XI. Chapter 3. Dark Shepherd
In his astounding poem “Prediction”, which the young Lermontov wrote in 1830, he talks about the uncrowning of the royal dynasty, of the people’s renunciation of their former rulers, and the rape and pillage that would sweep across the country. Amid all this mayhem, as he continues, there would appear a “grim-faced powerful man” with “a Damascus steel knife” in his hands who would jeer at all the sufferings.
In another edition of the poem’s ending, this man wears “a black cloak” and has “a majestic face” replacing “the inclining plume” of the original version. Either way, the last line testifies to Lermontov’s inability to see clearly through the womb of the coming century. “The inclining plume” is but a tribute to youthful romanticism, the transference of an “artifact” onto the future era. “The black cloak” is a poetic metaphor standing for the pitch-black darkness, which would envelop this ghastly figure lurking in the haze and clouds a whole century away. As for “the noble face”, here we may deal with a characteristic trait of Lermontov’s Demon transferred upon an uncannily powerful and deeply demonized human being. Or, perhaps, it is an indication that the poet’s prophetic vision has two historical figures of the coming century merge into a single image – they as though overlap on the time continuum, for Lermontov could not clearly differentiate between the dark giant and his noble-faced predecessor.
Two years before the revolution of 1905, another poet, this time Alexander Blok, wrote another poem. In the beginning of it, he describes, and rather precisely at that, the atmosphere in society just before the revolution. Yet, this description abruptly slips into a portrait of a “dark, malevolent, and ferocious pacifier of the people” that “drives people to the unknown abysses” with “an iron staff” in hand. The poem concludes with “Oh, God! Away from this fate!”
Yet, dodging this fate was too late. The appearance of this being had been predetermined too long ago and by too formidable forces coming from the infracosmos. Russian literature of the nineteenth century has another prediction of him, even more staggering considering that, among other things, it belongs to the author who was far from the metahistorical ideas and premonitions of the distant future. It was written in the form of prose, not poetry, and its content is so profound that I will have to depart from the rule which I normally adhere to in this writing: to not overindulge in citations. I feel compelled to give a whole series of them and only regret that the boundaries of this book cannot contain everything which concerns the forewarning about this being in a rather well-known work of the Russian classics (“The History of a Town” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, translator’s note).
“This is a man of an average stature with a wooden-like face… coal-black hair covers his conical skull and tightly rims – just like a yarmulke – his narrow… forehead. His eyes are… crested with somewhat swollen lids. His glance is clear and unwavering. His lips are thin, pale, and fluffed with a trimmed bristle of moustache. His jaws are developed but have no stark predatory expression. Rather, there is an inexplicable aura about them to crush or bite something asunder. He dons a buttoned-up military style frockcoat.”
You read this – and cringe. What is this? When and whom was it written about? It was written in the 1860’s. Yet, why is there such an incredible coincidence with the appearance, which our generation, unlike the people of the 1860’s, is so well familiar? Let’s read on:
“This face is questionless. On the contrary, all its features emanate some soldier-like, imperturbable confidence that all questions have long been cleared. What are these questions? How have they been cleared?... Perhaps, this is a question of the all-out extermination or, maybe, of simply having all people develop protuberated, wheel-shaped chests? Nothing is certain. It is only evident that this unknown question is going to be cleared at any cost. As such an unnatural timing of the known to the unknown is bound to entangle further on, the only consequence of this state of affairs is the total panic of fear.”
“The viewer’s gaze meets an idiot of the purest kind that made some macabre resolution and gave an oath to himself to deliver on it... When idiocy is complemented with authority, the task of safeguarding society becomes immensely complicated.”
“Ugryum-Burcheev numbered among the most fanatical neutralizers. Having drawn a straight line, he set to compress the visible and invisible worlds into it so that it would become impossible to move either forward or back, either turn left or right.” (*1) “There is nothing more dangerous than the imagination of a scoundrel that has no restraints whatsoever and is totally unperturbed with a prospect of corporal punishment. Once excited, it shakes off any yoke of reality and starts presenting the most grandiose undertakings to its bearer”. Ugryum-Burcheev (from Russian, ugryumiy or «угрюмый» translates as grim, and Burcheev seems to be a derivative of burchat’ – “бурчать” – which means to mumble, t/n) was “a scoundrel down to his core, by all his thoughts… Having ramified with an impenetrable mesh of roots and offshoots, a virtuosic linearity sat tight in his somber head like a willow stake. It was a mysterious forest filled with magical dreams. Mysterious shadows filed monotonously one after another; buttoned-up and trimmed, they just kept on walking in their uniform attires… Well ahead of their arrival to Glupov (a derivative of glupiy – “глупый” – translated as foolish from Russian, so Glupov basically means “Stupid Town”, t/n), they had already sketched out a whole systemized drivel in their heads, down to the smallest detail, of how to organize and regulate life in this ill-starred municipium.”
==========================================================
*1 Hardly did it occur to Saltykov-Shchedrin (a prominent Russian writer and satirist of the nineteenth century, t/n) that this striving to compress everything into a single straight line may have been a glimpse of his reminiscence of the milieu in the one-dimensional Pit of Shadanakar.
==========================================================
“The next day upon his arrival, he [Ugryum Burcheev] walked about the whole town… It was a long walk, his hand stretching out and his mind busy with scheming all along. Only when his gaze met the river, he felt that something out of the ordinary had happened to him. He forgot… he did not foresee anything like
this… A meandering strip of the liquid steel sparkled into his eyes, and not only did it not disappear – neither did it stop in its track under the gaze of this administrative basilisk.
– Who is there? – he asked, terrified.
Yet, the river continued with its murmur, and there was something tempting, almost ominous about it.”
“…At home, it took him only a minute to roundly resolve the question. He set to accomplish two equally marvelous feats: to destroy the town and eliminate the river. The means for performing the first feat had been already thought out; the other feat loomed vague and fragmentary. Yet, as there was no force in nature to convince this scoundrel in whatsoever ignorance of his, this ignorance was not only equipotent to but, in a sense, even more solid than knowledge. He was neither a technician, nor an engineer. Yet, he was a staunch scoundrel, and this is also a kind of force capable of conquering the world.”
“The town lay low; the air was stale and muggy. He did not make any arrangements, did not voice any thoughts, did not share his plans with anyone yet, but all understood – it was the end.”
As all those who have read Shchedrin know, the end began from the complete destruction of the old town and dumping all wreckage debris, including the dung, by the riverside.
“Finally, the craved-for moment arrived… Having summoned budochniks (low-rank policemen in the Russian Empire, t/n), he brought them to the river’s bank, step-measured the space, pointed with his eyes to the flow, and said in a clear voice:
– From here – to there!
However much were the commoners browbeaten, yet even they felt agitated. By then, only the human-made had been destroyed, but now there came the turn for something eternal, not of human making…
– Go! – he ordered to the budochniks glancing down the wavering crowd.
The fight with nature commenced.”
The fight with nature!.. According to a widespread opinion, Shchedrin rendered, albeit satirically, the image Arakcheev in Ugryum-Burcheev. They say there is a certain similarity between the Shchedrin’s character and the image of the detestable favorite. They also find there a caricature of military settlements, which Ugryum-Burcheev entertained in his administrative and town-building designs. It is also clear that another real historical personage, another despot was reflected in this image that was even closer to Shchedrin chronologically – Nikolai I. Yet… fighting with nature? Neither Arakcheev, nor Nikolai I wiped out entire towns so as to build new ones along their half-witted gridded outlines. Neither one, nor the other mobilized the entire populace for a meaningless and blind fight with nature.
Finally, the heaps of rubbish dammed up the river.
“There was a sound of crackling, whistling, and some monstrous gurgling… Then all quietened down. The river stopped for a minute and then started overflowing across the meadow side. By the evening, the overflow was so tremendous that its boundaries were nowhere to be seen while the water continued to rise. A hum was heard from somewhere; it seemed that entire villages were being crushed under the accompaniment of screams, moans, and curses. Hay stacks, logs, rafts, wreckage of village houses were floating and, having reached the dam, piling up in one spot.”
It is known that Ugryun-Burcheev’s designs were dashed the following morning. Overnight, the river washed out and carried away the dam and was now coursing again within its banks. Then the bewildered reformer decided to abandon the river and build the dreamed-of town Nepreklonsk (it can be translated as “Unyielding Town”, t/n) in a new place, on a smooth lowland. There, finally, overcome with sleepiness, he lay down holding an axe in his hand.
“Emaciated, humiliated, and ruined Glupovo residents breathed freely again after a long break. They looked at each other and, all of a sudden, felt ashamed. They did not understand what exactly had happened around them, but they felt that the air was filled with obscenities, and it was impossible to breathe it any longer. Did they have a history? Were there any moments in this history when they could express their independence? They remembered nothing. They could only recall to have had Urus-Kugush-Kil’dibaevy, Negodyaevy (a derivative of “negodyai” or villain, t/n), Borodavkiny (can be translated as “the warty ones”, t/n), and, to add insult to injury, this awful, graceless scoundrel! And all these smothered, gnawed, and ripped them with teeth – for the sake of what? Their chests were flushed with blood, their faces cringed in rage when recalling the graceless idiot that had come God knows from where, with an axe in hand and inscrutable impudence to pass a verdict on the past, present, and future…”
Ugryum-Burcheev awakened and resumed erecting Nepreklonsk, but the atmosphere had subtly changed. “He grew suspicious. He was stunned with silence during the day and rustle during the night. At twilight, he saw some shadows roaming about the town and disappearing God knows where. At sunrise, the very shadows reappeared in the town and promptly ran off home. This phenomenon repeated several days in a row, and every time he was about to leave his house and investigate into the cause of the nightly tumult, but each time a superstitious fear held him back.”
Citations have come to a close.
Surprising about them, of course, is not the fact that the great satirist gave a one-sided, unrealistic, and sharply grotesque image taken to monstrosity. That is a day’s job for a satirist. What is surprising is that, having started out from concrete historical figures of the past, figures of a lower stature, he had preempted a colossal figure of the future in his writing. Of course, he had depicted it only from the angle likening it to the Russian despots of the past. Yet, long, acute, and much anguished peering of the thinker into images typical of Russian history and its tendencies had led him to prophesize of the one, in whom the tyrannical tendency, which had shown up in Biron, Pavel, Arakcheev, and Nikolai I, would reach a climax only in the future – there would appear someone at the heights of power who, in one of his most essential aspects, would resemble Ugryum-Burcheev more than all his other precursors.
The great tyrants of Russian history, such as Ivan the Terrible and Nikolai I, were instruments of the demon of “greatpower” statehood – and just that. This exhausted their metahistorical significance, except that in the first period of his reign, Ivan IV had been an instrument of the demiurge, while in the second his will was aligned with Velga’s. The next Zhrugr would have Stalin as his instrument, too. Yet, by no means would this exhaust Stalin’s metahistorical role.
However great was Russia under Ivan the Terrible and, especially, under Nikolai I, her victories and defeats, the waxing or waning of her power had a direct impact only upon a limited geographical area: Middle Europe, as well as the Near and Middle East. The belligerent Russian ideology of the first two Zhrugrs – the idea of the Third Rome and the concept of “autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationalism” were marked with parochialism, both national and confessional. It well agreed with the then stage of technical development and the level of international ties in the world, which humanity had achieved by then. Yet, the ties were strengthening and branching out. As for technological achievements, having brought continents closer together and caused the warlike neighbors to bump foreheads just like rams hitting one another, they had changed the very notion of geographical space. For the first time, Russia found herself at the vanguard of history, and this was the very minute when the international Doctrine gained prominence inside the country. Russia became the first country armed with such an ideology that could potentially sweep across the whole globe. Moreover, the Doctrine’s inner impulse presupposed precisely such a planetwide expansion. When we talk about global empires or the global pretensions of great conquerors of the past from Genghis Khan to Napoleon and the British Empire, we use the word “global” in its conventional sense. Revolutionary Russia with her Doctrine was the first bearer of the global tendency in its absolute sense. The secret of its influence was that, unlike the dream of establishing the hegemony of a certain people (this dream is utopian, for no people is numerous enough to realize it), now the idea of an international commonwealth of nations was put forth. This commonwealth was to be bound together with a new social order, which was to spread like fire all over the world as a result of revolutionary outbreaks. The galvanizing, liberating significance of this concept for the countries outside of Russia was immense, especially for the colonies and half-colonies of the East and South. In some countries, it all gradually unfolded as outlined in Moscow; other countries underwent these changes, for the most part, thanks to the Soviet army’s bayonets. There were quite a few countries, such as India or Burma, wherein this revolutionizing principle dramatically changed its ethical and political coloration. Be that as it may, not only the Russian suprapeople’s masses but also other suprapeoples, other nations became actively involved in these revolutionary or transformational activities. Russia only strived, whenever possible, to keep to her guiding role (occasionally, she succeeded in doing this, but, over time, her prominence increasingly faded).
In another edition of the poem’s ending, this man wears “a black cloak” and has “a majestic face” replacing “the inclining plume” of the original version. Either way, the last line testifies to Lermontov’s inability to see clearly through the womb of the coming century. “The inclining plume” is but a tribute to youthful romanticism, the transference of an “artifact” onto the future era. “The black cloak” is a poetic metaphor standing for the pitch-black darkness, which would envelop this ghastly figure lurking in the haze and clouds a whole century away. As for “the noble face”, here we may deal with a characteristic trait of Lermontov’s Demon transferred upon an uncannily powerful and deeply demonized human being. Or, perhaps, it is an indication that the poet’s prophetic vision has two historical figures of the coming century merge into a single image – they as though overlap on the time continuum, for Lermontov could not clearly differentiate between the dark giant and his noble-faced predecessor.
Two years before the revolution of 1905, another poet, this time Alexander Blok, wrote another poem. In the beginning of it, he describes, and rather precisely at that, the atmosphere in society just before the revolution. Yet, this description abruptly slips into a portrait of a “dark, malevolent, and ferocious pacifier of the people” that “drives people to the unknown abysses” with “an iron staff” in hand. The poem concludes with “Oh, God! Away from this fate!”
Yet, dodging this fate was too late. The appearance of this being had been predetermined too long ago and by too formidable forces coming from the infracosmos. Russian literature of the nineteenth century has another prediction of him, even more staggering considering that, among other things, it belongs to the author who was far from the metahistorical ideas and premonitions of the distant future. It was written in the form of prose, not poetry, and its content is so profound that I will have to depart from the rule which I normally adhere to in this writing: to not overindulge in citations. I feel compelled to give a whole series of them and only regret that the boundaries of this book cannot contain everything which concerns the forewarning about this being in a rather well-known work of the Russian classics (“The History of a Town” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, translator’s note).
“This is a man of an average stature with a wooden-like face… coal-black hair covers his conical skull and tightly rims – just like a yarmulke – his narrow… forehead. His eyes are… crested with somewhat swollen lids. His glance is clear and unwavering. His lips are thin, pale, and fluffed with a trimmed bristle of moustache. His jaws are developed but have no stark predatory expression. Rather, there is an inexplicable aura about them to crush or bite something asunder. He dons a buttoned-up military style frockcoat.”
You read this – and cringe. What is this? When and whom was it written about? It was written in the 1860’s. Yet, why is there such an incredible coincidence with the appearance, which our generation, unlike the people of the 1860’s, is so well familiar? Let’s read on:
“This face is questionless. On the contrary, all its features emanate some soldier-like, imperturbable confidence that all questions have long been cleared. What are these questions? How have they been cleared?... Perhaps, this is a question of the all-out extermination or, maybe, of simply having all people develop protuberated, wheel-shaped chests? Nothing is certain. It is only evident that this unknown question is going to be cleared at any cost. As such an unnatural timing of the known to the unknown is bound to entangle further on, the only consequence of this state of affairs is the total panic of fear.”
“The viewer’s gaze meets an idiot of the purest kind that made some macabre resolution and gave an oath to himself to deliver on it... When idiocy is complemented with authority, the task of safeguarding society becomes immensely complicated.”
“Ugryum-Burcheev numbered among the most fanatical neutralizers. Having drawn a straight line, he set to compress the visible and invisible worlds into it so that it would become impossible to move either forward or back, either turn left or right.” (*1) “There is nothing more dangerous than the imagination of a scoundrel that has no restraints whatsoever and is totally unperturbed with a prospect of corporal punishment. Once excited, it shakes off any yoke of reality and starts presenting the most grandiose undertakings to its bearer”. Ugryum-Burcheev (from Russian, ugryumiy or «угрюмый» translates as grim, and Burcheev seems to be a derivative of burchat’ – “бурчать” – which means to mumble, t/n) was “a scoundrel down to his core, by all his thoughts… Having ramified with an impenetrable mesh of roots and offshoots, a virtuosic linearity sat tight in his somber head like a willow stake. It was a mysterious forest filled with magical dreams. Mysterious shadows filed monotonously one after another; buttoned-up and trimmed, they just kept on walking in their uniform attires… Well ahead of their arrival to Glupov (a derivative of glupiy – “глупый” – translated as foolish from Russian, so Glupov basically means “Stupid Town”, t/n), they had already sketched out a whole systemized drivel in their heads, down to the smallest detail, of how to organize and regulate life in this ill-starred municipium.”
==========================================================
*1 Hardly did it occur to Saltykov-Shchedrin (a prominent Russian writer and satirist of the nineteenth century, t/n) that this striving to compress everything into a single straight line may have been a glimpse of his reminiscence of the milieu in the one-dimensional Pit of Shadanakar.
==========================================================
“The next day upon his arrival, he [Ugryum Burcheev] walked about the whole town… It was a long walk, his hand stretching out and his mind busy with scheming all along. Only when his gaze met the river, he felt that something out of the ordinary had happened to him. He forgot… he did not foresee anything like
this… A meandering strip of the liquid steel sparkled into his eyes, and not only did it not disappear – neither did it stop in its track under the gaze of this administrative basilisk.
– Who is there? – he asked, terrified.
Yet, the river continued with its murmur, and there was something tempting, almost ominous about it.”
“…At home, it took him only a minute to roundly resolve the question. He set to accomplish two equally marvelous feats: to destroy the town and eliminate the river. The means for performing the first feat had been already thought out; the other feat loomed vague and fragmentary. Yet, as there was no force in nature to convince this scoundrel in whatsoever ignorance of his, this ignorance was not only equipotent to but, in a sense, even more solid than knowledge. He was neither a technician, nor an engineer. Yet, he was a staunch scoundrel, and this is also a kind of force capable of conquering the world.”
“The town lay low; the air was stale and muggy. He did not make any arrangements, did not voice any thoughts, did not share his plans with anyone yet, but all understood – it was the end.”
As all those who have read Shchedrin know, the end began from the complete destruction of the old town and dumping all wreckage debris, including the dung, by the riverside.
“Finally, the craved-for moment arrived… Having summoned budochniks (low-rank policemen in the Russian Empire, t/n), he brought them to the river’s bank, step-measured the space, pointed with his eyes to the flow, and said in a clear voice:
– From here – to there!
However much were the commoners browbeaten, yet even they felt agitated. By then, only the human-made had been destroyed, but now there came the turn for something eternal, not of human making…
– Go! – he ordered to the budochniks glancing down the wavering crowd.
The fight with nature commenced.”
The fight with nature!.. According to a widespread opinion, Shchedrin rendered, albeit satirically, the image Arakcheev in Ugryum-Burcheev. They say there is a certain similarity between the Shchedrin’s character and the image of the detestable favorite. They also find there a caricature of military settlements, which Ugryum-Burcheev entertained in his administrative and town-building designs. It is also clear that another real historical personage, another despot was reflected in this image that was even closer to Shchedrin chronologically – Nikolai I. Yet… fighting with nature? Neither Arakcheev, nor Nikolai I wiped out entire towns so as to build new ones along their half-witted gridded outlines. Neither one, nor the other mobilized the entire populace for a meaningless and blind fight with nature.
Finally, the heaps of rubbish dammed up the river.
“There was a sound of crackling, whistling, and some monstrous gurgling… Then all quietened down. The river stopped for a minute and then started overflowing across the meadow side. By the evening, the overflow was so tremendous that its boundaries were nowhere to be seen while the water continued to rise. A hum was heard from somewhere; it seemed that entire villages were being crushed under the accompaniment of screams, moans, and curses. Hay stacks, logs, rafts, wreckage of village houses were floating and, having reached the dam, piling up in one spot.”
It is known that Ugryun-Burcheev’s designs were dashed the following morning. Overnight, the river washed out and carried away the dam and was now coursing again within its banks. Then the bewildered reformer decided to abandon the river and build the dreamed-of town Nepreklonsk (it can be translated as “Unyielding Town”, t/n) in a new place, on a smooth lowland. There, finally, overcome with sleepiness, he lay down holding an axe in his hand.
“Emaciated, humiliated, and ruined Glupovo residents breathed freely again after a long break. They looked at each other and, all of a sudden, felt ashamed. They did not understand what exactly had happened around them, but they felt that the air was filled with obscenities, and it was impossible to breathe it any longer. Did they have a history? Were there any moments in this history when they could express their independence? They remembered nothing. They could only recall to have had Urus-Kugush-Kil’dibaevy, Negodyaevy (a derivative of “negodyai” or villain, t/n), Borodavkiny (can be translated as “the warty ones”, t/n), and, to add insult to injury, this awful, graceless scoundrel! And all these smothered, gnawed, and ripped them with teeth – for the sake of what? Their chests were flushed with blood, their faces cringed in rage when recalling the graceless idiot that had come God knows from where, with an axe in hand and inscrutable impudence to pass a verdict on the past, present, and future…”
Ugryum-Burcheev awakened and resumed erecting Nepreklonsk, but the atmosphere had subtly changed. “He grew suspicious. He was stunned with silence during the day and rustle during the night. At twilight, he saw some shadows roaming about the town and disappearing God knows where. At sunrise, the very shadows reappeared in the town and promptly ran off home. This phenomenon repeated several days in a row, and every time he was about to leave his house and investigate into the cause of the nightly tumult, but each time a superstitious fear held him back.”
Citations have come to a close.
Surprising about them, of course, is not the fact that the great satirist gave a one-sided, unrealistic, and sharply grotesque image taken to monstrosity. That is a day’s job for a satirist. What is surprising is that, having started out from concrete historical figures of the past, figures of a lower stature, he had preempted a colossal figure of the future in his writing. Of course, he had depicted it only from the angle likening it to the Russian despots of the past. Yet, long, acute, and much anguished peering of the thinker into images typical of Russian history and its tendencies had led him to prophesize of the one, in whom the tyrannical tendency, which had shown up in Biron, Pavel, Arakcheev, and Nikolai I, would reach a climax only in the future – there would appear someone at the heights of power who, in one of his most essential aspects, would resemble Ugryum-Burcheev more than all his other precursors.
The great tyrants of Russian history, such as Ivan the Terrible and Nikolai I, were instruments of the demon of “greatpower” statehood – and just that. This exhausted their metahistorical significance, except that in the first period of his reign, Ivan IV had been an instrument of the demiurge, while in the second his will was aligned with Velga’s. The next Zhrugr would have Stalin as his instrument, too. Yet, by no means would this exhaust Stalin’s metahistorical role.
However great was Russia under Ivan the Terrible and, especially, under Nikolai I, her victories and defeats, the waxing or waning of her power had a direct impact only upon a limited geographical area: Middle Europe, as well as the Near and Middle East. The belligerent Russian ideology of the first two Zhrugrs – the idea of the Third Rome and the concept of “autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationalism” were marked with parochialism, both national and confessional. It well agreed with the then stage of technical development and the level of international ties in the world, which humanity had achieved by then. Yet, the ties were strengthening and branching out. As for technological achievements, having brought continents closer together and caused the warlike neighbors to bump foreheads just like rams hitting one another, they had changed the very notion of geographical space. For the first time, Russia found herself at the vanguard of history, and this was the very minute when the international Doctrine gained prominence inside the country. Russia became the first country armed with such an ideology that could potentially sweep across the whole globe. Moreover, the Doctrine’s inner impulse presupposed precisely such a planetwide expansion. When we talk about global empires or the global pretensions of great conquerors of the past from Genghis Khan to Napoleon and the British Empire, we use the word “global” in its conventional sense. Revolutionary Russia with her Doctrine was the first bearer of the global tendency in its absolute sense. The secret of its influence was that, unlike the dream of establishing the hegemony of a certain people (this dream is utopian, for no people is numerous enough to realize it), now the idea of an international commonwealth of nations was put forth. This commonwealth was to be bound together with a new social order, which was to spread like fire all over the world as a result of revolutionary outbreaks. The galvanizing, liberating significance of this concept for the countries outside of Russia was immense, especially for the colonies and half-colonies of the East and South. In some countries, it all gradually unfolded as outlined in Moscow; other countries underwent these changes, for the most part, thanks to the Soviet army’s bayonets. There were quite a few countries, such as India or Burma, wherein this revolutionizing principle dramatically changed its ethical and political coloration. Be that as it may, not only the Russian suprapeople’s masses but also other suprapeoples, other nations became actively involved in these revolutionary or transformational activities. Russia only strived, whenever possible, to keep to her guiding role (occasionally, she succeeded in doing this, but, over time, her prominence increasingly faded).