Social myths die hard. When a people, a nation, or a state collectively accepts a myth as being true and factual, releasing such an entity from its hold can be extremely difficult.
As I have written in the past, the myth of Moscow being the Third Rome, first articulated by the Abbot Philotheus of Pskov in the 15th century, persisted throughout the Tsarist period, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, stripped of its pseudo-religious connotations by V. I. Lenin, became the secular philosophy of the neo-pagan Soviet Union. The myth in its various forms has remained as the basis of Russian imperialism.
With the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, the myth briefly entered a state of limbo, until it could be resurrected in the present time. The current drive focuses on the re-subjugation of those nations lost with the fall of the Soviet government in 1991 to the control of Moscow. The old Russian proverb that Russia is the “Mother of the Slavs” is the driving force behind the present war in Ukraine. The Russian desire to possess all of Ukraine was whetted by its successful seizure of Crimea in 2014.
Simply put, M. III R. holds that Mother Russia has the right, indeed the duty, to spread its mantel across the Slavic peoples of Europe. In the process, the cultural, religious, social and economic aspects of those nations are to be “Russified,” meaning that they are to subsumed into the Russian “meganation.” The resistance of the Ukrainians is predicated on their unwillingness to have their ethnic identity destroyed.
Across the centuries, many similar such attacks on the sovereignty of other peoples have been waged by Moscow the Third Rome. Here in the Northern Neck, we have a particular instance of bonding with those beleaguered peoples.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, which ended the long period of the Napoleonic Wars, the independent Kingdom of Poland was not reestablished, after it had been partitioned by Prussia, Austria and Russia in the late 18th century. Instead, a new Poland was brought forth with the Emperor Alexander I of Russia being recognized as the King of what came to be known as Congress Poland. A similar arrangement was made for Finland, whereby Alexander I became the Grand Duke of Finland.
Alexander I died under still mysterious circumstance in 1825, to be succeeded by his brother, who became the Emperor Nicholas I. The year 1830 witnessed a revolutionary wave all across Europe, and the Poles, hoping it would lead to their independence, rose up in revolt against Russian domination. Nicholas I responded with a brutal suppression of the revolt in which many Polish lives were lost.
The people of Richmond County wanted to show their solidarity with and sympathy for the suffering Poles. In response, they renamed the Richmond County Courthouse “Warsaw,” and thus the town has remained now for nearly two centuries.
In the early days of the present Russo-Ukrainian War, our Northern Neck Warsaw again expressed its concern by illuminating the water spouting from the fountains in the town park in yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. I need not say that to the best of my knowledge, in 1830 no ethnic Poles were living in Richmond County.
During the time of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the vast plains of Ukraine were known as the “breadbasket” of the country because of the wheat that was grown there. Economically, the plains are vital for food production, but as they comprise hundreds of miles of flat terrain, they are also prone to invasion by hostile powers. Ukraine has few natural barriers along its borders from which to defend its territory, making foreign invasion a perpetual threat to the country’s freedom and sovereignty.
Sadly, the social myth of Moscow being the Third Rome continues to persist in our own time, with cataclysmic consequences for those peoples that reject it.
