82
PARTISAN REVIEW
The revolt of Hungarian left-wing writers-and the no less sig–
nificant one of Polish intellectuals-would seem to justify an optimistic
forecast made at a time when eastern Socialism seemed to be sinking
lower and lower into depths of inhumanity, of terror, both physical
and intellectual. As the tragic survivors of the shipwreck of so many
received ideas, of so many utterly needless sacrifices, the Communist
writers and intellectuals of Eastern Europe find themselves confronted
by a truly crushing task: the rethinking of socialism in the light of its
successes and failures, while balancing the ravages of Stalinism against
the technical and scientific progress of the last several decades; and
the restitution for socialism of those moral, generous, and humane
principles which the Stalinist "realists" threw overboard.
The old Hungarian Communist Jules Hay, in an article published
on the eve of the September Congress which I would gladly cite in
its entirety, it is so beautifully written and courageous, said:
Yes, we call for complete freedom for literature. The most complete,
the most illimitable freedom conceivable among men living in civilized
society. That is, we want nothing to be forbidden thl! writer that the
laws do not uniformly forbid
all
citizens. Naturally, the writer is no
more authorized than anyone else to incite to murder, arson, theft, bri–
gandage, overthrow of the Republic, racial discrimination, etc.... But
he must be free (like any other citizen, for that matter ) to tell the truth
without restriction ; to criticize anybody and anything whatsoever; to be
melancholy ; to be in love; to meditate on death; to believe in the
omnipotence of God; to deny His existence; to express doubts as to
the accuracy of certain statistics relative to the Plan; to think along non–
Marxist lines; to think like a Marxist even when his ideas developed in
that way do not happen to correspond to officially established truths;
not to love certain rulers; to realize that the city is tumbling down
for want of repairs; to love Stalinville or not to love it; to defend
humanity even
in
situations about which less sensitive spirits have
been unable to see that there is anything inhuman; to have an original
style; and so on, and so on....
A salient fact: the Communist Hay, and with him, save for very
rare exceptions, all the Communist writers of Hungary, were defending
freedom not only for themselves but for non-Marxists as well, for every–
body: spiritualists, Catholics, idealists, anarchists, individualists, formal–
ists, pessimists, decadents, nationalists.... And if they were asked the
reason for this surprising show of "liberalism," they called on their own
past experience. "In helping the bureaucracy to muzzle non-Commu–
nist writers, we prepared our own servitude," they said. "The best among
us," said Hay in a speech to the Congress, "suffered
in
this climate
of mendacity," in this climate of empty, ostentatious optimism where
