There Are No Supreme Saviors

Briefly, first, about the author. Victor Serge (born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich) was born to internationalism--born in Belgium to two Russian revolutionaries in exile. As a youth he moved to Paris, joined the anarchists, was arrested by the French police for refusing to testify against the freewheeling Bonnot Gang. After his release he left Paris for Russia, his homeland which he had never seen before, and joined the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. After the war he remained in Russia to help build socialism, aligning himself with the left opposition to Stalin. He was sent to a prison camp by Stalin, and only by the help of an old friend's letter did he avoid being executed. Instead he was forced to flee into exile, first to Paris, then out of Europe from the Nazis, ending up in Mexico in his final years. All this time he remained, above all, a true revolutionary beyond reproach, forever committed to the labor movement, and a tragic embodiment of the heroes of the 20th century revolutions. Greater than all the Great Men, and forced to watch from a far as the proletarian revolution degenerated into an absurd bureaucracy, himself holding to hope all the while.

Soon They Will Know Our Bullets Are For Our Own Generals

Second, and again briefly, what this book is about. It begins with two neighbors, Romachkin and Kostia, divided only by a thin partition in collective housing in Moscow. They're both clerks in the Soviet state, both living in poverty, searching for something, not sure of what it is. One night, by chance, Kostia comes upon Comrade Tulayev, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet state. Kostia shoots Tulayev and flees into the night, evading capture. We do not see Romachkin and Kostia again until the final chapter.

The rest of the novel is a panoramic view of the Great Purge. We follow those who are chosen by an absurd bureaucratic process to stand trial for the assassination of Tulayev. All of them are completely innocent of this crime, but all bear some guilt in their past. As we follow each from their life as free men, to their arrest, to their time in secret prisons we follow a thread which is as much an exploration of the Great Purges as it is of human psychology.

So Come Brothers And Sisters For The Struggle Carries On

It would be a disservice to write off this book as just a fictional account of the Stalinist Purges. Serge is interested in the Purges, interested in representing Soviet society during that time, but more importantly his prime focus is on those who were part of those purges, whether they be the condemned, the detectives, the prosecutors, Stalin himself, or their friends and family. There is no character towards whom Serge does not extend pity and understanding. In a book about the vast historical processes of change in pre-WWII Russia we find a small cast of characters who are rendered with incredible depth and humanity.

Despite being a Marxist materialist, Serge remains interested in the spiritual issue of the Soviet citizens, and as such of modern humanity as a whole. His atheist characters, as they await their executions, are faced with the reality of death, the questions this reality begs. They consider the world though this light as they are brought to their prisons by sledge across arctic plains under unpolluted stars, taken from the women they love in the night, wondering what will become of the revolution they fought for after their deaths. They see the movement of not just history, but the universe as a whole, and themselves as part of the universe.

In the end his characters retain hope for the future, keep faith in the revolution, even if it is forced into a century of backwardness. Those who survive take pity on the dead, those who have been crushed by the unfeeling machine of history. They do what they can to remember their lives, and soldier on in the hope that their deaths will not be in vain. It's Serge's message to communists like himself who saw their revolution betrayed, cast into exile after watching their friends die. It's only more tragic now knowing the communist movement has still yet to recover, but all the same holds just as true. It's a feeling which can be understood by anybody who has hoped for a brighter future and seen it betrayed.

But if the ravens and vultures

Disappear one of these days

The sun will shine always

My review could never do this book justice. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It frequently moved me to tears. That Victor Serge is not remembered as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century is perhaps only due to the fact that he, as an international, is not considered as part of any national literary canon. He is written off by the establishment as a communist, written off by the left for being critical of both Trotsky and Stalin. His works are a testament for the future to unearth, to be rediscovered by a generation living in a time more deserving.

The titles in this review all come from various translations of The Internationale.

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