Dmitriy Rogozin is the most succesfull Russian nationalist politician who has made a career and risen from the leader of a nationalist organisation to a Russia’s representative to NATO (2008-2011), deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation (2011-2018) and director of the state corporation for space activities Roscosmos (2018-2022). His current occupation is unknown.
**Career**
Comes from a family of hereditary military. He is a graduate of the International Department of Journalism at Moscow State University. In 1996, he defended his PhD thesis on “The Russian Question and its Impact on National and International Security” at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. In 1999 he also defended his PhD thesis on “Problems of Russia’s National Security at the Turn of the 21st Century”.
In 2003, Dmitry Rogozin, leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, an association of nationalist organisations, was elected to the State Duma at the head of the electoral bloc Rodina he founded, which was supposed to win by taking votes from the Communists. At the time, Rodina became famous for its blatantly racist campaign video [Let’s Clean Up Moscow’s Garbage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiBOg5jTJQs). Four years later, the future deputy prime minister, the face of Russia’s military-industrial complex and the head of the space state corporation in charge of the ISS will be [perfoming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7FUpOyEdHw) on a stage with neo-Nazis.
The Rodina party in the Duma and Rogozin in the Kremlin are the peak of nationalist electoral success in Russia, unless one counts Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s national-populist LPDR, which has not been considered as part of the Russian nationalist movement since the mid-1990s. Rogozin’s career took shape in the 2000s, when the Kremlin pursued a policy of “managed nationalism”. The policy of managed nationalism means that nationalist sentiments in society are controlled and directed by the state.
Under Rogozin, Rodina shifted towards the right wing of Russian politics and became the second largest and one of the country’s most successful parties. Rogozin’s right views were not shared by all his party’s members. In early 2006, at Rodina’s congress, Rogozin resigned as party leader. Rogozin left Rodina after its merger with the Russian Party of Life and the Pensioners’ Party into Fair Russia. In November 2006, he was the Chairman of the revived Congress of Russian Communities. In April 2007, he announced that he may support the formation of the Great Russia Party, in conjunction with the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI).
In 2008, Rogozin was appointed by the Medvedev-Putin duumvirate as the Russian ambassador to NATO. As Russia’s NATO envoy, he was heavily opposed to Ukraine and Georgia becoming members of NATO. On 23 December 2011, Rogozin was appointed as Putin’s Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the defense and space industries. For the defense industry, he led the creation of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry. In May 2018, Putin selected Rogozin to be the head of Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency for two decades after the early 1990s and, in the past few years, transformed by Rogozin from a state agency into a state corporation.
**Ukraine war**
The US magazine Forbes [called](https://web.archive.org/web/20141226164708/http://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya-photogallery/vlast/252259-za-krym-otvetili-kto-iz-chinovnikov-popal-pod-sanktsii-zapada/photo/24) Rogozin “the chief hawk of Russian foreign policy” and the US administration of President Obama considered him one of the main high-ranking officials of the Russian government responsible for the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
