On Resisting Evil by Force

A bright, polemical, hard work by Ilyin, first published in Berlin in 1925, when the impressions of the Civil War and memories of the horrors of the "red terror" were still painfully fresh for the Russian emigration. In this work dedicated to the "white warriors, bearers of the Orthodox sword," the ruler of the thoughts of the right-conservative wing of the Russian emigration resolutely condemns the "non-resistance" theory of Leo Tolstoy with its "sentimental moralism," draws a distinction between actual violence as senseless and cruel oppression and "compulsion" - i.e., conscious and morally justified suppression of some harmful and dangerous activity. He condemns the former and considers the latter a simple necessity for the continuation of human society.