28
PARTISAN REVIEW
I cannot prevent people from finding my wntmgs useful to
them, and if I could I should not want to do so. But to write anything
at all in the direct interests of a particular political party-no,
that
I cannot do. I warned my new Communist friends at the very begin-
ning of our relations: I would never be a satisfied recruit, a recruit
to repose.
I have read a statement somewhere to the effect that "intel-
lectuals" who come over to communism ought to be regarded by the
Party as "unstable elements" useful on occasions but not entirely to
be trusted. How true, how very true! I said the same thing many
times to Vaillant-Couturier; but he would not believe it.
There is no party which can keep my loyalty-which can prevent
me from preferring truth to ·the Party itself. When falsehoods inter-
vene I am ill at ease; my role is to denounce them. I attach myself
only to truth; if the Party rejects truth then I must reject the Party.
I know well (and you have instructed me often enough in this
matter) that from the "Marxist point of view" Truth does not exist;
at least not in an absolute sense; that there are only relative truths;
but it is precisely these relative truths which are here in question;
which you falsify. And I believe that in questions of such weight and
import one only deceives oneself by seeking to deceive others. For
whom are you fooling now? Those you pretend to serve: the people.
One serves the people ill by blinding them.
It
is necessary to see things as they are, not as one would have
liked them to be:
The U.S.S.R. is not what we hoped it would be, what it gave
promise o~ being, what it still tries to appear to be; it has betrayed
our hopes. If we do not want our hopes to fail too, we must attach
them elsewhere.
But we shall not turn our face from you, 0 glorious and griev-
ing Russia. If first you were an example to us, now, alas! you show
in what engulfing sands a revolution can sink.
