The Fremen are Chechens: “Sabres of Paradise” as inspiration for Dune

I remember the Grozny war in the 90s. A Polish colleague in the physics department had told me of the reputation of Chechen drill sergeants in the Warsaw Pact military (where he and every other adult man of his generation served). Apparently if you got a Chechen NCO you’d really learn yourself some fighting. He thought the Russians would be in for a tough time of it, and he was right; the Chechens are a mighty and terrifying warrior race with few rivals in the modern world. I never really gave it much thought; mountain people are often tough, from the Scottish Highlanders to the Appalachians. Every once in a while, people from the Caucasus would show up in the news; generally by committing acts of extreme violence. 

A few years ago I was made aware of the fact that much of Dune was inspired by a popular history book from the 1950s called “Sabres of Paradise” by Leslie Blanch, a British travel writer of the day. Upon reading the thing, it’s almost self evidently true. 

One of the things that needs to be understood about the time of Blanch’s writing: the political prejudices weren’t much different from today. The Anglosphere absolutely hated Russia, both from the British worries about the Russians overrunning the Raj, and the US foreign policy elite worrying about Russian expansionism then as they continue to do today. As such, of course the Chechens were the heroes of a 1950s book on Russian history written by someone with at least some British intelligence ties. Imagine that nitwit Samantha Power writing a historical account of Russia’s wars in the Caucasus. After you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing at someone like that actually attempting such a thing, you can at least make the prediction that the Russians wouldn’t be portrayed as the heroes of the story.

It’s little remarked upon, but the Grozny wars were basically funded and somewhat organized by a coven of similar unholy rat bastard neocon lizards in the West who brought us such wonders as perpetual middle east wars and the surveillance dystopia we presently live in (but … muh cheap chalupas). Go look at the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya for a blast from the recent past. Everyone from Eliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Brzezinsky, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Geraldine Ferraro, James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen; a real rogues gallery of neocon fiends, no doubt backed by Saudi money, who were encouraging revolts by people who were slaughtering Russian schoolchildren. The Anglo fears the Rooskie, both in 1950, and in 2000 to this very day, when they’re blamed for everything from Donald Trump’s necktie to people laughing at the wrong things on Twatter to Rachel Maddow’s bacterial vaginosis. So, of course the Chechens were treated as the heroes in this book. The last time the Anglo was sympathetic to the Russian was during WW-1 when one of the King’s cousins was in charge of the place.

The Galactic Empire in Dune is the Russian Empire. David Lynch (ridiculously underrated) understood this in the 1980s and made the uniforms of Noble families the uniforms of the Russian empire. The Harkonnens were, roughly speaking, the Russian generals; great bears of men like Yermolov and Prince Baryantinsky. I mean Vladimir Harkonnen sounds pretty Russian; Lynch even kind of cast them that way. While the Atreides family had no real direct parallels, echoes of them perhaps in figures like Lermontov  and the eagle-faced Chechens themselves.

Lermontov is a figure worth mentioning in detail for his lack of Western recognition; a sort of Gurney Halleck figure; multitalented artist, bon-vivant, “poet of the Caucasus,” fierce warrior and duelist, he’s actually even more bad-ass than the fictional character. While he never fell in with Caucasian warriors like the fictional character, he deeply admired their courage. His sarcastic humor, charisma and womanizing ways were legendary and made him many enemies; more or less like the fictional Halleck. His poetry and sense of the epic pretty much incomparable in Russian history. He was, like Halleck, a skilled musician; rather than just the “baliset” he played many instruments. He was exiled to the Caucasus for his excesses, which, while it’s never mentioned in Dune, it is kind of alluded to that the Atreides adopted Gurney Halleck as a wandering wastrel without a house to serve. Lermontov was also a talented painter. And he wrote one of the greatest novels of Russian literature; a literature filled to the nostrils with great novels. Amusingly he was of partial Scottish descent; Gurney is a Scottish (and anglo-norman) name. Had Herbert written his witty troubador swordmaster Gurney Halleck as absurdly badass as Lermontov actually was in real life, Halleck would come off as an unbelievable Byronic Mary Sue. Really, Byron was a piker in comparison; Lermontov deserves his own adjective.

unbelievable human

much more believable fictional human

Very small details that made Dune a charming young-adult science fiction book are taken from Russia. It was obvious that he took a lot of influence from Islam. Less obvious it was all Caucasian Islam. Chakobsa was Chechen nobleman hunting language (supposedly a sort of pig latin; don’t murder me Chechen bros if that’s your secret: blame google). Kanly is the Caucasian rites of vengeance, just as in Dune. Sietch and Tabr are Cossack names for “camps.” Siridar was the Russian name for local political governors; also that of Landsraad governors. The Duniverse fought with kindjals; Caucasian weapon. Padishah was the Caucasian name for the Tsar; also the name of the Galactic Padishah Emperor.

“There had been a legend in the mountains, that on the night of Shamyl’s death a strange light was seen in the sky” (like Duke Leto). “To kill with the point lacked artistry.” Lifted wholesale from Sabres of Paradise. Imam Shamil in his letter to the Tsar “I have oft-times met your treachery, and this all men know.” There are more; “polish comes from the city, wisdom from the hills(or the sand),” “O! You who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.” “When Allah hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, he causeth his wants to direct him to that place.” It’s some of the best lines in Dune are taken from Sabres of Paradise; things men (and Lesley Blanch) actually said to each other.

Muad’ib was mostly the Imam Shamyl, who was an absolutely legendary superman rightly still idolized by modern day Caucasians. He was Avar rather than related to a Russian royal family, and a fierce Islamic Imam rather than an inventor of a new religion. His exploits and those of his warriors are so absurdly badass they make a science fiction novel with giant worms living in psychedelic fungus sand more believable and realistic.

PBUH

 

Of course, Dune was more than a flat out copy of the story of Shamyl and the Murid uprising. Herbert’s genius was in the character arc; the heroes journey; the bits and pieces taken from ancient Greece, India and so on (not much from China, oddly). Real life doesn’t quite work that way, though Shamyl remains a hero to many of his people; his character arc through recorded history wasn’t so obvious, and he obviously didn’t become Tsar of all the Russias in the end. The world building of Dune was pretty amazing as well, even if it was (very) loosely based on the history of the Russian Empire. The fact that there were no great books like “Sabres of Paradise” to steal ideas and world from later is probably why the books after Dune Messiah were such a weird trash fire. Nobody expects to write a legendary story when they sit down to crank out an adolescent science fiction book; Herbert didn’t have a plan B to milk the cow he’d created. His other books are pretty good too, but not as epic and lasting. Every teenage boy that reads Dune can relate to the heroes journey of Paul Atriedes. The other books were good too, but didn’t rise to culture altering legends like Dune.

 

They’re apparently remaking Dune as a film. Villeneuve has an interesting eye, and has done some good stories, but he’s a turkey when it comes to character development and arc, and so it will probably fail. Lynch’s Dune failed on the cutting floor; there was a good movie in it, and spergs like spicedriver were able to uncover he outlines of it. Lynch definitely read Sabres of Paradise; Villeneuve probably just watched Lynch’s mutilated film. I suspect it will at least look good, as most modern movies do. Hopefully I’m wrong, as it’s a great movie or series of movies. The material deserves it. Meanwhile we have spicedriver’s cut of Lynch’s movie which is almost there.

 

History is replete with unbelievable heroes and giants like Imam Shamyl, Lermontov, Tsar Nicholas I, General Yermolov. Most of them are recorded as dry footnotes in scholarly books. But on occasion, some popular historians rise to the level of poet troubadors themselves in writing of them. Leslie Blanch is one of them, and her book is vastly better than Dune as a work of literature and a story; and her life was also more interesting than Herbert’s in an era where that was really hard for a woman to pull off. Blanch was an amazing person: a female adventure travel writer in an era where such shennanegins were incredibly dangerous and very rarely done. She married a hero, worked as a spy, was a genius writer and lived an eventful and amusing life up to the age of 102. Despite the profusion of would-be lady adventuresses writing today, there are literally no anglophone women alive now who are as interesting and badass as Leslie Blanch, let alone as good at writing.

 

“Life is a present; one can’t have enough of it, can one?”

 

Similarly, our degenerate era of 0-dimensional Mary Sue NPC action heroes, we need better stories, and better heroes and villains. We need character arc and amusing relatable personalities which embody something like real people who actually lived, rather than unrelatable superhero robots which act like invincible video game avatars. A biography of Leslie Blanch would be amazing as a film or fictionalized story; though I am certain the temptation to turn into some awful sassy office-harridan trash would be ineluctable if it’s done in Hollywood or the UK today. I’m not asking for Lermontov tier genius like “A hero for our time” or Herbert-tier genius like … Destination Void, The White Plague (very current year) or the Santaroga Barrier (very “my last blog”). Simply writing middle to low brow popular entertainments with a pleasant story arc, fun two or three dimensional characters, and some food for thought would be nice. Barring that, just novel or even old stories that don’t suck, like old Hammer movies. I suspect such stuff will come from inspiration from history, which is a giant untapped reservoir of amazing people and ideas.