PARTISAN REVIEW
577
what he is saying?" I asked a Prague class of sixteen-year-olds.
"~o,
no,"
they said immedi a tely. "A man who is a lways su re of wh.at he is saying
can't be intelEgent. An intelligent man knows he doesn 't know every–
thing."
Of course, Party propagand a still had a genuine effect on what
may be called the "fifth generation." "When Czechoslovakia was in–
vaded," a sixty-six-yea r-old Pa rty member told me in Budapest in
1970, "my granddaughter and I were wa tching the news on TV to–
gether. She's only seven, but of course she wanted to know what a ll this
was about. Wha t could I say? I sa id there had been some problems in
Czechoslovakia, but now the Russia ns went in and things would be
quiet. She wanted to know if the Russia ns were good people. I said
they were people, there were good a nd bad people among them, like
in every other country. Nex t morning we went down shopping together.
As we stood there in the queue, she heard others ta lking about Czecho–
slovakia. And she started telling them not to \vorry, there had been
some problems there, but things would be quiet now, the Russians were
good people and they' d ta ke care of everything."
"It
can a lso be quite fri ghtening," said the thirty-e ight-yea r-old
Polish doctor quoted earlier. "As you know, for about two years now
we\'e been having these terrible war film s, a nd war serials and pro–
paganda on TV and radio. All the time , Folish heroism and the crimes
of the Germa ns. We know it has to do with the Partisans whipping up
nationalism, but you should see the children pl ayi ng in the street. 'Shot
you, bloody German, down , bang, bang, German swine, you 're dead.'
I 'm rea lly afraid of wha t will happen when these children grow up ."
My own view is they' ll have forgotten most of it as games, unless
the Germa ns should mea nwhile oblige by living up to the Partisa n
image. Judging by a ll my interviews, whatever East Europea n children
mayo r may not believe now, there i5 much less cha nce of even a minor–
ity of them turning into adult fa na tics tha n there was in the fifti es. To
compare beliefs with rea lity is an essential pa rt of growing up, and
young people in tod ay's Eastern Europe have far more access to rea lity
than they did in the Sta linist years.
Equa lly significa nt, those of my interviewees in the new genera–
tion who had come through belief to skepticism a lmost invariably put
their change at the age of 16- 17.
It
had been pa rt of their becoming
aware of the world during adolescence, rather th a n the rna ture ('risis
the same awakening Illeant for many older Communists.
" If
I quote
Lenin to a class of fourteen-year-olds ," a language teac her of twenty–
nine said in Bulga ria , " they' ll accept it as a matter of ('ourse. But if
I quote the saJ1le kind of thing to the boys who are seventeen or eighteen,
