Lieutenant Sverdlovski

Lieutenant Sverdlovski is the narrator’s riding, fencing, and pistol-shooting instructor in childhood and a warmly remembered presence during a later grave illness. His importance lies not in a broad independent story of his own but in the lasting place he occupies in the boy’s education: he gives the narrator practical martial skills and, when the child is critically ill, appears as a figure of personal reassurance.

Identity and Introduction

An elderly, tall instructor with a military bearing and a white mustache, Lieutenant Sverdlovski presides over a combined riding school, shooting gallery, and gymnasium. The narrator is eight and the youngest of his pupils. His mother brings him there three times a week, making the lieutenant a regular part of a childhood shaped by lessons and ambitions arranged by her.

Training and the Mother’s Ambitions

The instruction is rigorous and varied. The boy spends half an hour fencing, half an hour at pistol practice, and half an hour in the saddle, followed by gymnastics and breathing exercises. The pistol is so large that he struggles to lift it. At the shooting barrier he practices alongside reserve officers, retired generals, and young men with leisure to spare; after a successful session, his mother sometimes takes the target home. She watches his progress with evident satisfaction, and the lesson becomes part of her larger hope that he will one day be able to defend her.

The lieutenant’s own enthusiasm centers on marksmanship, and he admires the boy’s mother. The family is warmly welcomed at the school. After the boy shoots, his mother inspects the holes in the target, while Lieutenant Sverdlovski encourages the prospect of making him a cavalier. He also gives the boy fencing lessons and takes him on long country walks with a military rucksack. The education thus extends beyond formal practice: it joins physical discipline to an ideal of readiness and protection.

Relationship with the Narrator

The relationship is affectionate as well as instructional. Lieutenant Sverdlovski’s approval helps make the martial program vivid to the child, while his closeness to the mother places him within the family’s circle rather than at a distance as a mere teacher. The narrator remembers him as someone who did not only demonstrate skills: he took the boy out walking and later came to see him when he was gravely ill.

During that illness, the narrator draws on the habits and images associated with his childhood instruction. In his delirium he imagines fighting with a sword and pursuing an enemy, as Lieutenant Sverdlovski had taught him; he also tries to raise his arm and hit a target. These are not successful feats of physical training but a mental return to the lieutenant’s world of courage, practice, and action.

The Bedside Visit and Narrative Role

Lieutenant Sverdlovski visits the narrator in person and remains at his side, holding his hand. The narrator says that this martial presence encourages him. In the recollection, the instructor’s earlier lessons therefore acquire a second function: they have supplied the child with a vocabulary for imagining resistance, and the adult remembers the teacher himself as a comforting presence when resistance is most difficult.

The memoir gives no further account of Lieutenant Sverdlovski’s life or later career. His character is defined instead through these recurring points of contact: the training ground where a small boy handles an oversized pistol, the mother’s hopeful attention to each lesson, and the bedside visit that returns the instructor’s presence to the narrator at a moment of danger.