Tříska

The short story "Tříska", written by Vladimir Zazubrin in 1923, is a true, almost naturalistic account of the horrible methods of the Chekists and how things "worked" in Cheka during the so-called Red Terror. We are guided through the story by Andrei Srubov, the chairman of the Gubchek, or Provincial Extraordinary Commission, through whose eyes we see all these horrors, and at the same time we follow the transformation of the main character himself, to his, quite predictable, end.

The story was, however, rejected by Soviet critics and banned from publication, even though its author otherwise enjoyed a fair amount of support from the USSR government and was supported by Maxim Gorky himself. It was then published in Russia for the first time in 1989, and in 1992 it was co-produced with the French and made into a film (The Chekist, dir. A. Rogozhkin). The author of the story, Vladimir Zazubrin, and the writer Valerian Pravduchin, who wrote the preface to it in 1923, were both executed by shooting in the 1930s.

Czech edition