Windows

Not the Microsoft kind.

Since 2022, there have been at least 21 deaths of prominent Russians who have all died falling from windows.

It is widely suspected they were all defenestrations.

Defenestration: the act of throwing someone out a window. From the Neo-Latin De (down from) and the classical Latin fenestra (window or opening).

Rabbit Hole

Neo-Latin - A movement started in Renaissance Italy to promote a Latin “standard”. Medieval Latin had diverged greatly from the “classical” Latin of the Romans. This was an attempt to provide a standard Latin that was closer to the original.

This is different from the French Académie Française, which was established in 1635 to protect and regulate French. That’s not the same. The Académie Française is about keeping foreign influences out of the French language (and by foreign, the French meant mainly English). Now, if the Académie Fraçaise wanted to keep French sounding the way it did originally, like the Italians with Neo-Latin, the French would be advocating everyone start talking like they do in Quebec.

There are currently hundreds of English words used in French, such as le week-end, le wi-fi, le start-up. The Académie Française is working valiantly to relieve the French language of the burden of those English words. Among their suggestions; replace “wi-fi” with “l’accès sans fil à l’internet”, and “sexting” with “textopornographie”.

The English don’t care that 30%-40% of English is made from French words; you can thank William the Conqueror for that, although technically, we can probably blame Harold Hadrada.

Rabbit Hole in a Rabbit Hole

Harold the First fought William the Conqueror at Hastings in 1066 and lost, resulting in several centuries of Norman rule over England and French becoming the language of government.

One of the reasons Harold lost was that his army was tired. On September 25, 1066, Harold defeated Viking leader Hadrada at Stamford Bridge. 3 days later, 400 kilometres to the south, William landed at Hastings, forcing Harold to march south, which took about 2 weeks (with a short stop to gather more forces). While this isn’t the only reason Harold lost, it did contribute to the defeat.

Damn Vikings. And they DIDN’T have horns on their helmets. Damn Hollywood.

End Rabbit Holes

The term defenestration was coined in 1618 and used retroactively to describe an incident in Prague in 1419, when seven town officials were tossed out a window, resulting in the Hussite Wars.

Rabbit Hole

The Hussite Wars were a series of civil wars fought between 1419 and 1434 over religion. Hussites were pre or proto-Protestants (protestants before the Reformation). The catholics considered them heretics. The Pope ordered five crusades against the Hussites. At least a million people died.

End Rabbit Hole

In 1483, in Prague, during a violent coup, eight people were thrown from the upper-story windows of several town halls. Seven of them were already dead, so really, that was more of a house cleaning. In this case, the defenestrations are thought to have prevented another Hussite war.

In 1618, Prague (again) witnessed a defenestration when, during a meeting with the Protestant council, two Catholic regents and their secretary were defenestrated, landing 21 metres below (70 feet) but surviving. Catholics claimed angels protected the regents; Protestants claimed they landed in a dung heap. Regardless, around this time, someone decided they needed a word for what seemed to be a Prague problem and came up with defenestration.

That is not to say defenestrations hadn’t happened before; there are numerous examples throughout history, but nobody knew they needed a special word, and nobody made a habit of tossing folks out the window, as the Prague councils did.

I should point out that the defenestrations of 1618 did result in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Guess what! Religious war. Between 4 and 12 million died.

Russia, though, have raised the defenestration game to whole new levels (no pun intended). Or, probably more accurately, Putin has.

Nearly a quarter of all the suspicious deaths in Russia since 2022 have involved high windows above pavement. Not even “suicide” has reached the same levels (and I include the coroner-declared suicide death of the Deputy Head of the Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School, who apparently shot himself five times in the chest). Nearly all of the victims were critics of the Russian government, or the War in Ukraine, or the Russian President.

So, if you are planning a visit to Russia, I would suggest a ground-floor hotel room or a building with no windows and an I Heart Putin lapel pin.

Just to be on the safe side.