“The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery, not the rude glory of the Norman epoch, forms the cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy,” – wrote Marx in his “Secret Diplomatic History of the 18th century”.
Marquis de Custine (1790–1857) was a French aristocrat and writer who is best known for his travel writing, in particular his account of his visit to Russia, La Russie en 1839. He saw exactly the same what Marx did:
“Russia had herself become a semi-Asiatic country. And having been for centuries oppressed and humiliated by the Tatar hordes, Russian rulers were now inspired by a subconscious desire to compensate for these humiliations by inflicting them on others—at home and abroad. Suffering, after all, did not make people humane. It was a habit of princes and of people to take their revenge upon the innocent. They fancied themselves strong when they created victims. Thus the Russians had now come to occupy with relation to Europe the place the Mongols had once occupied with relation to Russia The role of buffer between Europe and Asia, once filled by Russia herself, had come now to be assumed by the Poles.
The patriarchal tyranny of the Asiatic governments, in contact with the theories of modern philanthropy, the character of the people of the East and West, incompatible by nature, yet united together by coercion in a state of society semi-barbarous, but kept in order by fear, present a spectacle that can be only seen in Russia, and, assuredly, one which no man who thinks, would regret the trouble of going to contemplate.”
De Custine’s book and Stalin regime >
Veche Assembly of Kyiv Rus which Moscow never had >
