ABSTRACT
In August 2014, in the middle of the war in Donbas, 76-year-old Aleksandr Prokhanov was filmed aboard a T-95 bomber bearing the emblem of the Izborskii Club. The Club can therefore be compared with Pamiat, the cadres' school of nationalism during the perestroika years – yet it probably has engineered fewer new doctrinal products than its famous predecessor. The Club does not hide its pride in having unified different conservative movements around a single platform, a feat that supposedly ended more than two decades of ideological rifts and an institutional inability to mount an organized front. In terms of political lobbying, the Club is able to draw on some established networks. Prokhanov has maintained connections within the military and security forces that date back to the Soviet era. Prokhanov's understanding of the Club's present mission follows the same vein: rehabilitate the economy, industry in particular, in a discourse otherwise mired in intellectual and spiritual limbo.
