Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

The Siberian column arrived at the southwestern approaches to Uralsk late in the afternoon of the third day, accompanied by droves of hoarsely barking dogs, supply wagons, and gun carriages that kicked up oppressive clouds of dust. All the while, marmots whistled on the pastureland as if demons had been awakened and, in the marshes, frogs raised a tumult.

Through field binoculars and despite a sultry haze, Ned viewed the city on the far side of the Ural River where the Ural met its tributary, the Chagan. Established by Cossacks late in the sixteenth century, Uralsk was the last European settlement encountered by any traveler from Russia to Central Asia, and though it belonged fully to the steppe, it was in fact closer to Vienna than to Verny,[33] the capital of Red Turkestan to the south. Uralsk was also familiar to every Russian schoolchild as a center of the 1770s Pugachev Rebellion, in which Cossacks and serfs raised a revolt against Catherine the Great along the Volga and east to the Urals. Since then, the city had become an agricultural center and trade stop, prospering until the current civil war smothered trade and put the region under the Soviet yoke.

As per Tolstov’s battle plan, the Cossack light artillery deployed at once in the hills overlooking the city. And even before the arms convoy arrived from Guryev, the crews for the mortars available at Uralsk went to work setting up their tubes for the first of several nightly bombardments intended to wear down the city’s defenders before the main assault. Several dozen tachankas, horse-drawn machine-gun platforms, were also towed to their pre-assigned attack positions, from which they would move repeatedly during the night to confuse Uralsk’s defenders.

According to the latest intelligence, the Red garrison comprised a small nucleus of veteran soldiers from Western Russia’s industrial centers, along with many more peasant conscripts and a few hundred local auxiliaries. By now, White agitators inside Uralsk had been spreading subversive talk for weeks, calling the Bolshevik occupiers looters and rapists intent on plundering the city and stamping out the Cossack way of life. According to some reports, the defenders were desperately low on food, fodder, and some types of ammunition, and their nerves taut from nightly acts of sabotage. Directing the city’s defense was its Provincial Revolutionary Committee Chairman, a Muscovite by the name of Petrovsky, and his Political Commissar, Andreyev, reputed to be a cowardly intellectual poseur whom even the most loyal Reds despised.

Zhanna’s first act upon arrival at Uralsk was to send a letter by truce messenger to Petrovsky and Andreyev, urging them to withdraw from the city and take their troops back to Samara. She received a prompt note in response, dictated on the spot and full of profane epithets. It addressed her as “simple child” and warned her to go back to herding livestock. The next morning, Zhanna and Colonel Denisov saddled their horses for a reconnaissance tour of the enemy’s defenses and, at the closest point to the Red barricades, she shouted her reply to the Red leader through a megaphone.

“You, Petrovsky, who call yourself revolutionary commander, I am Zhanna the Maid, sent here by the King of Heaven. I command you to abandon our city without delay. If you do, I will allow you safe passage back across the Volga. Resist and you will be destroyed. If you don’t believe me, give thought to the great hurt that will befall you and your men. This is our last warning.”

For a moment, silence prevailed on the other side of the barricade, and then a guttural voice rang out.

“Put a bullet through her!” it yelled, and a moment later shots rang out and a hail of lead cracked past Zhanna, over her head and to either side. But nothing touched her. Zhanna turned her horse around and trotted away.

Soon after, Zhanna’s party stopped along the Chagan River, where Zhanna dismounted, dipped her trembling hands in the chill waters, and intoned, as if in prayer, “I wash my hands of you and your men, Petrovsky. May God have mercy on your souls!”

On her return to the command tent, Zhanna received word that the first of the Austin armored cars and munitions from Guryev had reached the Siberian Army’s staging points at Uralsk. She set off at once to find them. The captain of the armored car detachment, a former schoolteacher named Popov, who had led a similar unit against the Germans and again against the Reds in the Czech Legion’s capture of Kazan, beamed with pride at being asked to describe the vehicles’ capabilities and how they might be employed at Uralsk.