Fantasizing on the theme "fate is a game" the writer Jorge Luis Borges, not without reason, noted that only the thrower who puts losses next to the winnings, will lead the account not only with money, will be able to completely seize and subjugate a person and failure, life and death.
Among the gambling games ever invented by people, there is one, if not embodying Borges's idea, then at least hinting at it. It's about Russian roulette.
The history of Russian roulette begins in the 70s of the XIX century, during the wars with the Ottoman Empire, the endless battles for the independence of Bulgaria and other Slavic countries, when Smith and Wesson revolvers entered service with the officer corps of the Russian army.
After all, Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Skobelev served as a role model - a truly legendary figure in the history of the army. At the hour of the enemy's attack, Skobelev liked to dine with champagne on a high hill or ride a white horse in a snow-white dress uniform under heavy fire from Turkish batteries.
Russian roulette fit into this row. She easily became a kind of beautiful gesture in the game of luck and death. A single bullet was loaded into the revolver drum, the player rotated the drum, put the pistol to his temple and fired. If he remained alive, he handed over the weapon to a friend …
With a favorable outcome of the roulette wheel, everyone went to drink champagne. If unfavorable, they buried a friend and recorded the loss at the expense of the “stray bullet of the enemy”. They also drank champagne, which is understandable.
The command quickly found out about the new officer's fun. And, although Skobelev himself treated them condescendingly - he admitted any, even the most absurd manifestations of courage - by special order of the Sovereign Emperor, the courts of officer honor mercilessly cut off shoulder straps and orders "for roulette".
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The famous game acquired a somewhat different character in the decadent era, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its rules and the weapon itself have changed in part. The pistol of the Belgian Leon Nagant, model 1895, entered into mass use.
But, most importantly, the mood and goals of the players have changed. Decadent poets and grim moralistic mystics ensured the popularity of aestheticized suicide.
All and sundry were shooting - pimply high school students and regulars of secular salons, muslin young ladies and artists and writers who were becoming fashionable.
Now it was often used as an answer to the fatal question: does fate love me, does life have any meaning? They also played for money, gathered at night in twos or threes, made wills against each other, and for a revolver.
On the full moon of May 1912, three very young people from good families gathered at one of the dachas of Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg - Nikolai Ipatiev, Vasily Nedumov and Irakli Gomreklidze. It so happened that they were all left without parents and themselves could dispose of large fortunes. The papers were signed and properly executed, all that remained was to play the game.
during the First World War, Nikolai went to the front, served in the cavalry, earned two St. George's crosses for desperate bravery. In 1915 he was shell-shocked, returned to the capital and closed in his own house on the Moika. A long history with Russian roulette haunted him, and after the overthrow of the monarchy in February 1917 he went to a monastery in the city of Zadonsk, Voronezh province. He was tonsured with the name Nicodemus.
Nowadays, Russian roulette has been preserved rather as a metaphor that excites the minds of writers and screenwriters. The modern world offers many ways to play cat and mouse with death, much more enticing than a regular revolver. Reckless courage, as before, is in value …