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place, we must acknowledge that fewer intellectuals were taken in by
fascism than by communism-and that the naivete of well-inten–
tioned, honest, and democracy-loving people was colossal. Inspired
by the promises of Marx for a better world and led to believe that
Soviet society was its incarnation, they tended to cling to their hopes
for a proletarian revolution in spite of overwhelming evidence–
until much later, when they got ready to publish their" self-criticisms."
Lottman locates Ilya Ehrenburg, the Soviet writer, correspon–
dent, and secret agent who moved easily between Moscow and
Paris, at the center of this grand deception. He facilitated many
jaunts to the Soviet Union-and to the First Soviet Writers Congress
in August 1934 , which was followed in 1935 by its international
counterpart in Paris. (A similar congress took place in the U .S.
about that time.) Told that the early congresses were to oppose fas–
cism, participants continued to be duped about their other aims .
Later congresses built on these intellectuals' genuine wish for peace,
and on their glorification of the working class, to serve the interests
of the communists. What amazes us most of all is the fact that the
French were blind for so long, probably due to their chauvinism,
which, after World War II , turned into a special sort of anti–
Americanism. By then, Paris and its literary Left Bank had become
a cog in the machine, as Communists were expected to offer their
reputations to defend, for example, Soviet philosophy of science, or
to conform to a narrow doctrine of Socialist Realism. They were
supposed to make speeches justifying the purges in Eastern European
countries and to help the Communist side in the "show trials."
Feeling themselves trapped between the two large power blocs–
Stalin offered peace and brotherhood and the United States guaran–
teed basic freedoms-some began to talk of a third way, that is, of
neutrality. One of the major proponents of this position, of course,
was Sartre-until 1951, when he found that it was "impossible to
take an anti-Communist position without turning against the prole–
tariat" and declared himself a fellow traveler. As we know, this led
to his break with Camus, whose
L'homme revolte-an
examination of
the perversion of the revolutionary ideal to justify murder, and a
more "left" reply to Stalinism than Arthur Koestler's
Darkness at
Noon-is
probably the best work on these dilemmas .
Lottman's book ends before Krushchev's revelations at the
XXth Party Congress in 1956, before Sartre 's move away from the
Party, and before the many other defections, when "the Left Bank
