The horror which No. 1 emanated, above all consisted in the possibility that he was in the right, and that all those whom he had killed had to admit, even with the bullet in the back of their necks, that he conceivably might be in the right.
Rubashov’s disillusionment springs from the fact that the light has gone out of the revolutionary movement, that what was to become a new paradise has become an old hell. The dictatorship of the proletariat has evolved into the tyranny of No. 1; the new man has grown into a Neanderthaler. Instead of a promised land, Rubashov has returned from his foreign assignments to find a country where factory workers are shot as saboteurs for negligence caused by fatigue. His conclusion that the regime’s error was caused by abandonment of ethical standards is central to the bouleversement he undergoes. But even despite this basic departure from Communist thought, it is important to recognize that he is still a Marxist. He even elaborates the old dialectic in prison with his “theory of the relative maturity of the masses.” His participation in his mock trial emphasizes the ambivalence he feels. One passage explains this behavior and that of some of the men to whom Koestler dedicated the novel:
The best of them kept silent to do a last service to the Party, by letting themselves be sacrificed as scapegoats—and, besides, even the best had each an Arlova on his conscience. They were too deeply entangled in their own past, caught in the web they had spun themselves, according to the laws of their own twisted ethics and twisted logic; they were all guilty, although not of those deeds of which they accused themselves. There was no way back for them. Their exit from the stage happened strictly according to the rules of their strange game. The public expected no swan-song of them. They had to act according to the textbook, and their part was the howling of wolves in the night....
Where there is freedom of choice, the disillusioned one follows one of three courses: needing an outlet for the forces which originally took him to the Party, he engages in leftist, non-Stalinist activity; ricocheting violently in the opposite direction, he aligns himself with the extreme Right; or exhausted, he sinks into a melancholy, nostalgia-tinged apathy. Rocco de Donatis throws himself into the struggle of the peasants for land. Frederick Wellman and Elsie McCabe lie with virtuosity in the service of Senator O’Brien. Lannie Madison retreats into neurosis. The causes of the disenchantment vary. Glenn Spotswood makes his break because he is interested in men as men rather than as pawns in a game. Rocco’s point of departure is the discovery of Siberian labor camps. Both of them, however, suffer somewhat the same aftereffects. There is a feeling of loss, the sensation that a platform has been knocked out from under them.
This particular reaction is best portrayed through the creative artists who appear in these novels. Julien Dellatre is one of three ex-Communists who call themselves the Three Ravens Nevermore. A scarred veteran of the Spanish Civil War, he refers to his poems, “Ode to the Cheka,” “Elegy on the Death of a Tractor,” and “The Rape of Surplus Value” as “past asininities.” His renunciation of the Movement is complete, yet his tragedy lies in the fact that he has found nothing to replace it. He has concluded that “Europe is going to the dogs,” that the reason is a turning away from God, a “loss of cosmic consciousness.” Feeling that a new religion is necessary to save twentieth-century man, he lacks a conviction which would permit him to take the final step into faith. The great passion of his life is behind him. In his own comment he has summed himself up: “a burnt-out fanatic is abject.” Another man of letters in the same novel is Leo Leontiev, “Hero of Culture and Joy of the People,” who has come from Russia to France to address an international peace rally. The death of his wife frees him to renounce the regime and find political asylum in France. Psychologically ready to take this step, “he felt as if a whole drugstore of poison were working at [his synapses]—the accumulated toxins of thirty years.” He has become a Hero of Culture by following the Party line in literature rather than his artistic conscience. Free at last, he feels that he must write something truly fine, a vindication of himself that will also be worthy of his wife, whose death he suspects may have been suicide or murder. But he is unable even to write the projected I Was a Hero of Culture for the American publisher who has given him a substantial advance. For him, as for Dellatre, the light had flickered out, and it could not be rekindled.
Some artists, like novelist Bernard Carr and poet Lester Owens in Yet Other Waters manage to rebound, to continue to work creatively. But still they bear psychological scar tissue. Even in the process of preparing to leave the Movement, Bernard Carr suggests from the floor that the Writers Congress be concluded with the singing of “The Internationale.” And he is moved as he sings. An allied phenomenon is that of the individual who is inwardly in conflict with the Party but remains with it through a fear of these consequences. When Bernard tells frustrated poet Sam Leventhal that he should leave the Party, Sam turns pale. “Bernie, the Party is my life,” he replies. “It would be spiritual death for me outside the Party.” An even more revealing answer is made by British physicist Lord Edwards. When Leontiev asks him why he stays, Edwards replies: “I told you there is nothing else. You will soon find that out yourself. Besides—once you’ve invested all your capital in a firm, you don’t withdraw it—not at our age, not after thirty years.”
The Role of Woman
When women engage in political activity in these novels they are usually cast in one of four roles: man’s guide, the reformer, the dedicated Communist, or the patriot. In the years before suffrage was extended to women, one of the few opportunities afforded them for engaging in political activity was to influence or guide a man who was politically active. Emily Harkness performs this function for Jerome Garwood in The 13th District. At the beginning of his career he is her intellectual protégé as she channels his reading and thinking. His rejection of this relationship is coupled with his political degeneration and ruin. In Hot Corn Ike Molly McMurdo counsels Mike Grogan with acuteness and insight. Since she is a procuress, she supplies very little moral guidance, but her analyses of the factors at work in the district are penetrating if not intellectual. Peter Ivanovitch, leader of the Geneva revolutionary circle in Under Western Eyes, preaches the cult of woman as well as revolution. He had been aided by a woman in making his legendary escape across Siberia. The devotion he felt toward her is also bestowed upon Madame de S——, who contributes not only inspiration but also her chateau to Peter’s activities. Fancying herself another Madame de Staël, this “Egeria of the ‘Russian Mazzini’” appears more like a witch than a prophetess. Possessed of a garishly painted, mask-like face whose outstanding features are extraordinarily brilliant eyes and obviously false teeth, she contributes to one conversation by screaming that they must “spiritualize the discontent.”
The intellectual guide of man par excellence is Ida Wilbur in A Spoil of Office. She remains stolid Bradley Talcott’s ideal and teacher even after he has attained the House of Representatives. But she is also an active field worker for the farmers. A pamphleteer and lecturer, she represents the woman reformer who enters into direct action rather than stand once removed from activity. Mrs. Ward’s Marcella acts for herself, but to a lesser degree than DeForest’s Squire Nancy Appleyard and Spring’s three feminists—Lizzie Lightowler, Anne Shawcross, and Pen Muff. Lawyer Nancy Appleyard is a ridiculous figure with her trousers and pistols, but in her feminist agitation she is a precursor of the others. These women are distinguished by conviction, perseverance, and willingness to engage in violent action under pain of brutality and imprisonment to attain their goals.
In strong contrast to Madame de S—— in Under Western Eyes is Sophia Antonovna, an influential veteran revolutionary. A striking woman with her gray-white hair and bright red blouse, she is “the true spirit of destructive revolution.” Shawcross’s daughter-in-law Alice is a direct descendant of Sophia Antonovna. Shortly after her return from Moscow, a letter is published addressed by Zinoviev to the Communists of Britain urging uprisings in the Army and Navy. Implying that Ramsay MacDonald had been pushed into treaties with Russia by Communist pressure, it helps cause the fall of his government. Noting the time of Alice’s visit and the intensity of her devotion to Communism, Shawcross suspects that she had helped Zinoviev to plan and write the letter. Dos Passos’ militant women Communists such as Jane Sparling throw themselves into Party activities almost more zealously than the men. One of the women in Yet Other Waters might be listed under political pathology as well as here. She is Alice Robertson, a nymphomaniac and frustrated novelist whose regard for her current lover does not prevent her from reporting on him to the Party.