SUMMARY:

The article by Mikhail Sokolov is an attempt to apply the sociology of intellectuals’ approach to the phenomenon of the Russian New Right. The trend that emerged in France in the 1960s has lost its influence everywhere in Europe except Russia. During the post-Soviet transition, the local “chapter” of the international right intellectual network enjoyed unprecedented popularity. Its leader, Alexander Dugin, became one of a few widely recognized public intellectuals.
The story of the movement is reconstructed in the first part of the article. The second part discusses the factors of success of the Russian New Right. The author critically scrutinizes and rejects such explanations as a demand for ideological services by the rightist political organizations, or specific esthetic responses by intellectuals to the challenges of the post-communism transformation. Instead, Sokolov reconstructs a specific social structure of competing for cultural capital in the field of production of new meanings. This specific conjuncture allowed the leaders of the New Right to position their paradigm as the most fashionable and promising cultural trend. At the end, the author makes prognoses about the future of the New Right in Russia.