Galiullin

Galiullin is a childhood friend and fellow soldier of Pavel Antipov, whose later identity as Strelnikov places the two men on opposing sides of the civil war. First seen as a lieutenant watching an attack from an observation post, Galiullin misreads the battlefield and believes Antipov has died. Years later, Lara describes him as a White officer who nevertheless helped her shelter people. His story connects the intimate persistence of friendship to the upheavals of war and revolution.

Identity and Background

During the First World War, Galiullin is a lieutenant and Antipov’s friend. He watches Antipov lead an attack from an observation post, but he cannot follow the assault’s outcome through the smoke of artillery fire. Another account of his childhood comes much later, when Lara recalls visiting the house where he grew up. Most of its tenants were railway workers, and she remembers seeing poverty there. The detail helps explain why she considers her own understanding of revolution to be rooted in experience rather than distant sympathy.

The Attack and the False Report

As Russian forces break through enemy positions, supporting units fall behind and the advanced troops are cut off. Antipov’s platoon surrenders, and he becomes a prisoner. Galiullin, however, has watched the attack from a distance and believes a shell has killed his friend. He reports what he thinks he saw: Antipov was buried by an explosion.

The attack itself offers no clear confirmation. The soldiers advance across open ground toward the enemy trenches; Antipov runs among them, urging them forward. When artillery fire abruptly stops, the observers hear the guns’ silence before two shells burst in front of the attackers. Smoke and dust hide what follows. Galiullin assumes the men have been killed, but his conclusion is wrong: Antipov survived and was captured. The gap between what a witness sees and what has happened becomes the source of the false report about his friend.

A White Officer in a Divided Country

Years later, Lara tells Yurii Andreievich that Galiullin has returned as a prominent White officer, serving with the Czechs and appearing to hold authority comparable to a governor-general. She has seen him often and credits him with helping save and hide many people. In her account, he behaves with chivalry, unlike the lower-ranking Cossack officers and police who, she says, set the tone for abuses. His assistance does not erase the violence surrounding regime changes, but it makes political affiliation an incomplete guide to individual conduct.

Lara’s connection with Galiullin is not merely political: she knew the household where he grew up and remembers his origins among railway workers. She also recounts that he and she spoke about Yurii Andreievich, and that their efforts together helped people in danger. In her view, real lives cross political boundaries and cannot be reduced to the fixed roles assigned to opposing camps.

Friendship and the Hidden Identity

By the time Lara speaks of him, Galiullin is fighting Strelnikov in Siberia. She knows that Strelnikov is her husband, and she says Galiullin knows both his identity and her relationship to him. Though enraged when Strelnikov’s name is mentioned, Galiullin never invokes Lara’s marriage. She regards this silence as a remarkable act of delicacy toward the wife of his childhood friend and wartime comrade.

The friendship’s history makes the confrontation especially stark: Galiullin once watched Antipov lead men into battle and mistakenly believed he had died; later he faces that same man under his revolutionary identity. The novel does not reduce their relationship to either friendship or enmity. Their opposed positions coexist with the older bond, while Galiullin’s restraint toward Lara preserves one private limit amid public conflict.

Narrative Role

Galiullin’s early battlefield testimony establishes a crucial instance of mistaken knowledge: his sincere report that Antipov was dead is based on the obscured view available from an observation post, while Antipov has in fact surrendered and survived. His later appearance in Lara’s recollections revises the reader’s understanding of him, presenting a White officer who can protect people and maintain discretion across political lines. Through this contrast, Galiullin links the uncertainty of wartime witnessing to the novel’s wider resistance to dividing human beings neatly into opposing camps.