Behind the Lines

In 1921, several months before Jaroslav Hašek started writing The Good Soldier Švejk, he described his life experiences in revolutionary Russia in the cycle The Red Commissar. In a similar way to how he mocked the pre-war Austro-Hungarian monarchy in his short stories, former Red Commissar Hašek captures the Bolshevik Revolution. The reader is presented with an amusing story set in the forgotten Tatar town of Bugulma, featuring the Soviet commander of the Tver revolutionary regiment, the drunkard Erokhimov, and the town commander, comrade Gašek. Through humour and hyperbole, Hašek shows both the fanaticism of the revolutionary era, when in the unfortunate year of 1918 everything suddenly "went off the rails", and the stupidity or simple human insecurity of the new rulers. The autobiographical cycle The Red Commissar is further supplemented by other of Hašek's short stories from that period. Unillustrated version.