White partisans

The White partisans are one of two rival partisan factions described in the villages where The boy lives during the German occupation. They seek to fight both the German forces and the Russians, but their conflict with the Red partisans is also political and economic: the factions disagree over land, property, and which villagers should bear the cost of supporting them. Their presence turns the countryside into a place governed not by one stable authority but by overlapping armed demands.

Identity and Political Aims

The blacksmith explains that the partisans have divided into White and Red factions. The White partisans want to fight the Germans and the Russians, while the Red partisans want to assist the Red Army. Village rumors add a distinct social program to this military division: the White partisans are said to favor retaining private property and leaving the landlords in place. By contrast, the Red partisans, supported by the Soviets, fight for land reform. The account presents these aims through what villagers hear and understand, rather than through a formal manifesto or a detailed description of either faction’s leadership.

The distinction matters because the factions do not merely ask the village to choose an external enemy. Their competing positions concern who may keep land and property, and who is entitled to support from the countryside. Their conflict therefore brings the larger political dispute into the everyday question of which armed visitors a household has helped. The account depicts the White partisans’ cooperation with landlords as part of this local struggle, not as evidence of a uniform or centrally described organization.

Visits and Village Obligations

The White partisans are among the armed men who visit the blacksmith. They arrive mounted, carry rifles and revolvers, search the house, and then sit down with him. In the kitchen, the blacksmith’s wife and The boy prepare food and drink for the visitors, including home-brewed vodka, sausages, cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, and roast pork. The visits occur frequently and without warning. The scene makes partisan presence material and domestic: the household must quickly provide hospitality to men who enter as armed visitors, while the blacksmith attempts to accommodate those who hold power locally.

These demands fall on villages already strained by the occupation. Peasants must deliver much of their meager harvest both to regular German troops and to partisans; refusing can bring punitive raids that leave villages in ruins. Each partisan faction increases its requests for assistance, so providing for one side carries risks beyond the immediate cost of food. The blacksmith’s preparations for visitors and his efforts to manage relations with armed groups illustrate how a household’s provisions become entangled with political allegiance, whether or not the villagers have any meaningful freedom to refuse.

Retaliation and Rivalry

The White partisans cooperate with landlords and take revenge on people suspected of helping the Red partisans. The Red partisans, in turn, favor the poor, penalize villages for assistance given to the White partisans, and persecute families of rich peasants. The resulting pressure reaches beyond combatants: suspicion, class position, and the assistance a village has provided can expose its inhabitants to punishment from the opposing faction. The narrative does not describe a neutral authority capable of protecting villagers from either side.

The two factions also fight one another during visits to the village. When a clash breaks out, the village becomes a battlefield: machine guns and grenades are used, and huts catch fire. Residents take shelter, while the fighting disrupts ordinary life and puts people who are not part of either faction in danger. The conflict thus differs from a simple campaign in which the partisans act together against the occupying force. Their internal division brings armed violence directly into the communities from which they seek support.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

After a battle, the village gradually resumes activity, but the fighting leaves practical disputes behind. Peasants and boys quarrel over weapons, uniforms, and boots abandoned by the partisans; residents also argue about where the dead should be buried and who should dig the graves. These contests show how the aftermath is shaped both by material scarcity and by the unresolved burdens of death. The White partisans’ conflict with their rivals does not end when the shooting stops: its consequences remain in the village’s disagreements over possessions, burial, and responsibility.

Set beside German searches and demands for food, partisan factionalism reveals a countryside pressured by several armed authorities at once. German troops question villagers about partisan visits and shoot peasants as a warning; the partisans, meanwhile, demand supplies and punish perceived support for their opponents. The White partisans are therefore represented both as fighters against occupying forces and as participants in a local order enforced through allegiance and reprisal. Their role sharpens the narrative’s picture of village survival: assistance is necessary to those who arrive armed, yet helping one group may make a household suspect to another.