The Bronze Horseman

While traveling in Russia, I had the privilege of speaking with a group of university students in Moscow who were majoring in computer programming and languages. Wonderful, bright, hope-filled young people. I told them that I had been blessed and challenged by the experience of thinking about the American Empire while I was traveling and reflecting on the Russian Empire. They seemed to understand.

Our topic was America in the sixties and the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement. They remembered hearing about the hippies. I assured them that yes there were some hippies, but really few in comparison to the total student population.

We were thinking together about empires. The week before I had been in St.Petersburg. In the evening, I walked from my small hotel on the Moika Canal to the square behind the Hermitage/The Winter Palace. On this plaza, Father Gapon and others led tens of thousands of people in the winter of 1905. With icons and placards they implored the help of the tsar. They sought food and work and hope and recovery from the humilaition of the defeat by Japan. But Nicholas was not at home. The Cossacks guarding the palace fired into the demonstrators killing hundreds.

I walked on along the Neva River. The city is lite in spectacular fashion. Awe is a great word. Be prepared for awe as you walk the banks of the Neva and look out to the Fortress of St.Peter and St.Paul. (Why would anyone name a fortress, prison, torture center after Peter and Paul?)

A long walk it is to the incredible statue of Peter the Great, called the Bronze Horseman. But coming up on it a nigth, having passed through the square where hundreds died in 1905, seeing the beauty and brilliance of the buildings along the Neva, I was stirred to see the statue of Peter. Only a few other people were there. My camera couldn't take a good picture and I didn't find one of the statue at night on Flickr. So maybe a friend will send us one; or I or one of you will have to go back with a better camera.

Peter sits forcefully astride a beautiful and powerful horse. A snake, still very much alive and so a threat, writhes under one of the horse's hoofs. Beneath the snake, carved in granite, are the powerful waves of the Neva and through them of all oceans, all watery chaos.

The symbolism of Falconet's sculpture,paid for by Catherine the Great is clear. A powerful ruler, a great autocrat, like Peter, and by the way like me,Catherine,masters the forces of man and nature, builds whatever the cost,in order to hold back the waters of chaos. Catherine's name on the statue is in the same size letters as Peter's. God bless Peter, God bless Catherine, as they lead us at whatever cost to victory over chaos, over the waters, over our enemies.

But the snake is not dead, only under the horse's hoof, for the time being.