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The Pharaoh
One of the best Polish novels, Boleslaw Prus' Pharaoh a novel on
mechanisms of political power power, an archetype of the struggle for and the
maintenance of political power that goes on within any state, was a favorite
of Joseph Stalin. Pharaoh is a metaphor of
society-as-organism that Prus had adopted from Herbert Spencer. All of a
society's systems must work together in harmony if the society is to survive and
prosper.
The protagonist of the novel, Pharaoh Ramses, learns that those who would oppose religion are exposed to
cooption
seduction
subornation
defamation
intimidation
assassination
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These conclusions are supported by historical evidence and by a recent research by Ariel Toaff, professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Professor Toaff describes instances of parents murdering their children facing religious conversion and cases of deeply religious persons resorting to poisoning and assassination when perceiving that their religious beliefs or their religion was thwarted.
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The central problem of the Premier Stalin administration was inherited from the Czars who for centuries struggled with the Khazar minority of the Russian Empire. About the time of Charlemagne, the eastern confines of Europe were ruled the Khazar Empire. The Khazar Empire was situated in what is now southern Russia, between the Black and Caspian Seas and extended far northward toward the city of Kiev. It consisted of a people known as the Khazars who adopted Judaism as the state religion. Neighbors of the Khazar Empire were the super-powers of that day: the Moslem empire of the Caliphs to the South, Prince Vladimir's Russia to the north, and the Byzantium Empire to the west.
The Khazars were warlike people and their rule was brutal and oppressive. Finally the allied forces of Prince Vladimir's Russia and Byzantium destroyed the Khazar Empire; Khazar were driven out of their homeland between the seas, many of them into eastern Europe. There they merged to some extent with Jews of the Diaspora from Palestine. Down through the ages, the Khazars dream of regaining their power within the Russian Empire has been passed down from generation to generation; it materialized after the fall of the Soviet Union.
References
Koestler, A. (1977) Thirteenth Tribe. Macmillan.
Prus, B. (2001) Pharaoh. New York: Hippocrene Books. Originally
published 1895.
Toaff, A. (2007) Pasque di sangue: Il Mulino, Bologna, Italy.
See Also
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