The Battle of Poltava was a 1709 military defeat in which Russian forces dealt a massive, though not final, blow to the ambitions of Sweden’s King Charles XII. The book mentions it briefly in an explanatory note rather than narrating the battle: its significance here lies in the contrast between the concrete historical event and the surrounding discussion of how dreams produce strange or degraded thought.

Historical Reference

A note identifies the battle as a major Russian victory over Charles XII in 1709, while carefully qualifying its result: the defeat was massive but not final. It offers no further account of the campaign, the combatants beyond the Russian forces and the Swedish king, or the eventual outcome of the conflict.

Place in the Book

The reference occurs amid notes accompanying a discussion of theories of dreaming. The surrounding material describes dream thought as capable of producing images and associations that waking thought would ordinarily control or reject. Against this discussion, Poltava serves as a compact historical fact, not as an example whose connection to dream psychology is explained in detail. Its brevity preserves the distinction between the note’s factual clarification and the book’s larger interpretive argument.