"What is Concealed Will Be Revealed." Kuryokhin and Dugin's Post-Ironic Political Campaign

Before dying prematurely of a rare heart disease, the multi-faceted experimental musician and performer Sergey Kuryokhin (1954-1996) scandalized his public by declaring his support for the controversial National Bolshevik Party—and by embracing “fascism” to protest the cultural decline that Russia’s transition to liberal democracy had supposedly produced. So fascinated was Kuryokhin with NBP co-founder Dugin’s dark mysticism and elaborate conspiracy theories that he organized a carnivalesque campaign for his 1995 Duma candidacy. Under the enigmatic slogan “Tainoe stanet iavnym [What is concealed will be revealed],” he staged a final, “demonic” concert of his legendary music collective, Pop-mekhanika, dedicated to the British magician-occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).

Here, Kuryokhin and Dugin make a campaign appearance on the political talk show “Babylon [Vavilon Dmitriia Zapol’skogo],” hosted by commentator Dmitry Zapolsky (1958-2021). Wearing the masks of the Egyptian gods Ibis and Anubis, they parody the empty rhetoric and surreal, ritualistic essence of Russian political life. In a possible gesture toward Yeltsin’s infamous “Yes, Yes, No, Yes” referendum from 1993, “Ibis” and “Anubis” recommend that viewers use their proprietary “system” to decide whom to vote for. To simplify the decision amid a plethora of candidates and parties, voters should make six cards: two with the letters p for plokho (“bad”) and kh for khorosho (“good”); two marked, respectively, “Capitalism/ Market” and “Socialism/ Plan”; and two more marked “West/ Cosmopolitanism” and “Russia/ State.” Once the cards are made, “Ibis” explains, the voter’s task boils down to a “little game of solitaire” that determines which set of mutually exclusive categories is “good” or “bad” for the given individual. The only rule is to respect affinities among the four categories: for instance, if a voter deems “Capitalism/ Market” to be “bad,” then “West/ Cosmopolitanism” cannot be “good,” and vice-versa.

Kuryokhin and Dugin’s proposed “system” ridiculed the way in which Yeltsin and other proponents of economic “shock therapy” had reduced political differences to a struggle between stereotypical “revanchists” and “progressives.” According to this simplified view, the former group consisted of those who wanted to bring the country back to the darkness of its Soviet past—and who would therefore cause its descent into fascism. The danger posted by the “revanchists” was the proverbial “red-brown plague,” a derogatory label used to discredit Yeltsin’s opponents. In the other camp were the stereotypically “progressive” reformers pursuing a capitalist/ Western “normalization” of Russia.

Dugin’s political campaign sought to merge art and politics in the service of “fascism,” which Kuryokhin especially saw—alongside mass media—as a tool for transforming reality through art. Kuryokhin also identified fascism with an authentic, romantic, and absolute commitment to an artistic or political project. On the pages of the NBP’s press organ, Limonka, the far-right Dugin similarly advocated for an alliance between art performance and radical politics in the spirit of French Situationism. It remains unclear whether Kuryokhin’s involvement with right-wing politics was sincere or just one of his elaborate pranks, on the model of his famous “Lenin Was a Mushroom” TV performance from 1991. Most likely it was both. Dugin’s creative approach to politics, on the other hand, soon grew indistinguishable from a new form of state propaganda. Ultimately, Dugin would align himself unconditionally with Putin’s government, actively involving himself in the regime’s media wars and repressive apparatus.