SOMEWHERE IN THE FIELDS OF MANCHURIA - 117 YEARS LATER
Two long-dead soldiers awaken in the fields of Manchuria to discover Russia at war once again - a dark reflection on repeating history and the human cost of national ambition.
In 1907, Italian satirist Gabriele Galantara drew two dead Russian soldiers sitting amid the carnage of the Russo-Japanese War.
One asks: “Is our Emperor really a friend of peace?”
The other replies: “Certainly! Has he not given us eternal peace?”
It was savage because the joke required almost no explanation.
More than a century later, I wondered what those two forgotten Russians might say if they could still talk.
So we returned to Manchuria 2022......
The guns have rusted away.
The battlefield has disappeared beneath grass and wildflowers.
Birds sing where men once screamed.
Their uniforms have rotted.
Their empire has vanished.
And then one skeleton nudges the other:
“Ivan, wake up! Wake up! Russia’s at war again.”
His companion is not impressed.
“Oh, just leave me alone. I was enjoying the birdsong before you spoiled it! Don’t you realise we’re history- dead and gone, waiting for Judgment Day? I’m beginning to think this is what the Americans call Groundhog Day… Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. Mother Russia just calls it another Great Patriotic War.”
And then, because it needs a little gallows humour:
“Nicolai… how come you still have a cap and I don’t?”
After 117 years, even the dead are getting tired of the reruns.
Since 1905, Russia has lurched through war after war, the latest being the invasion of Ukraine 2022.
That is the real point of the cartoon:
Governments wrap war in noble words; ordinary men provide the bodies.
The emperors change.
The flags change.
The slogans change.
The graves look remarkably similar....
