The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics)

by Victor Serge

Behind the Regional Secretary’s comfortable armchair hung a large portrait in oils of the General Secretary, supplied for eight hundred rubles by the Universal Stores in the capital — a slick and shining portrait, in which the Chief’s green tunic seemed to be cut out of heavy painted cardboard and his half-smile miscarried into absolute nullity. When the office was completely furnished, Makeyev entered it with suppressed delight. “Wonderful, that portrait of the Chief. That’s real proletarian art!” he said expansively. But what was lacking in the room? What was this strange, irritating, improper, inconceivable blank? He turned on his heel, vaguely displeased, and the people around him — the architect, the secretary of the city Committee, the commandant of the building, the chief clerk, his private stenographer — all felt the same discomfort. “And Lenin?” he said at last; then added, with almost thunderous reproach: “You have forgotten Lenin, comrades! Ha, ha, ha!” His laughter rang out insolently amid the general confusion. The secretary of the city Committee was the first to regain his self-possession: “Not at all, Comrade Makeyev, not at all. We hurried to get things finished this morning and there wasn’t time to put in the bookcase — there’s where it will stand — with Ilich’s Complete Works, in the Institute edition, and the little bust that goes on top of it, just like in my place.” “That’s better,” said Makeyev, his eyes still gleaming with mockery. And, before dismis...