A prophetic “extract from my shelves post” with a few comments by me at the end.
“Collected Works
Once a Grand Duke; Always a Grand Duke; Twilight of Royalty”
Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia
(P.S. this is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read)
“It mattered not that I was a Grand Duke. I was a Russian officer who had sworn to defend the nation from its enemies. I was a grandson of the man who had threatened to plough up the streets of Warsaw should the Poles once more dare disrupt the unity of his Empire. A seventy-two-year-old phrase of this same ancestor suddenly came to my mind. Across the report describing the “appalling actions" of a former Russian artillery officer, Bakunin, who had led the mob of German revolutionaries in an attack against a fortress in Saxony, Emperor Nicholas I wrote in two inch letters:
"Hurrah for our artillerymen!"
The similarity of our reactions struck me forcibly. That is how I felt when the red warrior Budenny smashed the legions of Pilsudsky and chased them all the way back to Warsaw. This time the compliments were due to the Russian cavalrymen but otherwise not much had changed since the days of my grandfather.
"But you seem to forget," said my faithful secretary, "that among other things the victory of Budenny means the end to the hopes of the White Army in the Crimea." Correct as was his remark, it failed to shatter my convictions. It was clear to me then, in the eventful summer of 1920, as it is now in the quieter days of 1933, that in scoring a decisive victory over the Poles the Soviet Government had done what any truly national government would have been obliged to do.
However ironical it might appear that the Unity of the Russian State had to be defended by the members of the Third Internationale, the fact remains that from that day on the Soviets were forced to pursue a purely national policy which happens to be the age-old policy introduced by Ivan the Terrible, crystallized by Peter the Great and brought to a climax by Nicholas I: To defend the borders of the State at all cost and step by step to fight toward the natural frontier in the west!
I feel certain that my sons will live to see the day when not only the nonsense of the independent Baltic republics will be brought to an end but Bessarabia and Poland will be reconquered by Russia and a considerable remapping of the frontier will take place in the Far East.”
———-
This nationalist policy of Russia that Grand Duke Alexander Romanov described here is the same policy that Putin is upholding with his invasion of Ukraine. Putin is the latest in a long line of Russian autocrats who believe in the divine rights of the state. His motivations are based in a centuries old fanaticism for Mother Russia that is more powerful than capitalism or religion or morality. That’s why he’s so dangerous, and never more so than now, with Trump and Musk using the United States as an international bludgeon.
I find it fascinating and horrifying in equal measures that we are still living the aftershocks of World War One, which is why I’m so passionate about history. For me, history is the map that can stop us from blundering around completely unaware of where we are.
#Russia #RussianHistory #history #extractfrommyshelves #imperialrussia #sovietrussia #soviethistory #memoir #memoirwriting #revolutionaryhistory #putin #russiannationalism #ukrainewar #trump #musk #internationalpolitics
