Россия, кровью умытая

by Artyom Vesyoly, Артём Весёлый, Ignacy Szenfeld (Translator)

В романе «Россия, кровью умытая» замечательного русского писателя, одного из зачинателей советской литературы Артема Веселого (1899 1938) запечатлен облик революционной России, охваченной огнем гражданской войны.

Текст приводится по изданию Артем Веселый. Избранные произведения, М., Гослитиздат, 1958 (с устранением опечаток).

Подзаголовок «Роман. Фрагмент» был сделан автором.

Genres: Fiction, Russia

560 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

Артём Весёлый (Real Name: Никола́й Ива́нович Кочку́ров; 1899—1938)
Born in Samara, on the banks of the Volga, the son of a waterside worker, Artyom Vesyoly was the first member of his family to learn to read and write. He took part in the Civil War of 1918-1921 on the Red side, and at its conclusion, began a prolific literary career. Vesyoly took as his main theme the horrific events he had witnessed and participated in during the fierce fighting in Southern Russia between the contending forces - Red, White, Cossack, anarchist and others - and the effects of these on the participants and unfortunate civilians caught between them.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russia Washed in Blood is one of the most colourful novels about the Revolution and Civil War. And for me it has become the symbol of the sanguinary history and the singular book of the cosmic shift in human consciousness…

Revolution in Russia –
raw Mother Earth shuddered and
the Whole wide world was plunged into turmoil.

Shaken by the hurricane of war, the world staggered, drunk with blood.
Cruisers and dreadnoughts plied the seas and oceans, belching fire and thunder. In their wake roamed submarines and minelayers, thickly sowing the watery wastes with the seeds of death.
Aeroplanes and Zeppelins flew west and east, south and north. From the heights above the clouds a pilot’s hand flung burning brands into the hives of human aggregations, the bonfires of the cities.

Revolution is a storm of fire… Revolution is a tempest of blood… And all the elements are at war with each other… And chaos rules the earth…

The soldiers drowned their longing for home and lost freedom with eau de cologne, furniture polish and varnish. During brief halts they danced on the platforms and had their pictures taken by station photographers, and in bigger towns they piled into horse-drawn cabs and rode off at full tilt to the brothels.

Civil war is a human cataclysm – it sweeps everything on its way and it knows no mercy either for the right or for the wrong… And all ends in the bitterest tears… And those tears can’t dry for a long, long time.

[Mike]

From Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary:

In the same period, censorship and ‘criticism’ achieved the silencing of a masterly Communist writer who had risen from the people, Artem Vesioly. But then- the title he had given his outstanding novel was Russia Washed in Blood!

It sounds intriguing. But unfortunately, if the only available edition is in Romanian, I guess I won’t be reading it anytime soon.