Question

What did Rubashov mean when he asked if the hostilities had started?

Answer 1

Answer:

Rubashov is a stand-in for the Old Bolsheviks as a group, and Koestler uses him to explore their actions at the 1938 Moscow Show Trials. Secondary characters include some fellow prisoners: No. 402 is a Czarist army officer and veteran inmate with, as Rubashov would consider it, an archaic sense of personal honor.