Ivan Ilyin

Ivan Ilyin

Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (Russian: Иван Александрович Ильин, Ivan Aleksandrovich Il'in; 9 April [O.S. 28 March] 1883 – 21 December 1954) was a Russian jurist, religious and political philosopher, publicist, orator, and staunch conservative monarchist. His perception of historical events was distinctive: while he saw the February Revolution as a "temporary disorder", the October Revolution, in his view, marked a "national catastrophe". This conviction propelled him into active opposition against the Bolshevik regime. He became a white émigré journalist, aligning 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.

Quotes

• Western European humanity moves by will and reason. A Russian person lives first of all with his heart and imagination, and only then with his will and mind. Therefore, the average European is ashamed of sincerity, conscience and kindness [regarding it] as "stupidity"; A Russian person, on the contrary, expects from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience and sincerity.
  Original: Западноевропейское человечество движется волею и рассудком. Русский человек живет прежде всего сердцем и воображением и лишь потом волею и умом. Поэтому средний европеец стыдится искренности, совести и доброты как «глупости»; русский человек, наоборот, ждет от человека прежде всего доброты, совести и искренности.
  • Ivan Ilyin, "Europe does not know Russia" (28 September 1948), published in Our tasks, Articles from 1948-1956, Tome I.

• Ukraine is recognized as the most threatened part of Russia in terms of secession and conquest. Ukrainian separatism is an artificial phenomenon, devoid of real grounds. It arose from the ambition of the leaders and the international intrigue of conquest.
  Little Russians are a branch of a single, Slavic-Russian people. This branch has no reason to be at enmity with other branches of the same people and to separate into a separate state.
  Having seceded, this state betrays itself to be conquered and plundered by foreigners.
  Little Russia and Great Russia are bound together by faith, tribe, historical fate, geographical location, economy, culture and politics.
  The foreigners who are preparing the dismemberment must remember that they are declaring by this to the whole of Russia a centuries-old struggle. There will be no peace and no economic prosperity under such a dismemberment.
  Russia will turn into a source of civil and international wars for centuries. The dismembering power will become the most hated of the enemies of national Russia.
  In the struggle against it, all alliances and all means will be used. Russia will shift its center to the Urals, gather all its huge forces, develop its technology, find powerful allies for itself and fight until it completely and forever undermines the power of the dismembering power.
  National Russia is not looking for anyone's death, but it will be able to respond in time to any attempt at dismemberment and will fight to the end. It is more profitable for any power to have Russia as a friend, not an enemy. History hasn't said its last word yet...
  • Ivan Ilyin, "Fundamentals of the struggle for national Russia" (Основы борьбы за национальную Россию), 1938. Interestingly quoted in this May 25, 2022 article by Alexander Zvyagintsev published in Rossiiskaya gazeta, the Russian Federation's own government gazette.
    In it, Zvyagintsev draws a parallel between the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish Empire, the Nazis and (more subtly) the present-day European Union by putting them all under a same umbrella term: "Several years passed, and the diabolical fascist machine of a united Europe fell upon our country. She, like once the hordes of swordsmen, Poles and Swedes, Frederick and Napoleon, was defeated."