Writer dreamed of a mythical Russia
In the early 1900s, in Tsarist Russia, young intellectuals with means would study philosophy and history. Some would feel a longing for their country to become more modern, to become a nation under the rule of law, as other nations in the world had done.
One such young scholar was Ivan Ilyin. His country was destined to change, but not in the way that he desired. The Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in a dictatorship, not a nation of laws. Ilyin made his views known and was told by the secret police to leave Russia. He left.
Living in exile in Germany, he began to create a story of Russia. In this story, in Ilyin’s mind, Russia became the one innocent country. It wasn’t a nation, so much as a civilization. God played a brief role in Ilyin’s myth. God created people, but with the creation of people, God shattered and lost all power. A sinful, corrupt world remained. But no one should worry. A leader, Russian, was to arise. A redeemer. Someone the people would recognize and follow. The people would obey all the laws because this was Russia, where things were pure. There would be elections, but even if the numbers didn’t always add up in the leader’s favor, the people would recognize that the special leader was the leader. It would be a special Russian form of democracy.
There would be problems with outside countries, of course, the decadent ones, but pure Russia would always prevail. The civilization that was Russia would be all-important and would spread, should spread, because it was pure. Because it was a “civilization” and not a nation, borders were not all that important. The purity, the innocence of Russia — that was the important part.
The problem that Ilyin had trouble solving was succession. Who would follow the leader?
Ilyin wrote pamphlets and books and a 40-volume set detailing his myth, and then he gradually faded into near obscurity.
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Meanwhile, the Soviet Union under the communist dictatorship did become modern, in a sense. It became industrialized. Cities and factories were built with money gained from state control of agriculture. The price for reorganization of agriculture was the starvation of millions. An additional price for state control of power was the imprisonment of millions in Soviet labor camps. Close to a million others were shot.
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The emerging Russian Federation, led first by Boris Yeltsin and then by his successor, Vladimir Putin, toyed initially with capitalism and democracy. Society in Russia seemed stable at last under Putin and most people were relieved. Foreign relations were generally positive, even with neighboring Ukraine, which had been in the Soviet Union but formed its own nation after the break-up. In 2004, Putin spoke favorably about Ukraine joining the European Union. That would benefit Russia, he said.
But the problems in Russia were deep. A market economy, as opposed to the centrally planned economy of communism, requires the rule of law, and the structure for the rule of law was weak. A few individuals, including Putin, became very wealthy, very quickly. Wealthy and powerful. Rule was not democratic, but oligarchic. A wealthy few ruled. Election fraud became common.
Also, Putin and others began reading Ivan Ilyin. The myth of the innocent Russia in perpetual conflict with the decadent and aggressive West appealed to these wealthy men. It helped justify their extreme wealth and was a useful propaganda tool. Feed the people the myth of pure Russia, and you don’t have to spend money to improve their lives. Make the West the enemy, and the people won’t ask too many questions. In 2005, Putin, the “redeemer,” had Ilyin’s remains removed from Switzerland, where he had died, and reburied in Russia.
Russian economic growth slowed with the international financial collapse in 2008. Subsequent elections were blatantly fraudulent, and citizens began to protest. Both Putin and the state-controlled media stated without proof that the protesters were paid by Westerners. This was the aggressive, decadent West, they said, seeking to attack pure Russia. Putin also began to assert that Ukraine, recognized by international law, including Russia, as a sovereign state for 20 years, was actually supposed to be part of Russia. “Civilization” was more important than legal boundaries. About this time, Russia made its first cyberattack, on Estonia. It was the first attack of the Russian cyberwar against any and all democracies.
Ukraine, at the same time, although also experiencing corruption by its leaders, was moving slowly toward association with Europe. The business community and the young people wanted the European model, and in 2013 the president was poised to sign an association agreement with the European Union, a preliminary step toward membership. Then the president, after speaking with Putin, decided not to sign. Protests began, violence against protesters resulted in larger protests, the president escaped to Russia, new elections were held, and Ukraine continued its path towards the rule of law.
On February 24, 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine while simultaneously conducting cyberwarfare and a propaganda blitz to confuse the world about what was happening. It wanted the world and its own people to believe that Ukrainians were rising up against their own. Russian armored vehicles were unmarked and soldiers wore uniforms with no insignia. Ukrainians who resisted the Russian invasion were called, by Putin, “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russiaphobes, and anti-Semites,” controlled by, as one of his advisors stated, “the Nazi junta that the Americans had installed in Kyiv.” The Russian head of security put it this way, “If the world were saved from demonic constructions such as the United States, it would be easier for everyone to live. And one of these days it will happen.”
This story, from Ilyin to invasion, is told by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his book “The Road to Unfreedom” (Penguin, 2018, 2023 preface, 284 pp). A second Russian invasion of Ukraine was launched in 2024, and Ukrainians continue to resist.
(Anne Bevilacqua is a book lover who lives in Haywood County. abev1@yahoo.com.)
