Poems of resistance during times of exile and repression

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Trotsky as Red Army commander, by Yuri Annenkov, 1924 Our readers speak out SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1989 19 Victor Serge, Resistance. Translated from the French by James Brook. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989.

Novelist, poet, political historian of Soviet and Chinese Communism, and member of the Left Opposition, Victor Serge wrote most of the poems in this volume from internal exile in the Ural Mountains from 1936 to 1939.

Like other revolutionist-poets, Serge understood the powerful links between words and deeds, and he summoned poetry to testify. Serge wrote poetry of regret and survival during the repressive years of what he called "revolutionary shipwreck," when the growing bureaucracy within the Soviet Communist Party began the process of deforming the Bolshevik Revolution.

In the face of the destruction wrought by forced collectivization and party purges, poetry, Serge argued, "should arise to scourge the executioners, to exalt the heroism of the tortured, land] to guard the proud memory of the shot."

Serge lived in exile in the forbidding climate of Orenburg, far from the centers of Soviet political and cultural activity, and also from the Europe of his youth, with its traditions of visionary political poetry. Resistance presents the complex fusion of Serge's commitment to the Bolshevik Revolution, his utter disgust at the bureaucratic betrayal of that victory, and his inescapable memory of a European urban culture denied to him in his Central Asian internment: "this legend I am presenting on the frontier of Asia,/ on the frontier of Europe,/ I who feel like a man torn apart, a Eurasian." ("Frontier")

Linking peasants to workers Serge responded to his dislocation by making poems which poetically and politically link the Khirghiz peasants to city workers, and connect his political culture to a global poetic tradition. For example, in "Four Girls," young women fording the Ural River make Serge think of Parisian Baudelaire's language of "order, beauty, calm and voluptuousness."

At the same time, however, the sight of an old peasant woman molding chalk rebukes Serge for his worldliness by the very persistence of her "powerful, tenacious hands that in the darkness work over the desolate whiteness,/ severely, obstinately,/ Since the beginning of time." ("Somewhere Else")

So, though one strain of Serge's poetry grows from his painful and many-layered exile from France, from Leningrad, and from the Communist Party, another strain builds up a Mini-State Dear editor, The current position of the Palestine Liberation Organization (and the objective of the Intifadah in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) is the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

It seems to me that the creation of an independent Palestinian state would be an historic advance in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. ... The role, then, of Marxists within Israel would be to fight for Israeli recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and to help build a movement for withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.

Once two states were established, a determined struggle would have to be waged within the Israeli state to prevent the Israeli militarists from attacking the Palestinian state. ... This does not negate the longerrange objective of a joint ArabJewish state that is both secular and based on the working class.

Once a Palestinian state were established, steps like academic and cultural exchanges, work on common economic projects, the struggle for peace between the two states, trade-union coordination and solidarity, and citizen-to-citizen informal contacts and political discussion could all lead to the eventual creation of a unified workers' state where Jews and Arabs could live as equals.

One point:

fabric of solidarity with his Left Oppositionist comrades and with people in struggle across the world.

In "On the Ural River," for example, his poem becomes a passageway connecting Soviet women in the fields to those in France and Greece who "stomp ripe grapes" but "don't know they have sisters here."

-Politics in a romantic styleSerge is a political poet in a romantic style: We feel the presence of stars in a night sky everywhere in Serge's poems, offering an image of unity for the Left Oppositionists is a section of the Fourth International within the Israeli state (the Revolutionary Communist League) which has distinguished itself in the struggle against Zionist oppression, it is my impression that there is no corresponding Palestinian Trotskyist group in the occupied territories or in the Palestinian diaspora.

I would advance the view that merely calling for a democratic secular state (without specifying the working-class character of such a state) is an insufficient basis for consolidating a Palestinian revolutionary Marxist organization.

Dan Rosenshine, Pittsburgh, Pa. Response D.R. raises an important point that is being hotly debated among revolutionists in Palestine. From its inception, and for well over a decade, the PLO advocated the formation of a democratic and secular state in all of Palestine; it categorically rejected a "two-state" solution for Palestine.

"The very existence of the oppressor state of Israel, based on the expulsion and forced exile of part of its citizens, even from one tiny village, is unacceptable to the revolution," affirmed a 1970 PLO resolution. "Any arrangement accommodating the aggressor settler-state is unacceptable."

Under intense diplomatic and military pressures, the PLO subsequently adopted the position described above by the reader-though it is far from clear that this "twostate" solution is the objective of the Intifadah, as is claimed.

The Intifadah has revealed the immediate aspiration of the Palestinian people to liberate zones free from Zionist control. It would be wrong, however, to equate this sentiment with the "two-state" program currently advocated by the PLO leadership.

Countless reports-and even surveys—reveal that a large bulk of the Palestinian fighters in the West Bank and Gaza refuse to recognize the Israeli settler-state's "right" to exist in its pre-1967 borders. They view the establishment of liberated zones on the West Bank and Gaza as a first step toward the full liberation of all of Palestine.

Setting up a Palestinian "mini-state" in the West Bank (and possibly Gaza) as proposed by the advocates of the "two-state solution" could only take place under terms dictated by the Israeli government and the imperialists. In exchange for the establishment of such a rump state, the PLO and the Palestinian people would be required to recognize the Zionists' "right" to the land within the pre1967 borders of the Israeli state. That is the hitch.

Recognition of the Israeli state would retroactively invalidate the right of resistance of the Palestinian people. It would legitimize the murderous conquest of Palestinian land and permit the Zionists to contend that 40 years of Palestinian "intransigence" was responsible for isolated in Central Asia, along the Steppes, and as far north as cities like Vorkuta, where today miners continue the struggle against the bureaucracy.

Serge's stars mirror the deformation of the revolution: "O rain of stars in the darkness! Constellation of dead brothers." The catastrophe of the workers' state is "our decapitated dawn, our nights with its star askew,/ with its inexplicable Milky Way torn to pieces." ("Confessions")

But even though the stars indicate vast distances, they also guide the separated revolutionists as if they were fragments of a ship sailing north, whose "ardent voyage continall the suffering in the region.

Rather than aid the fight for a democratic secular Palestine open to both Jews and Arabs, the "two-state solution" would represent a giant obstacle in its path.

For more background on this subject, we recommend Ralph Schoenman's pamphlet "The Hidden History of Zionism" (Walnut Publishing, $4 including postage and handling).-the editors Faster delivery Dear editor, We've received your Socialist Action regularly since 1986. From the period of 1970 to 1982, our section was closely collaborative with the Socialist Workers Party (USA).

Today the Trotskyist heritage of the SWP is with Socialist Action. But the difficulty is that Socialist Action reaches us very late by sea mail. So we fail to translate it into our Gusarats-language journal and equip our cadres when the events In the situation fast unfolding in Eastern Europe and other workers' states, we would like to be informed promptly. The role of Socialist Action is on a par with International Viewpoint, which we get by airmail. We request that you also send Socialist Action by airmail. M.D., Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (Indian Section of the Fourth International), Gijrat, India ues,/ the course... set on hope" ("Constellation of Dead Brothers"), aiming to find "in the northern lights/ in the glow on the glaciers,/ a simple, intimate and loyal word." ("Hands")

The exiles can look up and see the stars, binding them to each other and to comrades beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union: "I, vaguely think/ alone before the steppe,/ Of all those the world over from whom I am not separated — / Of the unemployed in Amsterdam, of Tom Mooney in his/ California prison ... " ("History of Russia")

Vision radiates outward The volume hovers between the despair of exile and Serge's refusal to admit any ultimate defeat. His vision radiates outward from the Northern frozen glaciers to all the terrain of the earth:

"I saw the glaciers of Elbrus, Kazbek,/ and more distant, icier, clearer,/ Ararat, Pamir, Everest, the Andes/ and more distant, icier, clearer,/ above the gently oscillating green fields the dazzling summits of the realest mountains."

In this poetry all of the oppressed, living and dead, form one massive community in struggle, "forming the one choir that murmurs in our shared veins/ our singing veins." ("Hands")

In the contemporary bit of historical dialectic that we call glasnost, we have just seen a hopeful exchange. In late 1988, Victor Serge's son, the painter of Vlady Kibalchich, went to the Soviet Union to urge the political and literary rehabilitation of his father, the return of his father's confiscated manuscripts, and to speak to the Soviet Writers' Union [see Socialist Action, April 1989].

This year, in the United States, City Lights Books, long known for its visionary poetic internationalism, has given us a chance to read Serge's poetry in English. Reading these poems, we hear new echoes and resonances in the words of Serge's poem "Cassiopeia": "standing on the earth, nothing/ separates us anymore, reunited as we are by the risen stars and this sign between us...

Annie Janowitz is an assistant professor of English at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

USSR

Dear editor, Your coverage of recent events in the USSR is excellent, as is the historical perspective you give on the Bolshevik past. Your historical pieces are excellent. You have carried articles on Trotsky (of course), Lenin, and even Zinoviev-all of which were most useful to me.

As one reader, I would humbly request that you do a piece on Bukharin. Next to Lenin and Trotsky, he was one of the giants of his time. Yet, aside for Cohen's book, I can find nothing on him in print (aside from an article in the ISO paper) and have not found any of his works in translation. An article on him would help bring this important figure to the awareness of your readers.

Steven Robinson, Riverside, Calif.

Correction

In the article "Bush's drug program: Build more prisons" by Jeffrey Goldman (Socialist Action, November 1989), we identified the author as "a member of Greenpeace." This was a mistake; he is not a member. The views expressed in the article are those of the author only. We apologize to Jeffrey Goldman and to Greenpeace.-the editors

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By SHIRLEY PASHOLK National Organization for Women (NOW) President Molly Yard declared, "We will not go back," as she opened the Nov. 12 Mobilization for Women's Lives. This determination to maintain safe, legal abortions brought 300,000 women, men, and children to Washington D.C.

After filling the grassy area in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the huge crowd lined the entire length of the Reflecting Pool stretching back to the Washington Monument and overflowed into the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial grounds.

Signs dotting the rally identified contingents from as far away as California. The most popular signs proclaimed: "Keep abortion legal" and "Who decides, you or them?" The crowd was overwhelmingly youthful, with large contingents of high school and college students. Delegations came from over 400 colleges in 38 states.

A cross-section of the U.S. population parSocialist Action Smeal (president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority) led the crowd in chants of "Abortion Rights—three; George—zero." She then added, "And this is just the beginning, going into 1990. We'll remember in November."

While many participants are confused about the possibility for positive change by supporting Democrats and Republicans, many are also convinced that more visible actions are necessary. They know that despite Mayorelect Dinkins's promise to enforce the laws against clinic blockaders, only large turnouts of pro-choice supporters have succeeded in preventing Operation Rescue thugs from closing down the clinics.

Membership in NOW and campus pro-choice groups continues to grow. Many areas are already mapping plans for demonstrations in January to commemorate Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized Nov. 12 rallies-coast to coast