The Case of Comrade Tulayev

by Victor Serge

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said Kasparov in a peculiar tone. He appeared to make himself at ease, unbuttoned the neck of his shirt, threw his cap into one of the armchairs, sat down comfortably in another with his legs crossed:

  “A nice office you have here — for whatever that’s worth — very nice. But beware of bureaucratic comfort, Artyemich. It’s a slough — a man can drown in it.”

  Was he trying to be deliberately disagreeable? Makeyev lost a little of his assurance. Kasparov looked at him judicially out of his strange gray eyes, which were calm in danger, calm in excitement.

  “Artyemich, I have been thinking things over. Our plans are 50 to 60 per cent impossible to carry out. To carry them out to the extent of the remaining 40 per cent, the real wages of the working class will have to be reduced below the level they reached under the Imperial Government — far below the present level even in backward capitalist countries … Have you thought about that? I fear not. In six months at most, we shall have to declare war on the peasants and begin shooting them down — as sure as two and two make four. Shortage of industrial goods, plus depreciation of the ruble — or, to put it frankly, hidden inflation; low grain prices imposed by the state, natural resistance on the part of grain owners — you know how it goes. Have you considered the consequences?”

  Makeyev had too much sense of reality to demur, but he was afraid someone in the hall might hear such words spoken in his office — words of sacrilege, challenging the Chief’s doctrine, challenging everything! They cut him, they troubled him: he became aware that it required his most conscious effort to keep himself from speaking the same terrible language. Kasparov went on:

  “I am neither a coward nor a bureaucrat, I know what duty to the Party is. What I am saying to you, I have written to the Political Bureau, with figures to support it. Thirty of us signed it — all survivors of Czarist prisons, of Taman, Perekop, Kronstadt … Can you guess how they answered us? As for me, I was first sent to inspect the schools in Kazakistan, which have neither teachers nor buildings nor books nor pencils … Now I am being sent to count barges at Krasnoyarsk — which is all the same to me. But that this criminal stupidity should be continued for the pleasure of a hundred thousand bureaucrats too lazy to realize that they are headed for their own destruction and are dragging the Revolution with them — that is not all the same to me. And you, old man, hold an honorable rank in the hierarchy of those hundred thousand. I rather suspected it. I sometimes asked myself: What is going to become of old Makeyich, if he isn’t a down-and-out drunk by now?”

  Makeyev walked nervously back and forth from map to map. Kasparov’s words, his ideas, his very presence, were becoming intolerably distressing — it was as if he suddenly felt dirty from head to foot because of those words, of those ideas, of Kasparov. The four telephones, the smallest details of the office, began to look odious. And anger was no way out — why? In a tired voice he answered:

  “Let’s talk about something else. You know I am not an economist. I carry out the Party’s directives, that’s all — today, just as I used to in the Army with you. And you taught me to obey for the Revolution. What more can I do? Come and have dinner at my house later. I have a new wife, you know — Alia Sayidovna, a Tatar. You’ll come?”

  Under the indifferent tone, Kasparov read an entreaty: Show me that you still think enough of me to sit down at my table with my new wife — that’s all I ask of you. Kasparov put on his cap, stood at the window for a moment humming to himself and looking out into the public garden (a gravel disk flooded with sunshine; a little dark bronze bust exactly in the center of it). “Right — see you this evening, Artyemich. A fine town you have here …” — “Isn’t it?” Makeyev answered quickly, feeling intensely relieved. Below them Lenin’s bronze cranium gleamed like polished stone. It was a good dinner, nicely served by Alia. She was short and plump, with a sleek animal grace: clean, well-fed; bluish-black hair twined over her temples, doe eyes, a profile of soft curves, all the lines of her face and body melting into each other. Ancient Iranian gold coins hung at her ears, her fingernails were painted pomegranate red. She served Kasparov to pilau, juicy watermelon, real tea — “you can’t find it anywhere any more,” she said pleasantly. Kasparov refrained from confessing that he had not eaten such a good meal for six months. He exhibited himself in his most amiable light, told the only three stories he knew (which he privately referred to as his “three little stories for inane evenings”) and showed none of the exasperation aroused in him by her little laugh, which displayed her white teeth and arched her round breasts, and by Makeyev’s self-satisfied guffaws; he even went so far as to congratulate them on their happiness. “You ought to have a canary, in a big, pretty cage — it’s just the thing for a nice, homelike place …” Makeyev was very nearly aware of the sarcasm, but Alia exploded: “Just what I’ve been saying, comrade. Ask Artyem if I haven’t!” When they parted, the two men sensed that they would not meet again — unless as enemies.

  An ill-omened visit: for soon after it, troubles began. The Party and administrative purges were just completed, under Makeyev’s energetic leadership. In the offices of Kurgansk there remained but a small percentage of old-timers — that is, of men formed in the storms of the past ten years. Tendencies — whether Left (Trotskyist), Right (Rykov-Tomsky-Bukharin), or Pseudo-Loyalist (Zinoviev-Kamenev) — appeared to be thoroughly wiped out, though actually they were not entirely so, for wisdom advised laying something aside for the future. But grain was not coming in satisfactorily. In accordance with messages from the C.C., Makeyev visited the villages, broadcast promises and threats, had himself photographed surrounded by muzhiks, women, and children, got up several parades of enthusiastic farmers who were turning over all their wheat to the state. The carts entered the city in procession, laden with sacks and accompanied by red flags, transparencies proclaiming a single-hearted devotion to the Party, portraits of the Chief and portraits of Comrade Makeyev, carried like banners by the village lads and girls. There was a fine holiday feeling about these manifestations. The Executive of the regional Soviet sent the orchestra of the Railwaymen’s Club to meet the parades; moving-picture photographers, summoned from Moscow by telephone, arrived by plane to film one of the Red convoys, and the entire U.S.S.R. later saw it on the screen. Makeyev received it, standing on a truck, shouting sonorously: “Honor to the farmers of a happy land!” The evening of the same day he stayed in his office late into the night, conferring with the President of the Executive of the Soviet and an envoy extraordinary from the C.C. The situation was becoming serious: insufficient reserves, insufficient receipts, the certainty of a reduction in cropping, an illicit rise in market prices, a wave of speculation. The envoy extraordinary announced draconian measures to be applied “with an iron hand.” “Certainly,” said Makeyev, afraid to understand.

  So began the black years. First expropriated, then deported, some seven per cent of the farmers left the region in cattle cars amid the cries, tears, and curses of urchins and disheveled women and old men mad with rage. Fields lay fallow, cattle disappeared, people ate the oil cake intended for the stock, there was no more sugar or gasoline, leather or shoes, cloth or clothes, everywhere there was hunger on impenetrable white faces, everywhere pilfering, collusion, sickness; in vain did Security decimate the bureaus of animal husbandry, agriculture, transport, food control, sugar production, distribution … The C.C. recommended raising rabbits. Makeyev had placards posted: “The rabbit shall be the cornerstone of proletarian diet.” And the local government rabbits — his own — were the only ones in the district which did not die at the outset, because they were the only ones which were fed. “Even rabbits have to eat before they are eaten,” Makeyev observed ironically. The collectivization of agriculture extended over 82 per cent of family units, “so great is the Socialist enthusiasm among the peasants of the region” wrote Pravda and at the same time published a picture of Comrade Makeyev, “the fighting organizer of this rising tide.” No one stayed out of t
he kolkhozes except isolated peasants whose houses slumbered far from roads, a few villages populated by Mennonites, a village where there was resistance from an old partisan from the Irtysh, who had twice been decorated with the Order of the Red Flag, had known Lenin, and for that reason was not arrested … Meanwhile a meat-canning factory was built, equipped with the latest-model American machinery and supplemented by a tannery, a shoe factory, and a factory to make special leathers for the army: it was finished the year meat and hides disappeared. Further building included comfortable houses for the Party leaders and technicians and a workers’ garden city not far from the lifeless factory … Makeyev faced everything, actually fought “on three fronts” to carry out the C.C.’s orders, fulfill the industrialization plan, keep the earth from dying. Where to find seasoned wood for building, nails, leather, work clothes, bricks, cement? There was a perpetual lack of materials, the starving workmen were perpetually stealing or running away — the great builder found himself with nothing on hand but papers, circulars, reports, orders, theses, official predictions, texts of denunciatory speeches, motions voted by the shock brigades. Makeyev telephoned, jumped into his Ford (now as battered as a General Staff car in the old days), arrived unheralded at a building site; counted the barrels of cement and sacks of lime himself, frowning fiercely; questioned the engineers: some of whom defied truth by swearing to build even without wood and bricks, others by demonstrating that it was impossible to build with such cement. Makeyev wondered whether they were not all in a conspiracy to destroy himself and the Union. But basically he knew, he felt, that all they said was true. His brief case under his arm, his cap on the back of his head, Makeyev had himself driven at full speed through woods and plains to the “Hail Industrialization” kolkhoze, which had not a horse left, where the last cows were dying for lack of fodder, where thirty bales of hay had recently been stolen at night, perhaps to feed horses which had been reported dead but were really hidden in the dreaming forest of Chertov-Rog, “The Devil’s Horn.” The kolkhoze looked deserted, two Young Communists from the city lived there amid general hostility and hypocrisy; the president, so helpless that he blurted unintelligibly, explained to “Comrade Secretary of the Regional Committee” that the children were all sick from undernourishment, that he must have at least a truckload of potatoes immediately so that field work could be resumed, since the rations allocated by the State at the end of the previous year (a year of scarcity) had been two months short — “just as we said, don’t you remember?” Makeyev grew angry, promised, threatened, both uselessly, overwhelmed by a dull despair … The same old story, over and over, over and over — it kept him awake at night. The land was going to ruin, the livestock was dying, the people were dying, the Party was suffering from a sort of scurvy, Makeyev saw even the roads dying — the roads over which no wagons any longer passed, the roads over which grass was spreading …

  So hated by the inhabitants that he never went out on foot in the city except when he was forced to, and then accompanied by a guard who walked three feet behind him with his hand on his holster, he carried a cane himself to ward off aggressors. He had a fence built around his house, had it guarded by soldiers. Things suddenly came to a head in the third year of scarcity, the day when Moscow telephoned him a confidential order to begin a new purge of the kolkhozes before the autumn sowing, in order to cut down secret resistance. “Who signed this decision?” — “Comrade Tulayev, third secretary of the C.C.” Makeyev dryly said: “Thank you,” hung up, and struck the desk with his fist. Into his brain rose a wave of hate against Tulayev, Tulayev’s long mustaches, Tulayev’s broad face, Tulayev the heartless bureaucrat, Tulayev the starver of the people … That evening Alia Sayidovna opened the door to a surly Makeyev, a Makeyev who looked like a bulldog. He very seldom talked to her about business; but he often talked aloud to himself, because under emotional pressure silent thinking was difficult for him. Alia, with her soft sleek profile, with the gold coins dangling from the lobes of her pretty ears, heard him muttering: “I won’t stand for another famine — not me. We’ve paid our share, old man, and that’s enough. I won’t play up any longer. The district can’t stand any more. The roads are dying! No, no, no, no! I’ll write to the C.C.”

  He did write, after a sleepless night, a night of agony. For the first time in his life, Makeyev refused to carry out an order from the C.C., denounced it as error, madness, crime. He felt he was saying too much, then again that he was saying too little. When he reread what he had written, terrified at his own audacity, he told himself that he would have demanded the expulsion and arrest of anyone who dared to criticize a Party directive in such terms. But the fields overrun with weeds, the roads overrun with grass, the children with their bellies swollen from starvation, the empty shops of nationalized retail commerce, the black looks of the peasants, were there, really there. One after the other he tore up several drafts. Hot and uneasy, Alia tossed feverishly in the big bed; she attracted him only rarely now, a little female who would never understand. His memorandum on the necessity for postponing or annulling the Tulayev circular regarding the new purge of kolkhozes was dispatched the next morning. Makeyev had a violent headache, drifted from room to room, in his slippers and half-dressed, behind the wooden blinds which were closed against the torrid heat. Alia brought him small glasses of vodka, pickled cucumbers, tall glasses of water so cold that vapor condensed on them in drops. He was red-eyed from lack of sleep, his face was unshaven, he smelled of sweat … “You ought to take a trip somewhere, Artyem,” Alia suggested. “It would do you good.” He became aware of her; the hallucinating midafternoon heat made a furnace of the city, the plains, the surrounding steppes, poured through the walls of the house, flamed in his numb veins. Hardly three steps separated him from Alia, who fell back, tottered beside the divan, was thrown down, felt Artyem’s dry hands knead her fiercely from neck to knees, felt his suffocating mouth press down on her mouth, felt him rip her silk kaftan, which would not unfasten quickly enough, felt him bruise her legs, which had not opened quickly enough … “Alia, you are as downy as a peach,” said Makeyev as he rose refreshed. “Now the C.C. will see who’s right, that numskull Tulayev or me!” For a moment, possessing his wife gave him the feeling of conquering the universe.

  Makeyev fought a losing battle with Tulayev for two weeks. Accused by his powerful antagonist of tending toward the “Right opportunist deviation,” he saw himself on the brink of the abyss. Figures and several sentences from his memorandum, quoted to denounce “the incoherencies of the Political Bureau’s agrarian policy” and the “fatal blindness of certain functionaries,” appeared in a document probably drawn up by Bukharin and delivered to the Control Commission by an informer. Makeyev, seeing that he was lost, abjured instantly and passionately. The Politburo and the Orgburo (Organization Bureau) decided to maintain him in his position since he had renounced his errors and was devoting himself to the new purge of kolkhozes with exemplary energy. Far from sparing his own henchmen, he regarded them with such suspicion that several of them found themselves on their way to concentration camps. Putting the burden of his own responsibility upon them, he harshly refused to see them or intercede for them. From the depths of prisons, some of them wrote that they had merely carried out his orders. “The counterrevolutionary irresponsibility of these demoralized elements,” Makeyev commented, “deserves no indulgence. Their only aim is to discredit the Party.” In the end he believed it himself.

  Would not his disagreement with Tulayev be remembered during the election for the Supreme Council? A certain vacillation in the Party committees made Makeyev uneasy. Many voices were raised in favor of candidates who were high Security officials or generals, rather than Communist leaders. Happy day! Official rumor repeated a remark by a member of the Political Bureau: “Makeyev’s is the only possible candidacy in the Kurgansk region … Makeyev is a builder.” Immediately transparencies appeared across the streets, urging: Vote for the Builder Makeyev — who, in any case, was the only ca
ndidate. At the first session of the Supreme Council, held in Moscow, Makeyev, at the peak of his destiny, ran into Blücher in the anterooms. “Greetings, Artyem,” said the commander-in-chief of the valorous Special Army of the Red Flag in the Far East. Intoxicated, Makeyev answered: “Greetings, Marshal! How are you?” They went to the buffet together, arm in arm like the old comrades they were. Both of them were heavier, their faces full and well-massaged, with fatigue pouches under the eyes, both wore well-cut clothes of fine material, both were decorated — Blücher wore four brilliant medals on his right breast, three Orders of the Red Flag and one Order of Lenin; Makeyev, less heroic, had only one Red Flag and the Medal of Labor … The strange thing was that they had nothing to say to each other. With sincere delight they exchanged phrases from the newspapers: “So you’re building, old man? Things going well? Happy? Healthy?” — “So, Marshal, you’re keeping the little Japs in order, eh?” — “Right — they can come whenever they’re ready!” Deputies from the Siberian North, from Central Asia, from the Caucasus, in their national costumes, flocked to stare at them. In the soldier’s reflected glory, Makeyev admired himself. He thought: “We’d make a fine snapshot.” The memory of that memorable moment went sour some months later when, after the fighting in Chang-Ku-Feng, the Army of the Far East regained two hills overlooking Possiet Bay from the Japanese (the two hills turned out to be of enormous strategic importance, though it had never been mentioned before). The message from the C.C. detailing these glorious events did not mention Blücher’s name. Makeyev understood, and a chill came over him. He felt himself compromised. Blücher, Blücher — it was his turn to go down into subterranean darkness! Inconceivable! … What luck that no snapshot had immortalized their last meeting!

  Makeyev lived quite calmly through the proscriptions, because they wrought havoc chiefly among the generation of power which had preceded his own and among generations even earlier. “By and large, socially the old generation is worn out … So much the worse for them, this is no time for sentiment … Heroes yesterday, failures today — it’s the dialectic of history.” But his unspoken thoughts told him that his own generation was rising to replace the generation which was going out. Ordinary men became great men when their day arrived — was that not justice? Although, when they had been in power, he had known and admired a number of the defendants in the great trials, he accepted their end with a sort of zeal. Incapable of comprehending anything but the baldest arguments, he was not troubled by the enormity of the accusations. (We have no time for subtleties!) And what was more natural than to use lies to overwhelm an enemy who must be put out of the way? The demands of mass psychology in a backward country must be met. Called to rule by the subalterns of the one and only Chief, integrated into the power behind the proscriptions, Makeyev had never felt that he was threatened. But now he felt the wind of the inevitable scythe that had mowed down Blücher. Had the Marshal been relieved of his command? Arrested? Would he reappear? He was not being tried, which perhaps meant that all was not over for him. However that might be, no one ever mentioned his name now. Makeyev would have liked to forget it; but the name, the image of the man, pursued him — at work, in his moments of silence, in his sleep. He found himself fearing that, speaking at some meeting of district officials, he would suddenly utter the obsessing name in the middle of a sentence. And the more he put it out of his mind, the more it rose to his lips — to the point where he thought that, reading a message aloud, he had inserted Blücher’s name among the names of the members of the Political Bureau … “Didn’t I make a slip of the tongue?” he asked one of the Regional Committee members lightly. Inside, he was writhing with anguish.