194
PARTISAN REVIEW
Of the journals sponsored by the Congress,
Der Monat
and
Encounter
were for years the most successful.
Der Monat
had the least difficulties be–
cause Germany had been cut off for twelve years from the outside world,
and there was a great desire there to retrieve what had been missed.
Monat
was in the 1950s the most influential publication in Germany, and
the most consistently interesting publication throughout Europe.
There was an openness and freshness about new ideas in early postwar
Germany that ceased to exist in later years. When the economic miracle
was achieved, large segments of the German intelligentsia turned to radi–
cal chic; the old German provincialism, self-righteousness, and
Besser
Wisserei
prevailed again. If in 1950 America could do no wrong, then in
1970 many intellectuals in Germany were anti-American. This brought
about the decline and demise of
Der Monat,
and it has not been succeeded
by a single even modestly interesting German periodical.
Both
Preuves
and
Tempo Presente
faced resistance. The mood of the
intelligentsia in France and Italy was
progressiste;
and fellow travellers
dominated key positions in cultural life. The Gaullists and the right also
disliked
Preuves
because of its Anglo-American connections and its lack of
enthusiasm for the Algerian war, among other reasons. Silone and his as–
sociate Nicola Chiaromonte were among the very few major Italian
cultural figures who had never collaborated or compromised with Fas–
cism, but it was precisely for this reason that they were not liked by the
gli indifferenti
who had produced their films and written their books under
Mussolini. Silone and Chiaromonte reminded them of their own mis–
deeds.
The record of many French intellectuals, including Sartre, was simi–
lar. Very few had been resisters, and they wanted to atone for their sins of
omission by joining the front rank of anti-Fascism - after Fascism had
ceased to exist. They persuaded themselves that Communism, purged of
its specifically Russian excesses, was the wave of the future; that Stalin
was an enlightened if somewhat harsh ruler; that the
Gulag
did not exist;
and that the Soviet system was making enormous progress in economic
and most other respects. These delusions did not fade until the late 1960s,
when Solzhenitsyn's books became bestsellers and Raymond Aron, ostra–
cized for decades, was at long last recognized as the most prescient French
thinker of his age; when Sartre and his
companions de route
were put in the
dustbin of history they had so often invoked when deriding their foes of
earlier years. To what extent did
Preuves
contribute to this change in the
French mood? It had a certain but most likely limited influence. The
French were not ready for an international journal of liberal persuasion
and the period was simply not propitious, although
Preuves
did receive
posthumous recognition many years later. It was a major influence in
