PAUL HOLLANDER
59
Loyalty to the Party or the Cause is less helpful for understanding the
motives of the generation of post-Stalin, post-Khrushchev leaders and
functionaries who were neither participants in a revolution nor highly ide–
alistic pioneers of radical social change which followed it.
It
is more likely
that what for the early generation of revolutionary leaders was legitima–
tion by ideali stic belief became for their successors a way of habi tual
thinking (or non-thinking), as far as the Party's power to legitimate expe–
dient but amoral policies was concerned. Nonetheless it is probably safe to
say that each generation of leaders and specialists (and their underlings)
took it for granted that their goals were sublime enough to sanitize - from
the long-range historical perspective - the means used to attain them; each
subscribed to Lenin's belief that "our morality is completely subordinated
to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat" and that "every–
thing that is done in the proletarian cause is honest." There was of course
a great lati tude in deciding what were the interests of the proletariat and
even in defining who precisely belonged to it. But there was no doubt that
the Party and its leaders were the ul timate arbi ters of these choices and
decisions.
In the final analysis it is probably most fruitful to combine two
approaches to account for the attitudes and behavior of the people whom
I called the specialists in coercion. In the first, the emphasis is on idealis–
tic commi tment, in the second, on its seeming opposi te: the love of power,
the flaws of character, even human depravity.
It
is difficult to separate these
two, since the lofty ideals were the most compelling justification for hold–
ing on to, or maximizing power by any means available, and for crushing
mercilessly those who would challenge it.
In
support of the first approach one may argue that the specialists were
more deeply commi ted
to
the sys tern and its val ues than those in other
realms of the hierarchy whose tasks and roles required a lesser degree of
ruthlessness. High-ranking officials in charge of the political police were
directly confronted with the potential dilemma of ends and means; they
had to use the most distasteful means; they needed particularly strong con–
victions and defenses to assure themselves that what they did was essential
and justified by some higher purpose or morality. Even the Nazis were
aware of this need and occasionally faced up to the task of explicitly jus–
tifYing the mass murder of civilians, as in the notorious speech HimmJer
gave to SS leaders in which he acknowledged that the mass killing of civil–
ians was not an easy task and required overcoming "human weakness."
The most satisfactory way to assuage incipient guilt or disgust was for
the specialists to remind themselves of the long-range goals and benefits
for which they were striving and the ideals enshrined in the theory which
guided them. The struggle for the new world required painful sacrifices.
