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Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s philosopher

By Ricardo Israel

I discovered Ivan Ilyin years ago and by chance. I was teaching at Wheaton College in Massachusetts as a Fulbright visiting professor, and in the library, I was looking for another book and other author for a Political Science Handbook in preparation. His text on The Essence of the Consciousness of Law was not useful to me, since his mixture of tsarism and orthodox religion was not suitable for what I was looking for in the relationship between law and politics.

I met him again because of the frequency with which he was quoted by Vladimir Putin, especially in solemn ceremonies. I reviewed my notes, reread it and it really helped me understand it, what it was and what it wasn’t.

Ilyin was born into an aristocratic family in Moscow (1883), no less than the Rurik dynasty, that of the original Rus in Kiev (year 862). He died in exile in Switzerland (1954), and Putin became personally involved, both in the publication of the 23 volumes of his complete works and in bringing his remains back, and in the consecration of his tomb.

Ilyin was a prominent ideologue of the White Movement, and wrote several books, from politics to spirituality, with Russia and its historical mission being the common denominator of all of them, drawing my attention to the way his ideas are present in Putin’s public pronouncements.

He criticized Tsar Nicholas II and blamed him – like Putin – for the collapse of the Empire in 1917, and saw in his abdication a crucial mistake, and in general, that of weakness in the exercise of power, is a recurring element in Putin. Ilyin was always a conservative monarchist, in the Russian and Slavophile tradition, and believed in values such as family and religious piety. His vision of Russia was inextricably linked to the Orthodox Christian religion.

In an article on The Russia of the Future (1949), he expressed both opposition to “totalitarianism (Marxist)” and to what he called “formal democracy”, proposing a “third way” for the reconstruction of the state and society, which in Putin becomes a fourth way. The revolution was only a parenthesis in a millenary history, an idea also familiar to Aleksandr Solzhenitysyn, another person in whom he has a lot of influence, especially in the role of religion in the history and future of Russia.

Another of his ideas is important for Putin, that of the damage done to the country by “the weak, damaged self-esteem” of the Russians. Ilyin influences both to look at western influence as predatory of their heritage. Even once he provided a moral justification for fascism, detaching itself altogether when German Nazism incorporated the Slavic peoples, including Serbs and Russians into the category of “subhumans.”

Undoubtedly, there is a thread that goes from Ilyin to Putin, and this is a political doctrine based on the conservative tradition, as has been highlighted by Timothy Snyder and other historians. Ilyin appears and reappears again and again in Putin, including that recent extensive speech on national television, where he tried to explain the reason for the invasion of Ukraine. In that speech were present two constants of Putin, the ideas of Ilyin and the criticisms of Lenin.

Also in 2014, after the occupation of Crimea, in his annual state message, Putin cited him as one of the most important references, both theoretical and spiritual of the historical time that he was governing the country. He quoted him for approval and applause: “He who loves Russia must desire freedom for her; first of all, freedom for Russia itself, independence and autonomy, freedom for Russia as a unit of the Russians.”

Ilyin is key to understanding Putin’s present discourse, from the day he takes office as president in 2000, that of seeking to regain Russian pride, the unity of the nation, and to return to being a respected power. It is not only the Russia that was left by the demise of the Soviet Union, but the historical one, the one that was born in Kiev. Is that, and only that Russia, that calls him to represent all Russian speakers, even those that were left to live in other nations. That is how Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria and perhaps, part of Ukraine and Belarus appear.

Let’s say it once, greater Russia is Putin”s purpose and not the reappearance of the Soviet Union, the tsars more than the communists, Christianity in its orthodox version more than Marxism. His thing is anti-liberalism, a profoundly traditionalist revolution, which has support not only among European rightists but also – and more difficult to explain – among Latin American leftists, although he has never wanted to create an international movement of support for his person, since it is limited to the recreation of historical Russia. Yes, it is a right and a left that have in common a rejection of university progressivism, postmodernism, identity politics and what they perceive as decadent in their societies.

Putin rejects feminism, the movements of sexual diversities, the UN 2030 Agenda, and his criticism of capitalism, is not from socialism, but the Anglo-Saxon version is seen as totally incompatible with the Russian tradition. Ilyín also endows him with a concept of authoritarian ruler, who must represent the entire historical tradition, and that this authority must not be shared or bent.

That vision of moral and political authority must be secured by a ruler who rejects Western culture as well as economic dependence and cultural colonization. Ilyin appears as its true leading philosopher, the one who shares the understanding that power is auctoritas and potestas at the same time, that is, the right to exercise it and to be obeyed, and that historical mission of vindication of the Russian tradition justifies limitations to freedom, and the predominance of the State over the individual in order to achieve a spiritual rebirth.

The values are conservative and as an ancient text says, from which a quote is extracted, used by both Ilyin and Putin, if Moscow is the heart of Mother Russia, it was in Kiev that the birth took place.