Private Voroniuk

Private Voroniuk, the guard responsible for the conscripts in car fourteen, is caught between the human distress of a mistaken labor conscription and the rigid rules governing his custody of prisoners. His brief dealings with Vasia Brykin show both the limits of his authority and the danger attached to his duty; when he later vanishes from the train, his role in the escape remains unclear.

Identity and Assignment

Voroniuk is a soldier assigned to guard several labor conscripts traveling in car fourteen. Among them are Prokhor Kharitonovich Prituliev, Vasia Brykin, and Kostoied-Amursky. The men had been strangers when impressed, but the journey gradually brings them into conversation and reveals personal histories that make the convoy more than a nameless group under guard.

The account places Voroniuk within an atmosphere of strict custody. A guard is answerable for the number of people in his charge, and their presence is checked by roll call. The rules give him little room to make individual exceptions: a decision made for one prisoner may place his own life at risk.

Vasia’s Detention

Vasia is a sixteen-year-old apprentice ironmonger who has been drawn into the labor corps through a mistake. His uncle, summoned to answer questions by a local soviet, entered the labor corps selection board’s office by mistake. Soldiers surrounded the men there and took them to barracks; the next morning, Vasia’s uncle was among those escorted to the train.

At the station, the families of the arrested men came to say goodbye. Vasia’s uncle asked Voroniuk to let him out briefly to see his wife. Voroniuk refused unless someone guaranteed the uncle’s return. Vasia and his aunt offered Vasia as a hostage, and Voroniuk accepted the arrangement: Vasia was brought into the car, and his uncle was allowed out. The uncle did not return to Vasia’s life; the boy never saw either his aunt or uncle again.

Vasia had not understood what was happening. When he realized he had been left behind, he broke down and begged Voroniuk to release him. Voroniuk would not do so. The narrative explicitly distinguishes this refusal from personal cruelty: he is enforcing a system in which the guard’s responsibility for his prisoners is strict and backed by mortal consequences. Vasia’s accidental passage into forced labor is thus shaped not by a deliberate decision to punish him, but by a chain of mistaken identity, desperate family bargaining, and an inflexible custody rule.

The Conscripts’ Plea and the Guard’s Limits

Kostoied-Amursky, an experienced co-operativist who had earned the respect of jailors under both the old regime and the present government, repeatedly appealed to the convoy commander about Vasia’s case. The officer acknowledged that the boy’s detention arose from a terrible misunderstanding, but said formal obstacles prevented the case from being examined until the convoy arrived. He promised to do what he could then.

Voroniuk’s position is made especially plain when Vasia speaks of home. The boy identifies the route through Dry Ford and Buisky, then describes Veretenniki, where his mother and two younger sisters live. He asks Voroniuk to let him go, addressing him as an uncle in his appeal. Voroniuk answers that he cannot release him: if he did, he would be held responsible and could be executed. The exchange shows how personal pleading encounters a rule that the guard believes he cannot safely break. It also leaves open the difference between sympathy and power: the boy’s longing is recognized, but recognition does not change his status as a prisoner.

Escape and Uncertain Aftermath

The next morning, Antonina Alexandrovna tells Yurii that Prituliev and Vasia have escaped, along with Pelagia Tiagunova, Ogryzkova, and Voroniuk. The account does not establish whether they escaped together or separately, or in what order they left. Nor does it resolve whether anyone was killed during the unexplained events. Voroniuk’s disappearance is presented as understandable in practical terms: once he discovered that the prisoners were gone, he would have had reason to flee to save himself.

The escape leaves a sharp reversal in his role. Earlier, Voroniuk had insisted that he could not risk releasing Vasia because he was accountable for the prisoners. After their disappearance, he too is absent, and the train’s escort commander searches frantically while the train’s commanding officer refuses to delay the journey to the front. The narrative offers no further account of Voroniuk’s fate. His brief arc remains suspended between enforcement and flight, with the uncertainty of the escape preventing a definitive judgment about how he departed or what happened among the missing passengers.