Behind the Lines

In 1921, a few months before Jaroslav Hašek began writing The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk, he described his life experiences in revolutionary Russia in the cycle The Commander of the City of Bugulma. In a similar way to the way he mocked the pre-war C.A. and K. monarchy in his stories, Hašek, a former Red Commissar, depicts the Bolshevik Revolution. Thus, a hilarious story unfolds before the reader, in which, in the forgotten Tatar town of Bugulma, the Soviet commander of the Tver revolutionary regiment, the drunkard Yerokhymov, and the town's commander, the journeyman Gashek, are featured. Through humour and exaggeration Hašek shows both the fanaticism of the revolutionary era, when in the unfortunate year 1918 everything suddenly "went out of joint", and the stupidity or simple human insecurity of the new rulers. The autobiographical cycle The Commander of the City of Bugulma is further supplemented by other short stories by Hašek from that time.