[1][2] Ustryalov belonged to a tendency of Slavophile intellectuals, although from early on he departed from his contemporaries by being less enthusiastic about the Eastern Orthodox Church than the likes of Sergei Bulgakov and Peter Berngardovich Struve.

The main ideologue for the Smenovekhovtsy as his followers became known, Ustryalov used written works such as In the Struggle for Russia (1920) and Under the Sign of Revolution (1925) to argue against the views of Struve.

[5] With the introduction of the New Economic Policy Ustryalov saw a process of "normalisation" beginning in the Soviet Union and argued that increasingly the USSR was "like a radish" in that it was red on the outside but white on the inside.

[5] Ustryalov did not consider himself a communist, rejecting the ideology as a foreign import, but began to use the term "National Bolshevik" after discovering it in the writings of German dissident Ernst Niekisch.

[8] Trotsky regarded the forces that gathered around Ustryalov as not wanting Russia to return to a state of semi-colonial dependence on Western capitalism and therefore anticapitalist without being the least bit socialist.