Today at 20:03
Ivan Ilyin is a Russian philosopher, writer and publicist. He is considered one of the ideological inspirers of Vladimir Putin. In Ilyin’s system of views, one can trace the ideas of the supreme rightness of the state, which especially attract Putin and Kremlin ideologists. In his own way, Ilyin worked through the concept of Russian fascism, avoiding the word “fascism”. Russian Holocaust historian and translator Ksenia Creamer spoke about this on the FREEDOM TV channel.
“Putin is an extremely dense person. He does not have a coherent belief system. It is indeed customary to say about Ilyin that he is one of the thinkers that Putin was, in a sense, keen on. Putin first learned about Ivan Ilyin from [Russian film director and screenwriter] Nikita Mikhalkov, with whom he was close. But in general, the fascination with figures of the “white emigration” is the fashion of the perestroika era of the 90s,” she noted.
It can be seen that important figures of the Putin regime, such as Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Patriarch Kirill, Russian statesman Vladislav Surkov, Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin and others, quote or mention Ilyin’s ideas, demonstrating the importance thinker.
“In 2005, Putin arranged the reburial of Ilyin’s remains in Russia. He is buried at the Donskoye Cemetery. His archive was brought from Michigan. This is indeed, in a sense, an important figure, who is then advised to governors. Medvedev, Lavrov, Patriarch Kirill are starting to get carried away with him and mention him in their speeches,” the expert said.
The idea of the primacy of the state, which means the supremacy of the interests of the state over the rights and freedoms of citizens, especially attracts contemporary Kremlin figures.
“Ilyin is a rather marginal figure in an intellectual sense. He did not greatly captivate people in both Soviet and post-Soviet times. It cannot be said of him that he is an important intellectual figure. But he has ideas that turned out to be extremely attractive to the Kremlin leadership, to the Putin regime. Mainly, this is the idea of the primacy of the state and the supreme rightness of the state. Ilyin can be described as a person who is trying to develop the concept of Russian fascism without using the word fascism,” the historian said.
Particular contempt for the ideals of democracy and the promotion of national totality as a standard of social order is what attracts the leaders of the Putin regime.
“Ilyin’s ideas reveal a hostile attitude towards democracy, individualism, which underlies democracy, towards human rights, human diversity, and subsequently towards political parties, towards civil rights, and in general towards the variability of the social structure. According to Ilyin, the variability and diversity that underlie Western democratic liberal societies is a kind of failure of God’s plan, which tried to create some kind of living national totality that does not imply any diversity. And this idea of contrasting national totality, uniformity with democratic diversity and individualism is the basis of Ilyin’s thinking, which is extremely attractive to Kremlin ideologists,” Creamer explained.
Read also: White House does not like idea of NATO taking over Ramstein format
