Yuzhinsky Circle

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Iuzhinskii Circle or Yuzhinsky Circle (Russian: Южинский кружок), also known as the Mamleev Circle, was an informal literary and occult group that met around the writer Yuri Mamleev. The group took its name from Yuzhinsky Lane in Moscow, where Mamleev lived in two rooms of a communal apartment in a barrack-like building in the courtyard. The building was demolished in 1968. The group emerged in the 1960s from the Soviet underground culture and at times had as many as 50 members. The meetings of the Yuzhinsky Circle are considered to have had a significant influence on the ideology and intellectual formation of a number of later Russian writers, philosophers and public intellectuals. The circle never had a clearly defined philosophical programme. Its participants were united primarily by shared literary tastes and an interest in mysticism and esotericism. According to the researcher T. V. Spirin, the members of the circle did not share a single religious worldview; rather, esotericism functioned as a synthesising factor, satisfying spiritual, aesthetic and countercultural needs at the same time. After Mamleev was forced to leave the Soviet Union in 1974, the circle continued to exist until the early 1990s under the influence of Yevgeny Golovin and Alexander Dugin. From the 1960s onward, the circle was involved in the dissemination and discussion of European philosophical, religious and esoteric doctrines, including currents that had influenced fascism and esoteric Nazism. Its early interests were mainly centred on esoteric mysticism, but over time parts of the circle moved increasingly closer to ideas associated with the European far right. The political scientist Marlene Laruelle has described the Iuzhinskii Circle as a “key actor” of Moscow bohemian underground culture and argues that its esoteric interests later became linked with the formation of post-Soviet Russian radical-right milieus.