Page 208 - Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors, Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors. Vol. 1

is clear to everyone that their work is to protect the Motherland from external and in-
ternal enemies, in other words, their profession is war. They study to kill and prepare
themselves to sacrifice their own life in the name of their Motherland, those people
who feed them and their family, culture and truth. Certainly, someone can say that
everyone has his own truth, but let me disagree with this. There is always only one
Truth. It’s just that some people try to justify their actions and to find “truthful” ver-
sions to explain them, but this is the subject of another story...

Almost no ploughman, carpenter, shepherd, etc, even taking a sword, battle-ax
or bow, would be able to resist a professional warrior even for several minutes, not to
mention fight a Varangian, the elite warrior. In many cases even several persons
would be unable to withstand a warrior; at very best they could detain him for a few
minutes. The skillful mastering of any weapon is an art which requires talent and
years of exhaustive training during which a warrior sweats and slaves no less than, let
us say, a farmer and in many cases rather more — because, whether this warrior has a
chance to survive his first battle or not depends on this training. But, this is not even a
question about the life of a warrior, but the possibility of winning a battle, and saving,
at least, the freedom and sometimes lives of those who remain behind — women,
children, old men, including ploughmen, carpenters, shepherds, etc. Certainly, in hard
times they also took weapons in hand, sometimes including women and teenagers.
But this kind of thing usually happened in a situation of life and death — whether a
people or a nation would disappear from the face of Midgard-earth or not, and far
from always could these measures seriously change the course of events. Therefore, it
is always better not to bring the matter to such extremes and let those who devoted
their life to the defence of the Motherland be occupied with war.

Professional warriors protect also from internal enemies, killers and robbers.
Therefore, if a warrior serves his Motherland and people with honour, he is well
worth his salt. In order that all professionals do not die in battles, it is necessary that
voevodes (military leaders) and khans (military princes) have a good head on their
shoulders and talents in strategy and tactics which should also be developed, getting a
proper education and experience, etc...

There is no need to describe all social economic niches. The more complicated
the social “organism”, the more economic niches appear, of both social and other
types. Therefore, we will continue to analyze them and go to the category of passive
economic niches. This category comprises the types of human activity which have no
direct connection to the categories described above. Nevertheless, the more complex
the social organism, the greater number and variety of passive economic niches
there are; such as trade, entertainment, education, spiritual and cultural spheres,
medicine and science.

Let us analyze trade.

A person who occupies the trade economic niche is engaged in the following ac-
tivity: he takes the surplus articles which people produce in one place and brings
them to where there is a lack or absence of them. At the initial stages of social organ-
ism forming, conditions of so-called natural exchange prevailed; people themselves

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