WESTERN VISITORS to the Soviet Union who lucked into Moscow’s insular intellectual circles were usually taken with the luxurious sense of timelessness in which they existed. With careers almost entirely lateral and ambitions, if they ever existed, generally shelved, people like Arutyunyan, Gudkov, and even Dugin seemed to study solely for the sake of learning, rarely even entertaining the possibility that theory could be put to work in any way.
