Genghis Khan with a telegraph

On October 1, 1857, the Kolokol newspaper published by A. Herzen in London published Herzen's open letter to Emperor Alexander II regarding the publication of M.A. Korf "The Accession to the Throne of Emperor Nicholas I" , which told about the Decembrist revolt. Proving the historical justification of the Decembrist movement, Herzen wrote: “If we had all the progress made only in the government, we would give the world an unprecedented example of autocracy, armed with everything that freedom has developed; slavery and violence, supported by everything that science has found. It would be something like Genghis Khan with telegraphs, steamships, railways, with Carnot and Monge at headquarters, with Minié rifles and Congreve rockets under the command of Batu .[3]

Herzen's metaphor "Genghis Khan with telegraphs" was later used by Leo Tolstoy. On July 31, 1890, he wrote to Boris Chicherin: “No wonder Herzen spoke about how terrible Genghis Khan would be with telegraphs, with railways, with journalism. This is what has happened to us now . ” Then, in his pamphlet The Kingdom of God is Within You, published in 1893, Tolstoy wrote:“Governments in our time — all governments, the most despotic as well as the liberal ones — have become what Herzen so aptly called Chinggis Khan with telegraphs, that is, organizations of violence, having nothing at their core but the most brutal arbitrariness, and at the same time using all the means that science has developed for the total social peaceful activity of free and equal people and which they use to enslave and oppress people.. Later, in 1910, in the article "It's time to understand", Tolstoy again turned to this image: "... the Russian government, ... now the very same Genghis Khan with telegraphs, the possibility of which so terrified him [Herzen]. And Genghis Khan not only with telegraphs, but with a constitution, with two chambers, press, political parties et tout le tremblement [and with all the chatter] ... The difference between Genghis Khan and telegraphs from the previous one will only be that the new Genghis Khan will be even more powerful than the old one.[4]

In the revolutionary press, and then in the post-revolutionary Soviet press, the metaphor "Genghis Khan with a telegraph" was usually applied to the Russian Empire, but in the post-revolutionary emigre press it was already applied to the Bolshevik regime. So, Nikolai Ustryalov wrote: “It cannot be said that the old culture collapsed immediately and completely. Nor can it be said that the new element, this “driver” or “Genghis Khan with a telegraph”, is something absolutely primitive and homogeneous.[5]

Then, during WWII, the Soviet literary critic A. Leites, in his review of the collection published at the end of 1941: “We will not forgive. A word of hatred for the Nazi murderers ”applied Herzen’s metaphor to Nazi Germany: “Once upon a time, Herzen talked with horror about the possible appearance of “Genghis Khan with telegraphs”, about the coming barbarians equipped with improved technology. But no, even the darkest fantasy of the progressive people of the 19th century could imagine what happened in the 20th century, when the fascist thugs began to put into reality their bloody plans to enslave humanity and eradicate its culture”. Ales Adamovich with co-authors used the words of Herzen in the same sense in the 1974 book I am from the Fiery Village.[6]

In 1949, the emigrant philosopher Semyon Frank modernized the metaphor by adding the atomic bomb to the telegraph: “A hundred years ago, the insightful Russian thinker Alexander Herzen predicted the invasion of “Genghis Khan with telegraphs”. This paradoxical prediction came true on a scale that Herzen could not have foreseen. The new Genghis Khan, born from the depths of Europe itself, has fallen upon it with aerial bombardments that destroy entire cities, with gas chambers for the mass extermination of people, and now threatens to wipe humanity from the face of the earth with atomic bombs . Five years later, in the emigrant " Socialist Vestnik ", the publicist Pavel Berlin published an article "Genghis Khan with a hydrogen bomb", where he wrote that “Chinris-Khan introduced communism, going further than the Soviet one... Both of these systems were built on the complete separation of the successful development of the latest technology, including, first of all, destructive technology, from the cultural soil that gave birth to and developed it... Reality brought us, in the person of Stalin, Genghis Khan, no longer with a peaceful and innocent telegraph, but with an all-destroying atomic bomb ... we see ... Malenkov with a hydrogen bomb. In the same year, 1954, in the July issue of the American magazine "The American Mercury", an article by J. Anthony Marcus "Will Malenkov succeed?", which said:“I remember those years when the manufacturing industry was extremely poor. Russia did not have a single tractor, tank, submarine, bomber or fighter of its own production, not to mention modern means of production and distribution of food and clothing and other necessary things. This is not the Russia that Malenkov inherited. Today he is Genghis Khan with atomic-hydrogen bombs, determined to use them to establish world domination - a course from which neither he nor his successor can ever deviate for long.[7]

In 1969, the Soviet literary critic I. Kramov, in his article “In Search of Essence” published in the Novy Mir magazine, applied the same metaphor already to the Western opponents of the USSR (and potentially to any possible dictator): “Genghis Khan, armed with a hydrogen bomb and rockets, is no longer a fantasy, not a fiction of a novelist, but a reality that must be reckoned with, so as not to find one day in the position of humanity, forced to recognize the advantages of the salamanders . In 1971, the Soviet writer V. Lvov, in his article “The Human Soul” published in the Neva magazine, wrote:“Genghis Khan with telegraphs! Yes, back then, in the middle of the 19th century, telegraph wire and Congreve rockets flying two hundred fathoms were the ceiling of technical power, and the Russian tsar and the French emperor were the embodiment of tyranny and violation of human rights. Today it all seems like child's play. Rockets now fly to Venus and Mars, and modern Genghis Khans own not only telegraphs, but also television installations, lasers, computers, and much more. The Genghis Khans of our day are also aiming at space. Mikhail Lifshitz, in his 1978 article in the Kommunist magazine, "What You Shouldn't Be Afraid of", applied the metaphor to Maoist China: “We now know that Genghis Khan with an atomic bomb is possible, and even Genghis Khan with a revolution, like the “Cultural Revolution” of Mao Zedong.[8]

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