taking a break for lunch. Fountains, cascades, and other waterworks clutter Peterhof’s grounds. The ordinary garden hose has taken much of the thrill out of fountains, I think. Right in our backyards we have something that sprays water beautifully into the air, and you can squirt your wife with it. Also, we have electricity. Spumes, spritzes, and artificial drizzle received more oohs and aahs when viewers knew that hundreds of serfs were scrambling uphill with buckets to make them happen. Peterhof’s fountains have been under restoration since World War II. Some spitting gargoyles had a plaque that read, THE DRAGONS WERE RAVAGED BY THE NAZIS . Which must have been a sight to see. Not satisfied with sexually molesting the garden ornaments, Hitler’s troops ruined all of Peterhof during their unsuccessful siege of what was then Leningrad. I went to the appalling Throne Room and looked at the gilded rococo moldings slobbered all over the walls and ceilings. A dozen immense purple glass chandeliers from a whore’s idea of paradise ruined the space overhead. Underfoot, an ugly jigsaw puzzle of parquet flooring spread for acres in all directions, so much of it that there were once servants whose job was to skate through the palace in big socks, keeping everything buffed. The throne itself was preposterous, and above it was a portrait of fat Catherine the Great, the picture bracketed by personifications of Justice, Truth, Virtue, and other things that Catherine wouldn’t have known if they bit her. An afternoon at Peterhof is enough to explain the whole Bolshevik revolution, especially in 1917 to starving sailors on the Kronshtadt fleet, freezing soldiers at World War I’s Eastern Front, and semichattel peasants hauling water buckets for the Peterhof fountains. I was ready to join the revolution myself if I’d get a chance to heave that throne through a window, make a penny-arcade shooting gallery out of the chandeliers, and play ducks and drakes with a hand grenade on those parquet floors. The problem is, the Bolsheviks didn’t do those things. And when the Germans did, the Bolsheviks spent the next four and a half decades carefully restoring the place. This is because marxists are insane. Marxism has had such an impact on this century and remains, even after the fall of the Soviet bloc, such a potent intellectual force that we tend to forget how loony are its fundamental tenets.
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