DIANA TRILLING
809
DT:
And that was the break?
DM:
Yes. It showed something very serious, that they were not
willing, as I thought they were, to go all the way in breaking with
the Old Man [Trotsky] and with Marxism.
DT:
Where did you get the money for
Politics?
DM:
Partly from the remnants of my savings from my
Fortune
job.
Partly, perhaps mostly, from a small income, a trust fund, that
Nancy [Macdonald] had. In those days, it didn't cost much. Our
deficit in some years was under a thousand dollars.
DT:
But you and Nancy did all the work.
DM:
Yes, of course, and we didn't have any salaries. But we paid
five dollars a page. Not very much. One of the reasons I gave it
up, outside of being tired of it and realizing that no magazine can
go on forever- you know, they have lives just like people do- is
that I was just fagged out.
DT:
Dwight, what did you feel about Yalta?
DM:
I felt disgusted. That was a sell-out. We just delivered it over–
they didn't have to do it, you know. Stalin was leading from weak–
ness. He just bluffed them. We didn't have to stop at the Elbe,
and Berlin didn't have to be divided. During the war everybody
began again to love Stalin.
DT:
Do you believe that the Soviet Union and America, when they
have detente, have something that has significance? Isn't it simply
a momentary strategy and tomorrow it can change?
DM:
Of course, but I don't think it's a one-sided thing. I don't think
it's a plot on the part of the Soviets against this country or vice
versa. I think that detente is useful just as I thought it was useful
for Nixon to go to China and bring it back into the community of
nations , recognize the fact that there is such a thing as China.
And I'm delighted by what's happening in China now [1979] be–
cause, as you know, it's completely counterrevolutionary. I dis–
cover, every time I hear the word revolution, that everything
revolutionary is lousy .
DT:
Don't you want a revolution?
DM:
Of course not . I mean, yes, I want a revolution but an anar–
chist revolution, which will never happen in this country.
DT:
Dwight, you wrote about the 1949 Waldorf Conference–
DM:
You mean the conference of the Stalinists? I wrote about it in
Politics.
DT:
Who was the moving spirit in the plan to break it up? Was it
Sidney Hook?
