SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE U.S.S.R.
a head with the wines and the liqueurs. Now there were six of us,
seven, counting the guide, and there were. often as many hosts and
guests, sometimes many more.
Throughout the whole trip we were not, properly speaking,
guests of the government, but of the rich Union of Soviet Writers.
When I think of the expense they went to for us, I doubt whether
the gold-mine of my author's royalties, which I now resign to them,
can possibly suffice to reimburse them.
Evidently they were counting on a different return from such
generous advances. And I think that part of the spite I am conscious
of in
Pravda
comes from the fact that I was a rather bad investment.
I insist that there is something tragic in this Soviet adventure of
mine. I had come as an enthusiast, I was totally convinced, I was
prepared to admire a new world, and they offered me,
as seductions,
mind you)
all the prerogatives I abominated in the old.
- But you don't understand, an excellent Marxist told me. Com-
munism is opposed only to the exploitation of man by man; how
many times must I tell you that? Once exploitation is ended you can
be as rich as Alexis Tolstoy or a great opera singer if only you acquire
your fortune by your personal work. In your Scorn and hatred for
wealth and possessionsI detect a very regrettable trace of your early
Christian ideas.
-That may well be.
- Which, let me tell you, have nothing in common with Marx-
ism.
- Alas! '"
As long as man is under the yoke, as long as the repression of
socially vicious forces keeps him prostrate, one correctly keeps on
hoping for a future flowering of all that he carries in him. One
similarlyexpects great things of children who grow up quite ordinary.
One has often the illusi0':l that man in the mass is made up of
individuals superior to the rest of humanity. I believe only that he
is less spoiled; but money will rot him quickly enough. And
look
what is happening in the U.S.S.R.: the new bourgeoisie forming there
has all the faults of ours. No sooner has it escaped from misery thml
it scorns the miserable. Avid of all the good things of which it was
for so long deprived, it knows how to go about acquiring them and
protecting them. "Are these really the people who made the Revolu-
tion? No, these are the people who profit from it," I wrote in my
book,
Return trom the U.S.S.R.
They may be Party members but
there is nothing of communism in their hearts.
25
