Who is Ivan Ilyin?

I was listening to Brian Whitmore’s Power Vertical podcast from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL] the other day.  The subject was “Putin’s Russian Idea”, a “new Putinism” that is emerging as a new ideology.  To summarize this emerging ideology, Whitmore had this to say: 

“A common refrain in the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West is that unlike the Cold War, it lacked an ideological component.  I would submit, however, that this is changing, and changing rather fast.  While Putin’s Russia doesn’t have a fully-baked teleological ideology like the Soviet Union had in Marxism-Leninism, I would argue that the contours of an incipient and emerging ideology are beginning to come into focus.  At the heart of this ideology is the notion that Russia has a specific historical mission as the last bastion of traditional Christian values that have been abandoned by the West, that a strong paternalistic state and assertive foreign policy is necessary to defend these values at home and abroad.  Moreover, the Russia in this historical mission is not limited to the borders of the Russian Federation, but includes what the Kremlin calls “the Russian World”, or Russkiy Mir.  In many ways this harkens back to the ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’ of Tsar Nicholas I.  It also draws on the thinking of White Russian émigré philosophers of the early 20^th Century like Ivan Ilyin.  And in an era where anti-establishment populism is on the rise in the West, the ‘new Putinism’ provides the Kremlin with a useful wedge issue to advance its interests.” 

Who is Ivan Ilyin?

In December 2013, Vladimir Putin gave “his” regional governors some homework for Christmas.  Note that I say “his” governors and not “Russian” governors.  Years ago, Russian governors could be elected by the people they served.  It’s an arrangement that worked like our own federation.  But now, there is only the appearance of a true federation because Putin appoints regional governors.  He can fire them anytime.  He took away that avenue of political pluralism from the Russian people.  But I digress…  Putin’s homework for all governors and senior politicians in the service of the state were three books for Christmas 2013 reading: Vladimir Solovyov’s The Justification of the Good, Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Philosophy of Inequality, and Ivan Ilyin’s Nashi Zadachi (Our Tasks).  Of the three, Ilyin was the only thinker whom Putin quoted in his speeches as president: in his presidential addresses of 2005 and 2006 and in his speech to the State Council the year after. In 2009, Putin went to the Sretensky Monastery to lay flowers on Ilyin’s grave.  Putin has an affinity for Ilyin.  Putin supervised the repatriation and reburial of Ilyin’s remains from Switzerland in 2005.  He also purchased Ilyin’s archive from Michigan State University and brought it back to Moscow.  Since Vladimir Putin went out of his way to bring Ilyin’s work and his mortal remains back to Russia, and since he wants people who work for him to get to know Ilyin’s works, I think it appropriate to dig into this early 20^th Century Russian émigré thinker. 

Information about Ilyin is scattered and somewhat hard to come by, but luckily I found a good source – Walter Laqueur.  Laqueur has long been a “go to” source for me, and he ranks with Robert Conquest and Adam Ulam for his Russian/Soviet scholarship.  His most recent work is Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West [2015].  In his discussion of all things Putin, he devoted a chapter to the “rediscovery of Ivan Ilyin.”  Ilyin was well-known among Russian émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s, faded into obscurity, and only recently has been rediscovered.  He was born in Moscow in 1883 in an upper-class family.  He studied law in Russia and Germany and wrote on Hegel, Fichte, the philosophy of law, and religious questions.  In 1922, Lenin expelled him and he settled in Germany.  He settled in Berlin and worked at the Russian Scientific Institute, primarily as a political lecturer and writer.  He devoted his time to the fight against the Bolsheviks.   He edited Mankind on the Brink of the Abyss, a collection of essays devoted to the misdeeds of the Bolsheviks.  But because Ilyin refused to write anti-Semitic propaganda for Josef Goebbels [of which the Russian Scientific Institute was a part], Ilyin was fired from his job and had to relocate again.  With the help of Sergei Rachmaninov, he moved to Switzerland, where he lived until his death in 1954.  From 1954 until the mid-2000s, Ilyin’s writings languished in obscurity until discovered by Vladimir Putin.  After Putin repatriated his remains and brought Ilyin’s archives to Moscow, almost thirty of his books have been republished in Russia. 

 

Of the three philosopher-thinker whose readings were “assigned” by Putin to the regional governors, Laqueur describes Ilyin as the “most troubling.”  The regime in search of an ideology finally found a prophet in Ivan Ilyin.  He was a monarchist, but not along the lines of a constitutional monarchy one would find in the United Kingdom, Sweden, or the Netherlands.  Ilyin’s ideal monarch was more of an authoritarian dictatorship.  Putin isn’t a monarch, but he is an authoritarian who openly embraces the Russian Orthodox Church, and for many that’s enough.  Ilyin was opposed to liberal democracy.  Ilyin was very religious.  Ilyin wrote quite a bit, but it is hard to find [as one who doesn’t read or speak Russian, it was for me, anyway].  I can find more information written about Ilyin than stuff written by him.  Of the writings I could find, here’s a summary: 

On Fascism – Fascism’s rise was a necessary reaction to Bolshevism, and was necessary and unavoidable.  It was correct because it derived from a sense of patriotism.  But the Nazis went wrong because they were pagans that were hostile to Christianity, religion, churches.  Ilyin didn’t buy into the whole “Fürher [leader] principle”, which he dubbed “Caesarism”.  His definition of “Caesarism”: “godless, irresponsible, and despotic; it holds in contempt freedom, law, legitimacy, justice and the individual rights of men. It is demagogic, terroristic and haughty; it lusts for flattery, “glory” and worship, and it sees in the people a mob and stokes its passions. Caesarism is amoral, militaristic and callous. It compromises the principle of authority and autocracy, for its rule does not prosecute state or national interests, but personal ends.” My thought is that Ilyin loves an authoritarian monarch, as long as that authoritarian is religious.  Otherwise his opposition to “Caesarism” and his love of authoritarian monarchs are incompatible.  He thought the Nazis were too totalitarian, their one-party control was a mistake and they erred when the Nazi state took over complete control of the economy.  Fascists could be authoritarian, and that was enough to combat Communism/Bolshevism and could give religion, the press, academia, art, non-Communist parties the ability to operate without being judged by a fascist regime.  He thought the demagoguery and despotism of the Nazis was wrong because they took God out of the equation.  He thought Franco and Salazar [both authoritarians but also über-Catholic] had the right idea.  Even though their authoritarian regimes were fascists, they didn’t label themselves as such.  In Ilyin’s world, it’s ok to be authoritarian as long as you’re religious.  Putin’s regime is authoritarian, and it at least pays lip service to protecting traditional Christian values. 

On Democracy – Ilyin apparently wasn’t a big fan of democracy.  He saw the “great unwashed” as easily seduced by “revolutionaries and traitors”.  Given the tenor of his remarks on the subject, one can only conclude that Ilyin thinks the huddled masses are too stupid to vote and can’t be trusted to exercise the right to vote responsibly.  For Ilyin, voting leads to rebellion.  To wit:  “Every citizen is secured the right to crooked and deceptive political paths, to disloyal and treasonous designs, to the sale of his vote, to base motives for voting, to underground plots, unseen treachery and secret dual citizenship to all those crudities which are so profitable to men and so often tempt them.  The citizen is given the unlimited right to temptation and the corruption of others, as well as the subtle transactions of self-prostitution. He is guaranteed the freedom of disingenuous, lying, and underhanded speech, and the ambiguous, calculated omission of truth; he is granted the liberty to believe liars and scoundrels or at least pretend to believe them (in self-interest simulating one political mood or its complete opposite). And for the free expression of all these spiritual seductions he is handed the ballot.”   He cited Rousseau’s teaching that man is inherently good and rational, but then he concluded the good and rational are easily tempted to do the wrong thing by voting.  So the “managed democracy” [which is a euphemism for “rigged elections”] of Putin’s Russia is part and parcel of the “strong paternal state”. 
 

On Orthodoxy – Ilyin posited the foundation of the Russian nation was the Orthodox Christian faith.  He argued that nations without faith “decayed and died.”  Orthodoxy gave Russians many things – “sympathy for the poor, the weak, the sick, the oppressed, and even the criminal…a living and profound sense of conscience; a dream of righteousness and holiness; an accurate perception of sin; the gift of a repentance that renews; the idea of ascetic catharsis; and an acute sense of “truth” and “lies,” good and evil…that spirit of sacrifice, service, patience, and loyalty, without which Russia would never have withstood its enemies and built an earthly home.”  It was Orthodoxy that gave Russians their sense of “citizen’s responsibility”, and with that responsibility a subservience to a monarch, and not just any monarch but one who would serve God.  Ilyin attributed many gifts of the “Christian sense of justice” – “a will to peace, brotherhood, justice, loyalty, and solidarity; a sense of dignity and rank; a capability for self-control and mutual respect.”  His argument boils down to this – Russians are better than everyone else because of their religion [Russian Orthodoxy], which is better than either Catholicism or Protestantism.  This speaks to Whitmore’s argument that part of the emerging ideology is that Russia has the “special mission” to uphold traditional Christian values. 

On Forms of Sovereignty – Ilyin argued that a diversity of peoples throughout the world merits a diversity in sovereignty.  He didn’t like a “one size fits all” approach to governance.  In his world, democracy doesn’t work everywhere [“There are no identical peoples, and there should not be identical forms of sovereignty and constitutions. Blind borrowing and imitation is absurd, dangerous, and can become ruinous”].  Ilyin argued that for those states that are used to being ruled by a monarchy for centuries, it’s irresponsible to force a republican form of government upon them.  And so the deposition of the Tsar in 1917 in favor of some kind of democracy was a mistake.  The Bolshevik Revolution compounded that mistake.  A democratic, federated republic is not a good fit for Russia.  Political elections are ruinous, and Ilyin asserted the only way for Russia is a “national, patriotic, hardly totalitarian, but authoritarian dictatorship.”  Again, this gets back to the “managed democracy” of Putin’s Russia. 

There is no single “playbook” for Putin’s emerging ideology like Marx’s Communist Manifesto was for Communism, but Ilyin’s writings are a good place to start when trying to understand why Putin and his ilk do what they do.