Sifting the Devil from the Dragon: Dracula versus Vlad Ţepeş

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Biographical, Cinema, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture, Regional History

(Image: Lonely Planet)

Romanians, especially those from the region of Transylvania, must view Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula with at best mixed feelings. On the one hand, the immense popularity of Stoker’s imaginative work of fiction helped put Transylvania on the international tourist map…on the other hand, its dark and ghoulish tale of chilling evil with its genesis in the mountains and forests of trans-silvae (“the land beyond the forest”), projects a negative and deceptively gloomy picture of the country. The association of one of the greatest heroes in Romanian history and a defender of Christianity, the Medieval ruler Vlad Ţepeş III, with the fictional Dracula, would be displeasing to many patriotic Romanians.

Dracula’s transformation into a classic of the Gothic horror genre captured the imagination of film-makers, inspiring numerous silver-screen interpretations of Dracula – from the silent German feature Nosferatu to countless Western film versions which made actors such as Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee famous – and typecast. The Dracula character’s pervasion of especially American popular culture has seen the trope extend to parody cartoon versions on TV (Duckula), to female teen “vampire-slayers” (Buffy) and even to “blaxploitation” movies asserting the emergence of a self-conscious black culture in the US (eg, Blacula).

Vlad’s signature punishment
In some screen interpretations of the novel, like the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the identities of Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş are presented as if they are one and the same person! (see also PostScript). Entirely fanciful of course but Stoker’s character did draw inspiration from the real-life Vlad Ţepeş III (or Vlad Împalatul). Vlad was the voivode✱ of Wallachia in the mid-15th century, infamous for impaling victims such as his own troublesome boyars or foreigners captured in conflicts (Ottomans, Bulgarians, Saxons, Hungarians▣). Such an horrific torture technique earned him the nickname “the Impaler”.

⇩ 1499 woodcut, Vlad the Impaler

Vlad Ţepeş, voivode and resident of Wallachia, not Transylvania
Stoker did get the name ‘Dracula’ from the Medieval Romanian prince, or at least from his family. Vlad’s father—Wallachian voivode before him—was Vlad II, also known as Vlad Drâcul…Drâcul (or Drâc) was a word for ‘dragon’ in the 15th century※, today in Modern Romanian it means “the devil” – something noted by Stoker in his research for the book as an apt descriptor for his fictional arch-nemesis. There is however a great deal of the character of Count Dracula that Stoker didn’t derive from the circumstance of Vlad Ţepeş. The Impaler had nothing to do with vampires or any supernatural beings and his associations with Transylvania were largely peripheral and tenuous. Vlad was supposedly born within Transylvania in Sighişoara although there are some doubts about this (an alternative view has his birthplace in Wallachia). Bran Castle, a Transylvanian tourist attraction identified with Stoker’s Dracula, has no connection with Vlad at all [Florin Curta, referenced in ‘The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler’, (Marc Lallanilla), Live Science, (2017), www.livescience.com].

⇩ Bran Castle (Photo: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images)

Constructing the Ur-vampire
Transylvania, being to outsiders, “a mysterious land of vampires and other supernatural things”, handed down a long tradition of folklore and legends, it’s not surprising that Stoker drew on this source for inspire and inform his vampire story. Superstitions and beliefs of Romanian peasants in Stoker’s time fuelled a plentiful supply of tales about vampiri (vampires), vârcolaci (werewolves) and other supernatural monstri. Stoker’s library research would also have acquainted him with the strigol, a Romanian figure of legend—“a reckless spirit that returns to suck the lifeblood from his relatives”—the type of vampirish “undead souls” that would find a place in Stoker’s horror novel [‘The Use of History in Dracula Tourism in Romania’, (Tuomas Hovi), www.folklore.ee].

⇧ Whitby, England (Image credit: www.visitwhitby.com)

Non-Romanian influences on Dracula
In the Dracula novel the undead Count travels to Britain in search of more victims, journeying to Whitby in Yorkshire. This echoes Stoker’s own earlier visit to Whitby in which the author was reportedly quite taken with the town, its colony of bats circling round the churches, its whole creepy atmosphere, all of which he would have found good material for a Gothic novel [‘How Dracula Came to Whitby’, English Heritage, www.english-heritage.org.uk]. Stoker apparently found more inspiration in Port Erroll (these days, Cruden Bay) in Aberdeenshire – Slains Castle with its “fang-like rocks” is thought to have also inspired the Transylvanian Dracula castle home in the book [‘Slains Castle’, www.visitabdn.com].

Vampires: not the exclusive preserve of Transylvania⦿
Bram Stoker was Irish and never visited Romania in his lifetime, prompting some to speculate that the Dracula story may equally have been influenced by the author’s own experiences growing up in Ireland. Stoker would have been exposed to homegrown myths of the supernatural (such as those involving the sidhe, the fairy people of Irish folklore), as well as to the nightmarish ordeal of living through a cholera epidemic [‘How Bram Stoker creates Dracula with the aid of Irish Folklore’, (Leonie O’Hara), Irish Central, 04-Oct-2020, www.irishcentral.com].

PostScript: Vampire tourism
Vampire tourism in Transylvania has not been waylaid by coronavirus, tourist operators in Romania are still offering up a raft of tour packages—with titles like “7-Day Dracula Highlights Tour” and “Fun With Fangs: Vampire Tours in Romania”—to lure the “vampire-curious”. The tours, tend to wallow in all the predictable cliches and stereotypes, milking the prevailing craze for all things vampire, staying in Dracula-themed hotels, etc. Vampire tourism is an intriguing admixture of history, tradition and fiction…taking a leaf from Hollywood some of the tours indulge in considerable conflating of the historic Vlad Ţepeş with the fictional Count Dracula (Hovi).

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↜↝↜↝↜

✱ ruler, a sort of military governor of a region

▣ Prince Vlad’s political fortunes generally hovered in the vacuum between the two regional powerhouses Hungary and the Ottomans, who he fought both with and against at different times

※ Drâculeşti is the patronymic – Vlad Ţepeş was also known as Drâculea, “son of the dragon”

☒ descendants of Saxon (German) merchants and craftsmen who migrated to Romania, commencing in the 12th century

⦿ though the tradition is a strong one in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, eg, Greece vrykolakas, Albania shtriga

Inspiring the Creation of Secret Agent 007: The Template of a World War 2 Yugoslav Spy

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Cinema, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture


The James Bond film series, is the world’s most successful and enduring movie franchise, since 1962, 24 completed feature films and with another currently cooling it’s post-production heels in Covid lockdown…a franchise that seemingly has not yet run out of steam. The 007 phenomenon has inspired countless imitations in cinema and television. This has ranged from blatant rip-off imitators trying to capitalise on its impetus in the Sixties (“Matt Helm”, “Our Man Flint”, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, etc.) to playing it for laughs parodies (“Get Smart”, “Austin Powers”, “Johnny English”).

(Photo: Britannica)

But where did the original creator of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, get his inspiration for the iconic character from? We know that Fleming’s own lived experience and background—as a British naval intelligence officer in WWII—made him an insider in the world of espionage, double deceptions and counter-agents. Obviously when the Caribbean-domiciled Fleming came to put pen to paper and create the fictional James Bond in the early Fifties, he drew on many of the real-life acquaintances he had met in the ‘workplace’❋.

In his lifetime Fleming never said definitively who the principal model for 007 was, but the consensus seems to gravitate towards a Serbian double agent Dušan (‘Duško) Popov, someone Fleming came across in the course of his own intelligence career. A famous scene in Casino Royale (Fleming’s first James Bond novel) further advances the association of the world’s most celebrated fictional spy with Popov. Bond’s besting of a powerful Russian criminal at the baccarat table in Casino Estoril (Portugal) in the book/film mirrors an exchange Fleming observed first-hand when the real-life spy spectacularly called the bluff of a boastful Lithuanian gambler in a baccarat game at the same location.

Popov stumbled into the espionage game after being arrested by the Gestapo. To get out of that pickle Popov agreed to spy for the Abwehr (German intelligence agency). While in England he was recruited by MI6 and turned double agent✫. During the war Popov managed to feed a steady stream of misinformation to the Nazis about the Allies’ movements, strength, etc. Most productive for the Allies was his role in Operation Fortitude – Popov helped to convince German military planners that the D-Day invasion of France would occur in Pas de Calais, not Normandy, the actual landing point. As a consequence of Popov’s disinformation, when Operation Overlord was launched in 1944 there were seven German divisions stuck in Calais and unavailable to the Reichswehr in Normandy [‘My name is Popov, Duran Popov’, (Marta Levai), www.0011info.com].

(Image: Getty)

The Serbian counter-spy also tried in August 1941 to alert the US military as to high-level Nazi and Japanese interest in Pearl Harbor, however the critical information which could have averted the military disaster on 7th December was blocked from reaching its target by CIA director Hoover. Hoover distrusted Popov as a double agent, an attitude not allayed by Popov’s reputation as a womaniser and playboy.

(Source: www.newspapers.com)

After the war Popov’s services were rewarded by the Brits with an OBE, but it wasn’t until 1974 that Popov himself lifted the cover on his war-time espionage activities when he published his autobiography. When asked about comparisons between himself and 007, Popov was dismissive of the hedonistic, jet-setting spy as portrayed on the big screen, remarking that “a spy who drank like Bond would be drunk the first night and dead the second” [‘From the archive: the real James Bond, 1973’, (Observer archive), (Chris Hall), The Guardian, 22-Mar-2020, www.theguardian.com].

_____________________________________________
❋ and on those Fleming only knew of, such as the legendary master spy Sidney Reilly [‘Novel Man’, (William Cook), New Statesman, 28-Jun-2004]

✫ at one point Popov was also spying for the Yugoslav intelligence service, making him a triple agent

Coronavirus 2.0: Déja Vu Europe – Post-Summer Fallout, Relaxing of Controls and Self-Control, Emerging New Hotspots

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Medical history, Public health,

Late September, COVID-19 has reached the inevitable, undesired milestone of the one millionth death worldwide from the disease. With the summer holidays behind them, Europeans on a trajectory to winter are facing the backlash of a resurgence of the coronavirus. Many countries in Europe are already in the grip of what is to all intents and purposes the second wave of the 2020 pandemic. In early September infection rates in Europe as a whole passed that of the season benchmark, the USA [‘Europe overtakes U.S. as COVID-19 hotspot as infections surge’, (Thomas Mulier & Bloomberg), Fortune, 10-Sep-2020, www.fortune.com].

Pop-up statue honouring Madrid health care workers (Photo: Getty Images)

The familiar patterns are there and yet inconsistencies exist from country to country. Several countries such as Montenegro❋, North Macedonia, Albania, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are seeing higher case numbers now than they experienced early on in the outbreak. This shouldn’t be altogether surprising as one clear explanation for such a jump simply points to the increased levels of testing now being conducted. [‘Coronavirus second wave: Which countries in Europe are experiencing a fresh spike in COVID-19 cases?’, Euronews, 29-Sep-2020, www.euronews.com].

Daily case numbers in Europe and the UK are spiking again in cities with high urban density—especially Madrid, Paris, Marseille, Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague—leading the way◰ [Netherlands among Western Europe’s biggest Covid hot spots’, (Jasper Bunskoek), NL Times, 28-Sep-2020, www.nltimes.nl].

Paris Central (Photo: AP: Kamil Zihnioglu)

Authorities have put the recent surge down to a general relaxation over summer of measures to curb infection. Workers returning to work in many European cities after the break are suspected of dropping their guard against the pandemic. Health officials have also pinpointed young people being a significant factor in flouting the rules (noting the existence of a recorded spike in new European cases for those aged 25 to 49)[‘Coronavirus: How it all went wrong (again) in Europe as 2nd wave grips continent’, (CNN) (via 9 News), 30-Sep-2020, www.nine.com.au].

The current upward trend of infections has placed governments in a dilemma. To try to rein in the burgeoning case numbers, the unwelcome prospect facing them is the need to reintroduce unpopular restrictions on communities and gatherings. In this light one thing governments are desperate to avoid at all costs is to go back to a national (or even sectional) lockdown scenario and expose their country to a redux of the crippling effects on the economy. In Madrid the Castilian authorities have already relented and opted to introduce selective lockdowns in certain urban districts [‘Europe’s coronavirus hot spot Spain to introduce selective lockdowns in Madrid’, Daily Sabah, 16-Sep-2020, www.dailysabah.com].

On the positive side mortality rates from COVID-19 being recorded now in Europe are a fraction of the death tolls of six months ago, weekly averages in September are around 13% of the peaks recorded during April (CNN/Johns Hopkins University). Having long ago parked the idea of eradication until the emergence of an effective vaccine, governments and health authorities plumped for suppression…a reality check in this “second wave” is an understanding of just how difficult it is to keep a lid on community outbreaks, let alone stamp it out entirely (Mulier/Bloomberg).

Odessa (freepik.com)
Endnote: Odessa – beautiful one minute … hot spot the next
As summer was ushered in at this much-in-demand Ukrainian resort spot on the Black Sea, people flocked to the sanatoriums and beaches. Similarly, nightclubs and restaurants in the city were packed with vacationers. The folly of flagrantly disregarding social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines resulted in an entirely foreseeable outcome – over 12,000 virus cases erupting in the city, ⅔ of which are tourists and visitors, some of these compounding the predicament by then carrying the virus back with them to their home cities and towns [‘In Ukraine’s Odessa, summer crowds ditched their masks. It’s now a hot spot in Europe’s “second wave”’, (Natalie Gryvnyak and Robyn Dixon), Washington Post, 28-Sep-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪

❋ Montenegro catapulted to the top of hotspots on the continent with 305.4 cases per 100,000 people infected in the week of 14-20 September [‘Coronavirus: Where are Europe’s infection hotspots?’, Sky News, 24-Sep-2020, www.news.sky.com]

◰ right through this month France and Spain have vied with each other for the ‘gong’ of worst-performing country in Europe for virus hot spots. Italy conversely is one country that has managed to buck this trend, so far resisting the pandemic’s resurgence – attributed to a more concerted adherence to government health guidelines this time [‘As Covid-19 Fatigue Fuels Infections in Europe, Italy Resists Second Wave’, (Eric Sylvers & Margherita Stancati), Wall Street Journal, 22-Sep-2020, www.wsj.com]

The Blacks Between the Reds and the Whites: A Ukrainian Anarchist Entity in a “Stateless Territory”

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

The Russian Revolution in 1917 fostered a desire for self-determination within the Ukraine (as with other national minorities inside the empire), setting up the impetus for a conflict in Russia’s ‘underbelly’ which would become economically and geopolitically crucial to Soviet ‘imperial’ statehood. The Ukrainian conflict that followed (1917-21)✱ was a complicated affair involving a civil war, foreign interventions by countries from both the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, the White Armies (a loose confederation of international anti-communist forces), the Bolsheviks (the Red Army) and from neighbouring countries Poland and Romania with their own territorial ambitions in the Ukraine. The struggle for political control in Ukraine involved the succession (and sometimes the co-existence) of 14 separate governments◘, before the Bolsheviks finally established the country as a constituent republic of the USSR [The Times Guide to Eastern Europe, (Edited by Keith Sword), (1991); Encyclopedia of the USSR, (Warren Shaw & David Pryce), (1990)].

 

Reds, Whites and Blacks  
Various social and political groups within Ukrainian society—peasants, Cossacks, nationalists, socialists, communists, anarchists—formed into autonomous partisan detachments and embroiled themselves in the southern front showdown between the Red (Russian) and the White (foreign) armies. Of these groups, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, colloquially known as the Black Army, in particular found itself in the middle of the White versus Red warfare.

Makhnovia AKA ’Makhnochina’
Of the assortment of homegrown players in the conflict in Ukraine, the Black Army was the most intriguing ideologically. Led by a brilliant military commander, Nestor Ivanovitch Makhno, and composed of peasants and workers, they were an army of revolutionary anarchists (or anarcho-communists). Makhno was engaging in a social revolution experiment by trying to establish a stateless, libertarian society in “free territory”. The Makhnovist Movement was based on the principle of self-government, a “federation of free soviets” without recourse to a dominant central authority◔ – a defiantly anti-statist position that was of course anathema to the Soviets. Aside from anarchists, the movement’s ranks were also swelled by Left Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists and maverick Bolsheviks [Nestor Makhno, Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921, (Alexandre Skirda), (2004)]. At its high-water point Makhnovia boasted an army some 100,000-strong [‘The forgotten story of the Free Territory’, (John Dennehy), Contributoria, July 2015, www.contributoria.com].

The Bolsheviks in their Ukraine military campaign alternated between forming alliances with the Black Army against the White Army when it suited them, and warring with them at other times. Makhno’s effective use of guerrilla tactics and his own martial innovation, the tachanka◘, played a decisive role in stopping the advance of Anton Denikin’s White Army on Moscow by cutting its lines of supply. When the Reds eventually got the better of the Whites in the war, Leon Trotsky (Soviet Commissar of War) reneged on the agreement with the Makhnovists, vilified Makhno as a “bandit warlord” and a “counter-revolutionary”, and proceeded to crack down on the Blacks ruthlessly [‘Free Territory of Ukraine’, Libertarian Socialist Wiki, www.libsoc.wiki.fandom.com]. With the Black Army’s strength decimated by the desertion of thousands of soldiers, the Red Army, superior in numbers and better equipped✧, ultimately defeated and dispersed the Blacks, forcing Makhno to flee Ukraine, eventually taking refuge in France.

Footnote: Makhnovia’s geographical base in eastern Ukraine
Makhno’s powerhouse was on the left bank of the River Dniepr, in the provinces of Ekaterinoslav and Northern Tavrida and in part of neighbouring provinces…an area forming a rectangle measuring 300 km by 250 km and populated by seven-and-a-half million people (Skirda).

⇣ A 1919/20 pictorial map of Ukraine (Image source: Christophe Reisser & Sons)

Postscript: Ukraine, ‘Malorossiya’ and historic ‘Great Russia’ assumptions of hegemony
The perception historically of Ukraine as “Little Russia”—held by by both Russians and the outside world—as a geographic entity falling naturally within the realm of “Great Rus” or even as indivisible from it, has acted as a handbrake on Ukraine’s aspirations for independence❂. In the present Ukraine/Crimea imbroglio, Russia’s military intervention and support for separatism in Ukraine (ie, the 2014 idea of eastern Ukraine as ‘Novorossiya’, (“New Russia”), the encouragement of the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic”), is the Soviet strategy redux of what happened in 1917 – the setting up of an alternative authority in the country to that of the Ukrainians, namely a pro-Russian regime in Kharkiv. The Europeans in 1917, perhaps with an underlying sense of the vast, sprawling Russian Empire as amorphously heterogeneous, had a poor awareness of the difference between Ukrainians and Russians (the Soviet policy of Russification was designed to further blur those differences)⧆ [‘Illusion of a friendly empire: Russia, the West, and Ukraine’s independence a century ago’,  (Ihor Vynokurov), Euromaidan, 02-Sep-2017, www.euromaidan.com].


࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏

✱ because of the causal link the conflict in Ukraine is sometimes characterised as the southern front of the Russian Civil War. Invading White Army leader General Denikin referred to the region as “Southwestern Krai”, a name with Russian imperial overtones

◔ Makhnovia relied on the adherents to an anarchist model to self-organise into peasant communes and worker co-operatives (Dennehy)

◘ horse-drawn machine guns

✧ the Bolsheviks routinely and deliberately underarmed Makhno’s army (the Black Army always had more volunteers than guns) (Skirda)

❂ this is a part of a continuum which had its genesis with Muscovy’s supplanting of Kyiv as the centre of the Russian state

⧆ when the Ukrainian war for independence broke out, the western powers, in striking contrast to their ready endorsement of Polish self-determination and independence after WWI, failed to offer the same support to the Ukrainians’ aspirations (Vynokurov)