Harry Sloan

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insistent note of hope in the midst of darkness, despair and defeat which single out Midnight in the Century as a very special novel.

It deals with perhaps the bleakest period of human history: reeking of defeat and betrayal the mid 1930s saw fascism stalk Italy and Germany; worthless careerists and bunglers- in the Kremlin purge the Communist Parties of mititants loyal to the spirit and programme of Lenin and Trotsky; and the workers' movement internationally, denied revolutionary leadership, falling victim to successive attacks by the capitalist class - the most crushing of which was to be the fascist defeat of the Spanish revolution.

The central figures of Serge's novel are Marxists, in the hardest place in the world to be Marxists - the degenerated Soviet Union, in which the "infallibility" of the line laid down by the leadership had to be imposed by a vast apparatus of repression, intimidation, incarceration, exile and execution.

Ravaged

This was the Stalinist period of crash industrialisation, in which through bureaucratic decree and the most brutal methods imaginable, the backward and ravaged economy of the USSR was force-marched into expansion. Industrial output grew from 7% of the level of the USA in 1928 to 45% in 1938 - butat what a cost.

Having accepted the isolation of the Russian Revolution and renounced any hope of extending it into the industrialised countries of Europe, the Stalinists set out to construct "socialism in one country" by lifting the whole country by its own bootstraps and exploiting to the utmost the human and material resources available at home.

New towns were constructed, new regions opened up and exploited, new industries created: the forcible collectivisation oi agriculture drove millions of middle and prosperous peasants, from the countryside into the towns. Urban living standards dropped like a stone - by half Published by Writers and at £6.95 (hardback).

between 1928 and 1932.

Millions of potential opponents of the regime were arrested. In the purges of 1936 to 1939 hundreds of thousands were executed, and millions despatched to labour camps.

Resist

Against this savage bureaucratic approach, Trotsky and the Left Opposition argued consistently for an internationalist policy and for a planned industrialisation and collectivisation of the economy which would convince the more reluctant elements of the pcasantry and mobilise the proletariat through political leadership rather than the police truncheon.

Though Trotsky was exiled, and the Left Oppositionists subjected to terrible repression within the USSR, they continued to resist, to organise, to argue and develop their political positions.

Serge's novel deals with these largely forgotten people giving a "worm's eye view" of the political struggle • between Trotskyism and Stalinism.

Experience Serge writes from experience. He himself participated in the early work of revolutionary reconstruction in Russia after 1917, was active in the formative Congresses of the Comintern, took up a critical line towards Stalin's leadership and was expelled from the CP, persecuted, imprisoned and eventually expelled from the USSR, stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1936.

He was during that time a supporter of the Left Opposition - though his political abilities were considerably less than his Just out from Pluto Press: an analysis of capitalism in crisis from regular Socialist Organiser contributor Bob Sutcliffe. £2.50 from bookshops, or (with 50p post and packing) from Pluto, The Works, 105a Torriano Avenue, London NWS. ing the Spanish Revolution and ism and Stalinism. fight her back with one's fists.

Yet Serge's novel is filled not with self-pity or despair: rather it is an astoundingly courageous statement of confidence in the ability of the working class eventually to throw off the parasitic bureaucracy. Nor is it a dry-asdust political tract or polemic.

It deals with revolutionaries as human beings - beings who exist not only in the man-made hell of Stalinist society, but also in the natural environment of sea and earth, changing seasons, harsh frost, spring blossom, love and warmth, the passing away of the old, the emergence of the new Comfortless While the Moscow of the opening chapter - 'Chaos' - iS the hub of bureaucracy, a combut not a politician.

Here we meet the resisters "We have the right to think a Leon Trotsky, February 1937 little. We're paying for it. And the right to speak, since we're already deportees — and not the kind who repent, who approve of everything, who say polite thank yous when the boys from Security tickle them in the butt with a boot toe. We're the only free men on socialist soil - fresh out of jail and ready to go back in, required to register every five days..

And Serge's novel draws a link between the integrity, the inner dignity, the resilience, of the political opponents of Stalinism and previous generations of religious dissidents who had stood out for what they believe against moral and physical blackmail and pressures.

He shows in this respect that commitment nommitmant ic Trotsky, March 20, 1938 types that would not be gagged, like Rodion, the young factory worker who got up at a Party meeting to question the inequality of wages.

"He stopped short, unable to recapture the idea which had come to him out of the heap-of words in a pamphlet on Hegel. "Hegel said: the worker in our factory can't live on wages like these, that's all." His face beamed with satisfaction while the Party activists, following eachother to the platform at a signal from the cell secretaty, called him a demagogue, a careerist, an egotist who thought only of filling his belly, a Trotskyite and a panic monger. The truth was buzzing inside his skull, he didn't under stand a word of the arguments they were assaulting him with. Only at the end of the meeting, amid the scraping of benches, did he stand up and say loudly - and everybody heard him - with a broad smile, "Talk all you like! You know very well I'm right.", Solidarnosc It is precisely this kind of spirit which — on a mass scale 20 years later - was to animate the anti-Stalinist revolts of workers in East Germany and Hungary; which re-emerged as a threat to Stalinist rule in the "Prague Spring" of 1968; and which reached a peak of organised expression in the vast Solidarnosc movement in Poland of 1980-81.

But Serge's central characters could expect no such mass movements in their lifetime. They could look back with nostalgia at the heyday. of revolutionary struggle after 1917: they could prepare as best they could politically for the future - passing on the political analysis and the fighting spirit of Trotskyism from the older Bolshevik cadres to the younger generations of opponents of the regime, but they knew precisely the odds against a short-term revolutionary movement sufficient to topple the Stalinists. The best they can do is to plan their hunger strikes in the prison camps and to dream:

"Let me live long enough to see a single socialist prison dynamited, just one. That's all I ask of BOOKS | Critique of the Gotha Programme, 30p; Wagi - price and profit, 40p; Communist Manifesto 60р; Capital volume 1 £3.95. Available c/o Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8: E add money for postage.

by MARX declaration of optimism, "The Beginning' sees Rodion, the worker, bearing the knowledge and the spirit of the Trotskyist circie, break out of the township and rejoin the proletariat.

Irony

The supreme irony is that the job kodion is given, on a construction site, is assembling the only brick-built building in town - a new District Headquarters for State Security. The breakneck labour • of the construction workers building the apparatus for their own repression is an excellent symbol of Stalinist parasitism.

Serge does not offer a transitional programme for political revolution: he does not offer a detailed economic or •political critique of Stalinist policies.

But he points to the kind of forces that are key to the struggle of the working class to recapture political power in the Soviet Union. He underlines that this cannot be based on political texts alone, but depends upon an attachment to life itself, to human values and a freedom of spirit which - however relentlessly attacked by Tsarism, Stalinism, fascism or other forms of oppression - must sooner or later re-emerge in revolt.

There is no other time to fight but here and now. So fight we must. Any workers feeling deterred or pessimistic after the recent succession of defeats and betrayals by the leaders of the British workers' movement should look for inspiration at the real-life tenacity of men and women beset by infinitely worse conditions which inspired this brilliant work of fiction by Victor Serge.

As Ivanov lin jail laboriously copies out clandestine notes from one Trotskyist prison cell to another, he rejects the view that in a few years 'no-one among the seventy million citizens of the Union will be able to imagine what freedom of thought is."

"No. It'll all explode one day. Deep inside man there - always be..."

"Then you believe in irrational?* "I believe in the proletariat."

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Socialist Organiser no. 130 May 5, 1983 Page 12 Socialist Organiser is not just a paper.

We fight to organise workers in the struggle for a new leadership in the labour movement. If you agree with what we have to say, you can help. Paid ads 5p per word, £4 per column inch. Send copy to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8, to arrive by Saturday for inclusion in the following week's paper.

SOUTH London CND/abour movement conference, Saturday May 21, 10am to 5pm, at Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea. Registration £2 per delegate, £l unwaged, to Nick Guttman, Battersea CND, 16 Chivalry Road, London SW11.

NEWHAM 8 Defence Campaign. Details of activities, speakers and model resolutions from PO Box 273, Forest Gate, London E7. BENEFIT for the May 7 Britain out of Ireland demonstration. Saturday May 7 • SCOTLAND Glasgow. For details of meetings contact paper sellers or Stan Crooke, 114 Dixon Avenue, Glasgow G42. SO is sold at Maryhill dole (Tuesday mornings] and Rutherglen shopping arcade (Friday lunchtime]. Edinburgh. For details of meetings ring Dave, 229 4591. SO is sold at Muirhouse (Saturday 10.30-12) and the First of May bookshop, Candlemaker Row. 7.30, Co-op Hall, 129 Seven Sisters Rd, N7. waged, £1.50 UB40.

LABOUR Movement Campaign for Palestine: recalled first national conference, Saturday May 21, 1lam, County Hall, London SEI. Open to members and to delegates from affiliated organisations. Membership £5, conference fee $2, to LMCP, c/o 28 Carlton Mansions, Holmleigh Road, London N16.

Labour CND West inaugural meeting. Sunday June 26, 2.30pm, Taunton CLP meeting rooms, 24 East Reach, Taunton. LP members only.

CONFERENCE of Socialist Economists conference 1983: The World Economy in Crisis. July 9 to 11 in Rochdale. Next meeting Monday May 9: 'CND and Socialism' '. 7.30 at the Castle Inn.

Hyndburn. Contact Acerington 395753, Meetings weekly - see SO sellers for details. SO is sold at Broadway, Accrington, Saturdays 11.30 to 1pm. Stoke. Contact Arthur Bough, 23 Russell Road, Sandyford (84170). Sheffield. Details from 25 Horsell Rd, London N5. ROACH Family Support Committee: march and rally 'For an Independent Public Inquiry into the death of Colin Roach in Stoke Newington Police Station' '. Saturday May 14 12.30pm, Bethnal Green Gardens, near Bethnal Green tube station, E2. 'IRELAND and Labour': public meeting called by Islington South Labour Party. Speakers: Ken Liv. ingstone, Clive Soley. Tuesday June 7, 7.30pm, Islington Central Library, Fieldway Crescent. "THE Fight Against the Police Bill': national conference Sunday May 15, 10.30am to 4.30pm, Hack ney Town Hall. Credentia free from Room 116, Hack ney Town Hall, Mare St, London E8. 'POPULAR Planning for Social Need': conference *to develop a democratic Alternative Economic Stra egy' . Saturday May 21, 11am-5pm, County Hall, London SE1. £2.50, £l unwaged. Organised by CAITS.

Hull. Meets every Wednesday, 8pm: details from SO sellers. Childcare available. SO is sold at the Prospect Centre (Saturday 11 to 12). Halifax. Contact 52156. SO is sold at Halifax Wholefood, Gibbet St, and at Tower Books, Hebden Bridge.

York. Contact 796027. SO is sold at Coney St on Saturday mornings, at the Community Bookshop, outside 'EL Salvador: Another Vietnam' • Norwood Labour Party public meeting. Thursday May 12, 7.30 at Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton, SW2. Speakers include John Fraser MP, Jaime Lopez [FDR].

LONDON Regiona CND trade union committee: rally and factory gate meeting at Thorn-Brimar, Mollison Ave, Brimsdown, Enfield, at midday on Thursday May 12. Speakers to include Ken Livingstone, Jonathan Hammond, Jeremy Corbyn. Thorn-Brimar has NATO contracts and produces nuclear war equipment, so the theme of the rally will be jobs not bombs and conversion from military to peaceful production. Trade unions are urged to send official delegations with banners.

DEMONSTRATION against the Police Bill. Sunday May 22, assemble 11 am at Brockwell Park, Bri ton, and march to Hyde Park. Called by National Campaign against the Police Bill. the dole office most morn ings, and at the Univers ity on Friday mornings.

• WALES Cardiff. Contact 492988.

• MIDLANDS :

Birmingham. Meets alternate Fridays, 7.30pm, the Hen and Chickens, Constitution Hill. Next meeting Friday May 6. SO is sold at the Other Bookshop, Digbeth High St.

Coventry. Contact Keith White, 75623. SO is sold at the Wedge Co-op, High St. Meets on first and last Thursday of the month, 1.30 at the 'Queen' , Primrose Hill St, Hillfields. Leicester. Contact Phil, 857908. SO is sold outside Supasave (Friday 4.30 to 6), the Co-op, Narborough Rd (Saturday 11-12.30), and at Blackthorne Books, High St.

Northampton. Meets every es Sociali struggl LONDON North-West London. Readers' meetings first Sunday of month. Phone Mick, 624 1931, for details. SO is sold at Kilburn Books. Hounslow. Next meeting Sunday May 8, on Ireland. For venue see SO sellers. SO is sold outside All Saints Church, Hounslow High St, Saturday 10.30am to 12.

Haringey. Contact 802 0771 'DROP the charges now!' Stoke Newington and Hack ney Defence Campaign meeting, Thursday May 12 7.30, at Stoke Newington Library, Small Hall, Edwardes Lane Entrance, Stoke Newington Church St, N16. The meeting is in support of the right to demonstrate and of the 98 people so far arrested on demonstrations demanding a public inquiry into the death of Colin Roach. Contact: SNHDC, c/o Oxford House, Derbyshire St, E2. Hackney. Contact Andrew Hornung, 28 Carlton Mansions, Holmleigh Rd, N16. SO is sold at the following London bookshops: Colletts, Central Books, The Other Bookshop, Bookmarks, Bookplace (Peckham Rd, SE15), Kilburn Books, and Reading Matters (Wood Green Shopping Centre).

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