Getting Into Putin’s Head: A Look at Ivan Ilyin

[Renauda]

I recall the historian Stephen Kotkin being ask in a YouTube presentation as to what would have happened with Russia if the White Russian Armies defeated the Bolsheviks in the Civil War following 1917. His response was to the effect that Nazism would have arrived and seized power in Russia before it ever happened in Germany.

Timothy Snyder’s following essay from 2018 sheds light on that response and how the writings of Ilyin have influenced Putin’s thinking:

https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-god-russian