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cion (and political violence) implicit in the existing literature, including
that which deals with the Nazi case. In the first group are the ideologically
driven, supposedly incorruptible, puri tanical executioners (metaphorically
speaking), exemplified in the Soviet case perhaps by Feliks Dzerzhinsky
and Hirnmler in the Nazi one.
Resulting in part from the inOuence of Hannah Arendt the former
type came to be eclipsed in popular as well as scholarly thinking by indi–
viduals of the second type such as Eichman personifYing the "banality of
evi!." These were supposedly very ordinary human beings who found
themselves in situations which imposed on them these unappealing roles;
they followed orders without being driven by strong convictions. Money
and privilege were sometimes factors, as in the former Soviet Union and
communist Czecholovakia where even within the state security system
there was distaste for domestic or internal surveillance. According to one
former employee ''' No one wanted to do this work - arresting and inter–
rogating political people. So it paid weI!.'" As time went by the morale of
the Czech state security declined: "By the end of the 1980s the StB didn't
believe its own propaganda." Certainly in the lower echelons, convictions
were not an essential occupational requirement, and underlings had better
reasons to shift blame to their superiors, as in the obedience-to-authority
scenario. Among the latter even a former colonel in the KGB argued,
"The system made us develop hostility to each other, the system itself! ...
Hostility, revenge, denunciations, spy mania, all that was encouraged - all
stemming from the man himself, the man with the mustache. From top to
bottom these base instincts were encouraged!" He did have a point: these
attitudes were indeed encouraged but not everybody responded in the
same way to such encouragement.
Not only former KGB officials, but even those who eagerly cooperat–
ed with the regime in the regimentation of the arts resorted to time–
honored excuses and rationalizations. One of them was Tikhon
Khrennikov, a mediocre official composer and favorite of Stalin. He
became infamous for the denunciation of Prokofiev and Shostakovich in
1948. More recently he asserted that he merely obeyed the order of the
Central Committee, "he didn't write the speech that was thrust into his
hands a few hours before he was due to speak." Moreover, "Nobody could
say no to Stalin ... My conscience is clear. . .. You had to live in that
atmosphere to understand what was going on."
Apparently the conscience of Vladimir Kryuchkov, the las t head of the
KGB (and leader of the 1991 putsch attempt against Gorbachev) was also
clear. In a conversation with the American journalist and author David
Remnick, he said:
