The story of a real man: “The Drummer’s Fate” by Arkady Gaidar

Gaidar’s military career was considered as incredibly successful in Soviet times. However, it is obvious that Gaidar did not stand the test of war. That is why, on the eve of the coming big war, the writer Gaidar set himself the task of becoming the tutor of future soldiers. It was a challenging task to accomplish. Gaidar could not be unaware that the fathers of many children, whom he was going to train the “Strong Red Guard,” were unjustly condemned during the years of the Stalinist repressions. The tragedy of the situation was aggravated by the splitting consciousness of the Soviet man, condemned to be both the executioner and the victim at the same time. It is impossible to cope with an external enemy unless one first defeats the internal enemy. Of course, enemies carefully disguise themselves, but this is not the main difficulty in fighting them. Gaidar’s artistic world is based on the bizarre dialectic of good and evil. There are often strange similarities between his positive heroes and antiheroes. To a certain extent, the old gangster Yakov is a double of the main character of the story Sergei Shcherbachev. Moreover, Sergey suffers from a clear personality splitting. By the end of the story, his dissociative identity disorder develops essentially pathological forms. Only in the final of the story does the hero overcome his duality. He is undoubtedly ready for the big war. Sergei Shcherbachev is sure not to have a traumatic neurosis, like Arkady Gaidar.

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