60
PARTISAN REVIEW
Lenin warned that " ... there are no ... serious battles without field hos–
pitals near the battlefields. It is altogether unforgivable to permit oneself
to be frightened or unnerved by 'field hospi tal' scenes. If you are afraid of
the wolves, don't go into the forest."
There was also the time-honored recourse to the claim of collective
self-defense, as articulated by Molotov, who even in the 1980s insisted that
the Purges were necessary, defensive and to the good of society. Soviet
authori ties always justified the various campaigns of coercion and poli tical
violence as strictly defensive measures, essential for the survival of the sys–
tem under attack by internal and external enemies of exceptional cunning
and evil. For instance, Vladimir Farkas recalled a high-ranking Soviet
political police officer who illustrated the cunning of "the enemy" (the
almost mythical entity and counterpoint to the Party) with a story about
a group of unmasked anti-Communist spies who, when in front of the fir–
ing squad, cheered Stalin and the Soviet Union: "They did so ... in order
to sow confusion even at the last moment of their lives, in the minds and
hearts of the soldiers executing them, by suggesting that they were going
to shoot loyal Communists."
More recently, vague references to "the times," as in the case of Yegor
Ligachev discussing particular mass murders of the N KVD in the 1930s,
have served a similar purpose. Apparently during certain periods, seen as
prolonged emergencies, a "temporary" suspension of ethical standards had
to be accepted. Anatoli Sudoplatov (who used to be in charge of assassi–
nations abroad, among other things) also believed that the historical
context provided absolution: " ... I do not intend to justifY what I did as
a member of foreign intelligence service from the 1920s to the early
1950s. That was a different time, a different historical period." This was
also the view of Ramon Mercader, the actual assassin of Trotsky who
wielded the pickaxe (and whom Sudoplatov employed in this task).
According to Sudoplatov, Mercader thought of himself as
... a professional revolutionary, proud of his role ... He told me: 'If I
were
to
relive the 1940s I would do the same thing, but not in the pre–
sent day world [of 19691.' He did not repent his murder of Trotsky. He
quoted the Russian saying 'One does not choose the time to live and
die' and said 'I would add
to
that. One does not choose the time to live,
die or kill.' It is clear to me now that present morals are incompatible
with the cruelty of the revolution, civil war and power struggles that
follow them ... There was no way for Stalin to treat Trotsky in exile
as merely a writer of philosophical books; Trotsky was an active enemy
who had to be destroyed.
