Birth of Our Power Read Free Page B

concluded, “I was thus in the main line of Russian writers.” 12
    Serge believed that fiction, what he called ‘truthful’ fiction, could communicate aspects of the revolution better than history or theory. Although definitely a writer with a ‘message,’ his technique was to bring experience to life on the page in all its multiplicity, using the modernistdevice of stream-of-consciousness to multiply perspectives on a single action. For example, in the splendid bullfight scene in Barcelona on the eve of the uprising, we see the action simultaneously from a kaleidoscope of viewpoints: wealthy spectators seated on the shady side of the ring, armed workers in the bleachers opposite, the Killer down in the ring and facing him … the bull! The whole spectacle becomes symbolic of the class confrontation that will take place on the morrow, and the masses identify both with the powerful, angry, tormented beast and with the agile, skilled Killer—who is, after all, one of
them,
a poor cowboy risking death for money.
    In
Birth of Our Power,
more than anywhere else, it is Serge’s collective hero, the “comrades,” the first-person plural pronoun of the title, who supply the underlying unity to the novel. It is “we” who awaken to power in Barcelona, “we” who suffer the frustrations of confinement in France, “we” who must face the problem of power in Petrograd. The collective hero is introduced in the first chapter of
Birth of Our Power,
significantly titled “This City and Us.” How does Serge characterize this “we”? Neither as an ideological abstraction nor through any blurring sentimentality, but quite matter-of-factly:
    There were at least forty or fifty of us, coming from every corner of the world—even a Japanese, the wealthiest of us all, a student at the university—and a few thousand in the factories and shops of that city: comrades, that is to say more than brothers by blood or law, brothers by a common bond of thought, habit, language, and mutual aid…. No organization held us together, but none has ever had as much real and authentic solidarity as our fraternity of fights without leaders, without rules, and without ties.
    Dario, El Chorro, Zilz, Jurien, José Miro, Lejeune, Ribas, and the other comrades whom Serge introduces here are not idealized; indeed, some turn out to be actual betrayers. But, although each is a perfectly individualized type (Serge excelled in the ability to create a sharp, living portrait with a few rapid strokes), they are at the same time representative of thousands of others: the rebels of every time and place.
    Later, in the center section of the novel, after Serge has introduced us to the world of the concentration camp (another microcosm, with its deportees from every land, its criminals, its capitalists, its idealists and madmen) we meet another group of comrades. This time it is the organized group of Russian revolutionary prisoners, for whomsolidarity is not just a word but the only means of survival against starvation, epidemics, and the psychological ravages of life in the camp. There is Krafft, the doctrinaire Bolshevik who strangely refuses to return to Russia when he has the chance; Fomine, the white-maned old rebel who is too worn out to face the long-awaited revolution when it finally comes; Sonnenschein, the Jew who can settle any political argument with a folk tale that reminds you of Sholom Aleichem; Karl and Gregor, sailors from an American battleship, two silent giants who more and more incarnate the power of the revolution as they move closer and closer to their goal; Sam, “Uncle Sam,” the ironic paradoxical character who is the most devoted revolutionary and yet—a double-agent. The chapter title is “Us.”
    We formed a world apart within this city. It sufficed for one of us to call the others together with that magic word “Comrades,” and we