This second part extends the Micheletian autopsy by relying on the surgical analyses of Françoise Thom. Here, Russia is no longer just a tyranny, but a viral pathology: « Cholera. » Michelet diagnoses an Empire founded on the ontological « Lie, » an anti-reality where Tsar Nicholas I is the « False of the False » and where the bureaucracy grinds down all organic life. The Russian regime’s capacity to export its own decomposition to dissolve the West’s moral defenses is terrifying.

A « cold poison » that lulls to sleep before killing. Facing this machine of death that has « suppressed » its own nation, martyred Ukraine appears paradoxically as the only living force, a miracle of resistance preventing the gangrene from overwhelming Europe.

It is a clinical warning: one does not negotiate with an epidemic, one contains it or dies from it.

by François de Vries — Paris, November 30.

The Intuitions of Jules Michelet on Russia (2)

Introduction: The Persistence of the Specter

In the vast theater of history, certain actors seem condemned to indefinitely replay the same tragedy—not as a farce, to quote Marx, but as a recurring nightmare that haunts the European conscience.

The analysis by historian Françoise Thom, titled « The Intuitions of Jules Michelet, » invites us to such a rediscovery: that of a past that will not pass, of a shadow stretching once again across the continent.

By exhuming the texts of Jules Michelet, and more specifically his Democratic Legends of the North (1854), Françoise Thom is not merely acting as an antiquarian. She lays out a clinical diagnosis of the present. She demonstrates that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not a new aberration, but the resurgence, feature for feature, of the Russia of Nicholas I.

This second part, « The Contagion of Darkness, » proposes to explore this dizzying intuition. It aims to dissect, with the rigor of an analyst and the depth of a visionary, the mechanisms of a power that, according to Michelet, has made lies its flesh and death its vital principle.

The objective is to exhaust the meaning of the Micheletian categories reactivated by Françoise Thom—the Lie, the Cholera, the Void, the Machine—to understand the war in Ukraine not as a territorial conflict, but as a metaphysical struggle between existence and nothingness.

By following the red thread extended by Françoise Thom, we will see how history traverses centuries to bite us, and how the prophetic warnings of 1854 become keys to survival for 2024. One « only needs to replace ‘Poland’ with ‘Ukraine’ and the Russia of Nicholas I with that of Putin » for the text to light up with terrifying clarity. This report aims to be the amplified echo of this substitution, an exhaustive anatomy of the political necrosis threatening the West.

I: The Ontology of the Lie

1.1. The Substance of the False

At the heart of Michelet’s analysis, relayed by Françoise Thom, lies an assertion of unheard-of philosophical brutality: Russia does not simply lie; it is the lie. « Russia, in its nature, in its very life, being the lie itself, its foreign policy and its weapon against Europe are necessarily the lie. »[01] This distinction is capital. It separates the utilitarian lie, practiced by all States as an instrument of cunning, from the ontological lie, which constitutes the very essence of Russian power.

In the Micheletian perspective, the lie is not a veil placed over reality, but a substitution of the real with a morbid fiction. The Russian government has built an inverted universe where words have lost their anchor in truth to become vectors of confusion.

This « supreme lie » [01] is not an accident along the way; it is the load-bearing structure of the Empire. Without it, the edifice collapses, for it is built on no organic or moral foundation, but on the void.

The analysis suggests that this lying nature « warps » the Russian mind itself, subjecting it to the « torture of a vile and base inquisition. »[01] The inquisition here is not only religious, it is cognitive: it forces the mind to accept the unacceptable, to see black and say white, thus breaking the individual’s moral spring.

1.2. The Tsar: The False of the False

At the summit of this pyramid of imposture sits the Tsar. Michelet defines him with a formula of significant redundancy: he is « the false of the false, the supreme lie that crowns all lies. »[01] Why this insistence on the doubling of the false? Because the Tsar is not just a liar; he is the incarnation of a false divinity. He claims to be the father of the people while being their executioner; he claims to be the guarantor of order while being the agent of chaos.

Françoise Thom’s analysis highlights the absolute continuity between the tsarism of Nicholas I and Putin’s regime. In both cases, the leader is the convergence point of all fictions. His will, described by Michelet as « uncertain, capricious in its action, »[01] becomes the only law, replacing justice, tradition, and reason. This autocratic caprice is dangerous because it is disconnected from reality. Enclosed in his own bubble of lies, the Russian leader ends up believing his own fabrications, dragging his country into disastrous adventures based on false premises. The « supreme lie » is therefore not only a tool of domination, it is a trap in which the tyrant himself is caught, condemning his action to « absolute uncertainty in results. »[01]

1.3. Corruption as a Vector of Degraded Truth

How does the lie descend from the summit to the base? Through the bureaucracy, that imperial « machine » Michelet describes with horror. But in descending, the lie undergoes a mutation: it transforms into corruption. The will of the Tsar, crossing the strata of administration, meets « venality » and « corruption. »[01]

It is here that the analysis becomes particularly penetrating for understanding the logistical and moral failure of the contemporary Russian army. The political lie (the grandeur of the empire) becomes an administrative lie (falsified reports, inflated numbers, stolen equipment). The system is eaten from the inside by the necessity of lying to superiors. Each rung of the hierarchy adds its own layer of falsehood to protect or enrich itself. The result is an « absolute uncertainty »:[01] the central power pulls levers that are connected to nothing. The « power of death » is thus, paradoxically, a power of impotence, undermined by the virus of deception it has itself inoculated into the social body.

Table 1.1: The Stratigraphy of the Russian Lie

Level of Power	Nature of the Lie (Michelet/Thom)	Manifestation under Nicholas I	Manifestation under Putin	Systemic Consequence
The Tsar (Summit)	« The False of the False », « Supreme Lie » [01]	Divinized autocrat, guarantor of Orthodoxy and Order.	« Special Operation », Denazification, Restoration of historical grandeur.	Total disconnection from reality, capricious decisions.
Foreign Policy	« Weapon against Europe » [01]	Protection of religious « dissidents », defense of aristocratic order.	Protection of « Russian speakers », defense of « traditional values », fight against NATO.	Subversion of democracies, hybrid warfare.
The Administration (Intermediate)	« Uncertainty », « Venality », « Corruption » [01]	Bureaucracy filters and distorts imperial orders.	Kleptocracy, falsified military reports, embezzlement of funds.	Operational inefficiency, paralysis of action.
The People/The Nation	« Vile and base inquisition », « Moral nothingness » [01]	Serfdom, forced silence, coerced adoration.	Apathy, television propaganda, social atomization.	« Suppression of Russia », death of the public spirit.

II: The Viral Pathology — « Russia is Cholera »

2.1. The Epidemiological Metaphor

Among the most striking intuitions noted by Françoise Thom is this lapidary definition: « Russia is cholera. » [01]For a 19th-century reader, cholera is not a simple disease; it is absolute terror, the scourge from the East, the blue death that strikes without warning and dissolves bodies.

By applying this metaphor to the Russian State, Michelet operates a major conceptual shift. Russia is not a conventional military power (like Prussia or France); it is a pathogen.

This identification suggests that Russia’s action on its neighbors is not of the order of classical conquest (assimilation, administration), but of the order of contamination. It is a « dissolving force. »[01] It does not seek to elevate the peoples it touches, but to lower them, to make them sick. Like cholera, it thrives on filth, misery, and disorder. Where it passes, social structures liquefy, trust disappears, and civic life is extinguished.

2.2. The « Cold Poison » and Demoralization

Michelet describes Russian influence as a « cold poison. »[01] This thermal image is essential. Russia is the pole of cold, not only geographically, but spiritually. It freezes the impulses of the heart, it congeals hope. The Russian poison acts on the nervous system of European nations. It does not kill immediately; it numbs.

Thom’s analysis allows us to understand the modern mechanisms of this intoxication. Before the invasion of tanks, there is the invasion of doubt. The « cold poison » circulates today via disinformation networks, the financing of extremes, the corruption of elites. The goal is to « demoralize » the future victim, to make them lose faith in their own values, to leave them « defenseless »[01] before the first cannon shot. The Russian cholera attacks the West’s moral immunity. It suggests that freedom is a weakness, that truth is relative, that brute force is the only reality.

2.3. Self-Dissolution

The nature of a disease is that it destroys the organism hosting it. Michelet notes that Russia, if it had nothing to devour outside, « would eat itself. »[01] It is a « power of death » that is « burning, devouring. »[01] This autophagy is visible in the way the regime treats its own population. Cholera makes no distinction between the Russian and the Foreigner; it is a principle of universal negation.

By transforming Russia into cholera for Europe, the Russian government has condemned its own people to live in a perpetual lazaretto. It has isolated Russia from the rest of humanity, cutting the vital links attaching it to civilization. Michelet warns that this process leads to an « infernal perdition, »[01] an endless fall into disease and death, from which only a radical rupture (a « movement of the heart ») could save the country.

III: The Mechanics of the Void — The Empire against the Nation

3.1. The Grinding Machine

In his letter to Russian officers, Michelet attempts to perform surgery on the conscience: one must separate « the empire and the nation. »[01] The Empire is not the political expression of the Russian nation; it is its parasite and executioner. The analysis describes the Russian State as an immense administrative and military « machine » that takes its leverage point on the officers, weighs on them, and crushes them.[01]

Michelet addresses the officer directly with a terrifying image: “You are the fulcrum of the lever that will crush you.”[01] The officer is not regarded as a thinking subject or patriot, but as a tool. The ‘machine’ functions through a chain of blind obedience, in which each rank crushes the one below it. By accepting to be a cog in this system, the Russian officer participates in his own destruction and that of his people. He serves a “power of death”[01] that consumes the vital forces of the country to feed an expansionist delirium. The machine does not serve Russia; Russia is the fuel for the machine.

This mechanistic vision is terrifying. The Russian individual, whether serf or general, is but a cog, fuel for the machine. The ‘terrible government’ is defined as ‘the death of Russia.’[01] There is here a total inversion of the social contract: the State does not exist to protect the nation, but to consume it. Every territorial extension, every apparent victory of the Empire is paid for by an ‘annihilation of the national genius.’[01] The more Russia expands geographically, the more it empties itself spiritually

3.2. Moral Nothingness and Barbarism

The effect of this machine is the industrial production of nothingness. Under the reign of the « false, » Russia has « descended the slope of a frightful moral nothingness. »[01] It has regressed. While the world advances, it walks « completely against the grain of the world. »[01] Michelet speaks of a return to « serfdom, » or even to « ancient slavery. »

Thom highlights the burning relevance of this observation. Putin’s Russia, by rehabilitating Stalinist practices, by militarizing society, by crushing dissent, organizes this regression. It creates an « immense void »[01] at the heart of society. This void is not neutral; it is a vacuum for violence. A society emptied of its morality, its culture, its humanity, can only be filled with fanaticism and hatred. The « internal destruction »[01] that Russia suffered in the last century (and which it still suffers) is the source of its external aggression. It projects its own void onto the world, wanting to reduce Ukraine, and all of Europe, to the same state of desolation as itself.

3.3. The Call to Officers: A Missed Opportunity?

Michelet addressed Russian officers, hoping that they would realize that the machine was crushing them too. He hoped they would see that serving the Tsar was betraying Russia. « The empire and the nation » are mortal enemies. Today, this call echoes in the void. The machine seems to have won. The distinction between the Empire and the Nation has faded; the nation has been digested by the Empire. The « national genius » seems annihilated, replaced by cynicism and resignation. It is the triumph of cholera: there is no longer a healthy body to resist the virus.

Table 3.1: The Dialectic Empire/Nation

Concept	The Empire (The Machine)	The Nation (The People)	Causal Relation
Nature	« Power of death », « Capricious machine », « Supreme lie ».	« National genius », « Own life » (potential), « Heart ».	The Empire « weighs on » and « crushes » the Nation.
Dynamics	Expansionist, devouring, mechanical.	Passive, suffering, drained of substance.	The expansion of one causes the annihilation of the other.
Result	« Suppression of Russia », « Moral nothingness ».	« Internal destruction », « Regression into barbarism ».	« The terrible government is the death of Russia. »

IV: Anatomy of the Crime — Poland as a Mirror of Ukraine

4.1. The Trinity of Conquering Lies

t is in the analysis of the method of conquest that the comparison between 1854 and 2024 becomes most striking. Michelet dissects the mechanics of the enslavement of Poland, and Françoise Thom invites us to read therein the fate of Ukraine.

Russia did not defeat Poland by the sword alone, but by « three lies »[01] which disarmed the Polish soul before breaking its body.

1. Fraternal concern (The religious/ethnic lie) : Russia feigned interest in religious freedom, coming to the rescue of « dissidents. »[01] This is the prototype of minority protection used by Putin in the Donbas. The predator disguises itself as a protector. It invents persecution to justify an invasion. It weeps over the victims it is about to create.

2. The Protection of Anarchy (The Constitutional Lie): Russia claimed to defend the « old Constitution » of Poland and its « old anarchy »[01] (the liberum veto). In reality, it wanted to prevent Poland from reforming, from modernizing, from becoming a strong State. It wanted « a Poland against Poland. »[01] Similarly, Russia has done everything to maintain Ukraine in corruption and institutional instability, sabotaging its attempts to move closer to the European rule of law. It wants weak, ungovernable neighbors, the better to dominate them.

3.Deceptive Politics (The Diplomatic Lie): Conquest is achieved through language. Russia promises friendship while preparing the massacre. It signs treaties to buy time. Its diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means, a psychological war intended to sow « dissolution. »[01]

4.2. The Murder of Fifty Million Men

Michelet speaks of a « monstrous crime, » of an « immense murder of fifty million men. »[01] This figure does not designate physical deaths, but the civil death of an entire nation. Russia wanted to erase Poland from the map and from history. It wanted to steal its soul.

But here arises Michelet’s vitalist paradox: the crime failed by its very excess. By dismembering Poland, Russia gave it a « stronger life. »[01] « The Poland you see in tatters and bloody, mute, without pulse or breath, she lives. »[01] Suffering condensed national life, rendering it indestructible. « All her life, withdrawn from her limbs, carried to the head and heart, is only more powerful. »[01]

4.3. The Ukrainian Transposition

Let us apply this grid to Ukraine. Putin wanted to « suppress » Ukraine as a nation, reduce it to a Russian province. He used the same lies (protection of Russian speakers, denunciation of a « Nazi » regime to create chaos). But the result is identical to that described by Michelet: aggression forged the Ukrainian nation. It unified the people, it awakened a heroic consciousness that was sleeping.

Ukraine, today « in tatters and bloody, » lives an intense, burning life, which contrasts with the dreary apathy of Russia. « She lives alone in the North, and no other. »[01] Russia, for its part, « does not live. » It is a machine of death, a geopolitical zombie that can kill but cannot create life. Michelet’s intuition crosses centuries: the executioner is dead, the victim is alive.

V: The Geopolitics of Light and Darkness

5.1. Russia against the World

Thom’s analysis underscores that Russia walks « completely against the grain of the world. »[01] It is not a simple divergence of interests, but a fundamental vectorial opposition. The world (understood as European civilization and moral progress) moves toward complexity, freedom, the individual. Russia returns to the brutal simplicity of slavery, to the undifferentiated mass, to nothingness.

This opposition makes any lasting compromise impossible. One does not negotiate between being and nothingness. Since Russia’s « foreign policy » is « necessarily the lie, » Françoise Thom’s analysis highlights that Russia walks « completely against the grain of the world. »[01]

It is not a simple divergence of interests, but a fundamental vectorial opposition. The world (understood as European civilization and moral progress) moves toward complexity, freedom, the individual. Russia returns to the brutal simplicity of slavery, to the undifferentiated mass, to nothingness.

Any agreement signed with it is null and void from the moment of signature. It is a « power of death »[01] that knows only destruction as a mode of interaction with others.

5.2. Hope through Inverse Contagion?

Michelet ends on an ambiguous but profound note of hope. If Russia is lost in its « infernal perdition, » what can save it? « That is not all. She lives alone in the North… What attaches her to humanity and to God… is the movement of the heart that Poland has awakened in her. »[01]

This is a staggering idea: Russia’s salvation depends on the nation it martyrs. The heroic resistance of Poland (and today of Ukraine) is the only thing that can provoke a moral shock sufficient to wake Russia from its ethical coma. It is by seeing the face of freedom in its neighbor that the Russian might, perhaps, become aware of his own chains. Ukraine is not only Europe’s shield; it is Russia’s chance for redemption. If Ukraine falls, Russia sinks definitively into darkness. If Ukraine holds, a light remains lit « in the North, » which may one day pierce the Russian night.

5.3. The Responsibility of Europe (From the summary table)

Michelet’s text, read by Françoise Thom, is also a warning to Europe.

To fail to see the nature of Russia is to condemn oneself to suffer its ‘cholera.’ To believe Russian lies is to inoculate oneself with the virus. Europe has often been complicit through naivety or cynicism, agreeing to turn a blind eye to the ‘internal destruction’ of Russia in the name of stability. But this stability is that of the morgue.

The ‘prodigious intuition’ of the historian summons us to choose a side. There is no possible neutrality in the face of cholera. Either one fights it, or one dies of it. To accept the Russian narrative is to accept that the lie is legitimate, that might makes right, that death is the future of man

Table 5.1: The Vitalist Balance Sheet (Life vs Death)

Indicator	Russia (The Executioner)	Poland/Ukraine (The Victim)
Vital State	« Russia does not live ». [01]	« She lives, and she lives more and more ». [01]
Location of Life	Nowhere (Void, Nothingness).	« In the head and heart » (Spiritual concentration). [01]
Dynamics	Dissolution, regression toward barbarism.	Resistance, unity, moral elevation.
Relation to World	« Against the grain of the world », « Against Europe ». [01]	« Alone in the North », link with humanity and God. [01]

Conclusion: The Final Diagnosis

At the end of this exploration, this « contagion of darkness » leads to an irrevocable conclusion.

Françoise Thom’s analysis, relying on the spectral vision of Jules Michelet, establishes that the Russian threat is existential. It is not a matter of traditional politics, but of pathology.

We are facing a political entity that has « suppressed » its own nation to become a machine of war and lies.[01] An entity that is « the cholera, »[01] that is to say, a force of pure dissolution. An entity governed by the « false of the false, »[01] impervious to reason and truth.

History does not simply repeat itself; it stutters. The « three lies » that killed Poland are those attempting to kill Ukraine. The « moral nothingness » of Nicholas I is that of Putin. But the « life » that saved spiritual Poland is the same that animates Ukraine today.

The message of this « second pastiche » is clear: one does not discuss with darkness, one turns on the light. Lucidity is the first weapon. Recognizing that Russia is « the lie itself »[01] is the beginning of resistance. As long as Europe has not integrated this « profound, admirable definition » of Michelet, it will remain vulnerable to the poison.

We must look the monster in the face, without illusion, and support those who, through their sacrifice, prevent the cholera from overwhelming the world. Ukraine lives. And as long as she lives, the lie cannot totally triumph. The contagion can be contained, if we have the courage to name it.

François de Vries

[01] « Les intuitions de Jules Michelet, une sélection de Françoise Thom » in DeskRussie — (2022-0401)

See Also :

« La danse des morts : Chronique de la grande nuit (1) Ou le sabbat des tyrans contre la résurrection des peuples » — (2025-1130)

Decryption:

The Ontology of the Imperial Lie

This second part proposes an exegesis of the Russian threat, characterizing it as an imperial and existential pathology. The analysis relies on Françoise Thom’s rereading of Jules Michelet’s intuitions (1854), asserting that Putin’s Russia is a resurgence of the regime of Nicholas I. Russian power is thus defined as the « supreme lie, » a force whose essence is falsification and which acts upon Europe like « cholera, » a pathogenic and dissolving agent. The source dissects the mechanisms of aggression, showing that the « three lies » used against Poland are repeated against Ukraine to create a moral nothingness and break the national spirit. The document concludes that this struggle is not political but metaphysical, with Ukrainian resistance being the only light capable of halting the contagion of Russian darkness.

Letter from beyond the grave from François-René de Chateaubriand to European-Security — Grand Bé, November 28, 2025 (© European-Security)