Jacques Bainac, a French novelist, historian and left-wing activist, has labored broadly at the Soviet length. Particularly, he wrote the screenplay for a movie that has develop into a cult in Russia: “The Chekist” depicts the crimes of the Cheka, the political police created beneath Lenin and broadly introduced again into the limelight in nowadays’s Russia.
In Russia, December 20 stays popularly referred to as “Day of Chekists”, even supposing since 1995 its professional title has been “Day of Workers of Security Bodies of the Russian Federation”. On this present day, workers and “former” individuals of the FSB and its predecessor ahead of the cave in of the USSR – the KGB, which itself succeeded the NKVD and the innovative Cheka – pay their respects to this political police that, since its advent on December 20, 1917, has killed and deported tens of millions in their compatriots. Vladimir Putin himself reactivated those celebrations and rehabilitated the time period “Chekist”.
By contrast, a minimum of till the very violent repressive flip taken within the nation in 2021, Russians denouncing Soviet crimes frequently posted on social media a hyperlink or footage associated with the 1992 movie The Chekist, on December 20, whose screenplay, in line with a Soviet novel, used to be written by means of Jacques Bajnak, the son of Lo-20249’s 1992 trainer.
Poster for the movie “The Chekist” directed by means of Alexander Rogojkin in line with the unconventional by means of Jacques Bajnak printed in 1992.
When Jacques Bajnak, historian, novelist and screenwriter, died on January 3, 2024 on the age of eighty-four, a number of articles recapitulated the more than a few stages of his lengthy and wealthy lifestyles. They maximum frequently discussed his paintings as a historian, after all, but in addition his refusal to serve within the army throughout the Algerian Battle; his transient proximity to Trotskyism; his involvement within the book place L. a. Vieille Taupe; his absolute opposition to “gangrene” negationism (he denounced it in an editorial printed in Liberation on October 25, 1980); his courting to Would possibly 1968 and his club within the radical left: Bainac discovered himself on the crossroads of a number of collective adventures of his technology.
Alternatively, his choice to denounce the political violence perpetrated within the USSR since Lenin within the Seventies is little remembered.
The Chekist, a 1992 movie in line with a 1923 novel
The ebook on which this movie is primarily based – a extremely autobiographical novel by means of Vladimir Zazubrin (1895-1938) – used to be printed in French in 1990. Written in 1923, ahead of the Birthday celebration introduced order to Soviet literature, it used to be printed within the USSR best in 1989. In Russian, it is named Le Copescau, “SSepkau” (SSepkau), “When you cut wood, shavings fly”, in most cases translated as “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”.
On this Russian name, the accessory is subsequently positioned each at the insignificance of the sufferers and at the basic query of the textual content, the query of intention and manner, which Dostoevsky had already handled broadly. Alternatively, the French name highlights the person who carries out the abstract repressions: the “hero”, Srubov, the person with “glass eyes”, is the native chief of the Cheka, even supposing he comes from the intelligentsia. Within the preface to the French version, the author born within the USSR, Dimitri Savitsky (1944-2019), notes 3 subject matters blended up on this novel: the “bloody slaughterhouse” – repression -, its “justification by the revolution” and “the destruction of human material, i.e. the madness (…) of Cheko”. Without a doubt, a fourth theme may well be added, moderately not unusual in Soviet literature of the Twenties: the perspective of individuals of the intelligentsia against the revolution, which calls for from him a surprising and overall transformation of his values.
In accordance with this novel, Jacques Bajnak wrote a screenplay that used to be then shot by means of director Aleksandar Rogojkine (1949-2021) as a part of a French-Russian co-production. This 1992 movie depicts the horror of the abuses perpetrated by means of the Cheka from the early years of Bolshevik rule and targets to be a mirrored image at the courting between violence, terror and revolution.
Film trailer.
Mainly, it is composed of a sequence of identical scenes: a consultation of the “troika”, this three-man fee, which judges in mins and systematically sentences folks to loss of life; collective executions of convicts in cellars; the evacuation in their lifeless our bodies, loaded like animal carcasses into truck beds. This is a society this is being exterminated.
A girl who seems like a villager washes the flooring and cleans up the spilled blood: nobody cares in regards to the folks she represents who don’t take part within the massacres, although they witness them. In spite of everything, Srubov, whose father used to be killed, loses his thoughts.
Questions on Lenin and the ebook about Kam
Bajnac, having “already read books about the Red Terror”, would have understood from the years 1963-1965 that “the problem (of communism) is Leninism”. Which used to be a ways from essentially the most common view some of the French left on the time. (Except another way famous, all feedback by means of Jacques Bajnak come from an interview with him, carried out by means of the creator in Cahors, April 21, 2022. Many biographical parts additionally come from this interview.)
Having voluntarily long past into exile to keep away from conscription, the younger guy returned to France in 1966 and become considering Russia: specifically he adopted the classes of Georg Haupt and Alexander Benningsen on the EHESS.
Having came upon the tale of the Bolshevik Kamo in Stalin’s biography written by means of Boris Suvarin, he got here up with the theory of dedicating the ebook to this abnormal persona: an Armenian who grew up in Georgia and, like Stalin, handed during the Tbilisi seminary, Kamo (1882-1922), Simon Ter-Petrosian1, his actual name1, used to be his actual title, he used to be answerable for Lenin, a pal of Lenin. “, this is, he supplied the Birthday celebration with cash and guns by means of all manner, together with armed assaults.
Bajnac used to be already within the practices of the Bolshevik Birthday celebration throughout Lenin’s lifetime. He is dependent upon resources to be had in France, but in addition within the USSR: because of a freelance with Fajardo, he spent 3 weeks in Moscow, Baku and Tbilisi, throughout the summer time of 1970 or 1971. He traveled by myself, almost didn’t talk Russian, however, as he mentioned, an worker of Intourist used to be looking ahead to him at each step to arrange what he wanted, from projection to projection, to filming within the lodge. Kamo, Lenin’s henchman, used to be launched in 1972.
Different books in regards to the revolution
“Terror under Lenin”, Pocket E book, 2003 (first version: Strelac, 1975).
Two years later, Beinz printed a collective find out about of the 1905 revolution (Sur 1905, Editions Champ libre, 1974), after which in 1975, Terror beneath Lenin (1917-1924). Between those two books an match came about: the Gulag Archipelago started to appear in Paris and a part of the French left become, reasonably, conscious about the size of Soviet crimes.
Terror beneath Lenin, a ebook designed by means of Beinz “in collaboration with” Alexander Skird, a expert on Russian anarchists, and educational Charles Uryevich, revives the debates. Certainly, it contains texts which, printed within the Twenties, most commonly in French, display that Lenin’s use of terror could have been identified from that point.
Moreover, within the introductory article entitled “Socialism and Barbarism”, Bajnac confirms that police terror used to be already used throughout Lenin’s time and that subsequently it is senseless to “overcome Stalin in order to free Lenin better”.
Right here, Bajnac is in the similar place as Solzhenitsyn in Gulag Archipelago, but in addition as Vasiliy Grossman in “Life and Destiny” – a singular whose newsletter used to be averted by means of the KGB and Central Committee of the CPSU within the early Sixties. Alternatively, in contrast to Solzhenitsyn, Bajnac believes that Marx can’t be held answerable for this terror: Lenin would have created “police state capitalism. Which has completely not anything to do with Marx’s undertaking.
Due to this fact, the renewed debate considerations the terrifying penalties of Soviet terror, its origins, but in addition Western blindness.
Perestroika and cinema
Perestroika gives Beinz new alternatives. Certainly, Pierre-André Butang, answerable for the cultural methods at FR3 and the mythical Oceaniques program, then, from 1992, deputy director of methods at L. a. Sept-Arte, may be very considering what is occurring within the East and suggests the creator Cam to spot, for FR3, the documentaries that had been then produced within the USSR.
Since 1988, Bajnac went, he would say, virtually each month to Russia and arranged themed evenings at Arte. Then he proposed to this channel to make seven movies about Soviet historical past by means of adapting seven works of literature (if truth be told, he spoke of “six films”, as a result of he didn’t need to be credited with one of the most seven). Having an actual interest for Russian literature – “How, without it, can you understand Russia?” “, he asked – he himself chose the books for adaptation, according to “ancient, chronological good judgment”, and wrote the scripts. “Then Arte used to be negotiating with Lenfilm, the Leningrad movie studios. I did not observe the capturing, there have been no running conferences. » He additionally did not select the administrators and thought to be a few of them too “nationalistic”.
His selection of authors testifies to his detailed wisdom of Russian and Soviet literature: Leonid Andreev for 1905, Mark Aldanov for February 1917, Vsevolod Ivanov for 1920, Vladimir Zazubrin at the Pink Terror, Sergey Zaligin (At the banks of the Irtysh) at the collectivization of villages, Lydia Tchouges at the collectivization of villages, Lydia Tchouges at the 2d International Battle. Battle. International Battle, Andrey Bitov for perestroika Russia. Filmed by means of other administrators, those seven movies had been broadcast on Arte from January 1993, as though to give an explanation for to the French what were going down within the USSR for greater than seven a long time.
Six of those movies are virtually forgotten nowadays. No longer Chekista, whose screenwriter in 2022 replied an excessively transparent sure to the next query: “Can we consider this film a continuation of your work on terror and Lenin, work begun in the 1960s?”
However Bajnac stopped being considering Russia round 1994, “especially – he said – since the archives were open and it was up to Russian historians to do historical work”, and he knew not anything in regards to the cult standing of Chekista in Russia, this option movie that has develop into a logo for many who refuse to overlook, justify and trivialize Soviet crimes.
Within the French preface to Chekist, Dimitri Savitsky wrote: “Challenging the KGB’s attitude towards its past is not a frivolous exercise, because the fate of the country largely depends on this organization. “Neither Savitsky, nor Bajnac, nor Rogojkina most definitely doubted to what extent.
