The inhabitants of expensive apartments were, therefore, terrified to see- the filaments gradually reddening in their electric lamps, for this might be a kind of death-bed illumination, signifying the near approach of squads of armed workers....
The year 1918 made its exit in a roaring tempest throughout Russia.
The sombre autumnal clouds were big with rain.
There were fronts in all directions—in the far North, on the Volga at Kazan, the Lower Volga at Tsaritsyn, in the North Caucasus, and on the borders of the territory occupied by the Germans.
Trenches extended for thousands of miles.
The coming autumn brought little cheer to the Red Army men, many of whom, as they watched the clouds creeping slowly from the north, thought of their native villages, where the wind was tearing the straw from the thatches, nettles were growing all over their lands, and potatoes were rotting in the fields.
And there seemed no hope of the war ever ending.
Ahead was nothing but pitch-dark night and the feeble gleam from the rushlight in the hut, where fathers and sons were anxiously awaited, while stories of such fearsome doings were told that the children on the stove ledge began to cry.
After the Republic had dealt with the various risings, the Central Committee of the Party, as if in response to the autumn depression, mobilized the staunchest Communists of Moscow, Petrograd and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and dispatched them to the army.
They travelled by train towards the fronts, breaking down any sabotage, both deliberate and unintentional, which they came across on the line.
The stern regime of terror was established in the army, too.
Disorganized and wilting detachments were transformed into regiments subordinated to the will of the Revolutionary Military Council.
Valour and prowess became the order of the day.
Cowardice was regarded as tantamount to treason.
The Red front took the offensive.
One sharp blow accounted for Kazan, and soon after, Samara fell.
The White detachments fled in panic before the Red Terror.
At Tsaritsyn, where Stalin was on the Revolutionary Military Council of the Tenth Army, a vast and bloody battle was going on against the White Cossack army of Ataman Krasnov, who had the aid and connivance of German headquarters....
But all this was only the prelude to the great struggle—a review of forces before the main events of 1919.
Ivan Ilyich Telegin had fulfilled the mission entrusted to him by Gimza.
During the fighting at Kazan he was appointed commander of his regiment and was one of the first to get into Samara.
It was a warm autumn day when he rode his shaggy pony down Dvoryanskaya Street at the head of his regiment.
They passed the square in which stood the monument to Alexander the Second— once more being hastily concealed with boards.
And there was the second house from the corner.... Ivan Ilyich bent his head—he was prepared for what he would see, but his heart nevertheless contracted with pain.
All the windows on the second floor—Dr. Bulavin's rooms—were smashed, and being on horseback, he could look into them: there was the walnut door, on the threshold of which Dasha had appeared, as in a dream, that time, and there the doctor's study, the bookshelves overturned and Mendeleyev's portrait on the wall, crooked, its glass smashed.... But where was Dasha?
What had happened to her?
There was no one to answer these questions.