“Did there really live such a Kovtyukh? Could there really be such heroes? I can’t believe it, although I want to believe it!”
★★★★ These are the words of a French Renault worker to the Communist newspaper L’humanité after reading Alexander Serafimovich’s novel. I confess that when I first read it, I thought it was an amalgam of numerous experiences throughout the Red Army throughout the Russian Civil War (really an undeclared external war waged by a dozen capitalist countries and their proxies). I had no idea this was the dramatic account of a single army—the tribulations of the Taman Army from August–September 1918.