The father of journalist and philosopher Daria Platonova Dugin delivered a farewell speech during the civil funeral service for his daughter, who was tragically killed in a despicable attack by the Ukrainian security services.
The full text of Alexander Dugin’s difficult speech for all of us was made available for sharing during a live broadcast on the Tsargrad TV channel:
“I wanted to raise my daughter in the way I see the ideal of a man. First of all faith: she spent her entire childhood in Orthodox camps, she went to church. And that is important, but I also wanted her to be an intelligent Orthodox person, so her mother and I advised her to become a philosopher. And she became one.
I can’t tell if she is deep as a philosopher.
But she tried to move in that direction. Now, perhaps she will reveal things that we have not seen, that we have not noticed.
From childhood her first words, which of course we did not teach her, were ‘Russia’, ‘our power’, ‘our people’, ‘our empire’. And that is what made her so perfect. Through difficult trials, she became a much better person than we were.
In our family it was always, from the beginning, established: you have to become better, you have to become superior, you have to become braver, you have to become smarter, you have to become more perfect. We did not praise her and she suffered. We said: this is a flaw, be better, better, higher. And maybe we went too far.
She wasn’t afraid, really. And the last time we spoke at the Tradition Festival, she said to me:
Dad, I feel like a warrior, I feel like a hero, I want to be like this, I don’t want any other destiny, I want to be with my people, with my country, I want to be on the side of the forces of light, this is the most important thing.
In my last conference with you, I told you that history is a battle between light and darkness, between God and his adversary. And our political situation, our war in Ukraine, but not with Ukraine, is also part of this war. Of light and darkness. Neither more nor less. And when we were leaving, a minute before his death, the death that took place before my eyes, Akim Apachev’s song ‘In Azovstal they bury demons’ was playing. He wanted to hear it, but we went early. Nothing would have changed.
Her life – this is what is striking – has been significant, it has been difficult, despite the fact that she is almost a young girl, that she lived not even thirty years, that she is gone, but she has moved along the line of this logic, which has become her logic. I am very grateful and moved: I didn’t think she was known and treated this way.
She was what she was. How much duplicity there is in our lives, how much cowardice, and she was not like that, she had integrity, she had been brought up that way, and her way is an incredible argument, the most frightening, perhaps monstrous, heartbreaking argument that she was right. That this was the way to go. This was how she would not have wanted a different fate, a different life.
She loved the fame she lacked, she was under-praised. And now, when the President awarded her the Order of Courage, I can hear how happy she is, how she says: “See, Dad, how good I am, and you said so”. To love fame for its good sides: what’s wrong with it if it’s light? Not for the other side. If you take yourself to the altar of your country, of your faith, of your truth, what’s wrong with that, if you are given the credit, that’s right.
I’m sorry, I can’t speak, I’m just very grateful to you, I’m grateful to everyone, to all our people, I didn’t know it could be like this, and to everyone who came, and to everyone who answered, to everyone who wrote. It turned out that I didn’t know who was the closest person and the closest friend of the others.
Sorry, I guess the last thing I want to say is that for her life had meaning, meaning was the most important thing for her, she lived according to that meaning. If her tragic death, her personality, her integrity, had affected anyone, she would have had only one wish: do not remember me, do not glorify me, fight for our great country, defend our faith, our holy Orthodoxy, love our Russian people, because she died for the people, she died for Russia at the front, and the front is here. Not only there, but also here, in each one of us.
The highest price we have to pay can only be justified by the end result, by victory. It lived in the time of victory and died in the time of victory. Our Russian victory, our truth, our orthodoxy, our country, our power’.
Daria Dugina’s loved ones, colleagues and activists came to bid her farewell.
The leaders of the Duma factions United Russia (Sergei Neverov), LDPR (Leonid Slutsky) and Just Russia – For Truth (Sergei Mironov) also spoke at the farewell. In their speeches, the parliamentarians emphasised that she would be avenged and that streets and squares in Russia would be named after her.