THE PHILOSOPHICAL BATTLEFIELD
267
Soviet astronomers and biologists. Third, he wondered how Kolman
could justify his statement that the Soviet Union had been the only
consistent anti-Fascist power in view of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and
Molotov's declaration in 1940 that "Fascism is a matter of taste."
Although he had delivered his speech in English, Kolman re–
plied in Gennan. He was in a spluttering rage. The criticisms, he
said, confinned
his
charges against Western Philosophy. He asserted
that complete freedom of press existed in the Soviet Union whereas
in the West freedom of press existed only on paper. (This brought
the retort from one of his critics: "That is where it belongs.") He
denied that collectivization had been forcibly imposed on the Russian
peasants and dismissed talk of famine as propaganda. He defended
the Soviet penal system as a vast humanitarian project. He argued
that since "in science there is only one truth" to compel others to
accept this truth does not in the least deprive them of their freedom.
Those whose errors are pointed out by the Central Committee of
the Communist Party are grateful for the trouble the latter takes
with them. There were no purges in science. To the pointed query:
"What about Vavilov?" (the eminent Russian biologist who died in
a concentration camp for espousing the biological theories of Mendel
and T. H. Morgan) he declared with perfect
sang-froid,
"Why every–
body knows he was an English spy: he confessed it himself before he
died." He had not heard of the case of the counter-revolutionary
Soviet astronomers but
if
they were punished they must have been
guilty since--and no one could follow the leap here-it was clear
that the Soviet Union had won the war against Hitler. He flatly
denied that Molotov had ever said Fascism was a matter of taste. He
had never seen a word about it in
Pravda.
Kolman's remarks were received with chilled amusement by
the Western philosophers and with some embarrassment by the phi–
losophers of the satellite countries.
The presence and behavior of the Communist philosophers at
the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy had one unintended
consequence. It brought home to the philosophers of the Western
world that despite
all
their differences they still constituted an intel–
lectual community with a common tradition. It also revealed the
character of the Soviet totalitarian threat to their philosophic voca–
tion, and that under some circumstances Socrates would have to serve
