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PARTISAN REVIEW
Communist Dmitrov at the Nazi trial). It was in facing their
OWll
apparatus of repression and deceit that the architects of the October
Revolution found themselves caught in a web of complicity and sub–
servience. The monstrous frame-up in which they were arraigned was but
a gruesome sequel to, and a grotesque extension of, the falsehoods they
had perpetrated, the frame-ups they had helped engineer in the service of
the Party which now, in turning on its own, wanted their blood.
To probe the similarities and the differences between Steklov's
"explanation" and Arthur Koestler's well-known hypothesis would take
me too far afield. Let me return to Wat's text. Shortly after his
"confession," StekJov, clearly at the end of his tether, is removed from
the room which he has shared with Wat. As he is being taken away, he
manages
to
cry out: "When you return to Poland, tell them how old
StekJov was dying!"
As it happened, it tookWat a number of years to fulfill this request.
Yet the old revolutionary could not have found a more responsive lis–
tener or a better chronicler than the ex-radical Polish intellectual, already
in the throes of an anguished quest for the essence of
Ie mal
dll
siecie
-
of
his, and our, century's fatal affiiction.
Donald Fanger:
Thank you, Victor. Our next speaker is Michael Heim.
His topic is "Central European Writing in America ."
Michael Heim:
Until recently the Central European confronted by
even the best-meaning Americans had to put up with the almost mythical
"Yugoslovakia/Czechoslavia syndrome," according to which the string
of nation-states stretching between the once and now current Germany
and Russia represented a barely distinguishable gray mass. It is true that
the real parameters of the situation there were occasionally clarified by
current events: during an invasion or civil war the American public,
bombarded by the media, would sort things out for a while, but a year
or two later the confusion would return. Interestingly enough, the
Central European media are now reporting an analogous phenomenon.
A recent article in the Hungarian press begins by decrying the American
innocent who gushes about his two-day stay "in your beautiful capital
Bucharest," but goes on to ask how many Hungarians know that the
capital of California is neither Los Angeles nor even San Francisco. Given
that the population of Hungary is roughly half that of California, the
author of the article concludes, isn't the Hungarian who blanks at the
mention of Sacramento as provincial as the American who confuses
Bucharest with Budapest?
