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which major figures receive all too much, but rather a call to serve a
great ideal, and to stand forth as one of the most virtuous, bravest,
and wisest in defending good against evil.
All this explains why the preponderant and best intellectuals in
the free countries felt from 1933 on that antifascism had become an
essential commitment to themselves and to all values that made
human life worth living. Some were antifascist because they had
long held leftist views . Others went over to the left because they
wanted to combat fascism . Miinzenberg's organization, like all the
other leagues, clubs and movements directed by the communists,
whether openly or surreptitiously, found so many adherents because
the words and deeds of the fascists, especially the Nazis, were fright–
ening to a growing number of people.
If
it was a question of freedom and the struggle against tyranny,
why did the antifascists not wage a similar struggle against Soviet
tyranny? Did not the Soviet Union also have a single party, identi–
fied with the state, which bowed to a leadership which in turn had to
leave all the decisions to a single man, hailed everywhere and at all
times as the glorious leader? This question should have become all
the more urgent insofar as the so-called proletarian dictatorship con–
solidated its monolithic character precisely in those years of passion–
ate antifascism and before everyone's eyes turned into Stalin's total
despotism.
Nevertheless the maxim still held: "In battle make common
front against the foe. Fix your gaze on him alone." Thus after the
rise of Hitler the antifascist was allowed to, had to forget Stalin's
despotism. Stalin's empire was, after all, the only one on earth which
could never turn fascist, because there the class system had been
eliminated, we were told, and a socialist country created .
Even the intellectuals with no communist leanings did not ob–
ject when the manifestos against the fascist fiends to which they put
their names contained ever more glowing paeans to the ideal and
freedom-loving character of the Soviet Union.
In the autumn of 1935 I became a permanent staff member of
the international Comite which from Paris called upon the world's
youth to rise up and oppose war and fascism .
It
had been founded,
financed, and led by the Youth Division of the Comintern . Dele–
gates from all nations were to represent those youth organizations
that were openly antifascist. I did not, of course, belong to the Youth
Division of the Comintern, but they offered me this post because for
