GR translation: Tchitcherine’s first glimpse after the years of training

[Mike Jing]

V704.19-28, P718.17-26   Tchitcherine means he’s had to fight to believe in
his mortality. As his body fought to accept its steel. Fight down all his
hopes, fight his way into that bitterest of freedoms. Not till recently did
he come to look for comfort in the dialectical ballet of force,
counterforce, collision, and new order—not till the War came and Death
appeared across the ring, Tchitcherine’s first glimpse after the years of
training: taller, more beautifully muscled, less waste motion than he’d
ever expected—only in the ring, feeling the terrible cold each blow brought
with it, only then did he turn to a Theory of History—of all pathetic cold
comforts—to try and make sense of it.

Whose training is it talking about here?