PAUL HOLLANDER
57
between the present and the future and that the latter
will
not
be contam–
inated by the practices of the present; it was the denial (again as summed
up by Lei tes) that
... the chance of attaining certain goals may be lessened by the ...
protracted and large-scale use of means which are at extreme variance
with them ...
. . . Bolshevik doctrine seems to imply that the actual or required state
of affairs existing before the full realization of Communism will be
reversed afterwards ... The use of means at sharp variance with the
state of affairs under Communism itself will not interfere with its
ultimate realization. The Party must accept as a matter of course any
expedient degree of discrepancy between means and ends.
Such attachment to "ultimate realization," that is, a pervasive future
orientation, derived from Marxism. Alexander Yakovlev a close associate
of Gorbachev and one of the most important voices for reform percep–
tively observed:
By making the illusory future more important than humanity,
Marxism gave people carte blanche to use any means when it came
to power ... thus placing them beyond good and evil. Positive values
- kindness, conscience, love, cooperation, solidarity, justice, freedom,
the rule of law - were unfit, useless. They weakened the class strug–
gle.
Yakovlev, unlike those who absolve Marx of any responsibili ty for the
outrages committed in his name, notes that Marxism grew into " ... the
conviction that everything that corresponded to the interests of revolution
and Communism was moral. That is the morality with which hostages
were executed, the peasantry was destroyed , concentration camps were
built and entire peoples were forcibly relocated." Dedication to the best
interests of abstractions such as "mankind" or "humanity" at the expense
of real human beings played a similar role. Again, Yakovlev (among many
others) was well aware of this fateful dichotomy: "Dostoyevky's Grand
Inquisitor speaks of love for humanity. But complete contempt for an
actual individual flows from this love."
Generations of Soviet Party functionaries, and before them revolu–
tionaries, internalized the myth of the Party which allowed them to divest
it of all responsibility for the errors and horrors commited on its behalf,
