The recruiting-office uprising begins with Sanka Pafnutkin’s refusal to undress for a medical examination, but quickly grows into a wider revolt against conscription and official authority. The escape from the office is followed by an explosion, a fire, and a mounted search for suspected fugitives; as the net closes around the villages, flight to the forest becomes the remaining option for Sanka and his companions.

The recruiting office and the first act of defiance

The chain of events is recounted by a young fugitive to Koska Nekhvalenykh and Terioshka, who are hiding in close quarters. According to his account, the recruits had been lined up naked while waiting for the doctor. When Sanka’s turn came, he refused to undress, objecting to exposing himself in front of others. He had been drinking, and when the clerk addressed him politely and told him to take off his clothes, Sanka struck the clerk in the jaw.

The incident turned from an individual refusal into open disorder when Sanka overturned the office table. Inkstand and army lists went crashing to the floor. Colonel Strese entered, denounced what he regarded as hooliganism, and insisted that he would not tolerate a revolution in the recruiting office. His response made the encounter a direct confrontation between the recruits and the authorities charged with enforcing the draft.

Flight and the explosion

Sanka answered Strese’s threat by calling on his comrades to gather their belongings. He punched through a window and ran into the street; the narrator of the account followed, along with one or two others. They fled while pursuers shouted after them. The flight was immediate and improvised: the men were still putting on their clothes as they ran, and the witness could not explain what larger purpose, if any, the revolt had acquired.

Later, at a gathering marked by drunken, competing voices, a loud explosion abruptly silenced the room. The pause lasted only a moment before confusion returned: some people stood up, others staggered or collapsed, and women screamed. Vlas Pakhomovich searched for the person responsible, accused an unknown culprit of throwing hand grenades, and called for the village to be cordoned off. The explosion’s cause is not established in the account; Vlas’s accusation is his suspicion, not a confirmed identification of the person who caused it.

Fire and the search for suspects

The gathering’s attention shifted when a column of black smoke rose from the county office building in Maly Ermolaï. The building was on fire. Several recruits fled it alongside Colonel Strese and the other draft-board officers, while mounted Cossacks and militiamen rode through the village looking for someone. Church bells rang the alarm as people ran toward Kuteiny. The narration presents a rapid succession of disturbances and pursuit, but does not definitively connect the earlier explosion with the fire or identify who set the building alight.

At dusk, Strese rode to Kuteiny with Cossacks, surrounded the village with guards, and began searching homes and farms. His search soon extended beyond the named fugitives. He ordered that Sanka, Goshka Riabikh, and Koska be found, dead or alive, and also demanded Vlas Pakhomovich’s son, Terentii Galuzin. Strese treated the Galuzin family’s suspected sheltering of political offenders and its alleged illegal meetings as grounds for suspicion, but the accusation remains part of the authorities’ pursuit rather than proof of the family’s involvement in the uprising.

The forest as refuge

Hearing that Strese was looking for outsiders from Pazhinsk, Koska told Terioshka that he, Terioshka, Sanka, and Goshka had only one place to go: the forest. He described the retreat as temporary, to last until the authorities calmed down, after which they might decide whether to return. The uprising therefore ends this episode not with the capture of its leaders or a settled political victory, but with an uncertain escape from village life into the woods. The next chapter’s title, “The Forest Brotherhood,” gives that flight its narrative destination without resolving the fugitives’ immediate prospects.