8
PARTISAN REVIEW
Indeed, one has only to look at the career of Yevtushenko to see how criticism
and compromise have become indistinguishable .
The scientific intelligentsia, on the other hand , unlike scientists here ,
seem to represent ,
if
only indirectly , the ideals of a free society . For one thing ,
they are not ideologically incriminated in the communist regime . But, in
addition , the growth ofscience and industry in the Soviet Union constitutes a
challenge to the regime, while in this country the relation to the system is
much more complex and contradictory.
If in the West there seems to be an affinity between conscience and
consciousness, the affinity in the Soviet Union is between false consciousness
and bad conscience . And the Soviet equivalent of the critical mind in the
West , which sees its purity in its disengagement from society , would appear to
be that of the scientific mind, which is socially integrated but disengaged
from ideology .
It
is most ironic that the end of ideology should serve
conservative ends in America and radical ones in the Soviet Union .
It
is also paradoxical that Benda's charge of treason against the
intellectuals-for " bringing politics ... into their activities as intellec–
tuals" -should be most applicable to the Soviet Union today.
W_P.
