Today is June 22, the 76th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.
It brings to mind a legend that has been circulating around the Internet: that a team of Soviet archaeologists opening the tomb of the medieval Mongol conqueror Timur Lenk (often angliciized as “Tamerlane”) triggered a long dormant curse that brought down the wrath of the conqueror on their country.
According to Wikipedia, Tamerlane’s tomb was opened on June 19, 1941 by a team of archaeologists who found inscriptions reading “when I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble" and “whomsoever (sic) opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.” Three days later, some four million Axis soldiers invaded the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front.
Coincidence? Certainly. I’ll wager the alleged inscriptions don’t even exist, as I have yet to find any account of the supposed curse that quotes them in the original Persian.
The legend of Tamerlane’s curse is but one of many that have emerged since the fall of the Soviet Union; another such is that of the Orthodox saint Matrona of Moscow, whom Stalin supposedly visited in the fall of 1941 as German forces approached the capital, and who assured Stalin that Moscow would not fall.