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Introduction
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp xi-xvi
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Summary
Artyom Vesyoly (1899–1938, real name Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov) was born in Samara on the Volga. His father was a carter and loader, and the son, who started work at fourteen, would later describe his own working career as follows: ‘factory – tramp – newspaper seller – cabman – clerk – agitator – Red Guard – newspaper – party work – Red Army soldier – student – sailor – writer.’ He joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917, aged seventeen, and was soon involved in the Civil War of 1918–1921. After being wounded in action in June 1918, having enough schooling to read and write – the first of his family to acquire literacy – he was assigned to propagandist duties. He travelled the front-line areas in an ‘agit-train’, producing propaganda material and editing local Bolshevik newspapers.
At this stage of his life, Vesyoly's political and ideological views accorded fully with those of the revolutionary leadership. When in the spring of 1918 he met the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, then in Samara and a staunch supporter of the Bolshevik cause, the two argued heatedly: Hašek upheld Russia's pre-revolutionary literacy legacy, while Vesyoly spoke fiercely in favour of unceremoniously consigning Pushkin and Tolstoy to the dustbin of history.
When the Civil War ended, Vesyoly was able to attend the Moscow Institute of Literature, founded by the poet Valery Bryusov, and study the craft of writing. He did not complete the course, but soon began to publish fiction and drama, most of it based on his experience of the social upheaval brought by war and revolution. Recognised as a young writer of great promise, he was a founding member of the Pereval group of writers and briefly a member of RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers).
The novel Russia Washed in Blood (Rossiya, krovyu umytaya), first published in full in 1932 but further developed in subsequent editions, is the best-known of his works. In it, he relied heavily on his own experience of the Civil War and on the letters he received from newly literate soldiers and veterans. He also incorporated, in revised form, some novellas which he had published separately in the 1920s.
Frontmatter
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp i-iv
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Etudes
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 201-270
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Summary
Pride
Troop by troop they rode into the distance,
Passing barrows – on into the blue,
Horses raising dust along their pathway,
Trampling bitter wormwood where it grew.
Georgy BorozdinThe smoke of morning campfires covered the meadow like a sheepskin coat. Unsaddled horses dozed in small groups, and the breeze tugged at their matted manes and docked tails. Deep in sleep, the troops snored by the bonfires in battle-haunted slumbers, muttering and exclaiming anxious fragmentary orders. Some were jumping up with teeth chattering and doing physical jerks, then heating their mess tins, chewing on grubby pieces of lard from their haversacks, sipping tea as strong as pitch from dented mugs – scalding their lips owing to a habit of doing everything in haste.
Nearby a village lay in black, burned ruins. The sooty stumps of stoves and chimneys rose above the ashes. Weeping women sat on bundles and metal-hooped trunks, swaddling exhausted children in rags. Glum peasants picked through the ashes, poking with stakes and pulling out blackened earthenware pots, ploughshares, spades and knick-knacks from under the smouldering embers.
The only house left standing was occupied by the headquarters of the cavalry brigade. On benches, on the floor and on the stove, orderlies, clerks and billeting officers were snoring at varied volume and pitch. A pungent cloud of tobacco smoke hung in the air, with a smell of ripe footcloths, rancid sheepskin and damp humanity. On a wide bed, under a satin coverlet lay the brigade's youthful commander Ivan Chernoyarov, drawing on his pipe and spitting right across the room to the doorway.
A heavy fist pounded on the window frame, setting the panes ringing.
‘Hey, admin!’
Chernoyarov raised his scalp-locked head: ‘Who's there? What's up?’
‘Ivan Mikhailovich!’ Fedulov the sentry reached up to the high window, hung on by his hands and went on, eyes bulging: ‘There's a Chechen here, came galloping up, wants to see you in person … We’re holding him under arrest.’
‘A Chechen? Where is he?’
‘Here. We’ve brought him … He's waiting,’ shouted Fedulov and dropped down again.
Barefoot and sleepy, the commander went out onto the porch.
Russia Washed in Blood
- A Novel in Fragments
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020
-
Russia Washed in Blood, first published in full in 1932, is the longest and best-known work by Nikolai Kochkurov (1899–1938), who wrote under the pen-name Artyom Vesyoly. The novel, more a series of extended episodes than a connected narrative with a plot and a hero, is a vivid fictionalised account of the events from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier. The title of the novel came to symbolise the tragic history of Russia in the twentieth century.
The novel’s main theme is the relation between freedom and dictatorship, reflecting a view that the cruelty which comes with elemental freedom destroys that freedom and prepares the ground for dictatorship. Vesyoly’s writings belong to the literature of moral resistance to Stalinism. For his failure to recognise the ‘leading organisational role’ of the Communist Party he would be executed in Stalin’s Great Purge.
Born in Samara, on the banks of the Volga, the son of a waterside worker, Artyom Vesyoly was the first member of his family to learn to read and write. He took part in the Civil War of 1918–1921 on the Red side, and at its conclusion, began a prolific literary career. Vesyoly took as his main theme the horrific events he had witnessed and participated in during the fierce fighting in Southern Russia between the contending forces - Red, White, Cossack, anarchist and others - and the effects of these on the participants and unfortunate civilians caught between them.
Death Tramples upon Death
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 1-8
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
raw Mother Earth shuddered and
the whole wide world was plunged into turmoil
Shaken by the hurricane of war,
the world staggered, drunk with blood.
Cruisers and dreadnoughts plied the seas and oceans, belching fire and thunder. In their wake roamed submarines and minelayers, thickly sowing the watery wastes with the seeds of death.
Aeroplanes and Zeppelins flew west and east, south and north. From the heights above the clouds a pilot's hand flung burning brands into the hives of human aggregations, the bonfires of the cities.
Crushing every living thing in their path, tanks crawled over the sands of Syria and Mesopotamia and the fields of Champagne and the Vosges, furrowed by trenches.
From the Baltic to the Black Sea and from Trabzon to Baghdad the hammers of war beat on without a pause.
The waters of the Rhine, the Marne, the Danube and the Neman were clouded with the blood of the warring peoples.
Belgium, Serbia, Romania, Galicia, Bukovina and Turkish Armenia were swathed in the flames of burning villages and towns.
The roads … Along roads wet with blood and tears came armies, artillery, baggage trains, field hospitals and refugees.
The terrible year 1916 rolled towards its close, flecked with crimson.
The sickle of war was reaping the stalks of life.
Temples and mosques, prayer-houses and churches were filled to overflowing with weeping parishioners, sorrowing, groaning and prostrated with grief.
Trains laden with bread, meat, spoiled canned food, rotting boots, field guns, shells … And the front devoured, wore out, tore up or fired all of it.
Cities writhed in the claws of cold and hunger, the groans of the villages soared to the very heavens, but the drums of war thundered on relentlessly and the guns roared in anger, drowning the squeals of dying children, and the screams of wives and mothers.
Grief came calling, and misery made its nest in the mountain auls of Chechnya, under the roofs of Ukrainian homesteads, in Cossack stanitsas and the shacks of workers’ cantons. The peasant woman wept as she plodded behind the plough. The townswoman wept as she bent her head over a notification bearing the terrible words‘Killed in action’against her beloved's name.
Private Maxim Kuzhel Has the Floor
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 9-32
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
all of Russia is one big mass meeting.
Our regiment was on the Turkish front when the revolution came and overthrew Tsar Nicholas II.
The men were astonished.
At first some of the old soldiers couldn't really believe it, and a burble went through the ranks … ‘Let's wait and see, there's sure to be an order from the divisional commander – a coup, the Tsar's abdicated, … Now we’ve got a Duma and a Provisional Government1 … time for some prayers of thanks, brothers!’
‘Any time!’
The bugler plays parade; the regiment forms up in a triangle.
‘By the right! At-ten-shun! Caps off!’
The padre lights up his censer, shakes out his sleeves: ‘Blessed be the Lord our God …’
The soldiers shiver and their hair stands on end … We stand there holding our breath, feeling oh so sorry for ourselves, and it's so cold it brings tears to our eyes.
‘Let us pray together to the Lord …’
We cross ourselves, fall on our knees, foreheads to the ground, thinking, ‘O Lord our
God, you unwashed uncombed soldiers’ God … Where have you got to and where have you dumped your flock, like a bad shepherd, not to mention your untouched untainted virgin? Why have you left us to the torments of an evil fate, and why don't you – you soldiers’ lousy God – have pity on a soldier's bitter life?’
The padre waves his censer, only his hair flutters in the breeze …
The soldiers feel cheerier, look at each other brightly and push out their chests.
Prayers over, we straighten up. What next?
The divisional commander rides out in front of the parade – beard grey, chest covered in medals, voice bulging. He rises in his stirrups and waves a telegram in the air: ‘Brothers!
His Imperial Highness the Emperor Nicholas II is no longer ruling over us.’
He waves his little telegram and bursts into tears.
And the soldiers say nothing, alarmed.
Only Bombardier Pimonenko isn't one to be cowed, he boldly unfurls the red flag he's brought with him:
DOWN WITH THE TSAR! LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE!
We’re stunned and all agog.
The Town of Klyukvin
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 271-312
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
flames flare up
and sweep like thunder everywhere.
The first joyful snow blanketed the town, casting a net over the thin-ribbed forest and settling on the straw-thatched caps of the villages. In the open steppe the free-flowing breeze drove raging clouds of snow and playfully curled the crests of snowdrifts.
Roads to the right
Roads to the left
Snowy wastes …
The first frosty tracery on windows.
Klyukvin exulted. The façades of little houses were decked with green boughs and crimson flags.
Somewhere beyond the fire station a band struck up. Through the narrow winding streets from the outskirts towards the centre came a steady stream of townsfolk. Children ran ahead shouting. Excited dogs bounded along. The men strode purposefully forward. The women puffed and panted as they ran, adjusting their headscarves.
‘Mother of God! … They’re coming.’
‘Yes! They’re coming … Heavens, Darya! Oh! … Praise be!’
‘Just like the dream I had …’
From the station Kapustin's partisan detachment rode into the main street. Their tired, steaming horses snorted. Scalp-locked partisans swayed in their saddles – their faces weather-beaten and their snow-covered black papakhas pushed back.
With banners flying and band playing, railwaymen, carters, weavers, bakers, tanners and needleworkers advanced across the market square to meet them.
‘Look, Mummy! Look!’
‘Some power there, brother! What a lot of people! … Ain't seen so many even at the Blessing of the Waters.’
‘That's what war does … Ought to hitch them horses to the plough.’
A vividly coloured skirt darted out from the footpath: ‘Mitroshenka …’
The young woman breasted the wave of horses … A hook-nosed, wind-burned partisan leaned down, swept her up under the arms and seated her in front of him; to a chorus of approving laughter he started kissing her tear-stained laughing face.
‘Hurrah, hurraa-aah …’
Heads thrown back, mouths wide ajar …
‘Yermolai! Brother! The devil take you …’
‘Ah, hello friend! Still alive, eh? Your Grunya's been worried sick; she's given you a brace of twins.’
An old woman grabbed at the reins of a bay horse, her eyes blazing and guttering by turns, like cheap candles in the breeze …
The Blaze Spreads and Rages
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 33-64
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
all of Russia at sword's point.
Mountains, forests, beaten tracks …
Soldiers streamed along well-worn roads and goat-tracks like litter on the torrents of spring.
Soldiers in their thousand besieged the stations and railway halts. At night the sky was lit by the glow of their campfires. All were bent on getting on a train, and the trains were full.
Trains rolled north amidst songs, whoops and whistles …
The rattling goods wagons were filled to the brim with men, like bags full of grain.
‘Friends, let us on!’
‘There's no room.’
‘We’ve got to move … Two weeks we’ve been waiting.’
‘Go ahead. We ain't stopping you.’
‘Find us a space …’
‘We’re full up.’
‘Comrades!’
‘Full up.’
‘From the Turkestan Regiment …’
‘Where d’you think you’re going? Afonya, put a match to his beard, will you?’
‘I’m a delegate. This is a ballot box,’ yelled Maxim in a hoarse voice, holding the box up in front of him like an icon. Nobody took any notice. Groans, squeals, shouts … The trains flew on in clouds of smoke and dust. And thousands of hearts rolled north, overtaking the wheels and tap-tap-tapping as they went:
…go-ing home …
… home …
… home…
Maxim took from his kitbag his last chunk of black bread, heavy as earth, and started waving it in the air as the wagons rolled by.
‘Hey, hey!’
A huge pockmarked Cossack caught it in the air, and snatched up Maxim's bags and Maxim himself and dragged him in through the window.
‘Away we go!’
It was crowded, but bearable.
‘Shut the door, it's cold,’ snarled somebody from under a seat. But the door had been torn off and burned long ago, and all the windows smashed.
‘Put up with it; you’re going home.’
From the top bunk a big cropped head was leaning down, with mischievous eyes glinting, and telling with great relish a story about Grisha Rasputin: ‘In he goes to the Empress's bawdoir, drops his velveteen breeches and gets straight down to business!’
‘How many times can you do it?’ she asks.
The Village of Khomutovo
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 313-348
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
dust clouds tower
over the whole world …
The district lay buried beneath snow and decrees.
The silent forests beyond the Volga lay slumbering. The wintry fields rested in deep silence. The village slumbered comfortably, sleepily letting fall cock-crows and peals of church bells.
One village stood above the gully, another one lay in it, another before you reached the forest, another beyond the forest, one in the valley and one beyond the little river.
How rich in grey villages you are, oh my homeland! And there lies the village of Khomutovo.
Its hip-roofed, five-walled houses stood scattered, with roofs of iron or timber and yards securely covered. Shutters of blue and fiery red, with decorative curlicues. The spacious family homes were warm and cosy, and you could scoop up cockroaches by the shovelful. Icon-stands occupying a whole corner. Paintings showing war scenes, the holy Mount Athos, and the torments of Hell. And the people of the village were tall, wholesome and talkative. In times past, on feast days, the village basked in the milk and honey of its fairs: cereals, mercery, painted pottery, wheel rims, harness hoops, pitch, gingerbread, honey cakes, herds of cattle and steppe horses, shouting, raised voices and Gypsy oaths, the doleful songs of blind beggars and holy fools, the merry-go-round and a two-storey tavern. This was the most important village in the district. And the Tsar's war hardly touched it: some of the villagers went to town to hide in the munitions works, and some simply bought themselves out and worked at home for the war effort, and worked well. Every year the women produced one or two babies, as if they were baking pancakes. The revolution struck the wealthy village like a thunderstorm – trade dried up, traffic along the highway ceased and things went downhill.
Ivan Pavlovich Kapustin grew up in Khomutovo as a poor orphan. He could not remember his mother, his father had been killed in the war with Japan and Vanya had to go out to work for strangers for a handful of rye crusts. Later the tavern owner Barmin took him away to the town.
Map
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp x-x
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On the River Kuban
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
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- 03 August 2020, pp 65-94
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
storms thunder and rain beats down
all over the land.
Between two seas, like a panther, crouched the Caucasus.
At one time, nomadic hordes had travelled the roads of the Caucasus; the barbarian’s stone club had battered Iranian and Byzantine culture, and the Mongol's mount had toppled the millennia-old idols of the East. From sea to sea flew the victorious banners of Persian rulers and despots. The hosts of Tamerlane swept small nations with them as a torrent sweeps away stones, and rolled over the mountain ranges. The Arab scimitar reached out as far as the sumptuous splendour of the cities of Transcaucasia. The teachings of fanatics and pagan prophets lashed the country like a rampant plague and toppled the citadels of Islam and Christianity, built up over hundreds of years. For centuries the earth groaned, stones flew from horses’ hooves, numberless hordes roared, stone cannonballs whistled, and fortress walls crashed down as a blind surge of blood swept away whole nations and trampled feasting kingdoms underfoot.
Hard by the Caucasus lay the fat and lazy Kuban.
At one time the Black Sea and Nogai steppes were uninhabited. Over the green open plains herds of proud wild horses roamed free, neighing and whinnying as they sought patches of their favourite grasses. Above the clouds grey eagles glided alone, and from on high fell on their prey faster than a blade falling on a doomed head. Along the rivers and lake shores here and there rose smoke from the encampments of bronze-skinned nomads who drove their numberless flocks of sheep from one place to another. Occasionally a raiding band of brigands would fly past, vying with the wind. And from one camp to the next with a drowsy tinkle of bells a caravan of slaves would make its way, the property of some Oriental trader, with rouged cheeks, painted nails and teeth, and beard curled into tight ringlets.
The years raced by like herds of wild boar.
At one time the Cossack desperadoes led their Cossack lives by the Don and the Dnieper rapids. They lived a life of freedom: they sowed when they wanted, and did not go hungry, wove when they wanted, without going naked; fished the meres and backwaters, hunted game in the steppe, drank wine and waged war.
Might Is Right
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 349-384
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
the country seethes in blood and fire …
The frosts bit hard throughout Shrovetide. A frigid sun sailed in a pallid haze and flicked its ears. Wide-eyed stars burned by night, and the snow sparkled with austere purity. In the open steppe, a ground wind drove a smoking powder and gripped the roads in eddies of snow.
Winter was broken at a stroke.
At a breath of warmth, the roads were swallowed in slush and soon awash. The rooks held wild swirling parliaments, the dung-covered streets were flushed by sunbeams and the sun crowed like a cock on the crown of the day.
A trickle became a torrent …
A draggle-tailed carnival time came crawling and snorting through the thaw. Spring came seeping through every cranny. The dun stripes of manured tracks struck out across the meadows, the tops of the ancient kurgans melted, the ice on ponds began to break up and meltwater licked the banks.
The village wallowed and swam in moonshine, gulping it down by the ladle-and bucketful. Revellers rode their carts along the lower street with the wind rushing past their ears. Some roamed the village in twos and threes, arm in arm, knocking on windows:
‘Anybody in?’
In strained creaking voices they bawled their bitter peasant songs, with bitter refrains. Ragged drunken shouts and the barking of stupid village dogs scourged the shy and timid village night.
Forgiveness Sunday came round, the very last day when every living soul drank deep, so as to last to the end of Lent. Festive church bells chimed with dancing notes. The women and girls in their Sunday best made their way home from church. Whole families gathered at oak tables in their clean-scrubbed, overheated homes to cram their ample rye-fed bellies with best baked and roasted fare, washed down with tea and baked milk.
The festive street was filled with jollity.
The sun hung in the heavens like a shock-headed sunflower. Dogs stretched out on the warm ground, listless and dead to the world. In the thawed patches, hens pecked at manure. Squawking cocks fought.
Glossary
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Russia Washed in Blood
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- 23 February 2022
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Note on Russian Names
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Russia Washed in Blood
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- 23 February 2022
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- 03 August 2020, pp ix-ix
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Contents
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
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- 03 August 2020, pp v-vi
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The Black Epaulette
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Russia Washed in Blood
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- 23 February 2022
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- 03 August 2020, pp 95-128
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
all of Russia engulfed in fire
and washed with blood.
For the second week, Nikolai Kulagin, an officer of the Kornilov Regiment, could not rise from his bed. He kept his pack, containing his pistol and a change of clothes, under his head and his rifle at his side. He covered himself with his cavalry cape, still damp from the front. Boiling water kept him warm; so, according to army tradition, did cigarettes. The squalid, ill-heated ward was full to overflowing with men wounded and frostbitten in recent fighting at Novocherkassk. The unsealed windows let in the fetid February damp. Kulagin’s bed was by the window. He could raise himself on his elbows and gaze for long moments at the street, then fall back on his crushed straw pillow and close his eyes and doze. His limp, peeling ears were black and swollen, and his frostbitten feet, suppurating in their bandages, exuded a sickening smell. Day and night the ache in his bones gave him no rest.
Rostov was in the last throes of revelry. In the city Duma, Constitutional Democrats, or Kadets, and Cossack generals were concluding their last speeches. In the evening the streets were packed with officers, carefree men-about-town and pure-bred blue-blooded belles. In the restaurants, the aristocracy of the capital and barons of high finance made merry. Political hustlers scurried about among them. Mingling with them, exploiting their resounding names, were members of the now-dissolved State Duma, sacked ministers, dignitaries of the Provisional Government, notorious terrorists, honoured heads of government departments disbanded by the revolution, minor country squires, prelates and card sharpers from exclusive gambling dens. All had hastened to the Don after the October coup with the intention of sitting out the bad times behind the Cossack lances. Those versed in the Okhrana's malodorous secrets and the ways of the Lord, learned scholars and socialists familiar with the nicest nuances of all possible social movements and forms of unrest vied with each other in predicting the speedy and inevitable downfall of the Bolsheviks. On wine-stained tables, proclamations of future governments were written and grand plans drafted for the restoration of Russia; ministerial portfolios were allocated and celebrated generals were appointed governors of regions where the suppression of insurrection was yet to begin.
Bitter Hangover
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
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- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
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- 23 February 2022
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- 03 August 2020, pp 165-200
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
fevered villages, delirious towns.
The army was assailed by lice,
the army was dying.
Autumn brought lashing rains, lead and blood.
Unharvested crops, infested with weeds, were laid as flat as felt. The orphaned grain fields were trampled by cavalry, devastated by swarms of mice and pecked clean by passing birds. The crimson banners of fires fluttered over the lands of the Kuban, the Terek and Stavropol. The Reds were setting fire to the homesteads and stanitsas of rebellious Cossacks; the Whites were laying waste peasant villages and workers’ settlements.
Winter was drawing in.
From the north, cold winds were more and more frequent, stripping the orchards bare and rustling the dead grass in the steppes. Morning frosts set in, covering puddles with the first fragile ice.
The troops were short of clothes and footwear.
Along the same routes, the same roads as the army, the typhus-bearing louse came crawling. The fit could manage to fight it off; the sick could not.
Mineralnye Vody
Pyatigorsk
Vladikavkaz
Grozny
Svyatoi Krest
Kizlyar
Chyorny Rynok
Long will the living remember those bloody landmarks.
In all the towns and villages, farmsteads and stanitsas the fleeing army left thousands upon thousands of wounded, ailing and sick to their fate. The commandants posted sentries at the doors of the field hospitals, with orders to let nobody out.
Those strong enough to go on came in to bid their farewells: ‘Don't worry, brothers … We’re going to withdraw for two or three days, then we’ll be back.’
‘You’re lying, soldier! You brought us here and sold us out … The cadets will cut us all to pieces.’
‘They won't touch you. They wouldn't dare harm a wounded man.’
‘If it was you lying here with a bullet in your chest you’d sing a different tune.’
‘I’m telling you we’ll be back soon. Just wait.’
‘Wait for who, and what? A hangman and a noose?’
Men began jumping up from the beds.
‘Brothers, get ready to move out!’
‘Where are you going? Why are you getting up? We’ve no horses, no warm clothing. The bridges in the rear are down. We’ve nothing to feed you with and no food for ourselves. In your condition none of you will survive the journey.’
Acknowledgements
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp vii-viii
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The Conquerors’ Banquet
- Artyom Vesyoly
- Translated by Kevin Windle
- Introduction by Elena Govor
-
- Book:
- Russia Washed in Blood
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 23 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2020, pp 129-164
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Summary
Revolution in Russia –
roaring wrath, a frenzy of flood tides
and raging waters.
Endless talking in the train. Why all the shouts and squabbling?
‘It all comes down to one thing: thrash the bourgeois!’
‘Yes. Thrash the life out of ‘em!’
‘Brothers …’
The land is ours, with everything that's on it.’
‘What about the Whites?’
‘Are we afraid of them Whites? You’ve got your rifle and a good eye.’
‘That's right.’
‘We’re the ones with the power. We’ll crush ‘em all and tear ‘em up.’
A train passes in the opposite direction.
‘Hurrah … aah …’
Hats and rifles waving.
‘Skin them bourgeois alive!’
‘Off with their epaulettes! Down with the cadets!’
‘They’ve pranced and danced all over us. Now it's our turn.’
‘Give it to ‘em, comrades! No pity for capital!’
‘Out with ‘em!’
And shouted curses and laughter and shots in the air lingered long after the trains had passed.
The mountain ranges parted and there like a wall was the sea. On both sides workers’ little houses flashed by, and the train flew into a station in a cloud of steam.
‘Where's the commandant?’ Maxim jumped from the train and accosted a young soldier running past with a bunch of spring onions in his hand.
‘Oh, brother,’ the soldier stopped and wiped his sweaty face with the hem of his coat, ‘Things are looking serious. But the front-line men won't let us down. They’ll see to everything in no time.’
‘Did I ask you about that?’
‘Hold on tight, Your Excellencies! You’ve got it coming!’ The soldier waved his spring onions and ran off.
Maxim watched him go, and guessed he must have come from a mass rally. ‘Must have had the full treatment. No brains left at all.’
A noisy throng was heaving and milling … Maxim made towards the station building.
‘Where's the bloody commandant?’
‘I’m the commandant.’
‘You’re the one I want.’
‘Who might you be and where from?’ the commandant came to life and raised a puffy face from the desk at which he’d been asleep. ‘Travel warrant?’
Maxim turned away to unbutton his trousers and pull out a document from a concealed pocket.
The commandant read it aloud: ‘This com-(yawn) -rade is de-le-gat-ed (yawn) to ob-tain wea-pons (yawn).
EPONYMY, ENCOUNTERS, AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE IN RUSSIAN PLACE NAMING IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS, 1804–1830
- BRONWEN DOUGLAS, ELENA GOVOR
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- Journal:
- The Historical Journal / Volume 62 / Issue 3 / September 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 March 2019, pp. 709-740
- Print publication:
- September 2019
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This history of Russian place naming in the Pacific Islands from 1804 to 1830 systematically juxtaposes, correlates, and compares toponyms inscribed in varied genres of Russian texts: map, atlas, journal, narrative, and hydrographic treatise. Its empirical core comprises place names bestowed or recorded by naval officers and naturalists in eastern and northern Pacific archipelagoes during expeditions led by the Baltic German circumnavigators Krusenstern (1803–6), Kotzebue (1815–18), Bellingshausen (1819–21), and Lütke (1826–9). We address the interplay of personality, precedent, circumstance, and embodied encounters in motivating voyagers’ toponymic choices and their material expressions. We consider diverse textual movements from located experience, to specific inscription, to synthesis. Russian toponyms constituted part of the vast stock of historical raw material from which Krusenstern later created the authoritative pioneer Atlas de l'Océan pacifique (1824–7). This toponymic focus is scaffolding for a dual ethnohistorical inquiry: into the implications for Russian toponymy of Indigenous agency during situated encounters with people and places; and into the relative significance of loca'l knowledge conveyed to Russian voyagers by Indigenous interlocutors, and its presence or absence in particular sets of toponyms or different genres of text.