On the organic unity of man and the state in the work of I.A. Ilyin

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of Ivan Ilyin’s political views from conservative-liberal to monarchist, tracing their reflection in his doctrine of the unity of man and state. It is noted that initially, while discussing the fundamental tenets of Hegel’s philosophical worldview, Ilyin posed the question of the ability of the national spirit, upon which the state is founded, to create conditions for the harmonious and free development of the human being. Then, reflecting on the results of the Russian revolutions and summarizing the experience of contemporary history, he concluded that there was not and cannot be an automatic triumph of morality in the life of socio-political organisms, and that ensuring the personal development of man is possible only through the targeted work of the elite to educate the morality and legal consciousness of the masses. In the years preceding World War II, Ilyin published works in which he mythologized the mission of the aristocratic elite in world history and welcomed the emergence of fascism as a concrete historical form of the “eternal White movement”. He be¬lieved that this movement is a positive-aristocratic force in world history that enlightens people and leads them to a good goal. In the postwar period, the Russian thinker reflected extensively on the crisis of Western democracy and parliamentarism, which arose against the backdrop of rapidly growing mass activism all aver the world and resulted in the emergence of Bolshevik and National Socialist variants of totalitarianism, which, in Ilyin’s opinion, destroyed the eternal value foundations of human existence. The Russian thinker sets the task of forming a new Russian statehood and tries to prove that this process necessarily includes a period of harsh aristocratic dictatorship, which must grow on a corporatist-solidarist and constitutional-monarchist basis.