26
PARTISAN REVIEW
But the fact is that the Russian people appear to be very
happy. I am entirely in accord with the testimony to this happiness
made by Vildrac and Jean Pons, whose books on Russia I cannot
read without nostalgia. Because, and I too have said so, nowhere
except in the U.S.S.R. do the masses of people, the people you meet
in the street (at least the young people) the workers in the factories
you visit, the crowds who swarm the places for rest, culture, amuse-
ment, present so 'smiling an appearance. How reconcile this appear-
ance with the frightful poverty in which the great masses are plunged?
Those who have travelled widely in the U.S.S.R. tell me that
Vildrac, Pons, and myself would have been quickly disenchanted had
we quit the big centers and the beaten paths of tourists. They speak
of whole districts where misery hits you in the face. And where ....
Misery in the Soviet Union is difficult to find. It hides itself like a
guilty thing. It cannot attract pity or charity, it is exposed only to
scorn. Those who exhibit themselves are those whose well being de-
pends on this misery. When one does come across numbers of people
who are obviously starving, they are smiling too, and their happiness,
as I said, is made "of confidence, ignorance, and hope."*
If everyone we see in the Soviet Union appears to be spirited,
it is equally true that anyone who has the audacity to lack spirit is
immediately suspected. It is extremely dangerous to be sad, or to
indicate that you are sad. A complaint cannot be lodged in Russia
-it goes to Siberia.
Russia is prolific enough not to show the terrible depredations
among her human herds. These ravages are all the more terrible for
being hardly noticeable. /And those who disappear, who are spirited
away, are very likely the most worthy, if not with respect to their
practical capacity then in so far as they dare to disagree, differ,
distinguish themselves from a mass which insures its unity only by
means of a mediocrity which becomes more and more ignoble.
In the Soviet Union what is called "opposition" is in reality
courageous criticism, freedom of thought. Stalin demands applause
*
It is necessary to remark once more on the Russian people's prodigious
capacity for life. Astonished at having endured inconceivable vicissitudes,
having suffered so greatly without being diminished by suffering, Dostoyevsky at·
tributed to himself the "vitality of a cat." A love of life which conquers pain as
readily as indifference or apathy,
a welling up of amusement
and lyricism, of
unexplained,
inexplicable joy; no m;;>.tter when, where, how ....
I shall have to
call it an extraordinary propensity for happiness. And in spite of everything.
It is
this quality which makes Do~toyev~ky so representative of Russia.
It is this
quality which attracts me so profoundly and fraternally,
and which, through him,
directs me to the whole Russian people. It is doubtful whether any other people
would have given themselves so generously to so tragic an experience.
