In 1934, his refusal to comply with Nazi directives to spread propaganda led to his dismissal from the Russian Academic Institute, stripping him of employment opportunities.

[4] Financial support from Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1938 allowed Ilyin to remain in Switzerland albeit barred from work or political engagement.

His works predominantly revolved around religion and Russia, although he diverged from Vladimir Solovyov's ideologies, advocating a global theocracy with whom the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance of the early 20th century is usually associated.

[1] Instead, Ilyin championed a patriarchal model of governance for Russia, rooted on Orthodoxy and faith in the autocratic tsar, distinguishing between autocracy and tyranny.

[11] Remaining true to Right Hegelianism throughout his life, Ilyin explored themes of statehood, law, and power in world history.

[14][15] Ilyin's views on Russia's social structure and world history influenced some post-Soviet intellectuals and politicians, including Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ilyin worked with Natalia on a translation of "Anarchism" by Paul Eltzbacher and a treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ("Idea of the General will") which were never published.

[21] Ilyin moved to Western Europe (Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin, Göttingen and Paris) studying the latest trends in European philosophy including: philosophy of life and phenomenology influenced by Husserl, who concentrated on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness; Scheler, who published "The Nature of Sympathy"; Fichte and Schelling on Absolute idealism.

After returning from Vienna, Ilyin was obsessed with psychoanalysis, diagnosing everything and everyone in Freudian terms, reducing every personal problem to neurotic symptoms, and according to one observer, psychoanalyzing every little gesture of those around him.

During the April Crisis (1917) he agreed with the Kadet Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavel Milyukov who staunchly opposed Petrograd Soviet demands for peace at any cost.

[31] The Moscow State Conference convened by Kerensky's Second Government was attended by actual and former Duma members, representatives of all major political parties, commercial and industrial organizations, the unions, army and academic institutions.

[35][40] On 29 September some 160 prominent intellectuals and their families were expelled (at their own expense and not allowed to return without the permission of the Soviet authorities) on a so-called "philosophers' ship" from Petrograd to Stettin, where they arrived on 2 October.

Beginning on 7 April the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service required an Aryan certificate from all employees and officials in the public sector, including education.

Ilyin confessed that he literally forced himself to read Lenin's works, the materials of party congresses and plenums, the Comintern, and the Soviet press.

[citation needed] On 5 August, Ilyin's house was searched, his letters were examined, and he himself was taken away for interrogation, where he was asked about his source of income and for details of the people abroad with whom he corresponded.

[70] On the opening of the reorganized institute [71] Ilyin reported on the plans of the Communist International to conquer the world; he held a lecture on the work of Ivan Bunin who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 1946 Ilyin stated he was never a Hegelian, as he himself expressed in the introduction to the German translation of his theses, a revised version of "Die Philosophie Hegels als kontemplative Gotteslehre".

Defunct In exile, Ivan Ilyin argued that Russia should not be judged by what he called the Communist danger it represented at that time but should look forward to a future in which it would liberate itself with the help of Christian fascism.

Ilyin wrote that many Russians believed that private property and large estates are gained not through hard labor but through power and maladministration of officials.

[74] Drawing on historical, geographical, ethnographical, linguistic, musicological and religious studies, the Eurasianists suggested that the lands of the Russian Empire, and then of the Soviet Union, formed a natural unity, making Russia a distinct civilization, neither European nor Asian but Eurasian, according to Paul Robinson.

[126] The initial support proved to be short-lived: he had fallen victim to Émigré denunciations, which prompted the search of his house by police and subsequent interrogation.

[127] On August 5, Ilyin's house was searched, his letters were looked over, and he was taken away for interrogation, where he was asked about his source of income and for details of the people abroad with whom he corresponded.

Finally, fascism was right since it derived from a healthy national-patriotic sensibility, without which a people can neither lay claim to its existence nor create a unique culture.

A year later Roman Gul accused Ilyin of antisemitism: "I still have among the clippings your pro-Hitler article where you recommend the Russians not to look at Hitlerism "through the eyes of Jews" and sing the praises of this movement!

[140]Paul Valliere, professor of Religion, at Butler University, wrote "Like Hegel, Ilyin was a statist and a monarchist, but to deny that liberal values occupied a central place in his political thought is a mistake.

Paul Robinson (University of Ottawa Faculty of Social Sciences), the author of the book "Russian Conservatism", points out if you want to find a fascist Ilyin, you can.

[142]According to Wolfgang Eilenberger, the author of "Time of the Magicians: The Great Decade of Philosophy, 1919-1929" at least three contemporary philosophers didn't believe in parliamentary democracy during the Weimar Republic[relevant?

[127] Having been taught a severe personal lesson by having his Hegel dissertation manuscript, notes, and materials confiscated in Austria at the outbreak of the First World War (July Crisis), which then had to be rewritten or reconstructed, all the evidence suggests that Ilyin took care to retain and preserve his papers and his books for posterity.

He authored several articles about Ilyin and came up with the idea of transferring his remains from Switzerland to the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where the philosopher had hoped to find his resting place.

[150] In May 2006, and with the financial help of Viktor Vekselberg the MSU transferred Ilyin's papers and books to the Science Library of the Lomonosov Moscow State University.