Tomorrow In History- August 25, 1698-- Czar Peter The Great Commences Mass Executions And Torture Of The Leaders Of "The Streltsy," The Rogue Army Which Rebelled and Marched On Moscow To Stage A Coup-- Historical Coincidence?
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Tomorrow In History- August 25, 1698-- Czar Peter The Great Commences Mass Executions And Torture Of The Leaders Of "The Streltsy," The Rogue Army Which Rebelled and Marched On Moscow To Stage A Coup-- Historical Coincidence?
Introduction-- A Reminder Of Why History Matters
Yevgeny Prigozhin is 98% missing. The 2% accounted for is the parts of him they will eventually recover. We all heard the news today and likely thought the same thing about the "who" and the "why" of it. That is natural, because of the fear that it could lead to chaos in Russia, which means that the US becomes once again "ground zero" and we need to dust off all of our old instruction pamphlets for how to "duck and cover." (As if crawling under our desks in elementary school was ever going to shelter us from an H-Bomb detonation. I packed all of my junk inside my desk anyway, including my coat just in case)
However it should be mentioned that Putin or someone under his orders tried to kill Prigozhin months ago in late June when a "friendly fire" series of missile strikes was called in to hit Wagner units while enmired in the battle of Bakhmut, which caused many casualties. Many at the time questioned the authenticity of Prigozhin's accusations, but there is little questioning that his revolt was for real in the early stage, the proof of which was the steep Russian aircraft losses due to being fired upon by Wagner forces during the initial phase of their march on Moscow. This was a big factor in the Wagner rebellion which gets lost.
So, because of how my brain is wired, instead of going onto Google News to read every single report by each news service on the internet which was running the exact same AP wire lead, I decided to do something typically unconventional and to dig into some Russian history. I went back to my archive on Russia's Czar, Peter The Great, whose life and history I have made a study of. And I dug, and dug some more, and there it was. Right there.
Dictators, tyrants, and cult leaders are often superstitious and deeply religious in a perverse way. They are steeped in symbolism, relics, mythologies, holy sites, supposed "miracles," obsessions with historic anniversaries, and are frequently preoccupied with aligning with the stars in order to fulfill and secure their fates. Many times they choose to see themselves as reincarnated great warriors, leaders, and military heroes from the past, as a means of reinforcing their egoistic belief in the eternal glory of their own destinies. Hitler himself was of that character, believing he was the reincarnated soul of Germany's Frederick The Great, and before him the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who ordered Pontius Pilate to carry out the crucifixion of Christ from his villa on the island of Capri.
It may seem presumptuous on my part to suggest that Vladimir Putin, an extreme Russian nationalist who sees himself as Russia's most important Czar, is one such deeply superstitious and religious tyrant. What is not presumptuous is to assert the documented biographical fact that Romanov Czar Peter The Great, after whom Putin's birthplace is named, is personally Putin's most admired Czar in all history, and therefore he consciously models himself upon him.
Peter, though not the first Romanov sovereign, was the first Russian Emperor of his dynasty who ruled over what he considered all of Russia, once his brother and co-ruler Ivan V, died and Ivan's sister Sophia, who served as regent for both, was removed and banished to a convent.
Putin is himself possessed of a determination to restore Peter's "Great Russian Empire" and its borders through wars of conquest, as a feature of his post-Soviet conversion to the cult of "The Third And Final Rome" prophesied by the Russian Orthodox Church. His quasi-mystical belief that "Ukraine is Kiev Rus" is his internalized justification for his genocidal eliminationist war, all of his lies about Ukraine harboring Nazis and the threat of Russia being encircled by NATO notwithstanding.
(For more background see this Rosen Report article dated March 27, 2022, on the history of the Third Rome prophecy, and its codification by Czar Ivan Groszny, aka, "The Terrible.")
https://therosenreport.blogspot.com/2022/03/today-in-history-march-28-1584-death-of.html
In addition, this excerpt from a Washington Post article (March 22, 2022) by David Ignatius circles back to the same reference.
["Putin’s mind-set was on display at a stadium concert last week, as he invoked a Russian Orthodox warrior-saint who spoke of his own battles as “thunderstorms” that would “glorify Russia.”
“This is how it was in his time; this is how it is today and will always be,” Putin said of Fedor Ushakov, an 18th-century admiral reputed never to have lost a battle and canonized as a saint in 2001, shortly after Putin became president.
Putin’s short remarks offered a reminder that his personality is more complex — and perhaps more dangerous — than the usual stereotype of him as an ex-KGB officer who wants to revive the Soviet Union. Putin is something different — a Russian Orthodox Christian believer rather than an atheist, with an ideology closer to Benito Mussolini’s fascism than Vladimir Lenin’s communism."]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/22/putin-religious-russia-history-ukraine/
And likewise, there is this excerpt from the United Institute For Peace, co-written by Aidan Houston and Dr. Peter Mandaville in an article titled "The Role Of Religion In Russia's War Against Ukraine"
["In President Putin’s long speech preceding the invasion, he alluded to the religious narratives undergirding the battle surrounding Ukrainian national identity. Putin claimed that Ukraine is “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”
Putin’s claim reflects a commonly held interpretation of the history of Orthodox Christianity in Russia. According to this view, Russians and Ukrainians are one people who originate from the same Christian kingdom that came into being in the 10th century. According to the national histories of both countries, Prince Volodymyr I of Kyiv accepted Christianity in 988 and established a devout kingdom that became the predecessor to the modern states of Ukraine and Russia."]
Once the implications of Putin's religious identity (and we use that term loosely) are fully understood, and we abandon our strongly held delusional belief that he is driven solely by pragmatism or an old communist's nostalgia for the Soviet period, then we can comprehend what otherwise seems incomprehensible about what he is doing, and why. It is a lazy argument which insists that Putin's war is motivated by his desperate attempt to hold power domestically, or that he was reacting to a perceived external military threat. He did not need a foreign war and all of the subsequent damage inflicted upon Russia to retake the power and control which he already has, especially considering there never was an external military threat. Ukraine's application for membership in NATO was a deterrent policy which included no strategic offensive military capability that posed a serious threat to Russia's homeland at all. Rather it was meant only to guard against Putin's long-standing commitment to dismember a neighboring sovereign nation in yet another destructive repeat of his annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine's prospective NATO membership was simply a "Do Not Enter" sign posted on their border.
So, in light of all of this, I had a nagging itch about what Prigozhin's Wagner Group reminded me of, and I decided to take a little time to scratch it.
Part I-- What Were The Streltsy?
According to Encyclopedia Britannica--
["A Russian military corps established in the middle of the 16th century that formed the bulk of the Russian army for about 100 years, The Streltsy provided the tsar’s bodyguard, and, at the end of the 17th century, exercised considerable political influence. Originally composed of commoners, the streltsy had become a hereditary military caste by the mid-17th century. Living in separate settlements (slobody), they performed police and security duties in Moscow and in the border towns where they were garrisoned; they often also engaged in trades and crafts. In 1681 there were about 55,000 streltsy, 22,500 of whom were stationed in Moscow."]
And further, from the Wikipedia entry...
["Some Russian historians believe that the Streltsy uprising represented a reactionary rebellion against the progressive innovations of Peter the Great, who had left the country on a tour of cities in northern and western Europe at the time. Others see it as a riot against the yoke of serfdom oppression, military-service hardships and harassment.
The Moscow Streltsy, who had participated in Peter the Great's Azov campaigns in 1695–1696, remained in Azov as a garrison. In 1697, however, the four regiments of Streltsy were unexpectedly sent to Velikiye Luki instead of Moscow. On their way there they were starving and carrying their ordnance by themselves, due to lack of horses. In March 1698, 175 Streltsy left their regiments and fled to Moscow to file a complaint. They secretly established contact with Sophia Alekseyevna, who had been incarcerated at the Novodevichy Monastery, and hoped for her mediation. The runaway Streltsy, despite their resistance, were sent back to their regiments, giving rise to discontent among the rest of them.
On 6 June, the Streltsy removed their commanding officers, chose four electives from each regiment, and made their way to Moscow, getting ready to punish the boyars and foreign advisers and blaming them for all adversities. The rebels (approx. 2,300 men) intended to install Sophia or, in case of her refusal, her alleged lover Vasili Golitsyn, who had been in exile. Peter I ordered four regiments (4,000 men) and a cavalry unit under the command of Aleksey Shein and Patrick Gordon to attack the Streltsy. On 18 June, the Streltsy were defeated not far from the New Jerusalem Monastery (Voskresensky Monastery) 40 km west of Moscow.
Peter employed savage tortures while investigating the incident. Many suspects were whipped to death with the knout, an extremely stout leather whip composed of numerous twisted strands. Many were stretched until their limbs broke; sophisticated iron thumbscrews were applied to the fingers and toes of some prisoners; while others had their backs slowly roasted or had their flanks and bare feet slowly torn apart with red-hot iron pincers. Peter thus induced suspect after suspect to name accomplices in a virtually unending cavalcade of forced, and likely often false, confessions.
As a result of a major investigation, 57 Streltsy were executed and the rest sent into exile. Upon his hurried return from London on 25 August 1698, Peter I ordered another investigation. Between September 1698 and February 1699, 1,182 Streltsy were executed and 601 were whipped, branded with iron, or (mostly the young ones) sent into exile. The investigation and executions continued up until 1707. The Moscow regiments, which had not participated in the uprising, were later disbanded. Streltsy and their family members were removed from Moscow."]
Part II-- Peter's Bi-Polar Disorder And Putin's "Bi-Polar World Order"--
This is an excerpt from "The Rosen Report" (June 18, 2022, "The Strategic Dirty Secret Behind Putin's Praise For Czar Peter The Great") in which we explored further this relationship between the two Czars, whose reigns were separated by slightly less than three-hundred years.
["There are similarities between Peter the Great and Vladimir Putin, but in my view not enough to weave a whole narrative which explains everything Putin is doing now in Ukraine, but it does reveal much about his mindset. Putin himself blundered recently in a children's school event, conflating Peter's seven year long war with Charles XII of Sweden with the Great Northern War in the Baltics in which Peter was allied with Sweden. A young student infuriated Putin by correcting him in public.
Recently the 350th Birthday of Peter was commemorated widely with events throughout Russia. This was the context of Putin's speech in which he praised Peter's expansion of the Russian Empire militarily by "taking back what was Russia's."
Putin was born and raised in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) named for the Czar, in fact built by him. St. Petersburg was Russia's window to the west, a first major step toward absorbing western science and culture for purposes of modernization. It became over time a center of Universities, museums, theaters and Opera houses, Ballet and staged drama. It was truly a cosmopolitan international city. In the early 1800's, the very first railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow was surveyed and built with help from the US Army Corps of Engineers and their famous leader US Major George Washington Whistler, father of the artist James McNeil Whistler. It was built for the Czar Nicholas I and his family to visit their Winter Palace.
As has been emphasized by his biographers, Peter was determined once coronated as Czar to modernize Russia, especially their military and Navy. Peter became an avid sailor, and studied all of the different designs of ships big and small, merchant or military.
He undertook a tour of Europe in 1697 which became known as "The Great Embassy" in which he visited the capitols and courts of many countries and their monarchs. He met with the great Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, an inventor and innovator of the telescope, who studied the rings of Saturn and discovered it's Moon, Titan. Peter also visited the shipbuilding yards of Venice to see how their Galleys were designed. In part, he intended his trip to be a kind of industrial espionage, as he traveled in disguise as a Russian infantryman accompanying the royal train. But it was a farce, since Peter was 6'8" tall, with a wild shock of red hair, clearly recognizable to all. Putin is a much better spy than Peter ever was, because he could easily "blend in."
Based on the recent media coverage, one is left to believe that except for these unfortunate expansionist wars that kept popping up, Peter was "pretty cool" as far as Czars go. And this is the awful mistake.
Peter The Great was in fact a "split personality." Putin praised one side of him which was a case of "cherrypicking" in order to justify his invasion of Ukraine, claiming Ukraine to be Russian. But that isn't the whole story. To understand fully what side of Peter's personality Putin most identifies with, you have to go back to Peter's childhood. "]
Peter's half-sister Sophia on two occasions tried to secure the Russian throne for her brother Ivan V by intriguing against Peter, by inciting Streltsy rioting and murder attempts against him. Both times they failed, but Peter never forgot and played "the long game" to exact his revenge.
Not to be ignored in this context is that in addition to his interest in navigation, shipbuilding, science and languages, he was generally erudite and cosmopolitan. While engaged in his European "Embassy" he was on his most refined behavior and fit right in with their polite society and nobility. As mentioned, he met with the Dutch scientist Huyghens, credited with astronomical discoveries, as well as other scientific and literary figures. He spoke and read Dutch, and considered briefly making it the language of the Russian Court, before settling upon French. He wanted Russians to smoke tobacco and drink coffee, and to have pubs and cafes become centers of intellectual and social interaction.
In effect, he wanted to copy the western Europeans in many ways to modernize Russia and break the power of the "Old Believers," the "Raskolniky," and the cultural backwardness which they enforced. Likewise Peter was always feeling threatened by the Russian oligarchs of the day, the Boyars, whose wealth and history of intrigues against him he intended to deal with at some point. In fact, he is famous for his edict mandating the cutting off of their beards in order to humiliate them publicly. This was part of his "revenge tour" for the multiple nefarious plots to kill him and his close family when he was a child.
But most important to Peter was maintaining and expanding Russia's naval power and modernizing his army in order to enforce his Imperial edicts in conquered areas, and to repel potential foreign invasion threats such as that of Charles XII of Sweden. To expand as an Imperial naval power, Russia needed the science, shipbuilding know-how, military strength and training to gain access to a warm water port, which meant they needed control of the Black Sea and the Ports on the Sea of Azov. (As they still do today)
Thus, when informed of the Streltsy rebellion he abruptly returned from his "Embassy" to Moscow and literally became a different person, a barbarian who was consumed with bloodlust and violence. The moment he arrived, 325 years ago tomorrow, he not only ordered the executions and torture of the Streltsy leaders, but he supervised them and observed all of it for hours. He sat there and watched, and glibly conversed with these men as they slowly roasted over a fire on a spit, all while he personally interrogated them, extracting many false confessions and lists of sympathizers for the revolt before they were mercifully killed. It is notable that historians believe that the 1698 Streltsy revolt of which we speak was triggered by their starvation, extreme shortages of horses, and supplies, much like with Prigozhin and his soldiers in Ukraine.
One day, a man of manners, curiosity, affability, high intellect, and the next a heartless and brutal mass executioner. One person. Two personalities.
When you look for a similar pattern of childhood trauma, extreme adversity, and suffering in the formative years of Vladimir Putin which shaped his personality in a similar way as that of Peter's in an effort to get a handle on why he is the way he is, one need not look very far.
From a very insightful article published in a blog called "aces too high" dedicated to addressing childhood trauma experiences, titled "How Vladimir Putin's Childhood Is Affecting Us All" by Jane Ellen Stevens:
["Born in 1952 Leningrad, Putin was a street kid in a city devastated by a horrific, three-year siege by the Nazis during WWII, a genocide described as the world’s most destructive siege of a city. Most of the population of three million people died, one million starving to death. Putin’s father was badly injured in the war, his mother nearly died of starvation. Living in a rat-infested apartment with two other families, the family had no hot water, no bathtub, a broken-down toilet, little or no heat. His father worked in a factory; his mother did odd jobs she could find. A small child, whose two older siblings are believed to have been lost to war and disease, Putin was left to fend for himself, severely bullied by other children.
From his parents he inherited their wartime trauma personified by Nazi forces threatening their existence, ravaging their city and killing their friends and family. With his parents struggling to survive, they were absent or too traumatized to be attentive to their son. There’s no mention of other family members: no grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Kindness and affection didn’t seem to have been part of the child Putin’s world."]
https://acestoohigh.com/2022/03/02/how-vladimir-putins-childhood-is-affecting-us-all/
The congruence is striking, the syndrome very similar, the identification with someone treated similarly who bore great pain at a young age, and you can see the obvious factors which led Putin to adopt Peter as his ego ideal, a person who became great and whose rise belied his harboring of extreme grievance and victimization, for which he swore revenge upon the world which he blamed for it.
Conclusion-- "What Next" You Are Asking?--
I recommend reading a good biography of Peter The Great, like the one written by Robert K. Massie. (Also the author of "Nicholas and Alexandra") Then, read the recent biography of Vladimir Putin by Fiona Hill, and you will see a very similar psychopathology, which has unique Russian cultural characteristics. Putin is multi-lingual, fluent in German from being stationed in East Germany as a young KGB agent. He is an accomplished expert in international business, trade, and finance, which has served him well as the world's wealthiest kleptomaniac. He is a sportsman, both an Aikido black belt and Judoka, an ice hockey player, and reportedly good at Chess. He is known to be occasionally affable and funny in his personal relations when it suits him. He claims incredulously to have found God, and is a regular worshipper at Russian Orthodox Church services.
And he also happens to be a brutal assassin and mass killer, having launched four military invasions, murdered his political enemies and journalists with radioactive Polonium, the nerve gas Novichok, and a long string of shootings and "window accidents" which still continue. He jails his opponents like Alexey Navalny, takes western hostages like Britney Griner and Evan Gershkovich, and frees the most brutal Russian murderers from penal colonies to engage in killing sprees against Ukrainians. He can be in fact two people when he so chooses, and that is why he finds such historical and personal affinity with Peter The Great. He relishes power because it gives him license to abandon his outward persona of calm and control, to free up the monstrous side of his bi-polar personality on the occasions he desires to indicriminantly spill blood for "Mother Russia," or "Matushka Rus" of the Russian blood and soil "Third Rome" cult. And above all, he is a most cynical and soulless individual, his expressions of faith, piety and love of God notwithstanding, a fact which our President Joe Biden has himself told Putin to his face.
So, there will be speculation about the death of Prigozhin and what will come next. I find it unsurprising that he was killed on a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg, a not so small slice of historical symbolism. Analysts are busy today poring over their Intel packages, psychological profiling reports, gaming the possible outcomes of a horrendous blood purge in Moscow and possible renewed revolt by Prigozhin's Wagner soldiers and by those in the Russian military command who enabled him. Already, Generals who supported Prigozhin are being sacked. So the obvious issues for our strategic planners are what this means for what he might do next in Ukraine or elsewhere, as well as at home.
But I find it hard to believe, knowing what I know, that Putin picked this week by coincidence, on this anniversary, to arrange the surreptitious removal of the one who was once his most trusted ally, who then became his worst betrayer.
In looking at these types of events, I believe that the timing of them is as significant as the event itself. If indeed the date and circumstances were not random as is my gut sense, this has implications for what Putin might do next strategically because it's a window into his state of mind. Which is "payback" on a huge scale.
And just one more observation. The last time I checked, the explosive device, either onboard the flight or ground based (that had to be the case either way based on eyewitness reports of how the jet broke apart and nosedived) which took down that business jet with Prigozhin and nine other passengers did not fall accidently out of a hotel room window, to restate the obvious. No matter what Fox News or Elon Musk might say.
