Generally, the concept of just war (bellum iustum) consists of two distinct parts: the right to wage war (ius ad bellum) and right or justice in war (ius in bello). The latter concerns conduct once combat has begun. Among other things, a war—if it is to be just—can only be waged by someone with the legitimate authority (auctoritas) to do so. Insofar as such authority derives either from the transcendent (as with divine right) or the immanent (as with the consent of the governed), theories of just war may be said to be either theological or secular. Thus, although not all theories of just war are necessarily theological, Ilyin’s, which is grounded in an idea of spirituality, is necessarily so.

In presenting a theological argument rather than a secular one, Ilyin circumvents two major logical problems regarding the authority of the Russian Whites to wage a new war against the Bolsheviks after the final defeat of the White Army in Yakutia in 1923. The first of these problems concerns the paradox of authorizing a war to restore an absolute monarchy without the authority of an absolute monarch in a polity that had overwhelmingly rejected the monarchy as an institution. Tsar Nicholas II had been dead for about five years; the White Army had been routed; and the nobility along with their supporters were scattered across Europe and the United States. The imperial line of succession was broken, and any merely human (re)installation of an autocratic tsar would de facto concede the point of opponents of absolute (that is, divinely ordained) monarchy, who advocated some degree of popular sovereignty. Nevertheless, as a ROVS ideologue, Ilyin needed to rally waning support for the monarchy by at least implying the possibility of overthrowing the Bolsheviks—the thinly-veiled practical purpose of ROVS.

This epistemological dimension of Ilyin’s argument is anything but trivial. The exiles and émigrés for whom he was writing were divided over precisely this issue—the nature and source of the authority (auctoritas) to govern with coercive force, including to wage war. Not everyone who opposed the Bolsheviks supported an autocracy, and of those who did, not all supported the same would-be autocrat. On the one hand, there were exiled Mensheviks and constitutional monarchists who formed part of the de facto anti-Bolshevik coalition.¹ They were no doubt relatively few in number compared to the absolute monarchists. Yet it was impossible to know how few, and a declaration of war in the name of an autocratic tsar would have alienated these much-needed co-belligerents. On the other hand, although most of the exiled and émigré forces supported the restoration of an absolute monarchy, there were in fact two competing claimants to the imperial throne. There was Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (1876–1938), who was the first cousin of the assassinated Tsar Nicholas II, and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (1856–1928), who was the late tsar’s first cousin once removed. Both of the Grand Dukes enjoyed significant support among the White émigrés, but Kirill Vladimirovich seemed to be the favorite in terms of his sheer number of supporters. Then again, ROVS, which was the largest organization of the exiled White military, backed Nikolai Nikolaevich.

The second logical problem concerning the authority of the Russian Whites to wage war against the Bolsheviks is related to the first. As explained above, Ilyin could not logically rely on
human authority other than that of a reigning autocratic tsar for his call to arms in
On Resistance to Evil by Force; to do so would be tantamount to admitting the validity of human authority and of at least some degree of self-governance. The difference between various types of representative government is a difference of degree, but the difference between autocracy and any sort of representative government is a difference of kind. For this reason, while Ilyin could not derive the requisite authority for the use of coercive force top-down from a dead tsar or a defunct monarchy, neither could he yield any further ground to bottom-up theories of governance in which the authority to use coercive force and wage war is derived from the consent of the governed or any portion thereof.

At the very least, Ilyin needed to prevent further damage to the influence of the imperial Orthodox epistemology and to contain the damage that had already been done. The damage, however, was extensive. Before Tsar Nicholas II was executed, he had abdicated the throne. Moreover, his brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, had refused to succeed him unless the people were permitted to vote for the continuation of the monarchy or the establishment of a republic, which never happened. Thus, not only did those actions leave Russia without a tsar and break the line of imperial succession, they also necessarily cast doubt on both absolute monarchy as a form of government and the divinely ordained status of the nobility, of which Ilyin himself was a member.

In merely proposing to put the future of Russia to a popular vote, Grand Duke Michael had already conceded the validity of some form of popular sovereignty—if only inadvertently. Rather than insisting on the will of God and his divine right, Michael Alexandrovich had offered to let the people determine the fate of Russia, the monarchy and, by extension, the privilege of the nobility. In simple terms, then, the monarchist Russian Whites for whom Ilyin was writing found themselves in an ideological catch twenty-two. According to the very form of government they sought to restore, no justification for the restoration of an absolute monarchy would suffice short of divine revelation. By framing his justification of coercive force in terms of resistance to ontic evil (e.g., in and through the Bolsheviks), Ilyin is able to rely—again, rhetorically—on
divine sovereignty, and thus, the lack of a tsar, who himself rules only by divine right, does not affect Ilyin’s justification of the use of coercive force. As mentioned above, Ilyin shares this reliance on divine authority with Pope Urban II and his “Deus vult!” justification for the European Crusades.

As a part of Ilyin’s rhetorical strategy, he carefully avoids direct reference to war as such in his discussion of the “resistance to evil by force” until late in the text, where he finally openly acknowledges the practical application of his argument in the context of war and begins to refer to “resistance to evil by force and the sword.” His reasons for initially avoiding discussion of “war” are entirely pragmatic: in proceeding this way, Ilyin appears to arrive at the implications of some greater truth rather than seeking to authorize war without the authority of a divinely-ordained monarch.

Conveniently for Ilyin, this workaround also redirects doubts about the validity of authority to wage war onto the Bolsheviks. Since theologies of just war assert rather than argue the authority of the monarchy to rule and wage war as an aspect of its divine mandate, no rebellion of the non-noble classes against the aristocracy (or the Church) could ever be “just,” because it would contravene divine order—natural law. The lower classes are by nature not divinely authorized to revolt. Thus, by doubling down on the imperial Orthodox worldview, Ilyin epistemologically pre-empts any argument for the validity of the Bolshevik Revolution as a popular uprising against the monarchy or the Russian Orthodox theology that supports it. In other words, he does not even address issues of popular sovereignty (or a dictatorship of the proletariat), because these concepts are nonsensical within the paradigm he asserts. In addition, his argument strategy also mitigates the problem of justifying a new war against the Red Army by implicitly denying the validity of the Bolsheviks’ Revolution against the monarchy in the first place.

Epistemological Propaganda

The execution of the tsar and the concessions of his brother, Grand Duke Michael (no doubt among other similar actions), weakened the idealist position of the monarchy and the Church in their epistemological battle royale against the materialist ontology of the Marxist Bolsheviks. While Ilyin was obviously concerned with defeating the Bolsheviks militarily, he was also keenly aware of the need to affirm and reinforce popular belief in an Orthodox-monarchist cosmology. He recognized that without its restoration, a White military victory would be of little lasting value.

In addition to presenting a theology of just war, On Resistance to Evil by Force thus also represents Ilyin’s effort to unring the bell of popular sovereignty. In his attempt to accomplish this task, he forces a strict dichotomy. Yet the either-or that Ilyin presents is not between absolute monarchy and popular sovereignty, but rather between ontic good and evil—between divine order and diabolical ruination. He presents the validity of the monarchy and the status of the nobility as consequent to, but inextricable from, the good, just as he clearly implies that their rejection betokens evil. In this way, Ilyin leverages his readers’ religious belief against any creeping doubts they might have in the White cause or the possibility of its success: either choose God and embrace the pre-revolutionary imperial social order as the good; or reject God’s will, embrace Satan, and declare yourself an enemy the worldly forces (that is, ROVS) that uphold God’s righteousness.

Part of the cunning of Ilyin’s argument is that it denies the possibility of pacifism or non-participation by excluding any third option. Ilyin defines evil not only as resistance to the White cause but as any failure to actively support it. The assumed metaphysics of his argument inculpate the Bolsheviks by negating the possibility of popular sovereignty, and his theodicy—his explanation of the problem of evil—makes enemies of any of the exiled Whites who, three years after the end of the Russian Civil War, may have been tempted to abandon the monarchist cause and get on with their new lives.² Having thus framed the conflict as an inescapable war—an immanentized eschaton—with a zero sum, Ilyin proceeds to offer a theology of just war.