PBC0193: mockery of tsarist ideology

In Bolshevik poetry recounting the story of the Great War, PBC 193 mocks tsarist arrogance with images of “mediocre Rus’” (W106) and “Rus’ haughty in its pride” whose rulers see the defects in every “people” (narod) but their own “Holy Rus’” (W95). With the idea that empires come and go, the poet peppers ‘Rus’’ with questions like “what were you so proud of?/....You called Moscow city the ‘third Rome’/ and there would be no fourth” and then angrily proclaims that the “tsar-father” sold Rus’ like a prostitute (W95) and tried to make a deal with the German invaders (W106).