Ivan Ilyin

Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883 to 1954) was a Russian jurist, religious and political philosopher, publicist and orator, a right Hegelian and far-right thinker. Brought up in Moscow in an aristocratic family, he studied at the law faculty of Moscow State University, graduated in 1906, became interested in the philosophy of law under Pavel Novgorodtsev and worked as a privatdozent from 1909. He opposed the Bolshevik regime and went into exile as a white emigre journalist and ideologue of the Russian All-Military Union; in 1934 his refusal to follow Nazi directives cost him his post at the Russian Academic Institute, and from 1938 he lived in Switzerland with support from Sergei Rachmaninoff. He wrote more than forty books and many articles in Russian and German on religion, Russia, statehood, law and power, championing a patriarchal Orthodox model of government and criticizing Western-style democracy, and his views later influenced some post-Soviet intellectuals and politicians.