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Euromaidan Exclusive: 2014 Reply of the Zaporozhian Kozaks to the Sultan (Putin)

Euromaidanpr has translated an eMail addressed to Vladimir Putin by the same Zaporozhian Kozaks who in 1676 composed their classic reply to Sultan Mehmed IV when he demanded their submission. (The 17th century original and historical backgrounds are included at the bottom.)

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Zaporozhian Kozaks reply an eMail to Putin (2014)

 

O vile Defender of ‘Holy Russia’,
Thou Putin, most magnanimous mouse,
Before annoying peaceful neighbors,
Clean up the crap in your own house!

Your Moskva clansmen lurked in swamps
And worshiped stumps of trees,
Your forefathers groveled, crawled and kissed
The muddy boots of Khans with obedient ease.

The joke of Europe was the fable: your “Third Rome”
And now “New Russia”?? Hey, what’s the matter,
Can’t keep your stories straight? (New drugs
Can help you stop hallucinating blather.)

The “Russian Empire” is just a wet dream,
All Lenin idols are crumbling down,
You’ll never get into Empress Catherine’s pants,
Thou withered, puny, inbred clown!

We SMSed the Prince of Darkness
For your accommodations – a heated room…
He said post-Perestroika Hell’s become quite civil,
But mangy worms like you and Patriarch Kirill
would cast a foul, repugnant gloom.

‘Old Nick’ won’t take you,
Even Beelzebub’s got some class…
Your Gazprom threats are useless,
Hell doesn’t give a damn about your gas!

The Evil One won’t even consider
The Super Bowl Ring you (like a street punk) stole,
But there are far more weighty sins
That suffocate your damned soul.

First off, you thief, return the glorious name
Of ‘Rus’ – Ukrainians’ pride and joy,
While Kyiv was the shining crown of Europe,
Moskva was only learning how to plunder and destroy.

Your Russia killed Ukrainians by the millions,
The Tsars, Emperors, Komissars, all hand-in-hand.
So tell Medvedev to wipe his filthy shoes
On Moscow’s doorstep, not in our cultured, Western land.

Maidan will shine for long hereafter,
Once you, your crooked mafia are long gone.
Democracy in Kyiv will flower – while Moscow
Will still be sighing for their ‘Empire’ and their Khan.

You leveled Grozny into dust,
You’ve turned the Chechens friends for life,
Some day they will return the favor,
We hear them sharpening the knife.

Politkovskaya wrote your profile portrait,
We tried to post it on FaceBook,
We tried to get the world to ‘Friend’ you,
Our Moderator said you’re a pathetic crook…

You squawked worse than a crow on YouTube
An out-of-tune rendition of “Blueberry Hill”,
Did your ‘green men’ tune the piano?…
What the hell is next, the “Barber of Seville”?

None too soon your term will end,
Your fellow Russians’ll boot you out the door,
Here’s a few jobs reserved for you –
If not, we can always find some more:

In Kyiv, you could scrub, wipe down
Yanukovych’s golden toilet bowls,
Imagine how high Kiselev will jump
At the spike in your approval polls!

Or maybe slicing ‘salo’ in a bar
Would fit your butcher qualifications?
(Perhaps you’ll lose your itch to carve
Vast regions from your neighbor nations…)

You’d better wait before applying
In Chechnya for that swineherd job!
We know it sounds appealing,
But they just might mistake you for the hog.

In Georgia, you can bottle pomegranates
And douse their sewers down with bleach,
In our Crimea, you can start collecting
The trash and bottles on the beach.

BTW, our Donbas miners send their love;
They always leave Crimea sparkling clean!
Don’t build casinos in Sevastopol;
Just play Russian Roulette with your carbine.

So LOL,
Thou Gottverdammte* KGB Drecksau*,
Thou limp-dicked Schlappschwanz*,
Go crawl back to your own Moscow.

Go stroke and fondle your judo boy-toys,
Go nibble your fish and veggie diet,
You ain’t no macho,
You’re scared to death of a little Pussy Riot!

Go shave your chest and kiss your horse,
Thou hairless, rat-faced loner –
The last Sultan we wrote at least
Liked women, and could pop a boner.

Our keyboard’s dim, our batteries are low,
The moon’s up high,
Time to break up our Kozaks meeting,
This date’s the same for you and I…
So here’s our final greeting:

‘Leck mich am Arsch’ *
And if that seems too harsh,
Well, here’s a send-off you can’t miss:
All our Ukrainian a-holes you may unisonly kiss!

     signed by:
Kyiv, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Crimea,
Odesa, Lviv, Donetsk, ‘NovoRossiya’ :-))
etc etc etc etc…..

 

– translated by Adrian Bryttan

– graphic art: Katya Mishchenko-Mycyk


 

German lexicon (Putin worked for KGB in Dresden):
Gottverdammte = God-damned
Drecksau = filthy pig
Schlappschwanz = candidate for viagra
Leck mich am Arsch = kiss my a**


Historical background to the 1676 letter and subsequent Ilya Repin painting:

An 18th century copy of the original letter (signed by “Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko and the whole Zaporozhian Host”) was found by an amateur ethnographer who handed it over to the famous historian Dmytro Yavornitsky. Yavornitsky happened to read it to a group of guests, including the renowned painter Ilya Repin. The artist had a great admiration for these Ukrainian freedom-fighters: “All that Gogol wrote about them is true! A holy people! No one in the world held so deeply freedom, equality, and fraternity.”

Repin made several studies and completed the most well known version in 1891, which Alexander III bought for 35,000 rubles, the highest sum ever paid for a Russian painting at the time. It is currently on display at the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.  Several full-size copies exist, including a famous copy by Paul Porfirov (Repin’s student} in the Cincinnati Art Museum. A second version, with different poses, was never completed and now is on display in the Kharkiv Art Museum.

Regarding the letter itself, the Zaporozhian (“za porohamy” – ‘behind the rapids’ of the lower Dnipro River) Kozaks had defeated Ottoman Turkish forces in battle. However, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed IV still wrote an arrogant, pompous and dismissive letter to the Kozaks demanding their submission:

Sultan Mehmed IV to the Zaporozhian Cossacks:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians — I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

–Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV

The Kozaks’ reply parodied the Sultan’s titles and mixed in, for good measure, a stream of invectives and vulgar rhymes. There are several translations and versions. The following is one of the tamer ones:

The Kozaks of the Dnipro to the Sultan of Türkiye:

Thou Turkish Satan, brother and companion to the accursed Devil, and companion to Lucifer himself, Greetings!

What the hell kind of noble knight art thou,  that can’t slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The Devil voids, and thy army devours. Never wilt thou be fit to have the sons of Christ under thee: thy army we fear not, and by land and on sea we will do battle against thee.

Thou scullion of Babylon, thou wheelwright of Macedonia, thou beer-brewer of Jerusalem, thou goat-fucker of Alexandria, thou swineherd of Egypt, both the Greater and the Lesser, thou sow of Armenia, thou goat of Tatary, thou hangman of Kamenetz, thou evildoer of Podoliansk, thou grandson of the Devil himself, thou great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld and, before our God, a blockhead, a swine’s snout, a mare’s arse, a butcher’s cur, an unbaptized brow, and the crick in our dick. May the Devil take thee! That is what the Kozaks have to say to thee, thou basest-born of runts! Unfit art thou to lord it over true Christians!

The date we write not for no calendar have we got; the moon is in the sky, the year is in a book, and the day is the same with us here as with thee over there, and thou canst kiss us thou knowest where!

Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.

 

 

 

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