Novel
Chapayev
Чапаев
Dmitry Furmanov · 1923
Opening lines
На вокзале давка. Народу — темная темь. Красноармейская цепочка по перрону чуть держит оживленную гудящую толпу. Сегодня в полночь уходит на Колчака собранный Фрунзе рабочий отряд.
A crush at the station. People, a dark mass of them. A line of Red Army men along the platform barely holds back the lively, humming crowd. Tonight at midnight the workers' detachment raised by Frunze leaves to fight Kolchak.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
In 1919, a detachment of weavers leaves Ivanovo-Voznesensk for the Eastern Front, where Kolchak's army is advancing. Commissar Fyodor Klychkov, a former student, accompanies it; along the way, he is told about Chapayev, a partisan leader who has become a popular hero. Appointed commissar to him, he is struck by the commander's ordinary appearance and by the inner strength that gathers men around him, and sets himself the task of exerting a political influence over this impulsive leader.
Context
From March 1919 the author had been commissar of the 25th division, commanded by Vasily Chapayev, before being transferred to Turkestan in June after a personal conflict; he appears in the novel under the name Fyodor Klychkov. He drew the book from his notebooks, and Gosizdat published it in 1923. The English translation appeared in the same year as the Vasilyev brothers' film made its hero a national figure.
Who it is for
A novel of the civil war seen through a commissar, best read with a few points of reference on the role of political commissars.
Prizes and reception
One of the first great successes of Soviet literature, made more famous still by its screen adaptation.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.