place
Herat
also: Герат
Afghan border town at the center of the 1885 Anglo-Russian war scare (the Panjdeh incident), a major news topic of the day that the soldier's tall tale in "Rasperekanalstvo!!" jokingly tries to top.
Reading notes
- Hopeless (A Sketch) §27 the cholera and Herat
The two stock topics of provincial small talk in 1884-85: recurring cholera epidemics in the Russian Empire, and the Anglo-Russian war scare over the Afghan border town of Herat (the Panjdeh incident), both constant fixtures of the newspapers of the day.