Novel
The Iron Flood
Железный поток
Alexander Serafimovich · 1924
Opening lines
В неоглядно-знойных облаках пыли, задыхаясь, потонули станичные сады, улицы, хаты, плетни, и лишь остро выглядывают верхушки пирамидальных тополей.
In endlessly sweltering clouds of dust, choking, the stanitsa's orchards, streets, huts and wattle fences have sunk out of sight, and only the tips of the pyramid poplars poke sharply out.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ru.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Summer 1918, in the Kuban. Scattered Red soldiers, cut off from the bulk of their forces by the Cossack uprising, gather and set out with their families on a five-hundred-kilometre march across the Caucasus, under attack from the Whites. At their head is Kozhukh, a soldier of peasant origin who became an officer during the war. The narrative follows this crowd on the march, in which each person at first thinks only of his own good.
Context
The author worked for several years on the book, based on the real march of the Taman army in the summer of 1918, under the command of Epifan Kovtyukh, who appears in the story under the name Kozhukh. He wanted to show the reorganisation of the consciousness of a mass of men. The book appeared in 1924, was translated into French as early as 1930 and into English in 1935, and enjoyed international success.
Who it is for
A short narrative in which the marching crowd serves as the main character; an old French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the landmark works of Soviet literature after the revolution, translated into many languages.