Russia's Tragic Past
TALMADGE, D. w.
Russia's Tragic Past The Kremlin. By Jules Koslow. Nelson. 244 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by I. D. W Talmadge Foreign editor, "Scholastic" Magazine THERE WOULD been no need today for a football...
...Bowes told the Tsar that the Queen had instructed him to say that unless the consent of the lady herself 'might be procured, which is a matter very doubtful, the match could not in any sort be brought to pass...
...But, alas, that was not to be...
...His history of the Kremlin is in effect a brief history of Russia itself...
...today would have been a gubernia in the United Russo-Britannic Soviet Kingdoms, and Khrushchev probably a Sir Nikita, Knight of the Royal Garter...
...She has but lately had the small pox and our painter has been obliged to depict her with a red face, deeply pitted.' "To further discourage Ivan, the Queen gave secret instructions to Jerome Bowes, her envoy to Russia, not to anger the Tsar but to gently dissuade him from his intentions...
...If anything, it disproves the theory that every people has the kind of government it deserves...
...Ivan the Terrible, still bent on marrying an English noblewoman, next asked for the hand of Lady Mary Hastings...
...Way back in the 1550s, the then occupant of the Kremlin, a kindly commissar named Ivan the Terrible, asked the Virgin Queen for her hand in marriage...
...Had Her Virginal Majesty not been so squeamish and accepted Ivan's proposition, world history would have taken a different course...
...Reviewed by I. D. W Talmadge Foreign editor, "Scholastic" Magazine THERE WOULD been no need today for a football or a summit conference with the Soviets if Queen Elizabeth I of England had not been such a prig...
...As Jules Koslow tells it in his lively history of the Kremlin, "Elizabeth, having heard of Ivan's 'terribleness,' was loath to allow her to marry the Tsar and tried to dissuade Ivan from his project...
...The Russian people certainly deserve a better fate...
...considering that in those cases, as over the rest of our subjects, we have not authority other than by way of persuasion to make them like such matches as by good apparent reasons.'" This infuriated Ivan, who thereupon sent the Queen a Gromyko-like note...
...Russia's Tragic Past The Kremlin...
...Aside from romance, his purpose was to form a sort of European Security Pact...
...Common tradesmen, and thou art nothing but a common wench...
...But now we see that in thy State other people rule, independently of thee—and what sort of people, at that...
...There are many such piquant tales in Koslow's highly readable and informative book...
...The U.S...
...After Ivan had requested a picture of Lady Mary, the Queen sent one with the following letter: "'I do not find her beautiful, and I cannot imagine that she would be found so by such a connoisseur of beauty as my brother Ivan...
...But primarily it is a disheartening account of Russia's tragic past and present...
...We had supposed," he wrote, "that thou wast a sovereign in thy State and in possession of the supreme power in the State, that thou hadst regard for the honour of thy rank and wast heedful of the advantage of thy realm...
...The author has done a masterful job of compressed writing...
Vol. 41 • September 1958 • No. 33
