THE CRISIS IN COMMUNISM
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from a French Communist of the younger generation, and gives us an
idea of how in a country of tolerance, free speech, and anticlericalism
this curiously misjudged, over-fanatic party could have become the
strongest political force, exerting an enormous attraction on all intel–
lectuals-scientists, writers, artists-a phenomenon that is much dis·
cussed, but still remains essentially unexplained and mysterious. The
document in question is the profession of faith of Edgar Morin, a
thirty-five-year-old sociologist, author of three books (one on postwar
Germany, one on the attitude of various civilizations toward death, and
one an extensive sociological analysis of the motion picture) . Answering
an
enquete
of the Paris magazine
Les Lettres Nouvelles
(September
1956), Morin, who was a Party member from 1942 to 1951, wrote:
I have never publicly denounced the aberrations, lies, and crimes of
the Stalinist policy although I was clearly aware of them.... In 1941
the pacifist and socialist ideas that had determined my life lost all
meaning or were perverted into collaborationism with the invader. The
war in the east confronted me with an almost biological decision be–
tween the Soviet Union, bastion of the revolution, and Nazi Germany.
The defense of Moscow, and later the victory of Stalingrad, exonerated
Stalin, after the fact, of his crimes, which were lost in the shadows of
the past. Was not Stalin the man of steel, that our age of steel needed?
The destructive rage of Zhdanov, the campaign against Tito, the public
trials, Morin had swallowed all these in silence, as had so many intel–
lectuals, who were otherwise professional humanists and signers of
manifestoes of protest. Why?
Five years of militant party activity had taught me to accept certain
stupid actions, lies, and taboos as decreed fate . .. . Soviet reality filled
me with both the greatest enthusiasm and the greatest horror. I feared
that by attacking the cancerous cell I would damage the living cell. ...
At that time I thought that only the victory of the revolution the world
over could bring about a 'thaw.' The victory of Stalinism would kill
Stalinism. . . . I was unable to speak out publicly, because I could
not leave the Party. My membership had assumed a mystical character.
I belonged to the proletarian community. Outside the Party there were
only petty-bourgeois swamps. I was a political corpse waiting for the
Resurrection.
And Morin, like others, speaks of the "fear of being alone." He was
finally able to overcome that fear when, like other
raisonneurs,
he was
expelled by the intellectual obscurantists and Zhdanovists.
Between the changeable Sartre and the changed Morin hundreds
of shadings of doubt and defection are to be found. France-and Italy,
where the crisis of Communism is even deeper-will soon number, at
