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

by Victor Serge

“We lie in wait for luck, Comrade Andronnikova, for our friends and for ourselves … We are living in the jungle of the transition period, eh?” “Living in it is a dangerous art,” thought the white-haired woman, but she merely smiled, more with her eyes than with her lips. Did this singular man — scholarly, keen-minded, passionately fond of music — really believe in the “twofold period of transition, from Capitalism to Socialism and from Socialism to Communism,” about which he had published a book in the days when the Party still allowed him to write? Citizenness Andronnikova, sixty, ex-princess, daughter of a great liberal (and monarchist) politician, sister of a general massacred by his soldiers in 1916, widow of a collector of pictures the only loves of whose life had been Matisse and Picasso, deprived of the ballot because of her social origins, lived by a private cult whose saint was Wladimir Soloviev. The philosophy of mystical wisdom, if it did not help her to understand the species of men called “Bolsheviks” — men strangely stubborn, hard, limited, dangerous, yet some of whom had souls of unequaled richness — helped her to regard them with an indulgence in which, of late, there was an admixture of secret compassion. If the worst were not also to be loved, what place would there be for Christian charity here below? If the worst were not sometimes very near to the best, would they really be the worst? Andronnikova thought: “They certainly believe what they write … And ...