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Nor was skepticism in evidence when he regurgitated the official figures
about gains in health care and education, and especially in overcoming il–
literacy by converting barracks to classrooms. Such lapses of skepticism also
allowed him to justify the lack ofelections:
"It
must be admitted, elections in a
country like Cuba are deeply divisive...."; many readers would also feel
uncomfortable with his all too judicious reflections on revolutionary violence:
"foreign critics must remember that revolution and civil war are not a gen–
eral election....." A long section describing his depressing meeting with a
Cuban writer no longer free to publish ends abruptly with, "But enough of
this gloom...." as he cuts to sunny Varadero Beach.
Cuba, Yes?
(like both
editions of
The Fellow Travellers)
ends inconclusively, the author seemingly
determined not to sum up, evaluate, or draw conclusions.
It is not surprising then that the new chapter on Cuba (and coinciden–
tally the entire new edition of
The Fellow Travellers)
ends on the following
dispirited note: "This may be an apposite point at which to conclude a jour–
ney in intellectual history spanning sixty years but now-perhaps-at a dead
end." For one thing, the phenomenon in question is far from being at a dead
end as the immense popularity of political tourism to Nicaragua has shown;
more importantly, it is hardly apposite to conclude a book without an attempt
to evaluate the range of phenomena it described. A failure to do so is partic–
ularly conspicuous in a second edition that provides a longer time span for
putting matters into a historical perspective and thus affords new opportuni–
ties for a summation.
Perhaps one reason for this reluctance to seek more illuminating
conclusions may be found in what was and appears to remain the major the–
oretical premise of the original study. It is put forward in identical form in
Chapter Seven of both editions entitled "A Postscript to the Enlightenment."
(These words also used to serve, but no longer do, as subtitle of the book. If
Caute finds the proposition entailed in this phrase less apt today than at the
time of the first edition, he does not say; retaining the chapter but not the
subtitle adds to the ambiguities.) Still, the chapter is there, and it does include
the gist of the theoretical argument. In fact, both editions might have con–
cluded more satisfactorily with this chapter. Although inexplicably not used
as a concluding chapter, the theme "the postscript to enlightenment" seeks to
provide understanding of the phenomenon the author sought to chronicle.
The problem is that there was more (or less, depending on how we look at
it) to fellow travelling than the appeal of the values of the Enlightenment
misidentified as inspiring the Soviet system. "The postscript to enlightenment"
thesis has its problems even in regard to the by-gone attractions of the Soviet
Union. At the same time Caute seems to suggest (correctly) that these
Enlightenment values do not adequately explain the attractions of Cuba and
