SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE U.S.S.R.
23
which two million roubles have already been spent, does not measure
up to doctrinal requirements, and was therefore quite rightly banned.
As for justice! Do you think that the last trials in Moscow and
Novosibirsk are going to make me regret having written that sentence
that infuriates you: "1 doubt whether in any other country today,
even in Hitler's Germany, the spirit is less free, more cramped, more
fearful (terrorized), more enserfed"?
I had for three years been too thoroughly steeped in the literature
of Marxism to feel very much out of my element in the Soviet Union.
Besides 1 had read too many accounts of trips, enthusiastic descrip-
tions, apologies. My great mistake was that 1 believed too willingly
in the hymns of praise. This was partly due to the fact that every-
thing 1 came upon which might have put me on my guard was so
clearly bad-tempered in tone....
1 would more willingly trust love
than hate. Yes, 1 subscribed; 1 had faith. Likewise, in the Soviet
Union 1 was never so much disturbed to find imperfection as 1 was
to encounter straight off the very prerogatives 1 wanted to get away
from, the privileges 1 hoped were abolished. Certainly, it seemed
natural to me that they would try to treat a guest as well as possible,
to give him the best of everything. But what amazed me was the
enormous disparity between this "best," and the common lot, that
such excessiveprivilege should exist side by side with a mass standard
of living so mediocre or so bad.
Perhaps this is an eccentricity peculiar to my mind and its
Protestant conditioning, but at any rate 1 distrust ideas that pay
dividends, and "comfortable" opinions; I mean opinions by which
the holder can hope personally to profit.
And 1 can see very well indeed how much the Soviet govern-
ment stands to gain from doing the handsome thing by artists and
writers, by everybody who could possibly sing its praises-though
there may be no definite attempt at corruption. But also 1 see only
too well how the writer stands to gain by endorsing the government
and a constitution which favors him to this extent. And so at once 1
am on my guard. 1 am afraid of letting myself be bribed. The un-
heard-of profits they offer me in Russia actually terrify me. I don't
go to a Soviet Union to rediscover privileges. Those that were waiting
for me there were scandalous.
And why shouldn't I say that?
The Moscow newspapers had informed me that in a few months
more than 400,000 copies of my books were sold. 1 leave it to the
reader to calculate the author's royalties. And the fat pay for maga-
zine articles! Had 1 written a dithyramb on the U.S.S.R. and on
Stalin, what a fortune would have been mine!
