622
PARTISAN REVIEW
nist Party was controlled by Russia, when what he should really have
said of himself is that although he was slow to realize that the Ameri–
can Communist Party was controlled by Russia and could therefore
continue to think that it was free to pursue its stated objectives, he
was even slower to recognize the truth about Russia. He cites his dis–
like of the Russian purges, the Nazi pact, the plight of the Russian
people as evidence of his early disenchantment with Russia, without
realizing that even the most profound disapproval of certain aspects
of the Soviet performance does not constitute a proper knowledge
of the nature of the Soviet Union-all fellow-travelers disapprove
of certain aspects of the Soviet performance. He fails to understand
that there is but a single criterion of a proper knowledge of the na–
ture of the Soviet Union-the awareness that the Soviet Union is
a totalitarianism as absolute as that of Nazi Germany- and that it
is only when one knows that Russia is a totalitarianism that one also
knows how impossible it is for a local Communist party to be free
to pursue its own objectives or to have ascribed to it any decency
of purpose.
Those who have been working closely with Dr. Oppenheimer
in the last few years assure us- and his testimony amply supports
this-that today he is perfectly clear that the Soviet Union is a
totalitarianism and that whoever helps a Communist cause is helping
totalitarianism. But he is completely ignorant of the slow stages by
which his knowledge came to him, and this ignorance, shared by
his lawyers, is the source of innumerable contradictions in the de–
fense he offers. For instance, at the start of the inquiry both Dr.
Oppenheimer and his counsel speak at greatest length to try to
establish the fact of his loyalty to America. Document after docu–
ment is introduced to prove that the defendant is a patriotic citizen
with a well-defined anti-Soviet position. Typical is an excerpt from
an issue of
Foreign Affairs
in which Dr. Oppenheimer writes:
" ... The second aspect of our policy which needs to be mentioned
is
that, while these proposals [about atomic control] were being
developed and their soundness explored and understood, the very
bases for international cooperation between the United States and
the Soviet Union were being eradicated by a revelation of their
deep conflicts of interest, the deep and apparently mutual repug–
nance of their ways of life, and the apparent conviction on the
