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

by Victor Serge

It was Wladek who returned to serious matters: “You know, my nerves are all to pieces, I admit — but I am not as afraid as I might be. Come what may, my death will fertilize Socialist soil, if it is Socialist soil …” “State Capitalism,” said Philippov. Rublev: “… We must cultivate consciousness. There is sure progress under this barbarism, progress under this retrogression. Look at our masses, our youth, all the new factories, the Dnieprostroi, Magnitogorsk, Kirovsk … We are all dead men under a reprieve, but the face of the earth has been changed, the migrating birds must wonder where they are when they see what were deserts covered with factories. And what a new proletariat! Ten million men at work, with machines, instead of three and a half million in 1927. What will that effort not accomplish for the world in half a century!” “… When nothing of us will remain, not even our smallest bones,” Wladek chanted, perhaps without irony.