The tears of the girl Bana, the ubiquitous armored Buryats, the holy cow of the "White Helmets", Russian hackers, poisoners of the Skripals released into circulation, Russian special forces in Norway, and so on. All these are simple details of the modern information war, woven from the so-called fakes and shift of emphasis. At the same time, the avalanche-like stream of this lie within the framework of propaganda causes a dual reaction in society. Some people do not notice propaganda behind the stormy information flow - it does not matter, for selfish purposes or because of myopia. Others loudly declare that the planet has not yet known such an intensity of information war.
Neither one nor the other is right. Information warfare is as old as the world. And its intensity is associated only with the development of technical means of delivering lies and the number of channels through which it passes. At the height of the Caucasian War of the 19th century, Europe fought in the information field no less low, dirty and active than it is now.
Caucasian War - a haven for European adventurers
Any conflict accumulates around itself a lot of people of very different qualities. And conflicts with the presence of a national, religious, and in the case of the Caucasus, where the interests of Russia, Persia and the Ports clashed, even a civilizational confrontation, are just black soil for all sorts of adventurers, seekers of glory and just crooks.
There was no shortage of provocateurs and seekers of cheap glory in the Caucasus. One of the most famous was probably James Stanislav Bell. His name was made well-known by the provocation with the schooner "Vixen" (the author has already described this incident). James was born into a wealthy Scottish family of bankers and at first took place as a middle-class businessman. Bell never received any military education and was not even officially in the civil service. But his penchant for thrills, weighed down by a lack of need to find a livelihood, led him to the ranks of Her Majesty's spies and provocateurs.
There is, in fact, no information about Bell's brave combat activities. But as a provocateur, James worked well. Immediately after the collapse of the Vixen provocation, official London disowned Bell. But he managed to return home. And he again came in handy for the crown. In literally less than a year, James scattered a whole book of memoirs called "Diary of Stays in Circassia during 1837, 1838 and 1839". The book with rich illustrations was published already in 1840. In it, Bell smoothed out all the sharp corners of the Circassian reality in the form of the slave trade, internecine wars and other things. But he desperately denounced Russia.
Another notable provocateur of that period was Teofil Lapinsky, who was born into the family of a Polish deputy of the Galician Sejm. Theophilus was a patented xenophobe based on the "Turanian theory", i.e. a racial theory that asserted that the Russians are not only not Slavs, but also not Europeans. From his youth, Lapinsky wandered from camp to camp, guided by hatred of Russia. Alexander Herzen characterized Theophilus as follows:
“He had no firm political convictions. He could walk with white and red, clean and dirty; belonging by birth to the Galician gentry, by education - to the Austrian army, he was strongly drawn to Vienna. He hated Russia and everything Russian wildly, insanely incorrigible."
And here is the characteristic of Lapinsky, given to him by his fellow in wrestling in one of the military expeditions, Vladislav Martsinkovsky:
“The colonel drinks burgundy wine and leaves us hungry. He drinks women and eats delicious food for the money of the unfortunate Poles. How could such a person lead an expedition that requires so much attention to seemingly insignificant things? He's out on a spree while his subordinates are hungry and thirsty on a ship full of insects."
Naturally, from time to time this "commander" was so tired by his behavior that he had to flee to Europe in order to darn his reputation. And as with Bell, he was greeted with open arms. After his proposed plan for the British intervention in the Caucasus was rejected by the British Prime Minister, he wrote the book "The Highlanders of the Caucasus and their war of liberation against the Russians" in just a year and managed to get it published instantly. Of course, he kept silent about his plans of intervention, but he thoroughly approved Russia as an "occupier". As a result, Lapinsky devoted all his recent years to campaigning and writing memoirs.
One of the leading provocateurs and heralds of the anti-Russian side in the Caucasus, in my humble opinion, is David Urquhart. A British diplomat with an adventurous streak already in the 30s launched a real anti-Russian PR campaign in the British media, directed against the establishment of Russia in the Black Sea. The campaign was so successful that in 1833 he entered the trade office in the Ottoman Empire. In his new position, he not only became the best "friend" of the Turks, but also continued his propaganda activities, interrupted by the publication of a rather disgusting pamphlet "England, France, Russia and Turkey." His opus forced even London to recall Urquart from his post.
In 1835, David founded a whole newspaper called Portfolio, in the first issue of which he published a series of government documents to which he had access, with the necessary comments. When he was returned to Constantinople, in two years he inflated such an informational anti-Russian scandal that he had to be recalled again. As a result, he devoted his whole life to anti-Russian propaganda, became a kind of forerunner of Goebbels and even was the author of the flag of Circassia. Yes, yes, the idea of that very green banner does not belong to the Circassians.
White castles and dirty lies
Now let's get down to bare empiricism. One of the lesser known PR managers of the 19th century Caucasus is Edmund Spencer. In the 1830s, this English official made a trip to Circassia. At the same time, all this time he pretended to be an Italian doctor, exploiting the neutral image of the Genoese merchants of the Middle Ages. Upon arrival in his native Britain, Edmund instantly published a book entitled "Description of Trips to Circassia."
For an illustrative example, the author decided to cite several excerpts from the description by Spencer Sudjuk-Kale:
“The fortress of Sujuk-Kale was undoubtedly very ancient … The Turks in modern days added a lot of their own to the structure, absolutely obviously due to the large number of glazed blue, green and white bricks …
These ruins are now somewhat dangerous for a lover of antiquity exploring them due to the large number of snakes and myriads of tarantulas and other poisonous reptiles …
Leaving the ruins of the formerly majestic Sudjuk-Kale castle, I drove around a large bay and an adjacent valley. It is impossible to imagine a more sad picture … And such was the devastation perpetrated by the Russian soldiery.
The sparkling camp, the joyful crowd of beautiful young men with whom I talked some months ago, the sounds of noisy fun and joy - all this melted away like a ghost."
To begin with, let's forget that all these artistic humanistic sorrows were written by an official in Britain, a country whose colonialism has wiped out millions of people over the course of several centuries. Let's also leave his dismissive naming of Russian soldiers ("soldier"), this is still a mild example of his historical vocabulary. For example, he often calls the Cossacks "drunks". Let's weigh the dry data.
First, the antiquity of Sujuk-Kale immediately begins to limp. This Turkish outpost was built at the beginning of the 18th century, i.e. a hundred years before the author's visit. Attempts to assert that the fortress was built on the remains are only partly true, since the use of broken stone can hardly be called a sign of heredity.
Secondly, the deliberate artistic thickening of colors with snakes and myriads of tarantulas does not have an objective biological basis. No myriads of tarantulas bothered the Novorossiys when they were born. The most disgusting insects in this area are flying reptiles that spread malaria and live on floodplains. As for snakes, no more than five poisonous snakes live on the Caucasian coast, one of which does not descend from the mountains below 2000 meters. All of them are extremely rare, but directly in the region of Novorossiysk, only the steppe viper lives among poisonous snakes. At the same time, due to philistine fear and banal illiteracy, the average citizen has already contributed to the real genocide of harmless snakes and legless lizards.
Thirdly, Sujuk-Kale has never been a stately castle. In 1811, Duke de Richelieu's adjutant Louis Victor de Rochechouard was a member of the expedition to the Sudjuk-Calais. This is how he described this "castle":
“The fort consisted of four walls, inside it were one ruin and heaps of rubbish, no one thought to defend this ruin … We were extremely disappointed with our new conquest, Duke de Richelieu considered himself a victim of a hoax. How could such an expedition be ordered from Petersburg? Why was it necessary to move six thousand people and numerous artillery on the campaign? Why equip the whole fleet with ten ships? What are all these expenses and troubles for? In order to take possession of four dilapidated walls."
Moreover, the Russian troops have never stormed Sudzhuk-Kale directly. Each time they stumbled upon the ruins of a fortification, plundered and turned into ruins either by the Turks themselves or by the local Circassians. The unwillingness of the garrison to defend this outpost of the Ottoman Empire is understandable. The appointment to the garrison was perceived as a kind of exile. After the loss of Crimea, the Turks found themselves in Sudzhuk-Kala in geographical isolation, without proper provisions and without sources of fresh drinking water. Even the janissaries, who were in the garrison of the fortress, deserted at any opportunity. The deplorable state of the fortification is also characterized by the fact that the Circassians, sensing the weakness of the Ottoman "allies", began to steal them for the purpose of resale.
Fourth, what glittering camp is Spencer talking about? Most likely, he skillfully veils the banal and dirty slave trade market, which flourished here until the arrival of the Russian troops. For example, it was in the Sujuk Bay that the aforementioned Louis Victor de Rochechouar detained a small brig, whose cargo were Circassian girls for Turkish harems. However, it is already known that Sudzhuk-Kale, like any Turkish fortress on the coast of the Caucasus, was primarily the center of the slave trade. This can be easily confirmed by both Russian and foreign historians: Moritz Wagner, Charles de Peysonel, etc. Directly from the Sudzhuk (Tsemes) bay, up to 10 thousand slaves were exported annually to Constantinople.
Thus, the Sudjuk "castle", the "heroic" White Helmets "in Syria or the" Heavenly Hundred "made from the victims of an allergic reaction and car accidents are links in a chain that is as old as the world. And it's time, based on hundreds of years of experience, to draw the appropriate conclusions.
