The Wild Division

The novel “The Wild Division” is a literary monument to emigre prose. Like the whole body of that neglected branch of Russian literature, the novel is filled with reflections on unrealized possibilities of the past. The work describes one of the versions of the “Kornilov Affair.”

The Caucasian native cavalry volunteer division (“Colored” or “Wild”), formed soon after the start of the 1914 war, included six national regiments: Ingush, Dagestan, Kabardin, Chechen, Circassian, and Tatar. In August (September) 1917, during the “Kornilov Affair,” the division—at the head of the 3rd Cavalry Corps—seized the city of Luga and reached the outskirts of Petrograd, its satellite city Gatchina.