Soviet militia

The Soviet militia is presented through its actions in the postwar city rather than through an account of its organization or chain of command. It searches for suspected political saboteurs after a railway disaster, pursues people connected to nighttime opposition activity, and arrests the boy and his companions in a raid. These encounters make the militia one of the forces through which the novel shows that the end of the war has not brought an orderly peace.

Public Order and Political Suspicion

After a railway disaster, newspapers list the casualties while police search for political saboteurs suspected of earlier crimes. The investigation places the disaster within a climate of suspicion, where a public catastrophe prompts authorities to look for politically motivated wrongdoing.

The militia is also visible in the city’s nighttime activity. The boy sees young men carrying leaflets to post on government buildings, which militiamen and soldiers tear down. He witnesses the militia organize a manhunt, while armed civilians kill a soldier. These scenes show public authority operating amid continuing political conflict, rather than against a backdrop of settled civic life.

The Nighttime Raid

The boy’s regular visits to a park near the zoological garden bring him into contact with people who trade, drink, and play cards. They give him chocolate and teach him knife skills; in return, he carries small packages to different addresses, avoiding militiamen and plain-clothes officers. His inability to speak is treated by the group as useful to these errands because it helps keep him discreet.

One night, searchlights flash and whistles sound as the park is surrounded by militiamen. The people gathered there are taken to jail. On the way, an officer pushes the boy roughly and disregards the red star on his chest, a detail that underscores the gap between the uniform’s sign of affiliation and the treatment he receives.

Arrest and Aftermath

The following morning, the boy’s parents come to take him away. He leaves the jail dirty and in a torn uniform, and regrets having to part from the people he had known in the park. His parents look at him with puzzlement but say nothing. The arrest therefore ends this brief nighttime belonging abruptly, returning him to his family without resolving the gulf between his experiences and their understanding of him.

Across these episodes, the militia’s presence links investigation, surveillance, and arrest. The daytime claim that the world is at peace is set against a city where political pursuit and violence continue after dark; the militia participates in that uneasy order, while the boy remains caught between its enforcement and the precarious communities it disrupts.