with you?”
“It’s OK,” I answered slowly, hoping for a happy outcome. Then he told me to run home.
The next day while father was still asleep a troop came to our place and stopped by the broad garden path leading down to the river. They cut branches from a large wind-felled fir tree, tied their rods together and put up a lean-to. I was so involved in helping them that I did not notice father’s appearance. He gave me a severe look, but as he came closer the scout leader
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presented himself and reported: “Eight scouts under my command building a lean-to, sir. Request your permission to remain and continue building.” During the report father snapped to attention. Receiving a report is a sacred matter among military men. He examined the lean-to, then, addressing the leader, asked,
“What is the predominant wind direction in these parts?”
“From the south.”
“Then why is your entrance also facing south? You’ll get gusts right into the lean-to. There is a slope here. You ought to dig that up-slope ditch a little deeper in case it rains.” Then he asked the leader to go off for a talk with him. We began rebuilding the lean-to. Some twenty minutes later not only did I get permission to join the scouts, but the scouts were allowed to gather in small groups on our property. My little world which up to now consisted of several streets, the cathedral, town square, and
Three magical summer months flew by, and in that time we matured as if it had been three years. It was wonderful that our leaders did not shout at us or order us about. Rather, they suggested things, and their suggestions had the power to attract and grip us for a long time. I remember that almost every boy on our street became a cub scout. The older boys became boy scouts right away. During the very first days our leader had a talk with us in which he said that every scout is a friend of children, the elderly, the weak, as well as the friend of animals and that every day he does at least one good deed. After that meeting we all rushed home vying with each other to compensate both people and animals for all the foul things we had done to them during the spring of that momentous year.
Old women no longer had to carry buckets of water from the town wells. “What’s come over all of you?” they would say, puzzled. “Before we’d look both ways before going out, but now you’ve all become so good all at once. Must be the Holy Spirit entered your hearts. Well, thank you little grandkids; come into the house, maybe there’s some candy for you,” they would say and wink conspiratorially. But we, proud and pleased, always declined “payment” for our good deeds. I should add that during those hot summer days cats would serenely stretch out on the broad beams of gates, and dogs, relaxed to their fullest, serenely slumbered in the dusty streets. Also, after a premature cracking of our piggy banks, the broken windowpanes in town were all replaced.
I also want to say that from August on, my pack leader was none other than Stepka. At my insistence mother sewed a scout’s uniform for him as well. He
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immediately became a scout and in two months’ time so distinguished himself that he was transferred to the cub scouts as pack leader. Our pack was the best. Stepa had so much energy that beside his usual responsibilities he occasionally took charge of the “combined detachment” of cub scouts who gathered on their own initiative to play on our property. No one called him Stepka anymore; it was Stepa or Stepusha. He was rid of that onerous “-ka” ending.
Once after watching us, father called Stepa over and told him that when he grew up he would be the sergeant-major of the best regimental training unit in the whole division. Stepa shook his head and protested that he would become the leader of the scouts and cub scouts in the whole province.
In October of that year the second revolution took place. In 1918 after the German troops departed, the screams about “freedom” reached a frenzy, but freedom itself somehow vanished. The
Two years later our family left Gomel. I lost from sight but not from memory the wonderful friends of my childhood.
Nikolai Filatov, A Soldier’s Letters
The views of Nikolai Filatov on the war and revolution are of historical and cultural interest, as is the manner of expression of this self-educated peasant soldier. The run-on text of each letter has been divided into paragraphs and capitalization of proper titles added, but an attempt has been made to preserve in translation other idiosyncrasies of the author’s language without drawing attention to them with the conventional notation
March 5th, 1917
How do you do greatly-respected Olga Valerianovna, I send you my greetings and wish you good health. I write you, Olga Valerianovna the following. We are still in position. The night of 28 February–1 March, precisely at midnight, in our entrenchments along the entire front we shouted “hooray” on the occasion of the English forces taking a city. At first we were told it was Gaa [Hague?], now they say it is an entirely different city, but that can be put off for now. Now lies ahead a more serious turnover, which happened in Russia. The matter is as follows. On March 4th at 8:00 PM we received at our position a telephoned telegram with news of the Russian Emperor’s abdication.
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