mushiks

Updated: May 23, 2025

The peasantry, the mushiks, whom the Russians had feared to trust infuriated by the destruction of their homes, committed awful atrocities upon the starving, freezing soldiers, who, maddened by cold and hunger and by the singing in their ears of the rarefied air, many of them leaped into the bivouac fires. It was a colossal tragedy. Of the 678,000 soldiers only 80,000 ever returned.

Mary Platt Parmele - A Short History of Russia