Background
Chapaev, Vasilii was born in 1887.
Chapaev, Vasilii was born in 1887.
A former labourer, who became the commander of a division, fighting Kolchak’s forces during the Civil War. His political commissar, Furmanov, became a well-known writer, by using him as a model to create the image of a down-to-earth, though uneducated and simple, self-made revolutionary commander, who became a sort of folk hero. The book called Chapaev (1923), and the classic Stalinist film adaptation (1934), had much more to do with his reputation than with his brief and not very successful military career (he was killed in action during the Civil War, 1919).
His glorification was clearly excessive, and Vasilii Ivanovich has much greater significance as the folk hero of innumerable anecdotes and jokes satirizing the official propaganda approach.