DANIEL BELL
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a higher moral order and possessed the only true claim to universal–
ism and freedom . Politically, this belief was the justification of the
Communist effort to undermine the Weimar Republic , to attack the
Socialists as "social-fascists ," to insist that fascism was "the last stage
of monopoly capitalism," and even, as Georg Lukacs stated in that
startling last testament (published in 1971 ), that "I have always
thought that the worst form of socialism was better to live in than the
best form of capitalism." •
The larger framework of the
PR
sentence was the Cold War.
This was 1952. There had been the takeover of Czechoslovakia and
the defenestration ofjan Masaryk. A whole new series ofpurge trials
had unrolled in Europe . In Prague, Rudolf Slansky, the general
secretary of the Party, and the other defendants "confessed" to being
"Zionist agents" in league with
R. H.
Crossman and Koni Zilliacus,
the left-wing leaders of the British Labour Party, in a plot against
the Soviet Union. In Hungary, it was Rajk; in Bulgaria, Petkov.
Zhdanovism had been reinstated in Russian culture and Akhmatova
denounced as a whore. The Jewish writers and artists, Bergelson,
Feffer, Michaels, had disappeared (and been murdered) . The city of
Berlin had become divided.
In Europe the intellectual lines were sharply drawn. Merleau–
Ponty, the French philosopher and an editor of
Les Temps Modernes,
had written a book,
Humanisme et Terreur,
restating the justification of
terror as a necessary defense of the Revolution . Sartre declared that
one should not discuss the Soviet concentration camps, lest that give
aid to its enemies and help the United States . Brecht had gone back
to East Berlin. Ernst Bloch, the philosopher, had returned from New
York to Leipzig. Lukacs had resumed his apologias in Budapest. In
Paris, Louis Aragon , dominating the French literary establishment,
led an onslaught against the critics of Stalinism. On the other side
were the voices of Koestler, Silone, Aron, Sperber, Milosz and
Orwell- but they were in a minority and were looked on as "rene–
gades," with the revulsion that some individuals felt (at that time) for
defrocked priests.
*See,
Georg Lukacs: Record ofa Life,
edited by Istvan Eorsi (London: Verso Editions,
1983), p. 181. See also the editor's introduction, pp. 16-20, for the psychological
basis of Lukacs's fear of being "excommunicated" from the Party. "In his eyes,
Stalin's death camps were now a world-historical necessity, now surface pimples on
the blooming face of the totality," writes Mr. EOrsi.
