VARIETY
487
the imaginative portrayal of the
Moscow Trials. For in Rubashov
the old Bolshevik we see the inex–
orable evolution of the rational
Marxist into the religious Com–
munist. Rubashov himself can ne–
ver fully accept the change, but he
does understand that the end-point
of his logic is a secular religion,
and so he makes the historical sac–
rifice and confesses. (In this con–
nection, notice how the religious
terminology drenches the Socialist
language: the
vision
of Socialism,
the
cause;
and for God we have
historical necessity,
vide
Harold
Laski.)*
The principle established in the
discussion of
secular religion
ap–
plies also to the word surrealisms.
*
Perhaps the closest prototype of
the Bolshevik leader was Ernest Woll–
weber, the real boss of the former Ger–
man Communist Party. (For reference
see Valtin's
Out of the Night
and
Kurt Singer's
Duel for the Northland.)
Wollweber, a hardbitten fanatical func–
tionary, held the organizational reins
of the party. A proletarian, he boasted
of his origins and despised the intel–
lectuals as weak and dilettantish. Yet
the Communists, more than any other
group, have exploited the intellectual.
For in this highly political world, peo–
ple increasingly are suspicious of pol–
itics and turn to men who hold out a
moral pretense. The Communists have
grasped this and have sought novelists,
poets and theologians as the initial
figureheads of front groups. These men
supposedly have a moral authority
drawn from their individual conscience
and not from organizational build-ups.
Thus we find the Croat poet Vladimir
Nazor used as one of the first leaders
of the Tito movement; Erich Weinert,
the poet, made chairman of the Mos–
cow Free German Committee and
Wanda Wassielevska, the novelist, as
head of the Union of Polish Patriots.
The
totalitarian liberal
is one
who voices the liberal tradition,
yet through his action helps create
the totalitarian society. The most
common species is the fellow-trav–
eler, the man who feels that Rus–
sia is on the "right road." Outward–
ly the liberal, inwardly he becomes
the apologist for the slave state.
The mechanism of transference has
long been a tantalizing problem.
The answer, I feel, lies in the 'lure
of power politics,' that wonderfully
gratifying sense of entering the in–
nards of history. How else can one
explain the pigeon-pouting piece
by Bruce Bliven in
The New Re–
public
some months back entitled
"The Hang-Back Boys," which
takes to task the radicals for not
accepting the "two centers of dy–
namic energy in the world today,
Roosevelt and Russia." This pecu–
liar 'wave of the future' line runs
from the hysterical screeches of
FM)
which denounces all those
who dare criticize the Administra–
tion, through the liberal weeklies,
who criticize Robert Murphy but
not the President who appointed
him, down to Alfred Kantorowicz
in the
Free World
who, in a nause–
ating article, glorified the Moscow
Free German Committee and poin–
ted triumphantly as an example
of its national unity to the instance
of Willi Brede!, the Communist
poet, sitting cheek by jowl with an
SS officer who commanded the
concentration camp where he was
once tortured.
Turning to the other side of this
situation, again the facts of social
life are best explained by these
semantic gargoyles. The phrase
monopolistic competition
has been
