THE BOOK OF YASHKA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3494, 22 February 1921, Page 54

THE BOOK OF YASHKA.

By

Jessie Mack at.

... 0f thousand war books published p 111 ? 0 , only a fraction can survive, but, however small the winnowed remnant ma.'y re, it will include one extraordinary book, ot which the manner of its production meetly preludes an uni'orgettab'e human document, written, as one may say m the life-blood of a great woman.* ‘‘Xf 1 shka '” the autobiography of Maria Botchkareva, creator and captain of the xtussian women’s Battalion of Death is not- indeed set down by her own hand,’for Al 3, l ] 3, 3 ) OtClllc 1 l’t' ir;) j on il 1i't:.,.., x..

peasant. Ihe book is a combined tribute to the courage and powei'ful memory of its subject and to the ski!) of the'scribe, Isaac Don Levine, who transcribed it for Ue press m America during the summer of 1918. Here in the short space of three weeks, covering a hundred hours of close work, Maria Botclikareva dictated in Russian (the one language she, the story of her 29 years of life as” peasant, exile, soldier, and fugitive. Not that she came to America to escape the death that threatened her in Bolshevist Russia : she came to plead Russia’s cause to President \\ ilson. “Yashka is the right name of this extraordinary tale of adventure, being that chosen for herself when she went tobserve her country as a Russian soldier in th a last days of 1914. It suits well the character of this strange, strong, tender Slav woman, with the broad peasant face, on which is stamped the sternness of an iron resolution and the brooding look of one who has lived familiarly with horror and death. An intensely powerful face it is, and one that could wreathe instantly with smiles and flash with frank sudden'merriment or melt in compassionate tears. Little of hope or merriment illuminated the childhood of this daughter of a morose, drunken father and a loving blit crushed mother. She was a paid drudge at eigiit and a-half, and the mainstay of her house at 14, struggling out into admired womanhood in a year more. Early she learned primitive woman’s lesson of treacherous wrong, and went an unloving bride from her father's tyranny to fall under the worse tyranny of the brutal boor Botehkarev, whom she married at 16. She had grown up in Siberia, which called to Russia for peasant settlers. Like her husband, she toiled at asphalte work; but while lie stayed on the lowest grade she rose to a foreman’s place. Vodka, the curse of her childhood’s home, made her life with Botchkarev an inferno. At 19 she fled to her sister in Irkutsk, and when not yet 21 the first gleam of sunshine ' she had ever known threw a subdued 1 light over the next two or three years. Unable to obtain divorce from the un- 1 speakable clod she had married, she ' * “Yashka,” edited by Isaac Do i Levine. 1 Frederick A. Bt<ikos and Co. <

l''* e r ed , lnto . tl , le common and accepted 3 1 f ot a cml agreement with a youn* f man ot no fortune but some education, and 5 ’ at v‘!V’ oslU,Jll ,, aud api’caranee that won her ! atiectimi. But this new lmshaiid, a 5 v " : ut.onaiy at heart, was already under 3 .mpumm, and their life and peaceful Toil 1 in th? \,.>- ailgori - f ° r tlle .horrors of exile Kashl-a" tli "i le ? 10I1 j l,f Northern Siberia. Ka. hka, the husband, sank into a nervous ami nioial wreck under these adversities E h'alT’T, H el ' *T ifice and de votion with that friahtf 1 ’ 3 a -T craz >’ 1 a homicTT U ' V '. lderness s!ie was bound to » a Homicidal madman. ' . 11 was then that the rumour of worldwar reached even that desolate outpost A deep fervour of patriotism, a striume meTn.Wl' 0 lcl P m en who were drivout the hated invaders, possessed her mght and day. Her love for l Yashka was 1 r d „ ead ’ hut she could serve him better hj some great deed that would win him me tzars pardon and make him a man knoT' ' a!!1 !;npe 1 tl,e Dashka she had or' 1 v T F' Vol ' *0 rise above the level of the Yakut savage that took her place Botch]'-., aS IHevlt ;% to think of .Maria ~ . . Y, l J"l a , an 'l Joan of .Arc together a.s to think ot spring and sunlight Her amaiuiens l , and interpreter. Isaac Levine wiues m the preface: svn.lT J ° f h ’i ° f Arc ’ Uotcltkareva is the *• lbol of , her country. (an there be tp 11101 e striking incarnation of France than that conveyed by the image of Joan ot Arc? Botchkareva is an astounding typification of peasant Lussia, with all her virtues and vices 1 ' ’ , tgnorant of history and literatme the natural lucidity of her mind such as to lead her directly- to the very fundamental truths of life. Religious with all the fervour of her primit've sou], she is tolerant in a fashion befitting a philosopher. Devoted to her country with every fibre of her being, she is free from impassioned partisanslnp and selfish patriotism. Overflowing with good nature and kindness, she is yet capable of savage outbursts and brutal acts. Credulous and trusttul as a child, she can be easily incited against people and things.' Intrepid and rash as a fighter, her desire to live on occasion was indescribablv pathetic. In a word, Botchkareva enibodies all those paradoxical characteristics that have made Russian nature a puzzle to the world. Take a wav from Russia the veneer of Western civilisation and you behold her Incarnation m Botchkareva. Know Botchkareva and you will know Russia. are the words of a man wiio knew Botchkareva, who penetrated to the hidden places of her soul during the recital of her strange and tragic story ft was characteristic of her to wish to give I'ussia her world—a true account of herself, one whom she had hoped to see Russia s deliverer. Strange, pathetic picture of a peasant woman thinking that to-day, as in the time of Alexander or t narlemagne, the reach of a mighty ruler, the winning of him, even, to see* as she herself saw, could make a world anew. She little knew the tangles, the webs, the excrescences on national life and government that come between humanity and its level due in these complex latter days. But the Russian .Joan had heard her voices in. that far Siberian prison of ice and wind, not wtih the conscious ear, but in the deeps of her woman’s soul, and she went. (To be concluded.)