Time Will Run Back

by Henry Hazlitt

  “I am trusting you completely,” said Peter. “I’m lost without your help.”

  “You can count on it. You know I’m an American anyway, and haven’t a ghost of a chance of ever becoming Dictator of Wonworld myself. That job is a Russian monopoly. The real danger is Bolshekov. If he becomes Dictator his first act will be to slit my throat. You can count on me absolutely.”

  They mapped out what their procedure would be when they got to the radio station.

  Once inside the building Peter had double cause to congratulate himself on his decision to take Adams. Everyone recognized Adams immediately, but in spite of the worldwide publicity attending Peter’s promotion to the Politburo, very few seemed to recognize Peter or know who he was.

  “Interrupt the program,” Adams ordered the announcer. “Introduce me.”

  Adams was brief: “I am speaking to you from the Central Radio Station of Moscow. With me in the studio are His Supremacy, Comrade Stalenin; and his son Peter Uldanov. His Highness Comrade Uldanov, as you know, was elected a member of the Politburo three weeks ago. His brilliance, and the consequent speed of his advancement since his return from America, have created a Wonworld sensation. And now you are about to hear a message of the utmost importance from His Supremacy, Comrade Stalenin, No. 1 citizen and Leader and Dictator of Wonworld.... His Supremacy!”

  Record X was turned on:

  “Comrades and citizens of Wonworld,” it began. “I told you on my last public appearance on May Day that the mounting pressure of work upon me would prevent me from making any further public appearances. This pressure has now grown to a point where I am forced to deputize more work than ever. I have therefore asked my trusted son, Peter Uldanov, to sit as my deputy in meetings of the Politburo and on other occasions, and to make public announcements in my name of whatever new policies or decrees I find necessary. I shall, of course, be more active than ever as your leader, working silently, often alone, late into the nights, working for you, the proletariat, working as one of you, as your vicar, as your spokesman, as your servant, working for you, the dictators of Wonworld. For the security of Wonworld depends upon the dictatorship of the proletariat, which must be maintained at all hazards, and I, as your vicar, as your deputy, representing you, mean to maintain it.

  “But I cannot do this without your help, without the help and support of every man and woman in Wonworld. Comrades, the future depends on you. We must work harder than ever before. We must all work longer hours. We must all tighten our belts one more notch. The Era of Abundance is before us. But this abundance will be possible in the future only by our further sacrifices in the present. The land of socialist plenty, as you have been told for more than a century, is to be reached only by the path of socialist austerity. There are only a few steps more along that path. We cannot risk or throw away all that we have won by refusal to take those steps now! And through my son, my deputy Peter Uldanov, I will from time to time announce those steps. Meanwhile I can only urge all of you once more to put your shoulders to the wheel. And tonight I ask you, around your tables, in your homes, to drink with me a toast to the Global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—to Wonworld Forever!”

  When the record had finished, Peter stepped up to the microphone:

  “Thank you, Your Supremacy. Thank you, my father. I promise you solemnly and faithfully, to the utmost of my ability, to carry out your instructions as your deputy. Every act I take will be in your name and at your command, and I will need the loyal and unquestioning support of every comrade in fulfilling the great trust and responsibility you have placed in my hands.”

  A recording was put on of the music of “Marx Save the Dictator.”

  Adams stepped before the microphone once more: “A recording of this entire program will be put on a Wonworld hookup at eight o’clock this evening. At the time when His Supremacy’s speech is being rebroadcast, I urge all of you, in your homes, in offices, in factories, in barracks, on farms, in correction camps—wherever you may be—to join me in a solemn toast to Our Great Leader and to his newly appointed Deputy.”

  The program was over. Some recorded music was put on. Adams turned to the announcer and the technicians in the recording room.

  “We have carried out this program at the orders of His Supremacy. A critical situation came up at the last moment which required his urgent presence elsewhere, so he made this recording. You are all to observe the strictest secrecy about the fact that he was not personally present. This is the beginning of the policy which he laid down in his May Day announcement. You will announce tonight’s forthcoming rebroadcast at half-hour intervals. For the eight o’clock Wonworld hookup, you will order all the direct-wired loud speakers throughout the Global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be turned on full blast.”

  On Adams’ advice, Peter called an immediate special meeting of the Politburo, in Stalenin’s name. As customary on such occasions, Sergei did the telephoning. This time the members were called in the reverse order of their priority. Bolshekov was notified last, and late. Each member as he arrived was asked whether he had heard the afternoon’s Stalenin broadcast. Giraud, who, Adams knew, disliked Bolshekov, arrived early. Adams took him aside for a few moments.

  Adams and Peter declared that they had just spoken with Stalenin and that he would be in at any moment. But when everyone but Bolshekov had arrived, Sergei by prearrangement came in and said that Stalenin had been detained and had asked that Peter conduct the meeting in his absence.

  Adams proposed a resolution endorsing the new arrangement. It was seconded by Giraud, and passed just a few minutes before Bolshekov arrived.

  Peter excused himself, turned the meeting over to Bolshekov, and said that the only other business His Supremacy had wanted conducted was a reading of the report of a special commission on the causes of the new famine in the Argentine. Adams read the report.

  It had all come off perfectly. Peter felt a new admiration for Adams’ shrewdness. The meeting, as Adams had pointed out in advance, would validate the new arrangement before there was time for anyone to plot to overthrow it. It incidentally kept every member of the Politburo, and especially Bolshekov, under Adams’ eye while Peter and Sergei, in the next room, confirmed the new situation over the telephone with the heads of the Security Police and the armed forces, apart from Kilashov and Marshal Zakachetsky themselves, who were both at the meeting.

  “Where are the Maxwells?” Peter asked, the moment the most essential telephoning had been done.

  Sergei shook his head. “I’ve been able to learn nothing.”

  Peter went in again to his father’s bedroom. The doctor was still there. His father’s condition had not changed.

  PART TWO: GROPING

  Chapter 17

  WHEN Stalenin regained consciousness he was, as the doctor had predicted, almost completely paralyzed on his right side. His talk was reduced to monosyllables: “No—yes—it—he—she—that—who—where—what?”

  Particularly “what?”—asked in every connection, and sometimes without any apparent connection at all. Peter had constantly to guess what it was that Stalenin was asking about. His father seemed to understand a good deal that was said to him, and to be able to indicate his wishes. But his wishes, with the passage of time, became constantly more passive, except in things that concerned his immediate animal comforts.

  But the stroke had brought about something far more remarkable than hemiplegia. It had completely transformed Stalenin’s character. The strength, the hardness, the brutality, the cynicism, melted away. He became gentle, childlike, affectionate.

  For ten days after Stalenin’s stroke Peter spent every evening at his bedside. They were dreary vigils. At the same time that Stalenin’s supper was brought in, his food-taster would enter, hollow-cheeked and expressionless, and take a little something from everything on the tray, to make sure it was not poisoned.

  When Stalenin was sitting up again Peter cut his visits down to three evenings a week. He found h
is father astonishingly easy to manage now. He discovered that he could get approval for almost any course of action he proposed, merely by the tone and manner in which he proposed it.

  Peter’s first task, he was convinced by Adams, was to strip Bolshekov of any real power over the political and economic life of Wonworld and to assume it himself. But he felt it would be dangerous to do this in so pointed a way as to humiliate Bolshekov publicly. So he relieved him (by forging orders signed Stalenin) of his duties as Commissar of Production, Chief of the Central Planning Board, Chief of the Supreme Economic Council, and Chief of the Congress of Coordinators. Peter turned all these offices over to Adams, with the understanding that he himself was to make all the really crucial decisions.

  To save face for Bolshekov, and to pacify him, Peter decided to appoint him Chief of the Armed Forces, and to announce in the name of Stalenin that this position was so important that it would occupy all of Bolshekov’s time.

  “That is the worst thing you could do,” warned Adams. “Bolshekov will make the armed forces loyal to himself, not to you.”

  “I have gone as far as I safely can for the present,” Peter said.

  “There is only one safe course with Bolshekov,” said Adams. “You must liquidate him. Arrest him quickly and quietly; have him shot immediately; make no announcement unless you have to; if you do, accuse him of treachery; arrest everyone friendly to him, everyone capable of leading a revolt; wring confessions out of them that they are Bolshekovites, and plotted—”

  “I’m not going to have anything to do with such methods,” Peter said. “If my mind is clear about any one thing today, it is that brutal and degraded means inevitably lead to brutal and degraded ends.”

  “With Bolshekov in power, or even with Bolshekov alive and free, you are in danger of achieving nothing but your own downfall. And mine—if I may be permitted to refer to so minor a consequence. It’s his life or ours.”

  “I’m not going to begin my deputized rule with a murder,” Peter answered. “I intend to strip Bolshekov of power, and I’ve gone as far as I can at the moment.”

  “Will you do at least one thing?” pleaded Adams. “Make Bolshekov head of the Army and Navy, if you must, but at least turn over the Air Force to someone else.”

  “Whom would you suggest?”

  “Why not take that portfolio yourself? Just sign a decree by Stalenin appointing yourself to the job. You could design a very dramatic uniform for yourself.”

  So Peter signed two new decrees, one appointing Bolshekov head of the Army and Navy and another appointing himself head of the Air Force. He forgot about the uniform.

  He began to take up with Adams the problems that had been troubling him increasingly since his arrival in Moscow.

  “I’m going to ask your advice,” he said, “on every important problem. I hope you won’t simply approve whatever I suggest. If you do I’ll make some fantastic mistakes. Can I count on you to be completely outspoken and candid with me?”

  “Candor is what I like most. You can count on me absolutely.”

  “We ought to be on a less formal basis,” said Peter. “It’s obviously so awkward for us to call each other ‘Your Highness* that we practically haven’t been calling each other anything at all. What is your first name?”

  “My full name is Thomas Jefferson Adams. It’s my real name too. I never took a party name, like Stalenin or Bolshekov. Most people that know me well just call me Adams.”

  “I’ll call you Adams, then. Will you call me Peter?”

  Adams nodded. But he apparently felt awkward about it. He took to calling Peter “chief,” in a half-ironic, half-affectionate way, as a sort of compromise.

  Peter began to speak about the poverty, misery, inefficiency, waste, tyranny, servility, and terror of Wonworld. “Surely it is possible, Adams, for mankind to devise a better system than this!”

  “I agree that it is possible, chief. But I should like to remind you that the best minds in Wonworld had been working on this problem ever since the triumph of communism. Successive reforms only seem to substitute one set of evils for another.... This, of course, is only what a few of us in the Party have been saying to each other. Stalenin and Bolshekov are two of those to whom I have never dared to say it.” “But haven’t changes brought any increase of knowledge, any progress?”

  “We always officially announce that they have. Every experiment we make must of course be pronounced a success, even when we abandon it. But personally—and entre-nous—I have never noticed any progress in my lifetime.”

  “But before that?”

  “Well, of course, if you believe the official histories—”

  “Well, let’s put all moral, political and economic questions on one side for a moment,” Peter said, “and take merely technical and scientific progress.”

  “I’ve gone into that question, chief, out of personal curiosity. So far as I can figure, in the whole century and a quarter since the founding of Wonworld we have on net balance made no technical progress whatever. We have improved a few practical things—or rather, we have applied what was already known in a few new directions. But in theoretical knowledge, as I told you once, we are actually far behind the level that the bourgeois scientists had reached in the last throes of the capitalistic world. Our official histories pooh-pooh it, but it seems to me that there is strong circumstantial evidence for thinking that the bourgeois scientists of the capitalist world had actually succeeded in splitting the atom. There are even grounds for believing that the bourgeois scientists had used this knowledge to invent an appallingly destructive bomb, and had actually used this. When I was a youngster, my father—the only American up to that time who had ever got to be a member of the Central Committee of the Party—once repeated whispers to me that the Soviet scientists stole the secret from the capitalist countries, with the help of bourgeois scientists and bourgeois fellow travelers, and that Russia got the jump on the capitalist world in using it. Some whispers went on to say that this, and not—as our histories have it—the inner technological decay of capitalism, was the real reason for the communist triumph. Apparently after our victory was complete, all the scientists who knew the atomic secrets were liquidated.”

  “But surely,” said Peter, “nobody believes any of this melodramatic nonsense!”

  “Oh, I’m not saying I believe it, chief—My father didn’t believe it; he merely cited it to show how fantastic the anticommunist lies could become.”

  “It certainly shows what childish minds these anticommunists had,” Peter said.

  “Yes, chief. We inner-circle communists have named this sort of thing ‘Buck Rogers’ stuff, after a notorious capitalist liar of that name.”

  “Who was Buck Rogers?”

  “He was the richest man of his time, and invented such tales to keep the masses in subjection.”

  “Let’s get back, Adams, to this question of technological progress.”

  “Well, my best guess, chief, as I’ve said, is that we are now technologically in the state of the capitalist world in the capitalist years circa 1918 to 1938, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.”

  “Didn’t capitalism make any technological progress in the decades after that?”

  “Personally, I think it did,” said Adams. “One hears stories of airplanes propelled by jet power that went faster than the speed of sound—”

  “More Buck Rogers stuff?”

  Adams shrugged his shoulders.

  “Anyway,” announced Peter with determination, “there is going to be progress now. Adams nodded a loyal but skeptical assent. “Where do we begin?”

  “That is the question that has been bothering me for some time,” said Peter. “There are so many places to begin.... But the first thing that needs to be done is to free the people from terror, to free them from servility and groveling.... We must give them freedom from fear.”

  “From fear of what?”

  “From fear of us, of course. From fear o
f the government.”

  “But fear is the only thing that keeps people in line! If people didn’t fear the government, if they didn’t fear our police, how would we be able to keep them from committing every sort of crime?”

  “Crime would continue to be made illegal,” said Peter, “and people would be punished for it by penalties graded according to the seriousness of the crime. But crime must be carefully defined by law.”

  “It already is.”

  “Maybe. But we should change the laws so that nobody can be arrested unless he is charged with a definite crime. He should be told what that crime is. He should be allowed to confront his accusers and to answer them. These accusers should present real evidence. The man accused should be assumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty and not, as now, the other way round. And maybe—I haven’t yet thought this out—the accused ought to be entitled, if he wants, to have someone else who knows the law better than he does, and who knows better than he does what his rights are, to defend him. Maybe the government itself ought to provide him with such a defender.”

  “I shudder to think what would happen, chief, if the cards were stacked so much in favor of the criminals. You would practically never be able to find anyone guilty. The criminals would certainly be freed from fear—”

  “I think it can be made to work,” Peter said. “Anyway, I’m going to try.... Don’t misunderstand me. Crime will continue to be illegalized. But each crime will be carefully defined, and nobody will be punished unless he is guilty of an act that had already been defined as a crime before he did it. We are no longer going to have acts declared to be crimes retroactively.’

  “But suppose somebody does something that is clearly antisocial, that is clearly against the interests of the State, and we have merely neglected beforehand to define that act as a crime?”

  “Then that will be our fault, Adams, and we will have to define it as a crime so that we can punish it in the future. But we will not punish anybody for having done it before it was defined as a crime. If I may invent a term, we will not pass any ex post facto laws.”