Letters of Insurgents

Postscript: For the Reader
Postscript: For the reader My last letter returned two months after I sent it. Yarostan’s address was completely covered by a large blot of opaque ink, and an arrow pointed to my address. There were no explanations anywhere on the envelope; in fact, there was no indication my letter had gotten any further than the local post office where the stamps were canceled, there was no clue as to who had returned it or why. During the past eight years I haven’t heard a single word from Yarostan or Mirna or Yara or Jasna. The “police capitalism” that imposed itself by means of its “historically available instruments” still rules today. I held on to Yarostan’s letters and the carbon copies of mine; occasionally I shared them with friends. Several years ago one of those who read them suggested I share them with a larger circle of friends. I hesitated because there was too much in them that could incriminate people whose lives are un... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Sophia’s Last Letter
Sophia’s last letter Dear Yarostan, I gagged as I read about Zabran’s self-exposure and suicide. On the surface some kind of monster died, a monster that left so many corpses in its train. I was horrified when I recognized the monster in myself and in those closest to me, those who gave my life its only meaning and goal, those who helped define my life’s search. My very dreams were contaminated by the monstrosity he stood for: the will to impose mental constructs on living people — which as Zdenek so perceptively pointed out can only be done by means of “historically available” instruments: guns, tanks, police and armies. You once pointed to a split in my life, the split between my “academic and journalistic world” and the “world of Sabina and the garage.” You included yourself in the latter world. I think the line you drew has to be re-drawn. I think the split w...

Yarostan’s Last Letter
Yarostan’s last letter Dear Sophia, I don’t deserve your pity. I’ve been blind. For over twenty years I’ve been nothing more than an apologist for a repressive ideology. You tell me you don’t have a vantage point from which to criticize my attitudes. The events I experienced here yesterday convinced me I never had a vantage point from which to debunk what I called your “illusions,” or Luisa’s for that matter. I parted with my own illusions far more stubbornly than you parted with yours. Jasna and I had to experience one shock after another before either of us were willing to admit we were wrong, and had always been wrong, about Titus Zabran. The extent to which we were wrong went far beyond Mirna’s or Yara’s dreams. I can now answer all the questions you and Sabina have been asking for the past few months. I can now tell you why Titus didn’t mention to me the lette... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Sophia’s Ninth Letter
Sophia’s ninth letter Dear Yarostan, Or should I address my letter to “Poor Yarostan”? As I read your letter I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m certainly not the one who has any right to pass judgment on you. Thank you for not waiting two weeks to write me. In two weeks you would have figured everything out, you would have seemed so sure of yourself, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to see you as I’ve never seen you before: lost, confused, unsure of yourself. I felt much closer to you than I ever had before. For the first time since we’ve written to each other you weren’t my life’s hero but someone like me, someone who is drifting and waiting, who isn’t quite included in the activities of those closest to him. I see now that it makes sense for you and me to be writing to each other; we have much more in common with each other than either of us do with Mirna... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Yarostan’s Ninth Letter
Yarostan’s ninth letter Dear Sophia, Your letter was as painful to read as it must have been to write. How can everything be over? How can workers without illusions about unions march back to work hailing their union’s “victories”? How can a population that just woke up be back asleep? We’ve been hearing rumors of an imminent invasion, of tanks massing at our borders, but those rumors disturb us infinitely less than the knowledge that “normal” life has resumed in your part of the world. We had begun to take it for granted that our fellow human beings in other parts of the globe were engaged in acts similar to our own. The council office and the commune, the occupied research center, the spreading general strike, had all become part of the geography of our world. You couldn’t have shocked us more if you had told us a continent had sunk. I was fascinated by Sabina&rsqu... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Sophia’s seventh letter Dear Yarostan, You’ll never guess where I am. Outside there’s a general strike. Everything is out of commission. Literally everything: fact ones, offices, transportation vehicles, even taxis — everything except the telephones, and a radio station that’s been taken over by the police. I ought to be in the council office, or in the research center where Tissie and Sabina are conquering the whole universe, or somewhere in the midst of all the excitement. But I’m sitting at my desk in Luisa’s house, writing you on the ancient typewriter I inherited from George Alberts when he left. I’m surprised it still works; it’s the machine on which I was going to type up my novel... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Yarostan’s seventh letter Dear Sophia, Your letter was marvelous. Jasna and Zdenek were both here yesterday sharing it with us, celebrating the events that have started unfolding around you. For once we received your letter in the spirit in which you wrote it. I was relieved that you hadn’t received my previous letter before you set out on your adventure in the Commune and the Council. The depressed mood in which I wrote it wouldn’t have contributed anything positive to your exciting experiences. I regret much of what I said in that letter. I now have an opposite admission to make to you. I was very moved when you said you were waiting for me to walk into your “council office.” If such an expedition should ever... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Yarostan’s eighth letter Dear Sophia, Your victory is complete. I never dreamed the passion you just described lay below the surface of the person I knew twenty years ago. I was wrong. My outlook didn’t allow me to see below the surface. I was near-sighted; I still am. Mirna, Yara, your letter, all the events taking place around me are making me suspect I’ve been viewing the world through opaque glass. The frame of reference I acquired from Titus and Luisa and from comrades I met during two long prison terms suddenly seems inadequate; real people seem to move outside its boundaries. More is breaking down and more is rising up than I’m able to take m. Perhaps I never dreamed of anything more than a different system of... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Sophia’s fourth letter Dear Yarostan, So much has happened since I sent you my last letter and most of it has confirmed your statement that you and I live in completely different worlds. I have no idea what place you would occupy in my world and you can’t know what place I’d occupy in yours. It certainly wouldn’t be the place you assign me! I admit I was shocked by what Jasna told about the people I’ve regarded as my comrades. I was particularly shocked by the ruthlessness and inhumanity with which Marc and Vera attained their bureaucratic goals. But I don’t have even a shred of sympathy for the path they took. Nothing in me could have accepted, or even drifted in. the direction in which they moved. Your ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Yarostan’s second letter Dear Sophia, My picture of you was hazy when I wrote you last time but now I remember you as if I had been with you only yesterday. No one who had known you twenty years ago could fail to recognize you. You wrote me a warm, comradely letter. I’d like to answer in the same spirit. I’d like at least to be polite. But twenty years have passed. Everyone around me has changed. Your picture of yourself as you are today is disturbingly similar to the person you thought you were twenty years ago. What I recognize in your letter is not the event we experienced together but an event we never experienced. I wrote to a living person and was answered by an imaginary person celebrating an event that never took p... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)