240
PARTISAN
Between 1946 and 1956 the struggle of the western
U\"l11\J\~.
against Stalinist Communism in Europe had a sort of
purity. The western intellectual knew what and whom he
was
bating. He could denounce the Communists and their allies
clear conscience.
As
late .as 1956, Khrushchev and his
«"'NU'L",
were presiding over the bloody suppression of the Hungarian
lution. But Communism in its post-Stalinist phase is less
pathological, and
it
is armed with the H-Bomb. The West
dispense with the threat of collective suicide, and the
.nt,pIiP,"ftI
can neither reject nor acclaim such a strategy.
Even more equivocal are the diplomatic conflicts
Europe. The independent states created since the war are
preferable to interminable warfare in Indochina and Africa, but
no sooner exist than they cease to stir the admiration or
'''lTnn'''....
the western intellectual. It is all very well for the intellectual
come passionate over the "liberation" of the "colonized
and
pressed" peoples, but the regimes created by these peoples are
evitably imitations of the Western (or Soviet) regimes. These .
vised states should, we feel, receive Western aid. But it is
see why an intellectual should feel particularly committed to the
venture of a Nasser or of a Mohammed V. In other words, once
political domination of the Europeans over the Asians, the
and the Africans has been terminated-and, with the end of
Algerian war, the process will be nearing its conclusion-the
States will pose problems for the economists and the experts.
the rich white minority of Europe and America will feel isolated
hostile world. The statesmen will have a great deal to do; the
tellectuals will be hard put to find occasions for crusades.
Perhaps, in the field of world politics too, the era of .
is coming to an end.
(Translated from the French by H.]. Kaplan)
