Along
that path, your steps shall never fade.
Tower
like a mighty peak above my thoughts;
For
they are quite at home in your great shade.
In
Memory of Reissner-by Boris Pasternak
"Larissa
Mikhailovna Reissner's work on newspapers and her presence on the newspaper
staff made us - newspaper labourers as compared with that great craftsman in
style - somehow more wary and tense. How can you treat style and form with
disdain when sketches like Reissner's are printed alongside your own? Even
someone who never thinks especially much about form starts to reflect. For my
part, let me say that none of the seekings of the Formalists (i.e. the
advocates of formalism in literature) have made an impression on me. But the
last articles of Larissa Mikhailovna Reissner made me learn a thing or two. I
believe, too, that more than one generation of pupil-trainees at the State
Institute of Journalism will learn the model of a good revolutionary style from
her sketches".
In
Memory of Reissner-by Lev Sosnovsky
"Having
dazzled many, this beautiful young woman swept like a hot meteor against the
backdrop of the Revolution. With the appearance of an Olympic goddess, she
combined a subtle ironic mind and the courage of a warrior. After the capture
of Kazan by the whites, under the guise of a peasant woman, she went to the
enemy camp for reconnaissance. But her appearance was too unusual. She was
arrested. A Japanese intelligence officer interrogated her. During the break,
she slipped through the poorly guarded door and disappeared. Since then, she has
worked in intelligence. She later sailed on warships and took part in battles.
She devoted essays to the Civil War that will remain in literature. She wrote
with the same vividness about the Ural industry and about the workers' uprising
in the Ruhr. She wanted to see and know everything, to participate in
everything. In a few short years, she grew up to be a first-class writer.
Having passed unharmed through fire and water, this Pallas of the Revolution
suddenly burned out from Typhus in the calm atmosphere of Moscow before
reaching thirty".
My
Life-Leon Trotsky
"Much
better to die in open combat, among comrades, with weapons in their hands. That
is how I want to die. That is how hundreds and thousands die for this republic
every day."
Larissa
Reisner
This
new collection of work containing the writings of the outstanding Russian revolutionary
Larissa Reisner was put together and published by Bookmarks which is the
publishing arm of the British Socialist Workers Party. Despite having
fundamental political differences with this group, the SWP and especially the
translator Jack Robertson deserve significant recognition and commendation for
this book.
This
new book concentrates on battles fought by the Red Army against White armies
supported by Western imperialist governments. Reisner shows what a bloody
conflict it was. The White counter-revolutionaries committed mass murder
against anyone suspected of Communist sympathies, including the elderly, women
and children.
Reisner
refers to many key Bolshevik leaders of the era. Many held her in high regard.
None more so that Leon Trotsky, commander in chief of the Red Army. In his
autobiography My Life, he wrote about Reisner, saying she "flashed across
the revolutionary sky like a burning meteor, blinding many... Her sketches
about the civil war are literature. With equal gusto, she would write about the
Ural industries and the rising of the workers in the Ruhr. She was anxious to
know and see all and participate in everything."
Amid
the death and destruction of the Russian Civil War, this highly educated young
woman managed to write in an informative, pulsating and almost poetic way. She
writes, "It is a strange feeling to be moving about in an unfamiliar
building with windows and doors slammed shut, knowing full well that a battle
to the death is about to take place in this godforsaken hotel. It is a racing
certainty that someone will be killed, some will survive, some will be taken,
prisoner. At such moments, all the words and all the rationalisations that help
preserve your presence of mind go out the window. All that remains is an acute,
penetrating sorrow — and underneath it, barely perceptible, a disorienting
question: whether to flee or stand your ground. In the name of what? Face
screwed up, choking with tears, the heart reiterates: stay calm, do not panic,
no humiliating exodus." (36-37)
Her
description of a particular event in which she witnessed the brutal slaughter
by White troops of innocent bystanders as being something out of a Goya
painting will stay in mind for a long time. Her work compares favourably with
another outstanding chronicler of the Russian Revolution, John Reed, whose book
Ten Days That Shook The World is required reading for anybody interested in
this period of history.
One
of the most important things that come out of her portrayal of the events of
the Civil War is that she believed that the Revolution was a mass event. People
were prepared to fight and die for this Revolution because a great cause
inspired them. This was not just some coup organised by a handful of
conspirators.
Particularly
striking are Reisner's comments about the importance of the Red Army leader
Leon Trotsky. In addition to Reisner's writings, the book contains two pieces
from Leon Trotsky's My Life, A Month in Sviyazhsk and The Train. Reisner
attaches great importance to Trotsky's leadership in defence of Sviyazhsk, which
turned out to be a turning point in the civil war.
One facet of her character that permeates the book is her bravery. She thought nothing of risking her own life in order to save others. One such example is when The Red Army, along with thousands of others in Kazan, fled to Sviyazhsk in 1918. Reisner believed that her husband, the Bolshevik Fyodor Fyodorovich Raskolnikov, had been taken prisoner by the Whites. She risked her neck by trying to rescue him by returning to Kazan. Her problem came when because she was such a high profile Bolshevik, she was easily recognised by a White officer. As she writes in the book, she managed to escape when a driver of a horse cab who was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks helped her, saying he "saved people like me, humbly and resolutely, just like they saved thousands of other comrades scattered all over the Russian highways." (62)
Larissa Reissner died on 9 February 1926, in the Kremlin Hospital, Moscow, from typhoid; she was 30 years old. There is no small element of tragedy in this life cut so short. To produce such an important body of work at such a tender age is remarkable. No doubt, had she lived, she would have been able to add substantially to that work.
It
is also clear that had she lived, that work would have taken on a much
different character. Her close association with Leon Trotsky (she worked on Leon Trotsky's
Commission for Improvement of Industrial Products) would have undoubtedly led to
her arrest and possible execution at the hands of Joseph Stalin's
counter-revolution. One thing is certain she would have defended not only
herself but the Revolution from Stalinism.
It
is perhaps fitting to end this review with a quote from a close associate of
Leon Trotsky- Aleksandr
Konstantinovich Voronsky, who wrote, "she died at the height of her
powers, intellect and beauty. She died in a clinic from an unexpected, absurd
and accidental illness after long-suffering had worn her out. She should have
lived, however, and she should have died somewhere on the Steppes, at sea, or
in the mountains, clutching a rifle or Mauser in her hands, for she was
renowned for her spirit of adventure, her unceasing restlessness, her courage,
greed for life and strong will. This was a fighting spirit, and, without
sparing herself, she gave herself completely to the revolution".[4]
Further
Reading.
Trotsky,
Leon, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (Harmondsworth, 1979).
X.708/22026.
[1] www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/reissner/works/hamburg/ch02.htm[2] See Svyazhsk ... An epic of the Russian Civil War-1918. Maradana : Hashim Press, 1948.LLSP [Extracted from “The Front.” Translated by John G. Wright and Amy Jensen.Larissa Reisner- From Fourth International, vol.4 No.6, June 1943, pp.184-189. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol04/no06/reissner.htm[3] See also Trotsky, Sri Lanka and an ‘Olympian goddess-https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2016/10/trotsky-sri-lanka-and-an-olympian-goddess.html[4] Aleksandr Voronsky-Art as the Cognition of Life-$24.95-Mehring Books
