Despite all the horrors of war, Holocaust and unseen destruction of Europe, Ivan Ilyin did not reject the ideas of fascism but immediately proposed how to make it better, by avoiding several mistakes his contemporaries made. This is something you can get convicted with in today’s Russia under the “Article 354.1 Criminal code of the Russian Federation. Rehabilitation of Nazism”. The very fact that the rulers of Russia, the Duma, the Church and the TV are cleansing the image of Ilyin, legitimizing him as a true Russian philosopher cannot but cause total rejection and resentment. Moreover in a country where its people are
proud of “defeating fascism”, cherishing Ilyin is a tragic irony.