The Case of Comrade Tulayev

by Joe Auciello

The Case of Comrade Tulayev, trans. Willard R. Trask, introduction by Susan Sontag, (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 336 pp., $14.95.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both valued literature in part for its ability to illuminate historical conflicts through the medium of fictional characters. Writers of literature, they said, could provide more understanding of and insight into the modern world than historians, economists, and sociologists.1

By exploring characters in depth, novelists are able to create a cross-section of an entire society, viewed from the inside out. Taken together, imaginary constructs can, in the hands of a skillful writer, combine to form a true-to-life social portrait.

In The Case of Comrade Tulayev Victor Serge depicts the world of Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s—the years of terror, betrayal, and fear—in a novel structured as a series of thematically linked stories. These chapter-length snapshots of bureaucrats, functionaries, state prosecutors, workers, revolutionaries—all victims of the Chief, i.e., Joseph Stalin—are woven together around a central conflict: the mysterious murder of a high-ranking government official, Comrade Tulayev.

The novel examines the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from the perspective of an author who, as a supporter of the Left Opposition founded by Leon Trotsky, was himself arrested in 1933, exiled, and in 1936 ultimately deported from the Soviet Union. As Serge remarked in his book, "From Lenin to Stalin," "in the course of the years, I assembled a profound knowledge of the workings of a totalitarian state.2

The child of Russian émigré parents, Serge became an anarchist militant as a teen-ager. Following the October Revolution in Russia, Serge supported and later wrote a history of the Russian Revolution. He joined the Communist Party, finding there the practical expression of anarchist ideals of liberty and struggle against class oppression.

As the revolutionary tide fell and a bureaucracy tightened its grip on the party and government, Serge, consistent with his original ideals, found himself in opposition and spoke out as a principled conscience of Bolshevism.

It here becomes apparent, Serge wrote, that moral criteria sometimes have greater value than judgments based on political and economic considerations.3 This view, which led Serge to emphasize his view that Bolshevik practices were partly responsible for the rise of Stalin, also led to a personal and political break with the exiled Leon Trotsky, who emphasized the objective and historical factors that caused the reversal of revolutionary perspectives in the Bolshevik party.

"The Case of Comrade Tulayev," written a decade after the quarrel with Trotsky, is permeated with Serge’s stress on morality and justice:"[W]e have neither the right to be silent nor to close our eyes. A sort of moral intervention becomes our duty."4 This idea, from the conclusion of "From Lenin to Stalin," could easily have been spoken by one of the fictional characters in "The Case of Comrade Tulayev."

The call for moral intervention was a lifelong conviction. A decade later Serge would scornfully criticize the socially committed writers of postwar France for their willingness to ignore the crimes of Stalin. Serge referred to such a writer as the false witness who gives proof of a blindness that borders sometimes on imbecility, sometimes on knavery.5

Morality, of a frustrated and desperate sort, is the motivation that sets the novel’s plot in motion. By the end of the first chapter, Central Committee member Tulayev, (for this faceless bureaucrat no first name is needed) has been murdered. His assassin was a young man, a worker, who took advantage of an accidental opportunity to lash out against a bureaucracy he knows is destructive, dehumanizing, and all-powerful.

The killer, "not even knowing myself the moment before what I was going to do," struck in a moment of anger and despair. The story takes leave of the assassin and quickly turns to the investigation.

The secret police, following the directive of the High Commissar, who takes orders from the Central Committee, which obeys the Chief, are all stymied. The case is complicated by motive—that is, too many people would have reason to kill a bureaucrat like Tulayev. "The first secret investigation produced sixty-seven arrests in three days." The circle widens.

Several chapters later: "The case ramified in every direction, linked itself to hundreds of others, mingled with them, disappeared in them, re-emerged like a little dangerous blue flame from under fire-blackened ruins."

Because the killer can be anyone, the investigators arrest everyone but find no one. The guilty, therefore, must be manufactured in the vise of government offices and prison.

The circumstances are exactly as Trotsky explained them in 1937 to the Dewey Commission: Isolated terroristic explosions are inevitable whenever political oppression transgresses certain boundaries. Such acts almost always have a symptomatic character.6 The characters in the novel certainly bear out this judgment.

As many readers will recognize, "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" is based on actual historical events, namely the assassination of Leningrad party secretary Sergei Kirov, the purges, and the notorious Moscow Trials. Most major characters have their real life counterparts. Prominent Bolsheviks like Nikolai Bukharin and Antonov-Ovseenko are transformed into thinly disguised fictional portraits. The head of the secret police meets the same fate as Henry Yagoda, who presided over the first set of trials and faithfully executed Lenin’s old comrades.

Minor and nameless government officials could have recognized themselves in this novel. One figure in the story is an obvious stand-in for Serge himself. The book’s plot adheres closely to fact.

Serge, then, did not invent the circumstances and conflicts he describes. His creative work as a novelist, though, leads him to envision the psychology of people who in real life were his political enemies. This is Serge’s achievement.

Deeply interested in the individual

Looking at the entirety of Serge’s work available in English, it is fair to say that he wrote journalism, history, and autobiography with the sensibility of a novelist and wrote novels informed by history and political theory.

But where Marxists are likely to write of broad class forces and historical trends, Serge is deeply interested in the individual. In a 1920s essay on proletarian literature, Serge criticized the kind of writer guilty of creating literature from abstractions.7

This judgment is a clue to his own methods as a novelist. Serge begins with an actual person and imagines his or her inner life within the context of real history. He wants to know, for instance, how some minor functionary gets up in the morning, what he thinks of his work, and what makes him happy. The result is a figure who is both an objective social type and a credible fictional character placed in the caldron of history that Serge himself had experienced.

In "The Case of Comrade Tulayev," Serge is particularly attuned to the lies, self-deception, and rationalizations that his characters tell themselves and each other.

One example may suffice for many. A long-time party member, an intellectual suspected of secret opposition, tells a young friend, the daughter of a Central Committee member, "Nothing happens in history that is not, in some sense, rational. The best sometimes have to be broken, because they do harm precisely by being the best. You cannot understand that yet."

Serge’s characters are all victims, but the most admirable of them, face their victimization squarely.

Most characters, though, like most people, are a mixture of contradictory qualities. "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" examines the frame of mind of the docile and servile, explores the half-truths of intellectuals who temporize, adapt, and ultimately capitulate to brute power.

The novel also presents readers with the zealotry of true believers whose self-righteousness is exceeded only by ignorance. Others are simpler: naïve or cynical or resigned. All are portraits of people under pressure. Serge’s viewpoint in the novel is deliberately panoramic. That is, he does not follow the tribulations of a single character from beginning to end but devotes a chapter to one main character, each drawn from different layers of Soviet society. A major figure in one story often reappears as a minor figure in another, which affords the reader a kind of double vision—i.e., the interior and exterior sensibility of the character.

More significantly, these characters are representative of distinct social types, so the accumulated perspectives cohere into a full-scale composite of 1930s Russia. But not only Russia. One chapter ("Journey into Defeat") is set in Spain, where Serge shows, from the point of view of a loyal Stalinist agent, how Soviet policy undermined the anti-fascist struggle.

One character refers to Soviet policy as "a farce which I fail to understand, but which is costing my people dearly." Another character asks incredulously, "Doesn’t your Chief know what is going on here, what his idiots, his toadies, his lame ducks have done? He wants us to win, doesn’t he? He is sincere? If so, we can still be saved, we will be saved, won’t we?"

The terrible answer is shown by the events of the chapter, which consist largely of hunting down, torturing, and killing suspected Trotskyists and members of the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM).

The action of the novel illustrates what Serge had written years before while the Spanish civil war was being fought: "It is in order to make the strangling of revolutionaries in Spain more effective that the old revolutionaries are being murdered in Russia!"8 Thus, the threads of the story s plot weave around Russia and encircle Spain.

By the end of the novel hundreds of innocents have been arrested, imprisoned, exiled. Many have been shot. Despite all these deaths, which, in Trotsky’s phrase, make up not simply a bloody line but a whole river of blood9 that separates Stalinism from Bolshevism, ultimately nothing much has changed. One bureaucrat replaces another and is replaced in turn; the machine grinds on. The Chief, fearful, paranoid, vengeful, holds on to power.

It is no surprise, and it gives nothing away, to note that Tulayev’s real assassin is never found. The killer’s anonymous letter of confession is burned to preserve the official fiction that "the Tulayev case" is closed.

The public announcement of the end of the investigation appears in print with other trivial items under the heading of "Miscellaneous Information."

The story ends with a Red Army parade, a display of might so impressive that even nature seems to be deployed powerfully.

Optimistic look to the future

What then, is the purpose and value of this novel, especially now, when the Soviet Union was dissolved more than a decade ago and the truth about the Moscow Trials and Stalin is widely known?

The answer, simply put, is that it is a protest novel no less significant and no more dated than Solzhenitsyn’s "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." These novels recreate the feel of daily existence years ago, animate the history texts, and give readers an irreplaceable personal perspective. Books like these ensure that the past is not forgotten.

The demise of the Soviet Union does not somehow invalidate or marginalize fiction set in the Stalin era. Serge would not have been surprised to hear of the collapse of "actually existing socialism" in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The quality of life depicted in "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" showed why the Stalinist monolith could not endure. Poverty and backwardness were only one part of the explanation. The essential fact is that in the workers state the workers did not hold political power but were the victims of a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy. In a 1938 essay Serge wrote, "Liberty is as necessary to Socialism, the spirit of liberty is as necessary to Marxism, as oxygen to living beings.10

He concluded this essay, a kind of personal manifesto, with an optimistic look to the future: "A new proletariat is rising in Russia, its industrial base greatly extended. The class struggle goes on. For all the dictator’s replastering, we hear the edifice of the old social framework cracking."11

But "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" is a novel, not history. A reader will not, for instance, receive from this book a clear understanding of the reasons behind the Moscow Trials, nor does the novel provide a theoretical explanation for the degeneration of the revolution in Russia. Serge does not explore these topics on the level of political theory, though his characters frequently debate theoretical issues and Marxism. To understand fully the why and wherefore of these trials, a reader still needs to study the work of Leon Trotsky, as Serge did himself.

True, the character Stefan Stern does speak in Serge’s voice when he says, "… they fly the red flag, and so they appeal to the strongest and rightest instinct of the masses; they catch men by their faith, and then cheat them out of their faith, turn it into an instrument of power. Their most terrible strength lies in the fact that they themselves believe they are continuing the Revolution, while they are serving a new counterrevolution, a counterrevolution such as has never existed before, and set up in the very rooms where Lenin worked."

This idea, though, receives no special emphasis in the story. It is not repeated, for instance, triumphantly or prophetically at the conclusion. The Stefan Stern character speaks as such a person would be expected to. His voice is merely one of many; his opinion merely one of the many opinions spoken in the novel.

In other words, in the fictional world of The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Serge does not give any greater consideration to his own beliefs. In this, Serge is consistent with Friedrich Engels, who once remarked to a novelist friend, "The more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for the work of art."12

With its journalistic qualities, its absence of strongly defined, didactic themes, "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" is an atypical yet effective protest novel. Serge the novelist does not, through a heroic central character or through a triumphant proletarian struggle, present an alternative socialist program supported by Serge the revolutionary. His political ideas advance by a more subtle interaction between writer and reader.

The story’s detailed portrayal of social catastrophe and political degeneration in the former USSR provokes in its readers strong feelings of disgust, outrage, and anger. In this response lies the real value of the novel.

Trotsky’s comments about another novelist (Louis-Ferdinand Celine), aptly describe Serge’s purpose in "The Case of Comrade Tulayev": "exposing the lie, he instills the want for a more harmonious future."13

Susan Sontag’s literary highjacking

By the closing pages, a reader may feel, "No, the case is not closed. The working class of Russia, deceived, beaten down, humiliated, has not yet spoken. There is still more to come." The overall result of the story is to promote, not anti-socialism, but anti-Stalinism.

This is not the conclusion of Susan Sontag, who once labeled communism as fascism with a human face and has written the novel’s introduction. She provides the necessary information of Serge’s biography, examines the reasons for his relative obscurity, and comments on the literary significance of Serge’s achievement.

Unfortunately, Sontag’s introduction is also an argument with and an effort to co-opt Serge for her view, which identifies Stalinism with Bolshevism and condemns revolution as inherently doomed by indiscriminate and self-destructive violence. Serge thought otherwise: "It is easy (and idiotic) to draw conclusions on the bankruptcy of revolution, of Marxism, etc."14

Sontag’s effort is a kind of literary hijacking. She attributes her opinions to Serge and improves his ideas by altering them. It is one thing to say the Fourth International did not represent an essentially different alternative to the Leninist doctrines and practice that had led to Stalinist tyranny, but it is an entirely different matter to claim that this is something that Serge knew.

Leon Trotsky, in a bitter polemic, said that Serge’s ideas were a bridge from revolution to reaction. Whatever the validity of this judgment, it must be noted that Serge himself never crossed that bridge. It is Sontag’s singular contribution to try to drag Serge into the ranks of anti-communists, a place where he does not belong.

Throughout his life Serge maintained the hope that a better world is in birth. He is the poet who once wrote, "in time flesh will wear out chains / in time the mind will make chains snap."15 Written by a man twice imprisoned, these words are more than some rhetorical flourish. The novel gives ample reason to sustain such revolutionary convictions. Serge’s more sympathetic readers will find reason to agree.

After "The Case of Comrade Tulayev," those who wish to learn more of Victor Serge would do well to acquire "From Lenin to Stalin," (Pathfinder Press) and "Memoirs of a Revolutionary," just recently returned to print by the University of Iowa Press. An overall account of Serge’s life and work is "The Course is Set on Hope," by Susan Weissman, available in paperback this spring from Verso.

1. "Marx and Engels on Literature and Art," edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morowski. (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973), pp. 105, 115. 2. Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), p. 57. 3. Ibid., p. 58. 4. 4. Ibid., p. 116. 5. "Victor Serge, The Writer’s Conscience," in David Craig, ed., "Marxists on Literature, An Anthology." (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), pp. 441-442. 6. "The Case of Leon Trotsky," (New York: Merit Publishers, 1968), p. 490. 7. Victor Serge, "Is a Proletarian Literature Possible?" in Jacques Ehrmann, ed., "Literature and Revolution," (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 142. 8. Victor Serge, "Crimes in Russia, Intrigues in Spain," in David Cotterill, ed., "The Serge-Trotsky Papers," (London: Pluto Press, 1994), p. 130. 9. Leon Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism," in "Writings of Leon Trotsky (1936-1937)," p. 423. 10. Victor Serge, Marxism in Our Time, in The Serge-Trotsky Papers, pp. 181-182. 11. Ibid. p. 183. 12. "Marx and Engels on Literature and Art," p. 115. 13. Leon Trotsky, "Celine and Poincare: Novelist and Politician," in Paul Siegel, ed., "Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art," (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 202. 14. "The Serge-Trotsky Papers," p. 167. 15. Victor Serge, "Be Hard," in "Resistance," (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989), p. 33.