Moving to France

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Pages from a Diary

In February 1929 my wife and I arrived in Turkey. On July 17, 1933, we left Turkey for France. The newspapers wrote that the French visa was granted to me as a result of an appeal — by the Soviet government! It would be hard to dream up a more fantastic tale. The initiative in this friendly intervention was taken, in fact, not by Soviet diplomacy, but by the writer Maurice Parijanine, translator of my books into French. With support coming from a number of writers and left political figures, including the deputy Guernut, the question of my visa this time was resolved favorably. During the three-and-a-half years of my third exile there was no shortage of attempts on my part and on that of my well-wishers to win access for myself to Western Europe. A fair sized album could be compiled of the refusals we have received. Among the signatures that would show up on the pages of such an album are those of the Social Democrat Hermann Mueller,chancellor of the Weimar Republic; British prime minister MacDonald, who at that time was still a socialist and not yet a semi-Conservative; the republican and Socialist leaders of the Spanish revolution; and many, many others. There is not the slightest suggestion of rebuke in these words: they are simply a statement of fact.

The possibility of France arose after the recent [May 1932] elections, won by a bloc of Radicals and Socialists. The matter was complicated in advance, however, by the circumstance that in 1916, during the war, I was expelled from France “forever” by the minister of internal affairs, Malvy, allegedly for spreading “pacifist” propaganda, but in fact at the insistence of the czarist ambassador Izvolsky. Despite the fact that Malvy himself, about a year later, was expelled from France by the Clemenceaugovernment — in his case, too, on charges of “pacifist activity” — the order for my permanent exclusion from the country remained in force. In 1922, Edouard Herriot, during his first visit to Soviet Russia, and while saying goodbye to me after a courtesy visit to the Commissariat of War, asked me when I thought I might visit Paris. I reminded him jokingly of my expulsion from France. “But who would remember something like that now!” he replied with a laugh. However institutions have stronger memories than individuals. Landing in the port of Marseilles, after leaving the Italian steamship, I countersigned an official paper handed me by an inspector of the Sûreté General giving notice that the 1916 order had been rescinded. I must say that it has been a long time since I signed an official document with such a feeling of gratification.

If the basic course of a person’s life departs from the orbit of the average, then all episodes touching upon it, even the most banal, take on a touch of mystery. The newspapers have made many ingenious guesses about why my wife and I travel under the “pseudonym” Sedov. In fact, that is my wife’s name, not a pseudonym. Under Soviet law a passport may be issued, according to one’s wishes, to the name of either partner. Our Soviet passport was made out in 1929 in my wife’s name, as the one that would provide least cause for “sensation.”

In order to avoid any demonstrations or complications in disembarking at Marseilles, my French friends decided to come out by motorboat to meet the steamship at sea. Out of this simple plan new complications arose. The owner of the motorboat, the worthy Mr. Panchetti, who was not given prior notice of the purpose of the trip, could not sleep all night: he was wracking his brains over why two young men would want to take a boat out at dawn, without even any women. He had no experience of such a thing. Moreover, there was a trial going on in Toulon at that very time involving two bandits who had killed a boatman out at sea and taken his property. Even though he was obligated by the deposit he had accepted, Mr. Panchetti resolved not to make the dangerous trip: at the most critical moment he announced that the motor would not work. There was no chance of finding another boatman nearby at that hour. Only by the intervention of the inspector from the Sûreté, who gave assurances of the young men’s peaceful intentions, was the situation saved. The boatman repented of his suspicions and proceeded to bring the passengers from the steamship in to shore, far from the harbor. The two modest Fords awaiting us there were soon transformed by the press into “high-powered getaway cars.”

The same newspapers wrote that we were met in Marseilles and escorted through France by innumerable police. In fact, besides the inspector — who calmed down the boatman, officially informed me of the rescinding of the ban on my presence in France, and then immediately withdrew — we did not encounter a single policeman. In order to convey what a delight it was for me to travel through the south of France in a car without any guard and free of surveillance, I should point out that since 1916, that is, for the past sixteen years — not to mention earlier periods of my life — I had not been able to go anywhere without being accompanied by a “guard,” sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but always a bodyguard.

But we have not said a word about the most important thing: the purpose of our trip to France. The purpose could not of course be medical care, or the richly stocked libraries, or the other benefits of French culture. No, there has to be some other, “real,” carefully hidden aim. The day after arriving we learned from the papers that our trip to France was undertaken in order to — meet Litvinov. I rubbed my eyes: Litvinov? From the same papers I learned for the first time that the people’s commissar of foreign affairs was at a French health resort. Furthermore, the most perceptive of the journalists do not want to leave us in, the dark on why exactly this meeting was needed. It seems that recently I have been completely overwhelmed by a longing to die in Russia and be buried in my native soil. To tell the truth, I had thought, until now, that the question of where and how I would be buried was the least of my worries. Frederick Engels, whom I’ve always considered one of the most appealing of human personalities, asked in his will to be cremated and to have the urn with his ashes buried at sea. If anything about this request surprised me, it was not Engels’s indifference to his native soil of Wuppertal but the fact that he took the time to think at all about how his remains would be disposed of. Why precisely at sea? But the perspicacity of the press is unrelenting. Today again I read about my attempt to win readmission to the Soviet Union — through Litvinov and, now, Surits, the Soviet ambassador to Turkey, who also turns out to be at the Royal health resort. Both diplomats, however, absolutely refused to meet with me, and this was the “hardest blow of my life.” And well it might be!

Litvinov is surely no less astounded than I at the thought that I might try to negotiate my return to Russia precisely through him. Such questions are decided in Moscow, through party channels exclusively, and Litvinov has not played any role in the party apparatus since long before the October Revolution. Under the Soviet regime he has never gone beyond purely diplomatic work.

The reference to Surits in this context is even more painfully wide of the mark. This entire business — if the perspicacious journalists will pardon my saying so — is a model of pathetic claptrap. I was not in Royal and I did not try to see Litvinov. I had not the slightest reason to do so.

One might write an instructive study about the tortuous paths by which truth finds its way through the press. In modem warfare, in order to kill a single individual, quite a few tons of iron are needed. How many tons of metal type are needed to establish the truth of one or another fact? The press’s error in the present case is that it sought mystery where there was none. My attitude toward the present Soviet government is no secret: since my deportation to Turkey I have commented every month in the Biulleten Oppozitsii (Berlin, Paris), as well as in the press of other languages, on questions of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. Along with my co-thinkers I have often stated publicly in the press that each of us is ready as before to serve the Soviet state in any capacity. But our cooperation cannot be obtained on condition of our renouncing our ideas or the right to criticize. Nevertheless, for the ruling group, everything is reduced to that question. It has squandered all of its authority. Totally incapable of renewing its authority by a normal party congress, this clique requires ever newer and ever louder acknowledgments of its infallibility. But that is one thing they can never expect from us. Honest collaboration, yes! Covering up for their wrong policies in the face of Soviet and world public opinion, no! Given such clearly defined positions on both sides, there could be no reason to disturb the summer holiday of the people’s commissar of foreign affairs.

Until recently our family thought of a fire as something remote that happened to other people, like a volcano erupting or a ship sinking at sea or the ups and downs of the stock market. But after the January 1931 fire in the villa we lived in on Prinkipo — in which everything was destroyed without a trace remaining, books, clock, clothing, linen, shoes — the concept of a fire became an intimate part of our lives. Just a few months later, one unhappy day our new quarters were suddenly filled with choking fumes of smoke, and everyone began to rush about the house looking for the source; finally we discovered a small bonfire blazing away in the cellar. The initiator of the enterprise turned out to be my six-year-old grandson, who had diligently gathered some sawdust, sticks, and old rags and had successfully ignited this highly flammable material. Not without some difficulty and alarm, we succeeded in putting out the fire — to the chagrin of its builder.

Traveling through France by automobile, we noticed a big forest fire in the distance. “Too bad it’s so far away,” said one of our companions, “it would be a marvelous sight!” The others shook their heads in reproach: What would a farmer think of such an aesthetic attitude toward fire? We had not been in our new quarters more than a few hours when the July wind, already hot enough, became unbearable. The large vacant lot adjoining our villa was covered with smoke and flame. The dried grass was burning; so were the bushes. And driven by a steady breeze, a strip of fire some hundred meters wide was moving directly toward our cottage. The wooden picket fence strung with barbed wire caught fire. Flames penetrated into the yard around the , house, burned the grass, burned the bushes, which flared up brightly, but then the fire broke in two and went around the house. A wooden summer house burst into flame violently. The villa was filled with smoke. Everyone rushed around to get things out of the house. The fire department of the nearby town was called, but they were slow in arriving. We abandoned the cottage, considering it doomed. But a miracle happened: the direction of the wind changed slightly; the fire hesitated along the gravel driveway, and began to move off to the side, away from the villa. By the time the firefighters arrived the fire was out. But even now as I write these lines the burnt odor still hangs in the air about the house. …

In any case, at least it was a French fire. The Turkish chapter of our life is now in the past. The island of Prinkipo has become a memory.