The Commissar

by Tony Roberts

  The other commissar, a man called Vassili Nakarov, shrugged and tossed another piece of wood onto the fire. “All those who oppose us. Monarchists, Kerensky’s supporters, Ukrainian separatists, Cossacks, Mensheviks, you name them. They’re calling it the Volunteer Army. I hear both Generals Deniken and Kornilov have escaped imprisonment and have made their way to Rostov to join their ranks.”

  “Civil war, then,” Casca said, warming his hands.

  “Oh yes, and we’re struggling against other forces, too. The UPR, the Ukrainian People’s Republic, who want separation from Russia, and Comrade Lenin insists they stay with us. Finland has declared independence too.”

  “And there’s the Central Powers, too, don’t forget,” Casca said.

  “Yes! We haven’t much to fear from Austria, but Germany is another story. Lucky they’re sat on their asses picking their noses at the moment. I think they’re waiting for the Peace Talks to begin.”

  “What peace talks?”

  “You’ve not heard? Oh, yes, I forgot, you were travelling. So. They’re meeting in a day or two at Brest Litovsk, Comrade Trotsky is representing us Reds as the legitimate government of Russia, and he’s going to negotiate with Germany as to what terms they are prepared to accept.”

  “I doubt the terms will be generous, Comrade Nakarov.”

  Nakarov agreed. “It would be best to agree to any terms and end this war so we can get on with defeating the Whites and the UPR.”

  “Isn’t that risky? Here we are, hardly a coherent force, made up of undisciplined shreds of the former tsarist army, and we’re expected to be able to fight against two opponents at the same time?” Casca shook his head. This was all far too hopeful to be realistic.

  Nakarov chuckled. “Ah, but Comrade Lenin has asked the UPR to allow us to march to Kharkov in order to hold it against the Whites, as it is a vital railway hub. The UPR haven’t sufficient forces to fight against the Whites, nor us. So we are going to occupy Kharkov from tomorrow.”

  “And hold it?”

  “Against all enemies. We are going to ensure Bolshevik rule prevails. We are concerned that the Ukrainians are not going to adopt the teachings of Marx, nor the leadership of Comrade Lenin. So we are to control this part of the Ukraine and see to it that fellow communists take control.”

  “The UPR won’t have it, you know,” Casca said.

  “We have ten thousand gun barrels that says we will.”

  Casca was doubtful the ten thousand were in any way effective. Their only good fortune was that the other factions were just as disorganized and when they arrived in Kharkov at the head of a vast column of men, in the snow, they clearly were there to dominate. It was an uneasy coalition between the Reds and the UPR, and Casca was disgusted to hear of outbreaks of violence and breaking down of discipline in the city.

  He visited the other Red Guard units and spoke to the other commissars. They were full of slogans and speeches and little substance. He was disappointed. He had thought that maybe they would help enforce a little more order. Finally, even the local Bolsheviks got enough of the violence from their own side and urged they be expelled from the city.

  This instigated an argument between the UPR forces and the Reds and one night all the Ukrainian soldiers were forcibly disarmed and arrested. Some volunteered to join the Reds while the rest were imprisoned.

  Casca didn’t know what had happened to them, other than they were in the hands of a new organization that had been raised by the communist leadership, called the Cheka. It seemed to Casca that these Cheka were a kind of political police force who were there to round up enemies, traitors and subversives. All very sinister.

  However, he got little time to brood on it as order came to him and his unit to get ready to march. They were now at war with the UPR and were going to advance on Kiev, the capital, under General Muravyov. Casca was going to fight for the Reds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They marched west through the January snow, four thousand of them, supported by an armored train, keeping close to the railroad that went from Kharkov to Kiev. Orders were clear from Petrograd; take Kiev in the name of the Revolution and hoist the red flag over the parliament building. Capture the members of the Ukrainian government and hold them until the Cheka arrives to interrogate them.

  “Interrogate them?” Casca echoed to the other commissar of the 1st battalion, his colleague Nakarov.

  Nakarov spread his gauntleted hands wide. “They are the political police. They’ll want to discuss the politics of the UPR to see if they coincide with the diktat of Comrade Lenin and his committee. We are merely here to ensure the revolutionary policies of the committee are followed by the soldiers of the Revolutionary Army.”

  Casca slapped his ice-encrusted gloves together. “That’s something I wanted to ask you, Vassili. What if we find any of our soldiers not following the rules, the orders? I mean, its one thing being ordered by Comrade General Muravyov and his chain of command, to attack, for example. But we are here to ensure the political side of the army is adhered to. So what if these soldiers go against the teachings of Comrade Lenin?”

  Nakarov’s face was grim. “We have the power to arrest any and summarily court-martial them. And if found guilty…”

  Casca blew hard into the freezing air. “I see. No matter if they are decent soldiers?”

  Nakarov laughed. “Do you see any of those here? They are rabble, peasants, fit enough only to dig latrines.”

  Casca had to concede his point. They had thousands of ill-disciplined men thinking they had the power of God – or in this case Lenin – because they were under the red flag. They’d carried out atrocities in Kharkov and it was fairly certain they would do the same in Kiev. Casca felt sorry for the civilians; it had been the same way back when the Mongols had gone over this very same soil and Casca had been part of the Horde. He hoped the same wasn’t going to happen again.

  The armored train was the supply point of the army so it was vital to be constantly guarded and protected. There wasn’t anything or anyone to oppose them, though, and they carried on westwards until they got to a place called Kruty, where a branch line from the south joined the main line. Beyond the small settlement the line split into two, the left-hand branch going onto Kiev.

  It was here that the Ukrainians made a stand. The branch line was on an embankment and here the UPR troops arranged their right flank protected further by three buildings behind them. Across the main line was their left flank, defending more open terrain but they had in the center the signal box and water tower and behind them the railway station.

  The train stopped. The UPR had a train of their own with an artillery gun on a flat car so the reds kept their distance and the officers conferred. They decided to hold two thirds of their force in reserve and launch the more reliable 1st Revolutionary Army into the attack. Casca was part of this force, so he and his men were ordered to the left to force the embankment, which Muravyov identified as being the lynchpin of the defending force.

  Casca studied the terrain ahead of them. They prepared themselves in front of a farmhouse and then got ready for the attack. With the ground being so hard it had been difficult to dig in, so they piled snow in front of them and lay behind this, hoping to be concealed as much as possible.

  The eternal mercenary ran his experienced eye along the top of the embankment before them. There were four units waiting to attack; each of a company of around 200 men or more. Casca was in the 2nd company of the 1st Battalion. The UPR didn’t look as if they had too many men to defend the front, and not many machine-guns, if any. To their left were two companies and one to their right.

  “What do you think, Comrade Commissar?” one of the soldiers ventured, peering across the flat white snow they were going to have to run through.

  “It’s going to be hard,” Casca admitted, “and they’ll be able to shoot at us for a long time, but once we get close to that embankment, we’ll be below their line of sight and they won’t be able to shoot at us
unless they expose themselves at the top. Once we get to the bottom of the embankment we should be able to drive them back with our better numbers.”

  “I don’t know if we should attack,” another soldier opined.

  As a few grumbled in agreement, Casca pushed his peaked cap further back away from his forehead and eyed the man. “Comrade, let me remind you that we are in the Revolutionary Army of the Peasants and Workers.” He recalled the propagandist bullshit the Petrograd committee had sent to him by dispatch. All commissars were supposed to read and learn and regurgitate without even thinking. Casca thought it dumb but it would work on the uneducated and illiterate mass of soldiery the Red Army was made up of. “Therefore the eyes of Comrade Lenin and the Petrograd Soviet are upon us. We are carrying the revolution to the rest of the world. Do you want those in Petrograd to say ‘those men of the 1st Revolutionary Army are whoresons and Kulaks and good for nothing!’?”

  The men shook their heads. They had been pumped so full of Bolshevik phrases, slogans and propaganda that they couldn’t conceive of the possibility of letting down the very movement that had freed them from tsarist rule and emancipated them. Casca smirked to himself cynically. These poor bastards had swapped one dictatorship for another, but at least they had more belief and hope than before. Only time would tell whether this was going to work or not.

  The order came and they got to their feet and charged in long lines, twenty paces between each line, in groups of men of three. Between each group of three was a gap of about the width of three men to the next. Tactics developed to try to reduce losses when assaulting a prepared position.

  Casca was with two private soldiers. As Commissar he was supposed to show what the French called elan and cran, courage and guts. Show the workers the revolutionary spirit! He zig-zagged, crouching down low, his greatcoat flapping from the thighs downwards as he desperately hoped none of the Ukrainians aimed at him.

  Shots broke out, a rattle of rifle-fire, as the Bolsheviks charged with a fervent roar. Men began toppling as they were hit; the defenders could hardly miss and now the deep throaty boom of the artillery joined in from the trains. The defenders were shooting at the attacking soldiers, the Red train shooting at the enemy train.

  Casca breathed hard as he crossed the snow, kicking up gouts of it as he forged ahead. Two men to his right were hit and went down. “Down!” he shouted and flung himself into the snow.

  Cold and wet but hell, what did that matter? He raised his Mosin-Nagant rifle and aimed along the lip of the embankment where the heads of the defenders could be seen. Bright flashes betrayed their discharges. A couple of bullets came close, cracking through the air. Snow fountained up close behind them.

  “Mother!” one of the two with Casca exclaimed, “that was close!”

  “Shoot at them,” Casca snapped and fired. He wasn’t hopeful of hitting anyone, just to keep their heads down. The men with him began to rattle out a succession of shots, all very ragged, but it seemed to keep the enemy hunkered down behind the embankment more than before.

  To the left the two companies there were advancing with hardly any opposition, while to the right the 1st Company was meeting a hell of a lot of resistance. Casca guessed the UPR had enough men to face two companies and no more. The Reds’ numerical superiority was going to tell. “Come on,” Casca urged those around him, getting to his feet, “let’s charge the swine; they’ll not like a good old taste of Bolshevik steel!”

  The men roared and sprang up, charging for the rail line. Shots rang out all around and three of Casca’s men went flying, blood staining their uniforms. Then they were too far below the line of fire to be hit and they crashed gratefully into the base of the embankment. The gunfire still went on, right above them. Casca rested against it, his back into the man-made feature, and looked left and right. Thirty men were with him, a good number to help him. Their faces were eager, bright. They put their faith in this scarred Commissar, one who readily mixed with them. Too many directed them from the rear. Here was one political leader who understood what it was to face the true test of the soldier. He was one of them.

  “Are you ready, comrades?” he asked.

  “Aye!” they chorused, bayonets ready.

  “Then for the revolution, for the red flag and for Russia!”

  They bellowed in response and they all scrambled up the snow-covered slope, Casca in the lead. He topped the embankment and came face to face with a row of soldiers lying flat out on the other side, their waists and legs on the downside, who’d been shooting at the reds. Casca wasted no time. Two of the Ukrainians, dressed in the ubiquitous greatcoat, one of grey, the other of brown, with the peaked caps of the Russian army, swung their barrels in his direction.

  Casca blew the forehead of the nearest one apart, and his brown hat sailed off. The other, with a hat of blue and yellow, the national colors of the Ukraine, centered his muzzle on Casca’s chest. The eternal mercenary flung himself aside and the bullet spat narrowly past. More men came over the top and shots traded from each side.

  Getting to his feet once more, Casca charged over the iron rails of the railway, slipping on the sleepers, then regaining his balance and came at another enemy soldier who was rising up to either run or meet the attack. Casca’s bayonet drove into his chest and the Ukrainian fell back, sliding down the far side.

  Another man came at the eternal mercenary. Casca sent his gun butt into the man’s face, breaking his teeth. As the man fell at Casca’s feet, the commissar drove his bayonet as deep into him as he could.

  A bullet cracked past his head and he crouched. At the top of the embankment he was as exposed as he could possibly be. With a roar he charged a knot of enemy soldiers still shooting into the faces of the reds trying to get over the railway lines. They had downed about six.

  Casca’s charge took him clean across the gap and his bayonet sank into the ribs of the first soldier. The man screamed like a pig. Withdraw. Second man swung his rifle in desperation. A 7.62mm bullet from Casca’s rifle exploded his head. Blood and brains splattered the third man.

  The Ukrainian staggered to his hands and knees, trying to get up. Casca’s rifle butt crashed onto his skull and knocked him flat. The embankment was suddenly freed from UPR soldiers who peeled back to the three buildings and dug in once more, shooting at the exposed Bolshevik soldiers chasing them. Casca waved his men back to the embankment and to take cover at the top so they could shoot down on the Ukrainian positions from a slightly elevated position.

  From his vantage point, about twenty feet up, Casca could see that the reds had now pushed the UPR right flank back to the railway buildings while the bigger left flank was retreating in good order to the three buildings on the other side of the main line.

  He checked the men around him. One or two were nursing wounds, but they were not too serious. The attack had probably cost the company thirty dead or wounded. A high cost, but they had been attacking into the teeth of a dug-in opponent behind a twenty-foot-high defensive position. It was just as well they hadn’t had a machine-gun.

  With the two companies now advancing from the left, threatening the right flank of the Ukrainians, the rest were now laying down an enfilading fire at the defenders. Sensing the UPR’s confusion, Casca seized the moment. A thought popped into his head. Carpe diem. He grinned. Good old Latin, where would one be without it? Horace, it had been. What had he said? Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Seize the present, trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may. How true!

  He got to his feet, waving to the men who all swung their heads to look at him. “Comrades! Come on! For the revolution! For the workers!” He knew how to use words of inspiration to get men following him, and to these men, those were the words they wanted to believe in.

  En masse, they rose up and charged down the embankment, yelling wildly, bayonets gleaming in the daylight. Casca ran onto level ground and saw the enemy falling back, attacked on two sides and knowing they’d be trapped unless they got out of there f
ast. Casca knelt as he got close to the first building and sighted on one soldier running backwards, aiming at the nearest Bolshevik soldier. Casca’s shot pitched the man over onto his back.

  Up. He worked the bolt action. Memory. Three shots? He had two left in the magazine. He crashed against the wall of the engine shed, a wooden plank construction. Men were either lying down, kneeling or running forward, shooting. The air was a mass of confused shots and shouts.

  He ran past a huddled shape on the ground, a fallen Ukrainian, and got to the next building. Now this was the edge of the railway halt and open ground lay ahead. Beyond the fleeing enemy soldiers was the line that ran to Kiev and the UPR had their armored train here, shooting at the advancing reds.

  Here the attack stalled as the Bolsheviks would now be at the mercy of running out into exposed ground. Orders came to halt and the men eagerly obeyed that one! Two young men, their faces bright and expectant, found themselves next to the commissar. “Comrade,” one said, breathing hard, “do you think they will surrender now?”

  “No, comrade,” Casca answered, peering around the edge of the building. “I suspect the enemy will withdraw now that they have lost control of the halt. They are in the open and we are in cover. We just need to bring our artillery up and pound them into pieces. They will soon flee.”

  So it turned out. Casca was content to watch the UPR unit, what was left of them, withdraw westwards towards Kiev. The men cheered and celebrated, and began making fires out of the wood from the buildings for the night.

  It had been a victory, but they hadn’t made the progress necessary and now they would have to advance to Kiev against more enemy units than planned. As a delaying tactic, the UPR had been successful.

  Now for Kiev.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Although the Bolshevik forces eventually entered the Ukrainian capital, they discovered that the UPR government had fled. The taking of the city had been made so much easier by the uprising of Bolshevik sympathizers in Kiev itself, distracting the defending forces enough to make an advance into the capital a formality.