The boy and the officer

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Ilya Repin 1884: Vsevolod Garschin

The Boy and the Officer ( Russian Денщик и офицер , Denschtschik i ofizer ) is a short story by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garschin , which appeared in the March issue of Russkoje Bogatstvo magazine in Saint Petersburg in 1880 .

The served author observes the goings-on in the army in peacetime with a wink.

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The married farmer Nikita is summoned to the city and found by the draft commission there to be fit for military service. The women at home in the village cry for a week. Then recruit Nikita has to join his regiment in the governorate capital. Because Nikita quickly becomes the worst soldier in the training company, he is sometimes punished by his sergeant with work during off-duty times. The supervisor soon realizes that work is not a punishment for Nikita, but a welcome respite from the incomprehensible exercise. When the company commander can no longer hear the sergeant's complaints about the incompetent soldier, he wants to get rid of him as a lad with an officer. However, these posts are all filled. The case is solvable. Nikita becomes the permanent orderly, that is, a boy, from Ensign Strebeljkow. This subaltern officer in the infantry is a good-natured young man who - expelled from high school - has volunteered in the military. Strebeljkow does not mourn the botched civilian career. He thinks it is easier to become a general than an examining magistrate or a doctor. So the ensign slept in bed half the day. In the next room, resting makeshiftly on the floorboards, the boy Nikita awaits the first order of his master, who usually wakes up in the afternoon. When the ensign goes to dinner after the afternoon command or to the club in the evening, Nikita has his peace again. In the club, Strebeljkow approaches Major Chlobuschtschin's daughter and challenges the young girl to dance on a tour. The major looks curiously at such actions.

Each of the two - gentleman and lad - has their dreams. Strebeljkow dreams, he looks down at himself and his eyes fall on his generals epaulettes . The ensign doesn't know how he came up with this decoration, but it can't be otherwise - he must have accomplished something significant. In any case, Major Chlobuschtschin suddenly leads his daughter to him with a submissive gesture ... The boy, too, dreams different things. For example, Nikita lies in the hut at home, having become a small child again, next to the sleeping mother and listens to the winter storm outside the wooden farmer's hut ...

German-language editions

Output used:

  • The boy and the officer . P. 150-168 in Vsevolod M. Garschin: The stories. Transferred and with afterword by Valerian Tornius . 464 pages. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1956 (Dieterich Collection, Vol. 177)

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