The Russian Federation’s State Duma has recently passed an amendment to the current law On Days of Military Glory (Days of Victory). The list includes nine new Russian holidays, from the one commemorating the victory Novgorod Prince Alexander Nevsky won in 1242 over the Teutonic knights at Lake Chud to the one in honor of Admiral Nakhimov’s naval squadron’s 1853 battle against Turkish ships in Sinop Bay. In spite of acute inter-party rivalry and hostility, the Duma unanimously passed the amendment. For the question is about such a highly important thing as fostering the nationwide sense of patriotism, awareness of a great historical role, and pride for the country’s past. History has proved that when a society is “proud” and “aware of its historic role,” it can hold out against any ordeals, hardships, repression, or even humiliations. All hail to great Russia!
Among those who actively participate in enlarging the pantheon of Russia’s national heroes is the Russian Orthodox Church which has canonized tsars and generals, including the last Emperor Nicholas II and naval commander Fedor Ushakov. Next in line is Tsar Ivan (IV) the Terrible, “the gatherer of Russian lands,” and Grigory Rasputin, “the throne’s guardian.” In time these heroes of Russian history will be as much respected as, say, Princes Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoi.
When a “great past” is attached to a “great power,” those who do this, as a rule, do not look into the historical context or the dialectics of characters and events, scornfully rejecting the causes, circumstances and consequences of heroic deeds. Reality is often intertwined with myths here. Let us take two examples.
The State Duma resolved to consider on June 6, the day Tsar Peter I defeated the Swedish fleet near Cape Hanko (Gangut), one of Russia’s Victory Days. This was an episode in the 21-year Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Russian historian Platonov wrote in 1915 that this was a purely imperial war, for Tsar Peter, like his predecessors on the throne, tried to reach the Baltic Sea coast and seize what is now known as the Baltic states and Finland populated with “aliens.” The overwhelming majority of the lands conquered by Peter at the time had never been (and is not today, incidentally) any part of the “primordial” Russian lands.
Another milestone in Russian history is the great Battle of Borodino (September 7, 1812). Beyond any doubt, Russia was then waging a liberation war against Napoleon’s troops that had invaded its territory. But why is precisely this battle of the 1812 Patriotic War so much extolled as if it were a great victory? This is what historian Sergei Pushkarev writes about it, “Before the battle, [Field Marshal] Kutuzov saw that further retreat would be the most rational tactic for the Russian troops. But public opinion demanded that the French be stopped and prevented from capturing Moscow. This is why Kutuzov stopped and offered the enemy a decisive battle on August 26... Both sides suffered tremendous losses, still holding on to their positions; on the next day, the chary commander-in-chief ordered his army to retreat. A week later, the French took Moscow abandoned by the Russian troops without a single shot.” A stranger would find it difficult to view the Battle of Borodino as something other than a prelude to the loss of the capital, the greatest tragedy that a state can suffer in a war. The myth of Borodino, which in fact began to be shaped in the public mind almost immediately after the battle, has now materialized as another “victorious day of Russia.”
Let us also take a closer look at the victory of the Admiral Nakhimov’s Russian squadron over the Turkish fleet in Sinop Bay (1853) during the Crimean War. Indeed, that was a rapid (three and a half hours) victorious battle, the more so that the Russian fleet had a considerable advantage in the number of cannons (720 against 492). Yet, this victory could not reverse the Crimean War, the war which graphically illustrated — especially during the siege of Sevastopol — the weakness of Tsar Nicholas I’s imperial military machine. The obsolete Russian fleet ended up absolutely helpless against the Anglo-French squadron consisting of up-to-date screw-propeller ships and had to be sunk at the entrance to Sevastopol Bay (this original way of naval deployment was also resorted to in future wars). Sevastopol was surrendered after bloody battles, and Tsar Nicholas I died of grief and shame, some historians believe. P. A. Valuyev, a contemporary of those events, wrote in 1855, “It is true that Nakhimov routed the Turkish fleet at Sinop, but how many of Nakhimov’s ships have come to rest on the sea bottom since then! Why did we engage without calculating the consequences? Why did we go to war without screw-propeller ships? Will our posterity say one day that even the glorious defense of Sevastopol was nothing but a series of efforts on the part of subordinates to correct the mistakes made by their superiors?” In any case, the Battle of Sinop was of not the slightest strategic importance and was unable to vindicate in any way the shamefully begun and still more shamefully ended war. But Russians do not care about these details.
Unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are more inclined to regret and analyze rather than idealize their past. Still less are they disposed to respect their prominent compatriots — there will always be some do-gooder with a pathological propensity to iconoclasm. This is perhaps one of the reasons why we have almost missed the last train of European-style state building and are still riding on the undercarriage. All we have been doing is going to war: we saved the Poles near Khotyn, conquered Moscow for Prince Wladyslaw, the Baltic coast for Tsar Peter I, or Izmayil for the insatiable Catherine II, and defend Stalin’s empire at the expense of tens of millions of dead. Shall we celebrate this?
