ideological reservations. Let’s proceed with the agenda. Reports on the Verkhne-Uralsk Isolator, the agrarian question, the United Front in Germany. You have the floor, Varvara.”
* * *
“In a few months the Left-Communist Sector of the Verkhne-Uralsk Central Prison has grown from 45 to 96, an increase in strength of more than 100% due to the arrests carried out in the large centres on the eve of the XVIth Anniversary of the October Revolution. On the other hand, the unorganized Party sector has gone up from 8 to 160. These are the orthodox people under suspicion who don’t realize what’s hit them and still keep on with their stupid platitudes. This twenty-fold increase shows us the rising curve of repression directed against the unstable elements of the ruling bureaucracy. These two figures, of which the first is the index of the resistance of the conscious proletarian vanguard to the Bonapartist dictatorship and the second that of the accelerated liquidation of the Party, together demonstrate . . .”
“What do these figures demonstrate together, that each of us doesn’t already know? We live on that knowledge alone, that’s the reason we’re here, and knowing it has lead us to this slow death. The Revolution is showing a false face which is no longer its own. It is refuting itself, negating itself, cutting us down, killing us. You see it, but can you believe it? We used to feel infallibly victorious. Where’s the mistake? Everything we loved is now reduced to a despicable sham. I ask you to weigh the thesis and the antithesis, to think through every word. Be careful not to underrate the dictatorship of the proletariat even if it is sick, if it loses its head, if it is iniquitous.”
“Be careful of yourself, comrade, your illusions are quite understandable, but you’re getting drunk on words. Are we Enragés, Equals , or proscripts of Prairial?”
“Drop your historical analogies, old man: They have nothing to do with Marxism. It’s Lenin’s ‘Who will carry if off’ that is the point today; and it’s not settled yet.
“In this connection, comrades, I request a three-second recess for Karl’s latest revelation (may his revolutionary’s soul rest in peace: his body is rotting slowly in the toilet of the General Secretary’s office). The ‘who will carry it off’—we’ve known that for a long time. The ‘who will carry it off to the grave’—we know that, too. But ‘when will his turn come?’ That’s what we don’t know . . .”
“. . . The Left-Communist sector of the prison has established fraternal ties with the Anarchists, who joined them during last year’s second hunger strike and this year’s first. The June strike was lost through a miscalculation. Scurvy had been rife during the winter; they should have taken the weakness brought on by the terrible cold into consideration. Several comrades were very ill by the seventh day. The strike committee proposed calling off the strike on their own responsibility, but they themselves were removed that night by surprise and taken off to the detention centre.”
“Removed? Why didn’t they resist?”
“Summoned separately to the prison office for negotiations around two in the morning, assaulted in the corridor, gagged, bound, kidnapped, what . . . The second committee, set up the following day, was unable to assume its functions because it was sequestered in a distant building and kept under surveillance. At six in the evening the commandant of the prison received telegraphed orders to resort to forced feeding. Old Kikvadze resisted. They sent to the madhouse for a strait-jacket to control him. His lips were in shreds from the food-pipe. He finally fainted, so that they couldn’t feed him. The other sick people decided to resist by force. Then a character from Moscow arrived, sent by the Special Collegium, who asked to meet with delegates.
“ ‘The Special Collegium of the State Political Administration,’ he
* * *
“In a few months the Left-Communist Sector of the Verkhne-Uralsk Central Prison has grown from 45 to 96, an increase in strength of more than 100% due to the arrests carried out in the large centres on the eve of the XVIth Anniversary of the October Revolution. On the other hand, the unorganized Party sector has gone up from 8 to 160. These are the orthodox people under suspicion who don’t realize what’s hit them and still keep on with their stupid platitudes. This twenty-fold increase shows us the rising curve of repression directed against the unstable elements of the ruling bureaucracy. These two figures, of which the first is the index of the resistance of the conscious proletarian vanguard to the Bonapartist dictatorship and the second that of the accelerated liquidation of the Party, together demonstrate . . .”
“What do these figures demonstrate together, that each of us doesn’t already know? We live on that knowledge alone, that’s the reason we’re here, and knowing it has lead us to this slow death. The Revolution is showing a false face which is no longer its own. It is refuting itself, negating itself, cutting us down, killing us. You see it, but can you believe it? We used to feel infallibly victorious. Where’s the mistake? Everything we loved is now reduced to a despicable sham. I ask you to weigh the thesis and the antithesis, to think through every word. Be careful not to underrate the dictatorship of the proletariat even if it is sick, if it loses its head, if it is iniquitous.”
“Be careful of yourself, comrade, your illusions are quite understandable, but you’re getting drunk on words. Are we Enragés, Equals , or proscripts of Prairial?”
“Drop your historical analogies, old man: They have nothing to do with Marxism. It’s Lenin’s ‘Who will carry if off’ that is the point today; and it’s not settled yet.
“In this connection, comrades, I request a three-second recess for Karl’s latest revelation (may his revolutionary’s soul rest in peace: his body is rotting slowly in the toilet of the General Secretary’s office). The ‘who will carry it off’—we’ve known that for a long time. The ‘who will carry it off to the grave’—we know that, too. But ‘when will his turn come?’ That’s what we don’t know . . .”
“. . . The Left-Communist sector of the prison has established fraternal ties with the Anarchists, who joined them during last year’s second hunger strike and this year’s first. The June strike was lost through a miscalculation. Scurvy had been rife during the winter; they should have taken the weakness brought on by the terrible cold into consideration. Several comrades were very ill by the seventh day. The strike committee proposed calling off the strike on their own responsibility, but they themselves were removed that night by surprise and taken off to the detention centre.”
“Removed? Why didn’t they resist?”
“Summoned separately to the prison office for negotiations around two in the morning, assaulted in the corridor, gagged, bound, kidnapped, what . . . The second committee, set up the following day, was unable to assume its functions because it was sequestered in a distant building and kept under surveillance. At six in the evening the commandant of the prison received telegraphed orders to resort to forced feeding. Old Kikvadze resisted. They sent to the madhouse for a strait-jacket to control him. His lips were in shreds from the food-pipe. He finally fainted, so that they couldn’t feed him. The other sick people decided to resist by force. Then a character from Moscow arrived, sent by the Special Collegium, who asked to meet with delegates.
“ ‘The Special Collegium of the State Political Administration,’ he
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