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PARTISAN REVIEW
The story of the Soviet Union in the last eighty years has been a
tragedy, for the Russians and the other Communist nations now free. It
has also been a tragedy, on a somewhat smaller scale of course, for Eu–
rope. Europe has been corrupted by it in obvious and not so obvious
ways, to what an extent it is too early to say. It has been corrupted be–
cause we've allowed our imaginations to be totally preoccupied with
other peoples' experience and not with our own, for one reason or an–
other. I think that it has been suggested here at this conference, many
times, that there are reasons that have not yet been examined. My con–
clusion is that until we know the patterns that dominate our thinking
and can recognize them in the various forms they emerge in, we shall be
helpless and without real choice. We need to learn to watch our minds,
our behavior. We need to do some rethinking. It is a time, I think, for
definitions.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you, Doris. The next speaker is Jakov Lind.
Jakov Lind:
It seems that my theme, "Changing Languages," has found
a wonderful introduction in Doris's remarks about what a tragedy for
the Russians Communism has been. Yes, it was a tragedy, which I would
like to pin down in my comments. It definitely was a tragedy for my
people, the Jews. I am a story-teller by profession, not a politician, not a
scientist, a literary critic, or philosopher. I will read you a story, just an
ordinary story. It happens to be my personal story, but it's not mine
alone. It is totally subjective, as all genuine stories are, a story unadorned
by garlands or perfumed petals. It is not romantic at all.
I did not do too badly for many years as an author who wrote in
the German language. I could have gone on writing in German. I had
done nothing else all my life. And then, suddenly, about in 1968, a
younger generation of restless students began to climb the barricades. In
Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, they protested what from my point of
view seemed to be their own bored, frustrated, uneasy expenence
In
postwar Europe. At the same time, while they were talking about
Ceaucescu, I decided that it was time for a change for me, too. The
young were smashing the last bit of sense of a mentally deranged society
that had been trying to rehabilitate itself ever since the end of World
War Two. The Baader-Meinhofs, the Red Armies, were breaching the
front lines of animal humanity, with bombs and bullets - in the name of
greater humanism. None of the "pamphleted sap," as I call it, produced
in French, German, Italian, Dutch, was translatable into English; it just
read like trash.
I needed my per onal revolution; I felt I had to keep moving west–
ward. Claustrophobia, nausea, asthma, whatever you call it - but it was
