Their war and ours

In the biography of Abd al-Qadir, Yuliy Oganisyan expresses one interesting idea, which allows us to understand some of the features of Soviet and post-Soviet historical and fiction literature:

“For a European of the 19th century, his cultural superiority over the “colored”, over the “savages” is an eternal given, self-evident, beyond doubt. It simply cannot be otherwise. The inability of the “savage” to approach civilization without European reins is just as obvious to him. This conviction ultimately stemmed from the European's confidence in the superiority of his own strength.

This superiority - of force, not of culture - has indeed been proven and confirmed many times in the past. Until the beginning of the 20th century, history here knew no exceptions, thus developing quite “logically” for the European bourgeoisie. Therefore, its representatives in the colonial world had no need to belittle opponents in their writings. Memoirs written by generals who fought with Abd al-Qadir are, as a rule, characterized by a respectful attitude towards the emir. The point here, of course, is not so much a love of truth as a general’s vanity: the more significant the defeated enemy, the greater the glory for the winner. French historians of the mid-19th century also rate his activities quite highly. They had nothing to fear: every national hero, no matter how great he was, was obviously doomed to defeat by the very “logic of history.” There were no exceptions.”

Feeling the power of “historical righteousness” behind them, the Europeans did not hesitate to describe the methods by which their victories were achieved:

“By order of the commander-in-chief, General Rovigo, on the night of April 6, 1832, a military detachment left Algeria and at dawn, when the El-Uffia tribe was sleeping in tents, unexpectedly attacked him. Before anyone could make the slightest attempt to defend themselves, all life was destroyed.

Returning from this shameful expedition, our cavalrymen carried severed heads on the points of pikes. All the captured cattle were sold to the Danish consular agent, the rest of the bloody spoils of the horrific massacre were put up for sale in the bazaar at the Bab Azun gate. You could see terrible things: women's bracelets with severed hands and earrings with earlobes hanging on them. The proceeds were divided among the thugs, and in an order to the army dated April 8, the general approved of this shame and expressed deep satisfaction with the zeal and resourcefulness shown by the troops. In the evening, the police ordered the Algerian Moors to illuminate their shops...

...Less than forty-eight hours had passed since the army arrived in this country, one of the most beautiful in the world, when the country was devastated...

...The water that the Algerians handled so skillfully and used so well, our soldiers diverted, destroyed underground water pipelines in order to fill their flasks...

..The morals were deplorable. Our behavior offended, I will not say Muslim virtue - I don’t believe in it - but the chastity of the Moors and Arabs, generously endowed with these qualities. Every day, vile things were told with laughter, which they seemed to have learned from Tiberius and Heliogabalus...”

But…

“At the beginning of the 20th century, the situation changed dramatically. Revolutions in Russia, Mongolia, Egypt, and the rise of national struggle in all eastern countries finally destroyed the illusion of the unshakable superiority of the capitalist West. Everything in the colonial world became unstable and precarious. The myth of the “civilizing mission” began to evaporate from the consciousness of Europeans.

The bourgeoisie could not come to terms with these changes. I didn’t want to part with the myth. Even more so with colonies. What to do?

Adapt history to colonial logic - at least in official historiography. Canonize the civilizing myth - albeit with reservations. To deprive national heroes of the rank of historical figures - in order to reduce national movements to the level of “savage riots.”

If you look at the memoirs of Wehrmacht soldiers, French legionnaires in Algeria, Israelis, Rhodesians and Americans in Vietnam, you will notice that they are all united by a single leitmotif: “We are kind, cultured guys, humane, we love humor and cats. And we are opposed by Russians, Algerians, Vietnamese and other savages who do not understand what benefits we bring to them and generally want something incomprehensible.” All this is accompanied by endless descriptions of the barbarity and cruelty of the enemy, which apparently should distract the reader from the question: “What were you so nice and good doing in the steppes of Ukraine, in the deserts of Algeria, in the rice fields of Vietnam”?

Now let's take Soviet literature and cinema. “Iron Stream” by Serafimovich, “Russia washed in blood” by Artem Vesely, “Quiet Don” and “Don Stories” by Sholokhov, “Walking in Torment” by Tolstoy, etc. Soviet writers were not afraid to paint objective portraits of their opponents, making it clear to their readers that the tragedy of the enemy lay not in the moral qualities of the whites, but in the fact that they fought for a historically doomed cause. No one compiled name lists of victims of the Kolchak-Denikin regime. But a lot could be written on this topic. And erect a couple of dozen memorials. And Babel, Serafimovich and Vesely wrote about the atrocities committed by the Reds without false shame. Here is an example excerpt from Serafimovich:

People were taken out of the priest's house with ashen faces, wearing gold
shoulder straps - they captured part of the headquarters. Near the priest's stable, their heads were cut off, and the blood was absorbed into the manure.
Behind the hubbub, screams, shots, curses, and groans, you couldn’t hear the river roaring.
We found the house of the village ataman. They searched everything from the attic to the basement, but he was missing. Ran away. Then they started shouting:
- If you don’t lick the cola, we’ll ruin the child!
The chieftain did not come out.
They began to chop up children. The chieftain was dragging herself on her knees with her braids scattered, incessantly clutching their legs. One said reproachfully:
- Why are you shouting, like a robed woman? From me it’s exactly like your daughter,
three-year-old... They were buried in the rubble there, near the mountains - but I didn’t scream.
He cut down the girl, then destroyed the skull of the laughing mother.

Books, by the way, from the school curriculum... And someone had the audacity to say that they learned about the cruelty of the civil war only under Gorbachev. Yes, there is a war, yes, war is unlimited violence, but the truth is not with those who use more or less violence, but with the representatives of the oppressed class.

And what about the whites? And those had no choice but to write boringly in emigration about the terrible “Red Terror” and the nobility of the Obolensky cornets, looking for in this justification for their struggle for what they had acquired through back-breaking labor. This tradition is also followed by modern Russian authors, who least of all want to touch on the real class, national, and social contradictions in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. It is much safer to reduce the issue to the moral qualities of the parties. Therefore, we should not wait for the appearance of at least some realistic films and books about the civil war. Everything will come down to how the Bolsheviks (among whom, of course, there is not a single Russian) slaughtered the white elves.