From Russia with Love :) (puns)

As some of you know...

I am taking a Russian culture class...
and I find the whole culture to be just fascinating to tell you the truth, and sadly not too far away from our culture.
but
different...

I'm writing because I read this passage out of my "textbook" and found it just heart-stopping the relationship between these two individuals..

for those of you who know nothing about Russian history...Peter the Great was this guy who westernized the whole of Russia very quickly and it's amazing...read about it...

well he died and only had two daughters (the rest of his children died)....and Anna was the first one...and Elizabeth the second...

Anna sucked as an empress...but Elizabeth was pretty good...

just to sorta' give you the idea of her personality....here's something she did which I find awesome...in the winter...she had all the doors in the palace opened..and had water poured over the floor...

this water turned to ice and she enjoyed ice skating on this...

another illustration is that she made her court (working stiffs and all nobles etc.) go camping- it began to rain...she enjoyed the rain and the mess it made of all her provisions and her delicacies that she had ordered from Europe...While everyone else freaked out...

sorta' makin' the best of every situation...she's adorable...I love reading about her...apparently she's pretty good looking too...and could dance a mean waltz....anyway..I was attracted to this love story between the empress and this peasant...I just love it...

I'ma be pretty much copying from the text book here on out...but I really hope you'll read it...It's moving trust me...

"One day in 1731 when she (Elizabeth) was twenty-two and attending services at the court chapel, she suddenly heard a splendid voice in the choir. She asked to be introduced to the talented new singer. He was tall, with a bronzed complexion, black hair and the expressive black eyes of a poet; a Ukrainian named Alexei Razumovsky. Alexei was from a small village north of Kiev, the son of a rustic Cossack shepherd. Alexei was a dreamer and his father was continually enraged at him because he was always trying to read. One day when, as often happened, his father was drunk, Alexei was caught once again with a book. in rage his father threw an axe at him, narrowly missing his head. After that, the boy went to live with the village priest, and his beautiful voice soon made him the finest singer in the choir. One day a court envoy passing through the town heard him sing and brought him back to sing in the court chapel. There, when he was twenty-three, Alexei met Elizabeth. Very soon after, she attached him to her own household as a bandura player. During her lifetime, the ebullient Elizabeth's interest was sometimes briefly captivated by other men, but her heart, once given, was true. Alexei and Elizabeth were devoted all their lives, a story of a peasant and a princess, of Catherine and Peter in reverse." (Peter, her father married a peasant girl also...and were really devoted...no intrigue or cheating or anything like that followed their relationship...pretty amazing :)

the story goes on to infer that they got married, but there's no proof of it...and it was just sorta' an implied thing that they were...

well eventually Elizabeth dies...in her 50's, so...Alexei is left on his own...and Catherine the Great takes the throne...

this is the part that really gets me...

"Still faithful and loving, Razumovsky was with Elizabeth when she died. Even after death, he remained gallant to her memory. Some years later, when Catherine the great contemplated marrying her love, Grigory Orlove, she sent her Chancellor, Count Mikhail Vorontsov, to Rasumovsky to try to obtain firm evidence that the two had really married. Cunningly, Catherine held out a golden carrot by suggesting that she would raise Razumovsky to the title of Imperial Highness and Prince Consort if he would reveal the truth and allow her to examine the documents. When this was proposed to him, Razumovsky said nothing but went over and took from a locked ebony casket a parcel of papers wrapped in pink silk. He carefully read them in silence. Then he kissed the papers, made the sign of the cross and threw them into the fire. With emotion, he turned to Vorontsov and said, "I have never been anything but the late Empress's most faithful slave. Now you can see for yourself that I have no documentation of any kind."

I JUST LOVE THAT!!!!

don't you?

It reminds me of parts of God's love, but it's human too, which I love the most about it...the fact that humans can love that much...

a man who is brought to prominence by his Love...and saved from his abussive father...

and he trusts her so much...

I love the last part...because I feel like Catherine and her cohorts...are sorta' like the devil...and they ask proof that we are God's children...(they ask if we're saved by God)

and he reads it one last time and burns the conformation...and all that crap...cause he knew who he was...

it's such confidence.

confidence that Christians should have that they are Christians...

and understanding what that means...

I really doubt he had any sort of trouble throwing those papers away, because look at his situation... he came from a lowly peasant family to being "the late Empress's most faithful slave"....

when you undergo such transformation and feel such love...a piece of paper doesn't mean anything...and certainly doesn't prove anything... (God tie in ;)

whether they were "officially/ceremonially" married...they were definitely married in spirit...

just that faithfulness

:) AHHHHH! :) that Love :)