On the Heroism of Mortals

by Allan Cameron

  “So the tsar is the peasants’ god?” Boris asked triumphantly.

  “Not at all. You’ve understood nothing as usual. The tsar enjoyed no more freedom than his aristocrats, his middle classes or the workers and peasants themselves. He was trapped by the trappings of power. He could not do what he wanted, because always, always he had to behave like a tsar. He couldn’t control his wife, his courtiers or his mad monk. No, no, the god of us all used to be tsarist autocracy. We danced to its tune even when our legs were so tired we could hardly move them. We haven’t really imprisoned the tsar; we have liberated him from the gilded prison of his office.”

  “I’ve heard that he has been executed by firing squad,” said Nadya.

  “Like I say, we’ve liberated him.”

  “But his family must weep,” Dimitry objected.

  “That goes without saying.”

  “I know, I know. In all the Russias, the people are bleeding and losing their loved ones daily,” Dimitry smiled, anticipating the pleasure of provoking Boris and perhaps Nadya. “But as I heard you describing so lucidly and cleverly how he was not in control of his actions, like a cow grazing in the field, then I couldn’t help thinking – you’ll forgive me, comrade, if I’m wrong – that he couldn’t then be held responsible for taking us unprepared into that crazy slaughterhouse called war.”

  “In a manner of speaking, you’re right,” I admitted after some hesitation.

  “It strikes me, comrade, that freedom… I’m only saying this because you haven’t yet defined freedom; you’ve only partially explained what freedom isn’t,” Dimitry continued to provoke. “It strikes me that freedom is like a cow going mad, as the peasant would see it, and attempting to go and graze a meadow other than the one the peasant chose. Or rather, if we can put the metaphor to one side for a moment, freedom is wilfully taking action not in one’s own interest but in the interests of justice and human solidarity, as we understand them. And that’s the problem. How can we know that we have understood them correctly?”

  “People like you can come close to the truth and appear to talk sense, only to let the truth slip from your fingers at the last moment,” I said, acting fully my role as political commissar mainly for Boris’s benefit. “You must never qualify your thoughts with expressions like ‘as we understand them’. Perhaps one day in the future we’ll be able to use such debilitating expressions in our speech. They don’t belong to our virile Russian workers or peasants who hold consciousness of their lack of freedom under the autocracy firmly in their heads.”

  “And it’s only because I know it’s very difficult for you to shake off your clouded, petit-bourgeois thinking, that I don’t wield the heavy axe,” Boris attacked Dimitry more aggressively. “But if you continue to speak like that, someone else will.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence until Dimitry said, “I take that as an argument in favour of dictatorship after the war.”

  Boris appeared to back off, and Nadya, always the conciliatory one, suggested, “It is too early to discuss exactly what freedoms should be re-established once we’ve driven off the invaders, but I think comrade Abram Davidovich should continue to elucidate us on the nature of freedom.”

  I hate it when she calls me comrade; it bureaucratises a relationship founded on real friendship. Come to think of it, I detest the term in all its uses, even though I am obliged to use it often. When I hear the word “comrade” used as a term of address, I immediately expect it to be followed by some form of mendacity – a simple lie or, worse, moral blackmail. And there was something mendacious about her behaviour, and the motivation, I believe, was her desire to protect Alexei. Whenever Nadya failed to live up to her own moral code, it was usually because of her generous nature. I felt her discomfort and decided to oblige with a little more wordiness on my part.

  It was time to reassure Boris and return to the new conformity. It still feels strange to be working for the government, rather than against it. A government very different from the previous one, but a government nevertheless. Governments do governmental things, and dissidents do dissenting things. These are two very different worlds, and when a revolution comes along, you have to leap from one to the other, like leaping onto a departing vessel: you have a fraction of a second to decide whether you want to remain on the seemingly solid jetty or take a turbulent trip to an as yet unknown destination. Or perhaps it’s even more dramatic and irreversible, like moving into another life and being uncertain whether you have ended up in heaven or hell. So I came out with all the truths we had accepted long before: the ever-increasing polarisation between rich and poor in capitalist society, the increasing concentrations of capital that become monopolistic, global imperialism, the perfidious foreigner who believes he has the right to decide our future. I covered a great distance in little depth, as I might do with a group of newly recruited peasants. Boris listened appreciatively as a child might listen to a well-known fairy story – not that Boris is a child or a fool; he is quick-witted and has a good practical intelligence, but he is a failed seminarist and failed poet – can you have a more dangerous combination? Dimitry Gregorevich lay back on the couch where he was sitting alone. But he could not relax and shifted his position incessantly, as though tortured by my platitudes. Nadya, on the other hand, was quite at ease and occasionally lit a cigarette. I am certain that she didn’t listen to a word I said. Alexei’s behaviour was not that different, but then he never listens.

  “Excuse me, Abram Davidovich, if I butt in,” Dimitry could take no more, “but aren’t we talking about freedom? Or is our political commissar trying to bore us into going on a suicide mission against the Whites? If that’s the case, I volunteer immediately.”

  Nadya laughed and spluttered on her cigarette smoke, and Boris said, “Take no notice of them, Abram Davidovich, they’re only happy if they’re ridiculing the party. You sometimes wonder whose side they’re on.”

  Perhaps I had got carried away. I rummaged around in my brain for a suitable platitude to end my speech with something about freedom. I poured myself a small vodka and gulped it down. “Absolute freedom,” I said, “can only be a state of mind and can never be granted by society, which must impose laws. By definition, all laws restrict our freedom. They may do so for very good reasons, but they are still restrictions. Our freedom is not just restricted by social coercion, but also by the failure of our own imaginations and education. Indeed the impositions and punishments inflicted by society often teach us how to be free. As someone who has spent over five years in Tsarist prisons, I can tell you that they were my finest university. You’ll think I am talking about our camaraderie and reading clubs in prison, which in part I am, but I am mainly talking about the periods of solitary confinement, beatings and torture, which either break you or break you free. After that, material luxuries have no worth. Selfish desires have no worth. Fear is gone, and the heart and mind are free. We may voluntarily subject ourselves to the discipline of party or army, but we never again delegate our intellectual curiosity to others.”

  “Dear God,” Dimitry rasped disapprovingly, “do we all have to go to prison and suffer beatings and solitary confinement to obtain freedom? Abram, that’s positively medieval. We should all join a monastery. Come come, Abram, there must be some other way we can train our brains without indulging in such barbarity.”

  “Of course, Dimitry, you’re right,” I panicked and could no longer think of my feet. “Literature is one path to that kind of freedom,” still very much in didactic mode, I then unwisely added, “I’m not talking, of course, of popular literature, but of high literature – our great classics.”

  “There are no such things as high literature and low literature,” said Dimitry glumly, whilst staring at the ceiling as though he were speaking to himself or rather had no expectation of being understood.

  “Oh yes there are,” said Boris, brightening at the chance to say something contradictory, “low literature covers all the books I understand and high literatur
e the ones I don’t. Low literature is full of common sense and language as we speak it, while high literature tries to be fancy and uses obscure language to peddle capitalist ideology.”

  “If you don’t understand it, how do you know which ideology it peddles?” said Dimitry, sitting up on his couch and staring at Boris fiercely.

  “I understand enough of it,” said Boris, and then noticing that his audience was unconvinced, he added, “and I’ve heard it from others – people who know about these things. That’s good enough for me.”

  “You might as easily say,” Dimitry continued, “that low literature uses a faux demotic language to manipulate the minds of working people and high literature uses elaborate language to subvert established ideas. It is much more complicated than that, of course, and European societies have learned that subversion is acceptable to the ruling class as long as it is obscure. But complex ideas always are to some extent. That’s why I reject these categories. So-called low literature is propaganda, and so-called high literature is just literature, and the working people should not be tricked into thinking it’s not for them. Tolstoy made me a communist, not Chernyshevsky.”

  Everyone laughed. Alexei said, “Dear Dimitry Gregorevich, why do you call yourself an ex-Tolstoyan?”

  “Leave the man alone,” I said, although I too was laughing. “Dimitry Gregorevich is right on all counts. It’s precisely because he’s right that we find him ridiculous. You see, he has thought about it and we haven’t. Besides, another thing should be made clear: there’s no need for Dimitry to renounce his Tolstoyan past; he can be a Bolshevik and carry that past within him. Look at the five of us, consider just how diverse our backgrounds are. The Red Army is a motley crew, and that’s our strength. This idea that creating a new society means creating a uniform new society is our fundamental mistake, and arises from the terrible sacrifice we’re having to make. But if we throw away our diversity of opinions, then we throw away the new society.”

  “Nonsense,” growled Boris, genuinely upset by my assertions. “The common purpose that holds us together in our fight against the Whites will be needed in fighting the economic war against ignorance, poverty and nature itself.”

  “Yes and no,” I said, very concerned about how far I could go, even amongst friends. “People talk of a new soviet man or communist man, but I would prefer to say a new soviet society or a communist society, which does not express a uniform type, but the same diversity that must be found in any society. A society develops through the workings of its intricate variegations, which give it robustness and flexibility. A society of uniform types will either overreach itself or wither, or rather it will wither because it has overreached itself and, by so doing, exposed its weaknesses. We five are so different and yet we can make a coherent fighting force. A common purpose does not presuppose a common essence.”

  “Abram Davidovich is right,” said Dimitry. “And literature teaches what he says. Literature delights in the diversity of human types, but does not always deny equality, which is another thing. Equality does not mean all people are the same, merely that each life has the same value. The mathematical genius and the peasant stunted by lack of food and continuous beatings are equal in that they both need to eat, to be clothed and to be sheltered; each needs physical and mental exercise commensurate with their abilities; each needs love and respect. A society that can provide those things is a good society, and one worth making sacrifices for.”

  “Ah, the simplicity of the autodidact,” cried Boris, his contemptuous smile full of confidence.

  We admired Boris, but there were times when he united us against him. This was one. Dimitry is far from simplistic, and his education, which would be remarkable in a bourgeois, is quite extraordinary in a peasant. Boris, the bourgeois communist, may be willing to admit that Dimitry has done well in difficult circumstances, but he fails to see that Dimitry surpassed him long ago. Dimitry has one of the best brains in the unit, anyone who is impartial would recognise that. We sat in silence and Boris’s smile died on his lips. As it did so, I realised that he was one of the most complex and inscrutable people I’ve known. I could not judge him because I could not understand him. I was aware that he hid within himself some unpredictable forces, which related to his competitive spirit and an overarching desire to be loved. How and why these restless spirits exist is difficult for a country boy like me to understand: I think they have what Nietzsche defined as the will to power. Such spirits only rarely achieve their narcissistic aims, but I fear that across the hundred of thousands under arms, there are quite a few of them who perceive a chance to become new Napoleons.

  Boris is not the type to back off: “Are we interested in Dimitry Grigorevich’s point of view, just because he’s a typically vain intellectual – albeit a peasant one. You know the sort, he likes to analyse things and come up with quirky views.” I started to interrupt, but Boris silenced me. “Be quiet, Abram Davidovich, you’re no better. Dimitry thinks this makes an impression, but these are not times for clever talk. People suffer. Everyone suffers. And they all hold on and suffer for the different futures they dream of – not for themselves, they’re too realistic for that, but for others, for society and even for generations yet to be born.”

  “Boris, you dislike differences of opinions,” I said, “but you fabricate them where none exist. We know about suffering and we know about our times. We are the generation that has to pay the price for progress – for the future, for history, if you like. It’s our best chance yet and we’re so nearly there. We mustn’t falter and we must continue to fight. But are our intellects so empty that we cannot ask ourselves what it is we are about to create?”

  Boris took offence: “My intellect is not empty.”

  “Did I say it was?”

  “In so many words.”

  Nadya stood up. “I’m off,” she said, “I’ve things to do. Don’t come to blows, comrades. Save them for the Whites.” She left with her aura of tempered briskness and the others then shuffled out with a few references to our relative success on the front, our hopes, our fears, but the atmosphere was stiff. Boris can do that. We felt threatened by a friend – a suggestion of what was to come.

  Two days later, Nadezhda ran to my room, which is a tiny airless space almost entirely filled by a single bed with a straw mattress. The only light comes from a small oblong window that can be opened with a rod. It must have been the bedroom of one of the more senior household servants, when the building belonged to its aristocratic owner. I was stirring after an all-night session of the international committee and no more than three hours’ sleep. My first reaction was one of irritation at this interruption so early in the morning when I was just getting my thoughts together and trying to plan my day. I didn’t even greet her, but nor did she.

  “It’s Alexei. You’ll never believe what he’s done now,” she said without waiting to catch her breath.

  I knew I would believe it, as the mention of Alexei in troubled circumstances was something I had long been dreading. My concern, of course, was more for her than for him, and on hearing his name, I changed my attitude, invited her to take the only chair and asked to explain everything from the beginning.

  “So what has he done?” I asked, as I sat down on my bed and removed from the only chair in the room the report I was writing for the People’s Commissariat for Political Education. As I turned to her, I gestured to the unsteady chair and gave her my full attention. It was immediately clear that she was rattled and, given her coolness in almost all circumstances, I was alarmed.

  “It’s so silly, I’m embarrassed to tell you, Abram Davidovich.”

  So embarrassed that she used my patronymic in private conversation. “Start at the beginning, but first take a seat,” I said, and my tone too was rather formal.

  “I’d rather not. I was looking for the wise political commissar, not for the regimental psychiatrist.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Well, it was my birthday yesterday,” s
he said and paused, as though this was significant.

  “Sorry I forgot about it,” I said not without a hint of sarcasm.

  She drew in her breath and, ignoring my statement, continued, “Alexei – well, you know what Alexei is like, so effusive and, well, loving, I suppose you’d have to call it that.”

  “Not like your previous lover – a broken old man, I seem to remember.”

  “Abram,” she barked, not having entirely lost her aristocratic ways, “this is serious, and I’m relying on you.”

  “Then get to the point,” my response was abrupt and betrayed my increasing impatience.

  “Well, it seems he wanted to get me a birthday present. Oh Abram, I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “He wanted to get me diamonds.”

  Then I understood. This was Alexei at his maddest: the world is falling apart, we’re fighting a difficult war with inadequate equipment and expertise, and the stakes are very high, and what was Alexei thinking about? Buying his girlfriend diamonds, and no doubt telling himself, “What’s the harm in that?” Part of me said he was not entirely wrong, and the other part said what a waste of precious time and effort, and what a foolish risk to run.