And Quiet Flows the Don

by Mikhail Sholokhov

  ‘They’re plaguing one another and plaguing the soldiers!’

  ‘They all want to be at the top.’

  A group of cossacks came up to Ivan Alexievitch and demanded:

  ‘Come to the commander and find out what we are to do.’

  They went in a body to the company commander, and found the officers in conference in his wagon. Ivan Alexievitch went in.

  ‘Captain, the cossacks are asking what they’re to do,’ he declared.

  ‘I’ll come out to them in a minute,’ the commander replied.

  The entire company waited by the end wagon. The commander joined the crowd, made his way to the middle, and raised his hand:

  ‘We are subordinate, not to Kerensky, but to the commander-in-chief and our immediate superiors,’ he said. ‘That’s correct, isn’t it? And so unquestionably we must carry out the orders of our superior command and go on to Petrograd. In the last resort we can discover what is the situation when we reach the station of Dno, where we shall find the commander of the First Don Division. I ask you not to get agitated. Such are the times we are living through.’

  The commander went on to talk about the soldiers’ duty, the country, and the revolution, seeking to soothe the cossacks and replying evasively to their questions. He achieved his aim. While he was talking to the cossacks an engine was coupled to the train (the cossacks were not to know that two officers had speeded up their departure by threatening the station-master with revolvers) and the men dispersed to their wagons.

  The troop train set off again, drawing near to the station of Dno. The cossacks fed their horses and slept or sat at the half-open doors, smoking and staring out at the sky. Ivan Alexievitch lay gazing through the door-chink at the stars flowing past. During the past few hours he had been thinking over the situation, and had come to the firm decision to resist the further movement of the company towards Petrograd by all means in his power. As he lay he considered how best to bring the cossacks to his own way of thinking.

  His thoughts turned to Stockman. Osip Davidovitch had once said to him: ‘Ivan Alexievitch, once let this national rottenness peel off you and you will be a piece of good human steel, a little grain in the general mass of our party. And the rottenness will peel off! All dross is burnt away in the forging.’ And he wasn’t mistaken, Ivan thought. Although he was somewhere outside the party, yet he had struggled vigorously and youthfully towards the party and its work. He had been forged into a reliable Bolshevik, seared with an unshakable hatred for the old system. Among the obdurate cossacks it was hard for him, without a single comrade to help him. He felt keenly his own political ignorance, and so he moved gropingly, testing each step by his own class instinct. During the years of war he had formed the habit whenever any difficulty arose of asking himself: ‘How would Stockman act in this case?’ and then trying to do what he thought Stockman would have done. So it had been during the summer, when he heard of the proposed Constitutional Assembly. At first he had been drawn gladly towards the idea, but then he hesitated, remembering Stockman’s words: ‘You must never put any trust in those who talk big in the name of the people, but who in reality are serving the bourgeoisie, and by their double-faced politics are weakening the militant revolutionary movement of the masses.’ Then, no longer hesitating, he had turned his back on the proposal, and had rejoiced to find his decision confirmed in the Bolshevik trench newspaper.

  So in this new case: even before Kornilov’s proclamation he realized that the cossacks’ road did not coincide with that of the commander-in-chief, yet instinct warned him that it was not for them to defend Kerensky. He turned the problem over and over, and resolved not to let the company get to Petrograd. If a clash had to come with anybody, it must be with Kornilov; yet it must not be in favour of Kerensky, not for his government, but for the one which would arise after him. He was more than confident that the real government he desired would come when Kerensky went. During the summer he had been in the military section of the Party Executive Committee in Petrograd, whither he had been sent by the company for advice in regard to a conflict that had arisen with the company commander. There he had seen the work of the Committee, had talked to several Bolshevik comrades, and had thought: ‘Let this backbone be clothed with our workers’ meat, and then there will be a government! Die, Ivan, but hang on to that, hang on like a child to its mother’s nipple!’

  As he lay on his horsecloth, he thought again and again with a great burning affection of the man under whose guidance he had first found his hard new road. He remembered what Stockman had said about the cossacks: ‘The cossacks are conservative to the backbone. Don’t forget that when you are trying to convince one of them of the truth of the Bolshevik ideas, but act cautiously, thoughtfully, and adapt yourself to the situation. At first they will be as contemptuous of you as you and Misha Koshevoi were of me, but don’t let that trouble you. Chisel away stubbornly – the final success is ours.’

  Ivan reckoned that he would meet with some objection from the cossacks when in the morning he tried to persuade them not to go with Kornilov. But when he began to talk to his wagon companions, and suggested that they ought to demand their return to the front and not go on to Petrograd to fight their own brothers, the cossacks willingly agreed and were fully prepared to refuse to travel further. Zakhar Koroliov and a cossack named Turilin were closest to Ivan in their outlook, and they spent all day going from wagon to wagon and talking to the others. Towards evening, while the train slowed up past a wayside station, a sergeant of the third troop jumped into Ivan’s wagon.

  ‘The company is detraining at the first stop,’ he shouted at Ivan. ‘What sort of chairman of committee are you if you don’t know what the cossacks want? We won’t go any further! The officers are putting a noose round our necks, and you’re neither fish nor flesh. Is that what we elected you for?’

  ‘You should have said that long ago,’ Ivan smiled.

  At the first stop he jumped out of the wagon, and accompanied by Turilin went to the station-master.

  ‘Don’t send our train any further,’ he ordered him. ‘We’re going to detrain here.’

  ‘How is that?’ the man asked in bewilderment. ‘I have instructions to send you on …’

  ‘Close your mouth!’ Turilin harshly interrupted.

  They found the station committee and explained to the chairman, a heavily built, grey-haired telegraphist, what was afoot. Within a few minutes the engine-driver had willingly shunted the train on to a siding.

  Hurriedly laying down planks from the wagons to the permanent way the cossacks began to lead out their horses. Ivan stood by the engine with feet planted wide apart, wiping the sweat from his smiling face. The company commander came running to him:

  ‘What are you doing? You know that …’

  ‘I know,’ Ivan interrupted. ‘And don’t you kick up any fuss, captain.’ Turning pale, his nostrils quivering, he said meaningly:

  ‘You’ve done enough shouting, my lad. Now we shall do the ordering.’

  ‘The commander-in-chief Kornilov …’ the officer stuttered, turning livid. But Ivan stared down at his boots pressed firmly into the sand of the permanent way, and waving his hand with relief, counselled the captain:

  ‘Hang him round your neck instead of a crucifix; we haven’t any use for him.’

  The officer turned on his heels and ran back to his wagon. Within an hour the company, not accompanied by one officer, but in perfect order, rode away from the station in a south-westerly direction. At the head of the first troop rode Ivan Alexievitch in command, with the short, lop-eared Turilin as his assistant.

  With difficulty making their way by the map taken from the commander, the company reached a village and halted for the night. In a general meeting it was resolved to return to the front, and if anyone tried to stop them, to fight. Hobbling the horses and setting guards, the cossacks lay down to wait for the dawn. No fires were lit. It was evident that the majority were in a depressed mood; they lay without th
eir usual talking and joking, concealing their thoughts from one another.

  ‘What if they think better of it and go back and submit?’ Ivan thought anxiously, as he huddled under his greatcoat. As though he had heard the thought. Turilin came up.

  ‘Are you asleep, Ivan?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Turilin squatted down by his side, and lighting a cigarette, whispered:

  ‘The cossacks are troubled … They’ve done the damage, and now they’re afraid. We’ve cooked a fine meal for ourselves. What do you think?’

  ‘We shall see,’ Ivan answered calmly. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’

  Turilin scratched his head and smiled wryly:

  ‘To tell the truth, I am. At first I wasn’t, but now I’m a little scared.’

  They lapsed into silence. A gentle, gracious nocturnal stillness enwrapped the meadows. The dew besprinkled the grass. A breeze brought the mingled scents of the marsh-grass and the mouldering rushes, the muddy soil and the dewy grass to the cossacks’ nostrils. Occasionally a horse’s hobble jingled, or there was a snort and a heavy thud as one of the animals lay down. Then again the sleepy silence, the distant, hoarse, hardly audible call of a wild drake and the nearer answering quack of his mate. The hurried, scribbling whistle of invisible wings in the darkness. A misty, meadow rawness. To the west in the nadir hung a rising, heavily violet billow of cloud. And in the zenith, over the ancient lands of Pskov, like a broad, well-trodden track the Milky Way stretched in unsleeping reminder.

  At dawn the company set out again. They passed through the village, followed by the slow stares of women and the children driving the cattle to pasture. They mounted a rise flushed a brick-red by the dawn. Turilin happened to look back, and touched Ivan’s stirrup with his foot:

  ‘Look round! There are horsemen galloping after us.’

  Ivan gazed back at the village, and saw three riders galloping along in a flying cloud of rosy dust.

  ‘Company, halt!’ he commanded.

  With their accustomed speed the cossacks ranged themselves in a grey square. When about half a mile away the riders dropped into a trot. One of them, a cossack officer, pulled out a white handkerchief and waved it above his head. The cossacks kept their eyes fixed on the approaching horsemen. The cossack officer in a khaki tunic came on in front, the two others, in Circassian uniform, kept a little behind him.

  Riding forward to meet them, Ivan Alexievitch asked:

  ‘What do you want with us?’

  ‘We have come to enter into negotiations,’ the officer replied with a touch of his cap. ‘Who has taken charge of the company?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘I am a plenipotentiary from the First Don Cossack Division, and these officers are representatives of the Native Division,’ the officer explained, pulling on his reins and stroking the neck of his sweating horse. ‘If you are willing to enter into a discussion of the situation, order the company to dismount. I have to transmit the verbal instructions of the chief of the division, major-general Grekov.’

  The cossacks dismounted, and the officers also. Pushing into the crowd, they made their way to the middle. The company made room for them and formed a small circle. The cossack officer spoke:

  ‘Cossacks! We have come to persuade you to think over what you are doing and to avert the serious consequences of your action. Yesterday the divisional staff learnt that you had given way to someone’s criminal persuasions and had arbitrarily abandoned your wagons, and we have been sent today to instruct you to return immediately to the station. The soldiers of the Native Division and other cavalry forces occupied Petrograd yesterday; we have received a telegram to that effect today. Our advance guard has entered the city, has occupied the government buildings, banks, telegraph and telephone stations and all the important points. The Provisional Government has fled and is overthrown. Think, cossacks! If you do not submit to the orders of the divisional commander armed forces will be sent against you. Your conduct will be regarded as treachery, as refusal to fulfil your military obligations. Only if you submit unconditionally can you avoid bloodshed.’

  As the officers rode up, Ivan Alexievitch realized that it would not be possible to avoid entering into discussion with them, for that would have only contrary results to those he desired. When the company dismounted he winked to Turilin and quietly pushed close up to the officers. The cossacks stood with downcast, gloomy faces listening attentively to the captain’s words; some began to whisper among themselves. Ivan’s own closest friends shuffled and stirred uneasily, whilst the entire second troop stood without raising their heads, as though at prayers.

  Ivan realized that the cossacks were on the point of submitting. A few more minutes and the officer’s eloquence would win them to his side. At all costs the impression he had made must be dispelled. Ivan raised his hand, and swept the crowd with dilated, strangely white eyes.

  ‘Brothers! Wait a bit!’ he cried, and turning to the officer, he asked: ‘Have you got the telegram with you?’

  ‘What telegram?’ the captain asked in astonishment.

  ‘The telegram saying Petrograd has been taken.’

  ‘Of course not. What do you want with the telegram?’

  ‘Aha! He hasn’t got it!’ came a single sigh of relief from the entire company. Many of the cossacks lifted their heads, and fixed their eyes hopefully on Ivan. Raising his hoarse voice, he shouted jestingly and assuredly:

  ‘You haven’t got it, you say? And so we’ve got to take your word? You can’t catch us so easily as that!’

  ‘It’s a trick!’ the company roared in unison.

  The telegram wasn’t addressed to us, Cossacks!’ The officer pressed his hand persuasively against his chest.

  But they would not listen to him. Feeling that he had again won the company’s sympathy and confidence, Ivan cut like a diamond on glass.

  ‘And even if you had got it, our roads don’t run with yours. We don’t want to fight our own folk! We won’t march against the people. No! The fools have been dragged into the open. We’re not going to help set up a government of generals. And that’s that!’

  The cossacks shouted their assent. ‘He’s giving it to them!’ ‘That’s right, Ivan!’ ‘Send them to the rightabout!’

  Ivan glanced at the emissaries. The cossack officer was waiting patiently with lips pressed together; behind him the others stood shoulder to shoulder. One of them, a handsome young Ingush, stood with folded arms, his slanting almond eyes glittering; the other, an elderly, grey-haired Ossetin, had his hand resting negligently on his sabre-hilt, and was surveying the cossacks with smiling eyes. Ivan was on the point of breaking off further discussion; but he was forestalled by the cossack officer, who after whispering to the Ingush, cried stentorously:

  ‘Don cossacks! Will you allow the representative of the Savage Division to speak?’

  Without waiting for permission the Ingush stepped forward, nervously fiddling with his narrow ornamental belt.

  ‘Brother cossacks! What’s all the noise about? You don’t want general Kornilov? You want war? All right. We will give you war. We’re not frightened! Not at all frightened! We shall smash you today. There are two regiments at our backs! So!’ He began with ostensible calm, but as he went on he poured out his words more passionately, phrases from his own language mingling with his broken Russian. ‘It’s that cossack there that’s upsetting you! He’s a Bolshevik, and you’re following him! So! Don’t I see it? Arrest him! Disarm him!’

  He pointed boldly at Ivan Alexievitch and swept his eyes around the circle, gesticulating fiercely, his face flushed swarthily. His companion maintained an icy calm, and the cossack officer played with his sword-knot. The cossacks were again silent, embarrassed and agitated. Ivan stared fixedly at the Ingush officer, and thought regretfully that he had let slip the moment when with one word he could have ended the talk and led away the cossacks. Turilin saved the situation. Waving his arms desperately, he leapt into the middle of the
ring and roared, while the spittle dribbled from his lips:

  ‘You crawling serpents! Devils …! Skunks …! They wheedle you like whores, and you prick up your ears! The officers will make you do as they want. What are you doing? What are you doing? They ought to be cut down, and you stand listening to them! Cut their heads off, let the blood out of them! While you’re palavering they’re surrounding us. They’ll mow us down with machine-guns! You won’t be holding meetings long when they start rattling! They’re deliberately pulling the wool over your eyes until their soldiers arrive. Ha, call yourselves cossacks? You’re a lot of petticoats!’

  ‘To horse!’ Ivan Alexievitch thundered.

  His shout burst like shrapnel over the crowd. The cossacks flung themselves towards their horses. Within a minute the company was again drawn up in troop columns.

  ‘Listen! Cossacks!’ the captain shouted.

  Ivan Alexievitch unslung his carbine from his shoulder, and putting his finger firmly to the trigger, exclaimed:

  ‘The talk is ended! Now if we have to talk to you it will be in this language!’

  He expressively shook his rifle.

  Troop after troop they rode off down the road. Looking back, they saw the emissaries mounted on their horses and conferring among themselves. The Ingush was arguing fiercely, frequently raising his hand; the lining of his cuff shone snowily white. As Ivan looked round for the last time he noticed this dazzingly gleaming band of silk, and abruptly before his eyes appeared the wind-lashed bosom of the Don, its foaming green waves, and the white wing of a sea-gull slanting across their crests.

  Chapter Five

  The various sections of the army flung by Kornilov against Petrograd were scattered over an enormous stretch of eight railway lines running from the west, south and east. All the main stations and even halts and sidings were packed with the slowly moving troop trains. The regiments were beyond the moral control of the senior command, and the scattered companies lost touch with one another. The confusion was made worse by the changing of instructions whilst en route and by unco-ordinated orders, and this intensified the already tense and nervous mood of the troops. Meeting with the elemental opposition of the railway workers, overcoming difficulty after difficulty, the Kornilov armies slowly moved on towards Petrograd.