This is certainly not a literary masterwork. It does not hold a candle to Quiet Flows The Don or Babel's Red Cavalry stories. On the other hand, it compares quite favorably to other Soviet propaganda books of the same era, such as the execrable How The Steel Was Tempered. Telling the story of a charismatic general through the eyes of his political commissar puts the title character in an interesting perspective. Chapayev is a bit vain and politically naive. There is a cult of personality around him that credits him with acts of individual heroism that are purely fictional. He gives rambling speeches that show a very primitive conception of the Bolshevik vision of socialism. Furmanov says several times that he is a unique product of this era, which is partly just Marxist cant about historical inevitability, but is also a true perception of a moment in history in which a smart and charismatic person from a disadvantaged background could rise to a position of great responsibility and excel in his work. However, Chapayev is probably lucky that that he was felled by an enemy bullet because he is precisely the kind of person who was not tolerated after Stalin consolidated his power. Chapayev would have been a prime candidate for a long sentence in the Gulag, or possibly just the more effective bullet in the head. Despite Chapayev's failings as a communist, the narrator has a great love and admiration for him. He appreciates Chapayev's leadership qualities and comes to like him personally. This makes for an interesting portrait of Chapayev, basically very positive, but flawed in some significant ways.