V roce 1921, několik měsíců předtím, než Jaroslav Hašek začal psát Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka, popisuje v cyklu Velitelem města Bugulmy své životní zkušenosti s revolučním Ruskem. Obdobným způsobem, jakým se ve svých povídkách vysmíval předválečné C. a K. monarchii, zachycuje bývalý rudý komisař Hašek bolševickou revoluci. Před čtenářem se tak odehrává úsměvný příběh, v němž, v zapomenutém tatarském městečku Bugulma, vystupuje sovětský velitel tverského revolučního pluku, opilec Jerochymov a velitel města tovaryš Gašek. Skrze humor a nadsázku Hašek ukazuje jednak fanatismus revoluční doby, kdy v nešťastném roce 1918 se náhle vše „vymklo z kloubů“, a jednak hloupost či prostou lidskou nejistotu nových vládců. Autobiografický cyklus Velitelem města Bugulmy je dále doplněn o další Haškovy povídky z té doby.

David Vaughan on Jaroslav Hašek:
Jaroslav Hašek: not just The Good Soldier Švejk.

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As Mark Corner points out in his interview in The Prague Post, “One important thing was to bring to life Hašek as a short-story writer, and even the short story as the medium at which Hašek excelled.” After reading this sample, I’m inclined to agree. I also want to mention my enjoyment of the two books I’ve read so far from the Karolinum Press, Charles University (the other book was Summer of Caprice by Vladislav Vančura, also translated by Mark Corner). After Švejk, I have trouble imagining Hašek without accompanying illustrations and the ones provided in this volume by Jiři Grus are delightful.
Dwight (A Common Reader, Friday, November 09, 2012)

In Bugulma the Tribunal is fair, and kind, and so makes for another example of Hašek's antithetical hyperbole.
This term applies to most of what Hašek describes of revolutionary activity. Gašek is able to take Bugulma and then become officer in command there with no violence whatsoever. Indeed, the mayor and citizens come to welcome the Communists with bread and salt (at the time it was considered an ancient Slav, including Czech, custom thus to welcome strangers to a town or a house, and one cannot know whether or not Hašek knew that the Irish considered it primordially Irish or Celtic). Equally unrealistic is the Bugulmans' willing, immediate, and complete compliance with Gašek's command that all weapons be handed in at his office. Gašek becomes a decent bureaucrat and is successful in his immediate institution of literacy classes, and eventually in getting a large body of nuns to leave their convent and clean the barracks in preparation for the arrival of a large Red Army contingent. Hašek's readers will have known the fates of thousands of nuns during the revolution and the civil war. The whole idea of bureaucracy functioning so well with so much public compliance is antithetical hyperbole. Hašek had satirised and would later consistently satirise chiefly Austrian bureaucracy, a fine example of which is the short story that portrays the complicated bureaucracy that controls matters in Purgatory. His picture of a revolutionary idyll in Russia is analogous to his pre-war short story about the extreme kindness and generosity of Bavarian policemen, prison warders and judges....

...No doubt Hašek had been attracted to the anti-authoritarian aspect of Russian Communist ideology, but the Bugulma stories demonstrate that he had no time for the institutionalised arbitrary violence of the Russian civil war. The last story in this volume, where Gašek, now much closer to the real Hašek, takes his revenge on the journalist and poet Jaroslav Kolman-Cassius, who had, in real life, published an obituary of Hašek, as having died in an Odessa pub brawl, more than anything else informs us that Hašek still condoned individual rowdyism, whatever he thought of the rowdy Red and White Armies and perhaps also of the ultimately antiRed violence of the Czechoslovak Army in Russia, the 'legions'. That was not fun.

Z doslovu Roberta B. Pynsenta
(Robert B. Pynsent je profesorem slavistiky a východoevropských studií na University College London)

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As I have already pointed out, the Soviet army was positioned on the other side of Bugulma some fifty versts
to the south and didn't dare to enter the town itself, fearing an ambush. In the end, however, they received an order from the Revolutionary Military Council in Simbirsk to occupy the town come what may and secure it as a base for the Soviet forces operating to the east of the town.
And so it came about that Comrade Yerokhimov, commander of the Tver Revolutionary Regiment, arrived that very night to occupy and subdue Bugulma, when I had already been their godfearing Commanding Officer for three days and had been carrying out my duties to the general satisfaction of all sections of the populace.
Once the Tver Revolutionary Regiment had 'penetrated' the town they fired salvos into the air as they passed through the streets, encountering no resistance except for my bodyguard of two Chuvashes. These were woken up while on guard duty at the door of the Commanding Officer's HQ and refused Comrade Yerokhimov entry to the town hall when he arrived, revolver in hand, to take possession of it at the head of his regiment.
The Chuvashes were taken prisoner and Yerokhimov stormed into my office-cum-bedroom.
'Hands up,' he called out, flush with victory and with his revolver pointing right at me. I calmly did as he said.
'Who might you be, then?' the commander of the Tver Regiment asked.
'I am the Commanding Officer of Bugulma.'
'Would that be White or Soviet?'
'Soviet. May I put my hands down now?'
'You may. However, I would ask you in accordance with the rules of war to hand over your command to me without further ado. I am the one who has conquered Bugulma.'
'But I am the one who was appointed Commanding Officer,' I protested.
'To hell with your appointment. You first have to conquer the place.'
'I'll tell you what,' he added, having taken a moment to bring out his magnanimous side, 'I am prepared to make you my second-in-command. If you don't agree I'll have you shot within five minutes.'
'I've no objection to becoming your second-in-command,' I replied, and summoned my orderly. 'Vasily, put on the samovar. We will take tea with the new Commanding Officer of this town. He has just conquered Bugulma....'
Sic transit gloria mundi.