A Waltz with Traitors полностью

I found vastly different accounts of the events leading up to the Bolshevik attack at Marianovka. I ended up writing that scene two ways and leaving the one that seemed to work best with the rest of the novel. Also, I found different numbers for legion fatalities. Carl Ackerman gave the number as ten; Edwin Hoyt said six.

This novel follows closely accounts of the 1918 battle for Omsk and the taking of Krasnoyarsk. One source said the Bolsheviks from Tatarsk telegraphed back to Omsk to ask for reinforcements. Another source said they telephoned. In either case, Dalek and Nadia weren’t really involved, but the Bolsheviks were expecting friendly reinforcements and instead ended up with a battalion of hostile Czechoslovaks to contend with.

Different accounts of the series of battles to take the train tunnels around Lake Baikal include different details, but the main events are well documented. The search for sappers was a plot device to get Filip and Anton temporarily with the Seventh Regiment but one that felt plausible. Some accounts say the legion purposely destroyed the train full of explosives at Baikal Station; other accounts say it was an accidental stray bullet.

As portrayed in this novel, most legionnaires were unenthusiastic when asked to stay in Russia to open the Eastern Front again. Their battles in the Urals, their near mutiny, and their growing animosity toward the Kolchak regime follow the sources. Several lines of the argument between Gajda and Kolchak are from the historical record, as is the overall situation described in the novel. The supplies stored in warehouses in Omsk, meant for the White Army but hoarded by corrupt Kolchak officials, eventually made their way to the Red Army.

Siberia during the Russian Civil War was a dangerous place. Bandits, released war prisoners, and Bolshevik partisans would have all been a threat to members of the legion—or their families—who wandered too far from strongholds. Though the term concentration camp is most closely associated with World War II, the term first came into use during the Boer War and was used by the Bolsheviks during the time of this novel. The system of camps and forced labor would grow into the infamous Soviet Gulag.

Kolchak’s telegram to Semenov and the legion’s interception of that telegram are real. Kolchak did eventually end up under the protection of the Sixth Regiment, who turned him over to the Irkutsk authorities when faced with the choice of turning him over or fighting their way east. The kidnapping and killing of the hostages that so angered the population comes from history, as does the story of Kolchak’s execution on the ice.

I found three different numbers in my various research books for the value of the gold in the imperial treasury the legion captured in Kazan, so I used the highest one (650 million rather than 560 million or 400 million), because it showed up in two sources. The fate of the gold is still a subject for speculation. Most of it, and maybe all of it, ended up in Bolshevik hands. But persistent rumors suggest part of it was on a train that plunged into Lake Baikal, or that part of it was buried in the woods.

The exact size of the legion is unknown, but just under 70,000 soldiers and civilians were evacuated. Most sources list about 4,000 dead in Russia and Siberia, though one source claimed closer to half of the legion died. Approximately 1,600 legionnaires married local women during their journey, though, at various times, new marriages were prohibited due to limited space for families. The bulk of the legion served in Russia, but there were also contingents serving in the Italian Front and on the Western Front.

The Great War and the Sovietization of Russia were responsible for multiple name changes. Saint Petersburg became Petrograd early in the war, then later became Leningrad, and is now once again Saint Petersburg. Pressburg became Bratislava (1919), Novonikolayevsk became Novosibirsk (1926), Verkhne-Udinsk became Ulan Ude (1934), Troitskosavsk became Kyakhta (1934), and Mysovaya became Babushkin (1941). Doch was listed by that name in one of my research books, but I could find it on a map only as Velyka Doch. Also, although Ukraine is the correct current usage, I have chosen to use the Ukraine and Kiev (rather than Kyiv) throughout this manuscript because that was the most common usage at the time of the story. I also simplified things by referring to Ukrainian Nationalists rather than to the Rada.

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Sincere thanks to Terri Ferran, Ron Machado, Tina Peacock, Charissa Stastny, Jaime Theler, Bev Walkling, and Linda White for reading all or parts of the manuscript and providing feedback. Thanks also to Covenant for taking a chance on a longer-than-normal manuscript, especially to my editor, Samantha Millburn.