Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

And standing directly in its path was Kazan, thereby offering the Siberians a golden opportunity to block the Red advance and, if successful, launch their own offensive from a location hundreds of versts closer to Moscow than anyone had thought possible. Fortunately, the Red garrison left behind abundant stockpiles of arms and munitions. All that was needed was to reinforce the Maid’s forces at Kazan with enough fresh troops and heavy weapons from Kappel’s Western Army or from Gaida’s Northern Army to withstand the Red onslaught. But the Stavka would need to give the order quickly, or the Maid’s volunteers would soon be overwhelmed. Accordingly, Zhanna dispatched encrypted cables at once to Samara, Ufa, and Perm, requesting the manpower and heavy weapons she would need to hold Kazan.

While awaiting a response, Zhanna and her S-R allies went to work mustering every able-bodied man in the city to repair the damaged earthworks and barricades. Dieterichs’ blunt reply arrived the following afternoon: no reinforcements would be sent. Zhanna had gone to Kazan without authorization. She was to evacuate the city and join Kappel’s forces east of the Kama or face the consequences.

On receiving the fateful telegram, Zhanna crushed it in her hand, threw it down, and ground it underfoot. But despite Dieterichs’ rejection, she refused to believe that Kappel and Gaida would abandon her. So she sent riders eastward across the Volga with a personal appeal to each general. Their responses were immediate and unambiguous: neither would send a single man to help her.

Though Zhanna faced an impossible task in holding off the Red column, she refused to back down. She told her officers that she would not leave Kazan until she had turned back the Red attackers and the city was out of danger. Nor did she intend to die in the attempt.

“In the name of God, we shall go on bravely and achieve victory!” she urged.

Each morning after that, Zhanna sent out patrols to search for signs of the Red Army’s approach, while her volunteers strengthened the city’s defenses. But Kazan’s civilian leaders, led by the very same S-Rs who had encouraged the Maid not long before to liberate the city, now took fright and hatched a conspiracy against her. Hoping to avoid the prospect of another siege and bloody revenge from the Bolsheviks if the city fell, the S-R leaders dispatched secret emissaries to meet the approaching Red column under a flag of truce. At the same time, S-R agitators posted anti-Siberian placards around the city calling the Maid an evil sorceress who had tricked Kazan’s leaders into an ill-considered and futile resistance. But when the Red Army commander refused to meet with the city’s emissaries, the S-R leaders grew even more desperate.

* * *

On the evening that the failed Kazan emissaries returned to the city, the three-man executive committee of the S-R Party in Kazan held a secret meeting, in which they summoned one of their most intrepid fighters before them and laid out a challenge. The fighter, a former policeman who had taken part in nearly a dozen S-R assassinations over the years, against both tsarist and later Bolshevik targets, knew that he would face the most brutal sort of treatment from the Reds if he were taken alive. More than that, he could easily pass for a Siberian, having spent five years in Siberian exile for his part in a failed S-R plot.

“We have a mission for you,” the committee chairman told the former policeman. “If you succeed, we may all yet be spared. If you fail, you will die a hero—and quickly. To decline means to fall into the Cheka’s hands sooner or later and suffer greatly before dying.”

“It seems we are all caught between hammer and anvil,” the fighter replied in a flat voice, without blinking. “If a way exists to the stay the hammer’s blow, I’m willing to try it.”

“Answer me this,” the chairman went on. “If you could penetrate the Maid’s camp, could you blend among them?”

“Easily,” the fighter affirmed.

“We would need you to pass well enough to stand for roll call, perhaps several times. Is it possible?”

“Provided that I can take another man’s place in the ranks, I believe so.”

“Good, then,” the chairman said, acknowledging nods from the other two committee members. “Let’s go outside where you and I can be alone, and I will tell you the plan.”

All through the next day, S-R scouts kept watch over the Siberian sentries who guarded Zhanna’s encampment, searching for sentries who generally resembled the former policeman. By the end of the day, they settled on three men whose posts were all located on the far side of the encampment, away from the city. At dusk, the policeman and a small support team set out to determine which of the three sentries, if any, might remain on duty after the sun went down.

They found one whose two-hour duty slot had begun shortly before dusk. As darkness fell, the S-Rs crept up from behind and slit his throat, leaving the impostor in his place.