Alexander Dugin
We - Russia and the world - are now in a state that can be reduced to the following pattern. We are talking about the situation in Ukraine, which is degenerating into the start of a real world war. Like any scheme, it simplifies reality, but at the same time makes it meaningful and elevates it to a certain probabilistic structure. This scheme has three objective vectors of possible developments and four versions of the subjective position. Thus, a certain asymmetry is already apparent at the outset, the significance of which will reveal itself as the scheme is described.

The objective level describes the probable logic of the unfolding of the cause-effect chains, already outlined on a concrete level of verifiable facts.

The subjective level encompasses the perception of events by groups, among whom are particularly important those who make the key decisions that, in turn, influence the events themselves in one way or another.

Catastrophic scenario (for Russia). Occupation. De-imperialisation. Finis Rossiae

Let's start with the worst-case scenario. Let us assume that the AFU and de facto NATO counterattack in Kharkiv and the Donbass is not an accidental mistake by the SMO, but something more sinister. Pessimists and critical observers (as well as participants) describe the consequences and continuation of this process in a thousand ways.

This scenario is described in detail in the official propaganda of the Ukrainians, who already foresee the transfer of hostilities to the Crimea, Belgorod, Kursk, Rostov and Voronezh regions and - at the limit - an attack on Moscow. It is also the rosy dream of Western Russophobes and Russian liberals. It is essentially a scenario for the end of Russia, Finis Rossiae.

It would mean not only the end of the regime, but the end of everything and everyone. And what is important is that the end would not be soft and compensated (as in 1991), but bloody and violent. If our retreat begins (in a sense, it will continue), everything will fall - for both external and internal causes.

This is an objective tendency to which a subjective political and ideological platform also corresponds: it is the dream of official Kiev, the Russophobic and globalist leadership and the supporters of Navalny*, Akhedzhakova and Ekho Moskvy, i.e. the fifth column within Russia.

The existing problems with the army's technical equipment, with the strategic miscalculations (which have already manifested themselves in the earlier stages of the SMO), with Russia's dependence on foreign technology, to which access has now been cut off, which, as it turns out, directly affects our weaponry, i.e. the overall critical dependence on the West in the earlier stages - may prove fatal.

But if it does, Russia as an entity will simply disappear, and everyone - authorities and society - will have to pay the price. No one will be able to escape.

Apocalyptic scenario (for everyone). The end of history. The destruction of humanity.

The second scenario is a nuclear apocalypse. It is possible that Moscow, which is beginning to lose seriously (first scenario), will decide to use nuclear weapons. What is being considered today is obvious. The argument 'nuclear powers do not lose wars' is exactly on this theme. The President's words about who 'will die and who will go to heaven' or that 'there will be no peace without Russia' also come to mind.

Likely? Yes, probably. Is anyone in Russia considering this possibility? Undoubtedly. So there is an objective chain of events that can lead to this, and there are subjective forces that take such a turn. They are ready for it.

In other words, there are objective prerequisites for such a turn, as well as forces that can make decisions accordingly.

Putin said his enemies will not wait for his voluntary surrender, citing the example of Salvador Allende, who fought with a machine gun to the last man, but the difference is that Allende did not have a nuclear button, he could only sacrifice himself and a few enemies.

Things could start right now. If the bombing of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the AFU achieved its objective, this would be equivalent to a targeted nuclear attack on Russian territory - after all, the weapons are Western and Western instructors are engaged in reconnaissance and targeting. The response would no longer come from Ukraine, but from the real decision-making centre, which is much further west.

However, Russia could resort to nuclear weapons in other situations, since for Russia - both state and people - losing a war would mean total annihilation, and not just a severe but still tolerable defeat, which could be overcome, the nuclear scenario cannot be discarded. The West clearly underestimates this probability, considering it a bluff.

A patriotically victorious scenario (for Russia and the supporters of a multipolar world). The holy war.

The third scenario is the most important. And the only one that is saved.

In Russia, a revolution is taking place from above. Putin, who has already broken with the West, turns this total and irreversible rupture into an ideology, a course, a strategy and the sole guideline of existence. All compromises are abolished, Russia is openly becoming a people's empire with a marked religious and social (anti-capitalist) ethos. Liberalism and Westernism are banned. Sabotage, theft, laziness and corruption are burnt with iron tempered according to the laws of war.

The state and the people regroup and the SMO is transformed into a popular holy war. To be or not to be.

Can the situation be objectively so? Of course it can. Many objective events, processes and factors - including a healthy and decisive reaction to previous failures and especially the events in the Kharkiv region - lead exactly in this direction.

Does this scenario have a subject? Without a doubt. First of all, the people themselves, society, the patriotic majority, the people at the front and a significant part of the ruling class; yes, the higher it is, the less there are, but the ruling class is not something homogeneous either.

Society is ready for this. Such is also the position taken by almost everyone involved in the war, in one way or another, and it is clear to everyone that what is needed above all is mobilization and the ideology of victory. We have come to the end of compromises. Among the officials - if we take them all together - the patriots are probably the majority; among the people - practically everyone, except for the agents of influence and the pathological exceptions (there are freaks everywhere). If such a patriotic revolution occurs from above, the mobilization will happen on its own and Russia will enter the final battle for the outcome of world history. In fact, the Orthodox elders, Russian philosophers and our heroic ancestors saw the future like this: the time will come when the Russians will rise up against the evil of the world, against the Antichrist, and fulfill their mission as masters. In the Soviet era, this scenario had a slightly different version, but the same essence: the struggle against the West for the salvation of humanity and a just and bright future.

That moment has arrived.

The main thing in this scenario is a rapid break from all dependence on the West: ideological, technological, psychological, economic, cultural. It was this dependence that paralyzed us at the critical moment. It emerged that the West held the keys to many vital spheres of our lives - informational, technological, cultural, financial. Yes, we had an important trump card in the field of natural resources, but it was Western ideology, technology and methodology that we used. The resource hardware is important, but the ideological and technological software is even more important.

The popular revolution from above is designed to dismantle the internal West - both in the form of residual liberalism and all other codes - as quickly as possible.

It is not easy, but if it is not, see the two scenarios above.

The status quo as an empty and meaningless illusion

Now all that remains is a direction that exists as a subjective position, but is not based on any objective reality - because it simply does not exist.

This is the mental state of the party of the 'status quo', or 'collective Rublevka'. It is the category of those high-level officials and businessmen who - for reasons no one knows - continue to believe that the world before 24 February 2022 and the world after 24 February 2022 are essentially the same thing. Nothing - neither reports from the front, nor terrorist acts on the home front, nor ongoing tectonic changes in the world order - seems to convince them otherwise. As before, they fight for their positions, promote their appointees to power, rout their competitors, make sure they keep what they have, i.e. they live as if nothing had happened, adapting reactively to the situation.

They are popularly considered the 'party of betrayal', the 'plum', but this is a mistake. They can neither betray nor drain anything. They are neither the authorities nor the people, and no one will come to an agreement with them, neither from the West nor from Kiev. We have already passed this point.

The SMO has exaggerated all the existing contradictions. A unipolar world cannot coexist with a multipolar one. Or rather, one can no longer think that the world is 'unipolar' and others that it is 'multipolar'. If Russia (as well as China) is serious about its sovereignty, it must prove it in war, there is no other way, and this war must be won. If we win, then it will be multipolar; but if not, Russia will not exist in any capacity. It will not be possible to return to the 1990s or the era before 24 February 2022, for anyone.

Three scenarios are possible, a fourth is not. It exists only as a tribute to inertia, that is, it exists in mind, but not in being.

Of course, many people at the top of the Russian political elite occupy this fourth position. They say that 'everything will work out somehow' and this arouses the justified anger of patriots; but since no such scenario exists in practice, there is no need to waste any effort. Capitulation was possible in the 1990s and so it has happened. Compromises - before the SMO there could have been and indeed were, e.g. Moscow's acceptance of the global West's rules on the division of labour and integration, the Minsk agreements, etc. - were not possible.

Now everything is accomplished. All that remains is to be or not to be. The "Rublevka Collective" no longer exists. The villas are standing, guards are watching, expensive cars are moving through space. Town days and concerts are organised. Even Skolkovo is working, while other scoundrels, backed by mad oligarchs, are rushing to the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but this is a chimera, a mirage. To be or not to be abolishes the very possibility of fantasizing any more.

If Russia exists, it is already very different from before: popular and mobilized, fighting on all levels - spiritual, ideological, technical, economic, frontal - in battle with an absolute enemy. If it does not exist, then it is already a dismembered colony occupied by NATO and Ukrainian Nazis, or a post-apocalyptic wasteland (see the first and second scenarios).

There are only three objective scenarios, and only those who understand this on a subject level and choose one are taken into account, i.e. they truly live and decide for their fate, for the fate of their country, people and humanity. They are the only ones who have meaning on the scale of history.

The party of betrayal simply no longer exists, because the time of concessions and compromises has passed, like a phantom pain. Now it is us, only us. That is all.