He passed Karel a mug of tea.
Romanek still kept abreast of events beyond their small attenuated world. He knew what was happening and felt he ought to have some sort of say in its outcome.
Not so Paul. That was where he differed from Romanek. Russia had changed him, Paul knew. He was tougher now, more resilient; hardened by what he had seen and what he had done. But he still thought himself to be little more than a passive link in the chain of events. If he happened to break, no matter; the chain would adjust and things would flow around him as they always had, as if he had never existed. His passiveness hadn’t changed. He still felt himself at the mercy of circumstance and supposed he always would be. Perhaps it was his nature to be blown this way and that, whichever direction the prevailing wind blew.
Karel had stretched out on his bunk with a newspaper. Posted as they were on the main line, editions of the Legion’s Československý deník were readily available. They were almost up to date. News, too, came from the constant stream of refugees passing along the track. Lucky ones had a horse and cart, sometimes even a cow; Kulaks in Bolshevik eyes, Paul supposed. Most were on foot, destitute families or widows with their children. A great number of the men passing were deserters from the Red Army or peasants dodging the Bolshevik draft. Caught between two armies, though, if they lingered in the rear of Kolchak’s forces too long it was likely they would end up as soldiers in his cause. Sometimes a few prisoners of war passed under armed guard. It was no war for taking prisoners and, dejected and demoralised, they had the look of men with no future. But having got this far from the front there was always the chance they might survive; conscripting them to Kolchak’s cause was easier than shooting them and digging graves in the frozen ground.
Romanek was reading from his newspaper.
‘It says here that your General Knox has taken charge of training Kolchak’s army in Vladivostok. More foreign aid is arriving as well.’
‘The British government see Kolchak as the saviour of Russia,’ said Paul.
Romanek hooted. ‘Too far away to see him for what he really is, that’s why.’
Being stationed on one of the rail arteries, they knew it was true about the war matériel. Fresh guns and supplies were flowing along the Trans-Siberian. Omsk was still a bottleneck, but they had seen for themselves trains of stores moving west. To the north of them, Gajda had benefited from a swelling of both men and supplies. He was now far better equipped and clothed than the old Peoples’ Army of Komuch had ever been.
Paul had struggled to understand it, though. Why were men — the majority of them peasants, after all — flocking to Kolchak’s banner now when, in the autumn when Komuch had lost Kazan, Samara and the other cities, they had been deserting in droves?
‘They’re a different class of peasant in Siberia,’ Karel said.
Paul scoffed. ‘You would have to classify them, wouldn’t you?’
Romanek may not have been an ideologue, but involving oneself in politics for any length of time was always to risk mud sticking. Politicians invariably dealt in generalisations as far as Paul could see — the thoughts and motivations of individuals far too complex a phenomena to be dealt with by the political mind. They preferred to reduce people to classifications. It had, after all, become the sine qua non of Bolshevism. In Paul’s opinion it was the first step anyone took in dehumanising a population.
He’d often said as much to Karel in the tedious dark hours spent killing time when they had had their fill of sleep.
‘You’re a cynic,’ said Karel.
‘All right, a different class of peasants how?’ he insisted, drying his socks over the stove and adding to the unwholesomeness of the atmosphere.
Karel propped himself on an elbow. ‘Different in that they’re not tied to landlords east of the Urals. There are no great estates in Siberia like there are in Russia. The Siberian peasant is either a tribesman or a man who has come east to escape serfdom — either the kind that existed before Alexander II, or the kind they’ve had to endure since.’
‘Or political exiles,’ Paul suggested.
‘Plenty of those,’ Karel agreed. ‘And their descendants. Did you know more than half a million were exiled up to nineteen-hundred?’
‘No,’ Paul replied, wondering who on earth had counted them. ‘In that case, I’d have thought they’d have no more love for White tsarists than a Russian peasant.’
‘Can’t speak for the tribes,’ said Romanek. ‘Who knows how they think? But the exiles made a life for themselves away from the government in Petersburg. They’ve got land, built businesses… Do you think they want to see the Reds take it away from them? Why do you think none of the local Soviets lasted long in Siberia unless they were SR controlled?’
Paul hadn’t given it much thought.
‘So they volunteer,’ Karel said, his tone adding an unspoken, ipso facto.
For now, Paul thought to himself. While things go well. If the Reds regroup and advance again he suspected it might be a different matter. No one is keen on joining a beaten army. And if the Omsk government couldn’t get men, he took it for granted they’d revert to type. Like the Reds, they’d use forced conscription, threats and beatings, burning villages and murdering as a last resort…
There had been a lull since the early successes. Gajda was still in Perm building up his forces, waiting for spring, while Voitzekhovsky was operating somewhere to the south of the railway, having left the Legion and rejoined the Russian army. Even further south, Kappel, the man who had persuaded Čeček to turn the Legion west against Samara and Kazan, was attempting to link up with Deniken in the Caucasus. There was talk of a push towards the Allies in Archangel. It had been reported in the Czech newspaper that General Poole had been replaced by General Ironside, and now the hope was that Ironside would resume the descent of the River Dvina and the Kotlas railway. Joining with Gajda, they would catch the Red Army in a pincer movement between Deniken and Kappel in the south.
Karel remained unconvinced. ‘It’ll never happen.’
‘Now who’s the cynic?’ Paul asked.
But he suspected Karel was right. So far, Ironside like his predecessor, had shown little inclination to quit the dubious comforts of Archangel for a winter campaign.
49
They stopped some distance from the station. A crowd gathered, hopeful of boarding. Paul jumped down, pushed his way through them and walked along the track against the flow of new arrivals. A convoy of trains lined the track ahead and into the railway station. Five, Paul counted as he passed, six including the armoured train — the broněviky at the head of the convoy. Russian troops guarded the trains, forcing back the press of refugees clamouring around them. For all Paul could tell by looking at them they might have been the same people he had seen in Omsk a year earlier. Now more ragged, more hungry, more desperate.
Beyond the station the sheds and railway workshops had been stripped of their timber. Firewood, he supposed. Towards Omsk, pillars of smoke rose into the frozen air as if from a desolate Gomorrah.
There was no transportation to be had into the centre of the city, but he had expected none. By now all the horses would have been eaten. A locomotive shunting boxcars along the spur line was being unloading of its freight for the convoy. Nothing appeared to be going back into Omsk. He supposed there was nothing to go back for.