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PARTISAN REVIEW
And yet, in a way, Stalin was trying (he had other objectives, to be
sure) to prove Lenin's and his own deeds forgivable, when he claimed
that socialism in one country could be achieved. If it were, then the
failure of world revolution would not invalidate morally the decision of
Lenin to overthrow the Kerensky government, from which followed
all
the crimes of the Soviet leaders.
Sozhenitsyn has detailed many of these crimes in his book,
The Gu–
lag Archipelago.
But there are two stories about Lenin, told to me by
Andrea CafE in Paris in 1949, and attested to by Ignazio Silone in Rome
in 1962, which for me at least best convey the attitude which made the
Bolshevik's crimes possible, and accepted. The first tells of Lenin at a
Party affair in Finland, before the revolution. A young recruit announced
to Lenin that he was quite ready to die for the Party, and Lenin was
unimpressed. "Many are," he replied , "so my question to you is this: 'are
you ready to pimp for the Party?' " The other tale has to do with
executions after the revolution. A comrade, well known to Lenin, came
to see him with a complaint against the secret police. They had arrested
his son and were about to execute him. And the man swore his son
was innocent. "I do believe you," replied Lenin, "but I know that nine
out of every ten persons shot by the G. P. U. are innocent. Why should
I intervene just for your son? And since I need the G. P. U., I have to
put up with their mistakes and injustices." In these tales we may grasp the
criminal thinking of the Bolshevik leader from which followed the par–
ticular illegalities and cruelties catalogued by Solzhenitsyn. What we have
here is the denial of moral experience as such.
Once again, despite their enormity are these crimes forgivable? By
Hegel's standard, yes, if something great was achieved which could not
have been brought into being otherwise, for instance: an international
revolt against capitalism or socialism in Soviet Russia. The first was no
longer possible in the early thirties, when Hitler came to power, the sec–
ond Trotsky and his followers claimed was contrary to Marxist theory.
But in that case there was no possible exculpation of the Bolsheviks, and
to say as much was also a crime. From this thought we may get some
sense of Stalin's hatred for Trotsky and his supporters, of Stalin's reasons
for staging the show trials and for ordering Trotsky's assassination.
That the Bolsheviks did not achieve their declared goal is incon–
testible, but there were positive developments throughout the world as a
result of their actions, which should moderate our judgment if not ex–
cuse their crimes. So I must insist here on the clear difference between
communism under Lenin, even under Stalin, and the Nazism of Hitler,
the fascism of Mussolini. This difference has been blurred of late. There
was Susan Sontag's remark in a speech just a few years back in which she
