La Révolution Surréaliste 1926
Source: La Révolution Surréaliste, no. 8, second year, December 1, 1926;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2012.
It has come to pass, alas, that in the deepest heavens a star has forever ceased to give off light. Down here the earth is a bit darker, and already the unspeakable beasts that had hidden in the darkness are crawling about.
With Dzerzhinsky dies the least known but the purest man of the Russia of the Soviets. I swear to you that what the bourgeois newspapers spew on his remains in order to sully him is not slander, and let no one speak of exaggeration. The miserable French rags that dare to print the cursed name are far beneath the truth. For Dzerzhinsky was the Pitiless par excellence, and no one who didn’t give himself wholeheartedly and forever to the revolutionary cause found grace in his eyes. Let’s not count the victims of this executioner; their carrion causes me horror. If he didn’t refuse to assume the role he once hated, a role that risks attracting general contempt, if the Incorruptible turned himself into a base policeman for the salvation of the world, believe me when I say that I find in this renunciation cause to overexcite my reasons for admiration.
Did Dzerzhinsky know the admirable Saint-Just’s apothegm that he applied better than anyone else: “Be inflexible; it is indulgence that is ferocious?” His task was not yet finished when he died. Who can now boast of being implacable? Who would dare to assume such a post? Moses Solomonovich Uritzky is dead, who forgave no one...
My eyes fixed on these examples I ask only, on the day of our revolution, to be equal to these sacrifices.