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This is a great story, but I became suspicious when they finally got to their source: > The story of the Khevsurs comes from American adventurer Richard Hallib
by lolinder 2y ago
This is a great story, but I became suspicious when they finally got to their source:
> The story of the Khevsurs comes from American adventurer Richard Halliburton's 1935 book, "Seven League Boots," a collection of his essays written while traveling off the beaten paths of the early 20th century. It includes an interview with the assassin of Tsar Nicholas II and a dinner conversation with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I.
Obviously, I can't know for certain which of these anecdotes is fact and which just make a great story, but this particular anecdote relies in part on a very suspect story about the ancestry of these people—a story which only outsiders ever told about them and which is of extremely dubious historicity [0].
Could a bunch of poorly armed horse-riding Khevsurs have volunteered to fight in WW1? It's plausible. But the idea that they were some sort of descendants of Western crusaders smacks of a story created for a sensational early-20th century travelogue.
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/abs/kicking-the-crusaders-out-of-the-caucasus-deconstructing-the-200yearold-meme-that-the-khevsurs-descended-from-a-lost-band-of-medieval-knights/DEB2594393B6FB98FAF4CB941AF2FAA5 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers...
- petesergeant 2y agoPeople love this kind of story, cf https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/polish-cavalry-charge-at-krojanty.html https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/polish-cav...
- GeorgeRichard 2y agoYes, the article does seem a little sketchy: > Even by the standards of 1914, Russia was a backward country. Most of its citizens were serfs, often tied to the land they worked, like serfs in the Middle Ages. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, more than 50 years before the start of the First World War.
- graemep 2y agoIt also relies on things such as their wearing red crosses like crusaders. Given this is in Georgia it is likely that this would be the cross of St George (as on the English flag).
- hnbear 2y agoPoles on horseback fought Germans in WWII. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty And, volunteering is easy, especially for a group pre-disposed to defending their land. I’d be more surprised about them not volunteering. I’d be surprised about them winning. Then again, in ‘39, as above, the Polish cavalry charge delayed the Germans. Charging machine-guns on horseback had the expected result in the end though.
- lolinder 2y agoAgreed! Like I said, I find it plausible that they participated. I just think that the crusader angle is a 1935 version of clickbait.