Moscow (AsiaNews) — Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (Gundjaev) is speeding up procedures to obtain tthe canonisation of the ‘generalissimo’ Aleksandr Suvorov, by the fateful date of May 9, the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Considered the most victorious commander in all of Russian history, Suvorov left behind not only the splendour of military glory, but also a tragic trail of blood all over Europe.
Suvorov’s name is linked to the massacres of so many of the empire’s minor peoples in the late 18th century, such as the Nogajtsi and Crimean Tatars, Baškiri, Kazakhs and others.
According to Phil Lawler,
“In 1794 he was recalled to crush the nationalist-revolutionary movement in Poland—which he did with ruthless efficiency,” Encyclopaedia Britannica recounts. “The slaughter involved in his storming of the Warsaw suburb of Praga (which he justified as shortening the war and saving lives) shocked Western opinion, but it earned him a reward of 7,000 serfs and the promotion to field marshal he had long coveted.”
A Wikpedia article estimates the number of civilians slaughtered in the massacre at 12,000.
