National Bolshevik
Figures like Eduard Limonov and Alexander Dugin resurrected National Bolshevism in the 1990s, blending Soviet nostalgia with Russian ultranationalism. National Bolsheviks advocate state control of key industries and a strong central authority while rejecting liberal-democratic institutions such as free elections and an independent press. Though not always reaching the extremes of Stalinist or Maoist totalitarianism, National Bolsheviks promote severe crackdowns on dissent and strict state control over society.
What it believes
The strong state should serve the nation and the worker at once: Soviet-style command of the economy fused with blood-and-soil nationalism, rejecting liberal democracy as the common enemy of both traditions it claims.
The appeal
It scavenges the two most mobilizing forces of the modern era — class grievance and national grievance — and aims them at the same target. In post-imperial rubble, that combination finds genuinely angry recruits.
Where it breaks
It inherits both parents' pathologies and neither's constituency: too red for the nationalists, too brown for the left, it has never governed anywhere and functions mostly as an aesthetic of transgression. Where its elements did fuse in power, the result was simply totalitarianism.
Among its neighbours
The Juchist above is the one working model — a dynasty with a fortress economy. The Leninist-Marxist to its left keeps the class and drops the nation; the Ba'athist to its right did the reverse at state scale. Below, the Left-Wing Nationalist pursues the same marriage by the ballot instead.
Figures — real and imagined — who share the National Bolshevik base ideology. They differ only on the third axis: from radical to restorationist, each is a different face of a National Bolshevik.
The company you keep.
The social axis (progressive ↔ traditional) splits National Bolshevik into nine named shades. Take the quiz to find out which one is yours.
- Radical National Bolshevik
- Progressive National Bolshevik
- Reformist National Bolshevik
- Heterodox National Bolshevik
- National Bolshevik
- Rooted National Bolshevik
- Traditional National Bolshevik
- Reactionary National Bolshevik
- Restorationist National Bolshevik