21
THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF RESISTANCE
In spite of the effort of the totalitarians to destroy all separate existences, there remain in all these dictatorships some groups that manage to offer some resistance to totalitarian rule. The family, the churches, the universities and other centers of technical knowledge, the writers and artists — each in response to the rationale of their being — must, if they are to survive, resist the total demands of the totalitarians. They are islands, islands of separateness, in the totalitarian sea. As we have seen, the totalitarian regimes seek to divide and rule in the most radical and extreme way: each human being should, for best effect, have to face the monolith of totalitarian rule as an isolated "atom." By being thus atomized, the people with its many natural subdivisions becomes the "mass," and the citizen is transformed into the mass man. This mass man, this isolated and anxiety-ridden shadow, is the complete antithesis to the "common man" of the working free society. (107c) It is, therefore, rather misleading to speak of the subjects of such regimes as "citizens." They are rather denizens or even serfs of the ruling party, and only the members of that party as participants in governing the society can rightfully be said to be citizens, at least according to Aristotle's carefully developed notion of citizenship.
But men resist this totalitarian effort — not only those within the particular structures of family, church, and technical establishment, but all kinds of individuals. If one studies, for example, the social composition of the July 20, 1944, uprising in Germany, one finds that persons of all walks of life were involved. Soviet opposition to
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Stalin also was widely distributed among the population. (99; 302d; 295c) The same is true of the French resistance and the Polish resistance from 1939 to 1945, the latter taking the dramatic form of a veritable political organization of the underground. (247; 168)
In exploring the human motivations which lead to resistance, one finds that they are as varied as human personalities are. Moral indignation and thwarted ambition, religious scruples and personal revenge, patriotic fervor and class antagonism, these and many other contrasting impulses, ideas, and convictions have entered into the complex skein of resistance movements and acts. We say "acts" because it is important to realize that a great deal of resistance consists of isolated individual acts of protest. The old German lady demonstratively shopping at Jewish stores on boycott day, the Polish peasant helping to derail a train, the French shopkeeper going out into the street in the dark of night and writing on an empty wall, "A bas Vichy!" — these and many other similar token acts constitute what one might call symbolic resistance. As one studies the Gestapo records, it becomes evident that there was a great deal more of this kind of thing going on than has become known to the outside world; it presumably is going on in totalitarian regimes
now.
Under totalitarianism, however, such resistance, whether passive or active, encounters difficulties, which are generally underestimated in countries where a measure of passive resistance and even nonviolent coercion, as in strikes, is accepted because the recognized rights of the citizen enable him to adopt a resisting posture under the protection of law and constitution. (50) Conscientious objectors have been allowed to resist draft laws, and indeed such resistance has in turn been legalized, as have been strikes and other forms of passive resistance. Totalitarian regimes are characterized by a ruthless suppression of all such behavior, and resistance, even mere symbolic acts, have involved all the risks of criminal behavior. By contrast, there exist the subtle temptations that a Polish writer has brilliantly analyzed. (251a)
The problem of resistance is basic to the modern world. Albert Camus has offered the most sophisticated analysis in terms of the "man revolted," meaning thereby anyone who is revolted by the injustice and violence of a system of coercive order, who revolts
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against it, and who eventually finds himself revolted by the violence committed by the new system. (48) He argues that the reason for such revolt is that any moral judgment which fails to take reality into account becomes immoral and murderous. His is basically a plea against every kind of fanaticism and for that moderation, the bonne mesure, which enables a person to see himself in perspective. And he concludes: "Finally, when the revolution, in the name of power and history, becomes this deadly and unmeasured mechanism, a new revolt becomes sacred, in the name of measure and life." (48a) Much in line with the view that the island of separateness is the ultimate escape, he argues that such a revolt, such a resistance, is based upon the village and the professional group.
Throughout Soviet history, the record clearly shows, there have been symbolic acts of resistance. In addition, actual plots and conspiracies to overthrow the Bolshevik regime — quite a few, doubtless, fabricated by the secret police for the sake of eliminating inconvenient elements (37j), but others probably genuine — accompanied the rise of the totalitarian dictatorship. (66b) The course of early Soviet history actually could be traced in terms of the plots, conspiracies, and efforts to overthrow the regime. There is incontrovertible evidence that, for many years after the revolution, sporadic outbreaks against the Communist regime continued to occur. Individual acts of resistance took the form of industrial sabotage, efforts to foil state delivery quotas, defection to the outside world, and others. (161g) Former Soviet citizens have often testified that their parents made great efforts to indoctrinate their children against Soviet propaganda. Similarly, the press in the satellite regimes often refers to acts of individual resistance among students or clergymen. (78a)
It is evident that none of this activity seriously threatens the power of a totalitarian regime. But there have also been cases of larger groups of persons engaging in concerted acts of sabotage. We find, especially among the farming and working population, extended use of the slowdown as a weapon employed to combat the collectivization program, which the peasants in Russia, and lately in Central Europe, violently opposed. There have been numerous cases of Communist officials' being assassinated, local party buildings burned, collective farmers assaulted by noncollectivized peasants.
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Stalin himself testified to the violence of the collectivization period in the USSR in his conversations with the Western leaders during World War II. Even more serious in nature were the efforts by the various non-Russian nationalities of the USSR to assert their national distinctiveness through separatism and eventual statehood. To this day, one can read in the Soviet press virulent denunciations of "bourgeois-nationalists" in the national republics, and periodic purges of such resisters are a common feature of the Soviet scene. (37k; 161h) But after all is said and done, the most this sort of activity does is to maintain the self-respect of those participating because of the shared common danger.
It must be remembered, however, that the nationalist type of resistance is not entirely resistance to totalitarian dictatorship. Instead it is rooted in the sense of national freedom and patriotism that was also the central motif in the resistance movements against the German conquerors during World War II in France and elsewhere, as it was a mainspring in the Soviet zone of Germany. Such resistance, especially when supported vigorously from the outside, as was the French movement after 1942, has a psychological basis quite different from the hopeless resistance to totalitarianism with which we are here primarily concerned. (247) But the distinction is not a sharp one, as shown by the story of the uprising of the German workers of June 17, 1953. Starting from a labor demonstration against excessive work demands, the uprising spread like wildfire throughout the Soviet zone of Germany, since it was misinterpreted as in keeping with the New Course of the Soviet Union, It was not directed against the foreign occupying power, although the deep resentment aroused by Soviet policies no doubt played its ! role. Rather it was mounted to overthrow the East German Communist regime and to reorganize the zone along more democratic lines. (29) Even more dramatic was the 1956 uprising in Hungary and the corresponding events in Poland. This is not the place to detail the story, but certain key features deserve mention. The Hungarian revolt has been termed an "unexpected revolution" by a| distinguished analyst, who undertakes to show that what seemed a sudden event was in fact the result of a number of residual disruptive forces, which the rapidity of the Stalinist imposition of Communism had suppressed but not eliminated. But these forces could not
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have come into play if there had not been a split in the top leadership. As a consequence, this writer concludes that "only another succession crisis, in conjunction with acute economic difficulties, is likely to create conditions favorable to open mass protests." (173a)
The Hungarian revolt seemed to suggest to some writers that there existed a real possibility for the forcible overthrow of a totalitarian regime. They argued that only the outside intervention of the Soviet Union prevented it from occurring in Hungary. But was the Soviet Union really an "outsider"? Was not the totalitarian regime in Hungary a working part of the Soviet bloc of which the Soviet leadership is the key control? Should not the uprising be placed within the context of a process of re-establishing a measure of "polycentrism," of autonomous centers of national Communism, that is to say, national totalitarian regimes? It has been rightly observed that, in his efforts to resolve this problem of a communism suited to Hungary, efforts that Gomulka was at the same time successfully developing in Poland, Nagy "was transformed from a Communist whose practical perspectives were essentially domestic and on broad issues subordinated to general Soviet requirements, into a national Communist willing to put the purposes of Hungarian Communism above the imperatives of Soviet policy." (38f) Yet the revolt of the masses got out of hand, turned against communism itself, and was dissipated as a mere movement of dramatic protest; as such it was unplanned and without strategy for so difficult a task, like the German revolt of 1953. (241; 93)
There are, of course, those more elaborate undertakings, known as resistance movements, in which extended preparations are made by large numbers of persons with the purpose of overthrowing and destroying the totalitarian dictatorship and replacing it by some freer system. Such movements are more likely to occur at the beginning or at the end of a totalitarian dictatorship. The extended civil war in Russia, after the Bolsheviks seized power, is perhaps the most sizable effort of this kind. It must be noted, however, that the democratic forces in Russia found themselves, in the course of the civil war, between the hammer and the anvil. On the one side, there was the Bolshevik dictatorship, with the flaming and bloodthirsty rhetoric of Trotsky; on the other, the reactionaries Denikin, Wran-gel, and Kolchak. These representatives of the old order succeeded
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in retaining control over large portions of the former tsarist army and were able to launch a large-scale fight against the Bolshevik government, established in Petrograd. Not until 1920, after two years of continued batdes, did the Bolsheviks succeed in establishing effective control over the former tsarist empire, and they were still faced with the problem of national separatism in the Caucasus. (276) However, one of the most unfortunate results of tsarism was the weakness of organized resistance to Bolshevism once it did establish itself in power. The instances mentioned earlier were the last gasps of the old system, but its final heritage was a new autocracy.
Large-scale resistance to totalitarian power has been much more in evidence when the totalitarian system is challenged from without by a force powerful enough to encourage organized resistance from within. The uprising of July 20, 1944, occurred at a time when the doom of the Nazi regime was a foregone conclusion for all but the most fanatical followers of Hider. Nonetheless, it was a remarkable undertaking in which there really culminated a protracted series of efforts to remove the Hider regime by force. In spite of the failure of several earlier attempts, the main leaders of the movement carried on. As already mentioned, they came from all classes of the populadon except the peasantry. Workers and clergymen, businessmen and army officers, government officials, professors, and students formed part of the far-flung conspiracy, which almost succeeded. By a mere chance, Hider was not seriously hurt, and the Nazis drowned the effort in blood. More than two thousand men and women were executed, often after brutal tortures and public humiliation. (100; 399; 295; 76d) But although this most extended effort at violent resistance against a native totalitarian ruler failed, it nevertheless served an important moral purpose after the collapse of the regime. This spiritual end, however, must be weighed against the frightful loss of valuable democradc leadership. No really significant movement of this kind crystallized in Italy until the Allied armies had conquered a substantial part of the Italian soil. The partisans who were organized to assist the Allied armies did put up an heroic struggle at the end, but it was a fight waged in close cooperation with these armies. (308)
The comparable effort of General Vlasov never achieved the
r
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scope of the July 20 uprising. The Vlasov defection from Stalin in the early stages of the Nazi-Soviet war, as well as local efforts to aid the Germans in their military activities, could count on the greatest mass support in the period of German successes on the battlefield. Had it not been for the stupidity of the Nazi leadership, a most effective movement against the Communist regime might have been stimulated. (99b) Greater in scope and more spontaneous in its development was the Polish resistance, considered the most effective in Europe, which culminated in the Warsaw uprising of 1944. This popular movement, although it was launched immediately after the Nazi-Soviet partition of Poland in 1939, at first was designed to provide the skeleton institutions of a Polish state in readiness for the Allied victory. However, as German atrocities mounted, more and more it took the form of an "underground state," waging organized warfare against the occupiers. The Civil Directorate of Resistance organized a vast network of underground publications, schools, and universities, even police and courts. This High Command of the Home Army directed, by 1944, the operations of a field army of some 300,000 men engaged in guerrilla activities, as well as urban squads designed to carry out sabotage, diversionary activities, and executions of particularly oppressive Nazi officials. In August 1944, when the Soviet troops were approaching Warsaw, the Polish Home Army units in Warsaw — numbering some 30,000 men — seized the city after several days of bloody streetfighting against the retreating Wehrmacht and SS. However, for political reasons, the Red Army halted its advance, leaving the rebellious city to its own resources. After 63 days of lonely house-to-house resistance, the city finally fell and was razed to the ground on Hitler's orders. (168b; 185b; 29) In view of this background and the long antecedent history of Polish resistance to foreign domination, it is not surprising that strong anti-Communist resistance has existed in Poland, ever since Moscow took over. This was finally admitted by the regime itself, when it stated in 1956 that "enemies of the people" had killed some 30,000 of its supporters between 1945 and 1956, prior to the Poznan uprising in June 1956. The Poznan demonstration, much like the East German one, became a genuine attack on the regime, though presumably it was not planned in advance. The skillful coup d'etat by Gomulka, securing
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a measure of independence from Moscow and the withdrawal of Soviet military forces, was by contrast very carefully planned and executed with superb adroitness and sang-froid. (38g)
It can be seen that generally the Nazi dictatorship stimulated much more violent resistance than the Soviet, not only at home but also in captive areas. This fact is only partially due to the greater sophistication of the police methods of the MVD and the ability of the Communists, because of their ideological position, to recruit local cadres of support. The Nazi program, particularly in the occupied countries, was a thoroughly negative one. The entire population soon became aware that they were doomed to a position of perpetual subjugation, inferiority, and, in some cases, total extinction. This policy the Nazis proclaimed openly, and their subsequent measures bore out the proclamations. The populations, with their schools closed, career opportunities liquidated, and the national economy ruined and exploited, had no choice but to resist. And resist they did en masse, stimulated by open atrocities. The Soviets, on the other hand, most carefully mask their atrocities (the secret executions at Katyn being only one example), loudly proclaim their friendship for "the people," and allow the population certain positive goals to strive for, such as industrialization with all its subsequent career opportunities and hopes. The political opposition is thus caught on the horns of a bitter dilemma: to resist might mean to harm the national economy, by driving the Soviets into more violent measures. The nation's youth, even if opposed to the regime, still cannot fail to notice the positive advantages of cooperation, especially on a nonpolitical plane. Nonresistance soon finds a most convenient rationalization.
Resistance to Soviet tyranny has thus been most effective when a common basis for such resistance was evident. The most violent expressions of it accordingly occurred on a national basis, when the local communities became convinced that they were being destroyed by Soviet settlers, by Russians flocking into new cities. Similarly in the captive nations, open resistance, sabotage, and guerrilla activity decreased once the period of open Soviet plundering stopped, around 1946-47, and more refined methods of economic and political "integration" were developed. At the same time, the populations could not fail to note the large-scale efforts to build factories, the rebuilding of such cities as Warsaw (which the Poles considered a
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national shrine), the often fantastic projects for a glorious future, to be achieved by the most stupendous labors. All of this, however, is a potent weapon in the Communist arsenal for the weakening of political resistance.
It can be seen from these experiences that the chances of success in overthrowing a totalitarian regime are slim indeed. Many outsiders have been unjust in demanding, and unwise in expecting, the growth of resistance movements in the more developed totalitarian systems. It is extremely difficult to mount an effective opposition to a totalitarian dictatorship precisely because it is totalitarian. No organizations are allowed unless they bear the stamp of official approval and are effectively coordinated with the ruling party. Nor do the means exist by which an enterprising person might gather others for effective cooperation. The regime's total control of all the means of mass communication, as well as post, telephone, and telegraph; its complete monopoly of all weapons (except insofar as the military can manage to establish some measure of independence; finally, its all-engulfing secret-police surveillance, which utilizes every available contraption of modern technology, such as hidden recording devices, as well as the older methods of agents-provocateurs and the like — these and related features of totalitarianism make any attempt to organize large numbers of people for effective opposition well-nigh hopeless. People have criticized a man like Goerdeler for his foolishness in preparing lists of people and formulating written programs for action both before and after the overthrow of the regime. This sort of criticism is not without good foundation, but the critics fail to show how they would organize any large number of people without even these rudimentary devices for effective communication. What the critics, in other words, are really saying is that no resistance movement has any reasonable prospect of success, and that therefore anyone undertaking it is lacking in judgment. The only answer is that which one of the German resisters gave his wife six days before the attempt to kill Hitler: "The most terrible thing is to know that it cannot succeed and that, in spite of that, it must be done for our country and for our children." (197c) If this is true, and we believe it is, that no effort at resistance is likely to succeed, then no outsider has a right to adopt an attitude of righteous indignation at the failure of the people living under a totalitarian dictatorship to offer such resist-
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ance. It is one of the central rules of all sound ethics, a rule stressed by such a rigorous moralist as Kant, that no one is obliged to undertake actions that are beyond what he can do (ultra posse nemo obligator). At this point, the will to become a martyr for a cause begins, and to do this is always "beyond the call of duty." (26)
There is little disposition in free America to dispute the right of resistance to totalitarian tyranny, even though resistance to established government is hardly regarded with tolerance when directed against the American government. With Lincoln, Americans are inclined to say that there is no appeal from ballots to bullets — but against totalitarian violence, resistance seems to them not only allowable, but morally required. It is often forgotten that the problem of a right of resistance has been a serious concern of political thinkers for hundreds of years and that the weight of religious doctrine has been against it, though some exceptions have been allowed. (211; 313) On the whole, passive resistance is about all that both Protestant and Catholic moral teachings will permit. For the rest, the sufferings that the abuse of governmental powers inflicts are to be endured as a scourge by which God chastises a sinful mankind. However, the insistence of the churches that the people, even though obeying totalitarian regimes, must not accept totalitarian values places the churches in fact in opposition to these regimes. In the light of this situation, it is not surprising that so much of the impetus toward building an effective resistance has originated in religious circles. It has usually been the result of a profound internal struggle, a veritable "revolution in the conscience." This struggle has been the most intense where the actual killing of a totalitarian leader was being envisaged. (25; 197c) When this side of the problem is given proper attention, it seems quite preposterous that people living in freedom and security should demand that the subjects of totalitarian rule rise and overthrow their rulers. All the outsider can do is to assist the subject population as far as possible in bearing its burden. Such aid has been limited indeed.
In short, it can be said that even within the grip of a total demand for identification with a totalitarian regime, some persons and even groups of persons manage to maintain themselves aloof, to live in accordance with their personal convictions, and perhaps to
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organize some minor opposition to the regime. They are often inspired by hopes that the regime might be forcibly overthrown, farfetched as such hopes have proved in the past. Yet such islands of separateness are not only eloquent testimonials to the strength of human character and to the unquenchable thirst for freedom; they are also helpful in preserving some human beings for a better day.
—— I
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22
THE FAMILY
The basic and the most persistent of human groups is the family. Political thought has always recognized it, even in the days before the individual person was accepted as the foundation of the political order. Hence it is not surprising that the family should constitute an island of separateness that appears in all totalitarian regimes. All these regimes have been inclined to combat the family. In China, where the family was traditionally venerated as the sacred bond, "familism" and "fllialism" have been targets of the regime's brainwashing terror. The destruction of this devotion of son to father, and the substitution for it of a devotion to party and regime, are mainstays of the totalitarian approach. It has even been suggested that "the desperate urge to sweep away decaying yet still powerful filial emotions and institutions" produces the totalitarian approach to man. (217f)
There was originally a striking contrast in the approach of the communist and the fascist ideologies to the family, but this difference has been replaced by approaches that closely parallel each other, characterized by an acceptance, even a promotion, of the family. Yet the image is basically altered: no longer the preserver of tradition and the seedbed of personality and character, the family is seen primarily as the procreator of children who will strengthen the regime, as essentially an instrument for enhancing the power of the totalitarian dictatorship; family policy becomes an element of population policy. It is fitted into the over-all planning of the regime's social and economic efforts. At the outset, however, this was not the view of the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, they tended to depre-
cate the family, interpreting it as an institution linked to private property and typically bourgeois in nature. This dogmatic view had its roots in the preoccupation with the strictly economic phases of social structure and dynamics, though it was perhaps reinforced by the Bohemian style of living of many of the ideologues of Marxist persuasion. Just as Marxism had a blind spot when it came to assessing the bureaucratic prospects resulting from the socialization of the means of production, so also it did not perceive the importance of stable personal relations within such a bureaucratic structure. Hence, at first, the Communists made not only divorce and abortion easy, but they encouraged sexual promiscuity on a large scale. (379c) The disruptive potentiality of such policies, clearly perceived by Lenin who denounced it, became increasingly apparent during the twenties, with the result that, after extended "discussion" in the early thirties, the trend was sharply reversed. In 1933 homosexuality was made a criminal offense, and decrees against abortion followed in 1936. Severe restrictions on the grounds for divorce were imposed in 1944, and since then Soviet publications have been at great pains to emphasize the importance to the regime of the family unit.
The role of the family is especially great in the development in the child of Soviet patriotism . . . Parents who are patriots develop in their children love for their native language, for the profound beauty of the national folklore and songs, and for the native country and scenery . . . Love of country begins to blend in his [the child's] consciousness with love for the socialist people and State regime and for the Bolshevik Party and its leaders. (407)
The Soviet people, the Communist Party and government concern themselves with strengthening the family, with the proper rearing of the younger generation. (419e)
In 1955 the Soviet press launched an extended discussion of the nature of "socialist morality," which again made manifest both the victorianism of Soviet morals and the importance that the regime attaches to the institution of the family. (238c) Citing numerous cases of broken families, the press reiterated the duty of party members to act as watchdogs for family unity and maintenance of socialist morality. This may mean removing a child from the family when its influence is considered undesirable. A child may be placed
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in a state institution, if a mother fails to raise the child properly; she is then deprived of the rights of motherhood. Boarding schools for children from broken homes are now on the increase. (All this, I however, is a far cry from the extremes to which the Chinese Communists have gone.) Such a policy is decidedly more in keeping with totalitarian needs, especially once the regime has become fairly confident that the family is no longer the center of hostility. The provisions of the law of 1955 once again legalizing abortion can also be understood, if seen in this light: the regime has been assured that natural increase in population is high enough; it is now encouraging family life; and at the same time it wishes to eliminate secret, and often fatal, illegal abortions. (419f) What is more, "the pattern of family life has changed in directions congruent with the needs and demands of the regime . . . The regime is no longer fighting the family . . . because in a large measure the Soviet family has been captured, and captured from within, by the regime." (161i)
The Fascists sought from the very beginning to strengthen the family. The argument was usually cast in terms of the role of women. More especially Hitler, in keeping with his blood-and-soil ideology, announced with his customary coarseness that women belonged in the kitchen and should devote themselves to the raising of children. Mussolini voiced similar opinions, and both movements faithfully repeated the slogans. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote: "The object of woman's education must be immovably directed to the making of future mothers." At the same time, the Fascists and Nazis wanted women to take a keen interest in their politics, to be totally committed to the ideology. Hence they would also proclaim: "Intellectual women? No! But those whose interests in life do not reach beyond the limits of the household are not fit to become the forebears of the kind of new generations which the Reich needs." (351)
In keeping with these ideological proclamations, Fascists and National Socialists offered various kinds of assistance: loans to young couples seeking to get married, prizes for mothers with many children, and aid during pregnancy, especially for women who were working. In the late thirdes, civil servants in Fascist Italy were required to be married, and all bachelors in government employ were discriminated against and heavily taxed. A hot debate raged
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over whether to expel bachelors from the party altogether. Mussolini was very fond of arguing that Italians had to reproduce more rapidly in order to become "great" and "found an empire." The very same type of assistance is now being offered in the Soviet Union and in the satellite regimes.
The Soviet government gives special allowances to mothers of illegitimate children or, if the mother so desires, provides special state institutions to care for them. Mothers of large families receive, apart from Medals of Motherhood for six or seven children and Medals of Maternal Glory for more than seven, substantial income awards. Birth allowances range from 250 to 2,500 rubles (from the third to the eleventh child), with monthly allowances from 40 to 150 rubles. (189d) The government also gives special consideration to working mothers, providing them with leaves of absence with pay usually for about 112 days, nurseries at the factories, and so on. In the satellite regimes, similar policies prevail; in Hungary, the government has even decreed a special tax on bachelors, as did the Italian Fascists before them.
All these forms of assistance are concentrated upon hastening and reinforcing the procreative function of family life. Beyond this, the totalitarian dictatorship by its very nature is obliged to pursue policies hostile to family life and family cohesion. Its desire for total absorpdon of the man or woman in the totalitarian mass movement propels it into efforts to counteract, indeed to break down, the closed circle of the family.
As was noted at the beginning of this chapter, the family has always been recognized as the most elementary of social groups, and by many political thinkers the family has been considered the essential underpinning of all organized polidcal systems. Aristotle in particular stressed this view, in combadng Plato's radical proposals for organizing a polidcal elite on the basis of a community of wives and property and on communal education of the young. (4; 278) Indeed, in the course of the centuries it became one of the commonplaces of political thought, and writers of the most divergent schools, Thomas Aquinas and Marsilius, Bodin and Althusius, Harrington and Montesquieu, Kant and Hegel, all agreed on the basic function of the family as the foundation of the political order. In spite of this almost universal agreement among political philosophers, there was reladvely litde discussion of just what were the
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characteristics of this basic institution, and the term "family" has stood for a great variety of social groupings, from the many-numbered patriarchal family to the small contemporary union of man and wife, rearing one or two children and united in romantic love for each other. Only fairly recently have anthropology and sociology devoted detailed scientific attention to the complex variety of structural models and the problems resulting from them.*
Family policy has everywhere become the concern of legislative bodies, and important enactments have been the result in, for example, Sweden and Switzerland. (259; 176) These developments are due to the fact that it is increasingly recognized that the intimate group must be strengthened and protected as a counterbalance to the alienation and isolation of man resulting from the increasing size of organization, both political and economic, in the contemporary world. Totalitarians, by contrast, although causing alienation in extreme form for all but the insiders, have in various ways sought to break up the cohesion of the intimate family grouping. We have described the way in which the mass organization of youth and the propagandist development of the school have been employed for this purpose. Besides, the encouragement of women to work in industry, the continuous appeal for men to attend meetings and to participate in collective enterprises, the whole governmental effort to organize leisure activities and to facilitate divorce and abortion —all these various undertakings have tended to weaken the family by depriving it of its functions. The following Supreme Court decision in Poland is but one of many characteristic of this particular stage in the development of totalitarian society: "[The Supreme Court has considered] the District Court wrong in holding that the petitioner's claim that serious political differences had separated him from his wife could not be a ground for divorce ... A marriage must be based on ideological unity which cannot prosper if there are conflicting views on basic political and social problems, especially if one partner represents a progressive, the other however a reactionary creed." (283) In breaking up the family
•Without detailed reference, the work of the following may be mentioned: Briffault, Burgess, Calhoun, Frazer, Groves, Malinowski, Mead, Morgan, Ogburn, Thurnwald, Westermarck, Zimmermann. A survey of American writings is given by Ernest R. and Gladys H. Groves, The Contemporary American Family (Philadelphia, 1947), especially ch. 2; the kinship problem is treated within a systematic context by Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 1951), ch. 5.
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group, totalitarian dictatorship has merely completed a cycle that started under industrial capitalism, when the factory began to take men out of their homes for the greater part of the day and, by paying them wholly inadequate wages, further encouraged the factory work of women and children. These consequences of industrial capitalism have been extended, by the methods described above, to the middle classes, who had maintained a rigid family system during the earlier phases of this development.
But in spite of policies hostile to family cohesion, the family has proved a haven for the persecuted and has served to counteract the tendency of our time to isolate and eventually to collectivize the individual. Consequently, the totalitarian movements, and more particularly their secret-police systems, have tried to break into the charmed circle of the family. Indeed, members of families have been encouraged to testify against other members, and this betrayal of the most intimate relationships has been praised as "patriotism" and loyalty to the totalitarian leadership. It is not an accident that one of the official heroes of the Soviet youth movement is one Pavlik Morozov, who earned his place in the galaxy of Soviet heroes by denouncing his parents to the NKVD. It appears that his father, a farmer, was opposed to collectivization, and young Pavlik reported this fact to the local secret-police officials. The father was duly "unmasked" and liquidated as an enemy of the people. Pavlik was subsequently murdered by his fellow villagers, who were enraged at this display of Soviet loyalty. His "martyrdom" earned him a lasting place in the manuals of the Pioneers and the Komsomolites. (437) Former Soviet cidzens testify that, at the height of the terror in the thirties, it was dangerous to discuss political matters even in the family circle, for the young were constantly exhorted by the party not to hesitate to denounce their closest relatives. And while such views may easily be exaggerations induced by the all-pervading atmosphere of fear, they do serve to reveal the type of atmosphere that a totalitarian regime tries to generate even within the family circle itself.
It would, however, be a great mistake to see the family under totalitarianism in the perspecdve of these special cases. They are, in a sense, as untypical as the Stakhanovs and the Hennekes and are exceptions to the rule. The annals of resistance movements are replete with stories of the aid offered by the family to the man or
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woman who seeks to fight the regime. But these are merely the dramatic expression of a much more general phenomenon, namely, that the anxiety-ridden subject of a totalitarian dictatorship, in his isolation and alienation from all ordinary community living, seeks refuge in the intimate relations of family life. It is, of course, difficult to document this generalization adequately, for the anonymous life of every man is not recorded for the social scientist to inspect. However, where we do catch glimpses of this situation, it confirms the general impression. (295b; 25; 197a) How long it will last is a more difficult question. In the view of some, "it is not with the traditional family as it earlier existed that the regime has compromised, and which it has restored to its former standing as a pillar on which the state rests. On the contrary, only the changes in the family that came about over the years, and the fact that in many ways the old family and its value system were transformed and no longer threatened the regime, made the compromise . . . possible." (161j) But whether the new family may not likewise become in many cases an island of separateness is a question left open by these comments, and there exist some indications that this is so. Investigators of the development of the postwar German family have been able to show, on the basis of extended interview material, that family cohesion was strengthened by the Nazi effort to weaken it, and that quite a few families made a conscious effort to broaden family ties. (315; 392) Both tendencies were further intensified during the postwar debacle, when the total collapse and break-up of country and social structure left the family as almost the only dependable "community group."
The same was true of the earlier Soviet days. The family, according to the testimony of many former Soviet citizens, became the sole refuge where anti-Communist sentiments were freely voiced and where religious rites were maintained. Many Soviet emigres recall that their parents attempted to counter the official propaganda to which the children were exposed in the schools and in the youth organizations. Some remember sharing their parents' indignation at the purge policies of Stalin. One, for instance, reported that "in 1937 in connection with the execution of Tukhachevsky and the military conspiracy, I stopped believing in the Soviet regime . . . These people had great merit . . . My father told me often about Yakir. He served in his division during the civil war. And what he
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The Family
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told me about him was always good. He became indignant when all this happened, and I was indignant with him." (37i) The transmission of parental feelings against the Soviet regime was particularly marked in the agricultural areas, where the official influence of the party had been the slowest in making itself felt and where collectivization had left the deepest wounds. In time, however, family attitudes themselves underwent a change. It became apparent that the Soviet regime would not collapse, and more and more parents, out of consideration for their children's future, became inclined not to impede their children's adjustment to the new system. This theme is repeated quite frequently by refugees from the Soviet Union and Communist China. Furthermore, the process of urbanization and industrialization tended to weaken family bonds and to deepen the abyss between the prerevolutionary and the postrevolutionary generations. Of course, such things as arrests or executions always tend to bind the family together, but generally speaking the family has gradually weakened in its resistance to the regime. Indeed, some emigres openly admit that they became alienated from their parents because it seemed that the parents had counterrevolutionary views. Anti-Soviet sentiments thus served sometimes to undermine parental influence, giving the party full control of young minds. By now, most Soviet parents are themselves of the postrevolutionary generation, and the family tends to be integrated into the system. This is less true, of course, in the satellite areas where, as in the early days of the USSR, the family still remains a bastion to be stormed and subdued. (118; 117)
It is perhaps not without interest that even in East Germany the same general trends can be observed. The situation is complicated by the extent to which family bonds extend westward into the Federal Republic. Again, the regime seeks to reorganize and at the same time to strengthen the family. (81) Again, the family finds itself battered by the demands of the regime upon all its members, but more particularly upon the youth whom it has organized extensively and seeks to influence through the propaganda carried on inside the schools and out. But again, we also find the family providing the essential "castle," the haven of refuge not only for those who are persecuted and those who resist, but also for large numbers of isolated men and women who have retreated into this group's intimacy as an escape from totalitarian demands.
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In conclusion, it might be said that the family, because of its basic and universal nature, because of the intimacy and human warmth of its bonds, has been a true oasis in the desert of totalitarian atomization. It has not only resisted this atomization, but the totali-tarians have found themselves obliged to make substantial concessions to family stability, primarily in order to buttress their search for the ever larger reservoirs of human manpower needed for the totalitarian enterprise. In doing so they have undertaken to reshape the family in terms of their own system, to deprive it of its autonomy, and to make it serve the regime as an initiator of effective indoctrination.
23
THE CHURCHES
"Religion is the opium of the people I" This famous slogan of the Communist-Marxist movement conveys a good part of the essence of the totalitarian approach — its hostility to all organized religion. The Communists especially were inclined to see the churches as willing helpmates of the established capitalist order, and to see the faith they encourage as merely "superstition" nurtured for the purpose of misleading the common man and of preventing him, by belief in a nonexistent God and by fear of a nonexistent afterlife, from taking a rational view of government, history, and the economy. The Fascists and National Socialists, committed in this as in so many other matters to ideological opposition to the Communists, denounced this doctrine of Marxism and, as a result, were mistaken by quite a few observers to be defenders of the church and of the Christian religion. In candid programmatic declarations, however, both Mussolini and Hitler made it very clear that they were equally hostile — clear, that is, to anyone who still knew and understood the meaning of the Christian faith and of the church, namely that it exists for the purpose of its practice on this earth. This must be said in spite of the fact that high-ranking dignitaries in both Catholic and Protestant churches, in both Italy and Germany, failed to perceive this basic conflict and sought to strike compromises built upon an acceptance of Fascist and National Socialist ideology. (418a)
It is true, however, that the Fascist and Nazi movements at the outset, pursued policies that seemed to be radically at variance with the well-known "godless" movement of the Bolsheviks, who openly
300 Islands of Separateness
attacked and eventually undertook a large-scale liquidation of the ecclesiastical organization of the Russian Orthodox Church. (181a) In their policies, the Bolsheviks were guided by the Marxist position on the subject of religion and by the violent policy declarations of Lenin. To quote but two such statements:
Religion is a kind of spiritual vodka in which the slaves of capital drown their human shape and their claims to any decent human life. (205h)
All oppressing classes of every description need two social functions to safeguard their domination: the function of a hangman and the function of a priest. The hangman is to quell the protest and the rebellion of the oppressed; the priest is to paint before them a perspective of mitigated sufferings and sacrifices under the same class rule . . . Thereby he reconciles them to class domination, weans them away from revolutionary actions, undermines their revolutionary spirit, destroys their revolutionary determination. (203b)
So instructed, the Bolshevik regime launched an intensive anti-religious campaign in the twenties, which lasted, with some relaxations and oscillations, until the end of the Great Purge in 1936-1938. The most violent periods involved the years 1922-23, 1929-30, and 1937-38. The first attack was designed to decapitate the Russian Orthodox clergy and involved the temporary arrest of the Patriarch and the deportation of the acting patriarchs. At the same time, "spontaneous" local actions on the part of zealous Communists were encouraged, resulting in the pillaging and closing of the churches. Local religious communities were "encouraged" to vote for decisions to close their churches and to transform them into museums or halls of culture. In 1925 the League of Militant Atheists was set up to give this campaign more effective expression. This was followed by an intensification in the antireligious campaigns carried on in the schools. Violence became quite open during the Yezhovshchina, and large numbers of the clergy were indicted for "antirevolutionary wrecking." The Russian Orthodox clergy was intimidated and subdued, and the church no longer represented an effective impediment to totalitarian rule.
The Fascists and Nazis claimed to fight this policy, which had aroused the indignation of the Western world, by erecting a totalitarian dictatorship strong enough to withstand the Bolshevik on-
Ch. 23
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slaught. But in conjunction with this claim, they propounded views that made religion purely a function of political needs. They insisted upon a "political faith," which must be the cardinal point of reference. (369) Hitler put this quite clearly and unequivocally in Mein Kampf:
For myself and for all true National Socialists there exists only one doctrine: nation and fatherland. What we have to fight for is to make secure the existence and the expansion of our race and of our nation, to rear its children and to keep pure the blood, the freedom and the independence of the fatherland, so that our nation may get ripe for the mission which the creator of this universe has assigned it. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge have to serve this purpose. (148b)
Mussolini was no less explicit in expounding such a "secular religion." In his Doctrine of Fascism, we read:
Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immediate relationship with a superior law and with an objective will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society . . . The man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a moral law binding together individuals and the generations into a tradition and a mission . . . the nation is created by the state which gives the people, conscious of its own moral unity, a will and therefore an effective existence . . . knows no limit to its development and realizes itself in testing its own limitlessness . . . Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. (268c)
But these views do not preclude accepting religion, or even the churches, as useful helpmates in the struggle for power that is politics. Both Hitler and Mussolini admitted, and the latter indeed stressed, the value of religion within this context: "In the Fascist State religion is looked upon as one of the deepest manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not only respected, but defended and protected," Mussolini wrote, and he added that Fascism did not vainly seek to expel religion from the minds of men, as Bolshevism had tried to do. But what if the church, what if the religion the church "embodies," demands something different from the Fascist state? The fight of Fascism with the church over the education of youth is typical here, and it is because of this potential clash be-
302 Islands of Separateness
tween the two that the totalitarian dictatorship considers the problem a serious one. The church is another island of separateness that cannot be allowed to remain separate and apart, that must be subjugated and coordinated.
From the other side of the dilemma, the Soviet Union found itself in the position of acknowledging the role of religion and the value of ecclesiastical organization, provided it could be made the handmaiden of the totalitarian dictatorship; so eventually the two ideologies, seemingly worlds apart at the outset, met upon a common ground that is in keeping with the inner rationale, the dynamism, of the totalitarian society. But this rationale is confronted in the sphere of religion, as in that of the family, with "limits," resulting from the very nature of the total claim which religion makes ■ upon the man who confesses it. Hence the story of religious opposition, suffering, and resistance to the inroads made by totalitarian political demands. One writer put it very well: "Had Hitler really known the Christian church, there would have had to exist a deathly enmity from the first day on." (42a) As it was, Hitler, like Mussolini, pretended to be defending the church against Marxism and to be protecting it against its corruption through participation in politics. He even claimed to be creating the "conditions for a truly deep, inner religiosity." (239; 42b) What is to be thought of this concern of Hitler's can be seen from one of his reported conversations: "What do you think, will the masses ever become Christian again? Never! . . . but the priests . . . will betray their God to us . . . and replace the cross by the swastika. They will celebrate the pure blood of our nation instead of the blood of their previous redeemer." (288) We find the very same views expounded in his Secret Tal\s, where we find such statements as "the party does well to keep its distance from the church," "I do not care for articles of faith," and "I do not permit priests to concern themselves with secular matters." (152c; 150f) He criticized S. H. Chamberlain for believing in Christianity as a spiritual world, and Mussolini for having made compromises with the Catholic Church. "By himself he is a free spirit," he said of Mussolini, meaning that the two agreed that Christianity was a "dying branch." He remarked that he would "march into the Vatican and carry out the whole bunch." (152d) It is necessary to face these brutally frank sentiments of the true Hitler in order to grasp the purely tactical meaning of expres-
Ch. 23
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sions like the one cited, which are meant to suggest that Fascism considers religion an important factor in national life. In Mein Kampf he had written that "the movement sees in both churches [the Protestant and the Catholic] equally valuable supports for the continued existence of our people." Hitler planned to tackle the problem of the churches after the war as "the last great problem" and to transform them into organizations for celebrating the racial "faith" in which he believed. (152e; 150h)
In the light of all the evidence, one might well ask whether the frank and frontal attack of the Bolsheviks was not the lesser evil. Neither in the Soviet Union in the twenties nor more recently in the satellites has there been the same amount of danger about churches, being caught in the meshes of totalitarian religious corruption, although recent tendencies in the Russian Orthodox Church are disturbing. But they are probably the consequences of the Soviets' adopting a line of approach more nearly akin to that of the Fascists: allowing the churches to operate on a very restricted basis and forcing them to abstain from all concern with secular issues in exchange for supporting the regime. The Soviet regime has thus been able to capitalize on the traditional submissiveness of the Russian Orthodox Church to state authority, dating back to the tsarist period. The Russian Orthodox clergy had spinelessly supported tsarism and, after the period of persecutions, had little stamina left for opposing the Soviet regime.
The turn in the church-state, or rather church-party, relations in the USSR came during the war, when the regime liberalized its religious policy and the church gave its blessings to the Great Fatherland War against the German invader. It was at that time that Stalin characterized himself, in an interview with a sympathetic American priest, as "an advocate of freedom of conscience and freedom of worship" and even suggested the possibility of cooperation with the pope "in the struggle against coercion and persecution of the Catholic Church." (338) Although this cooperation never materialized, the treatment of the Russian Orthodox Church never returned to its prewar severity, and the church became in some ways, at least politically, an appendage of the party. Before the 1953 elections to the Supreme Soviet, the Moscow Patriarchate stated that nowhere in the world was the church as free as in the USSR, and gave its blessings to those who cast their votes for the
304 Islands of Separateness
Communist bloc of candidates. The clergy has also been extensively utilized for propaganda purposes in connection with the various peace campaigns sponsored by the Soviet regime, and the patriarchs have been active in sponsoring these petitions abroad.
The Russian Orthodox Church has justified its cooperation with the Soviet regime, which some church members may possibly dislike, in terms of God's will and "giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Opposition to Soviet antireligious policies, however, still persists. In the twenties there were many cases of underground religious movements, of brave clergymen of all creeds, including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews (181c), preaching the word of God at the risk of their lives, religious congregations meeting secretly, and youth groups organizing to maintain the faith among the young. Even secret theological study groups operated in order to fill the gaps created by the arrests and deportations of the clergy. (464c; 181b; 132) The war, resulting in the opening of the churches under the German occupation and in the liberalization of the Soviet policy toward the churches, also served to reawaken religious activity. Even several theological seminaries were opened, with old, prerevo-lutionary, theological scholars permitted to teach in them. Despite the fact that the life of a priest in the USSR is one of the greatest uncertainty, including always the possibility of arrest, the number of applicants exceeded the capacity of these schools, suggesting that even after several decades of Soviet rule there were young people willing to risk serving God. At first, however, the regime was inclined to feel that religion would soon disappear once the church had been taken over and the young denied religious instruction in the state schools. That this did not happen is evidenced by efforts of the regime's propagandists to rationalize the persistence of religious feeling among some circles of the population. As one leading student of these matters put it: "Whatever the strength of religious feelings in a hundred years' time, there can be little doubt that the Holy Scriptures of the great religions will still be read and studied and at least to some extent venerated." (181d) The Soviets themselves have another explanation. The presence of "religious survivals" is due to the fact that "the consciousness of the people . . . usually lags behind the changes in the life of society . . . This applies particularly to religion, a form of social consciousness which lags behind the base more than all other elements of the superstruc-
-£h. 23
The Churches
305
ture and possesses a greater degree of independence. Another cause of the tenacity of religious survivals is the influence of capitalist encirclement." (323)
Old religious ways have been particularly strong in resisting Soviet atheism in the Moslem areas of the USSR, which include some thirty million Moslems. The Soviet regime has been engaged repeatedly in violent campaigns to break up the influence of the mullahs by closing the places of worship and subjecting the clergy to persecution. In the Crimea, for instance, long a center of Moslem tradition, not a single mosque was open by 1941. Yet, immediately after the German occupation, some fifty mosques were spontaneously set up by the former congregations. (464d) Later, Soviet propagandists linked Islam with colonialism and imperialism, and stated that "Islam reflects the social yoke and the views of the exploiters." (471; 181e) At the same time, the regime has sought to win sympathy and support from Moslems outside the Soviet Union. Concessions have been made in an effort to transform the USSR's Moslem leadership into helpmates of Soviet foreign policy, and their role in anticolonialist and peace movements has been encouraged.
In 1954 the antireligious campaign was stepped up. The Central Committee issued a decree, exhorting its members and the Komsomol to engage in more active antireligious propaganda and to combat the "last remains" of religion. But the committee's decree, "On Errors in Conducting Scientific-Atheistic Propaganda Among the Public," was not designed to stimulate a new period of open repression. Rather, it was to guide party members in their atheistic indoctrination without disturbing the relationship of party and church, since the church had become useful. Commentaries on this decree, therefore, stressed the fact that such propaganda must be careful not to degenerate into violence, which in effect might be more harmful to the party. Partiinaya zhizn, the organ of the Central Committee, emphasized that the method was now one of education and not of coercion. (434f)
And the regime could well afford such moderation. The previous coercion had destroyed any will to resist among the higher clergy, who now usefully serve the state. The process of urbanization has broken up the established village routine, which also involved religious ritual. The new urban centers, with their new modes of
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Islands of Separateness
life, leave little room for religion, and Soviet efforts aim to keep it so. Thus, while some religious feeling may continue, religion in the USSR no longer finds an institutional expression that could challenge the supremacy and the monopoly of the party, even in the nonmaterial aspects of life. (161k)
In the Communist satellites, antireligious activity seems to have learned a great deal from Soviet experience. Thus in communities where either religious feeling or the church was not strong, suppression was rapidly applied. In countries like Poland, where the church has had a long history of national struggle, more cautious measures have been adopted. Despite the arrests of some hundreds of priests, religious activity by the Roman Catholic Church continues on a large scale, new churches have been built, and old ones rebuilt. A Catholic university still operates in Lublin. But at the same time, the regime is steadily working to subvert the independence of the church. A collaborationist group, known as "patriot priests," was organized, ostensibly to defend Poland against German aggression. The Primate of Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski, known as an outspoken opponent of Communism, was forcibly removed to a monastery. In 1952 and 1953 the first arrests occurred among the bishops, and some were charged in public trials with being American spies. The government, on its own authority, appointed the patriot priests to fill their sees. The process of subjugation, although still not as far advanced as in Yugoslavia or Hungary (where the cardinals were sentenced to prison), is thus following the Soviet model, although it encounters much more resistance from both the clergy and the population. (329; 78b) Following a temporary accommodation after Gomulka's return to power in 1956, the regime has steadily moved back to its policy of weakening religion and the church.
These efforts of the churches in the captive nations resemble what the churches, or rather groups within the Protestant and Catholic churches, attempted under the Nazis (and to a very limited degree under Mussolini). The story is an involved one. During the early days of the movement and immediately after its seizure of power, there was very substantial support for it from the Protestant clergy. Its links with pre-Weimar Germany and its antisocialist and anti-Catholic outlook had made many of them look with favor upon a movement that claimed to fight these forces and to seek the re-establishment of a conservative, Christian order of things. Their
Ch. 23
The Churches
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traditional authoritarianism and nationalist patriotism inclined them to overlook the un-Christian views and actions of the movement, and as a matter of fact a substantial number of Protestant clergymen remained National Socialists to the bitter end.
But there did arise a most vigorous opposition within Protestant ranks. The fight was kindled in part by an issue that struck at the very heart of Hider's ideology: the racial issue. No Christian who understood the teachings of the church, and more especially no clergyman, could possibly accept the view that a member in good standing must be excluded from the church because he, or his father or grandmother, had been a Jew. Men like Pastor Niemoller, himself originally a National Socialist, rebelled at this flagrant violation of Christian teachings.
Perhaps even more important, though, was the issue of ecclesiastical self-government. The party's interference in the churches' affairs aroused their immediate opposition. Among Protestants this opposition was further intensified by the movement of the "German Christians," which culminated in a scandalous speech by one Krause in the Sportpalast on September 26, 1933. (42c) The German Christians were essentially National Socialists who favored a creed which was only nominally Christian, but in fact a replica of the National Socialist ideology: fight against Marxism, Jews, cosmopolitanism, and freemasons, and for the purification of the race. The Protestant clergy had to wage their fight against these perverters of the Christian faith. Since the German Christians had the advantage of the political support of state and party, this resistance was most difficult and dangerous, but it was carried on relentlessly and at great personal sacrifice. When the German Christians gained control of the church and elected the Reich Bishop, the opposing clergy, high and low, formed in March 1934 the Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche), * which held its first synod in Barmen-Wuppertal, May 29-31. This synod arrived at a pointedly oppositional agreement: "In opposition to the attempts to unify the German Evangelical Church by means of false doctrine, by the use of force, and of insincere practices, the Confessional Synod declares: the Unity of the Evangelical Churches in Germany can only come into being
* The literal translation would be "Confessing Church," and it may be the more correct one since the views of the church's members had nothing to do with the confessional.
3o8
Islands of Separateness
from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Ghost." They further maintained that the introduction of alien principles threatened the unity of Protestant Christians and that only those who remained true to the Gospel and the creed of the church (in contrast to the German Christians) represented the legitimate church. Denouncing the German Christians, they continued: "We reject the false doctrine that the Church might and must acknowledge as sources . . . besides the one word of God . . . other truths as God's revelation ... We reject the false doctrine that there are realms of life in which we belong not to Jesus Christ, but to other masters . . . We reject the false doctrine that the state should or could go beyond its special task and become the sole and total order of human life."
This was clearly a declaration of war against the very essence of the totalitarian dictatorship, and the Council of Brethren (Bruderrat), which was formed to carry forward the fight, constituted a true resistance to the regime. Besides Niemöller, Bishop Meiser of Bavaria and Bishop Wurm of Württemberg, as well as Karl Koch, who had headed the Gospel and Church group of opponents of the Nazi trends, were leaders of this movement. We cannot trace in detail here the complex story of this opposition. Though not successful in restraining the regime's acts, it nonetheless lasted from the beginning to the end of the dictatorship, with various advances and retreats on both sides, but maintaining intact the essential Christian teachings. It was responsible for the fact that a large majority of the Protestant clergy became unsympathetic if not hostile to the regime, that, of the 18,000 Protestant pastors, approximately 10,000 spoke out in 1935 against the regime's Church Law, I and that 11,000 again rejected the regime's attempt to settle the conflict in January 1939. Approximately 6,000 Confessional Brethren confronted the 2,000 German Christians among the clergy, and these men were subjected to vigorous persecution by the regime and considerable numbers perished in concentration camps. It would seem that only a minority of the Protestant pastors supported the regime actively, with nearly a third being in opposition. If proof were needed beyond the figures made available since the war, it is contained in a Gestapo report of February 15, 1938. "The Confessional Front embraces by far the largest majority of Protestant theologians  and   likewise  the  majority  of  believing church
Ch. 23
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1
members." (42d) No other organization, unless it were the Catholic Church, was able to mount a comparable opposition, to resist a totalitarian system for twelve full years. It was a true "island of separateness," resting upon the strength of Christian convictions among Protestants, stirring them into new life and genuine dedication. (145; 131; 77; 163)
But what about the Catholic Church? We find resistance here too, but of a somewhat different order. Considering the leading role of the Center Party in the Weimar Republic, and the great vigor of Catholic lay activity behind it, the Catholic clergy before Hitler's seizure of power maintained not only a standoffish but an openly hostile attitude toward the Nazi movement, going so far as to declare in 1932 that a good Catholic could not be a member of the party. United through its episcopate in a way inconceivable for Protestants, the Catholic Church stood firm against the movement until it actually became the government. Thereafter, unfortunately, they sought to accommodate themselves, in the manner of the church in Italy, hoping for a while to be able to secure an effective modification of the movement's totalitarian goals. The Center Party, after protracted study, decided to vote for the Enabling Act, giving Hitler unlimited power (March 1933). At the same time, rightist elements in the church promoted a concordat. (418b) It was concluded between the Reich and the church on July 20, 1933. However, the experience was similar to that of the church in Italy; the provisions of the concordat, guaranteeing the church its essential autonomy, were honored mostly in the breach; for example, in education, school, university, and adult, the church could only with the greatest difficulty retain some of the controls the concordat had envisaged. Similarly, the Catholic press and associations were put under severe pressure, and the bishops protested in a pastoral letter (1934).
As the regime became more fully totalitarian, the clashes increased until, in January 1935, the Nazis launched a full-scale attack against the church, seeking to destroy the Catholic press, Catholic education, Catholic associations, and even the influence of the priests over the faithful. They succeeded with press, education, and associations, but the congregations tried to stand firm. (371) The press was abolished or "censored"; education was driven from the schools, while confessional schools were virtually eliminated; and
310 Islands of Separateness
the associations were "coordinated," like all others. The pretenses used by the Nazis in explaining these attacks were, first, currency violations by ecclesiastical bodies and, second, sexual and other crimes by priests, monks, and lay brethren. The small amount of genuine evil which these accusations involved was, in typical totalitarian propaganda style, blown up to assume the significance of an essential characteristic. (197b) They served to discredit the church to some extent, until a substantial group of ecclesiastical dignitaries, under the leadership of Clemens August Count von Galen, Bishop of Miinster, and Konrad Count von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, insisted on taking a stand. Galen liked to spice his sermons of defiance with such remarks as "they can take my head, but not my convictions." There were also Bishop Sproll of Rottenburg and Bishop Bornewasser of Trier, as well as the redoubtable Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Michael von Faulhaber. They did, however, continue to insist upon the church's hostility to political rebellion and tyrannicide and created very grave conflicts of conscience by these equivocations. (209c)
But when speaking of these high dignitaries, we must not forget the vast number of more humble ecclesiastics, priests, monks, and nuns, who actually suffered more violent persecution because the Nazi government never quite dared to take vigorous action against the high dignitaries of the church, although it is highly probable that they would have done so after a victory in the war. Both Hitler's Secret Conversations and The Goebbels Diaries refer several times to this prospect. (150h; 125c) In any case, the regime did not show much forbearance with regard to the rest of the clergy; by the end of 1939 approximately 5,700 priests had been arrested, and nearly half were in concentration camps at that time. (229; 262a) This is about a fifth of the entire Catholic clergy. In short, the struggle was quite an open one, and the Catholic Church, like the Protestant, mounted a vigorous campaign of resistance. Churchmen, high and low, spoke out against the outrages of Nazi doctrine and action. They had their own "Catholic Niemoller," Jesuit Father Mayer who, though protected by Cardinal Faulhaber, was arrested in 1937. When this happened, the cardinal ordered protests to be read from every pulpit in the diocese.
However, the nature of the Catholic struggle was different from the Protestant, for  it rested upon  the church's hierarchical
Ch. 2j The Churches 311
authority. Therefore it took clear and decisive form only after Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, which was read from every Catholic pulpit on March 21,1937. In it the pope said:
With deep anxiety and increasing dismay, we have for some time past beheld the sufferings of the Church and the steadily growing oppression of those men and women who have remained true to her ... He who takes the race, or the people, or the state, or the form of government, or the bearers of the power of the state, or other fundamental elements of human society, which in the temporal order of things have an essential and honorary place, out of the system of their earthly valuation and makes of them the ultimate norm of all, even of religious values, and deifies them with idolatrous worship, perverts and falsifies the order of things created and commanded by God.
The pope said also that the church's efforts at accommodation had been made in the hope of preserving the essential basis of work for the Christian church, but that it had become clear that the true intention of Hitler was to destroy Christianity, as indeed it was. It has been suggested that the Catholic shift was in part motivated by the vigorous opposition that the Confessional Church was making; perhaps so. But there was enough provocation given by the Nazis themselves in their mounting attacks on the church to produce a reversal of the policy of accommodation. The Catholic clergy had been divided from the beginning, as had the Protestant, and it was in fact a matter of the opposing minority's gaining papal support that turned the tide in favor of outright opposition. (119; 342a; 76) In this respect, the Catholic Church had a distinct advantage, counterbalancing its slower start: once the authorities of the church had taken a stand, the unity of action of most Catholic clergymen was pretty well assured. These well-documented facts about the reality of Catholic resistance have been obscured recently by the argument over whether the pope should have denounced Hitler's extermination policy, raised by the remarkable play The Deputy. The controversy has brought forward the entire range of issues involved in resistance to totalitarianism as presented here.
Catholic authorities were faced with a most curious contrast when Austria and Poland were taken over by Hitler. In the former case, an abject subjection on the part of Cardinal Innitzer and the Catholic clergy had to be counteracted by the Holy See in order to
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bring the Austrian into line with the German episcopate, many of whom were outraged by the action of their Austrian colleagues. In Poland, on the other hand, the persecution of the church, as of the people, was so violent that after a report by Cardinal Hlond, in December 1939, the new pope, Pius XII, became even more firmly committed to a radical anti-Nazi position than his predecessor; in the sequel it also became an anti-Fascist position. In Poland particularly, the Nazis gave full vent to their anti-Christian feelings and subjected the Catholic Church to a policy of unmitigated terror. At first, the most intense violence was restricted to those parts of the clergy which were in the western part of Poland, arbitrarily incorporated into Germany itself. Since these territories were to be considered German in character, the presence of Polish Catholic clergy was highly inconvenient. Accordingly, mass arrests occurred in 1939, and the clergy was exposed to a policy of persecution until the end of the war. This policy soon spread to the other occupied parts of Poland, and mass deportations of the clergy to concentration camps took place. All in all, the Nazis arrested and placed in concentration camps 3,643 priests, 341 monks, 389 novices, and 1,117 nuns. Of these, 2,517, including 4 bishops, succumbed to their tortures or were executed. (297)
As a matter of fact, after Hitler had plunged Germany into war, the Catholic hierarchy, like the Confessional Church, was con-^i fronted with a difficult problem. They did not wish to be unpatriotic by seeming hostile to the fatherland; yet the intensification of totalitarian trends under the impact of war necessitated a sharper rejection of Hitler and his movement. Among the most moving documents portraying this conflict are the sermons of Bishop Galen after the bombardment and destruction of Miinster. Virtually from amidst the rubble, the staunch anti-Nazi denounced the tyranny of the Gestapo. In one of his sermons he said: "The right to life, to inviolability and to liberty are an indispensable part of every moral social order . . . Any state which oversteps these limits imposed by God and which permits or causes the punishment of innocent men undermines its own authority and the respect for its dignity." And he compared the church to the anvil that must resist and will survive the hammer striking it. The same line was taken by the Bavarian bishops, who in 1941 issued a pastoral that said: "We
German bishops protest against each and every violation of personal freedom ... we are concerned not only with religious and Church rights . . . but also the God-given rights of men" — ancient Catholic doctrine, but often forgotten in more recent times. (342b; 332; 249; 350) It all culminated in a protest by the entire episcopate, meeting at Fulda on March 22, 1942, which was immediately suppressed by the Nazis but distributed widely:
For years a war has raged in our Fatherland against Christianity and Church . . . We emphasize that we stand up not only for religious and clerical rights . . . but likewise for the human rights bestowed by God on mankind . . . We demand legal evidence for all sentences and the release of all fellow citizens who have been deprived of their liberty without such evidence . . . The Nazis wish to destroy Christianity, if possible . . . Before the soldiers whose Christian faith gives them the strength for heroic battles and sacrifices return home . . . we call upon you ... to support our efforts . . . Decisively and firmly we refuse the suggestion that we should prove our patriotic faith through faithlessness toward Christ and His Church. We remain eternally true to our Fatherland just because and at any price we remain faithful to our Saviour and our Church. God bless our country and our holy Church. God grant an honest, happy, lasting peace to the Church and to the Fatherland. (430c; 216b)
This in turn was followed by a pastoral of August 29, 1943, which recited at length the violations of Christian doctrine by the actions of the totalitarian dictatorship and more especially the killing of "unproductive" persons. It had been initiated on orders from Hitler and had aroused not only the ire but the most vigorous action of protest by bishops, especially Galen. The same protest was made two weeks later in a pastoral entitled, "The Ten Commandments as Living Law of All Nations." (262b)
While the Catholic Church in Italy did not assist Fascism's rise to power, she later entered into rather close and unfortunate relations with the regime. Many lay Catholics, of course, became Fascists, and a number of the higher clergy, notably Cardinal Schuster of Milan, became outspoken in their advocacy of Fascism. The high point of these relations was reached with the conclusion of the Lateran treaty in 1929. This treaty seemed favorable to the church on paper; it carried with it the church's endorsement of the regime.
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Islands of Separateness
Soon afterwards difficulties arose in connection with the education of youth (see Chapter 12), but at the outbreak of the Ethiopian war, priests enthusiastically welcomed the war as "carrying Christian civilization" to a barbaric people (Schuster). New difficulties then arose in connection with racialism, and Pope Pius XI spoke out sharply against such radicalism. He even considered repudiating the treaty, but died before he took this step. Nonetheless, throughout the war, the clergy supported the regime, although a significant minority developed a resistance movement which played a key role in the liberation and provided many of the Catholic lay leaders of postwar Italy. The Italian church's relation may therefore properly be described as an ambivalent one, with the hierarchy retaining the right to criticize and even to condemn the regime, which sharply differentiates its position from that of the Russian church, with its abject dependence on and subjection to the Bolshevik government. (120g)
In conclusion, we can say that the Christian churches have shown themselves to be a real bulwark against the claim to total power of the totalitarian dictatorship, perhaps more real than any others. Whether Protestant or Catholic, the genuine Christian cannot accept totalitarianism. For Christianity claims the whole man and the last word with regard to man's values and man's destiny. This claim the totalitarians cannot accept. They may temporarily seek to compromise, but if they accepted this claim they would cease to be totalitarians. This is what has happened in Spain. In its gradual retreat from totalitarianism to a personal and military dictatorship, Franco's regime has had the steady support of the Catholic clergy. Its highly conservative inclination has, at the same time, made it resist all popular, democratic tendencies.
It would be pure speculation to try to delineate the parallel problem in countries like China. To date there is no indication that the Confucians or Buddhists have been able to mount a defense comparable to that of Western Christians. But this may not mean that these peoples are prepared to accept a "secular religion" of the totalitarian kind forever. Perhaps the family will prove itself the comparable bulwark of human dignity, though the evidence so far is rather discouraging. (300b; 117) By contrast, the islands of separateness represented by the Christian churches, as guardians of the individual conscience and its religious freedom, are likely to
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outlast even a long-term totalitarian dictatorship. The extent to which they still exist in genuine form in the Soviet Union is rather uncertain But, in the catacombs of an unknown religious underground, the spirit of Christian men may be reborn.
24
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE TECHNICIANS
The attitude of the totalitarians toward science and hence toward the universities is an ambivalent one because, on the one hand, their ideology is supposed to rest upon scientific foundations, while, on the other, the antidogmatic attitude of all true science fits ill into the totalitarian scheme of things. Their escape takes the form of a crude utilitarian view of science as merely a means to an end. This ambivalence permits the existence of another "island of sepa-rateness," especially in those fields of learning which are somewhat remote from the totalitarian ideology. Yet even these tended to be invaded by the totalitarian dogmatism, as shown by Stalin's efforts in the -field of language and literature (see Chapter 12) and the Nazis' denunciation of Einstein's theory of relativity.
Science and the universities play a very special role in Western culture and society. If we take science in the broad (and proper) sense of any field of learning distinguished by a method or methods upon which a group of scholars are agreed as the most suitable for treating a particular subject, whether it be life, government, or human anatomy (110h), then the very autonomy of such groups of scholars clashes with the totalitarian conception, as it does indeed with all authoritarian conceptions of government. The extent of power wielded affects the seriousness of the clash, however, and it is bound to be the most serious in a totalitarian society. Yet Western culture has developed many of its distinctive traits, and more especially its technology, as a consequence of its dedication to learning in the distinctive sense of modern science. Indeed, human culture all over the globe is being not only profoundly affected, but revolu-
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tionized as a result of the impact of modern technology. And as we have tried to show, totalitarian dictatorship is itself the "logical" outcome of some of these technological trends. This is not true in the sense of modern technology's having "caused" totalitarianism, but in the sense of having made it possible. Without it, several of its distinctive traits, more especially propaganda, the terror, and central planning, would be quite impossible; the dictatorships set up by Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler would merely have been autocracies of the older despotic or tyrannical variety (for which they were and are mistaken by many, both friend and foe, as was shown in Chapters 1 and 2). The undeniable fact that totalitarian dictatorship rests upon modern science and technology produces an inner contradiction with many implications. It means that totalitarian dictatorship, in interfering with science, saws off the branch it is sitting on, especially as long as it competes in the world at large with free societies, in which the progress of science is unimpeded.
It is fairly clear from the record that totalitarian societies were and are parasitic, as far as science is concerned. They avail themselves, that is, of its fruits without contributing fully toward the maintenance of the plant that produces them. This parasitism takes two forms. On the one hand, there is the exploitation of past scientific and technological work. Both Mussolini and Hitler lived by the attainments of the societies which they at the same time sought to liquidate. The universities and the teaching staffs, their libraries and laboratories, were taken over and put to work within the context of the regime, like so many other existing things (especially the economy, embodying past technological advance). They continued to function, with certain slowdowns and breakdowns, in their accustomed manner, continued to provide education, to produce new knowledge and so on, even though the regime did not feed them but starved them, from a spiritual viewpoint. On the other hand, there is also the parasitism that exploits the progress and the inventions of free societies. There is no intrinsic parasitism involved in the free exchange of scientific knowledge; quite the contrary. But when this exchange becomes largely a one-way traffic, the parasitic nature of the recipient is made evident. The contributions of Soviet science to the general progress of science are limited. (253c) All the violent proclamations of the Bolsheviks and their claque celebrating the "triumphs" of Soviet science cannot hide
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Islands of Separateness
the fact that the USSR has continually fed upon scientific progress in the free countries. The most dramatic expression of this fact are the efforts of the Soviets to secure the essential data in atomic and hydrogen physics by the most elaborate kind of espionage. This statement remains true even though the achievements of the Soviets in certain fields have been extremely impressive and, with the launching of the sputniks, have achieved world-wide recognition. Very large investments have been made in particular areas of science that serve the regime, and therefore shifts of policy, such as Khrushchev's emphasis on agricultural production, may have striking results in fields that have hitherto been parasitic. Still, the overall result is spotty. The way in which science in all its reaches declines under totalitarian impact can be seen in particularly striking fashion in the successive depletions under the Nazis and the Communists in East Germany, as described in one detailed study. (257a)
In order to be able to engage in this kind of parasitic activity, the totalitarian dictatorship must nonetheless have the cooperation of "bourgeois" scholars who are willing to continue their work. Indeed, this continuation of scholarly work aroused the dismay and indignation of the outsiders and victims of these regimes, who felt that the guardians of truth and scholarship ought to rise in wrathful resistance against the totalitarian dictatorship (382; 136), or should at least depart and refuse to lend a helping hand in keeping the totalitarian regime going. There is much to be said for this viewpoint, at least in general moral terms. The fact is, however, that scientists and scholars, by the very nature of their task and training, are the least likely men to mount an effective resistance to a totalitarian regime. There have been, to be sure, quite a few cases of noble, if somewhat ineffectual, efforts on the part of scholars, but these were exceptions and they occurred rather late in the evolution of the totalitarian system, at a time when resistance was no longer effective. One of the main reasons is that the very antidogmatism of science causes scholars to be puzzled and perplexed in the face of so startling a development as a modern dictatorship. There are, of course, numerous scholars who are driven away by the totalitarian masters, but their position is that of victims of the regimes, not fighters in the cause of academic freedom. Still, scientists and scho-
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lars in the USSR while under constant pressure play an important, though quiet, part in defending academic freedom, the freedom to study and the freedom to teach, within the limited sphere of the possible. In the past few years there have been a number of remarkable statements by leading academicians and scientists — quite daring in the Soviet context. These people have criticized certain aspects of the school reforms as endangering cultural progress, have demanded less interference with the strictly scholarly pursuits of scientists, have called for more flexibility in the instruction of advanced students. There have been lively controversies over such new developments as cybernetics, whereas in earlier years an authoritative political pronouncement would have stifled scientific controversy. Quite a few have learned how to utilize skillfully the totalitarian ambivalence toward science, if not humanistic scholarship.
Hitler's views on science and the universities are a curious reflection of this totalitarian ambivalence. He mingled the harsh contempt of the man of action for the man of thought, with a ready dependence on science to support him in his pseudo-scientific biologically inspired views. In this connection, he repeatedly spoke of the "humility" which science instills in man as it shows him the limits of his knowledge, and he even betrayed an awareness of the nondog-matic, tentative character of science. He showed himself ready to voice some of the popular slogans of scientific progress in the manner of Haeckel, and at one point even exclaimed that the truth will win out in the end. (152f; 150i) But this "truth" that is going to win out in the end does not, in Hitler's more usual view, transcend reality (148c; 164); rather it is a tool that is to be employed by the practical man of action for the purpose of realizing "the iron laws of nature," which he contrasted with the "ideas of some crazy ideologues." Rarely has a man written his own epitaph in more persuasive form. And Hitler's confusion on the point is due to his basic failure to fathom, or even to grasp superficially, the conditions for the growth of modern science.
True scientific and scholarly activity is, of course, of great long-range benefit to any political order, including a totalitarian dictatorship. In a sense, therefore, the preservation of this island of separateness could even be justified by the central leadership. We find occasional observations of this sort, not only in the Soviet Union but
320 Islands of Separateness
also in Hitler Germany. In such grudging recognidon of the role of the independent scholar, the totalitarian ambivalence regarding science and scholarship finds its reluctant expression. (253d)
The inner contradictions of Soviet thinking on the subject of science are more complex than those in other totalitarian approaches. We have already had occasion to deal with dialectical materialism (Chapter 7) and with Stalin's notions on linguisdcs (Chapter 12), as well as the Lysenko theories involving the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Since Marx's and Engels' pretensions to scientific insight are much more insistent (and also better founded) than those of Mussolini and Hitler, the Soviet approach to science and the universities has been one of slow evolution. A considerable number of leading Russian scholars fled, of course, being evidently part of the bourgeoisie, while others lent their aid in providing the essential underpinning of Communist ideology. The most striking instance is Pavlov, whose experiments on the influence of environment tended to support the radical environmen-talism of the reigning ideology; he remained to transform the universities into cooperating instruments of the regime.
A leading scholar in the mid-fifties built his analysis of the scientist in the Soviet Union on the identification of five primary premises in the fields of scientific endeavor. (253e) These are materialism, antiformalism and antisymbolism, verification through practical results, the partisanship of science, and the modification of scientific dogma only through action of the political leadership. His able discussion of these several premises and their kinship with certain Western trends culminates in two propositions that display the inherent ambivalence of Soviet doctrine: first, there does not appear to be any significant difference between a decision in regard to scientific orthodoxy and a decision on foreign policy or domestic politics; and second, during the last years of his lifetime, Stalin himself was often quoted as reasserting the theme that science cannot advance except through open, free, and creative discussions. (253f) The apparent contradiction of these two views as stated remains unresolved. "The Bolsheviks do not, and perhaps cannot, fully realize the instrumental nature of scientific knowledge, since they try to make science the anchor of their total belief system." It is equally true, however, that the Bolsheviks do not, and perhaps cannot, fully realize the nature of scientific truth, since they make
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truth a function of the political order. And yet they need to know the truths of advancing science and scholarship as much as their rivals. It may, therefore, be questioned whether policy decisions in these fields are still as rigidly party-controlled as they once were.
It seems that the regime has moved away from earlier attempts to make such decisions and allows various controversies to rage within the scientific community, provided they do not go too far; at the same time, it supports tendencies and developments which seem promising in view of the requirements of the regime, without repressing its antagonists. In this connection, it needs to be remembered that there are differences among fields. Even Stalin did not interfere in physics or mathematics, and the party is naturally more sensitive to history, law, and philosophy than to the natural sciences.
The increase of cultural contacts in recent years between the USSR and the West has served Soviet purposes by facilitating technological and scientific borrowing, but it has created problems as well. For in overcoming the isolation of Soviet scientists and introducing them once again to the international community of their colleagues, it has become more difficult to control the direction o£ their work and to inhibit deviant lines of thought and research. Soviet scientists who are exposed to the standards and concerns of reputable foreign colleagues are, one might guess, buttressed in their own work and convictions, and grow more resistant to political pressures that contradict the major tendencies of international science.
For this reason, one of the recurrent themes in Soviet writing on scientific research is the emphasis both on ideological orthodoxy and on the importance of the quest for knowledge, including open and even controversial discussion. The obvious contradiction between the two postulates, given the totalitarian setting, usually results in the stifling of free thought to the detriment of scientific advance. That the Soviets are not unaware of the dangers of this situation is suggested by the following plea in Literaturnaya gazeta:
Why is it sometimes so difficult to organize one or another discussion ? Why are certain of our scientific disputes more like personal quarrels and altercations than like serious and principled discussions of the essence of great scientific problems? Why is it that with us valuable works, if
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Islands of Separateness
they are opposed to the views of the leading "school," are not always noticed? What can explain the mistakes made in a number of cases in awarding prizes in science? ... It seems to us that one of the reasons for all this is the canonization of certain scientific trends. (426a)
The party theoretical journal, Kommunist, re-echoes this by claiming that "a struggle of opinions, professional controversies, and discussions are more and more becoming the norm in our scientific and scholarly groups," and adds, "this is undoubtedly to the good." Yet, in the very same article, Kommunist states explicitly that "discussion of any scientific problem should be based above all on the Leninist principle of the party nature of science and scholarship, and participants in a discussion must approach the solution of all disputes from a position of Marxist-Leninist methodology, the only scientific basis for cognition of the objective world. Fruitful discussion can be based only on the Marxist outlook." (422c) A related problem appears to face the medical profession in its endeavor to maintain integrity. The Hippocratic Oath, mainstay of professional medical ethics outside of totalitarian reach, was abolished by the Bolsheviks because it "symbolized bourgeois medicine," that is to say, the independence of strict objectivity. But the Soviet doctor "is proud of the fact that he actively participates in the building of socialism." (94) Yet the inherent claim of the expert's true knowledge is strong enough to make many doctors, in spite of their being mere government employees, retreat into an island of separateness, "to tone down as much as possible some of the harsher and more repulsive aspects of the regime." (339d) It is obvious that, insofar as such medical professionals succeed, they are really helping the regime by mitigating the consequences of the inherent contradiction.
The case of the physician is actually a special instance of the situation of the technician and expert in general. His specialty separates him by the special claims of expert knowledge he possesses. Thus the requirements of management have led to an entire set of practices quite contradictory to the official rules on all levels of the directed economy. As the most thorough of the studies of this phenomenon points out, Soviet managers strive to attain their goals as formulated by the regime, but, in their efforts to achieve these goals, objective needs set them apart from the regime's preoccupations. (18b) Perhaps even more impressive is the case of the military. Here the "technical" requirements of victory on the battlefield
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would seem to be decisive and would persuade even a totalitarian regime to accept an "island of separateness." But such is not the case (see Chapter 27). Yet the disregard of technical and professional truths, notably in the case of the German military, has had disastrous consequences (123b), and the inner contradiction can lead to jeopardizing the very existence of the regime, as in Germany.
The result of this inner contradiction has been that universities and other institutions of higher learning have been greatly expanded under totalitarian dictatorship, while they have at the same time been "politicized," that is to say, subjected to a variety of political controls and fitted into the over-all planning of the regime. It is easy to misinterpret these developments, especially when their true nature is obscured by a "progressive" Western terminology. The most striking instance of this sort of danger was perhaps the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb (379d; 60), but many others have committed similar errors. Basically, the policies of the communist and fascist dictatorships in the field of higher education are remarkably alike and consist of the following measures. The universities are deprived of their autonomy and subjected to rigid bureaucratic controls. More particularly, the rectors (presidents) and deans are made appointees of a special government agency, and the teaching staff is made removable at pleasure. At the same time, programs of ideological indoctrination are instituted in which the "true science" of certain laws is expounded to faculty and students alike. In all institutions of higher learning, party and youth-group cells are instituted, which control, and terrorize, not only their fellow students but also the faculty. Ideological and party qualifications are given increasing weight in the selection of students as well as faculty.
In addition to these politicizing aspects of totalitarian university life, there is the stress on technological specialization in response to the needs of the regime's over-all planning. It has been called "pol-ytechnization" in the Soviet Union, and it means that there is an insistence upon narrow specialization of the student, and the steady increase in specialized schools of one sort or another. In addition, and this is peculiar to the USSR and its satellites, there is an enormous expansion of higher technical training. Admittedly, the Soviet Union started from a small base, and its rapid industrializa-
324 Islands of Separateness
tion has greatly increased its need for technical cadres. Still the figures are imposing, as shown in the accompanying table. (72b; 363c)
Soviet Higher Educational Establishments
	'Number of	Thousands of	1960-61
Year	institutions	students	multiple
1914-15	105	127.4	19
1927-28	148	168.5	14
1935-36	718	563.5	-
1940-41	817	811.7	2.95
1950-51	880	1,247.4	1.92
1955-56	765	1,867.0	1.28
1958-59	766	2,178.9	1.10
1962-63	738	2,944.0	-
It will be noted, however, that while universides quadrupled in number, other institudons of higher learning and the student body increased about tenfold. In keeping with this general trend, we see that the five-year plan for the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany specified an increase from 19 to 26 universities and institutions of higher learning and an increase of students from 27,700 (in 1951) to 55,000. (257b) But, in all cases, this increase is accompanied by the insistence on training, with fixed curricula, an extended academic year, and narrow specialization, as we have said, combined with a great deal of political indoctrination.
In what sense can institutions of higher learning and more especially their faculty and students remain islands of separateness? It would seem on the face of it as if they were completely integrated into the regime and hence incapable of any "separateness." The answer must be found in the nature of scientific and scholarly work. The preservation of some of the spirit of free inquiry is something both more precious and more elusive than any kind of political resistance, though the latter may spring from it. Many protests from individuals and groups occurred under the Fascist dictatorships, and presumably more can be found in the Soviet Union and the satellites if the records were thrown open. There is no point in reciting the individual acts, such as harboring a Jewish colleague, fighting the Nazi student group over a boycott, attending religious services of a minister belonging to the Confessional Church, and so on. In themselves they are unimportant, but in the
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aggregate they add up to a manifestation on behalf of independence and separateness; they imply a rejection of the total claim. Perhaps more important are such acts as the participation of a number of professors at the University of Freiburg, including Gerhard Ritter, Constantin von Dietze, Walter Eucken, and Erik Wolf, in the uprising of July 20, or the student-led underground at the University of Munich, which resulted in the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl as well as Professor Huber, or the leadership provided by Professor Chabod to the partisans in the Val D'Aosta, or the courageous fight carried on by Professor Carlo Antoni and his friends in Rome. (310d; 302c; 76c; 216c)
But the real issue is of a different kind. As we have already said, it results from the very nature of scientific work. It primarily affects the teacher, but it also involves the student, and the artist and writer in the bargain. One can dramatize the issue in terms of the apocryphal remark of Galileo's: "And yet she moves!" (112h; 311) For the man who knows, according to this anecdote, cannot be made by the decision of a political authority to forget and unlearn what he knows. Yet this is precisely what is implied by the fifth principle of the Soviet approach to science, namely, that all basic principles are to be decided upon by the key totalitarian leadership or the dictator. We know today that there remained in the German and Italian universities considerable numbers of scholars, teachers, and students, who quiedy continued their work along genuine scientific lines, who accepted Einstein and not his Nazi detractors, who taught Christian principles, even if they had to do so in esoteric terms, who realized that Hitler was a psychopath, even if they were prevented from saying so. This kind of experience does not perhaps add to the moral stature of German professors (whether professors of other nationalities do much better, the record to date would lead one to doubt), but it shows that the scholar can retreat into the inner sanctum of the intimate group and the private communication that permits him to preserve an island of separateness in the totalitarian sea. In other words, the totalitarian, like other authoritarians before him, finds it impossible to penetrate the invisible walls that surround the haven of scholastic enterprise, even though he can reduce the number of men and women belonging to it. Such objectivity has, therefore, occasioned great anger on the part of the Communists.
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A regular "struggle against objectivism" characterizes all totalitarian dictatorships, but especially the USSR. Besides the well-known phrases on this score uttered by Fascists in the past, we have this kind o£ statement from contemporary Communism:
The struggle against the reactionary bourgeois ideology prevalent in the universities ... is essentially identical with the struggle against objectivism . . . Objectivism serves direcdy the ideological war-preparation of American imperialism . . . With the help of objectivism the American imperialists and their German minions seek to break down the moral resistance of the German people and more especially its intelligentsia . . . Bourgeois objectivism is not compatible with true science and objectivity. It denies the fact of continuous progress in nature and society; for this development takes place through the ineluctable struggle of the New, which is coming, against the Old, which is dying . . because such objectivism places the Old and the New as equally deserving of attention upon the same footing. Thus objectivism wishes to produce the appearance of nonpartisanship ... In fact, objectivism is thus the most devious, the most insincere form of partisanship for the Old, the Outlived, that is to say, it is the ideology of the Reaction. We must unmask it . . . and fight it and take the side of the New, the Progressive . . . We must take the part of the laboring class, which is the most progressive class of mankind, and the part of that science which expresses labor's interests and which is therefore the most progressive science — Marxism-Leninism. (416)
Passages such as these make it quite clear why the totalitarian cannot be accepted by the scholar and scientist.
The situation is in this respect especially extreme in Communist ] China, owing to the practice of thought control (see Chapter 15). Scholars by the thousands have been terrorized into confessions of 1 guilt in the pursuit of objective science. The pitiful confession of Professor Chin Yueh-lin contains a striking illustration of the destruction of the inner sanctum from which resistance to the total "truth" of the totalitarians might spring. Thus he confessed that he "disseminated the purely technical viewpoint in logic . . . the formalists viewpoint ... to think highly of Wang Hao, who even now is serving the interests of American imperialism by being connected with an American university." (117h)
Such a confession, while perhaps extreme, makes it clear why the J scholar and the scientist cannot stay away completely from the
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totalitarian system without cutting himself off from his work. Many scholars, therefore, pay lip service to the ideological trappings. The introductions and the conclusions of their books become symbolic rituals by which the scholars make their act of obeisance to the regime, while continuing their search for the truth in the substance of their texts. The success of such attempts depends on the degree of personal courage, diplomatic evasion, and the esoteric nature of the research involved. It is no accident that recent years have seen a remarkable revival in satellite academic circles of interest in ancient and medieval history, literature, and the mathematical sciences. That some Soviet scientists escape into obscure subjects is illustrated by the following dissertations allegedly submitted to the Moscow Institute of Economics, of the Academy of Sciences: "Investigation of the Size of Spots on the Lady Bug," "Inquiry into the Length of Fish Gills." (480) Every relaxation in government control reveals the extent to which academicians attempt to maintain the separateness between their own values and those required by the regime. For instance, after Khrushchev's attack on Soviet architecture, a violent debate arose in Warsaw, and many non-Communist architects came out with sharp criticisms of the Soviet-style ornamental architecture which the regime had imposed on Warsaw reconstruction between 1949 and 1954. Referring to that period as "the hermetically sealed one," the architects insisted that more attention be paid to recent Italian and South American styles and repudiated the arbitrary standards of taste imposed upon them. That such pressures develop in free societies as well cannot be denied by anyone who has lived through the McCarthy era in the United States. But they are passing phenomena that cannot penetrate the "castle" that is the modern university. It is these castles the totalitarians seek to conquer. Stalin once said: "We are confronted by a fortress. The name of this fortress is science with its innumerable branches. We must conquer this fortress. Youth must take this fortress, if it wishes to build the new life, if it wishes to replace the old guard." Khrushchev made a new attack upon it in terms of the popular slogan about "school and life," insisting that everyone seeking higher professional training must go out into factory and field to get acquainted with the realities of a worker's life. It has become policy in the Soviet Union since 1958. There is, of course, a kernel of truth and general validity in this position, which has served as
328 Islands of Separateness
the educational philosophy of some institutions of higher learning in the United States as well as other countries.* At the same time, the very occurrence of such an appeal in the Soviet Union seems a mute testimony to the existence of islands of separateness in the institutions of learning.
The fortress, then, that Stalin talked about appears to be unconquerable. Why? Because it is no fortress at all. Science is a method of human beings who are engaged in the search for truth, and that truth is a hard mistress who expects to be wooed in accordance with her nature. As the totalitarians marshal youth to conquer truth, they are likely to find those youth who are capable of the pursuit, who have the imagination, sensitiveness, and sharpness of mind to discover new truths, becoming new recruits for a value that transcends the totalitarian enterprise. As they enter the island where the quiet of study and inquiry reigns, they become separated from the loud battle cries of the totalitarian regime.
* The Werkstudenten (working students) movement in Weimar Germany was built upon a cognate notion; it embodied the conscious effort of doing what many American students do as a matter o£ course and as a result of economic need.
25
LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
by Gail W. Lapidus
During the past decade, the continuing tension that exists in the relationship between totalitarian regimes and their writers and artists has been dramatically highlighted. The hesitant stirrings that followed Stalin's death and marked the beginning of a cultural thaw developed, in Poland and Hungary, into movements of social and political protest. In China, the brief campaign during 1957 to "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend" was quickly terminated by the regime when "poisonous weeds" blossomed instead. Even today in the Soviet Union the uneasy truce prevailing between the government and the writers conceals a continuing struggle over cultural policy that has important political implications.
The attitude of the totalitarians toward literature and the arts is, like their attitude toward science, an ambivalent one. Art is viewed in utilitarian rather than aesthetic terms and is considered to be an instrument in shaping the new society. Writers, in Stalin's words, are "engineers of the human soul." But engineering is not necessarily art. An excessive disregard for aesthetic qualities resulted in a general cultural deterioration, and the arts drove away the very souls they were intended to educate. This stagnation has on several occasions itself become a cause of concern to the authorities and explains the intermittent efforts of these regimes to sponsor, in however limited and grudging a fashion, a liberalization of cultural policy that continually threatens to burst its bounds.
In the early years of the Soviet regime, the social purpose of art was rather broadly interpreted, and diverse tendencies flourished in
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an atmosphere of relative freedom. So long as writers refrained from direcdy attacking the regime, they were permitted to indulge in endless debate about the function of art in the new society. Beginning in 1928, however, with the elimination of both the Left and the Right oppositions within the party and the launching of the five-year plan, the arts too were mobilized for socialist construction. In 1932, with the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers, all other literary organizations were abolished and the writers were brought under the direct control of the party. The cultural atmosphere prevailing at the time is revealed in a moving letter by the distinguished novelist Zamyatin, written to Stalin himself to appeal for permission to leave the Soviet Union:
I know that I have a most inconvenient habit of speaking what I consider to be the truth, rather than saying what may be expedient at the moment. Specifically, I have never concealed my attitude toward literary servility, cringing, and chameleon changes of color. I have felt, and I feel today, that this degrades both the writer and the revolution . . . The death of my tragedy Attila was a genuine tragedy for me. It made entirely clear to me the futility of any effort at changing my situation . . . Everything was done to close to me all avenues for further work. I became an object of fear to my erstwhile friends, publishers, and theaters. My books were banned from the libraries. My play . . . was withdrawn from the repertory . . . Any publishing organization that attempted to publish my works was immediately placed under fire . . . The last door to the reading public was closed . . . The writer's death sentence was pronounced and published. (2a)
Not only were the artists organized and their creative efforts subjected to increasing control and censorship, but an attempt was made to shape the actual content of literary and artistic productions. In 1934 socialist realism was proclaimed the official form of Soviet art. What distinguishes socialist realism from traditional forms of realism is its effort to portray reality "in its revolutionary development" so as to educate the working classes in the spirit of socialism. The artist's vision will overlook the imperfections of the present and will capture and emphasize only those aspects of reality that will be enshrined in the future. Socialist-realist art is permeated with purpose and filled with optimism. It glorifies the achievements of Soviet society and encourages its advance toward communism by portraying the successful conclusion
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of a great enterprise, the heroism of the builders of socialism, or the metamorphosis of an individual or group under the beneficent influence of the party. As Khrushchev himself explained: "Literature and art are part of the whole people's struggle for Communism . . . The highest social destiny of art and literature is to mobilize the people to the struggle for new advances in the building of communism." (174b) Modernist tendencies are rejected altogether as examples of "bourgeois formalism" and "art for art's sake," serving no progressive social purpose and reflecting an alien individualism.
Socialist realism, however, is more than a theory of art. It is also a theory of the role of the artist in society, which explains and justifies his submission to political control. If it is the function of the artist to enlist the masses in the struggle for communism, it is the party that is the final judge of what will promote or hinder the building of communism at any particular moment. Thus Khrushchev continues: "For the artist who truly wants to serve his people the question does not arise of whether he is free or not in his creative work. For him, the question of which approach to the phenomena of reality to choose is clear. He need not conform or force himself; the true representation of life from the point of view of the Communist partiinost is a necessity of his soul. He holds firmly to these positions, and affirms and defends them in his work." (174b) The new artistic method, when applied in the atmosphere of the purges of the mid-thirties, had a disastrous effect upon Soviet culture. Leading writers, such as Babel and Pilnyak, were exiled or disappeared. Others, out of conviction or fear, subordinated their work to the demands of the regime. A few remained aloof, turning like Pasternak to translations, or to children's tales, while continuing to write with little hope of publication.
The relaxation of ideological controls during the war years led to a brief cultural renaissance. Writers took advantage of the political situation to deal with new, nonideological themes in a new way. The sufferings and the stoic heroism of ordinary people replaced the superhuman achievements of Communist heroes. The portrayal of simple human emotions in a lyrical style intruded into a literature that had verged on journalism. As the end of the war approached, literature expressed the widespread sense of weariness and hope for relaxation in these poignant lines:
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And after victory we will make a halt,
Drink a cup, and rest to our heart's content. (344)
The regime responded to these tendencies with a new wave of repression attacking passivity and retreat from political concerns as anti-Soviet and calling once again for an optimistic and ideologically inspired literature, which would aid the state in rearing a new generation of fighters for communism. Offending publications were suspended, and offending writers, such as Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, were consigned to oblivion.
A new period of cultural stagnation followed. The public itself lost interest in contemporary Soviet literature and turned to the nineteenth-century classics, while theater attendance steadily declined to the point where even the authorities became concerned enough to hint that certain changes might be desirable. Stalin's death in 1953 accelerated both the demands of the artists for a degree of liberalization and the willingness of the regime to sponsor it as a part of a larger effort to encourage more initiative and creativity in Soviet life.
Ehrenburg's novel The Thaw, which gave its name to this period, expressed the widespread feeling of change and the mood of expectancy. Moreover, the book contained a sharp attack on the literary policies of the postwar years in its portrayal of two figures who are artists. One of them, Volodya Pukhov, is an "official artist" who has won success and fame by adapting his work to the demands of the regime. The other, Saburov, has remained true to his inner inspiration and lives a lonely, poverty-stricken life. In response to Saburov's defense of his independence, Volodya concedes that nowadays Raphael himself would be excluded from the ardsts' union, but he insists that, since lying, dodging, and maneuvering are common practices, it is foolish not to indulge in them oneself. In the end, however, moved by the sincerity and depth of Saburov's works, Volodya admits that he envies him.
Ehrenburg was not alone in his call for greater freedom. The poet Tvardovsky, in a long poem called "Horizon Beyond Horizon," complained about the state of Soviet literature, which had become so indigestible that one felt like screaming. Another author Pomerantsev, called for an end to artificiality and stereotypes in literature, criticized the discrepancy between reality in life
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and reality as it was portrayed in the arts, and demanded that sincerity, rather than fartiinost, serve as the criterion of literary value. Other works by other artists called for greater freedom to experiment with form and to express individual emotions. The representatives of the more orthodox school of art responded with attacks on the liberals for their nihilism and for their effort to divorce literature from life, while the party attempted to keep the demands for liberalization within bounds without resorting to the practices of the past.
It was Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 which set loose the still pent-up demands of the writers for greater freedom and gave dramatic encouragement to the liberals. The de-Staliniza-tion campaign enabled them to fink their own demands to the policies of the regime. They could argue that socialist realism and the heavy-handed system of controls that accompanied it were not inherently "socialist," but rather aberrations that resulted from the "cult of personality." Some efforts were made to glorify the twenties as the golden age of Soviet culture and to call for a return to the relative freedom of that period.
Along with increasingly widespread demands for cultural liberalization, there was an outburst of literary works of social and political criticism. A revulsion against the atmosphere of falsehood and the "varnishing of reality" that had prevailed under Stalin was expressed in the emphasis upon the need for truth and honesty in both literature and life. Typical of the idealism that this demand expressed was the poem "Zima Station" by the young Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It begins with the poet's review of his own life and his regret that noble impulses were translated into prudent actions rather than noble deeds. He returns to his childhood home to find an answer to his problem, rejecting ready-made solutions in favor of a personal quest. After a series of confrontations reflecting disquiet with the events of the past years and the distortions which the ideal of communism has undergone, the poet takes leave of the town and imagines its last words to him:
Search, search. Roam the whole wide world.
Yes, truth is good; happiness is better,
But without truth there can be no happiness.*
•Yevtushenko, "Stantsiya Zima," Okfyabr, no. 10 (1956), pp. 26-47.
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A similar return to humanistic values and a revulsion against m relativism marked other literary works of this period. The solit; individual who remained true to his own identity replaced the "positive hero" of socialist realism. Criticism extended to the bureaucracy itself, which was portrayed as indifferent to the needs of the people, self-seeking and petty-bourgeois in its motivations, stifling real creativity and initiative in deadening routine. Du-dintsev's novel Not by Bread Alone was a typical example of this genre in its attack on the privileges of the bureaucratic class, its corruptness and egotism and vulgarity summed up in the person of Drozdov.
This literary outburst posed a serious dilemma for the regime. On the one hand, the thaw was not necessarily contrary to its interests. To a certain extent, criticism of the Stalin era aided the party in its effort to dissociate itself from the past and mobilized opinion behind the campaign for de-Stalinization. Moreover, the criticisms of the bureaucracy paralleled the party's own campaign against bureaucratization and the stifling of initiative. As Khrushchev once confessed in speaking of Dudintsev's novel, Mikoyan had recommended that he read it with the remark that the author sounded like Khrushchev himself. However, the danger lay in the constant tendency of the liberalization to overstep the bounds that the regime sought to preserve. Criticism of isolated shortcomings would be welcomed, but any tendency to generalize them into criticisms of the system itself, even in the name of revolutionary ideals, had to be cut short. The party could not allow any other group to arrogate to itself the mantle of true Leninism.
The line between desirable and undesirable criticism was a difficult one to maintain, for conflict was basically a struggle ovei| the extent of de-Stalinization. The liberals were eager to go much further than the party would allow in questioning the foundations of Stalinism, and they therefore threatened both the legitimacy of the party's leadership and its function of social control. Not all of the literary ferment was political in orientation. Along with the demand for greater freedom for cultural activity, there was a desire for liberation from politics altogether, and for the opportunity to experiment with artistic themes and forms that were unrelated to social and ideological goals. But even this was a threat, for if aes-
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thedc rather than political criteria were crucial in evaluating art, the party would lose its directing role.
Finally, the growing coherence and organization of the writers frightened the party. The new and outspoken literature won wide popularity for its authors, while public discussions and poetry readings gave them a direct contact with public opinion outside the official channels. Also, as contacts increased among members of the cultural intelligentsia, its solidarity grew and it was able to present a more united front in the face of criticism. Isolation and atomiza-tion disappeared and resistance became bolder. Thus, in response to Khrushchev's indignant reaction to a December 1962 exhibition of modern and abstract art, two petitions reached the Central Committee, with a long and distinguished list of signatures embracing not only writers and artists but academicians and scientists. Both letters defended the exhibition, one going so far as to state:
Such an exhibition has become possible only after the 20th and 22nd Party Congresses. Our appraisals of this or that work shown at the exhibition may differ. But if we all address this letter to you now, it is because we want to say in all sincerity that, unless different artistic tendencies have an opportunity to exist, art is doomed to extinction. We see how your words at the exhibition are being interpreted by artists of the only schools which flourished under Stalin, permitting no one else to work, or even to live. We are deeply convinced that this was not your intention. (2b)
However, this was indeed the party's intention, and beginning with Khrushchev's attack on the exhibition there has been a concerted drive to restore a certain ideological purity to the arts and to reinforce party controls by selecting scapegoats and putting pressure on the less outspoken writers to moderate the demands of their colleagues. The present uneasy truce that exists in the arts is testimony to the continuing ability of the party to absorb pressures from outside and turn them to its own purposes. The writers and artists thus remain as an island of separateness, reluctant to subordinate their work completely to the demands made by the party, yet unable to offer any real resistance.
Writers and artists form an island of separateness in other totalitarian regimes as well as in the Soviet Union, although the specific
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forms of their existence and the character of the conflict are shaped by differing national situations, cultural traditions, and the stage c development of the totalitarian system itself.
The National Socialist and Fascist regimes never attempted comprehensive control over cultural life. Both these systems wei too short-lived to accomplish more than the first steps of sociall transformation, and they were too preoccupied with pressing political and economic problems to concern themselves excessively with the state of the arts. Their cultural policies therefore resemble those of the Soviet regime in its early years, when a certain amount of freedom prevailed provided there was no overt criticism of the regime. Many of the more outspoken writers and artists emigrated in order to continue their activities undisturbed, but even within j the country opposition to the regimes could make itself felt through a variety of subterfuges, which provoked a contest of wits between the official censors and the critics.
In China as in the Soviet Union there has been a tug of war between the writers and the regime, marked by alternating cycles of repression and relaxation. The Chinese Communist regime has not been immune to the problems that beset other totalitarian systems) in their relations with the literati. Chinese intellectuals were pro; foundly influenced by the whole tradition of nineteenth-century! Russian writers who assigned themselves the task of social criticism. Even those writers most committed to the success of the revolution in China carried their critical attitudes over into their relations with the Communist Party. They attempted to preserve for literary activity a degree of independence from party control and rejected the method of socialist realism imported by the Chinese party from th« Soviet Union. Their attitudes clearly conflicted with the efforts of; the Chinese Communist Party to arrogate to itself alone the function of exposing any defects in the new society.
The launching of the "hundred flowers" campaign in 1956 was an attempt to stimulate new creative efforts by the whole intelligentsia] and to enlist their enthusiasm in social construction. As in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European satellites, however, liberalization tended to overflow what the party considered its proper bounds. Writers attacked socialist realism as an "imported" method' that resulted in a confusion of literature with politics. They not only rejected party control over culture, but turned to attacks on
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the party itself. Criticism of bureaucratism and privilege were the expression of the struggle between the artist and his party-minded, frequently uninspired supervisors. The depth of dissatisfaction that this brief relaxation revealed within the creative intelligentsia and the movements of protest that threatened to get out of hand led to a rapid reimposition of control, but the underlying tensions remain.
Similar tensions existed in the relationship of regime and artist in Eastern Europe, intensified because Stalinism did not last long enough to destroy the values and social ties of the prewar intelligentsia and to create a new class of literati thoroughly imbued with Communist values. De-Stalinization in Poland and Hungary in particular thus had a profound impact, and literary criticism developed into outright political resistance. A more detailed study of these two situations reveals both the potentialities and the limits of literary protest.
In the early postwar years, the consolidation of control over Eastern Europe by the various Communist regimes compelled the writers and artists to make a difficult choice. By no means ignorant of the position of their colleagues in the Soviet Union, they were nonetheless encouraged to believe that developments in the People's Democracies would follow a more democratic course. The party encouraged them to believe that only a socialist society could fully liberate their creative talents and make culture accessible to the masses. As one prominent Polish writer explained the decision of a colleague to join the party: "He was, at least, a popular writer whose readers were recruited from the masses. His highly praised prewar novel had sold scarcely a few thousand copies; now he and every author could count on reaching a tremendous public. He was no longer isolated; he told himself he was needed not by a few snobs in a coffee-house, but by this new workers' youth he spoke to in his travels over the country." (251b) The party made few demands upon the writers at first, provided they refrained from openly criticizing either the regime or its Soviet ally. At the same time, it was generous with its patronage of the arts. But this policy did not last. Suppression all too quickly followed upon toleration as the People's Democracies were transformed along Stalinist lines into replicas of the Soviet totalitarian regime. The response of the writers was various. Some were drawn into increasing cooperation rand involvement with the regime at the expense of their art. Others
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remained aloof, writing "for the desk drawer," circulating an occasional manuscript secredy, or participating in informal discussions with like-minded colleagues. A large segment of the intelligentsia thus resisted the efforts of the regime at total social atomization and preserved a distinct identity and social ties. The death of Stalin and the resulting thaw enabled this cultural "underground" to emerge into public view.
The themes of the literature of the thaw in Poland and Hungary closely resembled those dwelt upon by Soviet artists, although the European artists were if anything even more outspoken in attacking the betrayal of humanist and progressive values under Stalin, i Criticisms of stifling bureaucratic controls over the arts were widespread, as were attacks on the whole method of socialist realism. What had at first been demands for more freedom for party intellectuals and artists increasingly became rallying cries for nonparty intellectuals and artists who had never accepted the premises of party control over the arts and who now overdy reasserted their traditional belief in absolute freedom for all creative work. Stagnation, it was argued, was the inevitable result of linking art to any power system and compelling it to approve and to justify instead of remaining independent and critical.
Even more dangerous to party control than criticism was the actual organization of the intelligentsia. Certain journals and periodicals, and the cultural circles and clubs that spread throughout Poland and Hungary during this period, became centers of independent literary, social, and ultimately political initiative, which accelerated the disintegration of party controls and which provided a common meeting ground for those who wished to bring about real social and political changes.
The events of 1956 and the years after demonstrated, however, the limits of resistance. Any fundamental changes in the political system of either country, even had the resistance been more unified in seeking such changes than it actually was, was precluded by the fact that the satellites were not fully independent states but offshoots of the Soviet system. Certain domestic reforms and changes could be won, but any dramatic change involved a confrontation with the Soviet Union. Moreover, whatever temporary and limited success could be achieved were due to the disorientation and wavering of the party leadership itself. Once the initial effects of de-Staliniza-
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tion had worn oft and the party had once again consolidated its control and unified its policies, the opposition was reduced to relative impotence. Today an uneasy truce prevails, one which allows a greater degree of freedom for experimentation in culture than exists in the Soviet Union but which nevertheless precludes any real threat to the political power of the satellite regimes. The writers and artists continue to form an island of separateness, but only an extraordinary combination of unlikely circumstances could enable them to launch another movement of actual resistance.
The position of the writers and artists within the various totalitarian systems raises the problem of the extent and limits of resistance possible within a totalitarian system. The conflict between these groups and the regimes results from the fact that the totalitarian system makes demands that the literati are unable to accept fully if they are to preserve their artistic integrity; they in turn demand a degree of freedom for artistic endeavor, which is a threat to the regime's total control of social activity. The ability of the writers and artists to achieve even a limited degree of freedom has depended upon political circumstances that they can manipulate but not ultimately control. The incomplete development of a totalitarian regime, the exigencies of war or crisis, the campaign for de-Stalinization, all have provided them with opportunities to extend their sphere of freedom. Outbursts of literary protest have been possible because of party indecision or party sponsorship. Although all these episodes reveal the extent to which the writers and artists constitute an island of separateness, resisting total assimilation to the totalitarian system, they also reveal the limits to any effective political resistance.