On the Road to Freedom

<p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>'Brother you have another pair of boots Jaroslav Ha��ek said to me grabbing me by the sleeve. How do you know? Yesterday you were in army boots and today you've got civilian ones on. I'd buy those army boots off you. And in this way my high-laced boots which I was given by the Austrian Red Cross way back in Beryozovka-za-Baikalom came into Ha��ek's possession. It was a silly thing to do. Not because I should have known that I wouldn't get a kopeck out of Ha��ek in exchange for them - at bottom I did know that - but as a former soldier I should have thought about reserves. Life is a war and in this war sometimes boots become casualties.' </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)><span>���</span>Thus ruefully muses Janko Jesensk�� Slovak poet and politician in the pages of his </span><em style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>On the Road to Freedom.</em><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> This book newly translated into English by Charles S. Kraszewski is unique among the memoirs that came out of the First World War as it chronicles not desperate charges or trench warfare but the daily life of Austrian prisoners of war taken into Russian captivity at the very outset of the conflict. Of course the reader will find more than one exciting passage in </span><em style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>On the Road to Freedom</em><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> from eyewitness accounts of the Soviet Revolution in Kiev and Saint Petersburg to the heroic and bloody route cut by the Czechoslovak Legions through Red Army forces as the former POWs make their way across Siberia to Vladivostok and the long steamboat journey home where they will aid in establishing the newly independent Republic of Czechoslovakia. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>But the most engaging aspect of </span><em style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>On the Road to Freedom</em><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> and the poems that Jesensk�� composed during his Russian captivity (a generous selection of which are appended to these memoirs) is the palpable experience of the daily life of the POW - far from home cold and hungry one of the 'ants [who] / Roil the yard with mess-plates in their hands - / Like hungry beasts for fish-soup from the kitchen.' </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Besides their value as literary texts Janko Jesensk��'s wartime writings in verse and prose are a welcome addition to the English library of early twentieth century history. They provide a fresh Slovak perspective on the 'Great War' the Russian Revolution the establishment of the Czechoslovak state and the situation of the smaller Central European nations on the chessboard of politics dominated by great powers.</span></p>