The river gleams dully through the early morning haze; softly its waters gurgle against the smooth pebbles of the banks. In the shallows by the banks the river is calm, its silvery surface almost unruffled; but out in midstream it is dark and restless, hurrying swiftly onward. The majestic Dnieper, the river immortalised by Gogol. The tall right bank drops steeply down to the water, like a mountain halted in its advance by the broad sweep of the waters. The flat left bank below is covered with sandy spots left when the water receded after the spring floods.

Five men lay beside a snub-nosed Maxim gun in a tiny trench dug into the river bank. This was a  forward outpost of the Seventh Rifle Division. Nearest the gun and facing the river lay Sergei Bruzzhak.
The day before, worn out by the endless battles and swept back by a hurricane of Polish artillery fire, they had given up Kiev, withdrawn to the left bank of the river, and dug in there.
The retreat, the heavy losses and finally the surrender of Kiev to the enemy had been a bitter blow to the men. The Seventh Division had heroically fought its way through enemy encirclement and, advancing through the forests, had emerged on the railway line at Malin Station, and with one furious blow had hurled back the Polish forces and cleared the road to Kiev.
But the lovely city had been given up and the Red Army men were downcast.
The Poles, having driven the Red units out of Darnitsa, now occupied a small bridgehead on the left bank of the river beside the railway bridge. But furious counterattacks had frustrated all their efforts to advance beyond that point.
As he watched the river flowing past, Sergei thought of what had happened the previous day.
Yesterday, at noon, his unit had given battle to the Poles; yesterday he had had his first hand-tohand engagement with the enemy. A young Polish legionary had come swooping down upon him, his rifle with its long, sabre-like French bayonet thrust forward; he bounded towards Sergei like a hare, shouting something unintelligible. For a fraction of a second Sergei saw his eyes dilated with frenzy. The next instant Sergei's bayonet clashed with the Pole's, and the shining French blade was thrust aside. The Pole fell. . . .
Sergei's hand did not falter. He knew that he would have to go on killing, he, Sergei, who was capable of such tender love, such steadfast friendship. He was not vicious or cruel by nature, but he knew that he must fight these misguided soldiers whom the world's parasites had whipped up into a frenzy of bestial hatred and sent against his native land. And he, Sergei, would kill in order to hasten the day when men would kill one another no longer.
Paramonov tapped him on the shoulder. "We'd better be moving on, Sergei, or they'll spot us."

For a year now Pavel Korchagin had travelled up and down his native land, riding on machine-gun carriages and gun caissons or astride a small grey mare with a nick in her ear. He was a grown man now, matured and hardened by suffering and privation. The tender skin chafed to the raw by the heavy cartridge belt had long since healed and a hard callus had formed under the rifle strap on his shoulder.
Pavel had seen much that was terrible in that year. Together with thousands of other fighting men as ragged and ill-clad as himself but afire with the indomitable determination to fight for the power of their class, he had marched over the length and breadth of his native land and only twice had the storm swept on without him:

the first time when he was wounded in the hip, and the second, when in the bitterly cold February of 1920 he sweltered in the sticky heat of typhus.
The typhus took a more fearful toll of the regiments and divisions of the Twelfth Army than Polish machine guns. By that time the Twelfth Army was operating over a vast territory stretching across nearly the whole of the Northern Ukraine blocking the advance of the Poles.
Pavel had barely recovered from his illness when he returned to his unit which was now holding the station of Frontovka, on the Kazatin-Uman branch line. Frontovka stood in the forest and consisted of a small station building with a few wrecked and abandoned cottages around it. Three years of intermittent battles had made civilian life in these parts impossible. Frontovka had changed hands times without number.
Big events were brewing again. At the time when the Twelfth Army, its ranks fearfully depleted and partly disorganised, was falling back to Kiev under the pressure of the Polish armies, the proletarian republic was mustering its forces to strike a crushing blow at the victory-drunk Polish Whites.
The battle-seasoned divisions of the First Cavalry Army were being transferred to the Ukraine all the way from the North Caucasus in a campaign unparalleled in military history. The Fourth, Sixth, Eleventh and Fourteenth Cavalry divisions moved up one after another to the Uman area, concentrating in the rear of the front and sweeping away the Makhno bandits on their way to the scene of decisive battles.
Sixteen and a half thousand sabres, sixteen and a half thousand fighting men scorched by the blazing steppe sun.
To prevent this decisive blow from being thwarted by the enemy was the primary concern of the Supreme Command of the Red Army and the Command of the Southwestern Front at this juncture. Everything was done to ensure the successful concentration of this huge mounted force.
Active operations were suspended on the Uman sector. The direct telegraph lines from Moscow to the front headquarters in Kharkov and thence to the headquarters of the Fourteenth and Twelfth armies hummed incessantly. Telegraph operators tapped out coded orders: "Divert attention Poles from concentration cavalry army." The enemy was actively engaged only when the Polish advance threatened to involve the Budyonny cavalry divisions.
The campfire shot up red tongues of flame. Dark spirals of smoke curled up from the fire, driving off the swarms of restless buzzing midges. The men lay in a semicircle around the fire whose reflection cast a coppery glow on their faces. The water bubbled in messtins set in the bluish-grey ashes.
A stray tongue of flame leaped out suddenly from beneath a burning log and licked at someone's tousled head. The head was jerked away with a growl: "Damnation!" And a gust of laughter rose from the men grouped around the fire.
"The lad's so full of book-learning he don't feel the heat of the fire," boomed a middle-aged soldier with a clipped moustache, who had just been examining the barrel of his rifle against the firelight.
"You might tell the rest of us what you're reading there, Korchagin?" someone suggested.
The young Red Army man fingered his singed locks and smiled.
"A real good book, Comrade Androshchuk. Just can't tear myself away from it."
"What's it about?" inquired a snub-nosed lad sitting next to Korchagin, laboriously repairing the strap of his pouch. He bit off the coarse thread, wound the remainder round the needle and stuck it inside his helmet. "If it's about love I'm your man."
A loud guffaw greeted this remark. Matveichuk raised his close-cropped head and winked slyly at the snub-nosed lad: "Love's a fine thing, Sereda," he said. "And you're such a handsome lad, a regular picture. Wherever we go the girls fairly wear their shoes out running after you. Too bad a handsome phiz like yours should be spoiled by one little defect: you've got a five-kopek piece instead of a nose. But that's easily remedied. Just hang a Novitsky 10-pounder ( The Novitsky grenade weighing about four kilograms and used to demolish barbed-wire entanglements.) on the end of it overnight and in the morning it'll be all right."
The roar of laughter that followed this sally caused the horses tethered to the machine-gun carriers to whinny in fright.
Sereda glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder. "It's not your face but what you've got in here that counts." He tapped himself on the forehead expressively. "Take you, you've got a tongue like a stinging nettle but you're no better than a donkey, and your ears are cold."
"Now then, lads, what's the sense in getting riled?" Tatarinov, the Section Commander,admonished the two who were about to fly at each other. "Better let Korchagin read to us if he's got something worth listening to."
"That's right. Go to it, Pavlushka!" the men urged from all sides.
Pavel moved a saddle closer to the fire, settled himself on it and opened the small thick volume resting on his knees.
"It's called The Gadfly, Comrades. The Battalion Commissar gave it to me. Wonderful book,Comrades. If you'll sit quietly I'll read it to you."
"Fire away! We're all listening."
When some time later Comrade Puzyrevsky, the Regimental Commander, rode up unnoticed to the campfire with his Commissar he saw eleven pairs of eyes glued to the reader.

He turned to the Commissar:
"There you have half of the regiment's scouts," he said, pointing to the group of men. "Four of them are raw young Komsomols, but they're good soldiers all of them. The one who's reading is Korchagin, and that one there with eyes like a wolfcub is Zharky. They're friends, but they're always competing with each other on the quiet.

Korchagin used to be my best scout. Now he has a very serious rival. What they're doing just now is political work, and very effective it is too. I hear these youngsters are called 'the young guard'. Most appropriate, in my opinion."
"Is that the political instructor reading?" the Commissar asked.
"No. Kramer is the political instructor." Puzyrevsky spurred his horse forward.
"Greetings, Comrades!" he called.
All heads turned toward the commander as he sprang lightly from the saddle and went up to the group.
"Warming yourselves, friends?" he said with a broad smile and his strong face with the narrow,slightly Mongolian eyes lost its severity. The men greeted their commander warmly as they would a good comrade and friend. The Commissar did not dismount.
Pushing aside his pistol in its holster, Puzyrevsky sat down next to Korchagin.
"Shall we have a smoke?" he suggested. "I have some first-rate tobacco here."
He rolled a cigarette, lit it and turned to the Commissar: "You go ahead, Doronin. I'll stay here for a while. If I'm needed at headquarters you can let me know."
"Go on reading, I'll listen too," Puzyrevsky said to Korchagin when Doronin had gone.
Pavel read to the end, laid the book down on his knees and gazed pensively at the fire. For a few moments no one spoke. All brooded on the tragic fate of the Gadfly.

Puzyrevsky puffed on his cigarette, waiting for the discussion to begin.
"A grim story that," said Sereda, breaking the silence. "I suppose there are people like that in the world. It's not many who could stand what he did. But when a man has an idea to fight for he can stand anything," Sereda was-visibly moved. The book had made a deep impression on him.

"If I could lay my hands on that priest who tried to shove a cross down his throat I'd finish the swine off on the spot!" Andryusha Fomichev, a shoemaker's apprentice from Belaya Tserkov, cried wrathfully.
"A man doesn't mind dying if he has something to die for," Androshchuk, pushing one of the messtins closer to the, fire with a stick, said in a tone of conviction.

"That's what gives a man strength. You can die without regrets if you know you're in the right. That's how heroes are made.
I knew a lad once, Poraika was his name. When the Whites cornered him in Odessa, he tackled a whole platoon singlehanded and before they could get at him with their bayonets he blew himself and the whole lot of them up with a grenade. And he wasn't anything much to look at. Not the kind of a fellow you read about in books, though he'd be well worth writing about. There's plenty of fine lads to be found among our kind."
He stirred the contents of the messtin with a spoon, tasted it with pursed-up lips and continued:
"There are some who die a dog's death, a mean, dishonourable death. I'll tell you something that happened during the fighting at Izyaslav. That's an old town on the Goryn River built back in the time of the princes. There was a Polish church there, built like a fortress. Well, we entered that town and advanced single file along the crooked alleys. A company of Letts were holding our right flank. When we get to the highway what do we see but three saddled horses tied to the fence of one of the houses. Aha, we think, here's where we bag some Poles! About ten of us rushed into the yard. In front of us ran the commander of that Lettish company, waving his Mauser.
"The front door was open and we ran in. But instead of Poles we found our own men in there. A mounted patrol it was. They'd got in ahead of us. It wasn't a pretty sight we laid eyes on there.
They were abusing a woman, the wife of the Polish officer who lived there. When the Lett saw what was going on he shouted something in his own language. His men grabbed the three and dragged them outside. There were only two of us Russians, the rest were Letts. Their commander was a man by the name of Bredis. I don't understand their language but I could see he'd given orders to finish those fellows off. They're a tough lot those Letts, unflinching. They dragged those three out to the stables. I could see their goose was cooked. One of them, a great hulking fellow with a mug that just asked for a brick, was kicking and struggling for all he was worth. They couldn't put him up against the wall just because of a wench, he yelped. The others were begging for mercy too.
"I broke out into a cold sweat. I ran over to Bredis and said: 'Comrade Company Commander,' I said, 'let the tribunal try them. What do you want to dirty your hands with their blood for? The fighting isn't over in the town and here we are wasting time with this here scum.' He turned on me with eyes blazing like a tiger's. Believe me, I was sorry I spoke. He points his gun at me. I've been fighting for seven years but I admit I was properly scared that minute. I see he's ready to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. He yells at me in bad Russian so I could hardly understand what he was saying: 'Our banner is dyed with our blood,' he says. 'These men are a disgrace to the whole army. The penalty for banditry is death.'
"I couldn't stand it any more and I ran out of that yard into the street as fast as I could and behind me I heard them shooting. I knew those three were done for. By the time we got back to the others the town was already ours.
"That's what I mean by a dog's death, the way those fellows died. The patrol was one of those that'd joined us at Melitopol. They'd been with Makhno at one time.

Riffraff, that's what they were."
Androshchuk drew his messtin toward him and proceeded to untie his bread bag.
"Yes, you find scum like that on our side too sometimes. You can't account for everyone. On the face of it they're all for the revolution. And through them we all get a bad name. But that was a nasty business, I tell you. I shan't forget it so soon," he wound up, sipping his tea.
Night was well advanced by the time the camp was asleep. Sereda's whistling snores could be heard in the silence. Puzyrevsky slept with his head resting on the saddle.

Kramer, the political instructor, sat scribbling in his notebook.
Returning the next day from a scouting detail, Pavel tethered his horse to a tree and called over Kramer, who had just finished drinking tea.
"Look, Kramer, what would you say if I switched over to the First Cavalry Army? There's going to be big doings there by the looks of it. They're not being massed in such numbers just for fun,are they? And we here won't be seeing much of it."
Kramer looked at him in surprise.
"Switch over? Do you think you can change units in the army the way you change seats in a cinema?"
"But what difference does it make where a man fights?" Pavel interposed. "I'm not deserting to the rear, am I?"
But Kramer was categorically opposed to the idea.
"What about discipline? You're not a bad youngster, Pavel, on the whole, but in some things you're a bit of an anarchist. You think you can do as you please? You forget, my lad, that the Party and the Komsomol are founded on iron discipline. The Party must come first. And each one of us must be where he is most needed and not where he wants to be. Puzyrevsky turned down your application for a transfer, didn't he? Well, there's your answer."
Kramer spoke with such agitation that he was seized with a fit of coughing. This tall, gaunt man was a printer by profession and the lead dust had lodged itself firmly in his lungs and often a hectic flush would appear on his waxen cheeks.
When he had calmed down, Pavel said in a low but firm voice:
"All that is quite correct but I'm going over to the Budyonny army just the same."
The next evening Pavel was missing at the campfire.

In the neighbouring village a group of Budyonny cavalrymen had formed a wide circle on a hill outside the schoolhouse. One giant of a fellow, seated on the back of a machine-gun carrier, his cap pushed to the back of his head, was playing an accordion. The instrument wailed and blared under his inept fingers like a thing in torment, confusing the dashing cavalryman in unbelievably wide red riding breeches who was dancing a mad hopak in the centre of the ring.
Eager-eyed village lads and lasses clambered onto the gun carrier and fences to watch the antics of these troopers whose brigade had just entered their village.
"Go it, Toptalo! Kick up the earth! Ekh, that's the stuff, brother! Come on there, you with the accordion, make it hot!"
But the player's huge fingers that could bend an iron horseshoe with the utmost ease sprawled clumsily over the keys.

"Too bad Makhno got Afanasi Kulyabko," remarked one bronzed cavalryman regretfully. "That lad was a first-class hand at the accordion. He rode on the right flank of our squadron. Too bad he was killed. A good soldier, and the best accordion player we ever had!"
Pavel, who was standing in the circle, overheard this last remark. He pushed his way over to the machine-gun carrier and laid his hand on the accordion bellows. The music subsided.
"What d'you want?" the accordionist demanded with a scowl.
Toptalo stopped short and an angry murmur rose from the crowd: "What's the trouble there?"
Pavel reached out for the instrument. "Let's have a try," he said.
The Budyonny cavalryman looked at the Red infantryman with some mistrust and reluctantly slipped the accordion strap off his shoulder.
With an accustomed gesture Pavel laid the instrument on his knee, spread the sinuous bellows out fanwise and let go with a rollicking melody that poured forth with all the lusty vigour of which the accordion is capable:

Ekh, little apple,
Whither away?
Get copped by the Cheka
And that's where you stay!

Toptalo caught up the familiar tune and swinging his arms like some great bird he swept into thering, executing the most incredible twists and turns, and slapping himself smartly on the thighs,knees, head, forehead, the shoe soles, and finally on the mouth in time with the music.
Faster and faster played the accordion in a mad intoxicating rhythm, and Toptalo, kicking his legs out wildly, spun around the circle like a top until he was quite out of breath.

On June 5, 1920, after a few brief but furious encounters Budyonny's First Cavalry Army broke through the Polish front between the Third and Fourth Polish armies, smashed a cavalry brigade under General Sawicki en route and swept on toward Ruzhiny.
The Polish command hastily formed a striking force and threw it into the breach. Five tanks were rushed from Pogrebishche Station to the scene of the fighting. But the Cavalry Army bypassed Zarudnitsy from where the Poles planned to strike and came out in the Polish rear.
General Kornicki's Cavalry Division was dispatched in pursuit of the First Cavalry Army with orders to strike at the rear of the force, which the Polish command believed to be headed for Kazatin, one of the most important strategic points in the Polish rear. This move, however, did not improve the position of the Poles.

Although they succeeded in closing the breach and cutting off the Cavalry Army, the presence of a strong mounted force behind their lines which threatened to destroy their rear bases and swoop down on their army group at Kiev, was far from reassuring. As they advanced, the Red cavalry divisions destroyed small railway bridges and tore up railway track to hamper the Polish retreat. On learning from prisoners that the Poles had an army headquarters in Zhitomir (actually the headquarters of the whole front was located there), the commander of the First Cavalry Army decided to take Zhitomir and Berdichev, both important railway junctions and administrative centres. At dawn on June 7 the Fourth Cavalry Division was already on its way at full speed to Zhitomir.
Korchagin now rode on the right flank of one of the squadrons in place of Kulyabko, the lamented accordionist. He had been enrolled in the squadron on the collective request of the men, who had refused to part with such an excellent accordion player.
Without checking their foam-flecked horses they fanned out at Zhitomir and bore down on the city with naked steel flashing in the sun.
The earth groaned under the pounding hoofs, the mounts breathed hoarsely, and the men rose in their stirrups.
Underfoot the ground sped past and ahead the large city with its gardens and parks hurried to meet the division. The mounted avalanche flashed by the gardens and poured into the centre of the city,and the air was rent by a fear-inspiring battle-cry as inexorable as death itself.
The Poles were so stunned that they offered little resistance. The local garrison was crushed.
Bending low over the neck of his mount, Pavel Korchagin sped along side by side with Toptalo astride his thin-shanked black. Pavel saw the dashing cavalryman cut down with an unerring blow a Poli............