Between Hitler and the USSR: The War and the Doctrine of Totalitarianism. Three New Texts by Ivan Ilyin 1940–1941

Abstract

At first, in the West and in the press of the Russian emigration, there was delight at the “Munich conspiracy” in the autumn of 1938 between Britain and France — both Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler’s road to the USSR was open. Then the enthusiastic were disappointed — in August 1939, the Molotov—Ribbentrop Pact was concluded between Germany and the USSR, and in September the World War began, in which the Munich sides became enemies. The Russian emigrant press once again began to talk critically about the “totalitarian” USSR, Germany and Italy. And our hero from Switzerland writes treatises against the totalitarian threat in modern Europe and publishes them in Yugoslavia. He was the Russian philosopher, political thinker and publicist Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883–1954).