Aleksandr Prokhanov (born 1938) is a prizewinning novelist and also as editor of the weekly
newspaper Zavtra 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 the difficult question of whether to
endorse Vladimir Putin as a savior 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 muck-raking and lyrical with Moscow scandal
interwoven 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 does not seek either to justify Prokhanov or to
denounce him: It seeks to understand him as perhaps the most eminent representative of a school
of thought that is here defined as 'post-Soviet esotericism'. Esotericist ideas some of them
strikingly reminiscent of beliefs that flourished in the early Christian centuries have
acquired wide resonance in Russia since the collapse of the USSR. Post-Soviet esotericism thus
represents a rare and valuable opportunity to examine a belief system of this nature in the
process of its emergence. The book will be of interest to anyone concerned with modern Russian
literature or politics and also more broadly to descriptive logicians and students of negative
esotericism.
