
“I Write on Human Skin”: Catherine the Great and the Rule of Law - lermontov
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/write-human-skin-catherine-great-rule-law/
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encoderer
Catherine the great was a Germanic 14 year old when she was summoned to Russia
by Peter the Great's daughter, empress Elizabeth, and she went on to learn the
language and rule as the greatest czarina in Russian history. Very interesting
story, I encourage ppl to learn more about it!

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vonnik
Anyone interested in an extension of this thought by Catherine should read
Kafka's "In the Penal Colony":
[https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm](https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm)

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adrianratnapala
Well, from the article it seems Catherine did a more-or-less correct job of
adjusting liberal principles to the reality of her country. Assuming that's
right, the fact is that her time, her place and even her throne didn't put her
in a position where she could do much.

In that sense Gorbachev was more fortunate, because he did a similar balancing
act at a time when everything ended up in flux (partly because of Gorby's on
work). And even that, by its nature, has to have unpredictable effects,
including the partial about-face that Putin represents.

~~~
thriftwy
> In that sense Gorbachev was more fortunate

In what sense was Gorbachev any fortunate? He saw the desctruction of the
country he was trying to fix, then chaos in all the fragments and then the
swift undoing of everything that he ever tried.

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ourmandave
_...in a conversation with Denis Diderot, the editor of the Encyclopédie and
the Enlightenment’s most original and radical thinker. “While you write on
unfeeling paper,” she told the philosophe, “I write on human skin, which is
sensitive to the slightest touch.”_

Metaphorically then.

~~~
Raphmedia
There are however historical cases where books were bound using human leather.

Edit: vague words

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baldfat
By common you mean 18 books have been confirmed worldwide.

> Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. As
> of April 2016, The Anthropodermic Book Project "has identified 47 alleged
> anthropodermic books in the world's libraries and museums. Of those, 30
> books have been tested or are in the process of being tested. Seventeen of
> the books have been confirmed as having human skin bindings and nine were
> proven to be not of human origin but of sheep, pig, cow, or other
> animals."[1] (The confirmed figures as of May 2017 have increased to 18
> bindings identified as human and 13 disproved.
> [https://anthropodermicbooks.org/](https://anthropodermicbooks.org/)

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coldcode
The Russians are an interesting people, part Slav and part Viking. The latter
I didn't know until I read a book on the Vikings. Rus was the term used for
the Viking rulers in the early part of the millennium and the name stuck.

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squozzer
I really enjoyed the story, then this --

>Two hundred and fifty years later, in a world where autocratic thugs reign at
the two extremes of the Western world,

oh brother.

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B1FF_PSUVM
Shh. Don't stir up the fanatics, they really enjoy bashing disbelievers.

Even good old Lavoisier - an impeccably progressive fellow - got his head
chopped off for not being delusional enough.

~~~
kaeluka
> Don't stir up the fanatics, they really enjoy bashing disbelievers.

Weird, that sounds a lot like what you folks are doing, too.

