Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
— Winston Churchill
Regular readers of Running Iron Report know that we consider the Russian Revolution to be a fulcrum of modern history. Taken not as a discreet event but as a part of the great convulsion of the First World War and a precursor event of the Second World War, the fall of the Romanovs and the rise of the Bolsheviks was an explosion that created the blast crater we all continue to live in.
Thus, you will find your correspondent most intrigued by the new Netflix limited series, The Last Czars.
It’s a hybrid of documentary and drama, which is a format I respond to, since it is analogous to my own approach to historical storytelling: Mix the drama with some analysis and you’ve got a cocktail that goes to my head like an ice-cold shot of vodka.
Readers will recall that I thoroughly enjoyed the hallucinatory Trotsky. It may seem sketchy to find entertainment in the travails of that tortured realm, but dammit, how can you not be entertained? This is the stuff out of which the most fantastical tales might be wrought. The history is tremendously significant — but we should not be so sober-sided that we pretend to dismiss its fascination as pure human drama. No game of thrones could be more lurid and strange than the story of the Romanovs — right from their ascension in 1612 and all the way through 1917.
Peter the Great’s 1697-’98 Grand Embassy to the capitals of Europe looked like an early 1970s Led Zeppelin tour — though I’m not aware that Led Zep got up to any dwarf tossing.
And has there ever been a stranger figure than Rasputin, the priapic peasant monk who insinuated himself into the Romanovs’ circle by means of his mysterious ability to alleviate the painful symptoms of the young heir Alexei’s hemophilia?
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Some of the commonalities between Russia and the United States fall right into my personal wheelhouse: Both nations are continent-spanning empires with wild hinterlands. For both, the Fur Trade was an early economic driver and impetus to exploration. The stark differences in political tradition are equally fascinating in their contrasts: Russia’s heritage is autocratic and aristocratic/oligarchical, while the American political culture has always been republican with a tendency toward our own oligarchical accretions of economic/political power. Russia’s history is, of course, unbelievably sanguinary; savage as our own history may be, it has nothing on the tale of the Bear.
If I had a whole separate lifetime for scholarly pursuits, I might well devote it to plumbing the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. As it stands, I must content myself merely to enjoy the spectacle.
Matthew says
Rasputin pops up as a supernatural villain in a lot of pulpy stories. (He’s Hellboy’s nemesis for example.) I imagine this has to do with his influence over the Romanov’s, his seemingly ability to heal their son, and most of all the fact that it took a hell of a lot to kill him!
He really does come across as a classic S&S character.
Matthew says
He’s probably the closest thing to the evil sorcerers that Conan battled a lot there is in real life.
Traven Torsvan says
That or Gilles De Rais if you believe the tales he was an initiate of a magickal order.
I believe he was also a partial inspiration for Sauron too
Matthew says
Gilles De Rais I believe was an influence on he legend of Bluebeard.
When the cashiers at fast food places ask for a name on the order, I always say Rasputin. Then I usually have to spell it and wait for them to pronounce it wrong when they call it.
OK, I’m doing that.
“Double chai latte with 14 shots of vodka for Ras… Raz… RazPUTIN?”
TJ says
First — great piece and second — the name drop is always funny. You have to sell it though. I’ve used Gern Blanston and if your in a page scenario, the options are limitless (keeping it clean).
Years ago when I worked dope, or vice ops, I would use the last name Scran (Narcs — backwards) just to see if anybody picked up on it.
Have to check out the series.
Nobody will ever forget the notorious Dan Burdett. Since we are discussing names. 🙂
TJ says
Or the Clown Car.…
“I’m not in the clown car am I?’ “Yes, yes you are.….”
“Oh”
I consider that incident one of my highest accomplishments. 🤠
John M Roberts says
‘ve long thought that Vladimir Putin should make himself king of Ethiopia. Then he could be titled “Ras Putin.”
lane batot says
Ha! I myself am just waiting for someone to inadvertently(?) refer to him publicly as “Vladimir Fartin’ ”.….
Saddle Tramp says
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also wanted to plumb the depths of the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma and he did so at the Hoover Institution’s huge archives on Russia. He would know well about qualifying those historical expungements. Anyway, there is an excellent article in the current Hoover Digest on his historic visits to mine the archives and revelations in research for his historical novels about the fall of imperial Russia after the revolution in 1917 as well as various other materials of interest.
A quote:
“Genuinely human freedom is inner freedom given to us by God.… freedom to decide upon our own acts as moral responsibility for them—that which was called in an age-old and now quaint, word: honor.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Coming for one who knew the inside of the gulag most assuredly authenticates such a statement.