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PARTISAN REVIEW
phenomena, which will disappear after the final victory, if not be–
fore. They believe in the possibility of saving something of their
values, of helping, changing, improving within the system or Party
without coming into conflict with these values. They believe this
because in the theory of the system every question finds its answer,
every desire its fulfillment. In this promise all that they desire is con–
tained. Might it not be their own fault, if the reality looks different?
How can one stop them from improving it? They ask about the
meaning of life and of history, and the Party answers. In their lone–
liness and insecurity they strive for a feeling of community and the
shelter of a new order of things, and the Party shows them the way.
Yes, they are swept away by the mass emotion of enthusiastic
youth; the future is anticipated and guaranteed, when nations will
live in peace and friendship, happiness and prosperity: Youth of all
nations, we are united by a single cause, a single courage ! The Party
knows why it needs the intoxication of these ceremonies.
"If
the enemy does not surrender, he will be destroyed,"
Stalin teaches through the words of Gorki. Children can be educated,
and Soviet pedagogy, as applied in the German Soviet Zone, is exem–
plary for the stifling of the soul. Adults who can no longer be educated
are subjugated, and if their complete subjugation does not succeed,
if their soul, their spirit, refuses to die- well, some day they them–
selves will die. Their death can even be accelerated by letting them
work, so that they serve the system to their last breath, even if
against their
will.
If
there is evil, then this is it: the man with a
murdered soul murdering the soul of others, and, if he fails, snuffing
them out physically.
How can one address those who do not suffer under the system
but serve it anyway? Those whose souls are not yet stifled, but who
cannot see through the deceit, trying instead to understand the
system intellectually? Because they stilI derive their inner nourishment
from the European tradition, they attempt to justify their position to
themselves. How can the word of the free world reach them? Counter–
systems, counter-ideologies are of no avail. The language of fact
alone can help, especially if it issues from a material betterment
in the social conditions of the West, proving by a thousand examples
the actual existence of the highest good of man, lost to so many in the
East, namely, personal liberty.
