Its title comes from a quotation by Vyacheslav von Plehve in reference to the Russo-Japanese War: "What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution." That quotation is one of the novel's two epigraphs; the other is a quotation from Robert Wilson Lynd: "The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
In 1851 Plehve's family moved from Meshchovsk to Warsaw, where his father accepted a job as instructor in a gymnasium.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Otto von Bismarck | Alexander von Humboldt | Wernher von Braun | Carl Maria von Weber | Herbert von Karajan | Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher | John von Neumann | Lars von Trier | Vyacheslav Molotov | Ferdinand von Mueller | Paul von Hindenburg | Alexander von Humboldt Foundation | Heinrich von Kleist | Anne Sofie von Otter | Erich von Stroheim | Max von Sydow | Justus von Liebig | Hermann von Helmholtz | Franz von Papen | Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg | Carl von Clausewitz | Von Ryan's Express | Richard von Weizsäcker | Theodore von Kármán | Manfred von Richthofen | Erich von Däniken | Dita Von Teese | Albrecht von Haller | Carl Michael von Hausswolff |