Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (; – 21 December 1954) was a Russian jurist, religious and political philosopher, publicist, orator, and a far-right thinker.
Ilyin began his career as a political writer during the failed 1905 Russian Revolution; by the February Revolution of 1917, which he later saw as a "temporary disorder", he shifted towards liberalism, and by October he became a radical right opponent of democracy. October Revolution, in his view, marked a "national catastrophe". This conviction led him to oppose the Bolshevik regime. As a white émigré journalist, he aligned himself with Slavophile beliefs and emerging as a key ideologue of the Russian All-Military Union. This organization firmly believed that force stood as the sole means through which the Soviet regime could be toppled.From the Russian Army to Underground Organizations: The Trajectory of the Whites in the European and French matrix
An anti-communist, he found himself admiring of Italian fascism and Benito Mussolini and initially, sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and Nazism; yet, his attitude critical of totalitarianism, which he distinguished from his own concept of fascism, was not embraced by the Nazi regime. In 1934, his refusal to comply with Nazi directives to spread propaganda led to his dismissal from the Russian Academic Institute, stripping him of employment opportunities."Il'in, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1883–1954) ." Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Dec. 2022 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>. Financial support from Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1938 allowed Ilyin to remain in Switzerland albeit barred from work or political engagement. This phase of restriction led him to delve deeper into studies encompassing aesthetics, ethics, and psychology.
Despite battling chronic illness, Ilyin wrote over 40 books and numerous articles in Russian and German. His works predominantly revolved around religion and Russia, although he diverged from Vladimir Solovyov's (with whom the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance of the early 20th century is usually associated) ideology, which advocates a global theocracy. Instead, Ilyin championed a patriarchal model of governance for Russia, rooted on Orthodoxy and faith in the autocratic tsar, distinguishing between autocracy and tyranny.Walter Lacquer (2015) His writings echoed calls for heroism and moral aristocracy, while cementing his role as a proponent of the proposition of existence of Western Russophobia.
Remaining true to Right Hegelianism throughout his life, Ilyin explored themes of statehood, law, and power in world history. He opposed federalism and neutrality, and disdained Western analytic philosophy. As an ultranationalist, Ilyin was a critic of Western-style democracy, advocating instead for a government aligned with Russia's autocratic heritage.
Ilyin's views on Russia's social structure and world history influenced some post-Soviet intellectuals and politicians, including Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Early life
Ivan Ilyin was born in an aristocratic family claiming Rurikid descent. Ilyin's grandfather was a military man who moved to Moscow, where he became a civil engineer. His last job was as commandant of the Grand Kremlin Palace and gates. His father, Alexander Ivanovich Ilyin (1851-1921), was born and raised in the palace and a lawyer at the Moscow District Court. Ilyin's mother, Caroline Louise née Schweikert (1858-1942), was of German Russian descent and confessing Lutheran. To be able to marry Alexander Ilyin in 1880 she converted to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Yekaterina Yulyevna.
Ivan Ilyin was brought up in the center of Moscow in Khamovniki District. He was educated at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium in 1901 and entered the Law faculty of the Moscow State University but would rather have studied history. Ilyin wrote as well in German as in Russian and mastered Church Slavonic. He studied Plato's Ideal State and Kant's Thing-in-itself. Ilyin became a political radical during his student days and supported the freedom of assembly. In 1904, he took part in a student march, was arrested, and spent a month in prison. The events of the First Russian Revolution and the October Manifesto were reflected in his pamphlets "Freedom of Assembly and popular Representation" (a way of public participation in politics), "What is a Political Party", "From Russian Antiquity: The Revolt of Stenka Razin". Ilyin produced them under the pseudonym "Nikolai Ivanov".
Under influence of Pavel Novgorodtsev Ilyin became interested in the philosophy of law. In 1906, Ilyin graduated and married Natalia Nikolaevna Vokach (1882-1963) in Bykovo. She was a translator, art-historian and niece of Sergei Muromtsev, a Kadet and chairman of the First Duma. Ilyin worked with Natalia on a translation of "Anarchism" by Paul Eltzbacher and a treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ("Idea of the General will") which were never published. From 1909 he began working as a privatdozent. (In the same year Lenin published his Materialism and Empirio-criticism under the pseudonym Vl. Ilyin).
Before the revolution
In January 1911, Knyaz Evgenii Troubetzkoy, along with a large group of professors, left Moscow University as a sign of disagreement with the government's violation of the principles of university autonomy. Ilyin moved to Western Europe (Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin, Göttingen and Paris) studying the latest trends in European philosophy including: philosophy of life and phenomenology influenced by Husserl, who concentrated on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness; Scheler, who published "The Nature of Sympathy"; Fichte and Schelling on Absolute idealism. Meanwhile, Ilyin worked on his thesis "Crisis of rationalistic philosophy in Germany in the 19th century" which he never finished. In May 1912 he returned to work at the university and delivered a series of lectures called "Introduction to the Philosophy of Law". Novgorodtsev offered to have an Ilyin lecture on the theory of public law at the Moscow Commercial Institute.
Ilyin was known as being extremely intolerant towards Andrei Bely, who called him "mentally insane". For six weeks in 1914 Ilyin and his wife paid visits to Sigmund Freud.
During the July Crisis, Ilyin was forced to leave and his writings were confiscated at the outbreak of the First World War. After returning from Vienna, Ilyin was obsessed with psychoanalysis, diagnosing everything and everyone in Freudian terms, reducing every personal problem to neurotic symptoms, and according to one observer, psychoanalyzing every little gesture of those around him. The two became pioneers of the psychoanalytic movement in Russia.God Is a Russian by T.D. Snyder. In: New York Review of Books 5 April, 2018 He began to develop a career as a writer and public figure.
World War I and the Russian Revolution
After the breakout of World War I, Evgeny Trubetskoy, once a member of the Party of Peaceful Renovation, arranged a series of public lectures devoted to the "ideology of war". Ilyin contributed to this with several lectures, the first of which was called "The Spiritual Meaning of the War" (1915). He believed that since Russia had already been involved in the war, the duty of every Russian was to support his country to the end. During the April Crisis (1917) he agreed with the Kadet Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavel Milyukov who staunchly opposed Petrograd Soviet demands for peace at any cost. In the summer of 1917, he published the pamphlets "The Party program and maximalism", "On the term of convocation of the Constituent Assembly", "Order or disorder?", "Demagogy and provocation", and "Why not continue the war?"
At first, Ilyin perceived the February Revolution as the liberation of the people. Along with many other intellectuals, he generally approved of it and supported the Russian Provisional Government. However, he was gradually disappointed and by the time the October Revolution had completed, viewed it as a catastrophe. The Moscow State Conference convened by Kerensky's Second Government was attended by actual and former Duma members, representatives of all major political parties, commercial and industrial organizations, the unions, army and academic institutions.Kröner, Anthony (2021) Vasilii Maklakov. A Russian liberal, between autocracy and revolution 1869-1957, p. 144 Ilyin warned the audience, about 2,600 people, "The revolution turned into self-interested plundering of the state". In the autumn, he wrote under the pseudonym Justus "Where is revolutionary democracy going?", "Mr. Kerensky's refusal", "What to expect?", "Nightmare", and "Who are they?"
In February 1918 Ilyin gave a public lecture on patriotism: the lack among the Russian people of a mature legal consciousness. In March the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed. In April Ilyin was arrested and accused of financially supporting a voluntary army in Moscow and having visited Andrey Avinoff, supporting the Imperial Army. The case was initiated by Felix Dzerzhinsky. The money he had received, Ilyin said, was destined for publishing: "The Philosophy of Hegel as a Doctrine of the Concreteness of God and Humanity". He was in the Butyrka prison dungeons for about a week but developed serious health problems; Ilyin seems to have developed bronchitis that needed treatment. He was released for lack of evidence and allowed to give lectures and defend his thesis. For three weeks Ilyin was bedridden; Novgorodtsev's apartment was searched on the eve of the defence.
On 19 May, Ilyin received two degrees. However, the publisher Lehman-Abrikosov made a generous gesture and offered to publish the two-volume book for free – so Ilyin returned the money to the sponsor Bary & Co. This two-volume dissertation (a provocative interpretation of Hegel) published in the revolutionary chaos of 1918, is considered one of the best commentaries on Hegel's philosophy, also by Vladimir Lenin.Grier, P.T. (2021). Ivan A. Ilyin: Russia's "Non-Hegelian" Hegelian. In: Bykova, M.F., Forster, M.N., Steiner, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62982-3_15 Even in the preface, Ilyin notes that Hegel is primarily an intuitionist (and not a logician or, even more so, a rationalist), and in the future, all of Ilyin's thought is based on this idea.
He was an opponent of the Russian spelling reform of 1918 and continued to use pre-reform spelling.
Ilyin became a professor of law in Moscow University. As was customary among Russian religious thinkers, he lectured at the Moscow higher women's courses. He was imprisoned between 11 and 24 August, but released with the help of Ivan Yakovlev's son. On 19 December, Ilyin received a summons to appear at a meeting of the Revolutionary Tribunal (non-recognition of Soviet power). In 1919 Ilyin wrote: "In Moscow, the winter is fierce, there is no firewood, we are hungry. They have already taken me to Cheka three times – and tried in a tribunal "for preparing an armed uprising".
Ilyin's ability to hate, despise, insult ideological opponents was particularly pronounced. Ilyin was again imprisoned in 1919, February 1920 and September 1922 for alleged anti-communist activity. He, along with many other "irreconcilable" anti-Bolshevik intellectuals, was condemned to execution, and then forcibly exiled. On 29 September some 160 prominent intellectuals and their families were expelled (at their own expense and not allowed to return without the permission of the Soviet authorities) on a so-called "philosophers' ship" from Petrograd to Stettin, where they arrived on 2 October.
Emigration