Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, known for views widely characterized as fascist. Born into a military intelligence family, Dugin was an anti-communist dissident during the 1980s. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dugin co-founded the National Bolshevik Party with Eduard Limonov, a party which espoused National Bolshevism, which he later left. In 1997, he published Foundations of Geopolitics, in which he outlined his worldview, calling for Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and conquest, and to challenge the rival Atlanticist "empire" led by the United States. Dugin continued to further develop his ideology of neo-Eurasianism, founding the Eurasia Party in 2002 and writing further books including The Fourth Political Theory (2009). Dugin also served as an advisor to the Chairman of the State Duma Gennadiy Seleznyov (Communist Party) and as an advisor to the Chairman of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin (United Russia). He was the head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow State University from 2009 to 2014, losing the position due to backlash over comments regarding clashes in Ukraine. Dugin also briefly served as chief editor of the pro-Kremlin Orthodox channel Tsargrad TV when it launched in 2015. His influence on the Russian government and on president Vladimir Putin is disputed. He has no official ties to the Kremlin, but is often referred to in the media as "Putin's brain", though others say his influence is exaggerated. Early life and education Dugin was born in Moscow, into the family of a colonel-general in the Soviet military intelligence and candidate of law, Geliy Alexandrovich Dugin, and his wife Galina, a doctor and candidate of medicine. His father left the family when he was three, but ensured that they had a good standard of living, and helped Dugin out of trouble with the authorities on occasion. He was transferred to the customs service due to his son's behaviour in 1983. In 1979, Aleksandr entered the Moscow Aviation Institute. He was expelled without a degree either because of low academic achievement, dissident activities or both. Afterwards, he began working as a street cleaner. He used a forged reader's card to access the Lenin Library and continue studying. However, other sources claim he instead started working in a KGB archive, where he had access to banned literature on Masonry, fascism and paganism. In 1980, Dugin