In the Russian -language segment of the network, you can find a quote about the traitors attributed to the British policy. We checked the correctness of such an attribution.
This quote is signed by users in the name of Churchill Facebook, Instagram, "VKontakte"And other social networks. In October 2022, the speaker of the Council of the Federation of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko I referred On her, commenting on the behavior of compatriots who criticize the actions of the Russian authorities from abroad: “If they water their fatherland like that, then let them remain there, if they are well there, let them not return to us. To them, probably, the statement of Churchill is applicable: "Sometimes it is necessary to simulate the collapse of the ship so that the rats are running away." In a similar context, the quote was given by a member of the Council on Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation Bogdan is nonsense and head of the Center for Social Conflict Settlement Oleg Ivanov. But the Ukrainian lawyer and blogger Rostislav Kravets In mid -February 2022, he used it in a post about the mass departments of the Verkhovna Rada and civil servants against the backdrop of rumors about the upcoming Russian invasion.
Winston Churchill is one of the most often cited politicians in history. The back of such popularity is a large number of quotes attributed to it, some of which are already Disassembled "Checked." Special selection There are such statements on the website of the International Churchill Society. However, neither there nor in Search base The Archival Center of Churchill at the University of Cambridge (more than 800,000 pages of documents are available there), nor other authoritative sites, related to the heritage of the former British Prime Minister, we did not find quotes, at least a little similar to disassembled.
At the same time, Churchill certainly knew An old idiom About rats running from a drowning ship, and used it more than once. For example, that is how he described The British who emigrated to Canada shortly after the end of the Second World War, and one deputy of the conservative who was gathered for elections from liberals, He called it The only rat floating to the drowning ship.
Moreover, “verified” did not find examples in Western sources when Churchill generally attributed a quote about the need to imitate the crash of the ship. In the Russian -language segment of the network, this attribution Appears Around 2020, although the phrase itself-without indicating authorship-has been known since at least 2005, when it was published in "Living magazine". In earlier print media, presented in the database of the Google Book project, it is not found.
Judging by the open sources, the verified statement is not very popular in English. In a slightly different form (with the mention of not imitation, but the real flooding of the ship) the phrase more or less actively It spreads Only from the beginning of the 2020s. This version in Germanwhere she became commonly used proverb. There the statement is known in two versions: “Sometimes, in order to get rid of rats, you have to drown the ship” (the Austrian writer is attributed Alfred Polgar) and “often there is nothing left, how to sink the ship and learn to swim in order to get rid of rats” (attributed to the German doctor and aphorist Gerhard Ulenbruck).
On the other hand, throughout the 20th century, an idiom was popular in English -speaking countries "Burn ship for the sake Togoto get rid of rats "(in Some cases vessel It was supposed sink). It means “losing something valuable in pursuit of insignificant purpose”, that is, it carries a completely different meaning. A rare example when a statement about the sinking of the ship was Name The Council is found in the "Bulletin of Harvard Graduates" for 1954, however, there this council is characterized as not perceived.
Thus, the aphorism of imitation of a shipwreck for the sake of getting rid of rats certainly does not belong to the authorship of Winston Churchill and, apparently, did not appear in the UK. A similar statement is known in German at least from the middle of the 20th century.
Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons
Read on the topic:
- Did Churchill say: “If the children of officials are not fighting, then this is not a war, but a business”?
- Did Churchill say: “When Russia, which fed all Europe with bread, began to buy grain, I realized that I would die of laughter”?
- Did Churchill say: “If you go through hell, continue to go”?
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