Going to the Source: "[COVID-19] was a bullet that was meant to be fired [by China], but likely was fired by mistake sooner than intended, at the wrong place, and in the wrong way.".

• Author: O'neill, John E.
• Position: WORLDVIEW - Excerpt from "The Dancer and the Devil: Stalin, Pavlova, and the Road to the Great Pandemic"

ANNA PAVLOVA died in the early morning hours of Jan. 23,1931, at age 49. Hers was the first of many deaths of great diva celebrities in the 20th century--Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Lady Diana--spectacles that left the public both enchanted and grieving. Though largely forgotten in popular memory today, the death of Pavlova shocked the world.

She had been in Paris for several days rehearsing for her tour of European countries and the U.S. After taking lunch in her hotel room, Pavlova boarded a train for the Netherlands, where she was scheduled to appear at The Hague. She became ill soon after departure. She struggled to breathe, and her lungs began to fill with fluid. Although she told the doctors and her husband, Victor D'Andre\ that she had been "poisoned" by the food in Paris, no one took her words seriously. Instead, her doctors treated her for pneumonia. When that failed, they treated her for bacterial blood poisoning. As the doctors failed to find a cause, they were reduced to treating symptoms. Despite their efforts, injecting her with serum and draining fluid from her lungs, nothing they did helped.

With death closing in, Pavlova made her company swear to go forward with the scheduled opening performance of her tour on the following night. Around midnight, she called for the costume that she had worn so many times as the dying swan. Too weak to speak further, she raised her hand as if making the sign of the cross ... and died.

Like the Dying Swan of legend, did she feel both sadness at parting and the joy of a great life well spent? Joseph Stalin's poison and thugs did what his threats and ambassadors could not do--they stopped Pavlova's dance.

On the following night, true to her company's promise and her command, the show went on before a weeping audience. Pavlova's part was played by no one; a spotlight followed her marks on the stage--and when Pavlova's signature "Dying Swan" was played with the spotlight shining where she should have been, the audience, led by the king and queen of Belgium, was moved to tears. Royals and commoners stood as one, openly crying.

Stalin, wrecker of cathedrals, was the only person in the world who would have smiled at the death of the beloved ballerina. One of communism's most prominent critics, George Orwell, later would capture the mentality of Stalin and his obsession with what could have been dismissed as mere "cultural" milestones and personalities: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the...