I believe that the formation of the Chekas was one of the gravest and most impermissible errors that the Bolshevik leaders committed in 1918 when plots, blockades, and interventions made them lose their heads. All evidence indicates that revolutionary tribunals, functioning in the light of day and admitting the right of defence, would have attained the same efficiency with far less abuse and depravity. Was it necessary to revert to the procedures of the Inquisition?
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the Bolshevik leaders for creating secret police that abused power instead of utilizing transparent and fair judicial processes.
Victor Serge reflects on the establishment of the Chekas by Bolshevik leaders as a serious mistake during a time of crisis in 1918. He argues that the use of transparent revolutionary tribunals that guaranteed rights to defense could have been equally effective in addressing the threats faced at the time while avoiding the moral corruption and brutality associated with secret police methods reminiscent of the Inquisition.
In practice
In a discussion about government oversight and justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of transparency in law enforcement.
It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs – a mass of other germs – and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?
when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.
As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.
I'll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past.
If you don't visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.