336
PARTISAN REVIEW
Gazei'
Czapski,
*
a giant whose
candeur d'esprit
reminded one of St.
Francis and who in his manner remained an aristocrat of the Age of
Enlightenment. He maintained that the Soviet theater wa a meet–
ing ground for all that remained of old Russian culture. Indeed, the
audience did not look at all like a typical Soviet crowd. "Look," said
Czapski, "at this man at the entrance. This i surely somebody from
the old days." I looked. This man, whom the eye of a painter and a
man of society recognized as someone from the old days, was in fact
the Chairman of the Bund's Executive Council, Henryk Erlich. He
was standing at the thre hhold of the hall, looking a bit uncomforta–
ble and distant, lost in thought. He was still dressed in the same suit,
made of cheap material and clumsily cut, but worn with quiet dis–
tinction. One encounters such faces in group photographs of
nineteenth-century socialist conventions, of a Brussels, a Zurich, or
a London Congress.
The interrogations in Soviet jails are often reminiscent of
medieval religious disputes. The interrogator is not only a political
inquisitor but also an ideological polemicist. In a contemporary
trial, conviction hinges on proving the defendant's gui lt rather than
on his confession. But as we know, in the inquisition trials, confes–
sion was essential, hence the u e of torture as the most effective way
to extract it. The Soviet trial ha the arne aim-that of "convincing"
the one who is judged or at least of winning the debate. The
interrogator has to be a trained debater. For a run-of-the-mill Soviet
interrogator, discussions with Erli ch and Alter were comparable to a
tournament between a small-time chess player and a Grand Master.
The inquisitor would find himself in an impossible situation: he had
to admit either the absurdity of his position or Stalin's fallibility.
The Soviet prison system was reminiscent of the prisons in the
periods of the religious wars in yet another respect: it came down
hardest on the dissidents. The Spanish Inquisition , as is well known,
was much gentler in dealing with the heathen Aztecs, the Moslem
Arabs, or even the schismatic Slavs.
It
unleashed its greatest fury
toward Protestants, toward those who left Rome, especially if they
had done so recently or covertly. Those Poles who assumed that the
chief targets of Soviet repression would be a prince, a landowner, a
priest, a semifascist politician, or a banker were surprised to learn
that the first ones to be arrested and the last ones to be released were
'a noted Polish painter and essayist.
