Chapter 1

Yuri Feodorovich Shapalev was born, 'somewhere beyond the Urals' in Western Siberia. He was uncertain of the year, but must have been in the 1890s. One of a large family; he was always vague about the number of his siblings, but he thought about nine.

He did recall, though, that his parents had been political exiles and either chose to remove themselves from police repression, or had been ordered out of Europe by the secret police, the OKRANA. In a dreary, cold and windswept wasteland his parents had continued to breed.

But he barely remembered them because he'd been given away to another family when he was only three. That family had wandered from place to place, seeking work labouring on farms or working in mines.

His new family, he recalled, were illiterate, stoic and emotionally distant. He didn't remember getting hugs or presents on his birthday. He did remember, though, the back breaking toil in fields since he could barely stand upright. The whole family, apparently, had a collective responsibility to survive. Education was in the fields, the wild climate and the lawlessness of frontier towns.

He was barely a youth when the labour convulsions of 1905 broke out. It had little effect on their lives, but it was about that time when he decided to strike out on his own.

He was a valuable member of the family's labour force, however, and they would've locked him up if they knew his plans. He went out into the Siberian winter, he said, 'to take a leak, ' and never came back.

If Yuri knew little else, he did know how to survive in a harsh climate. He became a hunter, vagabond and thief, like so many of his contemporaries. He knew that 'West' meant the wealth and opportunities of European Russia. There, he'd known from an early age, was where factory work could be obtained or employment in the Army. 'West' meant pretty girls who were compliant and accomodating. 'West, ' particularly the Caucasus, meant warm summer days and the sun-drenched shore of the Black Sea. This was the stuff of legend, of folk tales told around the campfire when the night was dark and the freezing wind drove the blizzards down from the Arctic.

Ekaterinburg had been founded in 1723 in the reign of Peter the Great. It was named after his wife, Saint Catherine, later Empress Catherine the Great. Then it had been an administrative centre, founded by one Tatischev and Peter's Proconsol for the Ural Region. Later, however, when mines were opened up in the Urals, Ekaterinburg grew in importance. Then came the Trans Siberian Railway.

Vostochnaya Station was a busy complex in 1905. Ore trains banged and crashed in the railyards and throngs of people looking for work jostled outside and in the station's great hall. It was the city's de facto employment centre, and as such, one wall of the hall was cluttered with notices for work.

Yuri pushed among the crowds. Illiterate, the notices on the wall made no sense to him. Naturally reticent, he found it hard to ask questions. Besides, although he'd have been reluctant to admit it, the sheer number of people in the hall intimidated him. He hung about on the fringe of the crowd, confused and growing despondent. He hadn't allowed for this in his mind, the sheer weight of humanity. He'd never seen so many people in his life.

"You lost lad?" he heard a voice behind him. Yuri was instantly on alert, hoping the voice would pass by or be talking to someone else. "Tovaritch! You, lad," the voice continued. His tone had a commanding, almost a stentorian tone like a policeman or an official. Yuri looked for an escape route. Cops meant trouble and there was a lot of trouble following him from the East, he was sure. A hand clamped on his shoulder. Yuri spun around ready for a fight but was confronted by a man of truly enormous proportions.

Yuri, already a good 6 foot in height, looked upwards to the man's face. He was dressed in a long, grey, greatcoat and fur hat. The bearskin featured a silver badge with a twin-eagle crest and crossed rifles. A gold sash hung about his enormous waist and a dress sword hung from it. On his feet he wore high boots into which was tucked his grey trousers with a broad red stripe down the outside of each leg. "You're a fine, strong lad," the man continued, "d'you fancy the life of a Guardsman?"

Yuri was dumbstruck, both by the man's intimidating appearance as well as his request. "What's your name, lad?" the man asked.

"Yuri," he replied, his voice lowered and not just a little frightened.

"Looking for work?" the man asked. Yuri nodded. "Well, what do you say? No finer life than the army... good pay, good food and lodging, girls, eh? You in trouble with the police?" Yuri's face blanched guiltily. "No worry," the man went on, "you'll have a whole regiment to protect you, eh? You behave yourself in the army and you'll have no trouble."

The man promised Yuri renewal and a clean start. This was a chance to forget about his old life, an opportunity to live an honest existence free from the insecurity of the road. He'd hardly said a word before the man took him by the arm and led him out of the station. He walked down boulivards teeming with humanity before being steered into an office on Tsarskoye Street.

"Last name?" asked the man behind the desk. To Yuri his surname was a distant memory, a name he'd foresworn for the comfort of anonymity. He hesitated and scratched his head. "Ok," the man smiled knowingly, "here, sign this, Private Rhykov!"

"Private, who?" he asked, confused.

"The name of my cousin's lifelong friend. He was killed on active service so I don't suppose he needs it anymore... sign!" Yuri shook his head. The recruiter smiled and signed for him. He was now in the army.

Private Rhykov was a natural when it came to soldiering. He was tall and strong and rigid discipline came easy to him. The army looked after him, clothed and fed him, educated and gave him comfortable quarters. In return he gave them unquestioning loyalty. From where he'd come from, with minimal expectations of life and from people, the army gave him a life with respect.

His initial term of enlistment was for 12 years. When the Great War burst onto the Russian people, Rhykov was a 'Sub- Proporshchik' in the 2nd Foot Guards 'Alexandra Imperatrix, ' one of the most prestigious infantry regiments in Imperial Russia. The old fashioned rank of 'Sub-Proporschik, ' or senior NCO, indicated how much tradition suffused the ranks of the Guard Regiments. They were hand-picked; only the tallest, the best and the most impressive infantrymen became Guardsmen. In theory they were charged with the preservation of the Imperial family. As such, the 2nd Guards' honourary Colonel, or 'Polkovnik, ' was none other than the Tsarina Alexandra herself.

Rhykov took seriously his oath of loyalty to the Romanovs. In 1914 he was fully prepared to die in the service of the Tsar and his family. Such a death ensured his instant salvation and fast track to Paradise in the eyes of the Russian Orthodox Church. Rhykov had never questioned that in his nearly 10 years of military service.

But the abdication of the Tsar, the Revolution, and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks came at a time when Rhykov's term of enlistment was up. His regiment had all but ceased to exist, the Officers fled, and the enlisted men split between the Whites and the Reds. He had no idea what he was to do.

The Barracks in Petrograd were known locally as the 'Preobash.' In October 1917 (Old Style calendar) it was home to groups of despondent and disorientated former Imperial Guardsmen. Their Officers had already fled Petrograd and Konstantin Yerenev's Red Guards had them besieged. Barricades had been set up outside in the street and nearby buildings bristled with snipers.

But it was a very porous blockade, and many Guardsmen had already escaped, to go home, join the Bolsheviks or 'go South' with their Officers. Rhykov had taken control of the remainder, some 200 soldiers, as senior Noncom.

There was little ammunition and food was getting scarce. The walls of the barracks were made from forbidding brick and was virtually impregnable to assault by storm. The Red Guards seemed unwilling to shed their own blood and the besieged had nowhere to go. It was a hopeless standoff and they all knew it. After a few days, a little party approached the main gate carrying a white flag. It was led by a man named Comrade Vladimir Antonov- Ovseenko.

Ovseenko was a Ukrainian, and a former 'Internationalist Menshevik' who'd gone over to the Bolsheviks in May 1917. He was from the elite, an Officers' family, and he'd commanded some of the Red Guard detachments who'd stormed the Winter palace in October. By November 1917 he already held a senior position in the Bolshevik Defence Committee, 'Sovnarkom.' Later, as a firm friend of Leon Trotsky, he was to end his life in the Stalinist purge of 1938.

Rhykov greeted the Bolshevik in the atrium of the barracks. He wore his dress uniform and sword, deliberately provoking the Red with the Tsarist crest on his busby. For Rhykov, all he had left was loyalty to a cause which no-longer existed. Ovseenko, however, oozed charm and diplomacy, 'he fully understood the soldier's dilemma, ' he maintained.

"But the Working Class needs men like you," he insisted, "to defend their freedom."

What impressed Rhykov more, however, was not Ovseenko's words but the fact he was a military man like himself. Ovseenko carried himself like an Officer, was familiar with a soldiers' way of speaking. So when he offered Rhykov a commission as 'Kombat' and a Battalion of Red Guards, in fact most of his own men, he readily accepted. 'Reinforcements were needed in the South, ' Ovseenko explained, so Rhykov led his troops South, into the Ukraine.

In Novocherkassk, General Alexeev had been joined by Kornilov and the Don Cossack Army to form the White Volunteer Army, the 'Dobrovocheskaya Armiya.' They took Rostov, then stormed into the Southern Ukraine scattering the weak Red Forces before them.

When Rhykov's Battalion arrived, the Ukraine was in an uproar. The Anarchist 'Black Guard, ' or 'Machnovistas, ' had made common cause with the Socialist Revolutionaries and held various towns to the South of Kiev. They were fighting brigades of Ukrainian Nationalists, who were being supplied by the German Army. The Anarchist/SR group had yet to commit to the Bolshevik cause and Ovseenko had been ordered by Sovnarkom to negotiate. The Bolshevik policy was to divide and rule; there would be time enough to settle with them later.

Shortly, though, at Brest-Litovsk, representatives of the Ukrainian Nationalist Rada would crash the peace talks and strike their own deal with the Germans. Ukraine would then be occupied by an Austro-German army until the general armistice in November 1918.

Rhykov, however, entered Kiev in late December '17 and took up defensive positions at Vasilkov, on the railway South.

The Battalion had taken their weapons with them from 'Preobash.' As a Guards Unit, they'd been well-supplied with Maxim Machine Guns. Their ill-armed opponents were no match for them and refused to challenge their control of the railway line.

A barricade of logs blocked the line and nearby huts were reinforced as makeshift pill boxes. Rhykov knew his craft and sited his defences well. Even Ovseenko was impressed and had taken quite a shine to his 'Kombat.' The Kommissar was looking for an experienced man to lead all Red Guard forces in the area, now grouped as a 'Division.' He looked no further than 'Comrade Kombat' Rhykov.

The new 'Comrade Komdiv' Rhykov had achieved a command position unthinkable for an ill-educated peasant soldier in the service of the Tsar. He now had nearly 7000 troops under his authority.

Vasilkov was well-supplied with food, thanks to 'expropriations' from local farms by enthusiastic local Red Guardsmen. The Kiev Soviet had organised the city onto a war footing, drafting legions of industrial workers to build barricades and man defences. To Rhykov's consternation, squads of women volunteers, mostly cloth workers, pitched in with the men and marched around in armed fighting squads. All of them, were now under his personal authority.

As the winter ground on, the 'Machnovistas, ' short of food supplies, thanks to the deprivations of Red Guard 'taxes, ' began small scale raiding against Bolshevik-held villages. It was a particularly harsh winter, made worse by the disruption to economic activity and shortage of manpower in the fields. Possession of cities like Kiev took on major importance, particularly if they were well-serviced by railways. Food could be brought in from outside; not so the small villages, those held by the 'Machnovistas.'

"Comrade Komdiv, Comrade Komdiv," gasped the breathless Red Guard, "we've captured... thieves..."

Rhykov was annoyed. This was both a discipline and a political problem. Theft of food from the 'proletariat, ' was a capital offence, punishable by summery execution. But if they were 'Machnovistas, ' and he suspected they were, then his orders from Kommissar Ovseenko was to let them go free. This was not out of any humanitarianism, but because Sovnarkom was trying to enlist the 40,000 strong Anarchist forces into the Red Army.

They were a sullen and miserable lot. There were five of them, two women and three men and they looked at the Komdiv with a mixture of anger and fear. Rhykov noted they were ill-dressed for the cold, a mixture of civilian and military clothing. Their weapons and ammunition belts had been torn from them and lay in a pile in the corner of the hut. A young Guard stood menacingly over them brandishing a Military Nagant revolver.

Rhykov held little patience for thieves, it emperilled them all and offended his sense of discipline. But these people were starving and even his cold heart melted a little at their desperation.

"Feed them," he ordered, "then send them back to their people." The guard looked disappointed and glanced sideways at Rhykov. Common sense had taught him never to question the Komdiv, however, and he scuttled out of the hut to forage some food from the kitchen. "Who are you? Where are you from?" he asked.

The men and one of the women turned their heads away in disgust. Although reprieved, their hatred infected the very air in the hut.

"Olga," said the younger of the women, "from Belo Pole."

"Ah." Rhykov knew Belo Pole was one of the Anarchist towns in the South West part of the Ukraine near the Romanian border. "Are things bad over there?"