The second life of Victor Serge
Dictatorial repression is often called “systematic,” but its main hallmark is caprice. It relies on the fear that even abject servility might not save one from the secret police. Genrikh Yagoda, Stalin’s head of the NKVD, orchestrated the Great Terror only to himself be “liquidated.” In a marvelously funny scene in Victor Serge’s Last Times, set in the early moments of the Nazi occupation of France, the hapless hotelkeeper Anselme Flotte is interrogated by Lt. Wichter of the Gestapo. On the brink of being released, it strikes Flotte that he might strengthen his case by informing on...
Source: washingtonexaminer.com
