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by the positive features: "I have no shadow of a doubt that the best
hopes of the world rest on the assumption of a Soviet victory."
However, Rolland apparently did have some dire forebodings. He
would not have dreamed of uttering these doubts in public, but he did
write to Stalin in 1937 asking for clemency for Bukharin, whom he had
met in Moscow two years earlier. About the mass terror, he wrote at
the end of 1937 in his diary: "I defend not Stalin but the Soviet Union, I
stand for freedom, for people who are masters of their own destiny.
Idolatry be it of Stalin, Hitler or MussoIini is a most damaging thing."
It is more difficult to find mitigating circumstances for Feucht–
wanger's book - except one perhaps; the subtitle was "a report for my
friends." This was a propagandistic work which the Soviet authorities
produced in record time. The manuscript was translated within a few
days, typeset in twenty-four hours, and printed within two to three
weeks in Moscow, Amsterdam, and New York. Two hundred thousand
copies in Russian were produced, but
habellt slia fat libelli,
soon after
withdrawn.
It
was never reprinted and was excluded from the Russian
edition of Feuchtwanger's collected works. It was thought that
Feuchtwanger's approach would be very effective for Western
consumption, yet for the Soviet public he was too objective, even
critical. After attending the Radek-Pyatakov trial, for instance, he wrote
that for people in the West the basic motives of the accused and their
behavior in court could not be wholly comprehensible. He also wrote
that the deification of Stalin could not be comprehended as long as one
looked at the Soviet Union through Western eyes.
His Soviet hosts were in a great hurry to get some statement out of
him even before his book was to appear, and thus he was invited to
write an article for
Pravda.
[t appeared on December 30th, 1936, and was
titled, "An Aesthete in the Soviet Union." [n it, he dealt with Andre
Gide's allegations that there was a cult of the individual in the Soviet
Union. It is true, Feuchtwanger wrote, that Stalin was honored in the
Soviet Union in a way not customary by Western standards. But if one
looked at the phenomenon closely, one would find this had nothing re–
ally to do with Stalin as a person, rather with Stalin as the embodiment
of socialism. It was not an artificial cult; it had developed as the result of
real socialist achievements. People were grateful to Stalin for their having
bread and butter, education, law and order, and for creating a strong
army. When the people said "Stalin," it meant prosperity and enlighten–
ment.
Was Feuchtwanger aware of the rea l situation in the Soviet Union?
Up to a point, yes, although sometimes for the wrong reasons. He con–
stantly complained about the lack of material comforts there; the light in
