This book by Daria Dugina is dedicated to the New Right. Daria does not even try to hide her “partisanship” here. She does not merely retell or analyse the New Right’s views, nor does she simply share her historical knowledge about the origin and development of this European movement; rather, she actively promotes their ideas with which she is fully in solidarity. Her solidarity is not only because of her family’s tradition, which she openly refers to in her lectures, livestreams, and interviews reprinted here, but is based on her own philosophical, political, and aesthetic choice. Dasha was an exchange student from Moscow State University at the University of Bordeaux, where she engaged in studying Plato and Neoplatonism. At the same time, she deeply immersed herself in French politics, which she perceived and interpreted through the perspective of GRECE, the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation, which the French press christened the “New Right”. Throughout her texts gathered here, Daria describes in detail just how imprecise such a determination was and is, as well as why it was applied to them. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasise that her academic references and historiographic excursions are tied together by her direct life experience, personal contacts, and, most importantly, her ideological kinship with this current in European political philosophy.

The New Right, their ideas, their history, their authorities, and their transformations have been treated in numerous volumes, the information contained in which is often more complete than the broad strokes with which Daria draws a picture of this intellectual phenomenon here. But it is all the more likely that no one other than Daria has so penetratingly, benevolently, and wholeheartedly attempted to present an integral image of the “Theory of Europe” that she recognised in the New Right, which she adopted and to which she swore an oath of allegiance. It is no coincidence that Daria said that if she hadn’t been Russian, she would have been French—and not only French, but French of the New Right. In fact, this is how the French themselves saw her. They accepted her as a young passionary of their movement and listened attentively to her clear, almost perfect French, which was at the same time so permeated with Russian meanings that the very combination yielded an explosive effect. Dasha was a beloved favourite of the founders and leaders of the New Right movement, and she was always at the centre of attention, the heart and soul in the company of young French conservatives. She was so, completely independently of her father. Dasha believed in the New Right and was inspired by their views on the need for a great restoration of primordially European values—classical, ancient, and medieval. The very expression “Theory of Europe” belongs to Daria Dugina.