Help with Russian sentence

[Irina West]

Dear Loren,


The sentence you asked about might be translated as:

"They marched ten arrested policemen ..."

Without knowing the context of this sentence, it seems that ten city policemen
were arrested and marched through town.

In response to your questions, I can offer the following:

1. It is not indicated in the sentence itself whether "oni" (they) who marched
   the policemen were the same people who arrested them.

2. No. "Oni" refers to whoever marched the 10 policemen.

3. The novel covers a period of more than ten years, and includes the 1917
   Revolutions and the Civil War. Gorodovye were a feature of Tsarist Russia,
   so their arrest could have taken place during these conflicts.

4. If I recall correctly, "Sestry" is a section from Alexei Tolstoy's
   "Khozhdenie po mukam", which was written in the 20th century. In any
   case the construction of this sentence is not obsolete.

>
>Oni  veli       arestovannykh desiat' chelovek gorodovykh
>they led        arrested      ten     people   police
>NOM  (V)PAST.PL (ADJ)GEN.PL   NOM/ACC GEN.PL   (ADJ)GEN.PL
>
>The third line, in all caps, represents the morphological status of each
>word.  I am aware that at least one of the words, thought adjectival, is
>functioning syntactically as a noun.
>
>Kindly answer the following questions:
>
>1.  Who arested whom (hence the "NOM/ACC" under _desiat'_)?
>2.  Is _Oni_ the police?
>3.  Can anyone who knows this literary work provide a larger context?
>4.  Since this was written last century, does anyone find it unacceptable
>    in 20th-century Russian?
>


Irina West