Ivan Ilyin’s Existential Polemology and Its Signifi cance for SMO Interpretation

In the article the author examines Ivan Iliyin’s polemology (philosophy of war). As legal philosopher Ivan Ilyin teaches us, the people of the fi rst part of the 21st century, a lesson of thinking about war, its moral infl uence on personality and society, its spiritual sense. This lesson has to be learned to be able to understand the purport of the special military operation. Regardless of Ilyin’s political ways and errors after the revolution and in emigration, in the philosopher’s articles in the time of the First World War we fi nd the most compliant with the Russian tradition view on the war as an event in people’s life: war as guilt, as spiritual judgment and spiritual trial. This very view on the special operation and in general on the developing world confl ict allows us to assess the positive spiritual changes that take place now in Russian society.