NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY - How the Steel Was Tempered 

PART TWO

Chapter Four

This is the frontier — two posts facing one another in silent hostility, each standing for a world of its own. One of them is planed and polished and painted black and white like a police box, and topped by a single-headed eagle nailed in place with sturdy spikes. Wings outspread, claws gripping the striped pole, hooked beak outstretched, the bird of prey stares with malicious eyes at the cast-iron shield with the sickle-and-hammer emblem on the opposite pole — a sturdy, round, rough-hewn oak post planted firmly in the ground. The two poles stand six paces apart on level ground, yet there is a deep gulf between them and the two worlds they stand for. To try to cross this no man's land means risking one's life.

This is the frontier.

From the Black Sea over thousands of kilometres to the Arctic Ocean in the Far North stands the motionless line of these silent sentinels of the Soviet Socialist Republics bearing the great emblem of labour on their iron shields. The post with the rapacious bird marks the beginning of the border between Soviet Ukraine and bourgeois Poland. It stands ten kilometres from the small town of Berezdov tucked away in the Ukrainian hinterland, and opposite it is the Polish townlet of Korets. From Slavuta to Anapol the border area is guarded by a Frontier Guard battalion.

The frontier posts march across the snowbound fields, push through clearings cut in forests, plunge down valleys and, heaving themselves up hillsides, disappear behind the crests only to pause on the high bank of a river to survey the wintry plains of an alien land.

It is biting cold, one of those days when the frost makes the snow crunch under the soles of felt boots. A giant of a Red Army man in a helmet fit for the titans of old moves away from a post with the sickle-and-hammer shield and with heavy tread sets out on his beat. He is wearing a grey greatcoat with green tabs on the collar, and felt boots. On top of the greatcoat he has a sheepskin coat reaching down to his heels with a collar of generous proportions to match — a coat that will keep a man warm in the cruellest blizzard. On his head he wears a cloth helmet and his hands are encased in sheepskin mittens. His rifle is slung on his shoulder, and as he proceeds along the sentry path, the tail of his long coat wearing a groove in the snow, he pulls at a cigarette of home-grown tobacco with obvious relish. On open stretches the Soviet border guards are posted a kilometre apart so that each man can always see his neighbour. On the Polish side there are two sentries to the kilometre.

A Polish infantryman plods along his sentry path toward the Red Army man. He is wearing rough army issue boots, a greenish grey uniform and on top a black coat with two rows of shining buttons. On his head he has the square-topped uniform cap with the white eagle emblem; there are more white eagles on his cloth shoulder straps and the collar tabs, but they do not make him feel any warmer. The frost has chilled him to the marrow, and he rubs his numb ears and knocks his heels together as he walks, while his hands in the thin gloves are stiff with cold. The Pole cannot risk stopping his pacing for a moment, and sometimes he trots, for otherwise the frost would stiffen his joints in a moment. When the two sentries draw together, the zolnierz turns around to walk alongside the Red Army man.

Conversation on the frontier is forbidden, but when there is no one around within a kilometre — who can tell whether the two are patrolling their sectors in silence or violating international laws.

The Pole wants a smoke very badly, but he has forgotten his matches in the barracks, and the breeze wafts over from the Soviet side the tantalising fragrance of tobacco. The Pole stops rubbing his ear and glances back over his shoulder, for who knows when the captain, or maybe Pan the lieutenant, might pop up from behind a knoll with a mounted patrol on one of their eternal inspection rounds. But he sees nothing save the dazzling whiteness of the snow in the sun. In the sky there is not so much as a fleck of a cloud.

"Got a light, Comrade?" The Pole is the first to violate the sanctity of the law. And shifting his French magazine rifle with the sword bayonet back on his shoulder he laboriously extracts with stiff fingers a packet of cheap cigarettes from the depths of his coat pocket,

The Red Army man hears him, but the frontier service regulations forbid conversation across the border. Besides, he could not quite catch what the soldier wanted to say. So he continues on his way, firmly treading down on the crunching snow with his warm, soft felt boots.

"Comrade Bolshevik, got a light? Maybe you'll throw a box of matches across?" This time the Pole speaks Russian.

The Red Army man looks closely at his neighbour. "The frost has nipped the Pan good and proper," he says to himself. "The poor beggar may be a bourgeois soldier but he's got a dog's life. Imagine being chased out into this cold in that miserable outfit, no wonder he jumps about like a rabbit, and without smoke either." Not turning around, the Red Army man throws a box of matches across to the other. The soldier catches it on the fly, and getting his cigarette going after several unsuccessful attempts, promptly sends the box back across the border.

"Keep it. I've got some more," says the Red frontier guard, forgetting the rules.

From beyond the frontier comes the response:

"Thanks, I'd better not. If they found that box on me I'd get a couple of years in jail."

The Red Army man examines the match box. On the label is an airplane with a sinewy fist instead of a propeller and the word "Ultimatum".

"Right enough, it won't do for them."

The soldier continues to walk, keeping pace with the Red Army man. He does not like to be alone in the midst of this deserted field.

The saddles creaked rhythmically as the horses trotted along at an even, soothing pace, their breath congealing into momentary plumes of white vapour in the frosty air. A hoary rime stood out around the nostrils of the black stallion. Stepping gracefully, her fine neck arched, the Battalion Commander's dappled mare was playing with her bit. Both horsemen wore army greatcoats belted in at the waist and with three red squares on the sleeves; the only difference was that Battalion Commander Gavrilov's collar tabs were green, while his companion's were red.

Gavrilov was with the Frontier Guards; it was his battalion that manned the frontier posts on this seventy-kilometre stretch, he was the man in charge of this frontier belt. His companion was a visitor from Berezdov — Battalion Commissar Korchagin of the universal military training system.

It had snowed during the night and now the snow lay white and fluffy, untouched by either man or beast. The two men cantered out from the woods and were about to cross an open stretch some forty paces from border posts when Gavrilov suddenly reined in his horse. Korchagin wheeled around to see Gavrilov leaning over from his saddle and inspecting a curious trail in the snow that looked as if someone had been running a tiny cogwheel over the surface. Some cunning little beast had passed here leaving behind the intricate, confusing pattern. It was hard to make out which way the creature had been travelling, but it was not this that caused the Battalion Commander to halt. Two paces away lay another trail under a powdery sprinkling of snow — the footsteps of a man. There was nothing uncertain about these footprints — they led straight toward the woods, and there was not the slightest doubt that the intruder had come from the Polish side. The Battalion Commander urged on his horse and followed the tracks to the sentry path. The footprints showed distinctly for a dozen paces or so on the Polish side.

"Somebody crossed the border last night," muttered the Battalion Commander. "The third platoon has been napping again — no mention of it in the morning report!" Gavrilov's greying moustache silvered by his congealed breath hung grimly over his lip.

In the distance two figures were approaching — one a slight man garbed in black and with the blade of a French bayonet gleaming in the sun, the other a giant in a yellow sheepskin coat. The dappled mare responded to a jab in her flanks and briskly the two riders bore down on the approaching pair. As they came, the Red Army man hitched up the rifle on his shoulder and spat out the butt of his cigarette into the snow.

"Hullo, Comrade. How's everything on your sector?" The Battalion Commander stretched out his hand to the Red Army man, who hurriedly removed a mitt to return the handclasp. So tall was the frontier guard that the Commander hardly had to bend forward in his saddle to reach him.

The Pole looked on from a distance. Here were two Red officers greeting a soldier as they would a close friend. For a moment he pictured himself shaking hands with Major Zakrzewski, but the very thought was so shocking that he glanced furtively over his shoulder.

"Just look over, Comrade Battalion Commander," reported the Red Army man.

"Seen the track over there?"

"No, not yet."

"Who was on duty here from two to six at night?"

"Surotenko, Comrade Battalion Commander."

"All right, but keep your eyes open."

As the Commander was about to ride on he added a stern word of warning:

"And you'd better keep away from those fellows."

"You have to keep your eyes open on the border," the Commander said to his companion as their horses cantered along the broad road leading from the frontier to Berezdov. "The slightest slip can cost you dearly. Can't afford to take a nap on a job like ours. In broad daylight it's not so easy to skip the border, but at night we've got to be on the alert. Now judge for yourself, Comrade Korchagin. On my sector the frontier cuts right through four villages, which complicates things considerably. No matter how close you place your guards you'll find all the relatives from the one side of the line attending every wedding or feast held on the other. And no wonder — it's only a couple of dozen paces from cottage to cottage and the creek's shallow enough for a chicken to wade across. And there's some smuggling being done, too. True, much of it on a petty scale — an old woman carting across a bottle or two of Polish vodka and that sort of thing. But there is quite a bit of large-scale contraband traffic — people with big money to operate with. Have you heard that the Poles have opened shops in all the border villages where you can get practically everything you want? Those shops aren't intended for their own pauperised peasants, you may be sure."

As he listened to the Battalion Commander, Korchagin reflected that life on the border must resemble an endless scouting mission.

"Probably there's something more serious than smuggling going on. What do you say, Comrade Gavrilov?"

"That's just the trouble," the Battalion Commander replied gloomily.

Berezdov was a small backwoods town that had been within the Jewish pale of residence. It had two or three hundred small houses scattered haphazardly, and a huge market square with a couple of dozen shops in the middle. The square was filthy with manure. Around the town proper were the peasant huts. In the Jewish central section, on the road to the slaughter house, stood an old synagogue — a rickety, depressing building. Although the synagogue still drew crowds on Saturdays, its heyday had gone, and the rabbi lived a life that was by no means to his liking. What happened in 1917 must have been evil indeed if even in this Godforsaken corner the youngsters no longer accorded him the respect due his position. True, the old folk would still eat only kosher food, but how many of the youngsters indulged in the pork sausage which God had cursed. The very thought was revolting! And Rabbi Borukh in a fit of temper kicked viciously at a pig that was assiduously digging in a heap of manure in search of something edible. The rabbi was not at all pleased that Berezdov had been made a district centre, nor did he approve of these Communists who had descended on the place from the devil knows where and were now turning things upside down. Each day brought some fresh unpleasantness. Yesterday, for instance, he had seen a new sign over the gate of the priest's house: "Berezdov District Committee, Young Communist League of the Ukraine," it had read.

To expect this sign to augur anything but ill would be useless, mused the rabbi. So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he did not notice the small announcement pasted on the door of his synagogue before he actually bumped into it.  

In a fury the rabbi tore down the sheet of paper. The struggle had begun.

In the centre of a large garden adjoining the local church stood an old house that had once belonged to the priest. A deadly air of boredom filled the musty emptiness of the rooms in which the priest and his wife had lived, two people as old and as dull as the house itself and long bored with one another. The dreariness was swept away as soon as the new masters of the place moved in. The big hall in which the former pious residents had entertained guests only on church holidays was now always full of people, for the house was the headquarters of the Berezdov Communist Party Committee. On the door leading into a small room to the right just inside the front hall the words "Komsomol District Committee" had been written in chalk. Here Korchagin spent part of his working day. Besides being Military Commissar of the Second Universal Military Training Battalion he was also Acting Secretary of the newly-organised Komsomol District Committee.

Eight months had passed since that gathering at Anna's, yet it seemed that it had been only yesterday. Korchagin pushed the stack of papers aside, and leaning back in his chair gave himself up to his thoughts. ...

The house was still. It was late at night and the Party Committee office was deserted. Trofimov, the Committee's Secretary, had gone home some time ago, leaving Korchagin alone in the building. Frost had woven a fantastic pattern on the window, but the room was warm. A paraffin lamp was burning on the table. Korchagin recalled the recent past. He remembered how in August the shop Komsomol organisation had sent him as a youth organiser with a repair train to Yekaterinoslav. Until late autumn he had travelled with the train's crew of a hundred and fifty from station to station bringing order into the chaotic aftermath of war, repairing damage and clearing away the remnants of smashed and burnt-out railway carriages. Their route took them from Sinelnikovo to Polog, through country where the bandit Makhno had once operated leaving behind him a trail of wreckage and wanton destruction. In Gulyai-Polye a whole week went into repairing the brick structure of the water tower and patching the sides of the dynamited water tank with iron sheets. Though lacking the skill of a fitter and unaccustomed to the heavy work, Pavel wielded a wrench along with the others and tightened more thousands of rusty bolts than he could remember.

Late in the autumn the train returned home and the railway shops again were the richer for a hundred and fifty pairs of hands. . . .

Pavel was now a more frequent visitor at Anna's place. The crease on his forehead smoothed out and his infectious laughter could again be heard.

Once again the grimy-faced fraternity from the railway shops gathered to hear him talk of bygone years of struggle, of the attempts made by rebellious but enslaved peasant Russia to overthrow the crowned monster that sat heavily on her shoulders, of the insurrections of Stepan Razin and Pugachov.

One evening at Anna's, when even more young people than usual had gathered there, Pavel announced that he was going to give up smoking, which unhealthy habit he had acquired at an early age.

"I'm not smoking any more," he declared firmly.

It all came about unexpectedly. One of the young people present had said that habit — smoking, for instance — was stronger than will power. Opinions were divided. At first Pavel said nothing, but drawn in by Talya, he finally joined the debate.

"Man governs his habits, and not the other way round. Otherwise what would we get?"

"Sounds fine, doesn't it?" Tsvetayev put in from his corner. "Korchagin likes to talk big. But why doesn't he apply his wisdom to himself? He smokes, doesn't he? He knows it's a rotten habit. Of course he does. But he isn't man enough to drop it." Then, changing his tone, Tsvetayev went on with a cold sneer: "He was busy 'spreading culture' in the study circles not so long ago. But did this prevent him from using foul language? Anyone who knows Pavel will tell you that he doesn't swear very often, but when he does he certainly lets himself go. It's much easier to lecture others than to be virtuous yourself."

There was a strained silence. The sharpness of Tsvetayev's tone had laid a chill on the gathering. Korchagin did not reply at once. Slowly he removed the cigarette from between his lips and said quietly:

"I'm not smoking any more."

Then, after a pause, he added:

"I'm doing this more for myself than for Dimka. A man who can't break himself of a bad habit isn't worth anything. That leaves only the swearing to be taken care of. I know I haven't quite overcome that shameful habit, but even Dimka admits that he doesn't hear me curse very often. It's harder to stop a foul word from slipping out than to stop smoking, so I can't say at the moment that I've finished with that too. But I will."

Just before the frosts set in, rafts of firewood drifting down the river jammed the channel. Then the autumn floods broke them up and the much-needed fuel was swept away by the rushing waters. And again Solomenka sent its people to the rescue, this time to save the precious wood.

Unwilling to drop behind the others, Korchagin concealed the fact that he had caught a bad chill until a week later, when the wood had been piled high on shore. The icy water and the chill dankness of autumn had awakened the enemy lurking in his blood and he came down with a high fever. For two weeks acute rheumatism racked his body, and when he returned from hospital, he was able to work at the vice only by straddling the bench. The foreman would look at him and shake his head sadly. A few days later a medical board declared him unfit for work and he was given his discharge pay and papers certifying his right to a pension. This, however, he indignantly refused to accept.

With a heavy heart he left the shops. He moved about slowly, leaning on his stick, but every step caused excruciating pain. There were several letters from his mother asking him to come home for a visit, and each time he thought of her, her parting words came back to his mind:

"I never see you unless you're crippled!"

At the Gubernia Committee he was handed his Komsomol and Party registration cards and, with as few leave-takings as possible, he left town bound for home. For two weeks his mother steamed and massaged his swollen legs, and a month later to his great joy he was able to walk without the cane. Once again sunlight pierced the gloom. Before long he was back in the gubernia centre; three days there and the Organisational Department sent him to the regional military commissariat to be used as a political worker in a military training unit.

Another week passed and Pavel arrived in a small snowbound town as Military Commissar assigned to Battalion Two. The Regional Committee of the Komsomol too gave him an assignment: to rally the scattered Komsomol members in the locality and set up a youth league organisation in the district. Thus life got into a new stride.

Outside it was stifling hot. The branch of a cherry-tree peeped in through the open window of the Executive Committee Chairman's office. Across the way the gilded cross atop the gothic belfry of the Polish church blazed in the sun. And in the yard in front of the window tiny downy goslings as green as the grass around — the property of the caretaker of the Executive Committee premises — were busily searching for food.

The Chairman of the Executive Committee read the dispatch he had just received to the end. A shadow flitted across his face, and a huge gnarled hand strayed into his luxurious crop of hair and paused there.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Lisitsyn, the Chairman of the Berezdov Executive Committee, was only twenty-four, but none of the members of his staff and the local Party workers would have believed it. A big, strong man, stern and often formidable in appearance, he looked at least thirty-five. He had a powerful physique, a big head firmly planted on a thick neck, piercing brown eyes, and a strong, energetic jaw. He wore blue breeches and a grey tunic, somewhat the worse for wear, with the Order of the Red Banner over the left breast pocket.

Like his father and grandfather before him Lisitsyn had been a metalworker almost from childhood, and before the October Revolution he had "commanded" a lathe at a Tula munitions plant.

Beginning with that autumn night when the Tula gunsmith shouldered a rifle and went out to fight for the workers' power, he had been caught up in the whirlwind of events. The Revolution and the Party sent Lisitsyn from one tight spot to another along a glorious path that witnessed his rise from rank-and-file Red Army man to regimental commander and commissar.

The fire of battle and the thunder of guns had receded into the past. Nikolai Lisitsyn was now working in a frontier district. Life went on at a quiet measured pace, and the Executive Committee Chairman sat in his office until late night after night poring over harvest reports. The dispatch he was now studying, however, momentarily revived the recent past. It was a warning couched in terse telegraphic language:

"Strictly confidential. To Lisitsyn, Chairman of the Berezdov Executive Committee.

"Marked activity has been observed latterly on the border where the Poles have been trying to send across a large band to terrorise the frontier districts. Take precautions. Suggest everything valuable at the Finance Department, including collected taxes, be transferred to area centre."

From his window Lisitsyn could see everyone who entered the District Executive Committee building. Looking up he caught sight of Pavel Korchagin on the steps. A moment later there was a knock on the door.

"Sit down, I've got something to tell you," Lisitsyn said, returning Pavel's handshake.

For a whole hour the two were closeted in the office.

By the time Korchagin emerged from the office it was noon. As he stepped out, Lisitsyn's little sister, Anyutka, a timid child far too serious for her years, ran toward him from the garden. She always had a warm smile for Korchagin and now too she greeted him shyly, tossing a stray lock of her cropped hair back from her forehead.

"Is Kolya busy?" she asked. "Maria Mikhailovna has had his dinner ready for a long time."

"Go right in, Anyutka, he's alone."

Long before dawn the next morning three carts harnessed to well-fed horses pulled up in front of the Executive Committee. The men who came with them exchanged a few words in undertones, and several sealed sacks were then carried out of the Finance Department. These were loaded into the carts and a few minutes later the rumble of wheels receded down the highway. The carts were convoyed by a detail under Korchagin's command. The forty-kilometre journey to the regional centre (twenty-five of them through forests) was made without mishap and the valuables safely deposited in the vaults of the Regional Finance Department.

Some days later a cavalryman galloped into Berezdov from the direction of the frontier. As he passed through the streets he was followed by the wondering stares of the local idlers.

At the gates of the Executive Committee the rider leapt to the ground, and, supporting his sabre with one hand, stamped up the front stairs in his heavy boots. Lisitsyn took the packet with a worried frown. A few minutes later, the messenger was galloping back in the direction whence he had come.

No one but the Chairman of the Executive Committee knew the contents of the dispatch. But such news had a way of getting round, especially among the local shopkeepers many of whom were smugglers in a small way and had almost an instinct for sensing danger.

Two men walked briskly along the pavement leading to the headquarters of the Military Training Battalion. One of them was Pavel Korchagin. Him the watchers knew; he always carried a gun. But the fact that his companion, the Party Committee Secretary Trofimov, had strapped on a revolver looked ominous.

Several minutes later a dozen men ran out of the headquarters carrying rifles with bayonets fixed and marched briskly to the mill standing at the crossroads. The rest of the local Communist Party and Komsomol members were being issued arms at the Party Committee offices. The Chairman of the Executive Committee galloped past, wearing a Cossack cap and the customary Mauser. Something was obviously afoot. The main square and sidestreets grew deserted. Not a soul was in sight. In a flash huge medieval padlocks appeared on the doors of the tiny shops and shutters boarded windows. Only the fearless hens and hogs continued to rummage among piles of refuse.

The pickets took cover in the gardens at the edge of the town where they had a good view of the open fields and the straight road reaching into the distance.

The dispatch received by Lisitsyn had been brief:

"A mounted band of about one hundred men with two light machine-guns broke through to Soviet territory after a fight in the area of Poddubtsy last night. Take precautionary measures. The trail of the band has been lost in the Slavuta woods. A Red Cossack company has been sent in pursuit of the band. The company will pass through Berezdov during the day. Do not mistake them for the enemy. Gavrilov, Commander, Detached Frontier Battalion."

No more than an hour had passed when a rider appeared on the road leading to the town, followed by a group of horsemen moving about a kilometre behind. Korchagin's keen eyes followed their movements. The lone rider was a young Red Army man from the Seventh Red Cossack Regiment, a novice at reconnaissance, and hence, though he picked his way cautiously enough, he failed to spot the pickets ambushed in the roadside gardens. Before he knew it he was surrounded by armed men who poured onto the road from the greenery, and when he saw the Komsomol emblem on their tunics, he smiled sheepishly. After a brief confab, he turned his horse around and galloped back to the mounted force now coming up at a trot. The pickets let the Red Cossacks through and resumed their watch in the gardens.

Several anxious days passed before Lisitsyn received word that the raid had failed. Pursued by the Red cavalry, the riders had had to beat a hasty retreat across the frontier.

A handful of Bolsheviks, numbering nineteen in all, applied themselves energetically to the job of building up Soviet life in the district. This was a new administrative unit and hence everything had to be created from bottom up. Besides, the proximity of the border called for unflagging vigilance.

Lisitsyn, Trofimov, Korchagin and the small group of active workers they had rallied toiled from dawn till dusk arranging for re-elections of Soviets, fighting the bandits, organising cultural work, putting down smuggling, in addition to Party and Komsomol work to strengthen defence.

From saddle to desk, and from desk to the common where squads of young military trainees diligently drilled, then the club and the school and two or three committee meetings — such was the daily round of the Military Commissar of Battalion Two. Often enough his nights were spent on horseback, Mauser at his side, nights whose stillness was broken by a sharp "Halt, who goes there?" and the pounding of the wheels of a fleeing cart laden with smuggled goods from beyond the border.

The Berezdov District Committee of the Komsomol consisted of Korchagin, Lida Polevykh, a girl from the Volga who headed the Women's Department, and Zhenka Razvalikhin, a tall, handsome young man who had been a Gymnasium student only a short time before. Razvalikhin had a weakness for thrilling adventures and was an authority on Sherlock Holmes and Louis Boussenard. Previously he had been office manager for the District Committee of the Party, and though he had joined the Komsomol only four months before, posed as an "old Bolshevik". Someone was needed in Berezdov to take charge of political education work, and since there was no one else to send, the Regional Committee, after some hesitation, had chosen Razvalikhin.

The sun had reached its zenith. The heat penetrated everywhere and all living creatures sought refuge in the shade. Even the dogs crawled under sheds and lay there panting, inert and sleepy. The only sign of life in the village was a hog revelling in a puddle of mud next to the well.

Korchagin untethered his horse, and biting his lip from the pain in his knee, climbed into the saddle. The teacher was standing on the steps of the schoolhouse shading her eyes from the sun with the palm of her hand.

"I hope to see you soon again, Comrade Military Commissar," she smiled.

The horse stamped impatiently, stretched its neck and pulled at the reins.

"Good-bye, Comrade Rakitina. So it's settled: you'll give the first lesson tomorrow."

Feeling the pressure of the bit relax, the horse was off at a brisk trot. Suddenly wild cries reached Pavel's ears. It sounded like the shrieking of women when villages catch fire. Wheeling his mount sharply around, the Military Commissar saw a young peasant woman running breathlessly into the village. Rakitina rushed forward and stopped her. From the nearby cottages the inhabitants looked out, mostly old men and women, for all the able-bodied peasants were working in the fields.

"0-o-oh! Good people! Come quickly! Come quickly! They're a-murdering each other over there!"

When Korchagin galloped up people were crowding around the woman, pulling at her white blouse and showering her with anxious questions, but they could make nothing of her incoherent cries. "It's murder! They're cutting them up..." was all she could say. An old man with a tousled beard came up, supporting his homespun trousers with one hand as he ran.

"Stop your noise," he shouted at the hysterical woman. "Who's being murdered? What's it all about? Stop your squealing, damn you!"

"It's our men and the Poddubtsy crowd . . . fighting over the boundaries again. They're slaughtering our men!"

That told them all. Women wailed and the old men bellowed in fury. The news swept through the village and eddied in the backyards: "The Poddubtsy crowd are cutting up our fellows with scythes.... It's those boundaries again!" Only the bedridden remained indoors, all the rest poured into the village street and arming themselves with pitchforks, axes or sticks pulled from wattle fences ran toward the fields where the two villages were engaged in their bloody annual contest over the boundaries between their fields.

Korchagin struck his horse and the animal was off at a gallop. The animal flew past the running village folk and, ears pressed back and hooves furiously pounding the ground, steadily increased its breakneck pace. On a hillock a windmill spread out its arms as if to bar the way. To the right, by the river bank, were the low meadows, and to the left a rye field rose and dipped all the way to the horizon. The wind rippled the ears of the ripe grain. Poppies sprinkled the roadside with bright red. It was quiet here, and unbearably hot. But from the distance, where the silvery ribbon of the river basked in the sun, came the cries of battle.

The horse continued its wild career down toward the meadows. "If he stumbles, it's the end of both of us," flashed in Pavel's mind. But there was no stopping now, and all he could do was to listen to the wind whistle in his ears as he bent low in the saddle.

Like a whirlwind he galloped into the field where the bloody combat was raging. Several already lay bleeding on the ground.

The horse ran down a bearded peasant armed with the stub of a scythe handle who was pursuing a young man with blood streaming down his face. Nearby a sunburned giant of a man was aiming vicious kicks with his big heavy boots at the solar plexus of his victim.

Charging into the mass of struggling men at full speed, Korchagin sent them flying in all directions. Before they could recover from the surprise, he whirled madly now upon one, now on another, realising that he could disperse this knot of brutalised humanity only by terrorising them.

"Scatter, you swine!" he shouted in a fury. "Or I'll shoot every last man of you, you blasted bandits!"

And pulling out his Mauser he fired over an upturned face twisted with savage rage. Again the horse whirled around and again the Mauser spoke. Some of the combatants dropped their scythes and turned back. Dashing up and down the field and firing incessantly, the Commissar finally got the situation in hand. The peasants took to their heels and scattered in all directions anxious to escape both from responsibility for the bloody brawl and from this man on horseback so terrible in his fury who was shooting without stop.

Luckily no one was killed and the wounded recovered. Nevertheless soon afterward a session of the district court was held in Poddubtsy to hear the case, but all the judge's efforts to discover the ringleaders were unavailing. With the persistence and patience of the true Bolshevik, the judge sought to make the sullen peasants before him see how barbarous their actions had been, and to impress upon them that such violence would not be tolerated.

"It's the boundaries that are to blame, Comrade judge," they said. "They've a way of getting mixed up — every year we fight over them."

Nevertheless some of the peasants had to answer for the fight.

A week later a commission came to the hay lands in question and began staking out the disputed strips.

"I've been working as land surveyor for nearly thirty years, and always it's been the dividing lines that caused trouble," the old surveyor with the commission said to Korchagin as he rolled up his tape. The old man was sweating profusely from the heat and the exertion. "Ljooking at the way the meadows are divided you'd hardly believe your eyes. A drunkard could draw straighter lines. And the fields are even worse. Strips three paces wide and one crossing into the other — to try and separate them is enough to drive you mad. And they're being cut up more and more what with sons growing up and fathers splitting up their land with them. Believe me, twenty years from now there won't be any land left to till, it'll all be balks. As it is, ten per cent of the land is being wasted in this way."

Korchagin smiled.

"Twenty years from now we won't have a single balk left, Comrade surveyor."

The old man gave him an indulgent look.

"The communist society, you mean? Well, now, that's pretty much in the future, isn't it?"

"Have you heard about the Budanovka Collective Farm?"

"Yes. I've been in Budanovka. But that's the exception, Comrade Korchagin."

The commission went on measuring strips of land. Two young men hammered in stakes. And on both sides stood the peasants watching closely to make sure that they went down where the half-rotten sticks barely visible in the grass marked the previous dividing lines.

Whipping up his wretched nag, the garrulous driver turned to his passengers.

"Where all these Komsomol lads have sprung up from beats me!" he said. "Don't remember anything like it before. It's that schoolteacher woman who's started it, for sure. Rakitina's her name, maybe you know her? She's a young wench, but she's a troublemaker. Stirs up all the womenfolk in the village, puts all kinds of silly ideas into their heads and that's how the trouble begins. It's got so a man can't beat his wife any more! In the old days you'd give the old woman a clout whenever you felt out of sorts and she'd slink away and sulk, but now she kicks up such a row you wished you hadn't touched her. She'll threaten you with the People's Court, and as for the younger ones, they'll talk about divorce and reel off all the laws to you. Look at my Ganka, she quietest wench you ever saw, now she's gone and got herself made a delegate; the elder among the womenfolk, I think that means. The women come to her from all over the village. I nearly let her have a taste of the whip when I heard about it, but I spat on the whole business. They can go to the devil! Let them jabber. She isn't a bad wench when it comes to housework and such things."

The driver scratched his hairy chest visible through the opening in his homespun shirt and flicked his whip under the horse's belly. The two in the cart were Razvalikhin and Lida. They both had business in Poddubtsy. Lida planned to call a conference of women's delegates, and Razvalikhin had been sent to help the local cell organise its work.

"So you don't like the Komsomols?" Lida jokingly asked the driver.

He plucked at his little beard for a while before replying.

"Oh I don't mind them.... I believe in letting the youngsters enjoy themselves, putting on plays and such like. I'm fond of a comedy myself if it's good. We did think at the beginning the young folk would get out of hand, but it turned out just the opposite. I've heard folks say they're very strict about drinking and rowing and such like. They go in more for book learning. But they won't leave God be, and they're always trying to take the church away and use it for a club. Now that's no good, it's turned the old folks against them. But on the whole they're not so bad. If you ask me, though, they make a big mistake taking in all the down-and-outs in the village, the ones who hire out, or who can't make a go of their farms. They won't have anything to do with the rich peasants' sons."

The cart clattered down the hill and pulled up outside the school building.

The caretaker had put up the new arrivals and gone off to sleep in the hay. Lida and Razvalikhin had just returned from a meeting which had ended rather late. It was dark inside the cottage. Lida undressed quickly, climbed into bed and fell asleep almost at once. She was rudely awakened by Razvalikhin's hands travelling over her in a manner that left no doubt as to his intentions.

"What do you want?"

"Shush, Lida, don't make so much noise. I'm sick of lying there all by myself. Can't you find anything more exciting to do than snooze?"

"Stop pawing me and get off my bed at once!" Lida said, pushing him away. Razvalikhin's oily smile had always sickened her and she wanted to say something insulting and humiliating, but sleep overpowered her and she closed her eyes.

"Aw, come on! You weren't brought up in a nunnery by any chance? Stop playing the little innocent, you can't fool me. If you were really an advanced woman, you'd satisfy my desire and then go to sleep as much as you want."

Considering the matter settled, he went over and sat on the edge of the bed again, laying a possessive hand on her shoulder.

"Go to hell!" Lida was now wide awake. "I'm going to tell Korchagin about this tomorrow." Razvalikhin seized her hand and whispered testily: "I don't care a damn about your Korchagin, and you'd better not try to resist or I'll take you by force."

There was a brief scuffle and then two resounding slaps rang out. Razvalikhin leapt aside. Lida groped her way to the door, pushed it open and rushed out into the yard. She stood there in the moonlight, panting with fury and disgust.

"Get inside, you fool!" Razvalikhin called to her viciously.

He carried his own bed out under the shed and spent the rest of the night there. Lida fastened the door on the latch, curled up on the bed and went to sleep again.

In the morning they set out for home. Razvalikhin sat gloomily beside the old driver smoking one cigarette after another.

"That touch-me-not may really go and spill the beans to Korchagin, blast her!" he was thinking. "Who'd have thought she'd turn out to be such a prig? You'd think she was a raving beauty by the way she acts, but she's nothing to look at. But I'd better make it up with her or there may be trouble. Korchagin has his eye on me as it is."

He moved over to Lida. He pretended to be ashamed of himself, put on a downcast air and mumbled a few words of apology.

That did the trick. Before they had reached the edge of the village Lida had given him her promise not to tell anyone what had happened that night.

Komsomol cells sprang up one after another in the border villages. The District Committee members carefully tended these first young shoots of the Communist movement. Korchagin and Lida Polevykh spent much time in the various localities working with the local Komsomol members.

Razvalikhin did not like making trips to the countryside. He did not know how to win the confidence of the peasant lads and only succeeded in bungling things. Lida and Pavel, on the other hand, had no difficulty in making friends with the peasant youth. The girls took to Lida at once, they accepted her as one of themselves and gradually she awakened their interest in the Komsomol movement. As for Korchagin, all the young folk in the district knew him. One thousand six hundred of the young men due to be called up for military service went through preliminary training in his battalion. Never before had his accordion played such an important role in propaganda as here in the village. The instrument made Pavel tremendously popular with the young folk, who gathered of an evening on the village lane to enjoy themselves, and for many a towheaded youngster the road to the Komsomol began here as he listened to the enchanting music of the accordion, now passionate and stirring, now strident and brave, now tender and caressing as only the sad, wistful songs of the Ukraine can be. They listened to the accordion, and they listened to the young man who played it, a railway worker who was now Military Commissar and Komsomol secretary. And the music of the accordion seemed to mingle harmoniously with what the young Commissar told them. Soon new songs rang out in the villages, and new books appeared in the cottages beside the prayer-books and Bibles.

The smugglers now had more than the frontier guards to reckon with; in the Komsomol members the Soviet Government had acquired staunch friends and zealous assistants. Sometimes the Komsomol cells in the border towns allowed themselves to be carried away by their enthusiasm in hunting down enemies and then Korchagin would have to come to the aid of his young comrades. Once Grishutka Khorovodko, the blue-eyed Secretary of the Poddubtsy cell, a hot-headed lad fond of an argument and very active in the anti-religious movement, learned from private sources of information that some smuggled goods were to be brought that night to the village mill. He roused all the Komsomol members and, armed with a training rifle and two bayonets, they set out at the dead of night, quietly laid an ambush at the mill and waited for their quarry to appear. The border post, which had been informed of the smugglers' move, sent out a detail of its own. In the dark the two sides met and clashed, and had it not been for the vigilance displayed by the frontier guards, the young men might have suffered heavy casualties in the skirmish. As it was the youngsters were merely disarmed, taken to a village four kilometres away and locked up.

Korchagin happened to be at Gavrilov's place at the time. When the Battalion Commander told him the news the following morning, Pavel mounted his horse and galloped off to rescue his boys.

The frontier man in charge laughed as he told him the story.

"I'll tell you what we'll do, Comrade Korchagin," he said. "They're fine lads and we shan't make trouble for them. But you had better give them a good talking to so that they won't try to do our work for us in the future."

The sentry opened the door of the shed and the eleven lads got up and stood sheepishly shifting their weight from one foot to the other.

"Look at them," the frontier man said with studied severity. "They've gone and made a mess of things, and now I'll have to send them on to area headquarters."

Then Grishutka spoke up.

"But Comrade Sakharov," he said agitatedly, "what crime have we committed? We've had our eye on that kulak for a long time. We only wanted to help the Soviet authorities, and you go and lock us up like bandits." He turned away with an injured air.

After a solemn consultation, during which Korchagin and Sakharov had difficulty in preserving their gravity, they decided the boys had had enough of a fright.

"If you will vouch for them and promise us that they won't go taking walks over to the frontier any more I'll let them go," Sakharov said to Pavel. "They can help us in other ways."

"Very well, I'll vouch for them. I hope they won't let me down any more."

The youngsters marched back to Poddubtsy singing. The incident was hushed up. And it was not long before the miller was caught, this time by the law.

In the Maidan-Villa woods there lived a colony of rich German farmers. The kulak farms stood within half a kilometre of each other, as sturdily built as miniature fortresses. It was from Maidan-Villa that Antonyuk and his band operated. Antonyuk, a one-time tsarist army sergeant major, had recruited a band of seven cutthroats from among his kith and kin and, armed with pistols, staged hold-ups on the country roads. He did not hesitate to spill blood, he was not averse to robbing wealthy speculators, but neither did he stop at molesting Soviet workers. Speed was Antonyuk's watchword. One day he would rob a couple of co-operative store clerks and the next day he would disarm a postal employee in a village a good twenty kilometres away, stealing everything the man had on him, down to the last kopek. Antonyuk competed with his fellow-brigand Gordei, one was worse than the other, and between them the two kept the area militia and frontier guard authorities very busy. Antonyuk operated just outside Berezdov, and it grew dangerous to appear on the roads leading to the town. The bandit eluded capture; when things grew too hot for him he would withdraw beyond the border and lie low only to turn up again when he was least expected. His very elusiveness made him a menace. Every report of some fresh outrage committed by this brigand caused Lisitsyn to gnaw his lips with rage.

"When will that rattlesnake stop biting us? He'd better take care, the scoundrel, or I'll have to settle his hash myself," he would mutter through clenched teeth. Twice the District Executive Chairman, taking Korchagin and three other Communists with him, set out hot on the bandit's trail, but each time Antonyuk got away.

A special detachment was sent to Berezdov from the area centre to fight the bandits. It was commanded by a dapper youth named Filatov. Instead of reporting to the Chairman of the Executive Committee, as frontier regulations demanded, this conceited youngster went straight to the nearest village, Semaki, and arriving at the dead of night, put up with his men in a house on the outskirts. The mysterious arrival of these armed men was observed by a Komsomol member living next door who hurried off at once to report to the Chairman of the Village Soviet. The latter, knowing nothing about the detachment, took them for bandits and dispatched the lad at once to the district centre for help. Filatov's foolhardiness very nearly cost many lives. Lisitsyn roused the militia in the middle of the night and hurried off with a dozen men to tackle the "bandits" in Semaki. They galloped up to the house, dismounted and climbing over the fence closed in on the house. The sentry on duty at the door was knocked down by a blow on the head with a revolver-butt, Lisitsyn broke in the door with his shoulder and he and his men rushed into a room dimly lighted by an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. With a grenade in one hand and his Mauser in the other Lisitsyn roared so that the window panes rattled:

"Surrender, or I'll blow you to bits!"

Another second and the sleepy men leaping to their feet from the floor might have been cut down by a hail of bullets. But the sight of the man with the grenade poised for the throw was so awe-inspiring that they put up their hands. A few minutes later, when the "bandits" were herded outside in their underwear, Filatov noticed the decoration on Lisitsyn's tunic and hastened to explain.

Lisitsyn was furious. "You fool!" he spat out with withering contempt.

Tidings of the German revolution, dim echoes of the rifle fire on the Hamburg barricades reached the border area. An atmosphere of tension hung over the frontier. Newspapers were read with eager expectation. The wind of revolution blew from the West. Applications poured in to the Komsomol District Committee from Komsomols volunteering for service in the Red Army. Korchagin was kept busy explaining to the youngsters from the cells that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy of peace and that it had no intentions of going to war with its neighbours. But this had little effect. Every Sunday Komsomol members from the entire district held meetings in the big garden of the priest's house, and one day at noon the Poddubtsy cell turned up in proper marching order in the yard of the District Committee. Korchagin saw them through the window and went out into the porch. Eleven lads, with Khorovodko at their head, all wearing top boots, and with large canvas knapsacks on their backs, halted at the entrance.

"What's this, Grisha?" Korchagin asked in surprise.

Instead of replying, Khorovodko signed to Pavel with his eyes and went inside the building with him. Lida, Razvalikhin and two other Komsomol members pressed around the newcomer demanding an explanation. Khorovodko closed the door and wrinkling his bleached eyebrows announced:

"This is a sort of test mobilisation, Comrades. My own idea. I told the boys this morning a telegram had come from the district, strictly confidential of course, that we're going to war with the German bourgeoisie, and we'll soon be fighting the Polish Pany as well. All Komsomols are called up, on orders from Moscow, I told them. Anyone who's scared can file an application and he'll be allowed to stay home. I ordered them not to say a word about the war to anyone, just to take a loaf of bread and a hunk of fatback apiece, and those who didn't have any fatback could bring garlic or onions. We were to meet secretly outside the village and go to the district centre and from there to the area centre where arms would be issued. You ought to see what an effect that had on the boys! They tried hard to pump me, but I told them to get busy and cut out the questions. Those who wanted to stay behind should say so. We only wanted volunteers. Well, my boys dispersed and I began to get properly worried. Supposing nobody turned up? If that happened I would disband the whole cell and move to some other place. I sat there outside the village waiting with my heart in my boots. After a while they began coming, one by one. Some of them had been crying, you could see by their faces, though they tried to hide it. All ten of them turned up, not a single deserter. That's our Poddubtsy cell for you!" he wound up triumphantly.

When the shocked Lida Polevykh began to scold him, he stared at her in amazement.

"What do you mean? This is the best way to test them, I tell you. You can see right through each one of them. There's no fraud there. I was going to drag them to the area centre just to keep up appearances, but the poor beggars are dog-tired. You'll have to make a little speech to them, Korchagin. You will, won't you? It wouldn't be right without a speech. Tell them the mobilisation has been called off or something, but say that we're proud of them just the same."

Korchagin seldom visited the area centre, for the journey took several days and pressure of work demanded his constant presence in the district. Razvalikhin, on the other hand, was ready to ride off to town on any pretext. He would set out on the journey armed from head to foot, fancying himself one of Fenimore Cooper's heroes. As he drove through the woods he would take pot shots at crows or at some fleetfooted squirrel, stop lone passersby and question them sternly as to who they were, where they had come from and whither they were bound. On approaching the town he would remove his weapons, stick his rifle under the hay in the cart and, hiding his revolver in his pocket, stroll into the office of the Komsomol Regional Committee looking his usual self.

"Well, what's the news in Berezdov?" Fedotov, Secretary of the Regional Committee, inquired as Razvalikhin entered his office one day.

Fedotov's office was always crowded with people all talking at once. It was not easy to work under such conditions, listening to four different people, while replying to a fifth and writing something at the same time. Although Fedotov was very young he had been a Party member since 1919; it was only in those stormy times that a 15-year-old lad could have been admitted into the Party. "Oh, there's plenty of news," answered Razvalikhin nonchalantly. "Too much to tell all at once. It's one long grind from morning till night. There's so much to attend to. We've had to start from the very beginning, you know. I set up two new cells. Now, tell me what you called me here for?" And he sat down in an armchair with a businesslike air.

Krymsky, the head of the economic department, looked up from the heap of papers on his desk for a moment.

"We asked for Korchagin, not you," he said. Razvalikhin blew out a thick cloud of tobacco smoke.

"Korchagin doesn't like coming here, so I have to do it on top of everything else.... In general, some secretaries have a fine time of it. They don't do anything themselves. It's the donkeys like me who have to carry the load. Whenever Korchagin goes to the border he's gone for two or three weeks and all the work is left to me."

Razvalikhin's broad hint that he was the better man for the job of district secretary was not lost on his hearers.

"That fellow doesn't appeal to me much," Fedotov remarked to the others when Razvalikhin had gone.

Razvalikhin's trickery was exposed quite by chance. Lisitsyn dropped into Fedotov's office one day to pick up the mail, which was the custom for anyone coming from the district, and in the course of a conversation between the two men Razvalikhin was exposed.

"Send Korchagin to us anyway," said Fedotov in parting. "We hardly know him here."

"Very well. But don't try to take him away from us, mind. We shan't allow that."

This year the anniversary of the October Revolution was celebrated on the border with even greater enthusiasm than usual. Korchagin was elected chairman of the committee organising the celebrations in the border villages. After the meeting in Poddubtsy, five thousand peasants from three neighbouring villages marched to the frontier in a procession half a kilometre long, carrying scarlet banners and with a military band and the training battalion at the head. They marched in perfect order on the Soviet side of the frontier, parallel to the border posts, bound for the villages that had been cut in two by the demarcation line. Never before had the Poles witnessed the like on their frontier. Battalion Commander Gavrilov and Korchagin rode ahead of the column on horseback, and behind them the band played, the banners rustled in the breeze and the singing of the people resounded far and wide. The peasant youth clad in their holiday best were in high spirits, the village girls twittered and laughed gaily, the adults marched along gravely, the old folk with an air of solemn triumph. The human stream stretched as far as eye could see. One of its banks was the frontier, but no one so much as stepped across that forbidden line. Korchagin watched the sea of people march past. The strains of the Komsomol song "From the forests dense to Britain's seas, the Red Army is strongest of all!" gave way to a girls' chorus singing "Up on yonder hillside the girls are a-mowing...."

The Soviet sentries greeted the procession with happy smiles. The Polish guards looked on bewildered. This demonstration on the frontier caused no little consternation on the other side, although the Polish command had been warned of it in advance. Mounted gendarme patrols moved restlessly back and forth, the frontier guard had been strengthened fivefold and reserves were hidden behind the nearby hills ready for any emergency. But the procession kept to its own territory, marching along gaily, filling the air with its singing.

A Polish sentry stood on a knoll. The column approached with measured tread. The first notes of a march rang out. The Pole brought his rifle smartly to his side and then presented arms, and Korchagin distinctly heard the words: "Long live the Commune!"

The soldier's eyes told Pavel that it was he who had uttered the words. Pavel stared at him fascinated.

A friend! Beneath the soldier's uniform a heart beat in sympathy with the demonstrators. Pavel replied softly in Polish:

"Greetings, Comrade!"

The sentry stood in the same position while the demonstration marched past. Pavel turned round several times to look at the dark little figure. Here was another Pole. His whiskers were touched with grey and the eyes under the shiny peak of his cap expressed nothing. Pavel, still under the impression of what he had just heard, murmured in Polish as if to himself:

"Greetings, Comrade!"

But there was no reply.

Gavrilov smiled. He had overheard what had passed.

"You expect too much," he observed. "They aren't all plain infantrymen, you know. Some of them are gendarmes. Didn't you notice the chevron on his sleeve? That one was a gendarme for sure."

The head of the column was already descending the hill toward a village cut in two by the frontier. The Soviet half of the village had prepared to meet the guests in grand style. All the inhabitants were waiting at the frontier bridge on the bank of the stream. The young folk were lined up on either side of the road. The roofs of cottages and sheds on the Polish side were covered with people who were watching the proceedings on the opposite bank with tense interest. There were crowds of peasants on the cottage steps and by the garden fences. When the procession entered the human corridor the band struck up the Internationale. Later stirring speeches were delivered from a platform decorated with greenery. Young men and white-headed veterans addressed the crowd. Korchagin too spoke in his native Ukrainian. His words flew over the border and were heard on the other side of the river, whereupon the gendarmes over there began to disperse the villagers for fear that those fiery words might inflame the hearts of those who listened. Whips whistled and shots were fired into the air.

The streets emptied out. The young folk, scared off the roofs by gendarme bullets, disappeared. Those on the Soviet side looked on and their faces grew grave. Filled with wrath by what he had just witnessed, an aged shepherd climbed onto the platform with the help of some village lads and addressed the crowd in great agitation.

"You've seen, my children? That's how we used to be treated too. But no more. Nobody dare whip us peasants any more. We've finished with the gentry and their whippings. We're in power now and it's for you, my sons, to hold on firmly to that power. I'm an old man and I'm not much good at speech-making. But I'd tell you a lot if I could. I'd tell you how we used to toil like oxen in the days of the tsars. That's why it hurts to see those poor folks over there." He pointed with a shaking hand toward the other side of the river, and fell to weeping as old men do.

Then Grishutka Khorovodko spoke. Gavrilov, listening to his wrathful speech, turned his horse around and scanned the opposite bank to see whether anyone there was taking notes. But the river bank was deserted. Even the sentry by the bridge had been removed.

"Well, it looks as if there won't be any protest note to the Foreign Affairs Commissariat after all," he laughed.

One rainy night in late autumn the bloody trail of Antonyuk and his seven men came to an end. The bandits were caught at a wedding party in the house of a wealthy farmer in the German colony in Maidan-Villa. It was the peasants from the Khrolinsky Commune who tracked him down.

The local women had spread the news about these guests at the colony wedding, and the Komsomols got together at once, twelve of them, and armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, set out for Maidan-Villa by cart, sending a messenger post-haste to Berezdov. At Semaki the messenger chanced to meet Filatov's detachment, which rushed off hot on the trail. The Khrolinsky men surrounded the farm and began to exchange rifle fire with the Antonyuk band. The latter entrenched themselves in a small wing of the farmhouse and opened fire at anyone who came within range. They tried to make a dash for it, but were driven back inside the building after losing one of their number. Antonyuk had been in many a tight corner like this and had fought his way out with the aid of hand grenades and darkness. He might have escaped this time too, for the Khrolinsky Komsomols had already lost two men, but Filatov arrived in the nick of time. Antonyuk saw that the game was up. He continued firing back till morning from all the windows, but at dawn they took him. Not one of the seven surrendered. It cost four lives to stamp out the viper's nest. Three of the casualties were lads from the newly-organised Khrolinsky Komsomol group.

Korchagin's battalion was called up for the autumn manoeuvres of the territorial forces. The battalion covered the forty kilometres to the divisional camp in a single day's march under a driving rain. They set out early in the morning and reached their destination late at night. Gusev, the Battalion Commander, and his commissar rode on horseback. The eight hundred trainees reached the barracks exhausted and went to sleep at once. The manoeuvres were due to begin the following morning; the headquarters of the territorial division had been late in summoning the battalion. Lined up for inspection, the battalion, now in uniform and carrying rifles, presented an entirely different appearance. Both Gusev and Korchagin had invested much time and effort in training these young men and they were confident that the unit would pass muster. After the official inspection had ended and the battalion had shown its skill on the drill ground, one of the commanders, a man with a handsome though flaccid face, turned to Korchagin and demanded sharply:

"Why are you mounted? The commanders and commissars of our training battalions are not entitled to horses. Turn your mount over to the stables and report for manoeuvres on foot."

Korchagin knew that if he dismounted he would be unable to take part in the manoeuvres, for his legs would not carry him a single kilometre. But how could he explain the situation to this loud-mouthed coxcomb festooned with leather straps?

"I shall not be able to take part in the manoeuvres on foot."

"Why not?"

Realising that he would have to give some explanation, Korchagin replied in a low voice:

"My legs are swollen and I will not be able to stand a whole week of running and walking. But perhaps you will tell me who you are, Comrade?"

"In the first place I am Chief of Staff of your regiment. Secondly, I order you once more to get off that horse. If you are an invalid you ought not to be in the army."

Pavel felt as if he had been struck on the face with a whip. He jerked the reins, but Gusev's strong hand checked him. For a few moments injured pride and self-restraint fought for supremacy in Pavel. But Pavel Korchagin was no longer the Red Army man who could shift light-heartedly from unit to unit. He was a Battalion Commissar now, and his battalion stood there behind him. What a poor example of discipline he would be showing his men if he disobeyed the order! It was not for this conceited ass that he had reared his battalion. He slipped his feet out of the stirrups, dismounted and, fighting the excruciating pain in his joints, walked over to the right flank.

For several days the weather had been unusually fine. The manoeuvres were drawing to a close. On the fifth day the troops were in the vicinity of Shepetovka, where the exercises were to end. The Berezdov Battalion had been given the assignment of capturing the station from the direction of Klimentovichi village.

Korchagin, who was now on homeground, showed Gusev all the approaches. The battalion, divided into two parts, made a wide detour and emerging in the enemy rear broke into the station building with loud cheers. The operation was given the highest appraisal. The Berezdov men remained in possession of the station while the battalion that had defended it withdrew to the woods having been judged to have "lost" fifty per cent of its men.

Korchagin was in command of one half of the battalion. He had ordered his men to deploy and was standing in the middle of the street with the commander and political instructor of the third company when a Red Army man came running up to him.

"Comrade Commissar," he panted, "the Battalion Commander wants to know whether the machine-gunners are holding the railway crossings. The commission's on its way here."

Pavel and the commanders with him went over to one of the crossings. The Regimental Commander and his aides were there. Gusev was congratulated on the successful operations. Representatives from the routed battalion looked sheepish and did not even try to justify themselves.

Gusev said: "I can't take the credit for it. It was Korchagin here who showed us the way. He hails from these parts."

The Chief of Staff rode up to Pavel and said with a sneer: "So you can run quite well after all, Comrade. The horse was just a show-off, I suppose?" He was about to say something else, but the look on Korchagin's face stopped him.

"You don't happen to know his name, do you?" Korchagin asked Gusev when the higher commanders had gone.

Gusev slapped him on the shoulder.

"Now then, don't you pay any attention to that upstart. His name is Chuzhanin. A former ensign, I believe."

Several times that day Pavel racked his brains in an effort to recall where he had heard that name before, but he could not remember.

The manoeuvres were over. The battalion, having been highly commended, went back to Berezdov. Korchagin, utterly exhausted, remained behind to rest for a day or two at home. For two days he slept round the clock, and on the third day he went to see Artem down at the engine sheds. Here in this grimy, smoke-blackened building Pavel felt at home. Hungrily he inhaled the coal smoke. This was where he really belonged and it was here he wished to be. He felt as if he had lost something infinitely dear to him. It was months since he had heard an engine whistle, and the one-time stoker and electrician yearned as much for the familiar surroundings as the sailor yearns for the boundless sea expanse after a prolonged stay on shore. It was a long time before he could get over this feeling. He spoke little to his brother, who now worked at a portable forge. He noticed a new furrow on Artem's brow. He was the father of two children now. Evidently Artem was having a hard time of it. He did not complain, but Pavel could see for himself.

They worked side by side for an hour or two. Then they parted.

At the railway crossing Pavel reined in his horse and gazed for a long while at the station. Then he struck his mount and galloped down the road through the woods.

The forest roads were now quite safe. All the bandits, big and small, had been stamped out by the Bolsheviks, and the villages in the area now lived in peace.

Pavel reached Berezdov around noon. Lida Polevykh ran out into the porch of the District Committee to meet him.

"Welcome home!" she said with a warm smile. "We have missed you here!" She put her arm around him and the two went in doors.

"Where is Razvalikhin?" he asked her as he took off his coat.

"I don't know," Lida replied rather reluctantly. "Oh yes, I remember now. He said this morning he was going to the school to take the class in sociology instead of you. He says it's his job not yours."

This was an unpleasant surprise for Pavel. He had never liked Razvalikhin. "That fellow may make a hash of things at the school," he thought in annoyance.

"Never mind him," he said to Lida. "Tell me, what's the good news here. Have you been to Grushevka? How are things with the youngsters over there?"

While Lida gave him the news, Pavel relaxed on the couch resting his aching limbs.

"The day before yesterday Rakitina was accepted as candidate member of the Party. That makes our Poddubtsy cell much stronger. Rakitina is a good girl, I like her very much. The teachers are beginning to come over to our side, some of them are with us already."

Korchagin and Lychikov, the new Secretary of the Party District Committee, often met at Lisitsyn's place of an evening and the three would sit studying at the big desk until the early hours of the morning.

The door leading to the bedroom where Lisitsyn's wife and sister slept would be tightly closed and the three bending over a small volume would converse in low tones. Lisitsyn had only time to study at night. Even so whenever Pavel returned from his frequent trips to the villages he would find to his chagrin that his comrades had gone far ahead of him.

One day a messenger from Poddubtsy brought the news that Grishutka Khorovodko had been murdered the night before by unknown assailants. Pavel rushed off at once to the Executive Committee stables, forgetting the pain in his legs, saddled a horse with feverish haste and galloped off toward the frontier.

Grishutka's body lay amid spruce branches on a table in the Village Soviet cottage, the red banner of the Soviet draped over him. A frontier man and a Komsomol stood on guard at the door admitting no one until the authorities arrived. Korchagin entered the cottage, went over to the table and turned back the banner.

Grishutka, his face waxen, his dilated eyes transfixed in agony of death, lay with his head to one side. A spruce branch covered the spot where the back of his head had been bashed in by some sharp weapon.

Who had taken the life of this young man? He was the only son of widow Khorovodko. His father, a mill hand and member of the Poor Peasants' Committee, had died fighting for the Revolution.

The shock of her son's death had brought the old woman to her bed and neighbours were trying to comfort her. And her son lay cold and still preserving the secret of his untimely end.

Grishutka's murder had aroused the indignation of the whole village. The young Komsomol leader and champion of the poor peasants turned out to have far more friends in the village than enemies.

Rakitina, greatly upset by the news, sat in her room weeping bitterly. She did not even look up when Korchagin came in.

"Who do you think killed him, Rakitina?" Korchagin asked hoarsely, dropping heavily into a chair.

"It must be that gang from the mill. Grisha had always been a thorn in the side of those smugglers."

Two villages turned up for Grisha Khorovodko's funeral. Korchagin brought his battalion, and the whole Komsomol organisation came to pay its last respects to their comrade. Gavrilov mustered a company of two hundred and fifty border guards on the square in front of the Village Soviet. To the accompaniment of the mournful strains of the funeral march the coffin swathed in red bunting was brought out and placed on the square where a fresh grave had been dug beside the graves of the Bolshevik partisans who had fallen in the Civil War.

Grishutka's death united all those whose interests he had so staunchly upheld. The young agricultural labourers and the poor peasants vowed to support the Komsomol, and all who spoke at the graveside wrathfully demanded that the murderers be brought to book, that they be tried here on the square beside the grave of their victim, so that everyone might see who the enemies were.

Three volleys thundered forth, and fresh spruce branches were laid on the grave. That evening the cell elected a new secretary — Rakitina. A message came for Korchagin from the border post with the news that they were on the trail of the murderers.

A week later, when the second District Congress of Soviets opened in the town theatre, Lisitsyn, gravely triumphant, announced:

"Comrades, I am happy to be able to report to this congress that we have accomplished a great deal in the past year. Soviet power is firmly established in the district, banditism has been uprooted and smuggling has been all but wiped out. Strong organisations of peasant poor have come into being in the villages, the Komsomol organisations are ten times as strong as they were and the Party organisations have expanded. The last kulak provocation in Poddubtsy, which cost us the life of our comrade Khorovodko, has been exposed. The murderers, the miller and his son-in-law, have been arrested and will be tried in a few days by the gubernia assizes. Several delegations from the villages have demanded that this congress pass a resolution demanding the supreme penalty for these bandits and terrorists."

A storm of approval shook the hall.

"Hear, hear! Death to the enemies of Soviet power!"

Lida Polevykh appeared at one of the side doors. She beckoned to Pavel.

Outside in the corridor she handed him an envelope marked "urgent". He opened it and read:

"To the Berezdov District Committee of the Komsomol. Copy to the District Committee of the Party. By decision of the Gubernia Committee Comrade Korchagin is recalled from the district to the Gubernia Committee for appointment to responsible Komsomol work."

Pavel took leave of the district where he had worked for the past year. There were two items on the agenda of the last meeting of the Party District Committee held before his departure: 1) Transfer of Comrade Korchagin to membership in the Communist Party, 2) Endorsement of his testimonial upon his release from the post of Secretary of the Komsomol District Committee.

Lisitsyn and Lida wrung Pavel's hand on parting and embraced him affectionately, and when his horse turned out of the courtyard onto the road, a dozen revolvers fired a parting salute.

PART TWO

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