BOOKS
665
It is perhaps a paradox that this secretive bureaucrat should be so obvi–
ously endowed with star quality. But star quality it is. Both
in
his person
and his prose, the most lustrous feature of the man's style is pride-always
a useful trait in an apologist. His now-familiar face is lined with the weary
arrogance of one who has spent a lifetime being the brightest, most force–
ful, and (until 1989) usually most powerful person in any given room. He
is a man of evident and insolent intelligence, transparently arrogant, cul–
tivated, and calculating. He is radiant with an immunity to shame and a
cool disdain for the petty provincialism of mere truth. Curiously, a life–
time of deception helps make him believed. Above all, Wolf generates
awe; he looks positively sated with self-confidence, which has not, it
seems, been shaken even a little by the universal discredit that now covers
his lifework and the dismal castle of criminality and lies within which he
once secretly ruled.
For rule he did, and now that he rules no more, Wolf's chosen mission is
to defend and rationalize communism-his communism---against its discred–
it. The task is of course impossible, but Wolf clambers around the impossible
with such suppleness that it looks easy. Double
talk
helps. That, and an essen–
tially mendacious tone. If the smooth stuff here is to be believed, this lifelong
enemy of democracy---sworn, serious, and murderously effective-has always
been a matchless friend of liberalism, a crusader for good government,
Stalinist-style. Wolf avoids predictable pitfalls; he understands the futility of
mere denial, mere loyalty to the old lies. He easily-too easily---adrnits all kind
of evils and errors. Indeed, almost every senior figure
in
the history of the
GDR is seen as a knave or fool. Pig-headed brutes, the pack of them, all except
for-well, guess.
Wolf's prose is readable; he has interesting and probably even truthful
things to say on subjects ranging from the Otto John case to the motives
of gigolos, from the construction of the Wall to the mind of his hero and
patron in police statesmanship, Yuri Andropov. That liberal. Yet, claiming
to tell all, Wolf has surprisingly little to say that is new about the Cold War,
or even communism. Despite the grand tone, this is little more than a pack
of smooth evasions and contradictions, anecdotally dressed up. Wolf
sounds
like he is telling us truths. He is avoiding them. Rather than fill a page with
these evasions, let me focus on one above all: criminality.
Criminality has of course been a highly publicized issue in Wolf's
post-Wall saga, and he writes at length about his successful defense against
the German government's prosecution of him for some of what it con–
tends are his many crimes. Though the Germans have managed to convict
Egon Krenz and some fifty-five other GDR officials for various offenses,
Wolf has successfully maintained that he cannot be tried by one govern–
ment for actions he performed, legitimately, as a citizen of another
