.....high school nightmares of reading the thing resurrected
. Who says past "sins" don't come back to haunt you ..... anyways, the story is certainly epic in nature, and in a land where national spirit was lacking at the time (before independence always being tossed around by someone) was likely one of the defining elements in bringing the people under one 'banner', to demonstrate there is a separate 'people' here after all after being a more or less autonomous part of Russia for a long time. Could argue it being 'the appropriate' way of building a 'national' identity.
