A Czech's Adventures in the World of Idiotosaurs
Why didn't Jaroslav Hasek stay in Siberia forever?
Sergey Tashevsky
In April 1918, during the White Army's advance on Tomsk, the local council of deputies ordered all valuable equipment to be removed from the Tomsk Technological Institute to Chita. But quickly preparing it for shipment was impossible, unless wires were ripped out and parts of the equipment were torn out. The unique instruments were in danger of being looted and destroyed, but the commissars didn't care. Ivan Bobarykov, the institute's rector, was in despair. Failure to comply with the order meant facing execution.
But one morning, a Czech man appeared in his apartment, speaking Russian with a strong accent. Bobarykov's young daughter remembered him as the writer Jaroslav Hašek. He introduced himself as the authorized representative tasked with evacuating the institute and asked for an explanation as to why the equipment wasn't ready for shipment. Bobarykov explained as best he could. The stranger then disappeared briefly, returning an hour later with a document signed by the railway chief, stating that all the cars were occupied by military supplies and the evacuation of the institute was canceled. Thus, with a single stroke of the pen, the unique equipment was saved. Leaving the document behind, the stranger vanished.
According to Hašek's biography, he was in Samara at the time, where, as an agitator, he was recruiting Czechs and Slovaks for the Red Army. The distance from Samara to Tomsk is almost three thousand kilometers. This story seems implausible. But there are dozens and hundreds of such legends surrounding Hašek. He was often seen in different places simultaneously, and he wrote articles, stories, and notes under dozens of pseudonyms. So, anything is possible.
This was just one of many episodes of the Civil War in Siberia, in which Jaroslav Hašek played a key role. He was appointed to key "party" positions, from city commandant to head of the political department of the Eastern Front. He served as an agitator in Chapayev's division and edited at least a dozen Bolshevik newspapers in various languages. Over the course of three years, Hašek traveled almost the entire length of Russia from west to east, passing through Simbirsk, Samara, Bugulma, Ufa, Buguruslan, Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novo-Nikolaevsk, Irkutsk… Along the way, he married and nearly settled in Siberia permanently, even buying a house in Irkutsk. And, most likely, many chapters of the famous novel about the Good Soldier Švejk were written there.
Jaroslav Hašek himself was born on April 30, 1883, in Prague, the son of a poor schoolteacher. But his education was rather chaotic: after his father's death, he dropped out of high school, then suddenly enrolled in a trade academy, earned a diploma, and even became a bank clerk. But not for long. In 1903, Hašek was fired for persistent absenteeism. Then, after publishing a collection of mediocre decadent poems, he decided to pursue literature and embarked on the path of humorous writing.
The path in the Czech Republic was quite narrow at the time, with competitors tearing each other to shreds, but Hašek, as they say, "had the material." He was always where the action was. In the thick of student demonstrations, in brothels, in dive bars, in pubs. And all this not out of duty, but out of passion. So, although his colleagues considered Hašek a poor stylist, his feuilletons were popular. However, making a living from this craft proved difficult—especially when (as a byproduct of his dissolute lifestyle) he suddenly started a family. Fortunately, a friend got Hašek a job as an editor at the magazine "World of Animals," and for a while the young writer flourished—while also continuing to frequent dive bars, where he came up with all sorts of wonderful ideas. For example, he wrote and published articles about the mysterious sea creature "Tabu Taburan" and the ancient lizard "Idiotosaurus." Apparently, during that period, Hašek was generating such ideas literally every second and publishing them in various newspapers under hundreds of pseudonyms, so much so that current researchers of his work still can't figure them out. But Hašek didn't last long at the magazine—the idiotosaurs demanded his dismissal. So he took up the dog trade.
Yes, exactly like Schweik in his novel. After all, his experience working at Animal World hadn't been in vain—and Hašek skillfully pulled the wool over the buyers' eyes, telling them the virtues of the noble puppies. Sometimes they were dyed—but how could they be otherwise? "Dogs can't dye their own hair like women; the one selling them has to take care of that."
At the same time, he became interested in politics, since he needed something to do while drinking beer. And after a party in 1911, Hašek decided to found his own party (elections to the Austrian parliament were coming up). His mocking "Party of Moderate Progress within the Law" had a very decisive program: the widespread introduction of slavery, the Inquisition, and, most importantly, alcoholism in the Czech Republic. Hašek and his fellow party members worked diligently on this last point in pubs and beer halls, where they performed hilarious pantomimes based on Jaroslav's scripts, driving police agents to despair, as they found it too much to drink. However, they often met elsewhere, as evidenced by police reports of arrests: "the aforementioned, while intoxicated, urinated in front of the police headquarters building"; "in a state of mild intoxication, he damaged two iron fences"; "not far from the police station, he lit three street lamps that had already been extinguished" and so on.
It's surprising that, despite his selfless drinking, Hašek never forgot literature during these years. He literally poured out feuilletons and funny stories, one of which (almost like a prophecy) already featured the Good Soldier Švejk. But it wasn't until several years later that he finally materialized.
However, Jaroslav Hašek himself first followed Švejk's path. In 1915, he was rudely torn from a tavern counter and enlisted in the 91st Infantry Regiment. There, he almost immediately found himself in the setting of his future novel: Lieutenant Lukáš, Captain Sagner, the clerk Vanek, and many other future characters served in this regiment. But Hašek had no idea that all these people had gathered there to glorify his name forever, so he did everything he could to avoid their company and being sent to the front. He feigned rheumatism, but was branded a deserter, and had to rejoin his regiment as a prisoner in a prison train car.
The only thing he managed was to somehow come to an agreement with Colonel Lukáš and get a job as a clerk at headquarters for a while. Far from the trenches and the front lines. But fortune is fickle in war, and soon he, along with Lukáš's orderly, František Strašlipka (with whom he became close friends and who became the main prototype for Švejk), was sent, as they say, to the "theater of military operations." Right to the very bottom.
Neither of them had any intention of being heroes. But somewhere near Lviv, Hasek, who had an unusual gift for languages and spoke Russian fluently, demonstrated what his superiors considered heroism—and was awarded the Medal for Bravery. He'd struck up a conversation with some suspicious characters on the front lines, almost by accident, and suddenly discovered he'd captured a couple dozen Russian deserters. However, Hasek didn't have time to wear the medal, because on the morning of September 24, 1915, during the Russian army's counteroffensive, the opposite happened to him and Strashlipka. They, in turn, politely surrendered to the Russians, as was common practice back then.
He couldn't die by Russian bayonets! And Hasek, arriving in a prisoner-of-war camp near Kiev, breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the main madness of war was behind him. However, it wasn't so.
The camp proved worse than the front. Prisoners were decimated by hunger and typhus, so Jaroslav, like many other Czechs, decided to enlist in the Czech Legion, which fought on the Russian side. However, even here he struggled to find a better position: first, he became a clerk in the 1st Jan Hus Volunteer Regiment, and then a contributor to the newspaper "Czechoslovan," published in Kyiv. The primary focus of this highly free and independent publication was to encourage Czech prisoners in concentration camps to join the Legion. Jaroslav filled the newspaper with caustic feuilletons, mocking not only Prussian militarism but also Czech "national pride." For this work, Hašek quickly earned the recognition of the Austrian authorities, who declared him a traitor, and the hatred of Czech nationalists, who even tried to assassinate him. However, an era was dawning when it seemed everyone wanted to kill everyone, no matter the reason, and the Czech National Council decided to give Hašek a chance to "die gracefully" by firing him from the newspaper and sending him to the front. Hašek survived, although he earned an Iron Cross of St. George, 4th Class, which clearly indicated he could have been made of wood.
But then revolution broke out in Russia, and all the old heroism instantly lost its value. The Czechoslovak Corps placed itself under French command and declared allegiance to the Provisional Government, and when it fell, it refused to recognize Bolshevik authority. Many Czechs now simply wanted to return home. However, Hašek and his compatriots (whose national consciousness had resolutely awakened) were clearly no longer on the same path. He didn't want to return to the Czech Republic; he was going to Moscow. To the Bolsheviks.
It must be said that the Bolsheviks at the time were very fond of Europeans "attaching" themselves to them. World revolution was still on the agenda, so in Moscow, Hasek (a renowned writer and journalist, and, as he himself said, the leader of one of the influential Czech parties) was accepted into the Bolshevik Party without the slightest hesitation. Already in the winter of 1918, he became a member of the RCP(b). And he was immediately sent to the Volga region, to Samara, which had been captured by the Red Army, where scattered units of the Czech Legion were still roaming, awaiting evacuation to France. Against the backdrop of the escalating civil war, this was a powerful fighting force, and Hasek, as an experienced agitator, had to win them over to the Bolshevik side.
It can't be said that he was lucky. Within a few weeks, he managed to assemble only a small force, which scattered almost immediately when Czech units fighting against the Reds approached the city in June. The city was captured so quickly that Hašek only managed to reach the hotel where the unit's headquarters were located at the last moment to destroy the lists of volunteers. He made it, but it was too late to escape the city.
The danger was grave: the field court of the Czechoslovak Legion issued an arrest warrant for Hašek as a "traitor to the Czech people," and he was forced to hide in the outskirts of the city for almost three months, wrapped in rags and pretending to be the half-witted son of a German colonist from Turkestan...
It wasn't until September that Yaroslav managed to cross the front line and return to the Reds. But then his party career immediately took off—he became head of the International Section of the Political Department and, along with Red Army units, headed east to Bugulma, where he was suddenly appointed city commandant. He was then transferred to the 5th Army, appointed editor of the army newspaper "Our Way." With this newspaper, published, like many newspapers of the time, literally "on the fly," on an editorial and printing train, Hasek traveled through Chelyabinsk, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk, and finally reached Irkutsk. According to some reports, he even served for a time in Chapayev's 25th Division and was personally acquainted with the famous brigade commander. Somewhere along the way, fate brought Yaroslav together with the beautiful typist Alexandra Lvova, who became his second wife (he never got around to divorcing his first, but who cares when the whole world is going to hell).
And the world was flying. Essentially, the Bolsheviks were implementing Hasek's party program, introducing their "red" inquisition, inventing (under the guise of liberating workers) new forms of slavery, and undoubtedly fostering alcoholism. Hasek himself worked nonstop in Irkutsk, practically 24 hours a day. He simultaneously published several newspapers in different languages: "Shturm" (Storm) and "Rogam" (Offensive) in German and Hungarian, "Bulletin of the Political Worker" (Bulletin of the Political Worker) in Russian, and even "Uur" (Dawn) in Buryat. He wrote nearly 90 percent of the texts himself, and numerous translators translated them for the newspapers. However, Hasek picked up foreign languages incredibly quickly; he already spoke excellent Russian, learned Hungarian in a matter of weeks, and soon became fluent in Chinese. As for German, he spoke it like a native.
Hasek really enjoyed Irkutsk, and although there was once an attempt to assassinate him there (one of the Czech legionnaires remaining in the city recognized him and tried to "get even with the traitor"), he seemed to seriously intend to stay there permanently. As a well-known Bolshevik activist, he was elected to the Irkutsk City Council in early 1920. He even bought a house on the banks of the Angara River. Rumors persisted that Yaroslav had given up drinking and—in between publishing newspapers and attending city council meetings—was immersed in work on some large manuscript.
That’s probably how it was – he was already writing “Švejk”.
In fact, the first chapters of the novel were written back in 1917, when Hašek was working for the Czech Legion's propaganda newspaper. They were published in Kyiv in June 1917 as the novella "The Good Soldier Švejk in Captivity." Now a sequel was begging to be written. But just as Yaroslav began working on it, he was suddenly summoned from Irkutsk to Moscow.
In November 1920, revolution was also brewing in Czechoslovakia. In the city of Kladno, workers even proclaimed a "Soviet Republic," and all Czech communists registered in Soviet Russia were hastily sent home to "add fuel to the fire." So Hašek and his new wife had to leave immediately for Prague. And they celebrated the New Year of 1921 in the Czech capital.
But in Prague, no one but the police were waiting for Hašek. While he and his wife were traveling here from Moscow, the uprising had been suppressed, and the rebellious workers had been shoved into prisons. The old order remained intact. And almost no one was happy to see Hašek, whose reputation as a "traitor to the interests of the Czech people" had firmly cemented itself. No one, that is, except for a few old friends, one of whom soon brought clippings from local newspapers covering the past five years, where news and obituaries about Hašek had regularly appeared. "Upon returning home, I learned that I had been hanged three times, shot twice, and quartered once by savage Kirghiz rebels at Lake Kale-Isykh. Finally, I was stabbed to death in a savage brawl with drunken sailors in an Odessa tavern," Hašek quipped in one of his feuilletons. However, now, after his return, wild rumors began to spread throughout Prague with renewed vigor. They said that the new wife he returned with was the only surviving Princess Lvova, and that Hašek had executed all of her relatives, including her mother and father. With his own hands. They also said that during his time as commissar, Hašek personally executed hundreds of Czechs, and then raged in the Far East, killing Chinese, and even eating their flesh along with other Bolsheviks. "Is this really true?" a journalist from one of the Prague newspapers asked in horror while interviewing Hašek. "Yes, my dear lady," he replied, complaining of an unpleasant aftertaste.
Yes, the idiocy about which Hašek had written so many feuilletons and about which he was now finishing an entire novel continued to haunt him. And it seemed the more successful the text, the more powerful the idiocy became. His only salvation was work—and, of course, a drink or two or three in the evenings. He had to live hand to mouth, but publishers were increasingly interested in "Švejk," signing contracts for new chapters. They were in a hurry, because, as one of them put it, "this book will be a real bomb, but only in the coming years, while the generation that remembers all these events is alive. Then, of course, it will be forgotten."
Hašek wouldn't have minded being forgotten right now—and not being disturbed while he worked. But he couldn't find peace in Prague, so he moved to the small provincial town of Lipnice. They say it happened somehow spontaneously: he left his Prague apartment one day for a couple of drinks at a nearby tavern, practically in his slippers, and two weeks later he showed up in a cheap hotel in Lipnice. There, surrounded by empty bottles, he was finishing the third part of "Švejk"...
But he didn't have time to write the fourth part. The alcoholic marathon that Hašek had continued almost without interruption since his youth had undermined his health to such an extent that neither money (which he suddenly acquired at the end of his life), nor the recognition of his readers, nor his doctors could save him. He died on January 3, 1923, having dictated a few more pages of the manuscript, and his last words were: "Švejk is dying a hard time."
One could have ended there. Another great, but unfinished, novel remained after the author's untimely death (Hašek was only 39 years old). But it became not only the most famous book written in Czech in the world, but arguably the most famous anti-war book of all time, inspiring many other authors. Without it, for example, as Joseph Heller acknowledged, there would have been no novel "Catch-22." "Švejk" was translated into 58 languages, and its Russian version was published as late as 1926, in a translation by the Leningrad translator Herbert Sukkau (exiled to Tomsk in the 30s and executed there in November 1937). But idiocy continued to haunt Hašek: under Stalin, "Švejk" was published with numerous cuts, removing all the obscene passages from the text. The "ass" and other immodesties were put back in place only during the thaw, under Khrushchev, for which, of course, special thanks to him.
Be that as it may, The Good Soldier Švejk remains perhaps the most powerful tool in the fight against idiocy. It's one of those rare books that even influences military officials. Of course, the power of culture shouldn't be exaggerated; it has never saved human souls from being plunged into the primordial darkness of war. And yet, there's one mantra, coined by Hašek, that certainly has magical powers when repeated day after day: "Remember, you beasts, that you are human."
