NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ABSOLUTE MORALITY

Whether I agree with him or not, I am an admirer of Nietzsche’s God-given genius of uncompromising free thought. In appreciation of it, I can forgive him all his wild ravings and strange idiosyncrasies... Almost all, I must say... There is a limit, of course.

I am uncomfortable with Nietzsche’s attack on the morality of Christianity, but not because I am so anxious to rise to the defense of a specific religious practice, but rather for the larger reason that no one, not even he (Nietzsche) can so casually dismiss an existing source of absolute morality, even if it happens to be heavily polluted as it were, without offering a viable alternative, and it is here where Nietzsche is demonstrably and unequivocally wanting. Indeed, his food for thought is ambrosial, but where is his nourishment for hope? To him, hope is a lie, yet to him, too, truth kills. How is human society supposed to sustain its life then? Not by Nietzsche’s reason alone. Not by anybody’s reason alone. Pure reasoning turns deadly and divisive without the life-saving true fiction of unquestioning philosophical postulates and categorical imperatives. Welcome back, Kant!

THE SOCIAL NECESSITY OF RELIGION

Take it or leave it, but those who repeat after Karl Marx that “religion is the opium of the people” do have a valid point. It certainly appears that religion turns off the reasoning mind and brings out the irrational element. There is no way anyone can prove the existence of God through reason, and, as I said elsewhere, had proof been available, there would have been no room for faith, which is of course the starting point of religion. Credo… Pascal, another God-obsessed man alongside Spinoza, makes not the slightest effort to prove anything about God. His “wager” essentially boils down to a gambler’s odds. If God does exist after all, those who bet on God will be winners. If He doesn’t exist, your bet on Credo won’t lose you anything anyway…

Pascal was a genius scientist, and a good man, of course, but wagering on God does seem rather disrespectful to God, in my estimation.

All this time we have been talking about God inside religion, a “Denominational” God, who is inseparable from faith and from doubt. God exists just because your Church makes it the first and foremost of its dogmas. God exists because you are a member of your Church and believing in the God of your Church is your obligation as a member.

Ironically, it is fairly easy to prove the existence of God outside religion. God’s problem is not man’s faith, but the confusion resulting from the multiplicity of religions and a lack of clear definitions. A theistically neutral definition of God will work as soon as we disattach the concept God from religion. St. Anselm’s famous and infamous Ontological Argument: “that than none greater can be conceived” can work if treated mathematically, rather than theologically. We know that infinity exists as a mathematical concept. Then if we conceptualize God as infinity, or as the Absolute Entity of “none greater” qualities, and move Him out of the contested territory of religion into the uncontested territory of the so-called exact sciences, -- lo and behold! – God’s existence is no longer insurmountably hard to prove. Just like the foundations of mathematics are impossible to prove, they become axiomatic, ergo sunt!

As with all axioms, all we need to prove to justify their legitimacy, is their usefulness. Mind you, not their unconditional usefulness to each and every one, but their special usefulness to science and to other spheres of human endeavor. Is anyone prepared to deny a special usefulness to God?

***

However, Marx never said that God was the opium of the people. Remember, he said it about religion. The difference may be somewhat elusive, but it exists. Religion as a drug of mass intoxication and indoctrination may be used as a weapon against God. But let us not besmirch any religion for the ill effects it has on its extremist adherents. Let us not condemn historical Christianity, or Islam, or any other missionary and proselytizing religious movements for the inhumanity and horrors of religious wars, past and present. It is easy and often politically expedient to attack Islam today for the barbarity of its extremist elements, at the same time conveniently forgetting the bloody past of your own religion.

Indeed, religion is a mixed bag of good and bad things. Paraphrasing Longfellow, we can say that –

“…When it is good, it is very-very good,

But when it is bad, it is horrid!”

Yes, Dr. Marx, just like opium! It can wreak havoc as a powerful narcotic, destroying people’s psyche. But it can also do a lot of good. Take this for starters:

“Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.”

Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), English physician, called English Hippocrates.

But let us not be too modest about the beneficial role of religion on human society. Not only does it relieve human suffering and provide consolation to people in times of distress. Its cultural significance as the principal source of social morality, the absolute standard, as opposed to the relativist double standard, cannot be overestimated. Religion becomes the adhesive glue holding people together, defining their cultural development, their basic morality, their values, their national idea. One cannot build and maintain a nation on the foundation of reason and common sense alone. One must have a metaphysical foundation soaked in mysticism and bathed in the irrational. Nations cannot be governed by mere intellect. They need the supernatural element, producing awe and obedience to an absolute authority. They must believe. Who else but God can teach them the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, sacred and profane? Who else can give them hope for a better future, a higher meaning in life? Who can put them in the context not of a particularly lousy day, but of eternity?

The question of Warum? is not a special philosophical enquiry. It is the fundamental question of existence.

Why are people born and why do they die? What happens to the world without me and to me after life, having left the world? And to sum it all up, why should I care?

Without God and without religion as a conduit to God, there are too many questions that we cannot answer to anybody’s satisfaction. Especially to our own…

Many smart alecks may start arguing that man’s relationship to God or a lack thereof is an entirely personal matter. One can be moral and a believer in God philosophically, outside organized religion. Or one can be an atheist, yet a person of unimpeachable morality.

True, and I may even add that religion frequently serves as a hindrance to personal faith, a destroyer, rather than builder of morality. We know many famous and less famous examples of individuals raised in well-churched families, who could not cope with religious hypocrisy and have renounced God and morality as a result. Following Kierkegaard, we may say that most establishment churches have been corrupted by power and it is better to worship God in the blessed company of a pagan worshiping a stick than in the company of fellow “believers” for whom religion is merely a common form of social acceptance.

Yet the basic concepts of morality are absolute concepts and they can’t be developed ex nihilo in the admittedly relativist environment of pure reason. What the God-denying moralists do not wish to acknowledge, is that their alleged morality has not been spawned in them through spontaneous generation, that it has been inherited by all of us from our ancestors. We owe our morality to the culture of our society, and that culture has had religion as its essential component. We have inherited morality from our parents, and we have been spoon-fed morality by society. “Old values” can be renounced, both individually and collectively, but they never die, because without them there can be no absolute standards, and no social contract “in good faith” can ever be possible.

Religion is the only way for society and individuals to teach themselves about human values. Without religion there can be no culture and no society as such. Hence, the absolute social necessity of religion. Take it or leave it.

Happy Easter!

CAPITALISM AND HEALTHCARE: MORALITY AND COMPETITION

Healthcare.

Isn’t it a moral issue? The Hippocratic oath of the physician?

Isn’t it a social issue? The obligation of the State to care for its citizens?

The right of the covenanted citizens to receive medical help in case of illness and other medical conditions?

So, what does capitalism have to do with it? Isn’t the basic nature of capitalism – profit-making – inimical to all of the above: the physician’s oath to treat any patient no matter what, the state’s responsibility to provide medical help, the citizen’s right to receive medical help unconditionally?

This is what I hate about the question of healthcare in principle. Yes, please, take care of the physicians, so that in their noble selfless task of healing people they would be well provided for. So that the capitalist urge for profit would never pollute their honorable profession.

There is no wishful thinking here. The practical thinking on this subject is built into the system of remuneration for public officials. The President of the United States, even after substantial pay increases of recent times, still gets less than an average executive in the private sector. Elected public officials are paid quite enough not to want, yet not too much to want the job for money’s sake. The endemic curse of public office corruption is a human weakness not written into the job description. Public office is supposed to be a genuine vocation, a person’s higher goal to serve society. Profiting from public office is supposed to be considered a crime.

So, let us make the office of the physician a public office. Is that too much to ask?

In normal capitalist practice, competition is an essential ingredient. Making money is the main objective. Morality is only a limiting factor, a restraint on the temptation to excel at its expense.

Healthcare ought to have a different set of priorities, and money-making must not be among them. This is not merely a desideratum. This ought to be the underlying principle of healthcare in capitalist society. Indeed, in any society.

Alas, my argument sounds too idealistic even to me. There must be something very rotten in the whole social attitude to healthcare in American society. Instead of arguing which system is better for the patient: the standard system of competition among the providers or the so-called “Obamacare,” let us recognize that the two acknowledged “competitors” are nothing but the two sides of the same coin.

At issue here is not the technical means of providing healthcare, but the philosophical principle underlying it. Healthcare is a question of morality, not of economics. Capitalist competition must have no part in it.

So, will a corrupt health provider cease to be corrupt, should he become a public official? By no means! But just because human nature is corrupt, let us not corrupt the idea.

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

The title of this entry is deeply ironic. As we may all know, both concepts – capitalism and socialism – are definitely very poorly defined, and should we want to stick to the most common vague definitions, we must acknowledge that, like certain chemical elements, the two cannot possibly exist in real life.

Pure capitalism, whatever it is, means the absence of any government regulation, and, should it be allowed, immediately turns into a Hobbesian war of all against all. It is to avoid such war that the citizens of a covenanted commonwealth invite “sovereign regulation,” in the first place.

Pure socialism, whatever it means, is the antipode of communism. Communism abolishes sovereign power, whereas socialism maximizes it.

Ironically, this is the first difference between capitalism and socialism, which incredibly puts capitalism in the same boat with communism. Like communism, capitalism sees state power as its enemy, whereas socialism sees the state as its necessary foundation.

Enough of purity, though. Let us get practical. Those who acknowledge the existence of God and the devil, realize that communism is not of this world. The devil, for as long as he exists, will not allow communism in his earthly domain. So much for communism.

Which leaves us with just two antipodes, capitalism and socialism, pitched against each other by their divergent attitudes to state power. The two extremes in their pristine theoretical purity.

But not in reality! There, in real life, socialism transforms into totalitarianism, and the latter has the tendency to self-destruct. Too much state power, instead of enforcing equality, creates a new type of inequality, negates the socialist Raison D’Être, and the rest is history.

Real-life socialism needs individual freedom to survive. State power must be curbed, in order to make state power viable. Hence, the socialist train departs from its extremal terminal, and with a wink and a nod starts rolling in the direction of the other extreme, or rather toward the middle point.

Meanwhile, the capitalist train must recognize the presence and authority of the government dispatcher. It cannot be allowed to become a runaway train, because it will surely crash into the Hobbesian caveat: too much freedom means war of all against all. Free people enter covenants curbing their freedom, in order to protect the admittedly limited freedoms which  the State will allow them to keep under the covenant known as the State Constitution.

And so, the capitalist train departs from its own extremal terminal, and with a pained grimace starts rolling in the direction of the other extreme, or rather toward the middle point…

Capitalism and socialism: what’s the difference? Don’t tell me they are antipodes, because in real life they cannot be chained to their extremal terminals. Don’t tell me that they are like pornography and art: you will be able to tell them apart when you see them. Are you sure?

I suggest that there may come a time when the two trains rolling toward each other may reach certain points of the track, close to the middle point, when only an expert can tell the difference, but do not trust that expert’s opinion, because already today the terms capitalism and socialism are mostly used as vulgar pseudo-terms, but otherwise are too loosely defined to make a competent judgment.

CAPITALISM AND IMMIGRATION. PART II.

What is the political side of the current migration crisis in Europe and the ongoing massive migration into the United States?

Of course, economics is still a very large part of it, but to a large extent it takes a back seat to politics, and that political side of the current problem with migrants is hardly to be ignored. It is therefore safe to propose that the present-day migration crisis in Europe, and to a considerable extent the somewhat older problem of immigration in the United States, result from a combination of economic and political factors, a powerful combination, to be sure, making the solution of the problem difficult, if not impossible.

Here we come to another fork in the road. This time it is not politics versus economics, but within the political dimension, intended versus unintended consequences. It looks like the intended consequences of virtually unrestrained migration are open borders, a globalist dream. The influx of immigrants into developed countries is supposed to dilute the nationalist core of their societies, to make them more internationalist-friendly. The fact that forced internationalism must surely backfire with a fierce nationalist backlash is one of those must-be-anticipated scenarios, yet hypocritically it falls under the category of unintended results. As though anticipated and unintended can ever be reconciled in the logical slide from the fanciful intention toward the unintended inevitable…

One can easily brand the migration disaster as the worst mistake committed by the globalists, but it has to be acknowledged that unrestrained migration is in fact not a mistake, but the globalist sine qua non, the dream that needs to come true in order to validate globalism as such. The admitted failure of the globalist ideology is no excuse for the havoc it has unleashed. The problem is that the globalist idea is more viable than its strongest repudiation, its exposure through any catastrophic debacle associated with it. This reminds me of the time when the world breathed easier having presumably been rid of the smallpox disease, until it was discovered that the biological warfare laboratories had never allowed the terrible disease to go away, preserving it in their arsenal of lethal weapons.

Such is indeed the problem with the ideology of globalism. Pronounced discredited and virtually dead, it is very much alive just because it cannot die. Wherever there is a thesis, an antithesis is born. There can be no light without darkness. There can be no liberalism without conservatism. There can be no internationalism without nationalism. Globalism is born as the antipode to isolationism. The latter stands for tightly closed borders, whereas globalism stands for a world without borders, an open society, albeit with severe hidden limitations.

I may be contradicted by pointing out that the current migrant crisis is a byproduct of war. To which I reply that the war in question is a product of the globalist offensive. Take it or leave it. Any time a country goes out of its borders and its sphere of vital national interests, it commits the globalist transgression and invites a nationalist backlash. Globalism is the folly of the strong, nationalism is the defense of the weak. Mind you, the nationalism of the strong is seldom called nationalism. It is better known as chauvinism…

But whether we call it nationalism or chauvinism, it is a fairly healthy phenomenon, because the chauvinism of the strong still promotes the national interest of the strong, and there is nothing sick about that.

The problem with globalism, and its difference in principle from great-power chauvinism, is that it does not promote any national interest. It is internationalist at heart, and any manifestation of nationalism is its enemy.

Hence, the problems of the world today, including the out-of-control migrant crisis and the emergence of the so-called” Islamic extremism” are not some monstrous creatures spawned by some spontaneous generation. They are all reactive to the onslaught of globalism. Globalism threatens nationalism, and nationalism responds with threats of its own… As the great German poet Heinrich Heine said it, “Es ist eine alte Geschichte, doch bleibt es immer neu…”

Bringing down national borders, the globalist dream. Isn’t it a second coming of the idea of a world communist revolution? An idea that has forever given a bad name to the early Christian idea and practice of communism! And by the way, isn’t the globalist idea that same old Trotskyite idea of a permanent revolution until all national borders fall?..

A lot of things have been understated in this entry or intentionally left to the reader to be further developed. At the end we return to the title question of this entry: Capitalism and Immigration. Let us not judge capitalism too harshly here. Ironically, labor force migration does not constitute a problem of principle. As we know, there are different varieties of capitalism, and healthy capitalist enterprise must not be blamed for the sins of its perverted siblings. I see nothing malignant in profit-oriented activities as such, as long as they do not undermine the foundation of the country’s national interest. Patriotism, according to Hobbes, is a contractual obligation of the citizen to the sovereign in exchange for the fulfillment of the other side’s obligations to the citizen. Unless the State becomes dysfunctional and inimical to the basic needs of its citizens, it is the duty of the citizens to pursue the national interests of their State.

The experience with globalist ideology and practice proves that globalism does not give a hoot for national interest. It is preoccupied with its internationalist, anti-nationalist agenda which, in my judgment, is the root of all evils plaguing the world today.

And so, what about capitalism and immigration? Don’t blame the crisis in the United States on capitalism. Don’t blame the migrant crisis in Europe on wars and rumors of wars. Nor should we attribute the swelling tide of militant nationalism and religious fanaticism to nationalism or religion. They are all reactive forces springing to life because of a single culprit, which is the delusional and destructive idea of globalism.

CAPITALISM AND IMMIGRATION. PART I.

My original entry under this extremely current title was written eight years ago in the context of the general theme of the section in which it appears: Contradiction in Terms, that is, the particular section of my book dealing with questions of economics. Needless to say, the economics of labor cannot be separated from the accompanying social issue. Here is the punchline of that original entry:

***

“How does American capitalism today, in the act of maximizing profits, solve the problem of social dissatisfaction, which is the inevitable labor reaction to the employer pushing the profit margins?

By essentially suppressing the nation’s traditional working class, while using the demagoguery of immigration in a way that encourages illegal immigration in large numbers, to keep importing an alternative workforce from among the poor nations south of the border, who, it is believed, will be only happy to improve their economic situation and would not be causing their employers problems with social unrest and all sorts of demands-demands-demands!

This solution, however, has set off a number of ticking bombs, and they all keep ticking away…”

***

This emphasis on the social issues of immigration does not change the fact that we are dealing here with an underlying economic problem of the labor force. As the reader will be able to clearly see very shortly, my original treatment of the issue of immigration and modern migration trends as such was focused predominantly on the economics of labor migration.

Make no mistake, the focus on economics does not preclude the necessary involvement of social and political issues, all tied together in the predominantly economic package. At the same time, there exist certain purely political considerations, which have nothing (sic!) to do with economics, and that issue needs to be looked at quite separately and in isolation from the economic factors.

But first things first. Let us touch upon the economic aspect of immigration, even though much of this discussion may turn out rather trivial. Indeed, there is a very familiar term for it, known as economic migrant, or economic refugee. Many people without strong roots in their own country believe that their home must be some place where they expect to live better. And so they move to a “better place” out of purely economic motivation, even if they frequently conceal the economic motive behind convenient political talk.

It goes without saying that skilled-labor immigration to the United States and to other developed capitalist nations is in a different class from low-skilled immigration. There are surely common threads, but it makes better sense not to bundle them together.

Skilled-labor migration is largely self-explanatory and relatively conflict-free, in so far as it causes little if any social unrest and alienation. Indeed, elite labor force is gens una sumus of sorts and it is seldom viewed with hostility or even within the context of migration currents.

The economic dimension of low-skilled and unskilled labor migration, including illegal immigration, is a different story altogether but even so, it is pretty much straightforward. There is a clear-cut tendency on the part of profit-oriented capitalist entrepreneurs to either bring cheap foreign labor force into the country, or to take their business to the cheap labor force outside the country. It is also clear that illegal workforce inside the United States promises higher overall profit to the employers, with lower wages and hardly a nod to basic social programs, for which reason illegal immigration flourishes, despite all hypocritical protestations regarding its inadmissibility. It does not take a Nobel Prize Laureate to figure out that the real culprits of illegal immigration are not the illegals, but those who welcome the illegals into the country.

We can go on and on and on talking about this, but as I said before, this discussion will be touching all familiar bases and in that sense will eventually drown in its triviality. For which reason let us now change the angle of our discussion. Out with elementary economics, in with by no means elementary politics.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXLVII.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Rise and Fall of the Golden Horde.

A Historical Note Ending.

 

And so, once again, just as in the case of St. Alexander Nevsky and his anda Sartak, son of Batu-Khan, Prince Dmitry Donskoy must have used the idea of how to divert the Tatar forces from the plunder of Russian lands. The idea of his time, pertaining specifically to the situation with Khan Tokhtamysh -- and no matter who put it out first -- was to use Tokhtamysh’s privileged status as a Genghiside against the great Tamerlane, who was superior to Tokhtamysh in all respects, but did not have this status.

Talking about the Russian trump card! Judging by the behavior of Tokhtamysh toward his benefactor, and Tamerlane’s outraged response, the trump card did work to its maximum capacity. Not only was the biggest enemy of Russia at the time, Tokhtamysh, diverted from any further devastation of the Russian land, but the great Tamerlane, under different circumstances an even bigger threat, would become an implicit Russian ally, in their common animosity toward the Khan of the Golden Horde, and toward the bane of the Russians, the Golden Horde itself.

Having defeated Tokhtamysh and destroyed the Golden Horde, Tamerlane didn’t turn against the Russians next. He felt compelled to prove himself the true heir of Genghis Khan. After the great Khan’s death in 1227, his incredibly vast empire had effectively broken up into a number of uluses, and using the pretext of Tokhtamysh’s betrayal, it was now Tamerlane’s task to reconstitute the Mongol Empire. It is actually easy to understand how he would become obsessed with the idea of proving to all his supporters and detractors that he did not have to be a Genghiside, that in performing his historical feat of the regeneration of Genghis-Khan’s Empire ,he was equal to the Father of the Mongols, and thus better than any of his direct descendants.

In 1398, Tamerlane started a military expedition with his large army against modern-day Pakistan and India, ruled at the time by the Great Moguls, his indirect relatives. In 1399, having reached the Ganges River, Tamerlane prudently chose not to go any farther, and returned to Samarkand bringing in huge spoils.

Then, in the same year 1399, Tamerlane embarked on a major campaign against Persia, where the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid got in his way. Having subjugated parts of Iran, Tamerlane decided to make a detour to the Ottoman Empire, where in the battle of Ankara he took the Ottoman Sultan prisoner in 1402, and put him in a cage.

In 1404, Tamerlane decided to embark on a major expedition into China, but his campaign was stopped short by Tamerlane’s death at the age of 69, in February 1405. Quelle belle mort! The great man’s body was embalmed and brought back to Samarkand, where his magnificent tomb would become the most spectacular monument of the city.

***

The Tatar invasion of Russia left an indelible imprint on Russian history. From the beginning, an enormous wave of Tatar assimilation into the Russian mainstream culture was taking place. On the other hand, the opposite trend of a Russian assimilation into Tatar customs and habits never materialized. Just as the great Tamerlane feared and himself avoided, --- despite all its political weaknesses, the Russian culture proved dominant and triumphed over the culture of the invaders.

On the other hand, the Russians were never racist-minded. Anybody who would accept the religion of Russian Christian Orthodoxy through official baptism under the auspices of the Russian Church, was considered Russian, whether a Tatar or a Mongol, or a Turk, or an African Negro, or a Westerner, or anybody else.

Russian history knows many noble Russian Families originating with Tatar Khans, Murzas, etc. The Princely Family of Yusupov used to be one of the oldest and most respected in Russia. Tsar Boris Fedorovich Godunov, made world-famous by A. S. Pushkin and M. P. Mussorgsky, was of Tatar origin. Many other last names of Russian princes and noblemen reveal their unmistakable Tatar roots.

In the world of literature and arts, N. M. Karamzin, known as the father of Russian historiography, took his name from his Tatar ancestor Kara-Murza. The Russian poet Gavrila Derzhavin was a Tatar. The mother of V. A. Zhukovsky, the famous Russian poet and tutor of the future Tsar-Liberator Alexander II, had been a captive Turkish woman brought into Russia as a prisoner from the Russo-Turkish Wars.

The famous Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, dubbed “Anna of All Russia,” had Khan Akhmat of the Golden Horde as her ancestor.

In today’s Russia, Tatars constitute an important and highly respected group of artists and writers, sportsmen, businessmen and public officials. A Tatar woman Elvira Nabiullina is currently the brilliant Head of Russia’s Central Bank, one of the most powerful women in the world, according to Forbes, and Banker of the Year 2015, so named by the magazine Euromoney.

Having been born in Chechnya, then moving to the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, and spending my youth in Bashkorstan, I lived among these people, and was a witness to the process of ethnic assimilation on both sides, as intermarriages between Russians of both sexes and Chechens, Uzbeks, Bashkirs, and Tatars where commonplace, as were bonds of friendship among these groups. The Russian Federation boasts of nearly 200 ethnic groups living together under one national roof in almost general harmony.

This is a sign of great national strength. All these diverse groups contribute to the growth and advancement of science, technology, arts, and general culture.

This is the end of my historical detour into the role of the Golden Horde in Russian history.

My regular chapter A Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita will continue at a later date.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXLVI.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Rise and Fall of the Golden Horde.

A Historical Note Continued.

 

The decline of the Golden Horde started immediately after the death of Uzbek Khan. The Grand Prince of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy precipitated the Horde’s “dying gasp,” as N. I. Kostomarov called it, by his victory over Mamai on the river Don. But the “gasping” Horde was still capable of devastating random incursions into the Russian land. And, as we shall see from the great Tamerlane’s military campaigns against the Horde, it would take a lot of time and effort, plus Tamerlane’s prodigious skills, to overcome this “dark multitude.” Tamerlane had indeed gathered a huge army for this job. He delivered three consecutive blows to Tokhtamysh, each time weakening the latter considerably.

Tamerlane mounted three campaigns against Tokhtamysh: in 1391, 1392, and 1395. But it was only in the third campaign that he brought the whole of his strength upon his enemy, demonstrating his might and intelligence of a true military commander. These three painstaking efforts show us that no matter what, and even against such a brilliant foe as Tamerlane, the Horde was a tough nut to squash.

In that decisive year 1395, Tamerlane led his troops against Tokhtamysh in a wide arch, so that no enemy troop would be able to strike him from the rear. He pursued Tokhtamysh relentlessly, wiping out his whole settlements, until they were turned into deserts.

Thus Tamerlane was pursuing retreating Tokhtamysh armies into the Caucasus, where the famous Battle of the River Terek took place. But even afterwards he was chasing the remnants of the enemy army.

It may surprise the reader, but coming into the vicinity of the Russian lands during his campaigns, and one of his scout troops actually pillaging a minor Russian settlement on the Don, Tamerlane chose not to advance against the Russians any further, even though it is a historical fact that Moscow was expecting a Tamerlane invasion in 1395.

But let us keep in mind the fact that Tamerlane’s goal was to defeat and pillage the Golden Horde, rather than the Russians, who were actually his allies in this mission.

Tamerlane had excellent intelligence service, sending his spies in all directions, and being always up to date. He was aware that the Russians made poor vassals, that they had their Orthodox religion and would not change it under any circumstances. He knew that the Russians believed in their destiny. He also realized that the blue-eyed, light-haired white people had a culture of their own, and would be influencing his people with it. Another curious detail: Russian prisoners sold into slavery fetched far less money than other kinds, because they were known to make constant efforts to escape and frequently succeeded, which meant lost money to their owners.

And so, bypassing the Russian lands, Tamerlane continued to pursue Tokhtamysh into the Caucasus. He was running the remnants of Tokhtamysh's army like a herd of stupid rams to slaughter, and there, on the Terek River, the decisive last battle took place. After which he pursued the Tatars to the Dnepr River and also visited Crimea, where he slaughtered both Tatars and Genoan and Venetian merchants.

Tamerlane destroyed the Northern path of the Great Silk Road to China, which had gone through the territory of the Golden Horde, making it rich, but now deprived of its principal income. What remained was only the Southern path through Uzbekistan and other territories constituting Tamerlane’s domain and now directing the Great Silk Road merchant’s fees and taxes into his, Tamerlane’s coffers.

That is why in Uzbekistan today a majestic monument to Tamerlane stands in the center of Tashkent, replacing the Soviet-era monument to Karl Marx, which must have been shipped to Kiev after that…

I happened to live for several years in the famous Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan, and even in Soviet times the shops were awash in high-quality Chinese goods; magnificent rugs, fur coats, woolen clothing, all in good taste, to say the least. A more modern version of Tamerlane’s Uzbek route of the Great Silk Road, I must add.

In so far as their hospitality goes, the Uzbeks are second to none, but this is going to be one of the subjects in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries, where my guest will be yet another famous person of Oriental origin…

The great cities of Samarkand and Bukhara boast of magnificent buildings thanks to Tamerlane, who made Samarkand the capital of his Empire, and brought skilled artisans and architects from the Middle East to rebuild it into one of the architectural wonders of the world. Over the course of the next half-millennium, these cities suffered some damage and destruction, but were meticulously restored by the best Russian archaeologists in the 20^th century.

Practicing Moslems and tourists from around the world like to visit these sights, remarkable for their cultural and general historical significance. The most memorable sight of all in Samarkand happens to be – you guessed it! – the great Tomb of Tamerlane.

And so, instead of annexing Russian lands to his Empire, alongside the territories of the Golden Horde, Tamerlane did no such thing. The Golden Horde had now become, in the words of the Russian historian N. I. Kostomarov, a Horde “in its last gasp” and also a “wreckage” of its former glory.

 

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXLV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Rise and Fall of the Golden Horde.

A Historical Note Continued.

 

Christmas 1386 saw Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow embarking on a punishing expedition against the city of Novgorod, whose people had looted the city of Kostroma (where Dmitry had stayed during the plunder of Moscow by Khan Tokhtamysh), which was one of the cities loyal to Dmitry. In the confrontation between Dmitry and the city of Novgorod, amazingly, no blood was spilled to reach a favorable for Dmitry solution.

But what a coincidence! Already in the year 1387 (sic!) Tokhtamysh, for some reason, decides to attack the great city of Bukhara, his powerful sponsor Tamerlane’s domain.

Meanwhile, as a tribute from Novgorod, attacked by Donskoy, the grand Prince of Moscow gets precisely 8,000 rubles, the amount of tribute he owes, but hasn’t paid in five years to Tokhtamysh. (Actually, the amount paid by the city of Novgorod was only 3,000, whereas the rest of the money was coming from the Dvina Territory. A rather complicated, but very modern-sounding business transaction!)

At the same time, Tokhtamysh, having plundered the fabulously rich city of Bukhara, gets himself a very angry customer in the person of his former benefactor Timur, aka Tamerlane (1336-1405).

A strange story indeed! In an effort to figure out the situation we must first point out that Khan Tokhtamysh, although definitely inferior to Tamerlane in all respects but one, was an uncontested Genghiside, that is, a direct descendant of the great Genghis-Khan, which amounted to a great deal in the Mongol hierarchy. Meanwhile, the great Timur was merely a son of a minor Mongol nobleman, which means that his résumé for supremacy was lacking an admittedly essential ingredient. The fact that Timur was born in the vicinity of Samarkand was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was far away from the mainstream dwelling place of Mongol royalty, but on the other, it awarded Timur with an uncontested home turf of value. For a lesser figure this would not have meant much but for Tamerlane it turned out to be a decisive boon in establishing a home base, where he first matured and then excelled.

Most interestingly, the fact that Grand Prince Dmitry in 1387 would demand from the extremely wealthy merchant city of Novgorod the exact amount that he had all this time owed to the Horde, proves that all these years since the Tatar burning of Moscow in 1382, the great Moskal had been pulling the Khan’s leg.

***

Prince Dmitry's 1383 delegation, of which he himself was no part, did not bring Khan Tokhtamysh any money (the owed tribute amounted to a hefty 8,000 rubles), but Dmitry’s elder son Vasili remained at the Horde as hostage, with all implied consequences. Having come to the Sarai, the Russians did not show any expected submission. As for the taxes, they pointed out to the Khan that having been plundered and devastated by none other than Tokhtamysh himself, shortly before, in 1382, they were in no position to pay. With no taxes coming in from the Russians, while facing his financial obligations to his army, Tokhtamysh found himself in a very difficult position.

As for the Grand Prince of Moscow who was desperately seeking a way out of his own crisis, having won a historic battle in 1380, but gaining nothing from it, Dmitry Donskoy had to try some desperate measures of diplomacy, which, ironically, boiled down to the “Genghis-Khan” trump card now in his possession.

Thus, a Machiavellian theater plays out before the reader’s eyes, 87 years before the birth of the great Florentine. It is quite clear that being faced with the Russians’ inability to pay taxes, Khan Tokhtamysh was increasingly tempted to turn his gaze to some greener pastures belonging to his Southern neighbor and benefactor Timur/Tamerlane. Having on several occasions fled to Samarkand from the pursuing enemies, Tokhtamysh was familiar with those lands. His experienced eye had undoubtedly taken in the great wealth of Tamerlane’s Ulus. There was a second major factor, of course, which was the lack of respect on Tokhtamysh’s part, a direct descendant of Genghis-Khan for Tamerlane who was not a Genghiside.

Having underestimated both his enemies, namely, the Grand Prince of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy and, even worse, the great Tamerlane, Khan Tokhtamysh committed two horrific mistakes, which were bound to take him down.

Regarding Tokhtamysh underestimating Dmitry, this is what N. I. Kostomarov writes:

“Tokhtamysh must have counted on the [mistaken impression] that, having shown himself a faint-hearted coward [sic!], during the Tatar Khan’s raid on Moscow, and as the ruler of a devastated land, Dmitry posed a lesser threat…”

But this is exactly what Dmitry wanted Tokhtamysh to think!

On the other hand, Tamerlane’s domain was a choice morsel, and overestimating the man’s handicap of not being a Genghiside, Tokhtamysh reckoned that attacking him now was a clever thing to do.

On top of this, adding an insult to injury, Dmitry’s son Vasily, after two years of being in Khan’s custody, managed to escape from the Ulus into Moldavia, and from there to Lithuania, and thus Tokhtamysh lost his most valuable hostage.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXLIV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Rise and Fall of the Golden Horde.

A Historical Note Continued.

And so, Prince Dmitry Donskoy, after his glorious victory over the forces of Khan Mamai of the Golden Horde at the Kulikovo Field, where he used a brilliant military maneuver, cutting off Mamai’s core force from the forces provided by Mamai’s allies, was now facing a new challenge, namely from the new Khan of the Golden Horde, Tokhtamysh. The latter did not take Mamai’s defeat lying down, especially after Dmitry’s great victory emboldened the Russians to stop paying tribute to the Golden Horde altogether. In response, Tokhtamysh moved against the Russians, burned down several towns and devastated Moscow.

The coming of Tokhtamysh meant that a new political strategy had to be adopted by Prince Dmitry. The victory over Mamai gained little in practical results, except that it raised the spirit of the Russian people quite considerably. The Russians were firmly set on stopping paying tribute to the Golden Horde. So, what would be the next move?

In order to figure out the historical role of Khan Tokhtamysh, who can be safely called a mortal enemy of Russia, we need to look at another towering figure of the Moslem world at the time, who happened to play a decisive role in the eventual fate of Khan Tokhtamysh and the Golden Horde as such. This man is well-known to the whole world. His name is Timur, also known as Tamerlane, meaning “Timur the Lame,” the great Moslem military commander and statesman, whose name alone made his enemies tremble. Curiously, he has always been extremely popular in Russia, and earlier in the USSR, where the name “Timurovtsy” used to be given to young schoolchildren’s organizations, appealing to the Russian youth to be the best they can be.

The road to power at the Golden Horde was not an easy one for Tokhtamysh. Several times he tried and failed, each time fleeing to the safe harbor of Samarkand under the wing of his powerful protector Timur the Lame, aka Tamerlane. Each time was he given a new army to substantiate his claim, until finally Tamerlane’s army brought Tokhtamysh victory, and made him the Khan of the Golden Horde.

What happened next between these two “friends” is seemingly hard to understand. Tokhtamysh was no fool, but how could he have been so stupid as to bite the hand that had fed him? He had been to Samarkand, he had seen all he needed to see to recognize Tamerlane’s unquestionable superiority. Benefiting from the great power of his protector, he must have realized that he had no chance and hardly any reason to challenge that power. And yet he struck, and paid the price of his sheer folly. In fact, to use the Japanese word, he committed a harakiri.

***

As for the Grand Prince of Moscow, who in the words of the Russian historian N. I. Kostomarov, “was collecting subordinate princes for the common cause of protecting Rus,” could such a man be a pussilanimous man? Here is Kostomarov again:

“With Dmitry were the forces of the lands of Moscow, Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, Belozersk, Murom. There were also the forces of Pskov under the command of Prince Andrei Olgerdovich, of Bryansk under Andrei’s brother Prince Dmitry Olgerdovich [that is, Lithuanian princes].”

The total troop strength, according to the annals, was 150,000 men. Even if the number is exaggerated, it was still an astonishingly large army gathered by Prince Dmitry of Moscow. Having laid a trap for his enemy, Dmitry hid a fresh unit in a forest nearby, and having selected the right people for this purpose, he obviously had to be a very smart man. During the battle with the Tatars, part of the fighting Russians ran toward the forest, pursued by Mamai’s men. The Lithuanian reserve did not budge, but allowed the running Russians and their pursuers to pass by. Only then, on the signal of their commander Bobrok, the fresh troop attacked the Tartars from the rear. Panic arose among the Tatars, they started running and many drowned in the waters of the Don.

Prince Dmitry, working on very good advice, made the right decision to cross the Don, in order to fight the Tatars with his army’s back to the river, cutting off any possibility of retreat for the Russian troops, which meant till victory. Such a man could hardly be guilty of wrong decisions.

Having left Moscow (not fled, as some historians would want us to believe, but left!), before the advance of the new post-Mamai Khan Tokhtamysh in 1382, Prince Dmitry must have made the right decision, ordering the people finding refuge in the Kremlin to under no circumstances open the gates of the heavily fortified citadel. It was therefore not his fault that the defenders of the Kremlin fell victim to the cheap trick of Tokhtamysh, promising to spare everybody if they just please open the gates.

Tokhtamysh triumphed by means of a treacherous scheme, which is why it is so important to understand what happened afterwards.

But why did Dmitry Donskoy abandon Moscow to Tokhtamysh, in the first place? This was a painful but unavoidable decision. While Tokhtamysh was able in no time to raise up a strong army for his attack on Moscow, the winner of Kulikovo could not perform a similar feat. His army, albeit victorious against Mamai, was sorely depleted and had no time to regenerate. Any military confrontation with Tokhtamysh was bound to end in a disaster for Dmitry Donskoy, and he chose to abandon Moscow to the enemy as the only way to save Russia.

Ironically, the great Russian military commander Kutuzov used exactly the same logic against Napoleon, yet nobody would ever dare to call him a coward!

Returning to the devastated Moscow, Prince Dmitry Donskoy knew better than to cry foul. Instead, he sent a delegation to the Golden Horde, headed by his son Vasily. On receiving the delegation, Tokhtamysh took Vasily as his hostage and sent the others back with a demand to pay back the whole tribute owed by the Russians to the Horde, in the amount of 8,000 rubles.

Meanwhile, having stayed as hostage in the Golden Horde for two-plus years, Dmitry’s son managed to escape. The year 1385 saw him in Moldavia, from where he moved to Lithuania.

This is already a highly unusual phenomenon. Other hostages trying to escape were normally caught and subjected to a gruesome execution. But what happened after that, in the year 1387, dramatically alters the whole picture.

To be continued…