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

by Victor Serge

Rublev knew the minutes of the meetings of the Political Bureau, he quoted the most forbidden passages from them (passages probably now destroyed); he showed the General Secretary daily encroaching upon all powers; he followed the intrigue in the lobbies of the Central Committee; against it as a background, the figure of the Chief began to appear, still hesitantly, between resignation, arrest, the violent scene at the end of which two equally pale members of the P.B. faced each other among the overturned chairs and one said: “I will kill myself so that my corpse will denounce you! But as for you, the muzhiks will rip your guts out one day, and more power to them — but the country, the Revolution …” And the other, his face closed as the grave, murmured: “Calm yourself, Nicolas Ivanovich. If you will accept my resignation I tender it …” It was not accepted, there were no more successors. When he had written page after page, written freely, as he had not written for more than ten years, Kiril Rublev would walk up and down his cell, smoking. “Well, Dora, what do you think of it?” Dora invisibly turned over the written sheets. “Good,” she said. “Firm and clear. Yourself. Go on, Kiril.” Then he returned to that other necessary meditation, his meditation on the poppy field.