The ancient Greek historian Polybius wrote about the existence of historical cyclicality (the theory that historical periods and events repeat themselves).
This theme was later developed by Machiavelli, Campanella, and the Italian thinker Giambattista Vico, who lived from the late 17th century to the first half of the 18th century.
Indeed, many events and phenomena from the past recur from one era to the next. In these times of war, reports periodically appear in the media about unscrupulous individuals who, wearing military uniforms, pose as combatants and, for financial gain, collect money from gullible citizens, as well as spread various tall tales about the war, thereby sowing panic among the population. Exactly the same incidents were observed in our lands 100 years ago. As is well known, on August 1, 1914, the Russian Empire entered World War I. And between September 28 and November 8, 1914, one of the largest military engagements of that terrible war took place—the “Warsaw–Ivangorod Offensive.” During these bloody battles, the combined casualties of the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian armies totaled more than 100,000 killed.
A month later, on October 28, an unknown man with his right arm bandaged appeared in the village of Volokhiv Yar, claiming to be an officer wounded in the battles near Warsaw. He told the peasants that in that battle, the Germans had killed about three million Russian soldiers—allegedly because the soldiers had been given vodka right before the battle. That is why the soldiers, in a state of severe intoxication, went into battle without any sense of their actions and died in droves.
It goes without saying that such “reliable reports from the front” sparked panic in Volokhiv Yar. Officer Pershin told the peasants Fyodor Kirillovich Velichko and Pavel Gerasimovich Protsenko that he knew their sons—who had been drafted into the army—well, since both had served under his command. They were currently wounded and undergoing treatment at a hospital in Kyiv. In exchange for helping their sons secure disability pensions and leave, Pershin swindled a total of 12 rubles and 75 kopecks from the trusting fathers.
However, it so happened that at that time, Yavorsky, the district inspector for the city of Zmiiv, was passing through the settlement on official business; he noticed the suspicious officer and detained him. During questioning, it became clear that the man, who was posing as a wounded soldier, had never served in the military and had never even been to war. He turned out to be Alexander Evdokimovich Pershin, a 32-year-old peasant from the village of Nephaevka in the Shopin volost of the Belgorod uyezd, Kursk Governorate. Having no means of support and unable to find work anywhere, the resourceful man from Kursk began posing as a wounded officer and collecting “voluntary donations” from gullible and compassionate citizens. In this way, Pershin had managed to swindle about 50 rubles from various individuals by the time of his arrest. The police returned the money to Protsenko and Velichko and began investigating the “hero.” It turned out that the Verkhneselsky Court of the 1st Precinct of the Zmiiv Magistrate’s District already had a case against Pershin on charges of fraud under Article 174, but due to the defendant being at large, the case had been pending since 1912. For these reasons, Alexander Pershin was placed in pretrial detention. Law enforcement authorities opened a case to impose an administrative penalty on the fraudster for “publicly disseminating false information about the actions of the government and the military that causes alarm among the population.”
After reviewing the circumstances of Pershin’s case, the governor of Kharkiv ordered on November 6, 1914, that the accused be arrested for 90 days for spreading false rumors, with the time he had already spent in pretrial detention to be credited toward his sentence. Interestingly, as early as December 17, after 45 days of detention, the impostor was released from custody.
What became of this con artist afterward is unknown. I dare say that, after such a lenient punishment, he likely continued to pose as an officer or veteran on more than one occasion. Such “veterans”—who tell the public fantastical stories about three million casualties in battle (just imagine how much vodka it would have taken to get them all drunk!!) and collecting money on our soil have existed, exist, and will continue to exist—for history, alas, repeats itself…
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