FRITZ STERN
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often-the analogies between their experience in totalitarianism and
earlier experiences, that the European past was a kind of mirror to
their own anguish? I had the impression that these generously atten–
tive and responsive audiences and I were at times embarked on an
unusual, revelatory venture together. The truth of that impression is
untestable .
So it seemed to me, at least at the very beginning. My hosts had
selected German fascism as my first topic; other lectures were to be
on Bismarck , on the First World War, on Germany in world politics.
In contemplating these lectures I had thought, "What is Hecuba to
them?" only
to
sense within the first few minutes of the first lecture
that the story of German fascism gripped them with an immediacy I
could not have anticipated. Perhaps luck helped to make that first
lecture so memorable: at the last minute the Chinese produced a
translator who communicated not just words but my own passion,
whose rendition of my text seemed electrifying, and who spoke with
what seemed
to
me to be exceptional fervor. (I discovered later that
he had recently switched from the natural to the social sciences, that
he was now steeping himself in American-European sociology-that
" bourgeois pseudo-science" which in its emphasis on empirical fact
confirms the current party line favoring pragmatism. This sociolo–
gist was staking his career on the durability of the present course of
Chinese policy. The charming manager of the Institute of World
History spoke fluent Korean and Russian-the result of a decreed
miscalculation. One must hope that the rapidly expanding cadre of
English-speaking Chinese will not someday also constitute an excess
of expertise.)
I began that first lecture with some remarks about the anteced–
ents of fascism, about "a longing for fascism" in pre-1914 Paris,
Berlin, and Vienna-a longing among writers and rabble for some–
thing more authoritarian, more disciplined, more heroic than an
inequitable, rapacious, dull bourgeois society or a socialist utopia
that many thought would deny or enfeeble the nation. Despite these
ideological rumblings , fascism proved the
unexpected
revolution;
before 1914, Europe anticipated-and the elites feared-a socialist
revolution. This theme led me to make some fervent remarks about
Jean J aures and Rosa Luxemburg, the two great tribunes of the
Second International who alone could have become the challengers
to Lenin for the soul of European socialism. At the mention of Rosa
Luxemburg, a Chinese colleague whispered to me, "We have just
