# Yashka — Character guide

> Key figures in Yashka by Maria Bochkareva.

- [Yasha Buk](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/yasha_buk.md): In Siberian exile, Yasha drifts between card tables and sudden homecomings, by turns tender and terrifying. His jealousy of the political exiles who visit Maria curdles into violence, and his broken promises—sworn on his
- [Maria Bochkareva](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/maria_bochkareva.md): Maria narrates her own transformation from a battered wife in Amga to a decorated soldier who refuses to form a committee and stands alone against Kerensky's objections. Her stubbornness and physical courage make her bot
- [General Kornilov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/kornilov.md): Kornilov appears at a Petrograd luncheon as a man of few words and obvious resolve, his Mongol cheekbones and grey moustache marking him as a soldier of the old school. He endorses Maria's fight against the committees an
- [Alexander Kerensky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/kerensky.md): Kerensky meets Maria at a luncheon where he teases her refusal to form a committee, smiling even as he concedes her resolve. He plans a trip to the front and promises a solemn presentation of standards and icons to her w
- [Ivan Ivanovitch Petrukhin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/ivan_petrukhin.md): Petrukhin remains with Maria after she is nearly lynched, then leaves to join a deputation seeking her transfer to Moscow for trial rather than mob justice. He posts five trusted friends at her compartment and locks the 
- [Afanasy Bochkarev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/afanasy_bochkarev.md): Afanasy returns from the Russo-Turkish War with medals and literacy, courting Olga with the first shoes she has ever owned. But poverty and drink soon make him morose and violent, beating his wife and darkening the home 
- [Mikhail Rodzianko](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/rodzianko.md): President of the State Duma, the parliamentary voice of a crumbling empire, whose authority is tested as soldiers, streets, and soviets begin to outrun the old order.
- [Lieutenant Vasili](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/lieutenant_vasili.md): An officer in Yasha's regiment whose fate at the front becomes one of the many silences the war leaves behind, haunting the narrator's resolve.
- [Nastasia Leontievna Fuchsman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/nastasia_fuchsman.md): Maria Bochkareva's mother, a fisherman's daughter raised on begged bread and wolf-haunted roads, whose endurance of poverty and a brutal husband shapes her daughter's fierce will.
- [Stepan Vasiliev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/stepan_vasiliev.md): A soldier and comrade of Yasha who drifts toward Bolshevik convictions, embodying the political currents that will split the men Maria fights beside.
- [General Polovtzev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_polovtzev.md): Commander of the Petrograd Military District, a general whose decisions weigh the fate of the capital as revolution gathers in the streets.
- [Marusia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/marusia.md): A young woman whose brief romance with Vasili ends in betrayal and whose father's whip drives her toward marriage, the army, and a life she never chose.
- [General Brusilov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_brusilov.md): A high-ranking Russian general during World War I.
- [Daria Maximovna Vasilieva](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/daria_vasilieva.md): A wealthy woman who supports the Women's Battalion.
- [Vladimir Lenin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/lenin.md): Lenin enters Yashka's world as the revolution's most radical voice, insisting that soldiers like her are pawns of a government that must be overthrown, not merely reformed. His single-minded certainty — and his willingne
- [Governor Kraft](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/governor_kraft.md): Governor of a Siberian province, a figure from Yasha's exile.
- [General Verkhovsky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_verkhovsky.md): Russian Minister of War under the Provisional Government.
- [Leon Trotsky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/trotsky.md): A leading Bolshevik, encountered during the revolution.
- [Anna Petrovna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/anna_petrovna.md): A woman who helps Yasha during his escape from exile.
- [General Valuyev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_valuyev.md): A Russian general encountered during the war.
- [Captain Dementiev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/captain_dementiev.md): An officer in the Russian army.
- [General Walter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_walter.md): A Russian general of German descent.
- [Avdotia Ivanovna Kitova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/avdotia_kitova.md): An old woman who helps Yasha during his escape.
- [General Anosov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_anosov.md): A Russian general.
- [Shura](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/shura.md): A young woman in the Women's Battalion of Death.
- [Comrade Orlov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/orlov.md): A Bolshevik encountered during the revolution.
- [General Alexeiev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/alexeiev.md): A high-ranking Russian general.
- [General X](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters/general_x.md): An unnamed general encountered by Yasha.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/yashka_se/characters