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The Badgers

其他書名	A Novel
出版	Hyperion Press, 1973
主題	Fiction / General
ISBN	08835500839780883550083
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=7DgqAAAAYAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋The novel deals with a peasant revolt against Red Army grain collectors during the period of the New Economic Policy. The Badgers is the story of two brothers, Semen and Pavel Raxleev, country boys, who are in effect sold into urban bondage by their father. They are taken to Moscow by the petty storekeeper Egor Brykin and put to work for the merchant Byxalov, an Ostrovskian figure. After an argument with Byxalov, Pavel disappears into the proletariat. Semen is followed almost up to the Revolution, which destroys the merchant suburb Zarjad'e at the end of Part 1. Part 2 describes the subdual of the countryside by the still unstable Bolshevik authorities, the center of attention being the grain-expropriation campaign. Semen returns from the war and, back in his native village of Vory, runs into the grain requisitioners. After an incident at the Raxleev house, one of the communists is killed, and Semen is taken to be the murderer. He becomes a hero-fugitive, Semen Barsuk ("badger"), the leader of the badgers, or "flying brotherhood," made up of deserters from the tsarist army and dissident peasants. Part 3 describes the activities of the badgers. Their defeat is assured, at the end, by the appearance of a knight, called simply Anton, who turns out to be the long-lost brother of Semen-Pavel Raxleev. It comes to pass that the real murderer of the grain collector is none other than Egor Brykin, who is, conveniently, also an informer. Semen therefore remains in a state of grace: after a recognition scene with his brother Anton, he comes over to the communist side, leaving the other badgers to inevitable destruction.