The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge - 10 out of 10

 The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge

10 out of 10

 

 

The Case of Comrade Tulayev is an overwhelming, complex, brilliant, challenging, acclaimed – if not to the extent it deserves – challenging magnum opus that looks at the period after the Russian Revolution of 1917, covering a few decades before and after it, depicting the turmoil, catastrophes, massacres, famines that took place on a territory that covers one sixth of the earth – this is mentioned in the book at least a couple of times, and I guess it is correct…I think I have read somewhere else that this is, or used to be when it had all the Baltic states, the ‘stans’ and more territory included, such as the vast Ukraine, dismembered as it is now by the tyranny of Putin…in Russia though, most seem to see it as a ‘legal, just return to the motherland of Crimea – when the Chief was the absolute leader.

 

I do not think that Stalin is mentioned even once by name, albeit his portrait is hanging everywhere, and when descriptions of various offices, rooms where prosecutors, officials and others meet detail furniture, walls, the invariable aspect they all share is the portrait of the Chief, and he is omnipresent – we can wonder, I know I do, why has the author decided on avoiding the mention of the name…perhaps to avoid making it personal, to eliminate the accusation that he has something against the fellow, maybe to go against this overwhelming current that had Stalin as god, involved in all the minutia of life in the Soviet Union and another possibility could be that the indictment is against the system Per Se, and this is not about the usual objection that communist sympathizers and especially the fanatics make…oh, it is a splendid idea, it is perfect, it just did not have the chance to be implemented by the proper people, or in other words, if only they were not cursed by the endless list of bastards, from Stalin to Mao, from North Korean trio of Kims to Xi, communism would have brought heaven on earth.

Alas, this is one of the most vicious, dangerous and vile concepts that humanity has come up with and the numbers tell the whole story, for the system – not just mass killers like Stalin and Mao – has massacred tens of millions and the right number is surely north of one hundred million, if we add all the dead from the famines inflicted in the early days of the Soviet Union to the present ordeal that North Koreans suffer…there is the infamous quote of Stalin, who said that ‘the death of one man is a tragedy, but the loss of one million is just statistics’ and in that vein, this extraordinary novel deals with The Case of Comrade Tulayev, and being phenomenally comprehensive, it takes an individual murder and looks at what it means in the context of the struggle taking place in Russia, but not just there, for at least one chapter takes us to the Civil War in Spain, indicative of what the communists did there, the lack of ammunition, guns and especially human resources, the infighting, the plague that the Soviet interference brought about, for if they did support the left side in general, the botched manner in which they conducted their involvement is another proof of how inept, murderous, criminal communism really is, in all its aspects and again, not because of human flaws, but basically because the concept is murderous and abominable…they have had the opportunities to fix the ‘human factor’ and prove how glorious their philosophy is and they failed over and over again, from here, where we have had Ceausescu, yet another monster, whose ascension to power is not the cause of the failing of communism in this land, the catastrophic communism is the one that offers the chance for Mao, Ceausescu, Kim and the whole League of Extraordinarily Murderous Gentlemen to get to the highest office…

 

True, as I write that, I realize that capitalism and democracy has just given us the Splendorous Trump, the very stable genius that has made a mockery of that system and very nearly bankrupted it on January 6^th, when a mob of his cult members has occupied Congress and have come near to overturning the election that the idiot – and his seventy million followers, just as stupid as he is and how good it feels to write that, knowing that with this meager audience we have, there is no one to object and shout, perhaps nobody to read it – still claims that he has won…he has spoken yesterday to the CPAC mad crowd and repeated the big lie…the saving grace of democracy in this case was that eventually – even if it was dangerously and infuriatingly close – the would be tyrant has lost, which does not happen in China, North Korea or in communist states where leaders are elected for life and the ones that challenge that may end up poisoned with military grade gas, as was the case in Russia, with a number of opponents…

At the beginning of The Case of Comrade Tulayev, a young man named Kostia comes into the possession of a revolver and when he meets the high ranking official, Tulayev of the Central Committee, he takes revenge for decisions that the apparatchik had made and shoots him dead…because there is no witness, the investigation turns into one of the many political shows that communism likes to throw, in order to cover the structural, fundamental problems of communism and blame famine, millions of dead, shortages that make everything scares or completely absent on the ‘counterrevolutionaries, agents of the capitalists, traitors, enemies of the people’ and with that false narrative execute other tens of thousands, perhaps millions in purges, fake trails or even without a day in court…there is a strange feeling though when reading about the investigation and the false targets, because most, if not all of the big shots that are collected and labeled enemies of the people had been responsible for the ascent of that calamity, hell on earth that calls itself communism and thus, if they do not deserve to die for a crime they had not committed, what about their guilt and role in the millions who had died in the famine…incidentally, there are terrifying scenes in the books and some depict the killing of the poor horses and cattle that are left with nothing to eat –such is the success and efficiency of communism that they scorch the earth – and they just suffer in pain, trying to breathe and the poor peasants have to kill their only source of food and support in the fields…

 

Stalin aka The Chief and his sycophants and hit men target the high commissar, a local leader in a remote region of the Soviet Union, try to add to the list a man that outsmarts them in that he starts a hunger strike that he covers by flushing down the toilet the food, so that the guards do not even realize his plan, and therefore he is successful in killing himself and depriving the goons and killers of a victim and a false enemy of the people…when the daughter of a nomenclature fellow learns about the almost inevitable destiny of a thinker she had admired, she is pushing hard all those she knows to have the execution stopped – she contacts those she knows at the embassy in Paris, where she is at the time, and when it becomes clear that her efforts have no chance to change anything, she threatens to talk to the newspapers and that seals her fate and that of the family – such a protest is unacceptable, for though in theory the communist ‘wonderful philosophy’ is perfect and allows for everybody to express freely, as soon as one is a dissident, well, he or she is as good as dead, and furthermore, the family suffers the repercussions, is exiled to Siberia, Kamchatka or some other place where life is as hard as possible…if not impossible.