Jaime left an unspoken anxiety behind him in the weedy garden where the crickets raised their faint metallic chirping. At thirty-five, Stefan Stern had survived the collapse of several worlds: the bankruptcy of a proletariat reduced to impotence in Germany, Thermidor in Russia, the fall of Socialist Vienna under Catholic cannon, the dislocation of the Internationals, emigrations, demoralizations, assassinations, Moscow trials … After us, if we vanish without having had time to accomplish our task or merely to bear witness, working-class consciousness will be blanked out for a period of time
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