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In one of his literary masterpieces, La gloire des vaincus, Henri Troia tells us in a dazzling and epic way about the revolution that planned the December 1825 movement to overthrow the government of Caesar and replace it with a liberal and liberal government. In this novel, the writer retells an important stage in Russian history and tells us the facts of the revolution and its failure, the stories of imprisonment and exile, as well as the arduous journey that the wives of exiled revolutionaries made to join the their husbands in Siberia. Despite its imaginative framework, this historical novel tells the facts better than the books and historical documents, because the latter narrate the facts in a didactic way and only from the point of view of the ruler or the ideology that controls power, while that the novel tells us what history does not mention, as it penetrates the secrets of souls to show. We have the feelings and problems of people during their daily life, as well as their customs and traditions. The novel is capable of transcending the rhetoric of authority to convey a different and new point of view and express people’s concerns and aspirations.
In this novel, we follow the events of the revolution and its aftermath through the point of view of one of the insurgents, Nikola Ozarev. Through the march of this hero, we understand the reasons that prompted him and other nobles to participate in the coup, despite previously knowing the amount of sacrifices they will make and the losses they will suffer to achieve a noble goal, which is free the country from tyranny. The story begins after the return of Russian officers from France after they participated in the restoration of the monarchy and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. The irony is that some of these officials who helped establish the government of the Bourbons were very impressed with the system of government in Europe and found it more liberal and liberal than the dictatorial government of the Tsar, which derives its authority from the Church. They also read the books of French philosophers and were affected by them, so they decided to meet at the home of one of the revolutionaries, the poet Reliev, to prepare a protest movement against the assumption of Tsar Nicholas I to the throne after his older brother Constantine resigned the mandate of the pact and replaced the tsarist government with an interim government. During the meeting, the rebels agreed to meet in the main square of the capital and accompany their soldiers to demonstrate and declare their intention not to swear in the new Tsar and demand his resignation.
The novel shows us the clear intellectual contradiction between the revolutionaries dazzled by the ideas of the French Republic and the supporters of the tsarist rule, and this difference is manifested through the language that each side uses to speak about the other. a tyrant who refuses to carry out reforms and considers his movement a necessary national duty for the salvation of the Russian nation. The other side sees the revolutionaries as just crazy liberal officers and petty lads who don’t realize the consequences of their actions.
Through the dialogues that took place between the revolutionaries, little by little we began to explore the causes of failure, and we noticed the difference of opinions about the planned coup, since everyone makes a difference without a clear and thoughtful outline. Some want the main divisions of the army to move from one barracks to another to motivate the remaining divisions to rebel, until a sufficient number of soldiers gather to march to Senate Square in St. Petersburg and announce the refusal to swear allegiance. the new duke as the country’s czar. Others prefer not to waste time and go directly to the field. It is worth noting that all these military plans were discussed and discussed only one night before the coup.
The narrator describes the tumult of the leader of the revolution and his ideologue, the poet Reliev, on the night of the coup. He was also very confident of joining army units without ensuring his full loyalty to the revolutionaries, and his failure as a leader was evident after his arrest as he quickly collapsed in prison and declared his repentance and asked the Tsar’s forgiveness.
One of the reasons for the defeat was also resorting to deceiving the Russian people and not being honest with them about the reality of the situation and informing them of the legitimate demands of the revolutionaries. Coming out of the Russian people and the oppressed classes, the rebels did not at all seek to include the peasants and workers in their plans because they believed that popular intervention would lead to chaos and the fall of the state into the hands of the mob. Thus, the absence of public support caused the protest movement to lose the momentum necessary to overthrow the tsar. We can also add to the reasons for failure the prior knowledge of the Russian authorities of the conspiracy by a friend of the treacherous revolutionaries and the insistence of the conspirators to work on the coup and fight it to the end despite knowing that the Tsar she had become familiar with her plan to isolate him from him. Throne. The truth is that despite their good intentions and their real desire to reform the ruling system, grant a constitution to the people, and abolish slavery and class privilege, these revolutionaries seem romantic and imaginative in their demands. Some imagined that the revolution would take place without the shedding of a single drop of blood and dreamed of a peaceful transfer of power, and they did not realize that the revolution is not a road paved with flowers and winds and without many complications, and revolutionary violence is a fundamental element of change in most, if not all, revolutions.
The role of religion should not be overlooked here. Religious sentiments also played an important role in the direction of events, so the idea of storming the palace was excluded by most of the rebels or assassinating the Duke because of the religious aura that surrounded him. The assassination of the ruler was considered by the revolutionaries as a kind of heresy and disrespect for the legitimacy that the ruler represented, so the strict religious education they received made them impossible for them to really rebel against the person of the tsar, since who used to sanctify it and elevate it to a quasi-divine state. But after the fall of the first victim of the revolution, Nicolás and his companions realized that their brilliant and innocent revolution had been stained with blood and that there was no going back, and that they had no choice but to fight until victory or victory. death.
We do not lose sight of the deepening and consolidation of religious heritage, which considers that religion is the absolute solution to all political problems.
As for the real failure, it was the day of the coup. The results of poor planning appeared on the ground, as most of the teams that the conspirators hoped to join did not reach St. Petersburg, and the number of soldiers who participated in the coup did not exceed a few hundred, noting that the Most of these soldiers obeyed the officers without knowing the motives for the actual movement. When they heard the word constitution, they thought it was a woman’s name and did not understand its meaning. After hours of failed negotiations during which the Tsar tried, through various envoys, to push them into surrender, decided to bombard them with cannons, so many soldiers were killed and many lives lost, and the rebels ended up being executed or imprisoned and then exiled to Siberia.
In the words of the hero, President Nicolas Ozarev, the writer criticizes the experience of the revolution and identifies one of the most important reasons for its failure, for which he comes to the conclusion that the masses cannot take their freedom unless they are led by a powerful leader who has the will, determination and cruelty to the extent that the ruler enjoys, and that the leader must be human. Regarding the goals to be achieved and achieved, be rude and ruthless when choosing the methods and means to be used; The rebels failed because they lacked strong and conscientious leadership and a people to walk behind them to support them.
Despite their resounding defeat and the failure of their movement, the Decembrists, as they were later called, etched their names in Russian history, and the title of the novel “The Glory of the Defeated” clearly expresses the immortality achieved by these officers. and their revolution, which was repressed with brutality and extreme violence, moved the stagnant waters and awakened the people and inspired subsequent generations. Of revolutionaries. Even the famous poet Pushkin, who supported his ideas, wrote a poem to his imprisoned friends that some of his verses say:
Trust my friend
That the star of Hana will rise
Russia will awaken from its slumber
And we will write our names
On the ruins of the power of despotism
Although this novel dealt with a historical period far removed from the history of Russia, we find after two centuries that the same reasons hinder revolutions in our Arab world from the absence of a firm leader for the revolutionaries to the lack of clear and understandable goals for which to fight, in addition to the absence of strong popular support. Because of the sectarian, religious and tribal alignments. We do not forget the lack of planning for the post-revolution and for the future of the homeland, nor do we overlook the deepening and entrenchment of religious heritage in Arab society, which views religion as the absolute solution to all political problems. The reading of this novel is very interesting for those interested in the historical and political genre, and it is an opportunity to realize that there must be a minority that is content to give their lives for the sake of human freedom and elimination. of tyranny and social class.
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