No politics tonight, I promise. At least no contemporary politics. I’ve had enough of that for a while, I think. The battle goes on, of course, and as the sailors used to say (according to Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast), “Never say die while there’s a shot in the locker.” But I need time to regroup.

I don’t think I’ve done much politics in this space for a while, anyway. (Perhaps, as is so often the case, I delude myself.)

So what shall I write about? I’m reading a long book of history at the moment, so it will be a few days before my next review. This book I’m reading is about the history of the Baltic region, and the author, in his description of the Russian empire, refers to a man named Ivan Mazepa. Mazepa is a name (like Rienzi, about whom I need to write someday), that used to be quite well known in the U.S. as that of a foreign hero. We even have a town in Minnesota named after him, though we added a second “p” to the spelling.

Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) was a hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and a devoted and honored commander under Tsar Peter the Great. However, in the last year of his life, he learned that the tsar was planning to replace him, and so he defected to the side of Peter’s great opponent, King Charles XII of Sweden. He has been considered a traitor by the Russians ever since, but he had many defenders as well. The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him, but the Greek Orthodox did not. I believe he’s quite popular in Ukraine today.

What made him famous in the west was that Lord Byron wrote a poem about him. That poem led to a play, called “Mazepa, or the Tartar Horse,” which packed them in in England and then crossed the sea to America, where it was also a hit.

The centerpiece of the play was not the drama with Tsar Peter, which happened when Mazepa was an old man. It was a dubious anecdote about Mazepa’s youth, culled from a biography of Charles XII. That colorful story claimed that as a boy in Poland, Mazepa had an affair with a nobleman’s wife. When the couple were discovered together, the nobleman punished the young man by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting it running across the plains. Somehow, Mazepa survived, and made his way to the Russians, under whom he took military service.

The play, “Mazepa,” became a theatrical staple in the U.S. A melodramatic version appeared later, which featured a live horse running on a treadmill on the stage, a pretty good technical effect for the times.

But what really made the show a hit was when they cast a woman as young Mazepa. The actress was named Adah Isaacs Menken, and she insisted on riding the horse personally (instead of using a dummy), clad only a flesh-colored body stocking. Audiences were scandalized and delighted. The play toured the American West for years, and made pots of money.

As a final note, there’s an old movie called “Heller in Pink Tights,” starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren. It’s based on Louis L’Amour’s novel, Heller With a Gun, and was inspired by the adventures of the traveling “Mazepa” troupe.