MAX EASTMAN: THE MAN UNDER THE TABLE 19
My trip to the United States was not my first visit abroad. During
the years of the revolution I crossed the Soviet frontier some twenty times.
I crossed it before the publication of
Mahogany
and many times after it.
I have had many opportunities to do what certain traitors to the revolu–
tion have done. What was simpler for me than to remain abroad with
these automobiles, banquets and Max Eastman? I did not do so for an
obvious reason, stated in lines which Eastman himself cites from me and
which he describes as "'fearless and straightspoken." These lines which
I wrote in 1923 are: "I acknowledge that the Communist power in Rus–
sia is determined not by the will of Communists, but by the historic
destinies of Russia; and· in so far as I want to follow (according to my
ability and as my conscience and mind dictate' to me) these Russian his–
toric destinies, I am with the Communists." This statement, whose "candor
can hardly be questioned," according to Eastman, was written eleven years
ago; it holds good today. Some people who believed this truth eleven
years ago, are now under the table; for me it is even more true today
than it was eleven years ago. When I wrote those words, I was a fellow–
traveller; today I am a Communist writer, even though I do not belong
to the Communist Party. I am proud of these eleven years of growth,
years in which I learned to understand that the destiny of the USSR is the
destiny of all peoples, the destiny of the Socialist Union of the entire earth.
As I look back on those eleven years, I read with amazement in
Eastman's fairy-tale that during this period I have been compelled every
month, every week, almost every hour to "recant," to "repudiate," to
"pray,"
to'
"profess loyalty," to "beg on my knees." When did all this
happen? Where? In whose feverish brain? Does Eastman regard as
"repudiation" my recent books because they are more Communist than
my earlier books? That is possible. At one time Eastman called himself
a Communist; today he is an anti-Communist. At one time I was a fellow–
traveller; today I am a Communist. I t is possible that Eastman considers
it a "humiliation" for me to believe in that which he has betrayed. As
far as I am concerned, I have never been disloyal to the "historic des–
tinies"; I have nothing to repent.
Eastman pays hypocritical lip-service to the "facts in' the case." But
let us consider a few real facts, not imaginary conversations between
Gronsky and myself or the gossip of alleged but unnamed "friends" of
mine. Among Eastman's "facts" is a citation from a letter I wrote in
1929, a letter of "recantation" when, according to Eastman, I was accused
of being a "class enemy" who had "definitely broken with the social revolu–
tion." Eastman cites that part of my letter which says, that "the tale of
