Weapon

The historical novella "Zbroja" (Weapon) is thematically connected to the novel "Kolasy pad syaropam tvaіm" (Ears of Grain Under Your Sickle), but it is not a continuation, rather a peculiar offshoot of the magnificent epic work. Among the characters of the novella are Ales Zahorski, Mstislav Mayevsky, and the Kaghut brothers, Kandrat and Andrey, all already familiar to readers of "Kolasy."

The action takes place in 1862 in Moscow, where Ales and his friends arrive on a mission from Kastus Kalinouski to procure weapons for the future rebels. This is perhaps Karatkevich's most anti-imperial work, in which the autocratic system of Tsarist Russia in the middle of the century before last is exposed with extreme harshness. The Belarusian writer depicted "golden-domed" Moscow and its customs of the time distinctively and vividly, not yielding in mastery to his namesake, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, with his famous book "Moscow and Muscovites."