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Mapsix
Prefacexxiii
Part I
Fear, Contempt and Disregard
1. The Bear Phantasmagoria
Did History Create the Russia Anxiety? 3
2. The Destiny Problem
Does History’s ‘Black Legend’ Set Russia Up to Fail? 46
3. The Narrative Correction
What’s Really Happened in the Last 6,000 Years? 76
Part II
Normality, Friendship and Liberty?
4. The Dictatorship Deception
Does Russia’s Past Offer Democratic Prospects? 107
5. The Terror Moment
Is Russia Built on a History of Violence? 156
6. The Europe Question
Has Russia Ever Been Part of the West? 189
7. The Empire Relationship
Is Expansionism in Russia’s DNA? 229
8. The Invader Obsession
Does History Make Russians Seek Peace or War? 269
vii
C on t e n t s
Part III
The Fireglow of History
9. The Stalin Inheritance
Should Russians Remember the Past or Forget It? 319
10. The Putin Prospect
Is Russia’s Future Contained in Her Past? 358
Acknowledgements389
Notes391
Index429
viii
Maps
N
Rus principalities
N
E Republic of Novgorod
D
E
ia
n 0 100 200 miles
W
th
o
S
B 0 100 200 300 km
f
o
lf
u
G
O neg
a
D
RO
D
O
vi
n
Lake a
VG
Onega O
Lake N
Ladoga
F
O
Gulf of Finland IC
L
B
U
a
P
E
Se
R
c
Vologda
ti
Novgorod
al
B
ans
Pskov R O S T OV-
S U Z DA L
oni
lit Torzhok
hu
a
cur
an lg Rostov
Vo
ia
Suzdal
ns
Niem
en Kazan
Polotsk Vladimir
Moscow
prussians SMOLENSK
POLOTSK (founded 1147) Bulgar
Smolensk
were never fixed, national identities were far from primordial, and the
expanding and contracting for centuries, and other proto-states, such as the
1. EXPANSION (1) The emergence of ‘Russia’: Moscow was founded in
l
a
ra
U e
s
S
a n
p i
BULGARIA
s
C a
e
VO L G A
gal
Vo
p
Georgia
o
s
n
a
e
on
a l
D
Sarkel
p
ets
on
D
RNIGOV
Kozelsk
S e a
P E R E YA S L AV
Kaffa
CHE
Sudak
i
sn a
De
B l a c k
k
Kiev
Minsk
r
KIEV
at
y
Prip
Galloh
u
VO L H Y N I A
GALICH-
Pinsk
Varna
BYZANTINE
HUNGARY
EMPIRE
t
D
AN
POL
1147. At this time, other older principalities of Rus, notably Kiev, had been
Republic of Novgorod and Volga Bulgaria, were regional powers. Borders
medieval East Slavic world was multipolar.
N
Expansion of Muscovy by 1462
a
Expansion of Muscovy by 1505
h ni White
Expansion of Muscovy by 1533
ot Sea
B
f Boundary of Muscovy by 1462
o
lf
u Boundary of Muscovy by 1505
G
Boundary of Muscovy by 1533
D
vi
n
Lake RO a
Onega O
VG
Lake Olonets NO
F
Ladoga O Velki Ustiug a
IC m
Ka
Gulf of Finland L
B
U P e r m
Reval Ivangorod P
E Beloozero L a n d s
R
Lake Vologda
Pelpus Viatka
Novgorod V i a t k a
TEUTONIC M U S C O V Y L a n d s
ORDER Pskov
Kostroma
Vi
Riga
a
tk
Yaroslavl a
Rostov
Oka
Kolomna
L I T H UA N I A K A Z A K
Smolensk
Ryazan
Minsk Kaluga Tula K H A N A T E
Mogilev
KI E V Penza
na
Dn
P
ei
pe
r
Des
Orel Novosil
Pinsk Tambov
L
Kursk
Chernigov
A
Kiev
N
Kharkov
D
n
A S T R A K H A N
D
eip
er Don
K H A N A T E
Cherkassy
C R I M E A N Volg
a
K H A N A T E
Jassi
Kishinev
a
MOLDAVIA RE Azov e
Astrakhan
S
PI
M
E
n
N Sea of Azov
a
M
Kerch
O
p i
ban Ku m a
Ku
T
s
T
Kete
O
C a
B l a c k S e a
Riga Arkhangel
W. Dvina
L. Ladoga
N. Dv
Warsaw L. Onega
Vienna
ina
ns
Budapest Volga
Smolensk
tai
Yaroslavl
Moscow
un
Dni
Mo
Kiev a
Ok
ester
a
Kam
al
Dni
Kazan
Ur
Bucharest Voronezh
eper
Tobolsk
O
Odessa
b
Saratov Ufa Sibir
D l
o
bo
Volg a
To
Tara
n
Constantinople Tsaritsyn
Azov
Black
Sea Astrakhan
O
Irt
T KAZAKHSTAN
ysh
T
O
M
A
N
EM
PI Aral Sea
R
E
Caspian TURKESTAN
Sea
Tehran
(occupied
PERSIA 1871–81)
INDIA
AFGHANISTAN
Kabul
A RC T I C OC E A N
Kolyma
Indigirk
a
Kamchatka
na
Le
Yenisey
Okhotsk Sea of
Si ber i an Pl ai ns Yakutsk Okhotsk
an
Lowe unguska
A ld
r T
Le
Krasnoyarsk
Anga
Tomsk Nerchinsk
ra
Kuznetsk L. Baykal
Irkutsk MANCHURIA
Yenise
y
(occupied 1900–05)
Vladivostok
MONGOLIA
KULDZHA
expand, reaching its greatest extent, covering one-sixth of the world’s land
approximately the same size as the British Empire, though the British Empire
N
Principal area of peasants’ revolt led by Bolotnikov
S WE D EN Uprising of the non-Slav tribes
Lake
Ladoga Swedish attack on Novgorod 1610
Kexholm
Gulf of Finland Ceded to Sweden by Peace of Stolbovo 1617
Wladislaw’s campaign against Moscow 1618
Ladoga
Ceded to Poland by Peace of Deulino 1618
ES TON IA I ng r i a
Pskov
Kostroma
Yaroslavl
Ve
tl
ug
a
Vo
g l
a m a ry
Nizhnyi Novgorod
Kazan
L I TH UA NI A tatars
Murom
MOSCOW
a
Viazma
Sura
Ok
er
D nie p chuvash
Ugra
Smolensk
Kaluga m o r dva
sn
a
zh
Ber
So
Tsna
P
D
on
Briansk
ezina
included the invasion and occupation by the Mongols that began in 1240, the
Germany in 1941. One of the worst moments came during the Time of Troubles
4. PRESSURE (1) From the north and west: in its various incarnations Russia
Sea
ural cossacks
ian p
Cas
Astrakhan
A
lga
Vo
I
Saratov
ga
Vol
S
Tsaritsyn
don cossacks
S
Don
circassians
U
K h an a t e
Voronezh
Azov
R
on
Eletz
Belgorod
C r i m e an
E
Kursk
R
Se a of A z ov
I
Orel
P
zaporozhian cossacks
M
E
N
Chernigov
A
Gomel
S e a
T O
D
Kiev
B l a c k
a
N
A
O T
L
O
has faced elimination at the hands of foreign invaders. Moments of total crisis
invasion by Sweden in 1708, the attack by France in 1812 and the assault by
at the start of the seventeenth century, when the Swedes invaded, the Poles
N
St Petersburg
Moscow
Kiev R U S S I A N E
Samara
Rostov Omsk
Orenburg
Baku
E
PIR
Krasnovodsk
Khiva
EM
‘sphere’
Yarkand S in k ian g
OTTO
Kabul
Kashmir
Per
P E R S I A AFGHANISTAN
Peshawar
sia
nG
Lahore
Tib et
ul f
ta n
chis
A ra bia Balu Delhi NE
Lhasa
Agra PA
Karachi Sind L
Benares
Rajputana
BHUTAN
Arabian Sea Bengal
Central Calcutta
Province
Bombay
Bay
of
Bengal
Goa
5. PRESSURE (2) From the east and south: the sheer length of its borders
nineteenth century, Russia sensed threats from the Ottoman Empire in Asia,
from the whole range of European, American and Asian empires.
British territory British influence
French territory French influence
Japanese territory Japanese influence
Trans-Siberian railway Western treaty ports
Region contested variously between
Russia, China and Japan
E M P I R E
Krasnoyarsk
Chita M
an
ch
Irkutsk ur
ia
Tuva Verkhne
Harbin Vladivostok
Urga Sea
M o ngol i a of
E
(1912 autonomous) Japan
PIR
Osaka
Seoul
EM
Nagasaki
NE
g
PA
JA
C H I N A
PAC I F I C O C E A N
Assam Hong Kong
gal Macao
Upper Burma Tongking
Chittagong
L Philippines
a
A
o Manila
(USA)
nn s
am
South
Rangoon S I A M China
Sea
Cambodia
Saigon
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
MEDI
TER
RAN
EA
N
SE
A
OCEAN 1952
1955
1982
1990
1999
2004
2009
2017
Neutral EU members
with ties to NATO
States aspiring to
NATO membership
Moscow
C
A
S
P
I
A
N
S
E
A
BLACK SEA
I teach Russian history for a living, and I sometimes ask a class to tell
me the first thing they think of when they hear the word ‘Russia’.
Students suspect a trick question and turn their gaze towards the
middle distance. But what’s the trick?
In the new age of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin I asked a
group of students a slightly different question from the one above:
what they thought when they heard the name Putin. The image that
one of them put forward was precisely what the media presented: a
villain from a James Bond movie. His policies were violent and
expansionist; his rule was arbitrary and coercive. He ran a kleptoc-
racy and a mafia state based on a veneer of Russian nationalism. It
was a house of cards, ready to fall. But then the student did what
many excellent students do: mid-statement, uninterrupted, he pulled
himself up short, breathed out and suddenly changed direction. He
struggled to find coherence in terms such as ‘mafia state’. Sensing the
perils of received wisdom, he wondered if he was only saying what he
was supposed to say, and he set about adjusting his position in full
view of the rest of the class.
The question was not only about Russia, or about Putin: it was
about the limits of how we understand the world around us. After all,
observers had for years told different stories about Putin’s Russia. For
some, Putin had reshaped and modernized his country. Under his
leadership, Russia emerged from the chaos and misery of the 1990s.
He established a stable economy that was more flexible and open
than before, and that raised living standards, at least in metropolitan
centres, even after oil prices had long stopped rising. Presenting
himself as dignified, articulate and decisive, he also stabilized the
xxiii
P r e fac e
xxiv
P r e fac e
xxv
Pa rt 1
Fear, Contempt and
Disregard
[T]he next hundred years may become the golden age of civi-
lization, of the human race . . . [W]ith Britain and Russia as
the pillars of this new Europe, it can be done.
Alexander Werth, Anglo-R ussian
journalist, 19421
2
1
The Bear Phantasmagoria
Did History Create the Russia Anxiety?
3
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
4
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
but also disregard. After the end of the Cold War, Russia seemed to
disappear from the calculations of Western policymakers. It was not
considered to be an independent actor worthy of consideration.
Following a pattern that recurred from time to time, after a Russian
defeat or strategic overreach, ‘the West’ as good as said, ‘We’ve won.
That’s it. Game over. We won’t be hearing from them again.’ Accord-
ing to one Washington analyst who worked in the Defense Department
in the 1990s, America’s post-Cold-War foreign policy (expansion of
NATO, wars in the Balkans and the Middle East, forceful projection
of US values and interests, including in Russia) completely disre-
garded the possibility that Russia had its own legitimate interests.
‘We didn’t do it because we wanted to hurt them,’ she said. ‘We did it
because we didn’t care if it hurt them.’4 This more passive strain of
the Anxiety can have the same effect as active contempt and fear:
‘othering’ the biggest European country and increasing strategic
instability. But the Russia Anxiety is a cycle, and disregard can soon
turn into contempt and then to fear. For centuries, outsiders have
looked at Russia and felt superior or afraid. Years after the end of the
Cold War, the sum of these feelings is as dangerous as ever, even
though history shows that the Anxiety is almost always misplaced.
That might even be true in the great Russia crisis of the age of
Trump and Putin. By taking a snapshot of this crisis, framing it
between the US presidential election of November 2016 and the Rus-
sian election of March 2018, we can see what the Anxiety looks like,
how it works, and the risks we take when we wilfully lose control of
the way we talk about Russia.
T ru m p -P u t i n: a Ta l e of T wo
P r e si de n t i a l E l e c t ions
All the elements of the Russia Anxiety converged during the election
of Donald Trump to the American presidency. In the absence of a
consensus to explain the rise of Trump, and lacking concrete evidence
for widespread claims of Russian intervention in the election, Russia
again became a proxy for evil in the eyes of Trump’s opponents, most
of the media and the wider American establishment, especially in the
5
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
6
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
7
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
presidential race altogether,’ noted Steele, ‘but this is still largely wish-
ful thinking by more liberal elements in Moscow.’11 In other words, it
was never clear who initiated which policy, or which decision was
made where and on the basis of what information.
During the first year of Trump’s presidency, Robert Mueller began
the independent judicial investigation into alleged collusion between
the Trump election campaign and the ‘hostile power’ of Russia (the
report was scheduled for publication after this book went to press).
Speculation was periodically rife. ‘When a country can come inter-
fere in another country’s elections, that is warfare. It really is,’ said
Nikki Haley, United Nations ambassador, on 19 October 2017. No
Trump cabinet official had yet suggested a state of war. In January
2018, the defence secretary of the United Kingdom argued that Rus-
sia’s aim for Britain was as follows: ‘Damage its economy, rip its
infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and
thousands of deaths.’ Even the BBC was moved to suggest that this
might be ‘alarmist’.12 It sounded like the Russia Anxiety in action.
Foreign governments and writers were openly expressing contempt
for Russia. Fear of Russian aggression motivated the construction of
what looked like an anti-
Russian alliance. In building that alliance,
Western governments seemed again to be placing Russia outside their
definition of civilization.
But then an attempt was made in Salisbury on the life of a Russian
double-agent, Sergei Skripal, together with his adult daughter, days
before the Russian presidential election of 18 March. The British
government said that the weapon was a nerve poison – a chemical
weapon – that could only have come from a Russian facility. In effect,
they blamed Putin personally. Putin responded by asking what inter-
est the Russian authorities could have in such an ostentatious attempted
murder, just before a major election and weeks before the country
was due to host the football World Cup, and demanded to see the
evidence. The implication was that others – governments, renegade
spies, expatriate oligarchs – had an interest in humiliating and side-
lining the Russians even further, and that the fingerprints might
belong to conspirators in other countries. Or was it a rogue element
in Russian espionage, others speculated, implying that the Kremlin’s
control of its own secret services might be dissolving? It certainly
8
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
9
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
threats to its security – but there might well have been no full-
scale
flare‑up of the Russia Anxiety in Washington. No historian, speak-
ing as a historian, could evaluate the pictures painted by spies and
cybernetics experts about the 2016 election, but the historic themes
of the Russia Anxiety were nevertheless openly on display. The fear-
ful assumption of unique malevolence and extraordinary capacity –
the claim that the Russians could locate and change the opinions of
selected groups of voters in carefully chosen electoral districts, often
preoccupied as they were with local issues and personalities, as part
of a masterplan to install their own candidate in the White House
and sow doubts about the integrity of the voting system and the value
of democracy
– soon alternated with contempt for strategic over-
reach, tactical bungling and internal Russian weaknesses. The Russia
Anxiety is cyclical, although the cycles can overlap and change their
order, and the contingency of the Trump-
Putin crisis only showed
this up again. In the middle of 2018 it was even suspended, thanks to
Russia’s hosting of the World Cup, which charmed millions of visi-
tors and hundreds of millions of T V viewers, with longer-
term results
that might be important.
Both real and accidental, the Anxiety’s most important location
was in the imagination, where the phantasmagoria took shape. In the
age of Trump and Putin, it became ever more difficult to distinguish
reality from rhetoric. ‘Fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ were supposed to
be everywhere, their apparent ubiquity often blamed on Russian mis-
information programmes, but the Russia Anxiety itself was, as ever,
a conflation of fact and fiction. It seemed that many leading figures
lacked the appetite for making the distinction. In fact, even the sim-
plest distinctions became impossible. ‘Russia’ and ‘Putin’ were forever
elided into each other, one easily standing for the other. Photos cap-
tured the president with sinister sunglasses, a withering look or an
empty gaze. An Economist cover in October 2016 had a photograph
of Putin’s face coloured blue and shaded in black, with the back-
ground red; his eyes were missing, replaced by little red fighter planes.
In the Western imagination, this confected image was the face of
modern Russia.
For hundreds of years, such images have created and formed the
Russia Anxiety. They have given energy to the cycles that push the
10
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
F i v e H u n dr e d Y e a r s of t h e
Russi a A n x i e t y
The Russia critics of the early twenty-first century sometimes had a
good tune, but they were often singing from an ancient songbook.
Those who have written books about Russophobia have tended to
emphasize that it is age-old, even if they are themselves prompted to
write by a present-day crisis.13 Some date Russophobia to partings of
the ways between East and West in Europe, beginning with Constan-
tine’s decision to move the capital of the Roman Empire eastwards
from Rome to Byzantium (Istanbul) in 330 ad.14 Soon enough, the
division between an Eastern and a Western Europe was politically
defined, though in early medieval times, it was the Byzantine East
that possessed the richer culture and the greater power. When Grand
Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus, the forerunner of the modern East
Slavic states (the largest of which is Russia), was christened in 988, it
was Orthodoxy, taken from Byzantium, rather than Catholicism
from Rome which was adopted across the realm. Was this the moment
when ‘Russia’ chose East, not West? In 1054, the Schism between
Orthodoxy and Catholicism seemed to place Kiev and, soon, Mos-
cow (which was founded in 1147) on the proverbial wrong side of
history. And then the invasion of the Mongols in 1240 effectively
increased the distance between Moscow (and Kiev) and ‘the West’,
a distance which facilitated the assumption of barbarism.
Despite its shortcomings, this argument is attractive for one big rea-
son: it emphasizes moments of decision and external ill fortune, not
genes or geography, in erecting barriers between the Russian lands
and what would become the West. Russophobia – and the Russia
Anxiety as a broader phenomenon – was not inevitable. But in the
very length of its chronology, it implies a way of thinking which by
now can’t or won’t change. This is a fallacy. The backdrop of the Rus-
sia Anxiety is old, but it’s not that old. In its recognizably modern
11
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
12
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
13
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
14
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
15
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
the subject from that period was On the Designs of Russia by the
Member of Parliament and army general, George de Lacy Evans. It
contained an eight-
point plan explaining how to defeat Britain’s
greatest enemy. Top of the list: attack it pre-emptively.25
Britain’s Russia Anxiety survived the Crimean War and made Brit-
ain reckless in its imperial dealings with Russia. The Anxiety has
often distorted how policymakers interpret the risk that Russia poses
to them, collapses the timeframe in which a Russian threat can be
resolved and exaggerates their country’s capacity to defeat it (it was
the same for Germany in 1914). In the second half of the nineteenth
century, there was little prospect that the British could fight a suc-
cessful war against the Russians in either Asia or Europe, because of
the configuration of alliances and the distribution of military and
naval resources. Knowing this, but partly blinded by the Russia Anx-
iety, the British rolled the dice, but drew back, in two dangerous war
scares of 1878 and 1885.26
The Anglo-Russian encounter between the 1840s and early 1900s,
marked by rivalry over India, espionage clashes and alliance-building
in Europe, is one of the most potent historical sources of the Russia
Anxiety. Yet the Anxiety was not hard-wired: even at this time of
imperial competition and European tension, the Anxiety came and
went, had consequences of varying seriousness, and was contingent
on events. Even in the run‑up to the Crimean War, both governments
were capable of cordial and careful relations, as they worked out
exactly how to pursue their interests in south-east Europe. Nicholas I
made a successful visit to England in 1844. The war was not the con-
sequence of an inevitable contest between incompatible societies.
During the fighting, British subjects in Russia were largely allowed to
go about their lives peacefully and normally.27 While hatred there
might have been, and extravagant language there certainly was,
actual examples of physical violence between the two countries after
the Crimean War ended were zero apart from during the exceptional
circumstances of the Russian Civil War, when British troops fought
for one group of Russians in opposition to another.
Historians have come to argue that the ‘Great Game’ – the probes
and counter-
strikes, the espionage and the strategic competition
between Britain and Russia over north-west India, Afghanistan and
16
T h e Be a r P h a n ta s m ag or i a
urkestan – has therefore been overblown, and even the term ‘Great
T
Game’ was largely a later invention.28 The two countries might have
come close to war in the region in 1878–9, thanks not least to the
tension-raising and misunderstanding-inducing Russia Anxiety, but
local leaders, such as Abd al‑
Rahman Khan, had a much better grip
on strategy and policy than the sometimes hapless great powers, who
looked more like blunderers than master planners.29 One of the rea-
sons why the Anxiety can be so virulent but also fleeting is that it
represents an accumulation of Russophobic rhetoric rather than real
conflict. This was not a ‘clash of civilizations’ in any strategic or sub-
stantive sense, 30 though the language of British politics often placed
Russia outside the boundaries of civilization. Yet Russia was not at
war more often than the other great powers, not least Britain itself.
France, Britain and Russia ultimately became allies, fighting the
First World War together. By then, though, Germany’s fears of Rus-
sian conquest help to explain the reckless calls for a pre-emptive war
in 1914. The German court had been divided in its attitude to Russia
during the nineteenth century, with one side strikingly pro-Petersburg.
Bismarck, the pragmatist, joined Germany to Russia in two major
international agreements which helped to determine the course of
European affairs, the Three Emperors’ League in 1873 and then the
Reinsurance Treaty in 1887. But general cultural attitudes in Germany
were not so positive. In history and geography textbooks used in Ger-
man schools between 1890 and 1914, Russia was usually shown to be
‘backward’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘Asiatic’. ‘We do not love the Russians, cer-
tainly not,’ stated the Frankfurter Zeitung. ‘They are dangerous to us
and doubtless in their thinking and morality true Asians.’31 Yet when
war broke out, it was the Austrians who surpassed themselves in the
atrocities they committed against local populations on the Eastern
front (the Russians were also far from innocent).32
In the United States, meanwhile, sympathy and understanding
towards Russia were not uncommon in the nineteenth century, partly
promoted by the Russian connections of two presidents, Thomas Jef-
ferson and John Quincy Adams. The Russia Anxiety was a force, once
again, that was dependent for its existence on specific events. For
many, such as the poet Walt Whitman, a sense existed that Russia
and America were similar places, possessing a continental destiny, a
17
T h e Rus si a A n x i e t y
18
Another random document with
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Ei luullut Pietari pitkää aikaa nukkuneensa, kun jo vielä aivan
pimeällä ahnaan isännän ääni kuului komentavan vieraitaan riihelle
ja Jeesus siihen vastaavan, että kyllä tullaan. Mutta kun ei Jeesus
kuitenkaan tuntunut nousevan, ei Pietarikaan pitänyt kiirettä, vaan
antoi väsymykselle vallan ja nukahti. Kotvan kuluttua saapui isäntä
vihastuneena komentamaan heitä uudelleen, ja nähtyään heidän
nukkuvan rauhallisesti tarttui keppiin ja suomi sillä hyväisesti laidalla
nukkuvaa Pietaria. Tämä hyppäsi säikähtyneenä ylös ja Jeesuskin
heräsi vakuutellen, että kyllä tullaan, kyllä, aivan heti. Mutta kun
isäntä taas meni pois, jäämättä heitä odottamaan, painautui Jeesus
sijalleen ruveten muka uudelleen nukkumaan. Pietari kuitenkin
hätäili, että nyt on mentävä, sillä muuten voi käydä huonosti.
III
IV
V
Kuului reen jalasten kitinää ja pajan eteen ajoi huonolla ja väsyneellä
hevosella kaksi vanhaa miestä, joista toinen istui ajopenkillä.
Hevonen liukasteli kaljamalla ja miehet nousivat reestä. Seppä ei
ymmärtänyt, miksi tämä oli hänestä niin erikoisen mielenkiintoista,
sillä olihan satoja, tuhansiakin hevosia hänen pajansa eteen
pysähtynyt, upeita, maan valioitakin, ja hän oli tuskin silmiänsä
alasimesta nostanut. Mutta nyt täytyi uteliaana katsoa, ja
suuttuneena siitä seppä päätti kohdella ynseästi noita äijä-pahoja.
Äijät tulivat vihdoin epäröiden sisään, katsottuaan hetkisen, mitä
pajan oven päälle oli kirjoitettu. He vilkaisivat toisiinsa ja hymähtivät,
jonka jälkeen ajopenkillä istunut pyysi nöyrästi, että seppä kengittäisi
heidän hevosensa. Oli yksi kenkä aivan irti pääsemässä ja toisista
olivat hokat niin pahoin kuluneet, että hepo pakkasi kierällä pahasti
liukastelemaan. Mutta seppä ei vastannut mitään, eipä enää heihin
katsonutkaan, vaan rupesi tuikean näköisenä takomaan, niin että
säkenet sinkoilivat. Silloin sanoi toinen äijä, se, joka oli herrana
istunut:
— Mutta sallinet toki sen itsemme tehdä? jatkoi nyt kysyjä. Emme
muuta kuin hiukan työkalujasi lainaisimme.
VI
Jeesus ja Pietari ajaa nytkyttelivät hiljalleen pitkin aavaa suon selkää
ja kinailivat keskenään, kuten heidän tapansa oli. Pietarihan se
taaskin oli väittelyn aloittanut, sanoen:
— Kuuletko mitään?
— Kuuntele vielä!
Pietari kuunteli tarkkaan. Kaukaa edestäpäin kantautui hänen
korviinsa outo humina, kuin olisi tyynessä, tähtikirkkaassa talviyössä
kuoleman tuulenpuuska yksinään vyörynyt eteenpäin pitkin kylmää,
rannatonta, surullista suon selkää. Hän katsoi sinne ja näki pian,
kuinka sieltä hiihti mustilla suksillaan nopeasti ja viivasuorasti heitä
kohti Surma, tuo kolkko vanhus, jonka silmäkuopat olivat tyhjät ja
jonka parrassa jäähelmiä helisi. Hän vilkaisi Jeesukseen, mutta
tämän katse oli vaipunut tutkimattomaksi. Hän sanoi vain:
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