Russians As They Were

THEY THAT TAKE THE SWORD--Nicholas Kalashnikoff--Harper ($3).

An autobiographical first novel of a Russian ex-revolutionist and army officer who escaped to the U. S. in 1924, They That Take the Sword is a simply-told, convincing, first-person marathon (717 pages). It traces the career of an idealistic, dynamic, personable young Siberian peasant who ran away at 16 to become a "Russian Lincoln." He became leader of a terrorist group, was exiled to Siberia, rose to a captaincy during the War, commanded both Red and White troops in the civil war, narrowly escaped "liquidation" when he grew disgusted with both sides.

Other novels, with somewhat similar background, have been written by Russian exiles. Not one has become popular. (All the business went to such characteristic Soviet sagas as Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don, Gorky's Bystander, etc.)

They That Take the Sword not only has a good chance of success because of new interest in 20th-Century Russian history, but also stands out as a good novel in its own right. It tells its bloody epic through plausible human (and inhuman) characters. Its hero, Sergei Kuskov, is human in his contradictions. He coolly plans the assassination of Tsarist generals and police, but is tormented by puritanical scruples in his love affairs. A deadly foe of Tsarism, he nevertheless wins a medal for his zeal as a railroad construction boss, becomes a patriot in the War, gets to believe in democracy only after intellectual torment.

In this portrait, Sergei (like other characters in the book) has more of the Russian character as portrayed by Tolstoy and Dostoevski than of that played up by Soviet fiction. Soviet critics explain that Russians have changed, grown cheerful, hygienic, machine-minded, athletic, non-acquisitive. They That Take the Sword suggests that the Russian character survives more stubbornly than any Soviet official confesses.

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