelevin’s prose as neo-baroque, see Lipovetsky (2001: 31-50). On Pelevin
as a magical realist, see Keeling (2008), which emphasizes the historical
significance of magical realism as a representation of traumatic historical
events in the post-Soviet context.
43
See also Garza (2008: 1-22).
44
See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KHBvtMuaZk and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLb_qZZEdbU (retrieved 23 May
2018).
45
See, for example, http://www.g-class.ru/index.asp?zz=m3977919 (retrieved
December 29, 2018). There have been numerous instances in which the
courts, the FSB, and the police have treated citizens as subjects with no legal
rights.
46
On Russia following the Western vampire narrative, see Garza (2013) and
Hogle (2014: 33). On the difference between post-Soviet and Western
vampires in relation to their place in the social structure of the imaginary
society, see Khapaeva (2011: 112-134; 2012: 173-187; and 2013: 119-141).
47
On the importance of the memory of the Holocaust outside Europe, and in
the United States in particular, see Dean (2005: 12).
48
See, for example, Rau (1998).
49
In Jonathan (1970), his film adaptation of Dracula, “Geissendorfer com-
bines Stoker’s dialogue with references to Nazism and the Holocaust in his
102 Dina Khapaeva

explicit indictment of fascism, using vampirism as a metaphor for Nazism.”

However, the movie “was not widely distributed and never captured a large
audience” (Holte 1997: 70-71).
50
Among other films on the same subject, see Ulli Lommel’s Die Zärtlichkeit
der Wölfe (1973), and Dario Argento’s Profundo Rosso (Deep Red, also
known as The Hatchet Murders; 1975).
51
For example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer mentions Nazis in relation to
vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1, Episode 3 “Witch”; 1997).
52
See Sean Cisterna’s War of the Dead (2006), Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne: The
Third Reich (2010), and Josef Rusnak’s The Bleeding (2014).
53
According to Gabrielle M. Spiegel, the Memory Boom was conditioned by
the rise of the memory of the Holocaust (2002: 149-162). See also Winter
(2000: 27, 69).
54
These “collective phantasies” were present in the German historical memory
in the 1960s (Adorno 1998: 89-109).
55
On the recent turn towards the analysis of the memory of the perpetrators in
contemporary memory studies, see Crownshaw (2011). On post-Soviet
memory of the perpetrators, see Khapaeva (2016: 61-73).

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