Bare Fields E-Book

Иван Лукаш

• Herausgeber: Antelope Hill Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Nearing the end of the Russian Civil War, a large portion of the White Army, along with some of their families and other emigres, evacuated to Greek-occupied Gallipoli, taking with them the very soul of Russia, desperately hoping to see her in a new dawn. Among them was author Ivan Lukash, who penned the following collection of musings and observations during this time in Gallipoli from 1920 to 1921. Bare Fields paints a vivid image of their camps, from the bustle of the mornings to the late-night outings of both soldiers and locals, sprinkled with an abundance of anecdotes from such famed men as Pyotr Wrangel, Anton Turkul, Vladimir Manstein, and Alexander Kutepov.
 
An overarching theme to the book can be illustrated with the following question: What will a Russian man do when he is deprived of everything-his homeland, his wealth, his family, when nothing remains but the dry, gray landscape of a once beautiful city, now turned into Russia's foreign cemetery of ashes? As hope persists among some while others fall to despair, Lukash beautifully captures the varied answers to this unasked question in a way that is deeply insightful and surprisingly timeless.
 
Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to present this first English translation of Bare Fields: The Russians in Gallipoli, 1920-21 by Ivan Lukash, translated by Elevenfortyseven, a delicate yet powerful testament to the Russian will. In the words of Lieutenant Misha, as recorded by Lukash, "We have become the living idea of Russia, and if she is alive, we are not dead either, because we carry Russia in us like the sun. And that is why everyone here has a burning soul."

Leseprobe

Bare Fields: The Russians in Gallipoli, 1920–21

Ivan Lukash

Bare Fields

The Russians in Gallipoli, 1920–21

Translated by Elevenfortyseven

A N T E L O P EH I L LP U B L I S H I N G

Translation Copyright © 2024 Antelope Hill Publishing

First edition, first printing, 2024

Foreword Copyright © 2024 Elevenfortyseven

Originally published in Russian as

Голое поле: книга о галлиполи

(Goloe Pole: Kniga O Gallipoli) in 1921.

Translated by Elevenfortyseven, 2024.

Cover art by Swifty.

Editing and layout by Margaret Bauer.

All images added are in the public domain.

Antelope Hill Publishing | antelopehillpublishing.com

Paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-89252-009-6

EPUB ISBN-13:979-8-89252-010-2

Maybe we are dead men, if Russia herself is dead.

Maybe we are not needed if Russia is not needed.

But she is alive, and don’t you realize

that we, like her, are alive too?

– Lieutenant Misha

C O N T E N T S

Translator’s Foreword

Kutep-Pasha

White Birds

The Scatter of Stars

Clouds

T R A N S L A T O R ’ S F O R E W O R D

ELEVENFORTYSEVEN

Few conflicts have been as acute as the Russian Civil War of 1917. As many as ten million lives were lost; most of these are contained within Russia herself, and most of these are the lives of entirely innocent civilians. And what does this conflict have to show for itself? An exodus of Russia’s greatest patriots, who never gave up and formed an intellectual powerhouse in the White emigre movement, publishing powerful literary attacks in Berlin, Paris, and Sofia (most notably Ivan Ilyin); the unraveling of the Second World War (an abundance of evidence indicates that Stalin was preparing, through all possible means, to invade Europe and suffocate her within the decadent grip of the Marxist Internationale); a failed state, its eventual collapse, and the suffering of millions among its ruins; and a country whose people were left to yearn for some semblance of historical stability.

To set the scene: two sides, two warring ideologies—the monarchist Whites and the communist Reds; the fields, cities, and rivers of Russia as their battlefield. Tsar Nicholas II and his family had been taken hostage, to be executed in cold blood only sixteen months later (thankfully, today’s majority of Russian and international public recognizes this act for what it truly was: a criminal slaughter). Red soldiers, men who had previously sworn an oath to protect their country and its citizens, are pillaging the streets, murdering landowners and shopkeepers, stealing, and raping their countrymen’s women “in the name of the Revolution.” Yet, despite all this chaotic pain, despite this ruptured boil spreading its rot all over the country’s healthy, fertile body, the people do not resist. There is a well-known anecdote conveyed to us by a certain man of military talent: he tells of his return to St. Petersburg following some travels and finds himself shocked by the utter depravity and destruction sweeping through the country’s former capital. As he walks through the streets and observes all this, he stumbles across a theater, one he used to frequent, and decides to peek inside in order to gauge the extent of the damages, or determine whether the Red pillagers had made it that far yet. He walks in, and, to his surprise, sees that the theater is packed with men and women watching a performance, laughing, clapping. The man stood petrified, wondering how this could be: their city is under murderous demolition, and yet the citizens enjoy a show, peacefully, unknowingly—carelessly. . . .

The esteemed man above was Baron Pyotr Wrangel. Eventually, he would lead the entire White Army and oversee the historic evacuation of the Crimea—an event that saved over 145,000 lives—when it became clear that the existing fronts of the White Army would no longer hold against the spreading Red terror in 1920. Aboard 126 ships, Wrangel’s fleet, also known as the Russian Squadron, sailed to Constantinople, where other White emigres (intellectuals, artists, academics, veterans of the Imperial Army caught abroad at the time of the struggle) had been patiently waiting for the Bolshevik atrocities to end. Most of the civilians settled there, with their families and many of the soldiers, but a thirty-thousand strong section of the Russian Squadron decided to settle in Greece’s Gallipoli (Gelibolu today; Kallipolis in the Greek meaning “Beautiful City”). For the next three years, the patriots of the White Army would live in limbo, in temporarily frozen history: the sun rises, the sun falls, the soldiers pray, have tea, exercise, and swim in the glistening sea. A profound feeling of loss, of irritability due to inaction, permeates every living corner of their massive camp. Some men await a return to their homeland, others revel in the nightly activities and overdrink, and a few are driven to an impatient suicide. . . .

The author of this book, this living description, Ivan Sozontovich Lukash (1892–1940), is among the men of Gallipoli. Born to a veteran of the Russo-Turkish War, Lukash is most famous for his “interviews” of Anton Turkul and Vladimir Manstein (see pages 47–56)—two legendary men of Mikhail Gordeyevich Drozdovsky’s Regiment, a famed unit of men who completed a daring campaign from Romania’s Jassy to the Don in only two months, averaging forty to forty-five miles walked a day, recruiting over two thousand men on their way to the Volunteer cause—which serve as a morbid, yet glaring highlight in Bare Fields. His purpose is clear: to document the life and emotions of the camps, in order to preserve the memory of Russia’s displaced patriots. Lukash sees a collective of ambitious young men left with nothing—no home, no patria, no money, and, in some cases, no health. Yet, his lines consistently reverberate with a certain kind of strength: the swarming psychological despair is offset by a sturdy carelessness toward the severe physical, and thus mental, condition. The patriots live for the White struggle; they live by the memory of their homeland, and by a certainty in its salvation. His imagery is persistently dry, gray, ageing and aged, bronze. Gallipoli is a cemetery, its only colors the brilliant uniforms and outfits of the Whites, their different colors determined by their belonging to X or Y regiment. The men are bronzed by the sun, lashed by it; their uniforms are red, white, blue, with accents of yellows on their banners, black eagles, and, at times, dark-green gangrene and rot, and crimson blood, all set to the shimmering waves of the bright, blue, never-ceasing sea.

This piece serves no ulterior purposes; it was not penned in order to propagandize, nor is it in any form a call to action. Lukash presents to us a Russian mosaic, each tile set perfectly to the next. This mosaic, enriched by the most heartfelt yearning, would only make its return to Russia following the collapse of the Communist regime. At times, the author humors us with an anecdote or an amusing accident, and at other times, he laments over a young woman and his memories of her as a schoolgirl amidst the winters of St. Petersburg. She is older now, but still so fair; she spends her days watching the soldiers tire at their daily work from the heights of a terribly dilapidated house, through a window terribly broken, terribly frozen. . . . She, and the other loving wives present, are forced to endure this pain in a soldierly way; Russia forces them to endure this; their love for her presents no other option. A man once said, when asked about the role of a Russian wife, “When her husband shoots at his enemies, she will be there to supply the ammo.”

Lukash covers one single year in the three-year timeline of the Gallipoli camps. A frozen winter, a blazing summer, rainy fall and spring: the soldiers wait on and on, through it all, patiently. They wait for their Motherland to beckon; some do not know if she ever will, while others have never been more certain of her eventual summons.

Sometime around 1921, Lukash would leave for Sofia, Bulgaria, where this book would be published a year later. From Sofia, Lukash would move to Berlin and form a close association with Vladimir Nabokov, the then twenty-four-year-old future author of the infamous Lolita. Of their association it was said, “Never again would Nabokov have such close contact in his work with any writer as he did with the cocky Lukash.” Indeed, they would spend the next three years co-writing plays and ballets to accompany various pieces by composers. This was the only instance of Nabokov ever agreeing to work with another writer, and, perhaps, after reading this book, the reason for this will become that much clearer to the dear reader.

Lukash eventually moved to France, where he penned several historical novels and worked as a co-editor for a Russian emigre newspaper, Revival, until his death from tuberculosis in 1940. It is of note to mention that Ivan Ilyin also penned articles for this newspaper, as the ideological head of the White movement; it is unknown whether they ever met or became acquainted through letters, but their articles read that much better when taken together, with the knowledge of the events that fill in the blank spaces of Russia’s twentieth-century mosaic history.

No introductions can do justice to the sentiment, the feeling, presented in this work. It is an exhortation of the true Russian spirit: gentle, clearheaded, unyielding, melancholy yet optimistic. Few peoples can understand the adversities faced by the Russian nation throughout history, and the importance of this first fight against Communism cannot be understated. The White Army lives on in every patriot, in every man who is aware of the significance of their task, of the significance of history itself, with the White Army as a prototype of future struggle and Bare Fields a meditation on its daily, at times uneventful, but deeply significant life.

When the coals die out, touch them with your tongs, strike the charred black embers, and the sparks will rush and dance—sit closer, lean into the heat, and listen to the whispers of the fire.

You see: the walls are crumbling silently and the crimson towers fall, lightly whistling. You see how, glistened by their scarlet armor, the knights arose, and then the flaming monks rushed away, swirling. You see the hurling of burning banners.

Sit closer, bend forward, so that the crimson light illuminates your face, and listen to the whispers of the fire.

Listen. . . .

General Alexander Kutepov (1882–1930)