Bagration

I chatted today with some of my web-friends, and one of us said something about a great movie made at the end of the sixties, the War and Peace, directed by Bondarchuk. Great movie, and great actors, Bondarchuk playing Pierre Bezukhov, and Lyudmila Savelyeva in the role of Natasha, and Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Prince Andrei (I would have admired him some years later in the Seventeen Moments of Spring, a must-see TV series) .

But there was another hero from War and Peace who came today into my mind, the general Piotr Bagration. I can remember how impressed I was when I saw him in the movie.

This Bagration was a remarkable military commander - he died at the battle of Borodino, against Napoleon.

The general's remains were transferred to the place where he had fallen and remain there to this day. The grave was blown up during World War II (reputedly, the local museum only being able to save shreds of bone and cloth from the grave) but has since then been restored.

Bagration was a Georgian prince, the descendant of an aristocratic family known since the tenth century. David Kuropalates, the great-great forefather of Peter Bagration, unified Iberia and Abkhazia and was the first king of Georgia. His adopted son was Bagrat Bagration, who followed as king of Georgia. And the dynasty of the Bagrations would reign in Georgia for 900 years.

The legendary Empress Tamar belonged to the Bagrations - it was under her that Georgia lived her Golden Age. Rustaveli dedicated to Tamar his great poem, The Knight in the Panther's Skin:

I sing of the lion whom the use of lance, shield and sword adorns,

Of Tamar, the Queen of Queens, the ruby-cheeked and jet-haired.

How shall I dare pay tribute to her in praiseworthy verses,

Whom to look upon is to feast upon the choicest of honey?

And the history of Bagrations went on, mixed with the history of Georgia. King Vachtang VI was eventually forced by the events to accept Russian domination.

(Russian and Soviet Cinema)

(Жизнь в Kнигах)