Around 5,000 Kalmyks fought for the Germans and Italians, often serving as scouts. As for the Cossacks, many had fought against the Soviets during the Civil War and loathed the Communists. The Germans formed their first unit of defecting Don Cossacks in December 1941 and ultimately there were around 25,000 Cossacks fighting for Hitler: they were used for anti-partisan actions in Russia and later in the Balkans. To be fair, far more Cossacks served with the Red Army – seventeen corps on the southern fronts as opposed to just two corps of German collaborators. After the war, the Cossack and Russian collaborators captured by Britain were handed over to the Soviet secret police who either executed them or despatched them to the Gulags.
Finally the Germans issued their troops with Pervitin, a methamphetamine that allowed them to overcome fatigue and fight more viciously; the pills were addictive and often abused by units involved in the Nazi genocidal mass murders. They were nicknamed Stuka-tablets since their extreme ups and downs resembled the flight of the Stuka dive-bombers.
In many ways this is meant to be a homage to some of my favourite writers: I have mentioned Isaac Babel and Mikhail Sholokhov. But even though this is a very Russian, very Soviet and very Second World War novel, it is impossible to write about horsemen riding across sunbaked grasslands in times of unrelenting cruelty without recalling the brilliant Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard. This is also a homage to them.
Acknowledgements
I am hugely grateful to my superb editor and publisher Selina Walker for her delicate, energetic, tireless and sensitive editing, but also her sense of fun and comradeship on this and the other two novels – and to her assistant Cassandra Di Bello. Thank you to Mel Four, who designed this glorious cover. Thanks to my outstanding and irrepressible super-agent Georgina Capel and her team: Rachel Conway and Romily Withington (who have now sold these novels into twenty-seven languages) and her dynamic film/TV maestro Simon Shaps. Thanks to Lorenza Smith for the Venetian and Italian details; to Jonathan Foreman for his excellent editorial advice; and to my nephew Major Johnny Hathaway-White for his invaluable expertise on cavalry lore and horsemanship.
I want to thank my dear mother April Sebag-Montefiore, once a novelist herself, who came up with the name Silver Socks – and manages to be witty, wise and acute at the age of ninety.
Thanks above all to Santa who is wife, mother, novelist, friend, partner and consigliere on all matters – and to my children, daughter Lily and son Sasha, who make me laugh so much, and who, together, make up our ‘musketeers’.
This book is dedicated to Sasha.
Main Characters
Historical characters are marked with an asterisk
The Prisoners of Madyak-7
Benya Golden, writer, sentenced to 25 years
Jaba Leonadze, the Brigand-in-Power, Vor v Zakone, the Boss, a Georgian
Ramzan Ulibnush, ‘Smiley’, Chechen Criminal
‘Deathless’, Russian Criminal
Kuzma Prishchepa, ‘Speedy’, young Criminal, Don Cossack
Little Mametka, ‘Bette Davis’, Georgian Criminal
Dr Kapto, the ‘Baby Doctor’
Tonya (Antonina) Makarova, his nurse and assistant
Nyushka, ‘Bunny’, nurse
Yevgeny Melishko, ‘the General’, ex-prisoner
Senior Lieutenant Pavel Mogilchuk, NKVD officer, Head of the Special Unit
Captain Vladimir Ganakovich, Politruk, Political Officer
Captain Leonid Zhurko, officer
Sergeant Pantaleimon Churelko, ‘Panka’, Don Cossack, veteran of World War 1
Garanzha, ‘Spider’, Zaparozhian Cossack
Ismail Karimov, ‘Koshka’, ‘the Cat’, Uzbek
Major Ippolito Bacigalupe
Fabiana Bacigalupe, nurse, his wife
Cesare Malamore, Consul (Colonel) of Blackshirts (Voluntary Militia for National Security)
Major Count Scipione di Montefalcone, Savoy cavalry officer
Konstantin Mandryka, Chief of Schuma auxiliary police (Schutzmannschaft: ‘protection team’)
Bronislav Kaminsky,* deputy to Mandryka, Chief of Schuma, later commander of the SS Sturmbrigade Kaminsky (Russian National Liberation Army), Waffen-SS Brigadeführer, Iron Cross
SS Obersturmführer Oskar Dirlewanger,* convicted rapist/murderer, commander of the Nazi penal battalion known as the ‘Poachers’ Brigade’ and the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, later Oberführer, Iron Cross
Josef Stalin,* Supreme Commander, Chairman of the State Defence Committee, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, People’s Commissar of Defence, General Secretary of the Communist Party, ‘the Supremo’, ‘the Instantsiya’
Hercules Satinov, Soviet leader, member of the State Defence Committee, colonel general
Lavrenti Beria,* head of NKVD Security Organs, member of the State Defence Committee, Commissar-General of State Security
Svetlana Stalina,* daughter of the Leader, schoolgirl
Vasily Stalin,* son of the Leader, colonel in the air force, later general
Lev Shapiro, ‘the Lion’, journalist, screenwriter, war correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) newspaper
About the Author
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the acclaimed novels of his Moscow Trilogy – Sashenka and One Night in Winter, which won the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year Prize and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize: the novels are published in 27 languages. Montefiore is also the author of prize-winning bestselling history books now in 48 languages, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Jerusalem: The Biography and The Romanovs.
For more information see: www.simonsebagmontefiore.com or follow him on Twitter: @simonmontefiore.
Also by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Moscow Trilogy
Sashenka
One Night in Winter
The Royal Rabbits of London (with Santa Montefiore)
Jerusalem: The Biography
Catherine the Great and Potemkin
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Young Stalin
Titans of History
The Romanovs: 1613–1918
Praise for Red Sky at Noon
‘The gripping final instalment of the Moscow Trilogy tells of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Gulags and his fight for redemption. Meticulously researched… In this searing tale of love and war, most moving is the redemptive relationship between a soldier and a nurse that blooms amid the brutality. An homage to the author’s favourite Russian writers and the Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard, such influences pervade this atmospheric tale told in the author’s distinct own voice.’