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PARTISAN REVIEW
words and articles about the economic crisis or recession, without
any positive solution in sight.
At that time I became attracted to Marxism for two reasons:
that Marxism promised a humane solution, and particularly
that it claimed to be a science, and, as such, a tool, a guide
to
how to create a humane society. At this time I became a member
of a small group of Marxist theoreticians. During the War, in the
exiled government in London, I was in charge of the ministry
dealing with the future of Czechoslovakia, where I tried to project
Marxist concepts into what we thought would be a very demo–
cratic society based on the Czechoslovak, the democratic tradition.
And though we came home, and I spent quite a lot of time in the
Soviet Union studying planning and the many economic prob–
lems there, I was appalled by the inhumane features of the society
and the inefficiency of the economy. I tried to ascribe it not so
much to Marxism as to the backwardness of the country and par–
ticularly to the effect of the war and the demoralization that ac–
companies war. But also in Czechoslovakia I could see that none
of our aims was being fulfilled. We did think that we were creating
a humane society, but it was everything but humane. We older
Marxists discussed it and asked ourselves, Where did we make a
mistake? We had no answer.
It so happened that, being in charge of the Ministry of For–
eign Trade, I had to negotiate with Mr. Mikoyan, the Minister of
Foreign Trade, a very powerful member of the Politburo, who
insisted that the Soviet Union should orient its exports toward
the Soviet Union and not toward the West, while I insisted that
foreign trade should-be oriented toward the West-the highly
developed West-because that was where our future lay. And al–
though under those political conditions he had to give in and
sign such an agreement, very soon the Communist Party took
over and the Soviet government had its bridge heads in the form
of some secret agents in Czechoslovakia.
The
proble~
was solved in a very simple way: I was put in
prison by the Soviet intelligence officers. They organized the
Slansky trial our moderator spoke about, and I was sent to jail
for life. I spent eleven years in prison, which in itself was not of
great interest for me and my future. What is of interest is that I
was in solitary confinement for five years altogether, and it proved
to be, apart from many inconveniences, an ideal condition for
