Edmund Griffiths, Aleksandr Prokhanov and Post-Soviet Esotericism. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, January 2023. Distributed by Columbia University Press:
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/aleksandr-prokhanov-and-post-soviet-esotericism/9783838209630 .
Aleksandr Prokhanov (born 1938) is a prize-winning novelist and also, as editor of the weekly newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow), a leading figure in Russian ‘imperial patriotism’. Ever since 1991, when he signed (and reputedly wrote) the manifesto for the failed putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev, he has been an influential voice in Russian political culture—helping to turn the ‘irreconcilable opposition’ of the 1990s towards Empire, grappling with whether to endorse Vladimir Putin as a saviour or expose him as a fraud, and promulgating a bewildering series of ‘conspiracy theories’ in which Russian and international affairs are explained in the most extravagant terms. He has also been a remarkably prolific writer; and the best of his novels are real works of literature, at once muckraking and lyrical, interweaving Moscow scandal so tightly with the mystical yearnings of ‘cosmism’ that the reader can hardly prise them apart. The same themes flow backwards and forwards between Prokhanov’s fiction and his non-fiction. World conspiracies, space exploration, the resurrection of the dead, Stalin as a supernatural redeemer—these and other preoccupations recur again and again, in his leading articles as well as in his novels. This book, the first on Prokhanov, offers an account of his writing and of the ‘red-brown’ esotericism he expounds. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with modern Russian literature or politics, and also to students of ‘conspiracy theories’, esoteric belief systems, or the conspiracy novel.
“We have been waiting for a long time for a book on Alexander Prokhanov, and here it is. Prokhanov has been a central figure in the Russian nationalist landscape. Edmund Griffiths finally offers us a very useful analysis of Prokhanov’s ideological contribution to today’s Russia, and explores the different faces of Prokhanov’s Stalinist imperialist esotericism.”
Marlene Laruelle, Research Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University
“Edmund Griffiths’s engagingly written and erudite new book on the writing and political thought of Aleksandr Prokhanov adds important dimensions to our understanding of this crucial figure in the Russian nationalist pantheon. Griffiths analyzes Prokhanov’s work as a significant contribution to what he calls the ‘red-brown esoteric patriotism’ of post-Soviet Russia. For today’s reader, the linkages between Prokhanov’s world view and Vladimir Putin’s own imperialist thinking and actions in Ukraine are profound.”
Norman M. Naimark, Professor of Eastern European Studies, Stanford University
The author:
Dr. Edmund Griffiths did his post-graduate studies at the University of Oxford where he now teaches the Russian language. He is a former Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and the author of "Towards a Science of Belief Systems" (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). His articles have been published in the Times Literary Supplement and other periodicals.
