Woman Opera Star Who Fought With The Cossacks

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 31, 13 January 1939, Page 14

Woman Opera Star Who Fought With The Cossacks

Ghastly Days Of Russien Revolution

UL GARDO, enthusiastic woman opera singer, unhappily married to a famous 45-year-old violinist when she had not reached her fifteenth birthday, lived a life of adventure which culminated in the death, by starvation-in a "Red" prison-of her five-year-old daughter. . This famous operatic star, MOoving in aristocratic Russian circles, soon became involved in the Revolution. "Cossack Fury," her autobicgraphy, gives graphic descriptions of the terrible days when Russian fought Russian with more than the ferocity of animals. Torture, of the most diabolical nature, was practised by both Reds and Whites. Revolution did not come suddenly to Russia. For years it . had been generating, in city and village, behind the brilliance and gaicty. It had been gathering force and momentum, until nothing could bar its way. Highty per cent. of the Russians were ignorant peasants, only just emerging from the yoke of serfdom which had crushed them since the time of Katharine the Great. True, Alexander IT had released the Moujiki from their slavery, but their untutored brains were slow to grasp the meaning of the act, and for many years they still continued in their old way of life, uneducated, insensitive, a product of the Stone Age; while the rest of the world moved on. Joining up with Lavr Georgievich Kornilov, commander of the

Volunteer Army, the woman Lul Gardo fought, side by side, with the Cossacks in ferocious battles. Russian fought Russian — there was no quarter. Of the 4000 volunteers who were assembled at Novocherkassk at the end of 1917, there were six women, ali members of the aristocracy. Their adventures are told with graphic detail in ‘Cossack Fury," and as page after page is turned over and the words depict marches over frozen wastes, one is forced to compare the gallant retreat of the Whites with Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. "Ail the concentrated hate of the infernal regions seemed to pour forth upon us on that awful night. Guns-I cannot tell you how many of them-thundered around us, sending more and more of our men sprawling, battered and bleeding corpses, into the dust, blowing the wagons sky-high, so that the wounded, blown to smithereens, came raining down up us like hail. We had no ammunition with which to defend ourselves. Our wounded we had to leave at the enemy’s merey. Yet those of us who lived still hung grimly on." The volunteers’ escape from the trap set by the Bolsheviks must rank as one of the most amazing military exploits in history, and Lul Gardo’s gift of description is seen at its best as ‘she paints a word picture of ghastly days and nishta. A hook full of sexrsaticnal

and amazing revelations _

W.F.

I.

"Cossack Fury-’" Luli Gardo. Hutchinson, London. Our copy from the publishers,