The Civil War was already coming to an end, and Wrangel had been left isolated. The trainees thought they might be left out of the Polish war, but in June 1920, their training was suddenly broken off and they were hastily boarded on trains, some to the Kuban, others to Dagestan (where a good many of them were killed). Zhukov found himself in a composite regiment of trainees in Yekaterinodar. The regiment was sent to counter the landing that the rebel Ulagay had made in the Kuban. Then they fought the Kuban Cossacks, who had scattered into small detachments among the foothills. Those idiots wouldn’t surrender even after Denikin had been crushed. Zhukov’s unit cut down a lot of them and shot a good many more. With this, his officer training was considered complete, and in Armavir they gave him early promotion as a Red commander. Everyone in his group was issued new riding breeches, for some reason of bright raspberry red. They must have come from the stores of some old Hussar regiment, but they were all that was available. When these new graduates went to their assigned units, they stood out wonderfully, and the Red Army men looked at them like creatures from some other planet.
Zhukov took command of a cavalry troop, but soon he was promoted to squadron commander. They were on the same old operations— “mopping up gangs of bandits,” along the coast at first. Then in December, he was transferred to Voronezh Province to wipe out Kolesnikov’s band. And they wiped it out. Then to neighboring Tambov Province, where there were more rebel bands than you could count. The Tambov provincial headquarters had to bring in more troops to deal with them: by the end of February, the regimental commissar said, they had 33,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry, 460 machine guns and 60 pieces of artillery. He was complaining: We don’t have any political workers who can explain clearly what’s going on right now. This is a war brought on by the Entente, and that’s why the link between the city and the villages has been broken. But we’ll be steadfast and we’ll clear away all this rubbish!
In March, before it thawed, two of their cavalry regiments began an offensive from Zherdyovka Station in the bandit region of Tugolukovo-Kamenka. (The orders from the head of the provincial Cheka, Traskovich, were: Wipe Kamenka and Afanasyevka completely off the face of the earth and be merciless in your executions!) Zhukov’s squadron, with four heavy machine guns and one three-inch gun, headed the detachment. Near the village of Vyazovoe, they attacked an Antonov force of about 250 cavalry. Without a single machine gun, the rebels could reply only with rifle fire.
Zhukov was riding his golden-red Zorka (he’d taken her in a scrap in Voronezh Province after killing her rider). Then a strapping Antonov man slashed him across the chest with his saber, knocking him from the saddle. But Zorka fell as well, pinning the squadron commander to the ground. The enormous Antonov man raised his arm to finish off Zhukov on the ground, but the political officer, Nochyovka, rushed up from behind and cut him down. (When they searched the man’s body they learned from one of his letters that he had also been an NCO in the dragoons, almost in the same regiment as Zhukov’s.) First Squadron on their flank began to fall back, and Zhukov’s Second Squadron acted as a rear guard, using their machine guns to hold back the enemy. They barely managed to save their four machine guns, mounted on sleds, and pulled out their artillery piece as well.
Now Zhukov grew truly furious at the bandits. Weren’t they peasants just like us? But they were different somehow, not like our Kaluga people. What would make them rise up against Soviet power? His letters from home told of how people there were dying of hunger, while these folk wouldn’t give them any bread! The commissar explained that it was true we weren’t sending them any goods from the cities, but that was because we had none to send. They can get by on their homemade stuff, in any case; but where can the city get its bread? And the locals in all those backwoods places that our grain collectors haven’t reached just go on stuffing themselves.
So we didn’t need to waste words when dealing with these people. When we came into a village, we would take their best horses and leave them our worst. When an informer reported that Antonov’s men were in such-and-such a village, we would swoop in and round them up, searching the attics, the outbuildings, and the wells (one partisan medical assistant dug himself a hiding place in the side of a well shaft). Or we’d do it another way: We’d line up the whole village, young and old alike, 1500 people in all. We’d take every tenth person hostage and hold them in a barn. The others would have forty minutes to make up a list of all the bandits from that village before we’d shoot the hostages. What choice did they have? They’d bring us a list. It didn’t matter much if it was incomplete, the Special Section would find it useful in time to come.
They also had good information. One day we came into a camp that the bandits had abandoned in a hurry, and we found a copy of the same order that had sent us here. Our enemies knew a thing or two as well.
The Red Army’s supply system didn’t work very smoothly. One day you’d get your ration, the next day—nothing. (The pay rate for a squadron commander was 5000 rubles a month, but what could you buy with that? A pound of butter and two pounds of black bread.) So where could we get food if not in these bandit villages? A cavalry troop would ride into some village that was nothing more than a windmill and a few houses with only the women left in them. The troopers, still mounted, would use their whips to herd all the women into the storehouse at the mill and lock them in. Then they’d go off to rummage through the cellars. They’d drink a pot of milk and then smash the pot, just out of spite.
We’d make some peasant kid drive his cart with the squadron’s baggage and an escort of Red Army men, and he’d complain in all seriousness: “I hope you catch those guys soon and let me go back to my mamma.” Another kid, too small to understand, asked quite innocently and not angrily, “Uncle, why’d you shoot my dad?”
We captured about two dozen rebels, questioned them all separately, and each one fingered another: “He was the one on the machine gun.”
You’d come into a village with mounted patrol and find it all shut tight, as if everyone had died. You’d knock on a door and hear a woman’s voice: “Don’t be angry, but we’ve got nothing left. We’re starving.” You’d knock again: “We can’t trust anybody these days. Every bigwig who comes through here just wants to take our grain.”
They’d been so terrified by the Soviets and by the partisans that all they wanted was to be left alone.
At our political meetings, they warned us not to antagonize the local population unnecessarily. But they would also say, “Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes. If you suspect anything, just give them a rifle butt in the face.”
But even our own Red Army men worried us when they were reluctant to use their weapons against peasants (“We’re peasants, same as them, so how can we shoot at our own folk?”) The bandits were also spreading leaflets for our troops: “It’s you who are the bandits here. We did not invade your lands. Leave us alone, we can live well enough without you.” A rumor came from somewhere that within a few weeks, all the Red Army troops would be demobilized. “Why wait that long? How much longer do we have to keep fighting?” (Some of our men also went over to the bandits or deserted, particularly whenever our troops had to be redeployed.) The political officer Nochyovka would say: “Men like that have to be reeducated. Otherwise, when they’ve had a few drinks and start singing, it won’t be revolutionary songs, it’ll be ‘Stenka Razin’ or some filthy stuff. And if they spend a night in a village where all the men are away in the forest, they exploit the women as a class.” And he would give talks on the topic: “Spending your life without labor and without revolutionary struggle is parasitism!” (And someone would remind him of our woman medical assistant who was available for the whole division: “I’m not like a bowl of porridge,” she’d say, “there’s enough to go around, and plenty for the whole squadron.”)
We’d hold our breath at morning muster, waiting to see who’d gone off on French leave. We had to keep our own Red Army men in hobbles. The instructor from the provincial milit
ary committee told us that there were 60,000 deserters in Tambov Province, all of them now reinforcements for the bandits.
The orders that came from Tambov headquarters and the regiment were never written in strictly military fashion, setting out our reconnaissance sector or giving operation instructions; it was always just “Attack and destroy!” “Surround and liquidate!” “Whatever the cost!”
And we didn’t count the cost. But how were we to smoke out the bandits? How could we tell who they were? There were no Soviet authorities left in the villages; they’d all run off to wait it out in the towns, so who could we ask? An army commander would order all the village people to come to a meeting. He’d line up all the men in one rank: “How many of you are with the bandits?” No one said a word. “Shoot every tenth man!” And they’d be shot on the spot, in front of the whole crowd. The women would scream and howl and moan. “Close up the rank. Now, how many are bandits?” Once again, they’d count off every tenth man to be shot. Then the villagers would give in and point them out. A few of them would scamper away. You couldn’t pick them all off.
Sometimes a woman walking alone along the road would be arrested and searched to see if she’d been spying or carrying messages. A lot of horse manure along a road told us that a detachment of bandits had passed by.
Our boys also went hungry many times. Their boots were full of holes, and their uniforms were worn-out and bedraggled. They wore them all day and slept in them at night. (And some of them still had the raspberry pants!) We suffered a lot. If anyone had a leg amputated, it was done without anesthetic, and there were no bandages either.
In the middle of April, we in Zherdyovka heard that Antonov’s men had swooped in and taken the large factory town of Rasskazovo, just forty-five versts from Tambov. They held it for four hours and slaughtered the communists in their own homes, cutting their heads right off. Half the Soviet battalion there went over to Antonov, the other half was taken prisoner. Then the bandits withdrew under fire from airplanes.
So that was how our war with them went. Then, through the winter and spring, things got even hotter. It had been eight months now, and Antonov still hadn’t surrendered—in fact, he was even getting stronger. (Even though they sometimes had no bullets and just used bits of iron.)
An order came from Tambov headquarters: “All operations are to be carried out with sufficient severity to inspire respect for Soviet power.” Villages that supported the bandits were burned to the ground. All that was left were the skeletons of Russian stoves and ashes.
The Cheka Special Section in Zherdyovka wasn’t sitting still, either. The head of the section, Shurka Shubin, walked around in a red shirt and blue breeches with hand grenades dangling from his chest and a hefty Mauser in a wooden holster. He’d come into a cavalry camp (the formation commander was subordinate to the head of the Special Section): “All right, boys, whoever wants to execute some bandits, two paces forward!” No one stepped forward. “Some fine training you’ve had here.” All the people to be executed had been herded into the Special Section compound. They dug a huge pit, made the prisoners sit down on the edge, facing it and with their hands tied. Shubin and his men would walk along shooting them in the back of the neck.
But how else could they deal with them? Yorka had a good friend, also named Zhukov, though his first name was Pavel, and he would cut the bandits into pieces.
It was a full-scale war, and you had to give it all you had, and more. It wasn’t like that German War. It was here in Tambov that Yorka turned savage; it was here that he became a hardened, cruel warrior.
In May, a Plenipotentiary Commission from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee headed by another Antonov (though he was Antonov-Ovseenko) arrived from Moscow to stamp out the bandits. And to command the Special Tambov Army, they sent the commander of the western front, army commander Tukhachevsky, who had just settled scores with Poland. His deputy was Uborevich, who had a good deal of experience fighting bandits in Belorussia. Tukhachevsky brought his own staff with him, along with a detachment of armored cars.
Not long after this, Zhukov was lucky enough to see the famous Tukhachevsky in person when he came to the headquarters of the 14th Independent Cavalry Brigade in Zherdyovka along the railway in an armored trolley. The brigade commander, Milonov, ordered all the political officers and commanders down to squadron level to hear Tukhachevsky speak.
Tukhachevsky was rather short, but he carried himself proudly, as stately as a peacock. He knew his own worth.
He began by praising everyone for their bravery and dedication to their duty. (Everyone glowed, chests swelling.) Then he explained the mission that lay ahead of them all.
The Council of People’s Commissars had ordered that in the six weeks following May 10, the Tambov rebellion was to be put down. No matter what the cost! We all have heavy work ahead, he told us. The experience of suppressing such popular rebellions shows that we have to flood the whole area of the revolt with troops until it is completely occupied and then station armed units at critical points all across it. Kotovsky’s renowned cavalry division has just arrived from Kiev, detrained in Morshansk, and is already advancing on the rebel area of Pakhotny Ugol. When it’s done its job, it will come here, to the center of the rebellion. We have a huge material advantage over the enemy, with our air and armored car detachments. One of our first demands to the local population will be to rebuild all the bridges on the roads through the villages so that our motorized units can pass through. (But we must never use local people as guides!) We also have a supply of chemical gasses that we will use if necessary; the Council has given permission for this. In the course of this vigorous suppression of the revolt, all of you commanders will get some wonderful military experience.
Zhukov could not take his eyes off the army commander. This was probably the first time in his life he was seeing a genuine military leader, someone completely different from us simple cut-and-thrust commanders or even our brigade commander. How self-confident he was! And he was able to instill that same confidence in everyone else: it would all unfold just as he had said! There was nothing of the peasant in his face; it was aristocratic and well groomed. He had a long, slender white neck and large, velvet eyes. He’d kept his side whiskers long, but they were carefully trimmed. And he didn’t speak at all the way we did. His Budyonny helmet—the same helmet we all wore—truly suited him and made Tukhachevsky look even more like a leader.
Of course, he added, we’ll also send more of our agents to scout out the bandits, though the Chekists have, unfortunately, suffered some heavy losses. But we still have our biggest weapon: putting pressure on the bandits through their families.
Then he read aloud Order No. 130, which he had already signed and just now issued across the province so that the whole population would know. The language of the order was as absolutely confident as the young commander himself: “All peasants who have joined the rebel bands must immediately place themselves at the disposal of Soviet authorities, surrender their weapons, and name their ringleaders . . . Those who surrender voluntarily will not face the death penalty. The families of bandits who do not turn themselves in will be arrested immediately, their property confiscated and distributed among the peasants who have remained loyal to the Soviet authorities. The families of those bandits who do not report and surrender will be exiled to remote areas of the RFSFR.”
No gathering in which there were large numbers of communists, as was the case on this day, could end without everyone singing “The Internationale,” but Tukhachevsky took the liberty of not waiting for that. He extended his white hand only to the brigade commander and, with the same proud bearing, he left and drove off in his armored trolley.
This audacious display of authority also impressed Zhukov.
Then, even before “The Internationale,” all the commanders were given a leaflet from the Provincial Executive Committee addressed to the peasants of Tambov Province: The time has come to rid yourselves of this festering abscess of
Antonovism! Until now, the bandits’ advantage lay in their frequent exchange of exhausted horses for fresh ones. Now, however, with the presence of Antonov’s criminal gangs in your area, you must not leave a single horse in your village. Take them away to a place where our forces can protect them.
As the meeting broke up, Zhukov came away with new feelings: he felt inspired with fresh confidence, he had a new example to follow, and he was envious.
Just fighting a war—well, that was something any fool could do. But now—-to be a soldier with every bone in your body, with every breath you took, and do it so that everyone around you could sense it! That was something great.
Zhukov loved soldiering more than anything else.
The six-week period for the final suppression of the rebellion began. The armored cars of Uborevich’s detachment had their limitations. They couldn’t travel everywhere, and they often broke through the bridges, just as the light trucks and even the cars armed with machine guns did. The peasant horses feared the automobiles and wouldn’t go into an attack with them, and when our cavalry was pursuing the rebels, they couldn’t lose contact with the vehicles.
Apricot Jam: And Other Stories Page 25