CENTRAL EURO PEAN WRITERS
AS A SOC IAL FO RCE
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his hotel room was insuffi cient , the furniture ugly, the se rvi ce ineffi cient
and unhelpful. He even suggested that Gide, a sensitive man and an artist,
had been similarl y irritated and offended by the Russians. In brief, much
of the time th ere Feuchtwange r was in a foul mood, tho ugh somewhat
appeased by the enthusiasti c ovations he received in the theater and by his
interview with Stalin . Howeve r, he continued to complain : he did not
get hi s mail on time; the editor o f
Pravda,
Mekhli s (a parti cularly unsa–
vory charac ter) had asked him to make some changes in his article about
the Stalin cult.
Feuchtwange r' s Sovi et companion complained that despite all the
preca uti onary meas ures and controls that had been made, Feuchtwange r
was seeing all kinds o f doubtful characters. Thus, Piscator's wife had told
him about the housing situati on in Moscow; last summer she had spent
seve ral weeks in th e stree t beca use she had no shelter. H e wanted to
know whether it was true that Pasternak was in disfavor and no longer
pri nted . Why, he as ked , did th e Russian leaders publish only the nine–
teenth- centu ry classics,a nd why we re they afraid of modern w riters? He
had long conve rsa ti ons w ith Soviet offi cials about democ racy and free–
dom of speech, but he to ld hi s compani on that they had no t persuaded
him . Yet unlike G ide, he was not an aesthete, so he went on to defend
Stalin 's poli cy and , above all , the trials.
Gide was po litica ll y mo re naive than Feuchtwange r. H e had taken
the news about th e new democ rati c constituti on seri ously, and he was
bitterly di sappo inted wh en he rea lized that, fa r from becoming mo re
democ rati c, the Sov iet regime was turning mo re and more tyrannical.
Feuchtwange r was not di sillusioned , since he had no illusions in the first
place. A Ru ss ian commentato r, Plutnik , w riting in 1990 exagge rates
when he observes that " Feuchtwange r was not deceived . He saw every–
thing and understood everything." He saw ve ry little in hi s three weeks
in Moscow, and he did not , of course , understand everything. Above all,
the behavior o f the defendants in the trial he attended and the accusa–
tions against them remain ed a riddle to him . It is doubtful w hether he
was convinced by hi s own explanations. Why did the acc used not defend
themselves? H e repo rted what the Soviet people were saying, but this was
not quite persuasive. Perhaps he had missed something in translation? He
concluded that probably a maj o r Russian w riter was needed to explain
th is psycho logica l mys te ry. But there was no such w riter. After hi s
departure, Feuchtwa nger ceased to be interested in Moscow, Stalin , and
the trials. H e remained a fell ow traveler and signed va rious appeals in
defense of the Sovi et Union . He did not w rite the se ri es o f profiles he
had promised his hosts about the outstanding leaders he had met such as
Molotov, Voroshil ov, and so on . Instead , he went back to his historical
