My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  The creators of the modern Communist utopia were intellectuals: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Lenin, who consciously abolished any sort of law and replaced it with revolutionary justice (or as he called it: revolutionary terror), was paradoxically an erudite lawyer. Even Fidel Castro graduated with a law degree, and Pol Pot, the Cambodian organizer of cruel revolutionary slaughter, studied at the Sorbonne. Educated revolutionaries proclaim principles, even values, that often go against everything mankind has achieved.

  It was also college graduates who helped formulate the basic principles of National Socialism. Hitler’s right-hand man Joseph Goebbels received a doctorate in literature and philosophy. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s second, was also educated. He too tried to justify the murderous goals of the SS with a mystical theory of the exceptional individual and the historical calling of the chosen race. Albert Speer was apparently a capable architect, and he later designed megalomaniacal buildings according to Hitler’s ideas. Hans Frank was a lawyer by profession who, at least in the beginning, tried to get the regime to respect some basic legal norms such as the presumption of innocence until a defendant is proved guilty and the right of the accused to an independent defense. In the end, the opposite took place, and, as the absolute ruler of occupied Poland, he had on his conscience numerous illegalities, depredations, and murder.

  The Wannsee Conference at the beginning of 1942 where the planned slaughter of Jews in all occupied lands was decided, as the historian Mark Roseman points out, was attended by primarily people with academic titles; two-thirds had university degrees, and over half bore the title of doctor, mainly of law.

  One of the creators of the Soviet political or politicized trials, in which innocent people were condemned on the basis of forced confessions and name-calling that substituted for proof (stinking carcass, fetid pile of human garbage), was the knowledgeable prerevolutionary lawyer Andrey Vyshinsky. His Czech disciple, Josef Urválek, was a lawyer as well.

  Far too many intellectuals were in the service of a fanatical idea that contradicted and betrayed everything humanity had thus far achieved.

  In 1934, just after the Nazis took power in Germany, Karel Čapek published several remarkable reflections on the role of intellectuals in the political tragedy that was unfolding.

  An entire nation, an entire empire spiritually conceded to a faith in animality, in race, and in other such nonsense. An entire nation including university professors, preachers, men of letters, doctors, and lawyers. . . . What has happened is nothing less than the immense betrayal of intellectuals, and it has resulted in a horrifying image of what intelligence is capable of. Everywhere that coercion occurs on cultured humanity we find intellectuals who are engaged en masse, even brandishing ideological arguments. This is no longer a crisis or the powerlessness of the intelligentsia, but rather its quiet and energetic complicity in the moral and political mayhem of today’s Europe. . . . No cultural value can be exceeded if it is abandoned. . . . Destroy the hierarchy of the spirit, and you prepare for the return of the savage. The decline of the intelligentsia is the path to the barbarization of everything.

  Nevertheless, it did indeed happen, and for decades scholars have repeatedly tried to explain this mass failure of the intelligentsia.

  Thus far I have mentioned only the intellectuals who participated directly in the creation or the operation of totalitarian regimes. It is significant to note that, with only a few exceptions, these were not especially gifted thinkers. (This is particularly true of the Nazis just mentioned.) Goebbels was merely a capable demagogue; in reality, as his diaries show, he was inwardly insecure. For years he despaired over his fate, which seemed to him so hopeless that he considered suicide. Himmler was just as uncertain. His entire youth was utterly without success, and from his lack of confidence was born a raving fanaticism. When he finally decided to assume the mantle of the intellectual, he proclaimed only fatuous prejudices based on romantic German mythology. Their ferocious anti-Semitism bears eloquent testimony to the base intellectual level of both men.

  Not even among the Communist intellectuals do we find great minds. Although numerous paeans have been written about Lenin’s intellectual achievements, no one has yet sought inspiration in his flights into the area of philosophy or the social sciences. When examined objectively, his theses are a conglomeration of cranky polemics, simplifying interpretations, and, above all, errors and lies presented as scientific truth.

  Otherwise, intellectuals did not participate directly in the achievement of totalitarian power, but they either actively endorsed it or tolerated it without objection. Of these there were millions.

  During the birth of Communist ideology, enthusiastic supporters were found all over the world (even more than in the Soviet Union), and many were outstanding intellectuals. Artists were captivated by the utopian vision, the marvelous goals, and the skillful demagoguery with which Communist dictators managed to defend everything that took place in their empires (terror, famine, murder, and imprisonment). Some of these artists, at the beginning of the Bolshevik reign, were still allowed to work. During the first postrevolutionary years, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Anna Akhmatova, and Isaac Babel even approved of and were willing to publicly defend the Communist vision of a joyous society, as if it had already been created. Although other recognized and influential minds of the time condemned Bolshevism immediately after the revolution, they also found positive things to say about Russia. H. G. Wells visited Russia in 1920 and was shocked by what he saw. However, he ended up writing several complimentary things about Russia and Lenin. He concluded his book about his visit, Russia in the Shadows, with the assurance that only the Bolsheviks were capable of preventing the collapse of Russia. It was as if he’d forgotten that it was precisely the Bolsheviks who had brought Russia to the brink of collapse in the first place.

  In The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, Bertrand Russell, who visited Russia at the same time as Wells, spoke more ambivalently about Bolshevism.

  One who believes as I do, that free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism as much as to the Church of Rome. [But] the hopes which inspire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount [!], but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.

  It is true that the First World War shook people’s faith in current political systems, and this caused even educated people to look with expectation upon this great social experiment the Bolsheviks were trying to bring about in Russia.

  There were many intellectuals who supported Stalin even during the period of his greatest cruelty. Usually they found a rational justification for their weakness concerning the merciless totalitarian regime. Hewlett Johnson, nicknamed the Red Dean of Canterbury, one of the most passionate advocates of the Soviet regime, considered it more humane than capitalism. In his trilogy of journalistic books about the Soviet Union, he writes only about that which lent itself to Soviet propaganda. He enthusiastically praises free medical care, education, and the tax system, and justifies his praise (like Stalin) by pointing out the great support the regime receives in its elections. If such a large percentage of the population participates in elections—on May 10th, 1946, it was 99.7 percent—and if 99.18 percent voted for the selected candidates, there must be truth behind the elections in a country where there are equal voting rights, where voting is secret, and where elections are direct. Whether this prominent intellectual public figure from a country of traditional democracy actually believed this claim is difficult to judge. Lenin, however, called such intellectuals useful idiots. Useful idiots were used and abused, often cited as authorities, and showered with admiration and accolades. (Johnson was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize.)

  Of course, it is true that Soviet politicians cunningly continued the Russian tradition of showing willing visitors their country. After the war they deftly exploited the atomic fears of a series of intellectuals, and although they th
emselves were feverishly producing atomic weapons (intended to defend their camp of peace), they unleashed an enormous political campaign against the spread of weapons of mass destruction—and for this campaign they enlisted the foremost scientific experts, the Nobel laureates Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Linus Pauling.

  A few decades later, just after the publication of The Black Book of Communism, an editor for L’Humanité announced on television that even eighty million dead did not tarnish the Communist worldview. After Auschwitz, he opined, one cannot be a Nazi, but after the Soviet gulags, one can be a Communist.

  Certainly it is possible to remain a Communist standing over the mass graves of the murdered (they were, after all, enemies of the greatest and most humane society), it is possible to remain a Communist on the scaffold (whether as the condemned or the hangman), but it is impossible to remain an intellectual or a cultured person. Because the betrayal of intelligence leads to the barbarization of everyone.

  On Propaganda

  Propaganda, although it has not always gone by this name, has existed since antiquity. Oftentimes a capable and demagogic individual would win over so many adherents through disclosures and promises and an ability to provide the people with bread and circuses that he would succeed in achieving absolute power. With a certain schadenfreude one can say that every leader, every regime prefers the darkening of the minds of its subjects (called citizens in modern times). More precisely, the subjects should possess only enough knowledge to confirm the rule of those who hold power.

  Whereas democracies seek ways to limit the tendencies of governments to transform their citizens into a mere assenting mob, totalitarian regimes try to achieve the opposite.

  These regimes have a certain number of loyal citizens, often even fanatically devoted adherents (and approximately the same number of determined opponents). They attempt to acquire the rest of the citizenry for their goals or at least compel them to obedient silence. First they must protect each of their subjects from the influence of all enemy elements and ideas, and all thoughts that do not support the vision upon which the dictatorship is built are considered enemy ideas. Then they must besiege their opponents with correct thoughts. In his first speech as newly appointed chancellor, Adolf Hitler announced his cultural (or, better, anticultural) program. Concurrently with the political purification of our public life, the Reich government will undertake a thorough moral purification of the country. All cultural bodies, theaters, cinemas, literature, the press, and radio—all of this will be used as a tool to fulfill this goal. . . . Blood and race will once again become the source of artistic inspiration.

  A few weeks after this, purges were under way in all cultural organizations, in all media outlets, even in churches. Bonfires of “harmful” books blazed on city squares and in front of universities. Books vanished from libraries and bookstores.

  Over the course of a few months, the ground was laid for the dictator and his helpers to gain control over the people’s minds via propaganda in all media.

  In modern times, propaganda has become an essential element of totalitarian power. In the first stages there is always the corruption of the people through the generous distribution of property, which was at one time stolen from the nobility, another time from the Jews, and still another from the capitalists. Then follows the attempt to control the minds of the citizens.

  The clearest (and most cynical) function and mission of propaganda, as it is understood today, was defined by one of its creators, Joseph Goebbels, the author of the infamous dictum that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth:

  The goal of the National Socialist revolution was to seize power because the idea of revolution remains empty theory if not combined with power. Revolutionary political propaganda brought the ideas of National Socialism to the masses, and therefrom arose Adolf Hitler’s iron soldiers who, through faith in the gospel of his teachings, brought revolution all the way to the threshold of power.

  Propaganda is a matter of practice, not of theory. . . . In other words, propaganda is good if it leads to the desired results, and propaganda is bad if does not lead to the desired results. . . . Its purpose is not to be decent, or gentle, or weak, or modest; it is to be successful.

  The Communists were somewhat less direct in their speeches, but propaganda occupied the same essential position. According to Stalin:

  There is probably no need to mention the great significance of party propaganda and the Marxist-Leninist education of our workers. I have in mind not only the workers in the party. I also have in mind the workers of youth organizations, trade unions, business unions, cooperatives, financial and cultural institutions, and others. . . . The attention of our party must be concentrated on propaganda in the press and in the organization of a lecture system of propaganda.

  In reality, Marxist-Leninist “education” concentrated not only on party members but on all of society. Over the course of a few generations, it became the basis of education in the Communist empire, from preschool to doctoral students, and one could not receive a degree without successfully passing an exam on Marxism.

  Modern means of communication transformed propaganda into a powerful medium; therefore, every totalitarian regime sought to bring them under its power as quickly as possible. The day after the Austrian anschluss, Goebbels, now the powerful Nazi minister of propaganda, noted: I am giving Dr. Dietrich precise instructions for the reform of the Austrian press. We must initiate an enormous reshaping of personnel. . . . We are establishing a Reich radio in Vienna. At the same time, we are creating a Reich Ministry of Propaganda.

  In the days immediately following the February coup in Czechoslovakia, the Communists occupied the editorial offices of all newspapers and radio stations. They instituted action committees to expel tenacious editors and replace them with vetted personnel willing to cooperate. News organizations were purged, and those belonging to the party took power. Frightened non–party members often hastily joined their ranks.

  In all totalitarian systems, the news media are directed by some sort of office (called varying names); however, it is always in the hands of the ruling party, or, more precisely, the group that rules in the party’s name. The office dispenses orders concerning what may be written about and what may not.

  In the first half of the twentieth century, when radio was the most important news medium, the Nazis condemned to death anyone listening to “enemy” broadcasts. A few years later, Communists made it impossible to listen to foreign radio broadcasts by installing a net of jammers—this was not for humanitarian reasons; it was simply more effective.

  A sort of canon of propaganda quickly arises. The fundamental means, policies, and goals can be condensed into a few points.

  First, propaganda must name and define the basic idea it is implicitly to serve. It does not matter whether the idea is called National Socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, or Muslim fundamentalism. What is crucial is that it be transformed into Goebbels’s aforementioned gospel. The idea is holy, that is, unimpugnable, all-explaining, and eternal. Regimes based upon it will last for all time imaginable.

  It is necessary to convince the citizens to willingly accept the fact that what has happened is irrevocable. The Soviet Union will endure forever because it embodies the most progressive and advanced societal order. Therefore, our friendship with it will endure forever. The Nazi empire will assume the rule of Europe. Nothing will change during those thousand years (a thousand years and eternity mean the same thing in the life of an individual), and from this it follows that only an idiot or someone on the enemy side would oppose it.

  Article number two of the canon proves the existence of a cunning, deceitful, malevolent enemy intent on committing atrocities. (Without it, as I have indicated, no dictatorship can exist.) All effective propaganda is dualistic: It must battle for something the people long for, something to which they can fasten themselves, and at the same time it must battle against something or someone that is interfering with their desires
and ideas. The enemy can be Jews, international imperialism, the United States, Israel, kulaks, the bourgeoisie, Trotskyites, plutocrats, Bolshevism, Zionism, cosmopolitanism, degenerate capitalism, seditious transmitters of Radio Free Europe, the CIA, German revanchists, Masons, or religious sects. The enemy can change shape over time too. It cannot, however, disappear from the world because the sanctity of propaganda is always strengthened by doing battle with satanic forces. The enemy is a pariah: deceitful, disgusting, dirty, corrupt, cunning, crafty, inordinately ambitious, treacherous, insidious, intriguing, destined to vanish from history. No comparisons are powerful enough. The enemy is a blood-letting dog (Stalin for Goebbels, Tito for Stalin). For Hitler the Romanian peasant is a miserable piece of cattle, Churchill an unprincipled pig. When Lenin writes his furious polemic with the foremost Social Democrat, the theoretician Karl Kautsky, he showers him with ever-new curses—Kautsky is a renegade, a parliamentary cretin, a bourgeois lackey, a sweet idiot. For Stalin, those he needs to divest himself of, the pariahs, are a handful of spies, murderers, and cankerworms slinking in the dust before foreign countries, infected by a slavish feeling of groveling humility before every foreign stooge.

  Against the background of these repulsive monsters looms the refulgent yet almost kitschy image of the leader. He is kind, polite, wise; he has an understanding of the needs of simple people; he is uncompromisingly fair, works tirelessly, defends honor and decency, loves children, the elderly, and war invalids. Magazines and newsreels are chock-full of photographs of the leader and scenes from his life. Lenin with Gorky, with his wife, with his nephews. Lenin skates, collects mushrooms, and has a dog named Aida that he plays with. Hitler has his blonde. The führer also loves the children of his friend Goebbels. He skis and goes on walks, and we see him smiling and down-to-earth mit der kleine Helga. Stalin holds in his arms a pioneer schoolgirl, who has just brought him a bouquet of flowers. During the war, on the other hand, he inclines over a map of the front to demonstrate to everyone that it is he who is calling the shots in the final victory of his armies.