The Secret History of My Sojourn In Russia by Glagoslav Publications

JAROSLAV HAÅ EK

THE SECRET HISTORY OF MY SOJOURN IN RUSSIA TRAN SLATED BY CHARLES S. K R A SZ EWSKI

T RAN SLATION OF THIS BOOK WAS SUP P O R TED BY

GLAGOSLAV PUBLICATIONS

THE SECRET HISTORY OF MY SOJOURN IN RUSSIA by Jaroslav Hašek Translated from the Czech and introduced by Charles S. Kraszewski Translation of this book was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic Book cover and interior design by Max Mendor Publishers Maxim Hodak & Max Mendor © 2017, Charles S. Kraszewski © 2017, Glagoslav Publications www.glagoslav.com ISBN: 978-1-911414-66-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: The Enigma of Jaroslav Hašek. Is He Serious, or Is He Joking? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 I. FROM PRAGUE TO BUGULMA AND BACK . . . . . . . . . 55 HOW IT HAPPENED THAT I MET UP WITH THE AUTHOR OF MY OBITUARY . . . . . . . . . 56 PAN HURT’S DESTINY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 A Tale of the Portrait of Emperor Franz Josef I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 A LETTER FROM THE FRONT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 NECK SIZE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 A WEE LITTLE COLUMN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 A VICTIM OF THE GERMAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN SIBERIA . . . . . . . . . . 84 THE LOST ECHELON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 FROM THE DIARY OF A BOURGEOIS FROM UFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 ONE PRIEST’S TRAGEDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 IVAN IVANOVITCH OF UFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 ON GROCER BULAKULIN, THIEF OF UFA . . . . . . . . 104 THE JOURNAL OF FR. MALYUTA OF THE JESUS CHRIST REGIMENT . . . . . . . . . . . 107 JUBILEE REFLECTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 IN COMMAND AT BUGULMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 SECOND IN COMMAND AT BUGULMA . . . . . . . . . . 119 THE PROCESSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

STRATEGICAL PREDICAMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 BUGULMA’S GLORY DAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 NEW DANGERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 POTEMKIN VILLAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 DIFFICULTIES WITH THE CAPTIVES . . . . . . . . . . 146 BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL OF THE EASTERN FRONT . . . . . . . . . . 151 A SMALL MISUNDERSTANDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 AND HE SHOOK THE DUST FROM HIS SHOES… . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 II. PROPAGANDA, PROCLAMATIONS, LETTERS . . . . . . . 179 THE FEAST OF FREEDOM — THE HOLIDAY OF THE CZECH REVOLUTION . . . . . . 180 TO THE CZECH ARMY. WHY ARE YOU OFF TO FRANCE? . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 SOLDIERS — REVOLUTIONARIES! . . . . . . . . . . . 192 BROTHER CZECHOSLOVAKS! COMRADE SOLDIERS! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 TO ALL CZECHOSLOVAKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 VAE VICTIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 TWO GUNSHOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 THE MOST HOLY VLADYKA ANDREI . . . . . . . . . . 202 ADMIRAL KOLCHAK’S ARMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 BESTIA TRIUMPHANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 (LETTERS TO THE EDITOR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RED ARMY’S VICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 FROZEN BUREAUCRATS IN SOVIET OFFICES . . . . . . . 216 THE REVOLUTION IN GERMANY (THE BAVARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC) . . . . . . . . . . 218 SIBERIAN SKOROPADIAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 A SURVEY OF MILITARY EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

WORKERS’ REGIMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 TO ALL HUNGARIAN CITIZENS RESIDENT IN THE GUBERNIA OF UFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 THE ARMED FORCES OF THE PROLETARIAT . . . . . . . 228 THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN SIBERIA . . . . . . . . 230 A LAMENT FROM JAPAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 TURNCOATS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 IN THE WORKSHOP OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION . . . . . . . . . . . 240 THE CZECH QUESTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 WITH THE HOLIDAYS NEARLY UPON US . . . . . . . . 245 THE WHITES, ON THE 5TH ARMY . . . . . . . . . . . 246 (A LETTER TO JAROSLAV SALÁT) . . . . . . . . . . . 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

JAROS LAV HAŠ EK 1883 – 1923

INTRODUCTION: THE ENIGMA OF JAROSLAV HAŠEK. IS HE SERIOUS, OR IS HE JOKING? At a certain point in his story, an incarcerated Josef Švejk finds himself before a committee of physicians. “Tauglich!” he cries in a happy voice upon entering the room. Already eyebrows are raised. More than one Czech recruit will seek even to maim himself, so as to avoid the glory of falling on the battlefield on behalf of Emperor Franz Josef, and here comes a moon-faced fellow shouting “Fit for service!” When the physical examination begins, and a doctor tells him to take five steps forward, and then five backward, Švejk takes ten. “I said five steps!” the doctor growls. “Ehh! I can gladly spare you a few more,” Švejk replies. After a few minutes of song (Švejk good naturedly complies with their request to sing by running through the first couple of strophes of all the songs he knows, from folk chestnuts to hymns to the national anthem): Both doctors exchanged glances, and one of them asked Švejk, “Was your mental condition ever assessed?” “In the army,” Švejk replied, gloriously and proudly, “The military doctors officially classified me as a notorious idiot.” “It seems to me that you’re faking,” the other doctor shouted at Švejk. “I, sirs,” Švejk hastened to defend his honour, “am no faker. I am a true blue idiot. You can check it out for yourselves in the office files of the 91st Regiment in České Budějovice, or at the replacement headquarters in Karlína.” And he will proudly defend his categorisation as mentally incompetent to all comers. As he relates later on in the book: THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

They ran about, circling me like dogs, barking at me, and I just stood there silently. I didn’t say a word, just stood there, saluting, my left hand on the seam of my pants leg. After consulting for about a half an hour, the colonel runs up to me and growls, “Are you an idiot, or not?” “I beg to report, sir, I am an idiot.” Notoriously feebleminded, or wickedly intelligent? Is Švejk a complete dolt, who through the grace of God or dumb luck, constantly lands on his feet? Or is he the ultimate trickster, who plays the fool so as to flummox any and all who wish to use him in a manner that could lead him into harm’s way? This is the ontological question at the heart of Jaroslav Hašek’s best work, Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války [The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk in the Great War, 1921/23]. It torments his officers, it tickles his readers, and it simply cannot be answered. We’ll never know if Švejk is brilliant and manipulative, or merely stupid and very, very lucky. The same thing can be said for his creator, Jaroslav Hašek, especially the Hašek we come across in the pages of this book. Who is he, really? The “good soldier” who was recommended for the Silver Medal for Bravery for his role in capturing three hundred Russian soldiers, before his own captivity, or the “swindler and deceiver” castigated in the assessment of the officers of the 91st Regiment, for doing his utmost to avoid frontline service?1 Is he the skulker of Most nad Litavou, sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for desertion, or the hero who “showed courage when, during the retreat, he guided the whole battalion to safety across the river Igla, having learned from local inhabitants where there was a ford,” for which act those three years were remitted?2 Finally, is he the hero of the Battle of Zborów, the defining battle of the Czech Legions, formed from Russian prisoners of war to fight on the side of the Allies, for which he did indeed receive the Medal of St. George,3 or is he the traitor who “dirtied” himself with Communism, deserting the ranks of the Legions so that he was forced to escape from the Czech Army, who had sworn out a warrant of arrest against him? 1 Sir Cecil Parrott, The Bad Bohemian: the Extraordinary Life of Jaroslav Hašek, Author of The Good Soldier Švejk (London: Abacus, 1983), pp. 150, 147. 2 Parrott, p. 150. 3 Parrott, p. 174.

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Even those who knew him personally could never be sure. In his book of anecdotes concerning Hašek, Radko Pytlík quotes one of the writer’s comrades from the political division of the Fifth (Soviet) Army, where Hašek operated for a time during his Russian sojourn: “When the discussion turned to politics, one was never sure if he were speaking seriously, or joking.”4 The reason that neither we nor his intimates can ever really know when he is being serious, and when he is pulling our legs, is his delight in digging a camouflaged trap and hunching behind the shrubbery, giggling, to see who falls in. Jaroslav Hašek is the proverbial boy who cried wolf, or, more precisely, werewolf. One of his jobs before the war was on the editorial staff of the journal Animal World. This was a popular-science publication, beloved for its articles and vignettes concerning the environment and its furry denizens. Of course, lover of animals though he was, Hašek could not be satisfied with lions and giraffes. He spent his time thinking up fantastic creatures — for example, the “sulphur-bellied whale” or the man-eating “horrid gulper” who is assumed to be “the only species of ichthyosaur to have survived to our day and age.” His crowning achievement (for which he was quickly sacked) was his detailed instructions on the proper breeding of werewolves, which he described as “very pleasant animals, faithful, good on leads and watchful guardians, who can in all ways replace the dog.” His description of the werewolf, which he took pains to sub-categorise into “Siberian Werewolves with a silvery coat,” and “Manchurian Werewolves, with a golden sheen,” was so convincing, that a woman showed up in person at the Animal World offices wishing to buy “two Siberians” (as the magazine also acted as a middleman in the sale of pets). According to Hašek himself, a professor of natural history was so taken in by his inventions that he not only took out a subscription, but declared to the editors that he planned to “unceasingly promote your journal, as it has uncovered to my eyes ever new horizons in the field of zoology.”5 4 Radko Pytlík, Nasz przyjaciel Haszek (Warszawa: Państwowy instytut wydawniczy, 1984), p. 217. Parrott identifies the speaker as Arnošt Kolman, a “Czech Communist philosopher, who spent most of his life in Russia.” Cf. Parrott, p. 208. 5 Pytlík, pp. 95-98. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

This cavalier attitude to the truth seems to have been endemic to Jaroslav Hašek. Sir Cecil Parrott, his greatest English translator, biographer, and promoter, tells us that Hašek’s habits of embroidery carried over to other jobs, such as working as a correspondent for various Prague newspapers: In Prague bars he used to sell his news stories to other correspondents at two glasses of beer apiece. The general opinion was, however, that he invented many of them and they were not worth a great deal. According to Hašek, if there were not enough suicides, accidents etc. one simply had to invent stories to entertain the readers.6 One is reminded of Charles Foster Kane’s advice to his correspondent in Havana, when the latter complained complained to his editor that the “war” he was sent to cover simply was not happening. All he could offer him were prose poems in praise of the tropical paradise. “You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war…” If it were not for the fact that our ears are assaulted so frequently these days with cries of “fake news!” one might almost chuckle at the Czech rogue… The reader coming across Hašek for the first time might well be shocked at his talents of deception. If he or she is interested enough by the Hašek of the Russian stories to move on to Hašek’s masterwork Švejk, he will be even more shocked to discover that his tendency to lie drew him into criminal activity. For Hašek, like his best beloved character, supplemented his livelihood by setting up kennels, exaggeratedly named the “Cynological Institute” [Kynologický ústav] where, along with his partner Ladislav Čižek, he trimmed and dyed mutts to sell them as purebreeds to gullible dog lovers. As Parrott tells us, “an actual pedigree forged by Čížek is still preserved.”7 The person of Jaroslav Hašek is so incomprehensible, and yet so incomprehensibly entertaining and fascinating, that it is hard to pull oneself away from anecdotes. Most of these, as above, concern his unreliability, or his shrewdly deceptive nature; the Navajo trickster Coyote has nothing on him! We learn of him as a young man on a 6 7

Parrott, p. 122. Parrott, p. 94. JAROSLAV HAŠEK

walking tour of that deeply religious country Slovakia, literally living off the fat of the land without spending a cent. This he achieved by knocking on the rectory door of the Catholic parish with a sob story of being turned away by the Lutheran pastor, and then, with a full belly and after a good night’s sleep, spending one more night in town by knocking at the parsonage door and complaining there of having received the same treatment at the hands of the priest. As a newspaperman, not only did he make up stories, but he had no political convictions. He wrote for whatever paper, whatever party, would pay for his pen. Indeed, he once wrote concurrently for two rival papers, one the organ of the Social Democrats and the other representing the (Czech) National Socialists — and that’s not all: he polemicised with his alter ego.8 This is all very entertaining, and perhaps even endearing, at a distance. It wasn’t always so, to the people who knew — and the small number who loved — Jaroslav Hašek. Speaking of the latter, there is Jarmila, whom he married after forging an official ecclesiastical form declaring him to be a Catholic in good standing.9 Not only did she have a Purgatory on earth while he was in Prague; he committed bigamy by marrying a co-worker, Shura L’vova, while he was in Russia, whom he brought back with him to Czechoslovakia after the war was over. Nor were these the only hearts this improbable ladies’ man with the smooth, round face and fat, babyish body broke. In his memoirs, František Beneš speaks of that dramatic period in Hašek’s life, when he had to hide from his compatriots in central Russia after his desertion from the Czechoslovak Legions. Although the rumours in Moscow were that he had been killed, he was living in a Tatar village with some older, wiser, Tatar woman. Of course, he abandoned her immediately, as soon as the opportunity of joining the Red Army presented itself. Although at first the Bolsheviks didn’t really trust him…10 8 Cf. Parrott, pp. 48, 54, 76. 9 Parrott, p. 85. 10 František Beneš, quoted by Pavel Gan, “Jaroslav Hašek als Rotarmist an der Wolga 1918 (Überlegungen zu Hoffnungen, Enttäuschungen und Švejkladen inmitten der Russischen Revolution),” in Walter Schamschula, ed. Jaroslav Hašek 1883—1983. Proceedings of the International Hašek-Symposium, Bamberg June 24-27, 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983). Vol. I p. 110. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

Can you blame them? Who would? Hašek spun around more often than a weathervane in March. Sir Cecil Parrott is perhaps too kind to his beloved author when he assesses his ideological infidelities in The Bad Bohemian thus: “Always too impulsive to be consistent, he would throw himself passionately into what he believed in at the moment, only to change course with equal zest.”11 If he can be said to have been capable of belief in anything! Even more generous is the assessment of Hašek’s old chum Rudolf Medek, writing in the organ of the Czechoslovak Legion in April 1918 about the turncoat humorist, who wrote harsh polemics about his former comrades after he had gone over to the Bolsheviks: Don’t salt the soup for us, which you haven’t cooked and which you won’t partake of with us. — Go on doing what you please, what you know, and what your abilities permit you to do. If you create something wise, our heartfelt wishes for your success will go out to you. If you are an honest man, you will follow your own road to a good end. We will experience only pleasant joy from your achievements, if you become more successful than we. It seems to us that you are either a dreamer, who has learned nothing at all from life, or that you have quite a different agenda, of which we’d rather not speak…12 He did speak of it in another place, calling Hašek as “sentimental as old prostitutes are,”13 a description of biting insight, for Hašek truly did have a soft heart and could weep at a moment’s notice, although the metaphor of the prostitute seems even more fitting. Whether it was the almost pathological passion, with which he threw himself into whatever interested him at the moment (as Parrott suggests), or mere cynicism (as those single-handed polemics in the Prague newspapers incline us to believe), it is true that Hašek sold out so many times it’s a wonder that, in the end, he had anything left to sell. Hašek’s greatest partisans strove, in heroically dialectical fashion, to reconcile this most characteristic trait of his to the exigencies of the integrity we 11 12 13

Parrott, p. 169. Rudolf Medek, quoted by Gan, p. 51. Parrott, p. 189. JAROSLAV HAŠEK

expect of one another. Arnošt Kolman tries to convince us that “the contradiction between the irresponsible bohemian and the serious revolutionary only seemed to be contradictory; in reality, these were two sides of the same coin.”14 Parrott, despite his fondness for Hašek, is closer to the truth in showing us a coin with more than just two sides, if such a thing can be imagined, or, at least, arguing that the one side, the irresponsible side, is the one that most often falls face up: And so from being a bitter opponent of the Habsburgs, he became for a short time a partisan of the Romanovs; from being an eager recruiting sergeant for the Czech Legion, he turned almost overnight into an enthusiastic propagandist for Bolshevism; while yearning to see his wife again and be taken back by her, he ruined all his chances by marrying another woman whom he certainly did not love; and finally, having seen the light and abandoned alcohol after some seventeen years of it, he went back to his old vice and let it kill him.15 Jan Beneš is not sentimental at all when it comes to summing up Hašek’s character. While stating that “today, a determination of the objective truth about Jaroslav Hašek is almost impossible,” the preponderance of evidence leads him to a conclusion that is difficult to dispute: It is an unpleasant truth that must be told, that […] he betrayed and wounded every person who allowed him to get close to him. […] Jaroslav Hašek simply proved himself to be so utterly “independent” of any sort of morality, and distanced himself from any sort of measuring stick of any sort of “character,” that one can speak, in his case, of an absolute absence of morality.16 There’s not much more to add to that. But if there is any one unchanging fact in the kaleidoscopic life of Jaroslav Hašek, it is his great talent for writing, humorous writing, which culminated in The Good Soldier 14 Pytlík, p. 217. 15 Parrott, p. 271. 16 Jan Beneš, “Netrpělivý člověk pravoslavný,” in HAŠEK, Jaroslav. Velitelem města Bugulmy (Toronto: 68 Publishers, 1976), pp. 8-9. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

Švejk, one of the greatest novels of all time. Whatever we come to think of him after reading through the pages which follow this introduction — and in the propagandistic writings that make up the second part of the book, there is more to shiver at than to chuckle at — this one fact, that without Hašek there would be no Švejk, is justification enough to explore The Secret History of [his] Sojourn in Russia.

J A R O S L A V HA Š E K I N R U SSI A Hašek was born in Prague to middle-class parents on 30 April 1883, and baptised a few days later at sv. Štěpán (St. Stephen’s) church.17 His father was to die when Hašek was thirteen years old. In 1893, he began attending the c.k. Vyšší gymnázium (higher school) on Žitné St. One of the teachers at this school was Alois Jirásek (1851—1930), whose five-volume patriotic novel F.L. Věk attempts to tell the story of the Czech “národní obrození” (national revival) of the late eighteenth — early nineteenth century through the life history of its eponymous hero (whose name, not coincidentally, means “century” or “age”). The anonymous author of Hašek’s biography on the website referatyseminarki.sk tells us that “Jirásek was head-teacher of Hašek’s class for the second half of his first year.”18 Seeing as the two writers couldn’t be more different, one wonders how many pranks the young Hašek played on the four-time Nobel Prize candidate… During his youthful years in Prague, before he began to make his living as a journalist, Hašek was apprenticed to a chemist, and attended the Českoslovanská obchodní akademie (Czecho-Slavic Business Academy). He also started to get involved in the sometimes riotous activities of young Czech nationalists protesting the AustroHungarian government, and the favoured status of German speakers in Bohemia. He was only fifteen when he first came to the notice of the police authorities in Prague, for his role in an anti-German incident involving arson.19 If he had any political convictions at this time, they 17 Parrott, p. 34. 18 Anonymous, “Jaroslav Hašek životopis,” (http://referaty-seminarky.sk/ jaroslav-hasek-zivotopis/). “Ve druhém pololetí je jeho třídním profesorem Alois Jirásek.” 19 “Jaroslav Hašek životopis,” (http://referaty-seminarky.sk/

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leaned towards Anarchism. But even here one must be careful when using the words “Hašek” and “convictions” in the same sentence. Sir Cecil Parrott sums up the situation beautifully: Not that he had any deep-seated radical convictions: he was quite happy to offer his stories and feuilletons to a leading bourgeois daily like the National Newspaper or to the journals of the Otto publishing house and try to extort advances from their cashiers. It was just that he was ‘agin the government’ — opposed to authority, whatever form it took, and instinctively up in arms against those who tried to discipline him, whether they were his employers, superiors, teachers, the bureaucracy or the police.20 The only political “action” taken by Hašek before his admittance to the Bolshevik party in Russia was the creation of the Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law (Stranu mírného pokroku v mezích zákona) — the very name of which pokes fun at the perceived timidity of Austro-Slav politics, seeking a greater accommodation for the Slavic majority nations in Austria-Hungary. Although Hašek actively “campaigned” in the Imperial parliamentary elections of 1911, standing as an actual candidate from Královské Vinohrady, the activities of the Party tended towards cabaret performances, and led to a book of humorous short sketches by Hašek. It was this sort of activity — comic acting and publishing — which became Hašek’s great vocation. Even Josef Švejk, who was to bring his creator a neverdiminishing fame, has his beginnings in this pre-war period in Prague, when he began to appear in short stories as the “idiot in the company” (blbec u kompanie). Unlike Švejk, Hašek did not share in the anti-Serbian euphoria of his country gearing up for war at the assassination of Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. He donned the feldgrau of the Austrian Army when he was called up in February of the following year (and assigned to the 91st Infantry Regiment in České Budějovice, the same regiment that Švejk was to make famous in the novel). Still, there was jaroslav-hasek-zivotopis/). 20 Parrott, p. 54. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

no mistaking where his true sympathies lay. In November 1914, he was arrested in Prague for impersonating a citizen of Russia, a nation with which Austro-Hungary was then at war. Zdeněk Hoření provides an interesting police report of the incident, drawn up by Prague Police Commissar Slavíček (whom Hašek was later to satirise in one of the stories included in this book): In going over the lists of foreigners for 24 November, it was ascertained that Jaroslav Hašek was registered at the U Valšů inn, pretending to have been born in Kiev, having arrived from Moscow. He was officially summoned to appear before us, and it was established that the person in question was indeed the well-known writer and journalist Jaroslav Hašek. During interrogation he claimed to have wanted to test whether the police were actively and effectively monitoring the evidences of foreign nationals in wartime; for this reason, he stated, he had entered false data on the registry form.21 Again the clowning, again the thumb-nosing buffoonery. Cecil Parrott notes that this was not an isolated incident, for at this time Hašek was wont to frequent the bars and cafés of Prague, speaking only the (elementary) Russian he had begun to learn at the Commercial Academy. When asked why, he would reply with rather risky statements of the type “Well, we’ll all be speaking it soon enough.”22 It is not hard to detect, beneath all the smirks and giggles, an authentic sympathy for the brother Slavic nation in the East, an affection which has its roots in the Pan-Slavism symptomatic of many generations of Czech nationalists. The Germanising policies implemented in Bohemia following the Habsburg victory at White Mountain (1620), aimed at suppressing the Slavic ethnic identity of the Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia. naturally turned the more conscious element of the nation toward dreams of some sort of union, whether spiritual or political, with the one autonomous Slavic power in the

21 Cited in Zdeněk Hoření (ed.) Jaroslav Hašek, Tajemství mého pobytu v Rusku (Praha: Naše vojsko, 1985), p. 184. 22 Cf. Parrott, pp. 140 ff.

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world, Russia.23 Germanisation was so thorough in the Czech lands that, by the early nineteenth century, the Czech language had almost died out. The modern language was saved from oblivion — almost literally — by philologists and writers of the národní obrození like Fr. Josef Dubrovský (1753—1829) and Josef Jungmann (1773—1847) who reconstructed it on the basis of the speech of the peasantry24 and with generous loan-words from the kindred Russian and Polish tongues. Of course, most things are much prettier from a distance. The one Slavic nation least affected by Pan-Slavism was Poland, a great portion of which had been subjugated by the Tsarist Empire since 1795. And those Czech Pan-Slavs who had the occasion to experience Russia at first hand, like Hašek’s predecessor in absurd humour, the journalist and poet Karel Havlíček-Borovský (1821-1856)25 soon returned home disabused of their uncritical crush on Saint Petersburg, having come to understand why the Poles rose in rebellion three times against Russia, in an unsuccessful effort to extricate themselves from the enforced union. Yet Hašek’s generation had unlearnt, or never had learnt, such lessons. Because of Vienna’s attitude to the constituent non-German nations of the Empire, which was changing only so very, very slowly, the (again, mostly uncritical) adulation of Russia, and the hopes that the war on the horizon in 1914 would lead to the Austrian Slavs’ extrication from Vienna, was widespread. Milan Getting, the editor of the American periodical Slovenský Sokol (Slovak Falcon), thus described the sentiment of Czechs and Slovaks in the United States at the outbreak of the European conflict: The long-awaited time had come when something was to happen. What this something would be no one dared to express in words, but in the heart of every loyal Slovak there was a feeling 23 Much the same was true of the even harsher policies of Magyarisation imposed upon the Slovaks in the Hungarian region of the Dual Monarchy. 24 For many years, education and the business of government were carried out in the Czech lands exclusively in German. As the peasantry had little cause to deal with either institution, they had no need for German, and thus preserved the Czech language by keeping it in daily use. 25 See my “Karel Havlíček-Borovský, Tyrolské elegie (Tyrolean Elegies, 1852), Translation and Commentary,” Kosmas 25 (2011) 1:151-171. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

that this something would be done by the Russians… From the very first day of the war our sympathies were on the side of the Triple Entente Powers.26 For Czechs and Slovaks in the West, this meant enlisting in troops fighting under the flags of the enemies of Austria-Hungary — primarily those of France — joining the fight in hopes of winning autonomy or independence for their homeland. For those conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian ranks, this often meant seeking the first opportunity of crossing the lines and surrendering to the “brother Slavs,” the Russians. Janko Jesenský, the Slovak poet and politician, was one of those who bolted. He describes the process colourfully in Cestou k slobode [On the Road to Freedom], his memoirs of the war. Separated from his troop during a firefight in Galicia, he spends the night in a little forest, shivering and alone: Carefully, I crept on my belly up to the top of the little hill and raised my head to see what was at the top. — Russians! I pulled my head down, but one of them had already seen me. Growling like an animal (certainly, I had given him just such a fright as he had given me; he might be thinking that I was leading an entire company!) he shot his rifle. I saw the burst, but my head was already safely down. The bullet did not strike me, but flew past, above me. —Don’t shoot! I’m a Slav! I cried out. —So toss away your rifle! came the reply. I heaved my Mannlicher to his feet. And the Russian who had shot at me, smiled and showed me a trench where I would be safe. They surrounded me. They gave me bread and lard. I unpacked the cigars and chocolate that my brother Vlad had given me, and passed them around. […] “For you the war is over. You’ll go to Russia, and then to Siberia. It’s good in Russia, and in Siberia. You can buy a pound 26 Cited in Blanka Ševčík Glos and George E. Glos, Czechoslovak Troops in Russia and Siberia During the First World War (New York: Vantage, 2000), p. 9.

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of white bread for three kopecks — our old ladies will take care of you.”27 Was it really all that bad, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that a Slav automatically thought of treason as soon as he donned the uniform, and acted on his thoughts, as soon as he was close enough to do so? There are, of course, different ways of looking at the Empire. There is the piety of a Rio Preisner, who saw in what he called humanitas austriaca both a stable Catholic political order, and the harbinger of a European cooperation that supersedes volatile notions such as linguistic and racial ethnicity: Throughout its entire existence the Austrian monarchy was bound to the preservation of the cultural and political integrity of Central Europe, in opposition to Germany and Russia. Its tragedy was that both the Germans and the Russians understood, and to a certain extent respected, this task of hers, whereas the nations that constituted Austria did not.28 On the other hand, there is the perhaps more widespread view exemplified by Tadeusz Kudliński, Preisner’s elder by seventeen years, who grew up in Austrian Kraków and, like Hašek, served in the army during the First World War: In the officers’ school in Vienna I had friends from among all the Central European nationalities. Viribus unitis was the slogan of the multi-ethnic monarchy, a slogan as grandiloquent as it was false and unctuous. We communicated amongst ourselves in German, which did not in the least indicate a loss of ethnic identity. In our own group, and back in Galicia, we felt ourselves to be Poles, and [Polish] patriots. […] The Austro-Hungarian monarchy was the embryo of a Central European federation, with this one flaw, that the German nationality, although in the

27 Janko Jesenský, Cestou k slobode, 1914-1918. (Turčianský svätý Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1933), pp. 38-39. 28 Rio Preisner, Až na konec Česka (London: Rozmluvy, 1987), p. 238. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

minority, claimed the right to be first in the nation, which was the cause of ceaseless ferment and opposition.29 In hindsight, it is hard not to see in the well-intentioned postulate of national (read: ethnic) self-determination formulated by Woodrow Wilson, which led to the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, the bitter fruit of self-identification via language and religion, which led to the racial conflicts of the next few decades. Loyalty to “blood,” meaning, roughly, the language one spoke, the religion one adhered to, rather than to a supranational unifying figurehead such as the person of Franz Josef or his successor, the Blessed Karl I, is what set off the vicious bloodletting of Pole against German, Ukrainian against Pole, Pole against Slovak, during the fixing of “ethnic” borders in the 1920s — and to the popularity of hateful racial politics which characterise the German lands of the thirties and forties. But hindsight is 20/20, as they say. The situation in re the non-German peoples of the Austrian Empire in places like Poland and Bohemia was perhaps tolerable, and heading towards an even greater autonomy than had developed by the early twentieth century. The situation in Jesenský’s half of the Dual Monarchy was different. There, the Magyar majority was dead set against giving the sizeable Slovak and Croat minorities any sort of autonomy, even the right to use their native languages in school and court. Latin, which had been the parliamentary and legal language of the Hungarian Kingdom since time immemorial, had been replaced in the mid-nineteenth century with Magyar, and Magyarisation was so harsh in the Slovak areas of Hungary that Jesenský could be shunned and demoted at work (he was a lawyer) before the war, and incarcerated during his time in uniform, for such innocuous faux-pas as speaking Slovak in public, or singing Slovak songs in a pub. Hoření exaggerates with the expected pro-Russian sentiments of an author writing in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic when he calls all “proAustrian” Czechs “degenerates and renegades.” But he is merely telling the truth that, rightly or wrongly, “the majority of Czech soldiers never saw the Russian army as their enemy.”30 29 Tadeusz Kudliński, Młodości mej stolica (Warszawa: Pax, 1970), pp. 10-11. 30 Hoření, p. 186. The word he uses is odrodilec, which might also be translated as an “unnatural son.”

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The point is, there was a serious morale issue in the Slavic formations of the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Hašek’s Russian preferences were nothing out of the ordinary. His career as an Austrian soldier lasted six months: from his enlistment in February until August when — despite his heroics at the River Igla — he did not escape with the others at a sudden, overhwhelming Russian charge, but calmly waited to be taken prisoner. He was not alone. According to Hoření, that day marked a rout for the Austrians. 135 men of the 91st Infantry Regiment were killed, 285 wounded, and the great majority — 509 — taken into captivity, whether willingly or no.31 Thus began Jaroslav Hašek’s six years and three months in Russia, which gave rise to the book now in your hands.

FROM T S A R I S T PA N-S L A V T O B OLSH EV I K Jaroslav Hašek’s career in Russia cannot be separated out of his experience as a Czechoslovak prisoner of war, and the history of the Czechoslovak Legion, of which he was once a member. The beginnings of the modern Czechoslovak Army32 may be found among the émigré communities in Great Britain, the United States, and (especially) France, which raised a modest amount of Czechs and Slovaks to fight alongside the Allies in the struggle against Austria-Hungary.33 As far as Russia is concerned, petitions to the Tsarist government by the 31 Hoření, p. 186. 32 The common history of the Czechs and Slovaks, perhaps the closest kindered of any of the Slavic nations, is age-old and complicated. Although certain historical periods have seen agitation toward the recognition of one “Czechoslovak” people (an ideology especially prevalent during the Romantic nineteenth century, among such thinkers as the Slovak Lutheran pastor Jan Kollár [1793—1852]), generally, the two nations have understood themselves as closely related, speaking mutually intelligible languages, but having distinct identities. Most recently, this viewpoint has been underscored with the peacefully agreedupon dissolution of the Czecho-Slovak Republic on 31 December 1992, from which time the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been two independent states. Since 1 May 2004, along with Poland and others, they have been member states of the European Union. We will continue using the adjective “Czechoslovak” in this essay, as Slovak institutions also date their modern existence from the Pittsburgh Accord of 18 October 1918, and the Czechoslovak Legion. 33 Glos and Glos (p. 8) note a company of 600 Czechs and Slovaks from THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

Kiev-based Union of Czechoslovak Societies (Svaz Československých Spolků) to form Czechoslovak companies to fight alongside the Russian army were presented as early as 7 August 1914.34 The Czechoslovak Legions per se were organised under the aegis of the Czechoslovak National Council in France, which was itself formed in 1915. Soon, with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution on 8 March 191735 and the abdication of the Tsar on 15 March, the Council was permitted to establish a Branch (known in Czech as the Odbočka) in Russia, and to conduct unrestricted recruiting among Czech and Slovak prisoners of war for the Czechoslovak Legion. It was this organisation that Hašek joined in June 1916. He was assigned to the Legion’s Kiev organ Čechoslovan, of which he became editor in July, a position he was to hold until February 1918. As was the case with most of the ethnically-defined nations that were to be established upon the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the war, the Czechs and Slovaks had always been ruled by a monarch. As yet, there was no clear consensus among the Czechs and Slovaks as to the form that the government of their future state would take. It was during this period of his journalistic career — before the abdication of Nicholas II — that Hašek, the future Bolshevik, was agitating for the Czech throne to be offered to the Tsar, and Czechoslovkia united to the Russian Empire, either in a political, or a personal union.36 It was also in Kiev that Janko Jesenský met up with Hašek. He recounts the following anecdote, which portrays a new Hašek — the Legionnaire (he addresses Jesenský per the Legionary greeting “brother”) — and the old Hašek, quick-eyed and irresponsible: Jaroslav Hašek, the humorist, also frequented the editorial offices of Čechoslovan, but usually at night, so as to stretch his France and Great Britain as the first independent Czechoslovak unit to enter the fray from the West. 34 Glos and Glos, p. 11. 35 23 February 1917 in Orthodox Russia, which used the Julian calendar until the Bolshevik government brought Russia in line with the West with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar on 14 February. All dates throughout this essay are “New Style,” i.e. Gregorian. 36 Hoření, p. 187.

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legs out on some editorial desk and pillow his head on a pile of newsprint, of which there was more than enough there to be found. We rarely met. People said of him that he often got drunk and caused scandals in bars, but that he was an excellent writer of humorous stories. I don’t know how it happened, but one day we found ourselves in the offices during the daylight hours. He went about dressed in uniform, with a pale, swollen face, with tiny eyes above his round cheeks: his was almost a woman’s face, on which hair would not grow, or at least so it seemed to me. He inspected the feet of every person who was in the place, or who walked in. His boots were in bad shape. One of his big toes seemed to be peeping out and nodding at me. “Brother, you have another pair of boots,” he said, grabbing me by the sleeve. “How do you know?” “Yesterday you were in army boots, and today you’ve got civilian ones on.” “That’s true.” “I’d buy those army boots off you.” “All right.” And in this way my high-laced boots, which I was given by the Red Cross way back in Berezovo, all the way past Baikal […] came into Hašek’s possession. It was a silly thing to do. Not because I should have known that I wouldn’t get a kopeck out of Hašek in exchange for them — I did know that, in the end — but as a former soldier, I should have thought about a reserve. Life is a war and in this war, sometimes boots become casualties.37 The Czechoslovak Legion that these “brothers” made up was built to fight alongside the Russian army on the Eastern front. Despite the fall of the Tsar, the Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, and later Aleksandr Kerensky, vowed to honour their obligations toward the Western Allies and continue the war against the Central Powers. And fight they did, the Czechoslovaks, distinguishing themselves especially at the Battle of Zborov (Zborów) in Galicia in early July, 1917. However, 37

Jesenský, pp. 130-131.

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this battle, part of the so-called “Kerensky Offensive,” was to be the last offensive launched by the Russians in World War One. When the Provisional Government was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October 1917, a separate peace was sought with the Central Powers, and an armistice signed on 8 November. This posed a great dilemma for the Czechoslovaks. Not only did they wish to continue the struggle against the Emperor they had abandoned; it was a matter of life and death for them. The independent Czechoslovak state that the legionnaires, and their political leaders, were risking their lives to establish had little chance of coming into existence as long as the Austro-Hungarian Empire was undefeated. Imprisoned in Russia, now fighting against the Army that many of them had voluntarily deserted, on the side of the Russians, the Czechoslovaks could never return home as long as the AustroHungarian system was still in power there. If Russia was withdrawing from the battlefield, the Czechs and Slovaks needed to remain on it. But they had to get out of Russia. If the new Soviet government agreed to the Austrian demands to return their prisoners of war, their lives would truly be on the line. Thus was born the idea of extracting the Legion from Russian territory and transferring it to France, where it would carry on the battle against the Central Powers from the West. And so the head of the National Council, future president Tomáš G. Masaryk (1850—1937), negotiated what was to be an epic withdrawal of the Czechoslovak Legions across the immense continent of Eurasia, from the Ukraine, by rail, to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean, whence they would continue their world-encircling journey by ship. As Masaryk said on 7 April 1917, in an address to the troops printed in the Czechoslovak Daily: I am very satisfied at the fact that our united efforts have resulted in the creation of a corps, and in difficult circumstances at that. I am even more joyful that despite these hard times you have preserved your unity […] This unity of ours is something that our enemies should keep in mind; it will be a terror to them. […] Czechs of all parties and fractions have understood the exigencies of this ponderous moment, and have gathered together in a tightly knit order. Czechs and Slovaks have discovered a vital unity. That unison extends among Czechoslovaks and Russians,

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and it will be given to you to fight alongside the Yugoslavians and Poles. We Slavs have found ourselves in danger — let us remain faithful and devoted to one another! In France and Italy we will also be fighting on behalf of Russia. Our desire was to fight alongside our Russian brothers, and we gave our initial testimony to that desire in Zborów. But Zborów is in the past now, and we are sorry that a separate peace has been signed in the name of Russia. But it is for this very reason that we will continue the struggle in generous France, and our victory over Austria-Hungary will strengthen Russia as well. Despite all misfortunes and catastrophes we believe in the future of the Russian nation. As long as you remain in Russia, you are to preserve a strict neutrality in all her domestic quarrels, as you have done up to this point. We have no enemies among the great Slavic nation except those people and that party which openly unites with our enemies. Long live Russia and France! Long live the Allies! Long live the united, independent Czechoslovak nation! […] Brother soldiers, be resolute in your suffering, and preserve your unity! […] All for one, and one for all!”38 As it turned out, the journey would be a difficult one. According to the terms of the armistice, the Ukraine won her brief autonomy, and troops from the Central Powers arrived, seeking, among other things, the return of the Czechs and Slovaks who, in their eyes, had deserted the colours and taken up arms on the side of the enemy. Fortunately for the Legion, they were able to evacuate the Ukraine and Western Russia, but not without tense moments. Between 8-13 March, 1918, the Legion waged a fierce battle with the Germans in the northern Ukrainian city of Bakhmach, covering the retreat of the trains heading East. The battle was a victorious one for the Czechoslovaks, and claims a place next to Zborów in the military legends of the nation. Such an eventuality — rearguard battles with the Germans and Austrians — was to be foreseen. The true danger facing the 38 T.G. Masaryk, cited by František Polák, Masarykovy legie v boji proti Sovětům (New York: Independence Publishing Corporation, 1957), pp. 5-6. THE S E CRE T HIS TORY O F M Y S O JO U R N IN R U S S IA

Czechoslovaks came from the Russian “brothers” of whom Masaryk spoke so highly in his address to the troops. As the title of František Polák’s book Masaryk’s Legions in Battle Against the Soviets suggests, despite all of the smiles and handshakes and assurances of safe passage through Russia and Siberia to the embarkation point in Vladivostok, Soviet authorities went back on their word almost immediately. Original agreements on how to transport the weapons of the Czechoslovak troops to their destination, and how many of them could be retained by the retreating Legion, were unilaterally broken and replaced with harsher demands. The progress of the echelons was interfered with and retarded for long pauses at station after station, as “Stalin, who played the main role in negotiating the unfavourable conditions for the departure of our armies in Penza […] also encouraged the local Siberian Soviets in their enmity towards our echelons, and in their resistance to them as they made their way East.”39 Armed battles between the Czechoslovaks and the Red Army and Soviet commandos flared up time and time again along the nearly 4,500 miles of railroad track stretching from the Ukraine to the Pacific Coast.40 Agitation among the Czechoslovak Legions intended to convince the soldiers not to continue the trek to France, but to remain instead inside Russia and enlist in the Red Army to help in the struggle against the Whites in the worsening Russian Civil War was carried out by agents of Antonov Ovseyenko, the commander in chief of Soviet forces in the Ukraine, and Semyon Aralov, head of the operational department of the People’s Commissariat for War.41 They did not have much success in this. Polák states that the Legions generally kept to the line laid out in Masaryk’s address: The masses of our army instinctively knew [what the Soviets were aiming at], even though the lion’s share of them were Czechoslovak workers who had nothing, nor could they have anything, against the revolutionary movement of the Russian workers, even if they differed from them ideologically. For the 39 Polák, pp. 12-13. 40 Readers with a knowledge of Czech may find an interesting description of these matters in Miloš Kratochvíl’s Památné bitvy našich dějin (Praha: Josef Hokr, 1937), especially the chapter “Domů přes Sibiř,” which begins on p. 367. 41 Cf. Polák, p. 11; Glos and Glos, p. 38.

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legionnaires were conscious of the unique goal set before them, for which they had devoted their lives by enlisting in the Legion: to continue the fight for the freedom of their nation on the battlefield, against Austria and Germany. They had no interest in playing the gendarme to stifle the resistance against the Bolsheviks, or in allying themselves with them. They wouldn’t for anything wish to become mired down in the civil wars of Russia, and thus betray the political revolution of their own nation.42 This is not to say that there were no such betrayals of the national cause on behalf of the Bolsheviks. Polák acknowledges the existence of Czech Bolshevik agitators among the troops, while at the same time downplaying their significance: “The Czech Bolsheviks played no other role in all this than that of mere tools in the Soviets’ hands against us.”43 One of those tools was Jaroslav Hašek. In April of 1918 he formally burnt his bridges with the Legion by sending the following letter to the National Council Branch, which was read out at a meeting on the fourteenth: I hereby declare that I am opposed to the policy of the Branch and our army’s departure for France. I accordingly proclaim that I am leaving the Legion, until other views prevail both in it and throughout the whole leadership of the National Council. I request that my decision be placed on record. I shall continue to work for the Revolution in Austria and for the liberation of our nation.44 The manner in which this played out will be seen by examining the writings included in this book, especially the propagandistic writing that Hašek took up on behalf of another revolution than that in Austria, and against the Legion itself. The reaction among the ranks of the Legion was unforgiving. The mills of the army roll slowly, but surely, and three months later, an 42 43 44

Polák, pp. 9-10. Polák, p. 12. Cited by Parrott, p. 185.

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arrest warrant and charge sheet was drawn up by the Legion’s court martial against Hašek: Field Court Martial of the Czechoslovak Army Omsk, 25 July 1918, Nr. 203 ARREST WARRANT The Field Court Martial of the Czechoslovak Army hereby publishes, at the proposal of the public prosecutor this warrant for the arrest of Jaroslav Hašek, former member of the editorial board of the Humoristické listy in Prague; former volunteer of the 1 Czechoslovak Jan Hus Regiment; editor of Čechoslovan in Kiev; member of the editorial board of the soc. dem. com. periodical Pochodeň in Moscow, organiser of the Czechoslovak Red Army in Samara, who is charged with committing the crime of treason against the Czechoslovak nation. All members of the Czechoslovak revolutionary movement are hereby firmly directed to detain Jaroslav Hašek, in all places and at all times, and to transport him under armed guard to the Field Court Martial of the Czechoslovak Army.45 With the Czechoslovak Legion hot on his heels, Hašek had a direct and urgent reason to escape into the depths of the Tatar regions of Asian Russia, which he describes in the unfinished story “Jubilee Reflections.” If Zdeněk Hoření is to be believed, he was wise to take to his heels, for “after the battles in Penza, several Czechs, members of the 1 Penza Czechoslovak Regiment [of the Red Army] fell into the Legion’s hands. The captives were hanged without a trial. Hašek might well consider what might have been his fate, had he himself been captured by the ‘brothers.’”46 The same author cites the Moscow Haškologist Petr Matko, who purported to be in possession of a letter from a former legionnaire that stated that he had been urged by “someone in the Legions to assassinate Hašek in Samara.”47 45 46 47

Cited by Gan, p. 89. Hoření, p. 198. Hoření, p. 197. JAROSLAV HAŠEK

While it was that Hašek, to his credit, was above board enough to announce his departure from the Legions, we know that at least two months before his letter was read aloud at the National Council meeting, he was in Moscow. There, he was writing for the Communist periodical Průkupnik [The Pioneer], having entered into the ranks of the Red Army. In March, along with the Russian Bolshevik S. M. Biryukov, he attended a Communist rally at the Aleksieyevsky Military Academy, at which Lenin spoke. “Lenin made the greatest impression on us, with his speech. We were seeing him in person for the first time,” Biryukov wrote: This was the first time that we had the occasion to hear him speak. Hašek declared that although he is not a Communist himself, he would follow Lenin, and fight for the victory of the proletarian revolution. This declaration by the Czech Internationalist elicited our great enthusiasm. Ivan Georgiyevitch Kamkov, the eldest of us all, and a participant of three revolutions (he had been a member of the party since 1902), approached Hašek, took him in his arms and said, “Comrade Hašek, permit me to thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”48 Meanwhile, Hašek’s former comrades in the Czechoslovak Legion were continuing their improbably horrific, and heroic, journey to the Pacific Ocean — which he was to belittle so pettily in the story “The Lost Echelon.” Hašek did not accompany them; instead, he would “follow” Lenin, the same Lenin who, several months later, said the following about the Czechoslovak Legion: “Now, the fate of the entire revolution hangs on this alone — on the swift victory over the Czechoslovaks on the Kazan-Ural-Samara front. Everything depends on this.” Just a few weeks later, Lenin would send the following telegram to the staff of the Fifth Red Army (to which Hašek proudly belonged and extolled in his propagandistic writings): “the suppression of the Kazan Czechs, and the White Guards, just like that of the kulak leeches who support them, shall be exemplary and merciless.”49 48 49

Pytlík, pp. 214-215. Cited in Hoření, pp. 202-203. The first quote is from 1 August, and the

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jaroslav Hašek (1883—1923) is one of the most recognised Czech writers. He is the author of Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války [The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk in the World War, 1921/23]. Left unfinished at his death, it is one of the greatest humorous novels in world literature, centring on the comings and goings of Josef Švejk, dog thief, falsifier of pedigrees, and generally unflappable, beersoaked goodfellow from Prague. Innocent to the point of pathology, Švejk keeps the reader in a state of uncertainty. Is he an idiot, or the smartest schemer to grace the earth? Before the war, Hašek made his living as a writer of feuilletons for various satirical magazines, and as a reporter who was not above making up interesting stories to boost readership. His inventions of animals for the naturalist periodical Animal World, including an advertisement for werewolves as “companions that can replace the dog in all things” are the stuff of legend. He also once ran for political office, as a candidate of the farcical Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law. Called to the colours at the outbreak of the First World War, he took the first occasion to cross the lines into voluntary Russian captivity — despite having been recommended for a medal of valour while serving with the Austrian army. His Russian “sojourn” lasted six years. During his time in Sovietising Russia, he joined the Red Army and the Communist Party. For a while he served as one of the town commandants of the small Siberian city of Bugulma. His experiences during that period of his life resulted in nine of the stories included in this volume, which he began publishing after his return to Czechoslovakia in 1920. Jaroslav Hašek wrote some 1,200 short stories and articles during his short life. The Secret History of My Sojourn in Russia presents the reader with 52 of the most entertaining, and chilling, examples of his Russian period, containing both humorous fiction and deadly serious propaganda.

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ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR Charles S. Kraszewski (b. 1962) is a poet and translator, writing in both English and Polish. He is the author of three volumes of original verse; his translations published by Glagoslav include the entirety of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve (2016) and Stanisław Wyspiański’s Wawel Plays (both from the Polish) and a collection of Jan Balabán’s short fiction, Maybe We’re Leaving, from the Czech. He is a member of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad (London) and of the Association of Polish Writers (Kraków).

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Dear Reader, Thank you for purchasing this book. We at Glagoslav Publications are glad to welcome you, and hope that you find our books to be a source of knowledge and inspiration. We want to show the beauty and depth of the Slavic region to everyone looking to expand their horizon and learn something new about different cultures, different people, and we believe that with this book we have managed to do just that. Now that you’ve got to know us, we want to get to know you. We value communication with our readers and want to hear from you! We offer several options: – Join our Book Club on Goodreads, Library Thing and Shelfari, and receive special offers and information about our giveaways; – Share your opinion about our books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores; – Join us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our publications and news about our authors; – Visit our site www.glagoslav.com to check out our Catalogue and subscribe to our Newsletter. Glagoslav Publications is getting ready to release a new collection and planning some interesting surprises — stay with us to find out! Glagoslav Publications Email: contact@glagoslav.com

Glagoslav Publications Catalogue •• The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova •• Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams by Layla Alexander-Garrett •• Andrei Tarkovsky - A Life on the Cross by Lyudmila Boyadzhieva •• Sin by Zakhar Prilepin •• Hardly Ever Otherwise by Maria Matios •• Khatyn by Ales Adamovich •• The Lost Button by Irene Rozdobudko •• Christened with Crosses by Eduard Kochergin •• The Vital Needs of the Dead by Igor Sakhnovsky •• The Sarabande of Sara’s Band by Larysa Denysenko •• A Poet and Bin Laden by Hamid Ismailov •• Watching The Russians (Dutch Edition) by Maria Konyukova •• Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko •• The Stone Bridge by Alexander Terekhov •• Moryak by Lee Mandel •• King Stakh’s Wild Hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich •• The Hawks of Peace by Dmitry Rogozin •• Harlequin’s Costume by Leonid Yuzefovich •• Depeche Mode by Serhii Zhadan •• The Grand Slam and other stories (Dutch Edition) by Leonid Andreev •• METRO 2033 (Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky •• METRO 2034 (Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky •• A Russian Story by Eugenia Kononenko •• Herstories, An Anthology of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers •• The Battle of the Sexes Russian Style by Nadezhda Ptushkina •• A Book Without Photographs by Sergey Shargunov •• Down Among The Fishes by Natalka Babina •• disUNITY by Anatoly Kudryavitsky •• Sankya by Zakhar Prilepin •• Wolf Messing by Tatiana Lungin •• Good Stalin by Victor Erofeyev

•• Solar Plexus by Rustam Ibragimbekov •• Don’t Call me a Victim! by Dina Yafasova •• Poetin (Dutch Edition) by Chris Hutchins and Alexander Korobko •• A History of Belarus by Lubov Bazan •• Children’s Fashion of the Russian Empire by Alexander Vasiliev •• Empire of Corruption - The Russian National Pastime by Vladimir Soloviev •• Heroes of the 90s - People and Money. The Modern History of Russian Capitalism •• Fifty Highlights from the Russian Literature (Dutch Edition) by Maarten Tengbergen •• Bajesvolk (Dutch Edition) by Mikhail Khodorkovsky •• Tsarina Alexandra's Diary (Dutch Edition) •• Myths about Russia by Vladimir Medinskiy •• Boris Yeltsin - The Decade that Shook the World by Boris Minaev •• A Man Of Change - A study of the political life of Boris Yeltsin •• Sberbank - The Rebirth of Russia’s Financial Giant by Evgeny Karasyuk •• To Get Ukraine by Oleksandr Shyshko •• Asystole by Oleg Pavlov •• Gnedich by Maria Rybakova •• Marina Tsvetaeva - The Essential Poetry •• Multiple Personalities by Tatyana Shcherbina •• The Investigator by Margarita Khemlin •• The Exile by Zinaida Tulub •• Leo Tolstoy – Flight from paradise by Pavel Basinsky •• Moscow in the 1930 by Natalia Gromova •• Laurus (Dutch edition) by Evgenij Vodolazkin •• Prisoner by Anna Nemzer •• The Crime of Chernobyl - The Nuclear Goulag by Wladimir Tchertkoff •• Alpine Ballad by Vasil Bykau •• The Complete Correspondence of Hryhory Skovoroda

•• •• •• ••

The Tale of Aypi by Ak Welsapar Selected Poems by Lydia Grigorieva The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk The Garden of Divine Songs and Collected Poetry of Hryhory Skovoroda •• Adventures in the Slavic Kitchen: A Book of Essays with Recipes •• Seven Signs of the Lion by Michael M. Naydan •• Forefathers’ Eve by Adam Mickiewicz •• One-Two by Igor Eliseev •• Girls, be Good by Bojan Babić •• Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena •• Soghomon Tehlirian Memories - The Assassination of Talaat •• The Grand Harmony by Bohdan Ihor Antonych •• The Selected Lyric Poetry Of Maksym Rylsky •• The Shining Light by Galymkair Mutanov •• The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets - An Anthology •• Acropolis - The Wawel Plays by Stanisław Wyspiański •• Contours of the City by Attyla Mohylny •• Conversations Before Silence: The Selected Poetry of Oles Ilchenko •• Nikolai Gumilev’s Africa •• Zinnober's Poppets by Elena Chizhova •• The Hemingway Game by Evgeni Grishkovets More coming soon…