PARTISAN REVIEW
the last People's Policeman at the road block. More than that:
it surrounds me here in the West, too. Here in West Berlin, in my
street, my house, everywhere there are comrades. Few, it is true, but
you never know where. My first landlady warned me, "The occu–
pants above us are in the SED.l" I moved out. The State Security
informed me through my own brother that I should return, since
I cannot escape the Party anyway. I have a telephone here on my
desk; it rings, and the Party tells me that no traitor shall escape
his just punishment. "West Berlin will belong to us, too, and Western
Germany.... " How often, when someone had "absented"
him–
self, had I heard them say in the Central Committee, "Let him!
Some day we'll have him again. Then the Americans will need their
planes and ships for themselves."
A former "friend" visited me, a German-Lett who works for the
MVD. He is "frank" and invites me to the East sector for a single
visit; the Soviet friends just want to talk it over with me for a few
hours. "Be reasonable. They, and they alone, can still help you.
You know that otherwise it will be too late, and
if
they want to,
they will find you wherever you go." I know. I know the technique
of the automobile waiting at the curb at night. But who am I, any–
way? What does this omnipotent system have to fear from me, from
my insignificant activity as a renegade, from newspaper articles, from
an individual, who means nothing over there? "What is the in–
dividual? Who cares about him?" So Mayakovsky wrote. "His little
voice is no stronger than the squeak of a mouse." Still, apparently this
individual voice must be silenced, too, like the millions of voices over
there. Can it be that the system, the Party, is not omnipotent? It is
omnipotent where it has the power to silence all other voices. Does
it have this power? Yes, I also was silent, as millions are silent in the
Soviet Union and in the Soviet Zone today, except in the circle of
closest friends discovered after long and careful mutual "groping."
What
if
one could move these millions to break their silence? But is it
not true that only a Party can accomplish this, an organized resistance
movement?
No doubt, only those can flee the East who are immediately
threatened. Once someone belongs to the Party, he cannot do any-
1.
Socialist Unity
Party.
