The Sabres of Paradise
2.0 Stars
12-20-2024

You people need Tzeentch

This history book has been on my to-read book for 10 years? 15 years? since apparently it was one of the influences on Frank Herbert's Dune series. And you can see some of the inspirations that Dune took from the culture of the Caucus; the mountain tradition of personal and familial vendetta, the universal open carrying of daggers, the remote and highly defensible aouls/sieks, the messianic figure in the form of Shamyl (aka the Lion of Daghestan, aka the Third Imam, aka the Shadow of Allah), and the Daghestani supplying the inspo for the Atreides & Fremen, while the imperial Russians provide the inspo for the Houses Corino & Harkonnen. Still, I wouldn't read too much into this influence; the history provided some color and some general themes, but it was really just the slightest sliver of a seed for the Dune novels. It's mostly interesting in the parallels it raises between the modern world and the fictional world; e.g. the Atreides who are often read as the heroes of the fictional story would equate to ISIS in the real world, while in the real world the Paul Atreidies figure ended up being first captured by the Russians, then feted and pampered by the Russians, then spending the last few decades of his life pensioned off and making social calls in a mid-sized Russian town. Sort of universal jidhad dissolving into Jane Austen.

For this book itself, it is only a history book in the loosest of terms. It's more the result of the author's personal passion project and idiosyncretic investigations, and it focuses on individual incident, character, and personality more than it does on the larger flow of history or laying out a clear timeline of events. It's also from the age where authors would talk a lot about the essential nature of the Oriental, or the Frenchman, or of the Russian. It's also super, super fucking depressing, or at least the first 75% of it is. On one side of the conflict you have Imperial Russia at its most conservative and corrupt and brutal; willing to throw away the lives of its slave-soldiers by the hundreds of thousands, and killing or imprisoning anyone showing slightest leanings towards liberty, fraternity, or equality. On the other side of the conflict you have the mountains-have-eyes religious hillbilly zealots, who would love to be dirt poor but in most cases can only afford barren rocks, and who split their free time between praying to God, knifing each other, and kidnapping and raping 13 year olds. At various times during this portion of the reading I thought of the Three Body Problem and its decision to signal the aliens so that they can come and wipe us out, of the God-as-Watchmaker metaphor where he created the universe and set it in motion in order to observe it play out precisely to his calculation and what a boring and awful experience that must have been for him, and of how none of what I am reading is disproving the RadFem hypthosis of "maybe we should kill off all the men?" So, not a great time or area of the world in which to be alive.

As mentioned though, the book takes an odd turn in the last 25%. The Russian Tzar gets replaced, and his successor decides to try ... not being evil? And then Shamyl, the leader of the resistance to the Russians, is finally cornered, defeated, and captured. Rather than being executed, instead he's taken to the big Russian cities, greeted with parades and cheers, becomes a minor friend of the Tzar, and is settled along with his family and retainers in a snowy but pleasant Russian town. During the decades of warfare very little was known about Shamyl with any surety, instead he was just this shadowy and legendary leader masterminding the Murid's attacks on/resistance to Russian encroachment. And then in the sunset of his life suddenly everything is known about him, and is recorded by the Russian aides who managed his estate as well as by the thousands of people he dined with in this last stage of life. He seems to have taken his removal from absolute power with grace. I think most of us would have difficulty with the transition, especially losing the ability to lift a finger and have who ever was bothering you instantly beheaded. From most accounts Shamyl seems to have been Kvothe-like figure; charismatic and tough and talented and lucky and smart, but also constantly scheming to put himself at best advantage and make himself appear larger than life. One of the later-life encounters that stood out was when Shamyl met a visiting illusionist, and he saw through most of the tricks pretty quickly, but then demanded, nearly at sword point, that the other tricks be explained to him. This was a guy who never stopped thinking about stage craft and presentation. Even at a far distance you wish Shamyl had been able to live a different life where he could have put his talents to less murderous use.

Ok, now the part where I recount the more minor bits and pieces I found interesting:

From Civ5 fame, we have the Krepost. This was a Russian/Cossack invention, and referred to basically the smallest fort/watch tower possible, manned by ~5 soldiers. These were the nannites of frontier warfare, and were placed in the thousands along the border, with each krepost only ~100 or so yards from the next. As a hinterland tribe these must have been terrifying, since they prevented infiltration, could reinforce their neighboring Kreposts, could slow down larger raids long enough for larger Russian forces to arrive, and steadily advanced across the frontier in a cordon that contained more and more land each year.

Quotes about People X are like this, People Y are like that:

"Like all Poles, Przhetzlavski was adept at turning everything to political account. After the suppression of the Polish risings in 1863, he often spoke ..."

"French preceptors occupied a singular position in Russian households. Whatever the barriers of geography, politics, or language which isolated Russia from the rest of Europe, large numbers of French tutors found their way there during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and were followed by an invasion of English nannies. Both occupied a remarkable place in the westernization of the country. The tutors may be said to have had a profound effect on Russian education and culture, sophisticating and Gallicizing their little charges just as the nannies Anglicized them; superimposing discipline, plain foods and punctuality on these basically tempestuous babies. Although neither tutors, nor nannies, appear to have been able to achieve more than purely superficial effects of logic and order. As soon as their charges grew up, numbers of them were to be found blowing out their brains over some imagined slight; breakfasting at midnight; sobbing away whole afternoons sustained by pickled herrings; gambling or drinking for forty-eight hours on end; or galloping across the steppes in furious charges against fate. Soudba! Toska! Fate! Spleen! French tutors, and even English nannies, were no match for the Slav soul."

Excuse making when you accidentally kill the Third Imam's cat while he is away on business:

"Early in 1853, when Shamyl was absent for some months fighting in the mountains, poor Vaska-Nourman pined; refusing all food. In vain the choicest morsels were prepared for him, the household hanging over him solicitously. In vain Khazi Mahommed moved into his father’s rooms trying to feed the cat by hand—it was inconsolable and at last died. The whole aôul was becalmed in grief. Khazi Mahommed assembled all the available Murid dignitaries to honour his father’s pet, giving it a special burial and a funeral ovation worthy of a Naib. But no-one dared inform Shamyl of the tragedy. ‘Now it will go badly with me,’ he said, hearing at last of his loss. To him, Vaska-Nourman must have been mascot and companion, someone who shared the days of his glory and who returned his love unquestioningly—and made even less demands than the gentle Shouanete"

Russia, never a great place to be:

"The Dekabristi—so named from the fact that their revolt took place in December—were a group of cultivated and liberal young army officers devoted to reform the liberation of the serfs and, above all, to the formation of a constitutional government. Their very idealism, in its purity, made them incapable of carrying out their revolt against the tyranny which Nicholas embodied. Their abortive stand was a heroic madness, embodying the whole of nineteenth-century Slav psychology. The time was not ripe. The people were not ready; the idealists stood alone—and fell alone. Alexander Herzen was to write of them with love and anguish, throughout his Memoirs: Between 1812 and 1825 there appeared a perfect galaxy of brilliant talent, independent character and chivalrous valour, a combination quite new to Russia. These men had absorbed everything of Western culture, the introduction of which had been forbidden… They were its latest blooms and, in spite of the fatal scythe that mowed them down at once, their influence can be traced, flowing far into the gloomy Russia of Nicholas, like the Volga into the sea. The merciless manner in which the new Tzar suppressed not only the Dekabristi, but every personal freedom or liberal measure, kept the country cowed throughout his reign, and made him the embodiment of that tyranny which the Dekabristi sought to destroy."

"It had been raining heavily, the children were coughing—those who were left, that is, about a third, were already dead, en route. ‘Not half will reach their destination,’ said the officer in charge. ‘Have there been epidemics?’ I asked. ‘No… but they just die off like flies. A Jew boy, you know, is such a frail, weakly creature… he is not used to tramping in the mud for ten hours a day and eating dry bread—then, being among strangers, no father, or mother, nor petting; they just cough and cough, until they cough themselves dead… And I ask you—what use is it to the State? What can they do with such little boys? … Well, we must be off… Hey! sergeant! Tell the small fry to form up.’ ‘They brought out the children,’ continues Herzen, ‘It was one of the most awful sights I have ever seen… Boys of twelve or thirteen might somehow have survived it, but little fellows of eight and ten… Pale, exhausted, with frightened faces, they stood in thick clumsy soldiers’ overcoats with stand-up collars, fixing helpless, pitiful eyes on the garrison soldiers who were roughly getting them into ranks. The white lips, the blue rings under their eyes looked like fever or chill. And these sick children, without care or kindness, exposed to the icy wind that blows straight from the Arctic Ocean, were going to their graves."