To an Englishman, the 5th of November, with the act averted on that date, is more portentous than the 7th, and of course it scans better.
But to a Russian 7 November evokes two disasters that did happen. The second one, the Bolshevik takeover on that date in 1917, was more fateful. It also had wider implications.
However, it’s the first one that may perhaps elucidate our current plight. On 7 November, 1824, a raging storm broke out in the Baltic. The dams protecting St Petersburg burst, and the city was flooded.
Several hundred people and thousands of animals died, and it took the authorities many days to clear out the debris. Predictably, epidemics ensued, mainly of cholera, killing thousands more.
That event inspired one of the best-known poems in Russian literature, Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman. In the original Russian, Pushkin inaccurately described the eponymous statue of Peter I as copper, but then if a poet can’t claim poetic licence, who can?
Yet it’s not Pushkin’s response to the flood that’s relevant to our situation, but that of his close friend, the first Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev.
Over several years on either side of 1830, Chaadayev wrote his famous Philosophical Letters (since he wrote in French, as one did in those days, the actual title was Lettres philosophiques.) There he was scathing about Russian culture, describing it as backward and derivative.
“We did not take anything from the world; we did not give anything to the world,” wrote the intrepid philosopher with little regard for the inevitable consequences.
The government’s response followed a simple logic. Since any normal person knew that Russia was the most cultured, virtuous and spiritual nation on earth, no one at variance with that view could have been normal by definition.
Hence in 1836 Chaadayev was declared “clinically insane” and put under house arrest – the first but far from last time that the Russians used psychiatry for punitive purposes.
Yet the philosopher was not only a sane thinker, but also a prophetic one. His response to the 1824 flood should be chiselled in stone and prominently displayed in all Western capitals:
“We ought to worry not about fighting a calamity, but about not deserving it in the first place.”
Surely something to ponder during this Holy Week.
“Since any normal person knew that Russia was the most cultured, virtuous and spiritual nation on earth, no one at variance with that view could have been normal by definition. ”
Better our bad. At least it is ours. That is the attitude?
“the first but far from last time that the Russians used psychiatry for punitive purposes.”
The world famous American psychiatrist and actor Alec Baldwin only yesterday said that anyone voting for President Don must be mentally disturbed. I guess that means lock such persons up too.
I think there is something fishy about this quote. Are we to suppose that all those that perished were the worst sinners in all of Russia, and that they suffered divine retribution? Are natural disasters in fact supernatural? In a world created by an all powerful and all knowing God (which I assume is what Chaadayev believed) can any incident ever be truly random?
Is the gentleman’s statement merely metaphorical? Bah! A veritable can of worms!