From the Bookshelf of The Obscure Reading Group…

The Case of Comrade Tulayev

Victor Serge,

William R. Trask (Translator)

Start date: June 15, 2024

Finish date: July 1, 2024

Discussion: The Case of Comrade Tulayev

Discussion leader: Ken

Why we're reading this: Book 2 of 2 Reading Books for June
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The Case of Comrade Tulayev

Week Two Discussion: The Case of Comrade Tulayev
By Ken · 11 posts · 9 views

last updated Jul 01, 2024 07:41AM

Week One Discussion: The Case of Comrade Tulayev
By Ken · 17 posts · 12 views

last updated Jun 21, 2024 02:42PM

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What Members Thought

Jun 30, 2024 Kathleen rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, setting-russia

“… the Party cannot admit that it is impotent before a revolver shot fired from no one knows where--perhaps from the depths of the people’s soul …”

My, but this was a marvelous, obscure, dense, suspenseful, enlightening novel.

Victor Serge led a remarkable life. He was born in Belgium in 1890 after his revolutionary parents had fled czarist Russia. Serge returned in 1919, on the side of the Bolsheviks. A journalist, historian, intellectual, novelist, poet, anarchist, activist, and revolutionary, “… the Party cannot admit that it is impotent before a revolver shot fired from no one knows where--perhaps from the depths of the people’s soul …”

My, but this was a marvelous, obscure, dense, suspenseful, enlightening novel.

Victor Serge led a remarkable life. He was born in Belgium in 1890 after his revolutionary parents had fled czarist Russia. Serge returned in 1919, on the side of the Bolsheviks. A journalist, historian, intellectual, novelist, poet, anarchist, activist, and revolutionary, he spent years in prison, was thrown out of multiple countries, and died in exile in Mexico.

The Case of Comrade Tulayev tells of the “Great Terror” of the late 1930’s in Moscow, when Stalin, in order to stabilize his power, oversaw the systematic framing, persecution, and murder of any dissidents, including old party Bolsheviks influenced by Leon Trotsky.

Serge knew Trotsky. He knew Lenin. He knew what it was like to be hunted and to spend time in prison. He tells here a fictional story, but from this acute awareness. He used fiction in order to create composites, to pack each of his characters with truths from many lives and experiences. You can feel this when you read, in the thick, deep, intensity of the stories.

Susan Sontag wrote an incredible introduction that could stand alone as a fascinating biographical piece about Serge and his philosophies. About this book, she says, “whole lives are portrayed, each of which could make a novel.” This is so true. Among them there is Kostia, a struggling construction yard worker; his neighbor Romachkin, obsessed with justice; Erchov, in charge of the Tulayev murder case; Rublev, an old Bolshevik still working as a historian; Makeyev, a tough-guy peasant who becomes a local administrator; Kondratiev, who reports on the revolution in Spain … oh, and Tulayev, immaterial other than being the murder victim.

Behind them all lurks the haunting figure of the one pulling the strings:
description

A challenging read, but well worth the effort. ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2024 Ken added it

Shelves: finished-in-2024, world-literature

Another book with bookends. What goes around, comes around. Communism -- great in theory, but theories and reality make strange bedfellows. There's a line in here I have to find. Something about revolution eating its children. Think of the French, then the Russian, then the Seven Seas.

Now back to Susan Sontag's Introduction, which should have been an afterword, given that it gives things away. ...more

16 likes · Like · see review