Russian Verbs of Motion Cribsheet

Crib Sheet

“Sailing to Byzantium to plunder/ Greeks’ gold: ikons”:

860 A.D.,

Rus’–Byzantine War:

“Sailing to Byzantium” the title of a poem by W.B. Yeats.

On June 18, 860, a fleet of Russian ships sailed into the Bosporus and

pillaged  the suburbs of Constantinople, then moved on to the Isles of the Princes in the Sea of Marmora, where they plundered the monasteries.

**

“Storming Cuman Field for a/ Drink of Don”:

April 13, 1185,

Igor Svyatoslavich’s battle with the Donets Cumans:

Igor’s Russian forces surrounded and slaughtered.

**

“Stealing Dmitry’s Holy Name”:

July 21, 1605-May 17, 1606,

Reign of False Dmitry:

There were three pretenders to the Russian throne who claimed to be the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible: False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II, and Pseudo-Demetrius III. False Dmitry I, supported by Polish nobles and a Russian coalition, ruled Russia as Tsar until shot by a conspirator.

**

“And a rebel seals his lips/ With cups of blood”:

(1773-1774)

Pugachev Rebellion:

The Cossack leader formed an alternate government in the name of assassinated Tsar Peter III, challenging the rule of Catherine II. Pugachev’s insurrection was ultimately quelled by Catherine, and Pugachev was executed in Moscow in 1774. Pugachev, the literary character in Alexander Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter,” says, “Better to drink the blood of the living just once than feed on carrion for 300 years.”  This is the moral of the story of the eagle and the raven: a story Pushkin’s Pugachev tells Grinev, the story’s hero.

***

“Crossing into Poland”:

(1792-1794)

Polish-Russian War(s):

War of the First Partition;

War of the Second Partition, or:

Poland: War to Defend the Constitution;

War of the Third Partition.

**

“Gunning down Decembrists/ On December ice”:

December 26, 1825,

Decembrist Uprising:

The Tsar’s loyal troops fire on 3,000 army officers opposed to the ascension of Nicholas I.  A great many officers are killed fleeing the barrage, slipping on the ice in the square, or shot beside the Neva River.

**

“Sacking Peter’s Holy Name”:

(1914, 1924)

Saint Petersburg renamed Petrograd; a decade later,

The name Petrograd is changed to Leningrad.

**

“…a commissar seals the lips/ Of delicate carrion”

(1923-1961)

GULAG Labor Camps