Anxious to establish the identity of his quite new country Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov replaced a statue of communist theorist Karl Marx with a more exalted one of the 14thcentury Mongol conqueror Tamerlane on horseback. It was an appropriate change to avoid a too close connection to the Soviet Union of which Uzbekistan was then a part. But did itconform to reality? Was Tamerlane, man of the sword, a greater conqueror than Marx, man of the word? Which ultimately was the mightier weapon?
No one ever defeated Tamerlane on the battlefield. It couldn’t be done. He was a mister of tactics who outfought and outlasted all his enemies. He was merciless in his victories, making sure those he subdued would never rise again. His calling card, say historians, was a tower of skulls from severed heads that surrounded the massacre of men women and children in the cities he destroyed. He was seldom out of the saddle. That was home. A devout Muslim, he had no hesitation about killing other Muslims. He was indiscriminate in his slaughter.
The glorification of battle was all. He didn’t envision a permanent empire like Rome. His was an empire on the run, bound to dissolve after his death in 1405. But he had one lasting monument, the extraordinarily beautiful Samarkand in Uzbekistan. The riches in the cities he conquered were transferred to Samarkand, along with artists, architects, scholars, astronomers, glass blowers, weaversand all others worth keeping alive. “He threw himself into beautifying his capital with all the furious energy of war,” writes Justin Marozzi in his biography of Tamerlane. That can still be seen today.
No one ever defeated Karl Marx in argument. He wouldn’t allow it. Words were his weapon and he used them as aggressively as possible. He never killed anyone. But his words? Tamerlane is considered responsible for 17 million deaths. Many million more can be attributed to the name of Marx – Marxism – if not to the man who while promoting revolution was vague about the outcome. In revolution he said there’s no such thing as excess. Terror isexpected, as is the culminating rise of aproletarian leader of global proportion. He didn’t live to welcome the Russian Revolutionand the emergence of globalist Stalin, who might quickly have disposed of him as an unnecessary nuisance.
Marx is famed for his books Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. But he was mainly atireless journalist who was constantly urging on his advocates around the world. It was indeed an empire of letters. And he had no greater weapon at his disposal than the occasional slogan that sliced through argument as cleanly as Tamerlane severed heads: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains.They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite.”
Poor Tamerlane. Today except for Uzbeks, we hardly speak of him, while Marx remains on the tip of tongues, however removed from the master. That statue of his should be kept in reserve, just in case.
