Kolchak's White Army

Kolchak’s White Army emerges in the novel as a force whose changing fortunes reorganize life across the Siberian front. It succeeds the fallen Siberian Provisional Government, occupies the region under Admiral Kolchak’s self-appointed title of Supreme Ruler, and later becomes the object of a Red Army campaign that drives it eastward. Its presence is registered not only in political announcements and military maneuvers but in crowded hospitals, exposed medical stations, threatened villages, and the forced movement of people far from the front.

Political Rule and the Siberian Front

In the region around Khodatskoie, the original Soviets along the railway have already been overthrown. After a period under the Siberian Provisional Government, power passes to Admiral Kolchak, who assumes the title of Supreme Ruler. The shift is conveyed as a succession of authorities rather than a stable settlement: political control changes hands while the railway corridor and its communities remain caught in the consequences of war.

The story also places the White Army within a changing landscape of recruitment and military administration. At Kuteiny Posad, villagers hold a farewell feast for new recruits while a medical board under Colonel Strese examines draftees in nearby Maly Ermolaï; mounted militia and Cossacks are stationed in the village. The juxtaposition of food, seasonal celebration, and military inspection makes conscription part of ordinary village life, even as the recruits are being drawn into the conflict between rival forces.

Combat and the Medical Front

The White advance is seen at close range in the attack watched by Lieutenant Galiullin. As Lieutenant Antipov leads his platoon across an open field toward the enemy trenches, the attackers run, throw themselves down under fire, and rise together again. Men struck by bullets topple and do not get up. Galiullin initially fears the unit has been destroyed when German shells burst ahead of it and smoke hides what follows; the episode shows how battlefield reports and apparent deaths can be shaped by the limited view of an observer under fire.

The fighting also places medical neutrality under pressure. Yurii Andreievich serves as an army doctor, with two former prisoners of war among his assistants, but an engagement catches him at the front line. He takes cover beside a telephonist as the Whites attack across the field. According to the Red Cross convention, medical personnel should not participate in military operations; in this encounter, the danger forces the doctor to fire in self-defense. The episode makes the distinction between medical duty and combat explicit while showing how quickly the battlefield can collapse that distinction.

The costs of fighting extend beyond the firing line. Near a first-aid station in a damaged wood, exhausted soldiers lie motionless after four days of heavy fighting, while unsprung ammunition carts bring wounded men jolting from the battlefield. Many have been picked up during a brief lull only half an hour earlier; a substantial number are unconscious, and orderlies unload them on stretchers at the station. In Moscow, meanwhile, hospitals are already desperately overcrowded, with wounded men filling passages and landings. The streams of casualties thus connect the front to urban hospitals and press even upon wards not intended for them.

Retreat, Encirclement, and Defeat

The danger of the White advance is also felt in the evacuation of a village. After shouts, gunfire, running footsteps, and a glow above the buildings wake the inhabitants during the night, Yurii Andreievich learns that the Germans have broken through. The village is under fire, and the hospital begins moving at once, without waiting for an evacuation order. He sends Misha Gordon with the first party, arranging for the carriage to wait for him; as they hurry along the village street, bullets pass and shrapnel bursts above the fields. The front’s movement turns a military breakthrough into an urgent problem of transport, shelter, and getting people out alive.

Later, Kolchak’s forces encircle the Forest Brotherhood, the irregular partisan units in the taiga. The partisans are already suffering their worst setbacks, and the ring is pressing from every side. Its great radius, however, unexpectedly helps them: the approaching winter makes the taiga impassable and prevents the Whites from tightening the encirclement. Although the partisans can no longer move their camp, they abandon plans to shift position and prepare to defend their existing one. Deep snow offers protection, especially because the Whites lack adequate skis, while shortages of flour and potatoes make provisioning urgent. The encirclement is therefore both a military threat and a struggle against terrain, weather, and dwindling supplies.

The balance reverses decisively when news reaches the partisans that the civil war is over. Kolchak’s forces have been smashed; the main body of the Red Army is pursuing them eastward along the railway toward the sea, while another force is coming to join the campaign against scattered White units in the rear. The report is not wholly confirmed in every detail, but it establishes the scale of the defeat and the collapse of Kolchak’s military power. Its consequences remain painfully unsettled: Yurii Andreievich asks where the families are, and hears that Varykino is deserted. The army’s defeat ends one phase of the fighting without restoring the homes and family ties that war has put at risk.

Narrative Significance

Kolchak’s White Army is defined through repeated changes of scale. At one moment it is an authority replacing the Siberian Provisional Government; at another, a force crossing a field toward trenches, surrounding partisans in winter forest, or retreating east under Red Army pursuit. The novel connects those military movements to the practical conditions they impose: a doctor forced to defend himself, wounded men transported in carts without springs, hospitals filled past capacity, and a village evacuated under fire.

The White Army’s eventual defeat does not function as a simple return to safety. The news that Kolchak’s forces have been smashed answers the question of which army is winning, but it cannot answer the more personal question of where the families have gone. By placing the report of victory beside the deserted village of Varykino, the narrative distinguishes military resolution from domestic recovery: the front may move on, while displacement and uncertainty remain.