The Case of Comrade Tulayev

by Victor Serge

  Why was he so insistent? Could he know? How? Impossible that he should know. “Certainly, certainly,” Popov muttered. “I … we know you, Ivan Nicolayevich … We appreciate you …”

  “Delighted,” said Kondratiev — absolutely insufferable. And what he did not say, but thought, Popov understood: “And I know you too.”

  “Well, so you’re going to Serpukhov?”

  “Tomorrow, by car.”

  Popov could think of nothing more to say. He put on his falsest smile of cordiality, his face was never grayer, his soul never shabbier. A telephone call delivered him. “Good-by, Kondratiev … I have to hurry … Too bad … We ought to see each other oftener … Hard life, mmm … It’s good to have a frank little talk …”

  “Good indeed!”

  Kondratiev followed him to the door with unseeing eyes. “Tell them that I’ll yell at the top of my lungs, that I’ll yell for all those who didn’t dare yell, that I’ll yell by myself, that I’ll yell underground, that I don’t give a shit for a bullet in my head, that I don’t give a shit for you or for myself, because someone has got to yell at last, or everything is done for … But what has come over me, where do I get all this energy from? From my youth, from that dawn at Innokentievka, from Spain? What does it matter? I’m going to yell.”

  That day at Serpukhov passed in a region of lucidity that bordered on dream. How could Kondratiev feel sure that he would not be arrested that night, nor in the C.C. car, which was driven by a Security man? He knew it, and he smoked calmly, he admired the birches, the russet and gray of fields under flying clouds. He did not go to call on the local Committee before the function, as he should have done: Let me see as few administrative faces as possible (though there must still be some decent people among these provincial bureaucrats). He dismissed the astonished chauffeur in the middle of a street, stopped in front of the display windows of co-operative groceries and stationery stores, immediately discovered little placards reading “Samples,” “Empty” (the latter on biscuit boxes …), “No notebooks”; set off again, wandered through the streets, read the newspaper posted at the door of the Industrial Survey Commission, a paper exactly like the papers of all provincial towns of the same size, no doubt supplied with news by the daily circulars sent out by the C.C.’s Regional Press Bureau. He read only the local items, knowing in advance the entire contents of the first two pages, and he at once found the oddities that he had expected. The editor of the local column wrote that “Comrade President of the ‘Triumph of Socialism’ Kolkhoze, despite repeated warnings from the Party Committee, persists in his pernicious anti-cow ideological deviation, contrary to the instructions of the Commissariat for Kolkhozes …” Anti-cow! What a wonderful neologism! God almighty! These specimens of illiterate prose made him angry and sad at once … “Comrade Andriuchenko would not allow cows to be harnessed for plowing! Must we recall to him the decision of the recent conference, unanimously voted after the most convincing report by Veterinary Trochkin?” Somewhere under the immense sky of the steppes, Kondratiev remembered, he had once seen a cow drawing a cart on which there was nothing but a white coffin and a heap of paper flowers; a peasant woman and two small children followed it. Well — if a cow can pull a poor devil’s coffin to a cemetery on the horizon, why shouldn’t a cow pull a plow? The director of the dairy can always be sent to court afterward, if milk production falls below the Plan quota … We lost between sixteen and seventeen million horses during the period of collectivization — between 50 and 52 per cent. So much the worse for the Russian cow — since obviously we can’t make the members of the C.C. pull plows! There was nothing in the rest of the paper. Nicholas I had his official architects design models of churches and schools, to be followed by builders throughout the Empire … For our part, we have this press in uniform, edited by fools who think up “anti-cow ideological deviations.” It is a slow process, the rise of a people, especially when you put such heavy burdens on their shoulders and so many shackles on their bodies … Kondratiev thought of the complex relation between tradition and the mistakes for which we ourselves are responsible. A tall young man in the black leather uniform of the Tank School came hurrying out of a shop, turned, suddenly found himself face to face with Kondratiev; and surprise and hostility appeared in his fresh young cold-eyed face. “Eyes which are determined to reveal nothing …”

  “You, Sacha!” Kondratiev exclaimed softly, and he felt that, from that instant, he too would force himself to reveal nothing — nothing.

  “Yes, Ivan Nicolayevich, it is I,” said the young man, so embarrassed that he blushed slightly.

  Kondratiev almost said, idiotically: “Nice day, isn’t it?” but that evasion was not permissible … A virile face, regular features, the high forehead and wide nostrils of a Great Russian — a handsome face under the leather helmet.

  “You make quite a fine-looking warrior, Sacha. How’s your work getting on?”

  Sacha sternly broke the ice, with unbelievable calm, as if he were speaking of perfectly commonplace things:

  “I thought that I would be thrown out of the school when my father was arrested … But I wasn’t. Is it because I am one of the top students, or is there a directive that forbids throwing the sons of executed men out of special units? What do you think, Ivan Nicolayevich?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kondratiev, and looked at the sidewalk.

  The toes of his boots were dirty. A red, half-crushed worm writhed in the muddy space between two paving blocks. There was a pin on the pavement too, and a few inches from it, a blob of spit. Kondratiev raised his eyes again and looked straight into Sacha’s face.

  “What is your own opinion?”

  “For a while I told myself that everyone knew my father was innocent, but obviously that doesn’t count. And besides, the Political Commissar advised me to change my name. I refused.”

  “You were wrong, Sacha. It will be a great handicap to you.”

  They had nothing more to say to each other, nothing whatever.

  “Are we going to have war?” Sacha asked in the same unemotional voice.

  “Probably.”

  Sacha’s face barely lit up with a restrained smile.

  Kondratiev smiled broadly. He thought: Don’t say a word, lad. I know. The enemy first.

  “Do you need any books?”

  “Yes, Ivan Nicolayevich. I want German books on tank tactics … We shall have to meet superior tactics …”

  “But our morale will be superior …”

  “Right,” said Sacha dryly.

  “I will try to get the books for you … Good luck, Sacha.”

  “Good luck to you too,” the young man said.

  Was there really that strange little gleam in his eyes, that implication in his tone, that restrained vigor in his handshake?

  “He would have every right to hate me,” Kondratiev thought, “to despise me, and yet he must understand me, know that I too …” A girl was waiting for Sacha in front of the wax figures of the “Scheherazade” Hairdressers’ Syndicate Co-op (“permanents 30 rubles” — one third of a working woman’s monthly wage). Kondratiev made more serious calculations. According to the no longer up-to-date statistics of the C.C. Bulletins, we have eliminated to date between 62 and 70 per cent of Communist officials, administrators, and officers — and that in less than three years. In other words, out of some two hundred thousand men representing the Party cadres, between 124,000 and 140,000 Bolsheviks. It is impossible, on the basis of the published data, to determine the proportion between men executed and men interned in concentration camps, but to judge from personal experience … It is true that the proportion of men executed is particularly high in government circles, which doubtless gives me a wrong perspective …

  A few minutes before the hour set for his speech, he found himself under the white colonnade of Red Army House. Worried secretaries came running to meet him … the secretary of the Executive Committee, the secretary of the General Staff, the secretary of the local C
ommandant, and yet others — almost all dressed in uniforms so new that they looked as if they had been polished, with yellow knee leathers, shining holsters, shining faces too, and obsequious handshakes; and they made an impressive escort as he mounted the great marble stairway and young officers threw out their chests to salute him, magnificently immobile. “How many minutes before I am to speak?” was the only question he asked. Two secretaries answered simultaneously, their freshly shaven faces bowing eagerly. “Seven minutes, Comrade Kondratiev …” A voice which respect made almost hoarse ventured: “Will you take a glass of wine?” and added in a humble and casual tone: “We have a remark-a-ble Tsinondali …” Kondratiev nodded and forced a smile. It was as if he were walking surrounded by perfectly constructed manikins. The group entered a sort of drawing room and buffet in one. Two heavily framed pictures faced each other from cream-colored walls, on either side of the edibles: one represented Marshal Klimentii Efremovich Voroshilov on a rearing charger, his naked saber pointing to a murky spot on the horizon; red flags surrounded by bayonets hurried to overtake him under a sky of dark clouds. The horse was painted with extraordinary care, the nostrils and the dark eye, to which a highlight lent animation, were even more successfully rendered than the details of the saddle; the rider had a round, slightly foreshortened head which might have come out of a popular picture book; but the stars on his collar glittered. The other large portrait showed the Chief, in a white tunic, delivering a speech from a platform, and he was pure painted wood, his smile a grimace, the platform looked like an empty buffet, the Chief like a Caucasian waiter saying, in his pungent accent: “Nothing left, citizen …” On the other hand, the real buffet gleamed white and opulent, with caviar, Volga sturgeons, smoked salmon, glazed eels, game, fruits from the Crimea and Turkestan. “Gifts of our native soil,” Kondratiev joked cheerfully, as he went to the buffet to receive the offered glass of Tsinondali from the plump hands of a dazzled blonde. His joke, the bitterness of which no one divined, was greeted by obliging little laughs, not very loud because no one knew whether it was really permissible to laugh in the presence of such an eminent personage. Behind the waitress who had been given the honor of serving him (photogenic, 50-ruble permanent, and decorated with the Medal of Honor of Labor), Kondratiev saw a broad red ribbon garlanding a small photograph — of himself. Gilt letters proclaimed: WELCOME TO COMRADE KONDRATIEV, DEPUTY MEMBER OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE … Where the devil had they unearthed that old snapshot, the bootlickers? Kondratiev slowly drank the Caucasian wine, waved away smiles and sandwiches with a stern hand, remembered that he had barely glanced at the printed outline of his speech, supplied by the Division for Army Propaganda. “Excuse me, comrades …” His escort instantly fell back, leaving him in the center of a six-foot circle of emptiness. He drew several crumpled sheets from his pocket. An enormous white-eyed sturgeon pointed its minute carnivorous teeth at him. The bulbs in the chandeliers were reflected in the amber jelly. The printed speech discussed the international situation, the battle against the enemies of the people, technical training, the invincibility of the Army, patriotic feeling, loyalty to “our inspired Chief, guide of peoples, unique strategist.” Idiots! they’ve given me the standard speech for Morale Office representatives with the rank of general! … “The Chief of our great Party and of our invincible Army, animated by a will of iron against the enemies of the Fatherland, is at the same time filled with a profound and incomparable love for the workers and all upright citizens. ‘Think of man!’ That unforgettable phrase, which he propounded at the XIXth Conference, should be graven in letters of fire in the consciousness of every commander of a unit, of every political commissar, of every …” Kondratiev thrust the dead clichés back into his trousers pocket. Scowling, he looked around for someone. A dozen faces offered themselves, hastily assuming dutiful smiles: We are here, absolutely at your disposal, Comrade Deputy Member of the C.C.! He asked:

  “You have had some suicides?”

  An officer with cropped hair answered, speaking very quickly:

  “Only one. Personal reasons. Two attempts — both men have acknowledged their misconduct, and reports on them are good.”

  All this took place completely outside reality, in a world as insubstantial and superficial as an airy vision. Then suddenly reality forced itself upon him; it was a painted wooden lectern, on which he laid his heavy, blue-veined, hairy hand, a hand which had a life of its own. He became aware of it, looked at it for a long moment, observed too the minute details of the wood, and out of that real wood, out of that hand, there came to him a simple decision: He would face the entire reality of the moment, three hundred strange faces, different yet alike, each one of them silently triumphing over uniformity. Attentive, anonymous, molded in a flesh that suggested metal, what did they expect of him? What was he to say to them that would be basically true? Already he heard his own voice, heard it with nervous displeasure, because it was speaking vain words, words he had glimpsed in the printed speech, words long known by heart, read a thousand times in editorials, the sort of words of which Trotsky once said that when you spoke them you felt as if you were chewing cotton batting … Why have I come here? Why have they come here? Because we are trained to obedience. Nothing is left of us but obedience. They do not know it yet. They do not suspect that my obedience is deadly. Everything that I say to them, even if it is as true as the whiteness of snow, becomes spectral and false because of obedience. I speak, they listen, some of them perhaps try to understand me, and we do not exist: we obey. A voice within him answered: To obey is still to exist. And he continued the debate: It is to exist as numbers and machines … He went on delivering the prepared speech. He saw Russians with shaved heads, the strong race which we formed by freeing the serfs, then by breaking their will, then by teaching them to resist us unendingly, thereby creating within them a new will, despite ourselves and against ourselves. In one of the front rows sat a Mongolian, arms crossed, small head held erect, looking sternly into Kondratiev’s face. Eyes eager to the point of cruelty. He was weighing every word. It was as if he had distinctly murmured: “You are on the wrong track, comrade, all that you are saying is useless, I assure you … Stop speaking, or find words that are alive … After all, we are alive …” Kondratiev answered him with such assurance that his voice changed. Behind him there was a stir among the secretaries, who, with the garrison commander, made up the presidium. No longer were they hearing the familiar phrases to which they were accustomed at functions of this sort; it made them physically uneasy — with the sort of uneasiness that is produced by an error of command in field maneuvers … The line of tanks suddenly sags, breaks, all is confusion, the commanders are reduced to humiliating rages. The Political Commissar of the Tank School stiffened against his dismay, reached for his automatic pencil, and began taking notes so hurriedly that the letters overlapped on the page … He could not grasp the phrases which he heard being uttered by the orator — who was a member of the Central Committee, of the Central Committee, of the Central Committee — was it possible? The orator was saying:

  “… we are covered with crimes and errors, yes, we have forgotten the essential in order to live from hour to hour, and yet we are justified before the universe, before the future, before our magnificent and miserable fatherland, which is not the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, which is not Russia, which is the Revolution … did you hear me? … the Revolution, outside of any definite territory … the mutilated, universal, human Revolution … Be well assured that, in the battle which will break on us tomorrow, all our forces will be dead within three months … And you are our forces … You must understand why … The world is going to split in two …” Should he be stopped? Was it not a crime to let him say such things? The Political Commissar is responsible for all that is said by a speaker at the school, but has he the right to stop the Central Committee’s orator? The Commandant, the fool, would certainly not understand a word of it, he was probably hearing only a murmur of periods; the head of the sch
ool had turned purple and was concentrating his attention on an ash tray … The orator was saying (the commissar caught only snatches of his fiery discourse, and could not establish a connection between them):

  “… the old Party members of my generation have all perished … most of them in confusion, in despair, in error … servilely … They had roused the world … all in the service of truth … Never forget … Socialism … Revolution … tomorrow, the battle for Europe amid world crisis … Yesterday, Barcelona, the beginning … we arrived too late, too sapped by our errors … our forgetfulness of the international proletariat, of mankind … too late, wretches that we are …” The orator spoke of the Aragon front, of the arms which did not arrive — why? He shouted the “why” in a tone of defiance, and did not answer it — a reference to what? He proclaimed the “heroism of the Anarchists …” He said (and the commissar, transfixed, could not take his eyes from him), he said:

  “… Perhaps, young men, I shall never speak again … I have not come here, in the name of the Central Committee of our great Party, that iron cohort …”

  Iron cohort? Hadn’t the phrase been coined by Bukharin, enemy of the people, agent of a foreign intelligence service?

  “… to bring you the copybook phrases which Lenin called our Communist lie, ‘Comm-lie’! I ask you to look at reality, be it baffling or base, with the courage of your youth, I tell you to think freely, to condemn us in your consciences — we, the older generation, who could not do better; I tell you to go beyond us as you judge us … I urge you to feel that you are free men under your armor of discipline … to judge, to think out everything for yourselves. Socialism is not an organization of machines, a mechanizing of human beings — it is an organization of clear-thinking and resolute men, who know how to wait, to give way and to recover their ground … Then you shall see how great we are, one and all — we who are the last, you who are the first, of tomorrow … Live forward … Among you there are some who have thought of deserting, for hanging yourself or putting a bullet in your brain is deserting … I understand them thoroughly, I have considered doing the same thing myself — otherwise I should not have the right to speak to them … I tell them to see this vast country before them, this vast future … I tell them … A pitiful creature, the man who thinks only of his own life, his own death, he has understood nothing … and let him go, it is the best thing he can do, let him go with our pity …” The orator continued his incoherencies with such persuasive power that for a time the Political Commissar lost his own self-control, and regained it only when he heard Kondratiev speaking of the Chief in very strange terms: “The most solitary man among us all, the man who can turn to no one, overwhelmed by his superhuman task, by the burden of our common faults in this backward country where the new consciousness is feeble and sickly … corrupted by suspicion …” But he ended with reassuring words: “the inspired guide,” the “pilot’s immovable hand,” the “continuer of Lenin” … When he stopped speaking, the entire audience hovered in painful indecision. The presidium did not give the signal for applause, the three hundred listeners waited for more. The young Mongolian rose and clapped passionately, it set off a tumult of irregular and as it were galvanic applause, in which there were islands of silence. Kondratiev saw Sacha standing at the back of the hall — he was not applauding, his hair was rumpled … Facing off stage, the Political Commissar was making fervid signals, an orchestra struck up “Be There War Tomorrow,” the audience took up the virile refrain in chorus, three working women, wearing decorations and the uniform of Chemical Aviation, filed onto the platform, one of them carrying the new school flag, in red silk richly embroidered with gold …