When I opened our conservative broadsheet this morning, I had to rub my eyes to make sure I hadn’t misread. No, there it was, in large bold type on the front page: Apologia pro imperium nostrum.
I translated mentally, to come up with Vindication of Our Empire. But as I read on, the article went far beyond a mere vindication.
“Lest we forget,” it said, “few of our colonial possessions were acquired strictly by military conquest. Yet even those that were derived infinite benefits from what Lord Palmerston so aptly called ‘liberal interventionism’. However, whatever method of entry into the Empire, each of its members was infinitely better off in it than at any time before or since…
“The other day I spoke to a prominent member of the Indian parliament, who told me he blamed the British for all of his country’s woes. ‘How so?’ I asked, readying myself for a heated argument. ‘I blame you for leaving,’ he explained…
“We have a moral and I daresay legal right to reclaim the Empire we lost, much to the chagrin of its former subjects. India and Pakistan, much of Africa (including the RSA), most of the West Indies received from Britain the priceless gifts of parliamentary democracy and independent judiciary, free markets and free elections – above all, the most precious gift of the sublime English language.
“And let us not forget the delights of Anglicanism, the true Christianity for our time and of all time – the confession for all seasons. It is the Anglican English who are the God-chosen people, and we must restore our mandate of the territory currently inhabited by those with an unsustainable claim to that distinction…
“Instead of besmirching the reputation of our empire builders, we should worship their names – the names of Drake and Nelson, Gordon and Roberts, Rhodes and Napier…”
And so on in the same vein. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Can you believe yours? No? Good. Because I made this up. No such article has appeared in the British press, broadsheet or tabloid, nor even on one of those loony-fringe websites.
Yet this wasn’t just a puerile prank on my part. I simply wanted to give you a little taste of what the Russians read in their papers and watch on their TV.
Replace the British Empire with either the Russian or Soviet equivalent; British empire builders with Ivan III, Ivan IV ‘The Terrible’, most of the Romanov tsars, plus Stalin and Zhukov; Anglicanism with Orthodoxy; former British colonies with the Russian possessions; multiply the volume by any factor it takes to exclude any contradicting information, and you’ll begin to get some idea of the propagandistic swamp in which the Russians are immersed around the clock.
Stalin in particular is hailed for leading the Soviet Union to victory in the great war, which achievement is supposed to outweigh the tens of millions murdered, starved to death or “turned to camp dust”, as the popular idiom went.
Proving yet again that Russia’s past is unpredictable, the media omit to mention that the Soviet Union entered the Second World War as Hitler’s ally. Nor have I seen too many references to the 1.5 million Russians serving in the Wehrmacht and the SS, or indeed to the tens of millions who perished in the war due to Stalin’s incompetence and brutality.
Their brains scoured to blankness, many Russians gather together in fair imitations of the Nuremberg rallies and scream themselves hoarse, shouting “We can do it again!” What exactly? Murder tens of millions of other Russians? Plunge half of Europe into a tyranny as revolting as the Nazi one, but outdoing it in the body count?
It’s not just the media that does the brainwashing either. The same jingoistic, bellicose messages come across in films, plays, novels, poems – and of course songs.
Over the past century and a half, but especially since 1917, Russian singers have been blessed with a vast repertoire of drum-beating, bugle-blowing, nationalistic, racist and anti-Semitic songs to warm the cockles of every heart disconnected from a brain.
Specifically, the songs’ number and frequency always increased immediately prior to Russia’s pouncing on yet another neighbour. For example, before Soviet aggression against Finland in 1939 the radio waves were inundated with a song specially commissioned for that event.
Alongside a promise to help the Finnish workers mete out reprisals on their capitalist oppressors, the song featured a poetic refrain, saying “Do accept us Suomi, you beauty, into the necklace of your limpid lakes.” Suomi chose not to, and the song stopped blaring from every loudspeaker.
One of today’s most celebrated purveyors of that genre is Zhanna Bichevskaya, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, frequent performer at Kremlin concerts, Putin’s favourite, ubiquitous star on radio and TV, host of her own TV show, one of the most recorded and best-selling singers, laureate of numerous… – please tell me where to stop: the list of the lady’s medals could go on and on.
Since we are in a tasting mode today, I thought you’d like a soupçon of Miss Bichevskaya’s delicious output. Here I am translating excerpts of her current hit Kulikovo Field.
For the outlanders among you, especially those who never studied Russian history, Kulikovo Field was a battleground that has been turned, for no sound historical reason, into a Russian shrine. There, In 1380, a contingent of Russians and Mongols under Prince Dmitri Donskoy and the Tatar Khan Tokhtamysh defeated another Tatar contingent under Mamai.
Soviet pupils (and Russian, both pre- and post-Soviet ones) were taught that thus ended the Tatar-Mongol yoke of Rus, which is a mythological solecism. For, two years later, Moscow surrendered to Tokhtamysh, who took Donskoy’s son Vasily I hostage. Muscovy remained a vassal of the Horde for another two centuries.
But never mind history, feel the patriotism. Kulikovo Field has become a symbol of Russia’s martial grandeur, her mighty response to enemies. It’s against that background that you can fully appreciate these excerpts from Zhanna’s song (I’m translating just the words, not the rhyme and metre).
“How did we allow this to happen, brothers? Russia again is moaning under the yoke of black locusts. That means the Russians must take up arms again…
“We’ll sweep the vampires from the body of our land, and there won’t be any zones [another word for Stalin’s concentration camps], camps or prisons, all the enemies of Russia will be slain…
“Russia will reclaim the Russian Sebastopol, the Crimean peninsula will again become Russian, as will the majestic Bosphorus, our Constantinople and the world’s shrine Jerusalem! And, to spite the Masons and other villains [no prizes for guessing who the other villains are], all those who are seething with hatred of Christianity, we’ll remember Kulikovo Field, and the scales will fall from our eyes, and this shrine will unite us.”
Rousing stuff, that. Now imagine an ordinary Russian, not much given to exegetic contemplation, who hears the same message round the clock, blaring at him through every medium and every genre.
Then imagine a country where something like that is standard fare, the regular spiritual and cultural sustenance. Have you done so? Splendid. Now imagine a British journalist who thinks that country is “the most conservative and Christian in Europe”. But enough about Peter Hitchens…
Professor Ferguson suggested this some years ago now. Not colonies as normally called but more correctly a “protectorate” whatever you define that as. Merely a strong government benevolent for the most part to bring stability, real democracy, stop tribal warfare and not have your average everyday African dictator loot the country clean. That idea of the professor went no where.
Listing the “priceless gifts” delivered by Great Britain reminded me of the film “Life of Brian” where the leader of the People’s Front of Judea asks the question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” After some quick back and forth they get to: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
It is interesting to note that John Cleese has been in the news recently for his responses to trans-hysteria and forced vaccination. What was said in jest (“It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”) is now a battle against raging ideology.
Cleese and his ilk are partially responsible for what ails the west. Leftists (and America haters) to a man, he and the likes of JK Rowling are too late to the commonsense party.