T H E HUMANIT IES AN I) CULTUR E H EROES
749
powe r or their fun cti o n? W e are speakin g of hundreds of tho usands, if
not milli ons, of peopl e, who we re connected with the old regime. It is
nea rl y impossible . To address this problem , our parliament has put into
effec t some laws that are controve rsial but not really severe: some people
who had hi gh- leve l Party fun cti o ns or were members of the militia are
not all owed
to
have leading positi o ns fo r fi ve yea rs. This was a comp ro–
mi se between leg:l lity and th e press ures from below. I opposed thi s law,
but it was accepted. I guess it is just o n the brink o f acceptabili ty, give n
th e diffi cult peri od we live in .
Q llcstiol/."
T hi s is direc ted to Doris Lessing. Politi cal romanti cism inflated
the va lu es of th e Soviet systems and di sparaged those o f the W est. It
seems
to
me thi s arose o ut of a so rt of bad consc ience. Do you agree?
How do you explain it?
Doris Lessing:
Do you mean bad consc Ience in th e W est o r my bad
conscience?
Q IICSlioll :
Th e infl ati o n o f th e va lues of Communism by Western intell ec–
tu als, whi ch yo u spo ke o f, and th e di sparagement o f th eir own values
and th ose o f their own cultures, came o ut o f a bad consc ience of some
so rt . Do you agree?
Doris Lessing: I
th ink that fo r some reason or oth er - hi sto ri ans would
be able to explain why - in th e W est th ere has been an expectati o n of
some kind of idea l, o r perfect, or mu ch better soc iety than we've got. I
don ' t kn ow w he re thi s has come from , and I' ve spent a lot of time
thinking abo ut it recently. Why are we so terribl y dissa ti sfi ed with a kind
of soc iety that, however imperfec t, is actually pretty good for most of its
citi zcns? Where docs thi s di ssa ti sfac tion come from? Sometimes it ari ses
from contcmpt and loa thin g for the countries we live in. Until recentl y
people here tho ught that the grass was greener in the Communist coun–
tri es, o r if it was n' t greener, th en it was go ing to be. This was all roo ted
in a di slike of what we've go t. I have no idea where it comes from . It
ce rtainl y leads to extrao rdinary paradoxes. Yo un g people in Britain , fo r
ins tance, go o ut from fa irl y pri vileged positi o ns to work in third world
countri es beca use th ey arc Communists. I'm talking abo ut Zimbabwe.
T hey find th e Ill ost appalling conditi ons, and th eir hea rts break. They see
yet aga in that parad ise docs not exist. But why people expect it to exist,
is th e po int.
