Beleguered Bolsheviks: Attacks by Cossacks and Capitalists

In 1918, as World War I drew to a close, Allied forces intervened in the ill-fated struggle to put down the Bolshevik insurgents in the Russian Revolution. The prospect of an armistice with Germany preoccupied European and American attention, and the joint efforts with the White Russians were neglected, disorganized and even--in the Revolution's later stages--pathetic.

Nevertheless, the White Russians did achieve some transient successes, particularly in the Southern theater, where their troops at one time penetrated to within 200 miles of the Communist headquarters at Moscow. Last Train over Rostov Bridge is the story of the part in this campaign played by an American flier, Caotain Marion Aten. The story is true.

Aten's tale, as ghost-written by professional author Arthur Orrmont, carries the reader through the early, swashbuckling advances of the White cossacks and the supporting British fighter squadron with which Aten flew. His book catches the enthusiasm which swept across the anti-Communist armies and which made the toast "Christmas in Moscow" a Cossack watchword. And finally, the dream shattered and the Communist counter-offensive moving forward irrevocably, Aten's narrative makes up the ghastly retreat to the Black Sea and the eventual evacuation of Allied forces from under the guns of the Bolshevik advance guard.

Portrayed against the background of this macrocosmic rise and fall is a strikingly personal account of a love affair between Aten and a Russian nurse. By what, from the story teller's point of view, was an extremely for fortunate coincidence, Aten met the girl and had opportunities to spend any amount of time with her while the Cossacks were at the height of their successes; later, during the nightmarish retreat, the two lovers meet with their own special tragedy. The parallel between the personal and over-all themes would be entirely plausible, if left to the reader to discover, for it is natural enough that in the chaotic sickness of a starving people's retreat would be many individual calamities. But Aten and his ghostwriter cannot leave well enough alone- throughout the middle part of the book appear such signposts as "It was as if, with Nina's departure (her unit had been ordered away), mercy left us and the sky fell in." Spelling things out has its virtues, but this is a little too much.

Style, indeed, is not one of the book's strong points. Aten and the British flyers seem to have viewed the early parts of the South Russian campaign as some kind of deadly sport- tensely exciting, to be sure, but still a game. At any rate, the language of the first half of the book makes them all sound more like characters in a hopped-up battle between the cowboys and Indians. The enemy "is coming down the Volga with a flotilla of gunboats." Aten's commander announces at one point, "We'll load up with twenty-pound bombs and take out after him as soon as Bunny (Aten) finishes his tea." Those were the days when military airplanes rarely went faster than 200 miles an hour, and the involved dogfights possible at such low speeds are continually described in a tone that makes one wonder if Aten and his boys will ever fail to send the "Bolshie" villains crashing earthward in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke.

BUT midway through the book, as the war ceases to be a game, there is a change in Aten's tone. The retreat becomes a vastly sobering experience: "the refugee trains inched and shuttled and rocketed by. We sat warm and cozy and full of hot buttered rum--and ashamed." Aten's war does not sound like cowboys and Indians any more. The second part of the book is infinitely better than the first--had each section been written immediately after the events it describes transpired, the change in style would add to an impression that Aten aged a great deal during this campaign.

Mature or not, however, Aten was an extremely perceptive observer during what in hindsight has emerged as an extremely important part of history. For had the Cossacks been able to push their advance through to Moscow, and thus exterminated the Bolsheviks, the state of the world would be unrecognizably different today. Aten, in the midst of the Cossack army, had opportunities to meet and study its commanding officers. And the description of their policy conflicts and petty jealousies is another important part of his book. Two of these men clashed openly on the question of how far to extend the White Russian lines during the approach to Moscow. They disagreed over whether the final push should be made simultaneously from three points, or with a more concentrated force at one. The former policy was used; had it not been, the defeat might have been averted.

Last Train over Rostov Bridge is far from great history; neither does it qualify as outstanding story-telling. Nevertheless, it is still a striking account of what must have been quite an adventure. The book doesn't tell nearly as much about the Russian revolution as Kennan's Russia and the West. But it goes a lot faster.