“Chapaev” Furmanov in brief summary


In the frosty January midnight of the nineteenth year from the station of Ivanovo-Voznesensk the working detachment assembled by Frunze sent to the Kolchak Front. From all factories and factories, workers come to accompany their comrades. In front of a crowd of people, speakers speak with brief speeches. On behalf of the detachment Fyodor Klychkov bids farewell to the weavers. He is from former students, “in the revolution he quickly found in himself a good organizer.” The workers know him very closely and consider him their own.

The train goes to Samara for at least two weeks. In the Revolutionary Military Council, Klychkov receives a memorandum left for him by the commanders of the Fourth Army, in which Frunze orders the commissars to immediately go to him to Uralsk, ahead of the detachment, which, because of the devastation on the railway, moves slowly. On shifting, in a sleigh, political workers go on a journey. Finally, they meet in Frunze in Uralsk. While on

the road Klychkov listens to the stories of the drivers about Chapaev as a people’s hero. In Uralsk Fedor Klychkov, after a temporary job in the party committee, receives a new appointment – the commissioner in a military group, whose chief is Chapaev. Continuous fighting, led by the Red Army, does not provide an opportunity to organize organizational and political work. The structure of military units is often so confusing that it is unclear, how far the power of this or that commander extends, Klychkov looks closely at the military experts who crossed over to the side of the Red Army, sometimes lost in conjecture – do these people honestly serve the new government? Fedor awaits Chapaev’s arrival: this visit should to some extent clarify the ambiguity of the situation that has arisen.

Klychkov keeps a diary in which he describes his impressions of his first meeting with Chapaev. He struck him with his ordinary appearance of a man of medium height, apparently of small physical strength, but possessing the ability to attract the attention of others. In Chapaev felt an inner power, uniting people

around him. At the first meeting of the commanders, he listens to all opinions and makes his own, unexpected and precise conclusion. Klychkov understands how much Chapaev is spontaneous, irresistible, and sees his role in further exerting ideological influence on a truly popular commander.

In his first battle for the village Slomikhinsky Klychkov sees Chapaev riding around on the horse across the front edge, giving the necessary orders, encouraging the fighters, keeping up the hottest points at the right time. The commissar admires the commander, especially since he himself, because of his inexperience, lags behind the Red Army men who entered the village. In Slomikhinskaya, robbery begins, which Chapaev stops with one of his speeches before the Red Army men: “I order you never to rob again.” Only the scoundrels are roaring. And they obey him without question – however, returning the loot only to the poor. What is taken from the rich, divide for sale, so that there will be money for salaries.

Frunze by direct wire calls Chapaev and Klychkov to his place in Samara. There he appoints Chapaev as division chief, having previously ordered Klychkov to cool the partisan zeal of his commander. Fedor explains to Frunze that it is precisely in this direction that he conducts his work.

Chapaev tells Klychkov his biography. He says that he was born to the daughter of the Kazan governor from the gypsy artist, which Klychkov doubts, attributing this fact to the excessive imagination of the people’s hero. The rest of the biography is quite common: Chapaev, as a child, grazed cattle, worked as a carpenter, traded in a shop near a merchant, where he hated the merchants-deceivers, walked along the Volga with a hurdy-gurdy. When the war began, he went to serve in the army. Because of his wife’s betrayal, he left her, taking the children who now live with a widow. All his life he wanted to study, he tried as much as possible to read – and painfully feels the lack of education, talking about himself: “As there is a dark man!”

Division Chapaeva is fighting against Kolchak. The victories alternate with temporary setbacks, after which Klychkov urges Chapaev to learn strategy. In disputes, sometimes very sharp, Chapaev increasingly listens to his commissar. Buguruslan, Belebey, Ufa, Uralsk – these are the landmarks of the heroic path of the division. Klychkov, drawing closer to Chapaev, observes the formation of his military talent. The authority of the legendary commander in the troops is huge.

The division goes to Lbischensk, from which to Uralsk more than a hundred miles. Around – the steppe. The population meets the red regiments hostilely. More and more they are sent to the Chapayevites of the scouts, who inform Kolchakov about the poor supply of the Red Guards. There are not enough shells, cartridges, bread. The whites take unawares the exhausted and hungry detachments of the Red Army men. Chapaev is forced to wander the steppe in a car, on horses, in order to more quickly manage the disparate parts. Klychkova is recalled from the division to Samara, no matter how he asked to leave him to work next to Chapaev, given the mounting difficulties.

In Lbishensk there is a division headquarters, from here Chapaev continues to go around brigades daily. Intelligence reports that the major forces of the Cossacks near the village were not found. At night, someone’s order removes the reinforced guard; Chapaev did not give such an order. At dawn, the Cossacks catch the Chapayevites by surprise. In a short and terrible battle almost all die. Chapaev was wounded in the arm. Next to him there is always a faithful newsman Petka Isaev, who heroically dies on the bank of the Urals. Chapaev trying to cross the river. When Chapayev almost reaches the opposite shore, a bullet hits him in the head.

The remaining parts of the division with fights break out of the environment, remembering those who “with their selfless courage gave their lives on the banks and in the waves of the troubled Urals.”


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“Chapaev” Furmanov in brief summary