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they wanted their turn. The most obstreperous of them, Henri Pou–
laille, finally walked out, taking the bouncers with him and ripping
his photograph out of the display case on his way through the foyer.
Most of the newspapers picked up these rumblings; not many of them
were represented the next afternoon in a smaller hall when Ma–
deleine Paz was finally given the floor. Gide, Malraux, and Bar–
busse sat on the platform with knitted brows (as a photograph
shows) while she stood to speak. Citing the printed program, she af–
firmed the need to discuss a specific case involving freedom of ex–
pression, direct and indirect censorship, and the dignity of the
writer. Serge, a French-language writer of Russian parents, Belgian
birth, and revolutionary convictions, had gone to Russia in 1919
where he was admitted to the party and given important responsibil–
ities in organizing and administering the Third International. His
novels and historical works describing the early years of the revolu–
tion in Russia were known to French-speaking intellectuals. In 1927
he was excluded from the party and imprisoned without trial for sev–
eral weeks on suspicions of Trotskyite sympathies. Arrested again in
1933 he was deported without trial to Orenburg in the Urals, where
he was confined with no resources, material or intellectual, for three
years. He could write but not send his manuscripts abroad. He and
his wife were both in precarious health.
Madeleine Paz's speech ran close to an hour, with an impas–
sioned coda.
Right now, he's paying the price. While we sit here at a Congress
convoked to defend the integrity of thought, out there, on the
other side of the Urals, a thinking man is trying to remain calm
and hold onto his hope in the revolution.
Three Russians, including Ehrenburg, answered her charges by say–
ing Citizen Kibalchich (his family name) had bitten the hand that
fed him; they knew nothing about the French writer, Victor Serge.
The Belgian delegate angrily retorted that they lied, that in fact
Serge had translated many Russian texts of the revolution, including
the poetry of one of the Soviet delegates who had just spoken and
who would otherwise be unknown in France . Unfortunately no one
made a motion or proposed any specific action . These particular
speeches are the hardest of all to find. Anna Seghers provided an
escape route by complaining that if the Congress was going to talk
about individual cases, why didn't they bring up all the imprisoned
