'So even you, an émigré and a Menshevik, admit that Stalin is the Lenin of today,' retorted Mostovskoy. 'It's true: we are the heirs to all the generations of Russian revolutionaries from Pugachev to Razin. The heir to Razin, Dobrolyubov and Herzen is Stalin, not you renegade Mensheviks!'

'Fine heirs you make!' said Chernetsov. 'Do you realize the meaning of the elections for the Constituent Assembly? After a thousand years of slavery! During an entire millennium Russia has been free for little more than six months. Your Lenin didn't inherit Russian freedom – he destroyed it. When I think of the trials of 1937, I remember a very different legacy. Do you remember the secret-police chief Colonel Sudeykin? He and Degaev hoped to terrify the Tsar by inventing conspiracies, and then seize power themselves. And you think of Stalin as the heir to Herzen?'

'You must be mad,' said Mostovskoy. 'Are you serious about Sudeykin? And what about the great social revolution, the expropriation of the expropriators, the factories seized from the capitalists, the land seized from the gentry? Has all that passed you by? Whose legacy is that? Sudeykin's? And the way the workers and peasants have entered every sphere of social activity? Do you call that a legacy from Sudeykin? I almost pity you.'

'I know, I know,' said Chernetsov. 'One can't argue with facts. But one can explain them. Your Marshals and writers, your doctors of science, your people's commissars are servants not of the proletariat, but of the State. And as for the people who work in the fields and on the shop-floors! I don't think even you would have the nerve to call them masters. Fine masters they make!'

He leaned towards Mostovskoy.

'Incidentally, there's only one of you I really respect – and that's Stalin. He's a real man! The rest of you are just cissies. He understands the true basis of Socialism in One Country: iron terror, labour camps and medieval witch-trials!'

'I've heard all this shit before,' said Mostovskoy. 'But I must say, there is something particularly nasty about your way of putting things. Only a man who's lived in your home since he was a child and then been thrown out onto the street can be that despicable. And do you realize what that man is? A lackey!'

He stared hard at Chernetsov.

'Still, I'd wanted to talk about what brought us together in 1898, not what separated us in 1903.'

'So that's what you wanted, is it? A cosy little chat about the days before the lackey was sent packing?'

At that Mostovskoy really did get angry.

'Yes, that's just it! A runaway lackey. A lackey who's been thrown out onto the street! Wearing kid gloves. We don't wear gloves – we've got nothing to hide. We plunge our hands into dirt and blood. We came to the workers' movement without Plekhanov's kid gloves. What use have those gloves been to you, anyway? Thirty pieces of silver for some articles in the Socialist Messenger? While the whole camp – the English, the French, the Poles, the Norwegians and the Dutch -believes in us…! The salvation of the world lies in our hands! In the power of the Red Army! The army of freedom!'

'And is that how it's always been?' interrupted Chernetsov. 'What about the pact with Hitler and the invasion of Poland in 1939? And the way your tanks crushed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia? And the invasion of Finland? Your army and Stalin have taken back everything that was given to the small nations by the Revolution. And what about the suppression of the peasant rebellions in Central Asia? And Kronstadt? Was that in the name of freedom and democracy?'

Mostovskoy held his hand up to Chernetsov's face.

'I've already told you – we don't wear kid gloves.'

Chernetsov nodded.

'Do you remember Strelnikov, the political-police chief? He didn't wear kid gloves either. He had revolutionaries beaten up till they were half-dead and then wrote out false confessions… What was the purpose of 1937? You say you were preparing to fight Hitler. Was your teacher Marx or Strelnikov?'

'None of your filth surprises me,' said Mostovskoy. 'It's what I've come to expect. But you know what does surprise me? Why should the Nazis put you in a camp? They hate us frenziedly. That's clear enough. But why should Hitler imprison you and your friends?'

Once again, as at the very beginning of the conversation, Chernet-sov smiled.

'Well,' he said, 'they haven't let me go yet. Maybe you should get up a petition for my release.'

Mostovskoy was in no mood for joking.

'No, you shouldn't be in one of Hitler's camps – not with the hatred you bear us. Nor should this character.' He pointed at Ikonnikov who was making his way towards them.

Ikonnikov's hands and face were smeared with clay. He held out some dirty sheets of paper covered in writing and said: 'Have a look through this. Tomorrow I might be dead.'

'All right. But why've you decided to leave us so suddenly?'

'Do you know what I've just heard? The foundations we've been digging are for gas ovens. Today we began pouring the concrete.'

'Yes,' said Chernetsov, 'there were rumours about that when we were laying the railway-tracks.'

He looked round. Mostovskoy thought Chernetsov must be wondering whether the men coming in from work had noticed how straightforwardly and naturally he was talking to an Old Bolshevik. He probably felt proud to be seen like this by the Italians, Norwegians, Spanish and English – and, above all, by the Russian prisoners-of-war.

'But how can people carry on working?' asked Ikonnikov. 'How can we help to prepare such a horror?'

Chernetsov shrugged his shoulders. 'Do you think we're in England or something? Even if eight thousand people refused to work, it wouldn't change anything. They'd be dead in less than an hour.'

'No,' said Ikonnikov. 'I can't. I just can't do it.'

'Then that's the end of you,' said Mostovskoy.

'He's right,' said Chernetsov. 'This comrade knows very well what it means to attempt to instigate a strike in a country where there's no democracy.'

His argument with Mostovskoy had upset him. Here, in the Nazi camp, the phrases he had repeated so often in his Paris apartment sounded absurd; they rang false even in his ears. The other prisoners were always repeating the word ' Stalingrad '. Like it or not, the fate of the world hung on that city.

A young Englishman had made a victory sign and said: 'I'm praying for you all. Stalingrad 's halted the avalanche.' Words like these made Chernetsov feel happy and excited.

He turned to Mostovskoy.

'Heine said that only a fool reveals his weaknesses to an enemy. Very well, maybe I am a fool, but you're right – I do understand the meaning of the struggle being fought by your army. That's a bitter admission for a Russian socialist. It's hard to both rejoice and suffer, to hate you but feel pride in your achievements.'

He looked at Mostovskoy. For a moment it seemed as though even his good eye had filled with blood.

'But do you really not understand, even here, that man cannot live without freedom and democracy?'

'Come on now!' said Mostovskoy sternly. 'That's enough of your hysterics.'

He looked round. Chernetsov thought Mostovskoy must be wondering whether the men coming in from work had noticed how straightforwardly and naturally he was talking to a Menshevik, an émigré. He probably felt ashamed to be seen like this by the foreigners – and above all by the other Russians.

Chernetsov's blood-filled socket stared blindly at Mostovskoy.

Ikonnikov reached up and grasped the bare foot of the priest sitting on the second tier of boards.

'Que dois-je faire, mio padre? Nous travaillons dans una Vernich-tungslager. '

Ikonnikov looked round at the three men with his coal-black eyes.

'Tout le monde travaille là-bas. Et moi je travaille là-bas. Nous sommes des esclaves,' he said slowly. 'Dieu nous pardonnera.'