The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote." —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Greetings from the far left coast where reading Timothy Snyder's book The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) on the heels of Masha Gessen's The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017) is profoundly unsettling. These books open a window onto the intellectual and philosophical precepts that frame how Vladimir Putin and Russia's ruling class view the world and their place in it. Gessen's account is grim. Snyder leaves me reeling.
The remarks that follow also draw on an article by Snyder in The New York Review (Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism, March 16, 2018).
Questions about the influence of ideas in politics are very difficult to answer, and it would be needlessly bold to make of [Ivan] Ilyin’s writings the pillar of the Russian system. For one thing, Ilyin’s vast body of work admits multiple interpretations. As with Martin Heidegger, another student of Husserl who supported Hitler, it is reasonable to ask how closely a man’s political support of fascism relates to a philosopher’s work. Within Russia itself, Ilyin is not the only native source of fascist ideas to be cited with approval by Vladimir Putin; Lev Gumilev [son of poet Anna Akhmatova] is another. Contemporary Russian fascists who now rove through the public space, such as Aleksander Prokhanov and Aleksander Dugin, represent distinct traditions. It is Dugin, for example, who made the idea of "Eurasia" popular in Russia, and his references are German Nazis and postwar West European fascists. And yet, most often in the Russia of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is Ilyin’s ideas that to seem to satisfy political needs and to fill rhetorical gaps, to provide the "spiritual resource" for the kleptocratic state machine. (Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher)
In his youth Ivan Ilyin (1883–1954) was a philosophy student and lecturer influenced by the likes of Kant, Hegel, and Husserl. He became a counterrevolutionary after the experience of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks imprisoned Ilyin multiple times before expelling him from Russia in 1922. He emigrated first to Germany, where he became an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler, whom he saw as a defender against communism that had been inflicted on Russia by the decadent West. Later he ran afoul of the Gestapo and in 1938 fled to Switzerland, where he died forgotten in 1954.
Ilyin wrote more than forty books and hundreds of articles and pamphlets intended to serve as guidance for Russian leaders who would come to power after the end of the Soviet Union. There appears to have been more in them of off-brand theology and eccentric mysticism than philosophy in the Western tradition. Among his recommendations for a post-Soviet Russia was a national leader, sufficiently manly, like Mussolini, personally and totally responsible for every aspect of political life, chief executive, chief legislator, chief justice, commander of the military. Here I think of the staged photo shoots of a shirtless Putin on horseback and astride his trike riding with the Night Wolves motorcycle gang. The trike, according to Snyder, is because is unable to ride a motorcycle. More detail about this would have been welcome.
As Snyder tells it, Ilyin is Putin's authority on the past and main man on the ideas front. Putin began to rehabilitate Ilyin as Kremlin court philosopher and organized his reburial in Moscow in 2005. In 2006 Putin sent an emissary to reclaim Ilyin's papers, which had somehow ended up at Michigan State University. That year Putin began citing Ilyin in his presidential addresses.
Ilyin, Dugin, and their kindred spirits hold that Western civilization is foreign and inimical to Russian culture, which is an organic, mystical, spiritual whole. They have no use for Western notions of freedom, individualism, rule of law, universal values, rationality, truth. Russia is under relentless assault by America and Europe, whose depravity stands in contrast to Russian innocence.
The rule of law was not a universal aspiration, but part of an alien Western civilization; Russian culture, meanwhile, united Russia with post-Soviet states such as Ukraine…Ilyin had imagined that "Russia as a spiritual organism served not only all the Orthodox nations and not only all of the nations of the Eurasian landmass, but all the nations of the world." Putin predicted that Eurasia would overcome the European Union and bring its members into a larger entity that would extend "from Lisbon to Vladivostok." (Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher)
"'Freedom for Russia,' as Ilyin understood it (in a text selectively quoted by Putin in 2014), would not mean freedom for Russians as individuals, but rather freedom for Russians to understand themselves as parts of a whole." Dugin envisioned a movement that would resist "extremist humanism," the idea that all humans everywhere have rights, and the concept of a society based on law. He placed himself squarely in Putin's corner, saying, it was "the rule of Putin that spelled the true victory of Eurasianist ideas" and "We support the president totally, radically. That places us at the total and radical center" (quoted by Gessen).
Kellyanne Conway's theory of alternative facts was a misdirection, possibly unintended. There are no facts. Truth is absent. Snyder uses the term "implausible deniability" to describe claims made by Russia's rulers and the media they control. It does not matter that their assertions are not believable. The intent is to foster belief that everyone is lying. No source is trustworthy. Homophobia, spurious charges of pedophilia leveled against dissidents, and sexual paranoia are other elements of the Russian playbook. AIDS, like communism, was a plague inflicted on Russia by the West. Ilyin said jazz was a plot to induce premature ejaculation. The Russian playbook has been adopted by Republican Party poohbahs and the MAGA faction. It has always been Trump's default setting.
Exposition of the ideas and influence of Ilyin and Dugin takes up only a portion of The Road to Unfreedom. Much of the book is devoted to Russian attempts to undermine the European Union, its support of far right parties, such as Marine Le Pen's Front National, Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, and the Alternative für Deutschland/AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, cyberwarfare, and election meddling.
Donald Trump was the Kremlin's candidate for president in 2016. As Felix Sater, a Russian American who worked as a senior adviser to the Trump Organization and brought in Russian money through the Bayrock Group, wrote in November 2015, "Our boy can become president of the United States and we can engineer it." Junior Trump acknowledged in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." For example, "Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower in the 1990s…Russians were arrested for running a gambling ring from the apartment beneath Trump's own." And so on.
Throughout this exercise, Russians knew what was fact and what was fiction. Russians knew Trump for what he was: not the "VERY successful businessman" of his tweets but an American loser who became a Russian tool. Although Americans might dream otherwise, no one who mattered in Moscow believed that Trump was a powerful tycoon. Russian money had saved him from his fate that would normally await anyone with his record of failure. (The Road to Unfreedom)
Putin's rhetoric on Ukraine can be traced to Ilyin:
Russian culture, Ilyin wrote, automatically brought 'fraternal union' wherever Russian power extended. Ilyin wrote of "Ukrainians" in quotation marks, because he denied their separate existence beyond the Russian organism. To speak of Ukraine was to be a mortal enemy of Russia. Ilyin took for granted that a post-Soviet Russia would include Ukraine. (The Road to Unfreedom)
In the last few years, Vladimir Putin has also used some of Ilyin’s more specific ideas about geopolitics in his effort translate the task of Russian politics from the pursuit of reform at home to the export of virtue abroad. By transforming international politics into a discussion of "spiritual threats," Ilyin’s works have helped Russian elites to portray the Ukraine, Europe, and the United States as existential dangers to Russia. (Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher)
In a meeting in 2011 when Putin was Russia's prime minister in between presidential terms and Joe was vice president, Putin told Biden, "You look at us and you see our skin and then assume we think like you. But we don’t" (Michael McFaul, Vladimir Putin does not think like we do, Washington Post, January 26, 2022). Discussions about Putin's threats of nuclear escalation in Ukraine often turn to speculation about whether he is a rational actor who would not do something that would risk, perhaps ensure, his own destruction. In what sense can we speak about the possibility of rational action by someone who considers rationality an alien, Western (our progressive friends might say, with disdain, Eurocentric) concept? Intellectuals and pundits of the school of political realism counsel negotiation—and who can be against that? But how reasonable and realistic is it to negotiate with someone whose indifference to truth means he cannot be relied on to uphold his commitments in any agreement?
Cathy Young, another of my go-to sources on Russia, along with Gessen and Anne Applebaum, views the nuclear issue from a slightly different angle that offers a glimmer of hope:
Obviously, the West must take nuclear saber-rattling seriously. My own view is that even in defeat, Putin is not suicidal. He is not a true believer like Hitler, who would not have hesitated to blow up the world if he had the means to do it rather than accept Germany’s defeat by the Allies. Putin, until the day he is deposed or killed, will always believe that he can spin a loss as a win—at least, enough of a win to save face.
Which is why I think we can cheer for the eventual collapse of Putin’s war effort without worrying too much that we are cheering for Armageddon (the conflagration, not the general). Of course, it’s still hard to say what a victory for Ukraine will look like. But it looks real, and the past few days’ events make it more likely. (How Putin’s Latest Attempts to Escalate in Ukraine Have Backfired, The Bulwark, October 14, 2022)
Events come at us in waves. Looming ahead in fewer than thirty days is an election whose outcome will hold grave implications for the future of liberal democracy in this country. The January 6 committee hearing on Thursday and the Supreme Court's dismissal of Trump's request for it to intervene in litigation over documents seized at Mar-a-Lago last summer merit discussion. So too does America's Christian nationalist crowd and its intellectual standard bearer Marjorie T. Greene. More verbiage could be spilled on the zany philosophies, a term used loosely in this context, of Ivan Ilyin and Alexander Dugin. Perhaps I should throw myself into the blog more diligently. There is plenty to write about if I can only pull myself out of doldrums and dithering.
Memo from the editorial desk: My knowledge of Ilyin and Dugin is secondhand, based entirely on Snyder, Gessen, and Young. It is always best to go to primary sources. Alas, nothing is available at the public library. Powell's has a single book by Ilyin and a number by Dugin. I am curious but not curious enough to make an investment at present.
And baseball. My Phillies are playing in the postseason for the first time since 2011 after a maddeningly up and down year for a team I really like and often felt should be better than they were showing. Injuries to key guys played a part in the erratic performance. Right fielder Bryce Harper and second baseman Jean Segura spent almost half the season sidelined by injuries. Pitchers Zack Wheeler, Zach Eflin, and Seranthony Domíguez spent significant time on the disabled list.
The offense see-sawed between formidable and dormant. Pitching staff aces Wheeler and Aaron Nola were solid and at times dominant. The rest of the rotation was inconsistent, sometimes pretty dang good, others not so much. The bullpen was an arson squad early on. Management made some moves and adjustments and by year's end it was generally solid, sometimes stellar. The return of Domínguez after Tommy John surgery in 2020 was major.
So here we are. A team that management proclaimed in the spring was built to win games with offense subdued the Cardinals twice by scores of 2–0 in the wildcard series where Wheeler and Nola came up aces. Now the Phils are up 2 games to 1 over the NL East champion Braves following a bravura performance by Nola and the bullpen in game 3. They can move on to the NL championship series with a win today. They could also lose the next two to a fine Braves team.
I like to think there is a little magic in this group that never stopped battling when the going was rough. The team mentality throughout the year was "next guy up." It's not all on any one guy. After a loss, put it behind you and show up tomorrow. Braves fans have reason to think there's a little magic in their team too, which after all won 101 games during the regular season. That's not shabby. We will see what happens. Ah, baseball. Hope springs infernal.
New blog post: Indivisible Tuesday. October 9, 2022. Indivisible Oregon is an activist group that coalesced after the 2016 election to resist the Trump agenda. Much of the group's focus is on getting out the vote…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
Pictured below: Indivisible Tuesday, October, October 4, 2022. These are people MAGA Republicans characterize as socialist, Marxist liberals, maybe even antifa. A menacing bunch of rabble rousers I'm affiliated with, n'est-ce pas?
